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

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  The female steampiper lunged at Buckle. He backed up, parrying her blows, noticing in the flurry that her sleeves were thick with silver lace—a high-ranking officer.

  A sharp vibration hit Buckle’s boots along the grating: he realized that someone else had just landed on the catwalk behind him.

  Buckle bobbed low, bending at the knees just as an arc of silvery steel sliced the air over his head. Buckle whirled around and kicked the second steampiper, a tall, powerful male, in the stomach, staggering him backward.

  Buckle stood up, holding his sword in front of him, sideways to each of the steampipers, who moved in as a pair, like lions, stalking each flank.

  Buckle had been suckered into a trap. He would have cursed himself, but there wasn’t time.

  BALTHAZAR, RESURRECTED

  SABRINA GRIPPED THE FRAME OF the drift scope as she leaned forward, craning her neck to peer over the green glow of her instruments and catch a glimpse of the steampipers swarming under the glass nose of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s piloting gondola. She saw nothing except flashes in the fog bank. Muskets thundered on the umbilical behind, and up the stairwell above. The sounds made her cringe. Many stray bullets, smoking with hot phosphorus, would be puncturing more hydrogen cells, straining the stockings. Even if the zeppelin survived another hydrogen explosion, Sabrina doubted that they could stay aloft for long.

  Sabrina itched to grab her saber, to charge up the stairs and join in the fight, but she had her hands full just keeping the damaged zeppelin in the air. Besides, the brawl might well come to her—the piloting gondola was a prime target for any attacker. The gondola was well defended: Geneva Bolling was down in the hammergun turret, while the crew had been issued pistols at their stations; two musket-toting crew members and a Ballblaster had been posted aft, covering the stairwell and the umbilical ramp hatch; even Kellie was primed for action, pacing at Sabrina’s calves, ears pinned back, growling.

  “How is the rudder, Mister De Quincey?” Sabrina asked.

  “As long as she doesn’t snap off, we are fine, ma’am,” De Quincey replied. Sweat trickled down his face from under his hat, leaving cold trails on his skin as the subzero air froze them in channels of salty ice. It took nearly every ounce of his considerable strength to keep the zeppelin steady.

  “Elevators, Mister Dunn?” Sabrina asked.

  “Holding, ma’am,” Dunn replied, but the strain in his voice was unmistakable.

  Every member of the bridge crew was in a battle at his station. Ripped open and dragging hard to port, without blue-water ballast for the trim tanks, and with three of the six main boilers out of action, it was a real balancing act to keep the gigantic hydrogen airship level. Over and over again, the bubbles danced, and time and time again, they fought the air vessel back into line.

  The fog bank beneath the gondola disappeared as if they had driven off a cliff, the mist falling away to the endless, black-as-ink Pacific Ocean below. Good, Sabrina thought, eyeing the mammoth Catalina Obelisk that loomed almost dead ahead, a massive pillar of purple-black stone thrusting up from the channel waters and disappearing into the clouds, whose course it cleaved high above.

  “Hold course due south, one mile,” Sabrina said. “Then we turn due west.”

  “Aye, south one mile to course change due west,” Welly said, working the drift scope and charts.

  Sabrina could now clearly see the blue-white comet tails of the steampipers streaking below. She leaned to the open port gunwale and peered down at the ocean.

  “Do not expose yourself in such a fashion, Navigator!” Balthazar bellowed, his boots banging down the stairwell, making the crewmen flinch until they realized who it was. “Fly your foundering zeppelin! Let the rest of us put our eyes on the sky! The last thing we need is for you to stick your head out the window and get potted!”

  Sabrina ducked her head back from the gunwale as Balthazar stepped up beside her, breathing hard, stinking of blackbang smoke, pistol and sword in his hands.

  “Father!” Sabrina said, suddenly angry, wanting to scold him. What was he doing out of bed and fighting steampipers? She bit her tongue. He looked hale, his face flushed, his eyes hard—he usually did recover quickly from his episodes. But she did not like it. “What is the situation up topside?” she asked evenly.

  “They have latched on and cut their way in everywhere, but the crew is holding their own,” Balthazar said. With the help of the troopers, we have kept the pressure on so they cannot form up and get a foothold. It is down to knives and swords now, for the most part.”

  “Aye,” Sabrina replied. No more pistols. Good.

  Balthazar wiped his face with his sleeve. “Watch your hull. They’re buzzing under the gondolas, looking to plant grenades. Our sky dogs on the umbilicals are giving them what for, but we’ve taken casualties, and they have blown some gaps in the antiboarding nets, I’m afraid.”

  “How of them many are there?” Sabrina asked, her voice squeezing off as she jumped to help De Quincey strong-arm the lurching rudder wheel.

  “Thirty, maybe thirty-five, as far as I could tell,” Balthazar replied, grabbing a wheel spoke to assist. “And some of the dead ones I have seen—their bandoliers are loaded with bombs.”

  The skin on the back of Sabrina’s neck tingled. If only one steampiper managed to slip away into the vast catacombs of the Pneumatic Zeppelin and detonate a bomb in the right place, it would most likely be the end of them all.

  SWORDS

  ROMULUS BUCKLE WAS A MASTER of the blade, trained from boyhood by the Crankshaft sword mistress Gweneviere Gray. Gweneviere was a tall, lovely woman, not a day over forty years, her youth preserved by outdoorsmanship, but a woman entirely described by the nature of her own name: her hair was silver-gray, her boots were gray, her jackets were gray—even her dog was gray. Her entire person might easily have lifted up and drifted away into the clouds, if it were not for the exceptional green of her eyes, a young ivy color made doubly striking by her own gravity, and the way she anchored anyone to the spot simply by looking at them. She had expected much from Buckle as Balthazar’s adopted son, and he had delivered. Endless hours of thrust and parry had evolved into a wickedly easy dance for him.

  As a rule, Buckle was always the aggressor, always attacked. Sword combat was a deadly game of the feint and parry, yes, but in the end, the man who kept his opponent back on his heels with the thrust and swing usually won.

  Even when he was being threatened from both sides simultaneously, Buckle attacked.

  The female steampiper had let Buckle come on, backing up with measured steps, parrying his every blow with expertise. She was keeping him engaged, setting him up so her comrade could waltz up from behind and skewer him.

  Buckle lunged with a powerful overhead stroke that made her stagger backward, buying himself enough space to turn and meet the thrust coming from the second steampiper. The fight had become a blur of slashing swords and deft parries, back and forth, in the semidarkness. The brass faces of the steampipers’ helmets gleamed under the whirling yellow buglights; the huge gas cells waffled, and the oceans of ropes hummed in the gusts of wind that still surged through the interior of the airship.

  Buckle could not keep this up for long.

  Twice Buckle had succeeded in landing killer thrusts on the second steampiper, and twice the man’s iron cuirass deflected the blade in a skittering scrape of sparks. And twice Buckle had nearly lost his head—or at least an ear—to the flashing counterstroke.

  Buckle, battered by the day’s trials, began to tire ever so slightly, and it was then that the momentum of the fight turned against him. The male steampiper’s blade sliced the air over Buckle’s head as he ducked; it shattered a buglight dangling from a hook, the splinters of glass flashing as they fell, the stunned fireflies holding in a clump for an instant before bursting out in all directions. Buckle whirled to parry the female steampiper’s swing, but her blade grazed his sword hilt and slashed across his forearm just above his glove cuff. It bit deep
through the cloth and flesh, but did not reach down to tendon or bone. Buckle felt no pain, but he sensed weakness, weakness in his sword arm, and that was worse.

  He had to extricate himself from his dilemma or he would be dead within seconds. Slashing violently in each direction, Buckle planted his hand on the catwalk rail and hurdled over the side, dropping into the void below.

  Plummeting alongside the dark tower of a gas cell, Buckle slapped his sword into its scabbard. He had made a dangerous move, certainly, diving into a compartment vault from the Castle deck, but it was a calculated one.

  And it would be damned hard to follow.

  He would surely escape…provided he lived through it.

  Buckle knew every inch of the Pneumatic Zeppelin—the only advantage he had over his opponents—and after a fifteen-foot plunge, he plopped down on the back of a central airbag, a big, soft cushion with the consistency of a jellyfish. The airbag was filled to bursting with boiling air, and its goldbeater’s skin was nearly as hot, so hot that he felt as if he had dropped into a skillet in the instant it took for the balloon to bounce back, launching him forward over its rounded flank. It was exactly the rebound Buckle had hoped for: he was thrown into the guitar-string wall of counterweight ropes above the Axial deck and grabbed hold of one, sliding down it to the catwalk, fifteen feet below.

  As soon as Buckle’s boots landed on the Axial deck catwalk, he drew his sword again. He heard fighting all around him—shouts and sword clashes, the occasional musket blast—but he was alone where he was.

  The female steampiper landed right in front of Buckle, and with a catlike roll to her feet she came at him, her short sword poised and ready. Buckle instantly charged. He swept his sword low, aiming for her knees. She jumped, again with the superb agility of a cat, planting her boots on both rails so she was astride the catwalk. Buckle rolled forward under her, leaping up to take a backhanded slash at her backside. But she had already sprung away.

  Buckle turned around, sword steady. She moved toward him, her short sword weaving in front of her, feinting to the left and then to the right.

  Swordmaster Gweneviere Gray always told Buckle that he was one of the lucky few who had a sixth sense in mortal combat; once again, it saved his neck. In that moment, he realized that the second steampiper was charging his back, his sword only a few sprinting strides away.

  Surrounded. Again.

  Buckle drew his dagger and whipped it at the female steampiper. The unexpected projectile caught her off guard, the whirling blade clanging off her helmet, and she jumped back. Buckle spun on his boot heels, turning in to the rush of the second steampiper, who had his sword raised in anticipation of a killing blow. Buckle lunged into him, closing the gap instantly. The steampiper awkwardly thrust his sword down as the space for a swing vanished, and Buckle caught the blade on the hilt of his saber. Buckle drove his shoulder into the steampiper’s chest, a bruising collision against the iron cuirass, grabbed him by the collar, and launched him over the catwalk rail.

  The second steampiper released a terrified shout inside his helmet as he went over the rail. But Buckle’s move was not perfect—the steampiper was big and quick, and he clawed at Buckle’s head as he passed over, blunting the force of Buckle’s maneuver. Buckle dropped the steampiper more than he hurled him, and the fellow managed to grab ahold of the base of the catwalk with one hand and cling to it, swinging over the vault as his sword fell into the chasm beneath.

  Buckle could have finished the male steampiper with a stomp of his boot on the man’s fingers, but he was already backing up, off balance and ducking for his life, as the female steampiper attacked.

  KAMIKAZE IN THE COCKPIT

  “KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, my girl,” Balthazar said, turning to head back up the piloting gondola stairwell. “I am going to go up and give my former hosts a few more parting shots.”

  “Aye,” Sabrina said, grunting as she and De Quincey worked the rudder wheel to counter another yaw to port. “Be careful!”

  “Steampiper!” Welly shouted, flinging his arm out, his index finger pointing straight out the nose dome. “Twelve o’clock! Dead ahead!”

  Sabrina snapped her head around. A steampiper was coming head-on at the gondola, with the velocity of a bullet. A glittering line of hammergun darts swung after him, but could not intersect his line; phosphorous streaks—shots from the crew members on the bow pulpit—missed. The steampiper, his image distorted by the broken nose glass, had one arm raised; in his hand was a grenade bomb, its lit fuse whipping back and forth in the wind with a fluttering red sparkle.

  “Grenade!” Sabrina shouted. The steampiper was mere seconds away from being able to lob his bomb in through the open flanks of the gondola, or up into the numberless openings in the bottom of the envelope. “Thwack him!” she screamed.

  Welly and Nero lifted their pistols. Balthazar dashed back with his pistol up; the Ballblaster and the two crewmen charged with him, crowding the cockpit around Sabrina with leveled musket barrels. Sabrina ducked her head.

  “Fire!” Balthazar yelled.

  Sabrina heard a ragged, thunderous clap of gunfire, followed by a shattering of glass in the nose dome. She lifted her head and saw, through the cloud of smoke and the cracked and holed panels of dome glass, a brilliant blue-white flash. At least one ball had hit its mark: the damaged steampack spewed scalding steam and sent the steampiper into a violent spin. A white blossom opened behind him for an instant—a parachute—but the steampack flames instantly burned it away. The steampiper lost his grip on the grenade and it fell harmlessly to the sea. But he yanked his controls to veer his stricken contraption directly into the path of the piloting gondola.

  “Kamikaze!” Welly screamed.

  That was all the time anybody had before the impact. Enough time for Welly to utter one word, for Sabrina to duck low behind the gyroscope and try to push Kellie under the instrument panels with her, aware that everyone in the gondola was throwing themselves to the deck.

  The impact was horrible. The steampiper crashed into the port side of the gondola’s nose dome, tearing up instruments as the immense momentum of the steampack carried his body through portside panels of brass, copper, and wood. Sabrina felt the heat of the steampack engine passing above and to her left, followed by a stinging shower of twisted metal, falling brass tubes, bolts, screws, bits of glass, and cold splashes of glowing green boil.

  The steampiper and his berserk machine were gone in a flash, deflected in the destruction.

  Sabrina opened her eyes and pulled herself to her feet. The port side of the gondola was ripped open horizontally, tunneled through to the middle, the wind slashing through the gap with a sucking roar: the entire portside bulkhead was gone, with nothing left in the breach but wobbling remnants of wood and metal ribs, snapped pipes, and sheared tubes jetting steam or leaking bioluminescent boil that was sucked away in the slipstream.

  The elevator-wheel station was gone. Lieutenant Ignatius Dunn, the elevatorman, was gone.

  Toward the stern of the ship, over the twisted port gunwale, Sabrina saw the broken body of the steampiper, still attached to his mangled steampack, bounce off the port side of the gunnery gondola and spin straight into stern propeller nacelle number one, four hundred feet beyond. Jammed by the high-velocity bulk of the steampiper and his machine, the propeller’s torquing shaft tore itself to pieces. The nacelle split into a million jagged fragments and exploded in a white ball of fire, ejecting the flaming propeller off over the ocean.

  “We’ve lost number one propeller!” Sabrina screamed.

  The already unstable Pneumatic Zeppelin, now overdriven by the starboard side propellers and bereft of elevator control, immediately lurched to port, threatening to heave completely over onto her side.

  “She is going to roll!” De Quincey shouted. Balthazar was now shoulder to shoulder with him at the helm.

  “Emergency elevator wheel!” Sabrina screamed as the deck lurched. Both she and Welly threw themselves at the emergen
cy control wheels, which were folded up into the ceiling over the captain’s station. Together, they drew the small elevator wheel down.

  The gondola creaked as it tipped to the left. Kellie bumped Sabrina’s knees, her claws rapidly scraping the wood planks as she scrambled against the rising tilt of the deck.

  As soon as the reserve elevator wheel locked into the steering channel, it started to whirl. At the risk of breaking their fingers, Sabrina and Welly snatched the spokes. Sabrina planted one boot on the bulwark and threw her back against the wheel—but her strength, combined with Welly’s, could do no more than prevent it from spinning out of control. Half the levers she wanted to reach for were damaged or sheared away.

  The zeppelin had lost equilibrium—again. Sabrina needed power, and she needed lift, and both systems were already pushed beyond their limits. “Shut down main starboard propeller number four!” she screamed into the chattertube, its hood now missing. “All ahead flank!”

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin heaved once more to the port side, hurling Sabrina’s stomach into her throat and throwing everyone to the left. The apprentice engineer, Lionel Garcia, lunged to slam the chadburn dial into all ahead flank position, lost his grip, and fell away, crashing hard into Sabrina and Welly, who were now angled below him.

  The shattered nose dome swept downward until nothing could be seen but the black sea, three hundred feet below.

  Sabrina wrenched at the elevator wheel, the skin on her hands feeling as if it was tearing away under her gloves, but the wheel fought her, heaving back in the opposite direction, threatening to send the airship over onto her back, and every soul aboard to a watery doom.

  NOT DEAD YET

  BUCKLE LASHED HIS SABER FROM angle to angle, blocking every one of the female steampiper’s blows, as he tried to find an instant to set his feet again. The female steampiper rushed him, not wanting to allow him the luxury of recovering his defensive stance.

  An explosion shook the Pneumatic Zeppelin, sending a concussive ripple through the superstructure and delivering a violent kick to the support girders and catwalk beneath Buckle and the female steampiper. Losing her footing, the female steampiper stumbled into Buckle and attempted to head-butt him with her helmet. He grabbed her sword arm by the wrist and she grabbed his. They hung there for a heartbeat, the black, polarized-glass eye slits of her helmet pressed to his forehead, the muffled heaves of her breathing mixing with the sound of his own air-sucking in his ears.