Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “Airspeed five knots. Fifty feet to evacuation point,” Welly said.

  “Back one-third,” Max said, cranking the jangling chadburn handle to that position.

  “Back one-third,” engineering repeated on the chattertube, ringing the chadburn bell with the daughter dial.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin’s engines revved up, the propellers gently whirring in reverse, the vibration jiggling the boil in its tubes.

  “Airspeed four knots. Thirty feet to evacuation point,” Wellington said. “Twenty feet…airspeed three knots…ten feet…airspeed two knots…five feet…dead stop.”

  “All stop!” Max ordered into the chattertube as she swung the chadburn lever. “Hover.”

  “All stop and hover!” came the engineering response.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin now hung motionless above the fog bank.

  “Directly above evacuation point,” Welly said, scratching a line on his map with pencil and ruler.

  Max glanced at her watch and leaned in to her chattertube mouthpiece. “Lower the launch.”

  “Lowering launch! Aye, Captain!” It was Ivan’s voice coming to her on the chattertube. Ensign Glantz was chief of the boat on the launch. The chief mechanic was not supposed to be there, but there was no stopping him now.

  The great winches and winding gears of the launch’s lowering mechanism creaked and groaned behind the piloting gondola.

  “Launch descending. Fifty feet of rope. Aye!” Ivan reported through the chattertube.

  The Arabella was to be lowered fifty feet, and the Pneumatic Zeppelin would descend the rest of the way down with it. This would allow the mother airship to provide covering fire for the rescue expedition as they boarded the grounded Arabella. The crew were already at their battle stations; the rear hatch of the gondola had been opening and shutting as musket-armed crew members clambered out onto the umbilical bridges.

  “Ballast, vent hydrogen five percent for vertical descent,” Max said. “Down ship.”

  “Down ship!” Welly shouted into the chattertube.

  “Venting hydrogen, five percent, aye,” Nero Coulton repeated, cranking his gas-release wheels on the hydro board.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin sank, slow and easy, and the piloting gondola was once again swallowed up in the gray nothingness of the fog bank. The vapors, impregnated with a vile stench of coal smoke, dead fish, sea salt, and rotten onions, made Max gag—it was not the released hydrogen, which was odorless and colorless—and she wondered if the entire city smelled like this.

  The fog thickened overhead: it suddenly got much darker inside the gondola. The phosphorescent coating on every dial, register, and control surface glimmered a soft yellow green.

  It was quiet. Max could hear the indistinct patter of the tiny mechanical agitators stirring inside the hundreds of boil-filled instrument spheres, vials, and cylinders on the bridge, each one generating its own green bioluminescence.

  “Hydrogen five-percent vent complete,” Nero said, scrutinizing the instrument gauges on the hydro and ballast boards.

  “Aye,” Max responded.

  Welly had his face pressed into the drift scope. “Rate of descent two feet per second. Estimate launch to make landfall in approximately thirty-five seconds.”

  Max watched her gyro, compass, and inclinometer.

  “Thirty seconds to launch landfall,” Welly said. “Zero bubble.”

  Ivan’s voice came rattling down the chattertube. “Launch has cleared the fog ceiling. We are over the landing site. Thirty feet to landfall. Thirty feet.”

  “Thirty feet, aye,” Max repeated back to Ivan though her chattertube hood.

  “Rescue team sighted—but we’ve got a hornet’s nest down here!” Ivan yelled.

  Max’s stomach muscles tightened. The fight they had expected was on. The Pneumatic Zeppelin, coming down like a big, fat, slow duck, would not fare well if there was anything down there bigger than muskets. She heard the sounds of blackbang muskets blazing, faint at first, but rapidly gaining in intensity.

  “Twenty feet,” Welly reported.

  “Twenty feet to launch landfall!” Ivan said almost simultaneously on the chattertube, most likely peering down the Arabella’s drift scope.

  “Twenty feet, aye,” Max said, turning to Nero. “Hydro—ready to replenish hydrogen in all sections, five percent.”

  Nero already had his hands resting on his controls. “Five percent, aye. Hydro ready for the bounce, ma’am.”

  The fog thinned out and disappeared under the glass observation window at Max’s feet. Looking down past the dog, she had a bird’s-eye view of La Brea Square below. It was designed as a huge hexagon, with the massive phoenix sculpture at the center, and four causeways leading away from each side. The wide causeways, built to span the massive pool of black tar over which the entire square rested, were bordered near the center by irregular pumping structures capped with amber-stained glass domes.

  Directly below, grouped in a defensive circle on the eastern causeway, was the rescue expedition, muskets afire. A considerable force of Founders had the Crankshaft and Alchemist intruders surrounded—and Max could see dozens more racing to the scene from the adjoining streets.

  Outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded, Buckle’s expedition was not going to last much longer.

  NEWTON AND THE ARABELLA

  ROMULUS BUCKLE’S EYELIDS FLUTTERED, BATTLING against the acrid cordite that stung his eyes. He caught glimpses of shadows moving in a fog lit up by bright yellow muzzle flashes. He was confused for a moment, until he remembered where he was. He was being carried—or, more descriptively, dragged—as his heels scraped along the ground. Powerful hands laid him down against a wall, and the sudden stillness made his head swim violently. He forced his eyes open, focusing on Corporal Druxbury and Sabrina as they kneeled over him. Druxbury was wrapping Buckle’s head with bandages.

  “You okay, old salt?” Druxbury shouted, realizing that Buckle had regained consciousness.

  Buckle tried to say something—he wasn’t sure what—but his mouth would not form the words. A musket ball struck the wall above his head, showering him with sharp bits of granite. Anger flooded through him. He had to get up and fight. He clawed at his pistol holster and tried to pull his body up.

  Sabrina shoved Buckle back down, hard enough to bang the back of his head against the wall. “Romulus! For the sake of mercy, stay down!”

  Buckle took a deep breath. He tasted blood in his mouth. He could see one of the amber glass domes towering over the opposite wall of the causeway. A line of finely formed letters, corroded with green rust but still quite prominent, were chiseled along the dome’s high copper collar: STEAM POWER FOR OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD OF PEACE AND BROTHERHOOD.

  Buckle turned his head to the left. Andromeda was lying beside him, with Kepler and Wolfgang crouched over her. Her blood-streaked face rested mere inches from Buckle’s, her depthless eyes of violet-black staring into his. The white of one eye was soaked by blood, but that ghastly detail now escaped Buckle’s notice: the Alchemist leader was not looking at him, but rather into him.

  The clouds in Buckle’s head suddenly melted away, replaced by clarity.

  Buckle suddenly knew things. He knew that Andromeda could not speak. But he knew she was urging him to act.

  Buckle turned his head to the sky and saw a long, ellipsoidal shadow growing darker and darker in the fog ceiling: it was the Arabella making her descent. Grabbing ahold of the low causeway wall, Buckle yanked himself to his feet, drawing his pistol as he rose. Druxbury and Sabrina now had their backs to him, part of the rough circle of Ballblasters and Alchemist troopers who, under the direction of Pluteus, Scorpius, and a somewhat recovered Balthazar, were returning fire at flashes in the gloom that came from every direction. Katzenjammer Smelt stood in the center of the formation, arrogantly heedless of any danger, aiming, firing, and reloading his pistol with the calm ease one might see on a practice range.

  Musket balls with their phosphorescent trails wh
izzed through the miasma, ricocheting off metal, biting into granite with nasty whacks of pulverized rock, smacking holes in the mottled glass of the tar-pit domes.

  Buckle lifted his pistol, waiting to shoot at a musket muzzle flash. He saw a section of fog burst with a circle of light. He jerked his pistol to the mark and fired. Whether he hit anything or not he would never know.

  “Just cannot stay out of the party, can you, Captain?” Sabrina shouted, biting the top off a paper cartridge as she appeared at Buckle’s shoulder. “I think they are forming up to the east!”

  “Where the hell is that Martian with your airship?” Scorpius bellowed.

  “She shall be here,” Buckle replied.

  “My airship,” Smelt howled nearby.

  A Ballblaster at Buckle’s shoulder cried out and fell backward. It was Reyes. Buckle knelt beside the man to check his pulse. He was dead. The Founders soldiers, Buckle thought as he jammed his ammunition into his pistol barrel and ramrodded it home, were surely more proficient at fighting in the fog than his clansmen were.

  A roar of musketry boomed overhead. The slender keel of the Arabella had cleared the fog ceiling, and her gunwales, jammed from bow to stern with muskets, had opened up in a barrage of flashes.

  “Our transportation has arrived, children!” Balthazar shouted.

  The Arabella was coming down to land in an excellent position: the length of her hull would roughly straddle the western end of the eastern causeway, placing the airship like a wall between Buckle’s force and the Founders soldiers, collected under the huge phoenix statue at the center.

  “Good work, Max!” Buckle shouted.

  Seeing the arrival of the Crankshaft reinforcements, the Founders on the eastern end of the causeway started pressing. The vapors rippled with gunfire that was suddenly much closer and heavier in its volume. An Alchemist trooper fell, screaming as he clutched a leg split wide open. His companions dragged him back. Buckle stepped into the breach and discharged his pistol at the shadows in the fog.

  The battlefield suddenly fell silent.

  Sabrina had been right. The enemy was forming up for an assault.

  Buckle drew his sword, the saber blade ringing as it slid out of the scabbard. It was going to be close.

  “Form up on me!” Pluteus screamed, striding back and forth. “Double ranks!”

  The Ballblasters and Alchemists, hastily reloading their muskets, fell back into two lines.

  Buckle hurried into a position at the end of the front line. He stuck his empty pistol into his belt. There would be time for only one volley—and then the fight would be hand-to-hand.

  “Fix bayonets!” Pluteus ordered. The troopers drew their bayonets from their belt frogs. “Bayonets!” Bayonets were snapped onto the musket barrels with a resounding click.

  Buckle heard a gravelly-throated Founders officer shout in the mist ahead, his orders as loud and clear as if he were on parade: “Charge!”

  What seemed like a hundred men and women screamed a battle cry, their voices rolling from the fog like an ocean wave.

  “Front rank, kneel!” Pluteus yelled. The front rank of troopers dropped to one knee.

  “Take aim!” Pluteus shouted.

  The troopers lifted their musket stocks tight to their cheeks, barrels unwavering, leveled at the mass of shadows rushing at them through the mist.

  “Hold!” Pluteus shouted.

  The Founders came on, their shadows getting darker and more defined, the pitch of their battle cry growing. There were a lot of them.

  “Hold! Wait for it!” Pluteus shouted.

  A wall of black-uniformed Founders soldiers, both men and women, burst out of the fog, their muskets spattering yellow with a volley of fire.

  “Fire!” Pluteus shouted. The Ballblaster and Alchemist ranks boomed in a solid volley of musketry, blowing up a cloud of dark powder smoke. Buckle saw casualties drop from the Founders line—but they had barely dented their numbers.

  “To the bayonet! Have at ’em, old salts!” Pluteus yelled.

  Buckle squared his feet and raised his sword. The Founders would surely overrun them. But all they had to do was buy enough time for the leaders to board the Arabella.

  A rip of musketry and the deep roar of cannon opened up high at Buckle’s back. A hail of phosphorus musket-ball traces sliced into the Founders line. He heard the low chunk, chunk, chunk of the hammergun, the whirs of its harpoon darts passing over his head. The Founders staggered and slowed. A series of explosive shells rolled across their leading rank from left to right, mowing them down, tearing them to pieces.

  Buckle looked overhead: the massive keel of the Pneumatic Zeppelin had emerged, as big as a sky city, dwarfing the grand phoenix statue beyond. Her gondolas and umbilical bridges rippled with the flashes and phosphorus flicks of musket fire. The gunnery gondola, cannon hatches flung open, the twelve-pounders drawn back for reloading, was wreathed in rivers of blackbang smoke. The hammergun slung beneath the piloting gondola swung from side to side, barrel bouncing, expending ammunition in violent puffs of superheated steam.

  And suspended by dozens of thick ropes and cables fifty feet beneath the Pneumatic Zeppelin was the Arabella, her descent slowing to a hover, the bottom of her hull mere inches above the causeway. Along with her musket-wielding crewmen on the weather deck stood the hulking form of Newton, the rotating cannon on his arm spinning, spewing currents of black smoke as barrel after barrel discharged blast after blast, raining his explosive shells on the Founders. Zwicky stood at Newton’s side, grinning like a madman.

  “Fall back and embark!” Pluteus howled through the din.

  The troopers backed up toward the Arabella, carrying their wounded as they retreated. Scully had a firm grip on Balthazar, making sure he was one of the first in line to board the launch.

  Sabrina took ahold of Buckle’s arm and pulled him with her. “Let’s go, Captain!”

  The Arabella’s main loading door swung down and slammed on the causeway. Ivan leapt down the ramp, the earflaps of his ushanka askew, waving his pistol. “What are you waiting for? An invitation? Come on!” he shouted.

  Kepler was the first up the ramp, carrying Andromeda in his arms, followed closely by Wolfgang, then Scully and Balthazar.

  For a moment, as he approached the Arabella, Buckle worried about the black Founders uniform he was wearing, his regular gear tucked away in Sabrina’s haversack. One of his own crewmen might pot him. Or, more disturbingly, Newton might pot him. He realized that was why Sabrina was holding him by the arm.

  “Move!” Pluteus yelled.

  Buckle glanced back down the causeway. Musket flashes popped in the mist, but the Founders charge had melted back into the fog, which was still being pummeled by Newton and the Crankshaft guns.

  Buckle and Sabrina arrived at the ramp as the troopers embarked in a stream. The air was swimming in gunpowder haze, with sparks and burning wadding streaming down from Newton’s hot barrels directly above.

  “Let’s get it moving!” Ivan shouted. His pet wugglebat, Pushkin, popped its furry head out his breast pocket for an instant, then ducked it back in.

  Pluteus followed the last trooper up the ramp, shoving Ivan’s pistol out of the way as he passed him. “I told you to watch that thing, Gorky!” he snapped.

  “Captain!” Sabrina shouted, halfway up the ramp. “It is time to go!”

  Buckle looked back at Smelt, trailing last, taking one last shot into the fog. “Smelt! Get your arse up the ramp!” he yelled.

  Smelt spun around. He holstered his pistol and calmly strode toward the ramp.

  A Founders soldier, half crazed with bloodlust, his face and uniform spattered with the blood of his massacred fellows, charged out of the fog at Smelt’s back. His musket led the way, the bayonet leveled straight at Smelt’s spine.

  Buckle snapped out his pistol, aiming it just past Smelt’s right ear.

  Smelt narrowed his eyes in rage. “Assassin!”

  Buckle pulled the trigger. The
hammer dropped with a useless click. Empty. Smelt was one instant away from being skewered. Buckle clenched his fingers around his sword hilt and lunged, shoving Smelt hard to the right. The Founders man howled, adjusting the angle of his bayonet attack to catch Smelt, even as he stumbled.

  Buckle slashed his sword across the soldier’s musket barrel, knocking the bayonet thrust aside. Then, driving his left forearm up to catch the man under the chin, he stepped into his forward momentum and drove his blade into the man’s stomach.

  The Founders soldier stopped cold, his face twisting on Buckle’s sleeve. Buckle saw the blood-red point of his saber protruding from the man’s back—he had run the poor bastard through. The dying soldier gurgled. Buckle felt the wheeze of the man’s last breath hot on his cheek, saw the light in his brown eyes extinguish. The man dropped; Buckle yanked his sword free as the body fell.

  Buckle turned and saw Smelt staring at him like a man who had just witnessed an unspeakable outrage. Smelt spun on his heel and marched up the ramp.

  Sabrina grabbed Buckle, her ringlets of red hair striking as they bounced around her green eyes and pale, sooty face. “Get aboard, Captain! Hurry!” Buckle turned and raced up the ramp with Sabrina.

  Ivan, perched in the doorway, yanked at all of them as they passed. “Get lost, Smelt. Nice to see you, Serafim. Nice uniform, Captain—a perfect way to get yourself potted by one of your own!”

  Buckle and Sabrina stumbled into the dark hold of the Arabella. Buckle sensed the crowd of people within more than saw them. The loading door cranked shut as fast as its steam-powered gears could spin.

  Ivan swung to a chattertube and shouted into the hood. “Launch secure! Haul away!”

  The Arabella jerked, nearly throwing everyone off their feet, the winches high above in the Pneumatic Zeppelin being thrown to full power immediately.