“Check the hydrogen lines first,” Max shouted, then clambered up to the walkway. “Move!”
A simple “thank you” would have been nice, Ivan thought.
Half an hour later, out on the windblown exterior of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Ivan’s back still hurt. The airship was running at less than maximum speed, but sixty knots still packed a wallop. He skimmed down his safety line as he arrived at the monstrous, forty-foot-high tear in the envelope skin.
Max was there, along with three teams of skinners that included Rudyard, Amanda, and Marian Boyd, who had bloodstained bandages jutting out of her flying helmet. There were also four of Pluteus’s Ballblasters, well tethered and perched at the perimeter with their muskets ready, eyes peeled and turned toward the sky, even though it was unheard of to run into a second hunting pair of tanglers in one day.
Max, Marian, and the skinners sewed emergency patches, battling to keep the wind from whipping loose fabric into their faces, a real hazard with jagged, doped edges and nine-inch needles in the mix. Ivan slid into position to assist Marian. He was anxious to do something. He wanted to be busy. He did not want to think about Buckle being dead.
Max waved Ivan off. “What are you doing, Ivan?” she shouted. “There is no need for a mechanic out here! Get back inside!”
“A simple ‘thank you’ would have been nice,” Ivan grumbled.
SECOND-IN-COMMAND
SABRINA SERAFIM GRIPPED THE RUDDER wheel, the solid swing of its smooth brass handles reassuring against her hands. She had taken the rudder wheel from De Quincey, needing an anchor for her soul. Half an hour earlier, she had seen Buckle fall. She shuddered, not wanting to remember. The gondola cockpit was silent, and the winding and hissing of the instruments on her bowler hat seemed unusually loud.
“We shall maintain all ahead standard until repairs are completed,” she told Welly, who was now seated in the chief navigator’s chair. “Adjust for drift. Keep us on course.”
“Aye, Captain,” Welly replied, his voice quavering.
Captain. Sabrina took a deep breath. Romulus Buckle was gone. Her captain. Her brother. Her friend. It was impossible. She had always been certain that Buckle was bulletproof, untouchable. What an awful way to die: cut to shreds by a tangler as he plummeted to earth. It wasn’t the way he should go. It was improper.
Kellie stood at Sabrina’s feet, tail tucked between her legs, panting, foam coating her tongue after she had run miles of airship passageways and catwalks in a vain search for her master. Sabrina had tried to pick her up, but she squirmed away, inconsolable. Perhaps Kellie would have preferred to jump overboard with Buckle to join him in his end.
The dog’s quivering misery made Sabrina feel even worse. Here she was—the acting captain—and her insides were knotted with anger at the unfairness of the world.
At least the Pneumatic Zeppelin was holding its course more easily now. Sabrina had had to compensate for the starboard-side drag less and less. This was good. With three skinner teams on the repairs, the job should almost be done—as long as no more beasties showed up—and she could get the airship back under full power again. She was in command now; standing at the helm where Buckle should have been, she felt alone.
“The sea breeze is stiffening from the west with the onset of evening, Captain,” Welly reported. “Recalculating drift corrections.”
“Aye,” Sabrina replied.
Other than the sounds of her commands and Welly’s acknowledgments, the gondola had been running silent since the tangler attack. Welly’s pencil scratched loudly now and again as he worked his navigational math, his usual smile missing from his face as he leaned over his station. Poor Welly. He bore as much affection for Buckle as anyone. Well, Welly, you’d better get used to the chief navigator’s chair, Sabrina thought, because it is yours now. And get ready to be nitpicked, because no navigator ever wants to have a captain who used to be a navigator, because they’re always leaning over your shoulder, telling you how you’re doing everything wrong. She smiled a little, surprising herself.
Sabrina was always a little hard on Welly because of that, because of the annoying twinge of embarrassment she felt at having her pimply apprentice, who was a full three years her junior, wearing her hat and telling everyone who would listen of his adolescent devotion to her. She would upon occasion refer to him as “the kid,” even though she knew he hated it. But deep underneath, Sabrina quite liked Welly (in a big-sister sort of way), with his earnestness and honesty, and she often caught a glimpse of the handsome man who was struggling to grow up and out of the gawky, awkward “kid.”
Sabrina was no stranger to loss. There would be no wet-eyed sadness from the acting captain. Not with a crew devastated by Buckle’s death at exactly the moment when they needed him the most, mere hours before the Pneumatic Zeppelin was to plunge down into the poison mists of the Founders’ city, charging headlong into the unknown, into a fortified bastion where they would be outnumbered and outgunned.
Buckle’s loss was painful, but it changed nothing. Balthazar Crankshaft had to be saved. Even if the Pneumatic Zeppelin and her entire crew perished in the effort, no one doubted that the sacrifice would be worth it. Don’t miss Buckle too much just yet, Serafim, she mused to herself, for you may be joining him soon.
And for just one instant, Sabrina allowed herself a twinge of hope, the tiny comfort that somehow, somewhere, Romulus Buckle might still be alive. He had escaped the clutches of certain death before. But as the little hope grew, it only further illuminated the reality of Buckle’s death. She buried it.
Pluteus arrived in the gondola, his boots clomping down the iron stairwell and across the gondola’s teakwood deck. He stank of sweat and gunpowder, so Sabrina could smell him coming as well as hear him. “I’ve been informed that we are currently drifting along at half speed, Serafim,” he said, frustration coloring his voice. “How long is that going to last?”
Sabrina winced. She did not want Pluteus on the bridge. She adored him, but he was overbearing. “Not much longer, I’d wager, Pluteus. But our repair is a big job. We were ripped wide open at the kidney.”
Pluteus placed his hand on Sabrina’s shoulder; it was heavy, cloaked in a long leather glove with an armored plate stitched into the forearm. His hand had always felt reassuring. Pluteus was a big, gruff infantryman, but as Balthazar Crankshaft’s cousin, he was like an uncle to most of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s crew. “We are all sorry about Romulus, my dear,” Pluteus said. “I know how close-knit you and he were.”
Sabrina patted Pluteus’s hand and tried to smile. “Thanks, Pluteus. But right now all I want to do is get Balthazar back. We owe it to Romulus to pull this one off.”
Pluteus nodded and took a long, deep breath. “He won’t be the only Crankshafter to die today, I am afraid,” he said.
“Think lucky. Buckle always thought lucky,” Sabrina said.
Pluteus grinned. “All right, well, my troopers are getting geared up,” he said as he turned to leave. “Give me a signal five minutes prior to disembarkation, please.”
“Pluteus, I, wait…” Sabrina blurted.
Pluteus stepped back. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
Sabrina’s nerves twisted inside her stomach. She hadn’t wanted to have this conversation with Pluteus. But now she had no choice. “I am going with you.”
“Going with me where?” Pluteus asked.
“Down there. Into the mustard.”
Pluteus blinked. Then he looked angry. “No. No you are not, Serafim,” he replied.
Sabrina stepped away from the helm, motioning for De Quincey to return to his station at the wheel. “I was already slated to accompany Romulus. I can help you,” Sabrina whispered, glancing at Welly, De Quincey, and the others, bodies only a few feet away at every hand, all able to hear every word they were saying.
Pluteus sighed through his nose. “You are the acting captain now, Serafim. Your place is here.”
“Pluteus, I…I am the only one who knows the way int
o the city.”
She saw surprise flash in Pluteus’s eyes. “You? You are the one? And how in blue blazes do you know that?”
“It is not important.”
“Is not important? Answer me, Serafim,” Pluteus demanded, stepping forward to face her directly. “How do you of all people have firsthand knowledge of secret passageways in and out of the City of the Founders?”
“Balthazar knows how.”
Pluteus leaned very close. “I need to know how.”
Sabrina had always looked up to Pluteus, even emulated him, and now she had just seen the shock in his eyes shift to angry suspicion. It angered her. “Not here, General Brassballs, and not now.”
Shock registered in Pluteus’s expression. He looked as if he wanted to slap her. “Balthazar may allow you the privilege of hiding your history, and so be it. But when it affects the here and now, I demand to know the facts.”
“Step aside, General,” Sabrina said, encouraged by the baritone authority brimming in her voice. “With all due respect—I am the captain here.”
For a moment Pluteus did not move, his eyes hard and mean, the veins in his neck popping. Then, like a lion thwarted, he lurched aside.
Max’s voice rang from the chattertube hood. “Chief Engineer to the bridge,” she said.
Sabrina leaned in to her chattertube mouthpiece. “Aye, Chief Engineer.”
“Emergency skin repairs are complete, Captain,” Max announced. “But no more than all ahead standard recommended.”
“Aye, Max. Good work,” Sabrina said. She stiffened up, feeling a surge of energy. Her spine suddenly felt as it if it were injected with iron. She grabbed the engine telegraph lever and cocked it forward to all ahead full, sounding the bell. “All ahead full!” she shouted into the engine-room chattertube.
“All ahead full!” an engineer answered. The second dial on the engine-room telegraph swung to match the first, and the bell rang again.
“Your chief engineer recommended no more than standard, Captain Serafim,” Pluteus commented dryly, glowering.
“I am going to make up your lost time for you, General,” Sabrina answered, feeling the Pneumatic Zeppelin surge under her feet, the propellers winding up to a thundering hum. Kellie raised her head as she always did when the ship accelerated…but dropped it and fell to whimpering.
Sabrina nudged the rudder wheel, and as the weak light of the afternoon sun drifted its shadows across the cockpit, the glass nose of the gondola swung down toward the yellow miasma below, toward the Los Angeles basin, fogged with poison, and toward the fabled, wicked city within it.
THE CROW WHO COULD NOT CAW
MAX PAUSED ON THE MAIN keel corridor just a few feet from the piloting gondola stairwell. She had felt the Pneumatic Zeppelin rev up to all ahead full with little concern: she knew that the captain—whether it was Buckle or Sabrina—would push the engines to their fullest regardless of her recommendations. The situation demanded such risks. And she was certain that the patching would hold.
She was staring at her hands. She could not make them stop shaking.
She clamped them behind her back.
Captain Buckle was lost, and it was her fault.
No one would blame her, of course, not after she’d killed one tangler and nearly lost her life to the second while trying to drag her captain to safety. But that made no difference at all. Buckle was dead. She had failed him.
Snap out of it, Max! she thought. Things would be harder now, with Buckle gone. But she had to truly be the first mate and help Sabrina as best she could.
If only her hands would stop shaking.
Max hurried down the circular staircase with her hands still clasped behind her back. When she stepped onto the gondola deck, she scanned the gauges and dials at the engineering station, making sure that the zeppelin’s systems were in good shape. She also immediately smelled the tension simmering between Sabrina and Pluteus. Sabrina looked calm, but Pluteus’s face was flushed; he was shifting his weight almost imperceptibly forward onto the balls of his feet.
Sabrina turned her head and smiled sadly at Max. “Good work, Max. Aerodynamics are acceptable.”
Max rubbed her ice-rimed goggles with the sleeve of her coat, doing so more to keep her hands busy than to actually defrost the lenses. “She will hold together as long as we do not run into any weather.”
“I trust you have recovered sufficiently from your fall?” Sabrina asked.
“Yes,” Max replied. It was almost a mumble. Max did not feel like talking.
“I was told that you did everything you could on the roof,” Sabrina said. “No one could have done more.”
Max nodded, unable to look Sabrina in the eyes. Kind words, but each one stabbed Max in the heart.
“We all know—” Sabrina started.
Something burst in Max’s head. “What are your orders now, Captain Serafim?” Max asked, cutting Sabrina off, daring her to continue with her ineffective sympathies, her unintentional tortures.
“All right, Max,” Sabrina said softly. “All right.”
“There is no point in dwelling upon tragedy, Captain Serafim,” Pluteus said gravely. “Time is a-wasting, and you have not answered my question. How do you know the way into the City of the Founders?”
Despite the ratcheting up of the tension, Max was grateful for the distraction.
“I haven’t time for explanations now, General Pluteus,” Sabrina replied with an authority in her voice that Max had never heard before. “See that your troopers are prepared. I shall be joining you presently.”
“I am a general and a council elder—” Pluteus started.
“And I am the captain,” Sabrina replied evenly. “See to your men.”
Pluteus glared.
Max glanced back at Sabrina. Sabrina was correct that the airship captain was the commander on the airship. But what was this she had just overheard? Sabrina knew about a passageway leading into the City of the Founders? In a world where no one on the outside knew anything about the mysterious city, it was a considerable revelation. Pluteus was reasonable in his request for her to explain how she knew such a thing.
But Balthazar always allowed his adopted children to keep their secrets.
Something big and birdlike swooped up and landed on the gondola’s starboard gunwale rail, where it was open to the sky.
Tangler. That was Max’s first thought. A tangler zipping in to snatch a meal. She grabbed for her pistol.
“Tangler!” both Sabrina and Pluteus shouted, both drawing their pistols. Nero, unarmed, threw himself to the deck.
The dog—the thought flashed in Max’s mind—the dog was too distraught to even bark.
It was not a tangler.
So the dog did not bark.
The bird-thing perched on the gondola rail was a machine, a bizarre metal construction that resembled a huge crow. Gears and cogs hummed across the length of its body, and glass portals roiled with steam and boiling water within; polished copper feathers lined the wings, glimmering in the gray light, while the eyes glowed red over a jet black beak on the metal skull.
Max and her shipmates stared over their pistols at the mechanical apparition. Neither she nor they had ever seen anything like this before.
The crow looked back at them with its red eyes. It released a jet of steam from a valve on its back and then seemed to relax, as if conserving its energy.
Uttering a small yip, Kellie jumped to her feet, hurried up to the mechanical crow and carefully sniffed one of the brass claws clutching the rail.
Max slowly lowered her pistol. The others did the same. Nero rose to his feet, looking a bit sheepish.
“Well, keep my powder dry,” Pluteus stammered. “What wizards construct such wondrous contraptions as this?”
“Alchemists,” Sabrina whispered.
The crow lifted its left leg, causing Kellie to jump back an inch, and there, clutched in its brass talons, was a leather-bound scroll.
Welly cautiously stepp
ed forward and took a hold of the scroll, which the crow’s talons released with a convulsive jerk as soon as he touched it. He rolled the scroll open, its parchment paper crackling as it was stretched out.
Welly read the note and then read it again. “I…” he started, and stopped, as if his eyes could not make out the elegant handwriting.
“Out with it, man,” Pluteus huffed.
Welly looked up from the scroll, blinking, stunned. “It’s from Captain Buckle. He’s with the Alchemists. He wants us to come retrieve him.”
“What?” Sabrina asked, incredulous.
Max was afraid to believe her ears; she felt as if she had suddenly forgotten how to breathe. Kellie, on the other hand, somehow understood, leaping up and chasing her tail as she did when a particular excitement was too much for her.
Welly waved the scroll, overcome with joy. “He is at the Observatory. The captain! Captain Buckle’s alive!”
NINETY-NINE SOULS
CAPTAIN ROMULUS BUCKLE SMILED THE way he smiled when he had some air under him. He stood shoulder to shoulder with General Scorpius, Wolfgang, Wolfgang’s assistant Luckmoor Zwicky, six Alchemist soldiers, and two robots inside the cramped and creaking main hold of the Arabella, the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s launch. The Arabella was not flying on this trip—she had been lowered by cables to pick up her passengers near the Alchemist Observatory, and now she was being ratcheted back up into her berth inside the belly of the hovering mother zeppelin—but it was close enough to flying for Buckle.
Scorpius cleared his throat and scratched his hoary gray-black beard. He obviously was not comfortable off the ground, and neither were the tall Alchemist soldiers with him. Wolfgang looked quite pleased, however, as did Zwicky, a scrawny, bookwormish type. Wolfgang and Zwicky ran the two robots Scorpius had chosen to accompany his platoon: Newton, with all of his firepower, and a strange machine they called the Owl, because it looked like one, or at least its face did, while the rest of its body more resembled that of a metal ostrich. Ten Alchemists and two robots did not an army make, but from the looks of their equipment and the three massive trunks packed with gear they carried with them, they would add needed punch to the Crankshaft rescue mission.
Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) Page 9