“Looks bad, sir,” the helmsman, Mariner, muttered.
Buckle whipped a glare at Mariner that made the young man physically shrink. “Watch your tongue, Mister Mariner! Do not look at it, damn your hide!” Buckle leaned forward, addressing the entire bridge. “Just a bit of a blow! Piece of cake! Am I not accurate, Navigator?”
“Crumbly pudding on a plate. Just peachy,” Sabrina replied.
Buckle clenched his hands together behind his back so hard they hurt. He had gotten as far southwest as he was going to get. As the furious thundering of the storm washed over them, he gathered every church bell in his voice and bellowed. “Hard a’starboard! Heave to! Put your back into it and put our nose into it, Mister Mariner, you miserable sky dog!”
Mariner needed no prodding. He spun the rudder wheel to the right in a blur that threatened to break a poorly placed finger as he snatched at the passing spokes. “Hard a’starboard, aye!”
Buckle leaned on the binnacle for support as the airship swung nimbly, despite the heavy air. He had not flown in the Arabella for a while—he had forgotten how much more agile she was than the vastly larger Pneumatic Zeppelin.
“Coming around on new bearing, due northwest, aye! Six hundred and fifty feet!” Sabrina yelled.
As the Arabella straightened her course, her nose pointing northwest, she faced a churning wall of surging gray and black that blocked out the entire sky. The deafening roar of the maelstrom, drowning out all but the most strident shouts, set Buckle’s ears to ringing. The deck vibrated, rattling with such violence that it blurred his vision—he had to keep blinking to clear it. He leaned into the chattertube hood. “All hands brace for impact!” he shouted. “Goggles on! All hands brace for impact!”
“Ten seconds!” Sabrina shouted. She glanced back at Buckle, her red curls swinging about her temples under her derby as her green eyes met his, her face shadowed and soft under the impending shade of the storm, and—for an instant that he would only recall later—Buckle was stunned by how beautiful she truly was.
She smiled and lowered her goggles over her eyes.
Buckle smiled back.
The bridge began to darken rapidly, as if night was falling at great speed.
“Eyes on your gyro, Mister Mariner,” Buckle said. “You will not have a horizon in there.”
“Aye!” Mariner replied, his voice rattling.
“Steel your spine, Helmsman!” Buckle shouted, planting his hand on Mariner’s shoulder. “This is what you signed up for!” The madness was on Buckle, the exhilaration, the surging bravado he felt when faced with insurmountable odds; it was not a suicidal urge, nor a reckless one that might endanger his beloved crew, but a confidence born of necessity. If the captain surely believed things would shake out all right, then the crew could believe it as well.
“Leveling out!” Windermere shouted, winding the elevator wheel to neutral. “Leveling out at eight hundred!”
Eight hundred feet. Nowhere near the altitude the Arabella needed. “Equilibrium, drivers! Keep a tight grip on the wheel, Mister Windermere!” Buckle yelled. “This cold devil is going to try to shove the nose down!”
“Aye, Captain!” Windermere answered.
“Five seconds! Engage boil!” Sabrina shouted, though Buckle could barely hear her any more.
“Boil engaged!” Lawrence cried, flipping her agitator switches.
The Arabella began to rock back and forth, lanterns swinging and floorboards groaning. Buckle saw a rippling flash rip through the interior of the miasma and disappear.
Buckle’s pounding heart missed a beat. Electricity. The myths of lightning were true.
The sprawling array of instruments crowding the dark bridge stations lit up with the gentle green glow of the bioluminescent boil, rapidly brightening as the agitators stirred up the algae soup.
The instant before the Arabella’s nose plunged into the churning maelstrom, Buckle realized that the snow and mists were hurtling upward—upward—at a breathtaking rate, as if the storm were upside-down.
The wood of the hull started seizing up, sounding off with loud, restless cracks. The nose dome suddenly clattered as a burst of silver-white frost erupted on the glass, rippling in long, crackling fingers across the panels, obscuring the view in jagged tributaries of ice.
This was no blizzard. It was far worse than that.
“Bloodfreezer,” Buckle whispered to himself in utter, despairing awe. He then screamed “Bloodfreezer!” as he yanked his goggles down over his eyes. He shouted it again, though he could not tell if anyone could hear him over the cacophonous rush of the atmosphere.
And then the storm swallowed them whole.
BLOODFREEZER
IF A MAN WERE TO die and be cast into hell, he might not find himself in a place so uninviting, Buckle thought. Almost hurled to the deck as the airship shot upward like a crossbow bolt, his head was forced down in near-utter darkness as he clung to the binnacle, planks splintering at his knees, overhead pipes bursting with scalding steam, glass instruments splitting into shards and collapsing into glittering streams of fantastically bright-green boil, cuffed about the eardrums by the terrific roar, his lungs agonized as they fought to keep from freezing solid in sucking air unfathomably far below zero.
Buckle breathed shallowly, through gritted teeth, preventing the air from overwhelming his lungs. The moisture in his nose and eyes had immediately frozen, and it felt like a hundred tiny daggers stabbed his eyelids whenever he blinked. His goggle lenses were half iced over, but they were of the highest quality—Alchemist glass—and there were still enough clear spots for him to see. And what he saw was a nightmare: the figures of the crew were shadows in a black hole lit brilliantly green by the thousands of glass boil spheres, tubes, feeders, and liquid dials that were still intact on the bridge. But outside, outside the icebound glass nose, the darkness heaved and writhed in upward-driven torrents of snow and small, frightening flashes of light.
Flashes of light. An electrical storm. It was said that the Bloodfreezers generated charges of the mysterious force called electricity at altitude, within their bodies, but few had ever survived seeing such things to verify the tale. Electric charges loose in the clouds were not a good thing—such things surely blew up zeppelins.
Buckle fought to find his voice again. “Maintain equilibrium!” he tried to shout, but his cold-seized vocal cords failed him. It did not matter; the bridge crew clung to their stations, each knowing what most absolutely had to be done.
Buckle clawed his way up the binnacle and peered at the still-intact gyroscope in front of him, dipping around in its glowing green sphere, as were the bubbles in their inclinometer tubes alongside. The Arabella was still pointing northwest, but drifting to port, up at the nose by about five degrees, rocking with an odd sharpness, but they were upright and close to an even keel. The mere fact that the Imperial-built launch was still in one piece was impressive; she had bowed a bit on impact, yes, but she had taken the punch—her spine had held. The hull was good, but the brutal updraft might have torn the entire envelope away, for all Buckle knew.
Buckle wrenched his head toward the ballast board: the glowing boil in the hydrogen-pressure tubes read well, so his concern for the envelope was momentarily eased. Pushing up to his feet, Buckle heard his crew shouting reports through iced-up throats, but he could not make them out. He cleared his throat again and again, trying to heat up his voice box, and choked—the freezing air was thick with a vile, sulfurous, skin-itching smell, which he first feared was a shipboard fire, then knew to be the atmosphere itself, rife with sizzling energy.
“Helm!” Buckle croaked. “Hold your course! Helm!” Buckle turned to see Mariner on his knees, blood streaming from a cut above the hairline, his face contorted with effort as he battled the rudder wheel—and the wheel was slowly twisting him down. Buckle lurched aft to grab the opposite spokes of the wheel and, with an effort that threatened to snap his collarbones, helped Mariner inch the wheel back to starboard.
The Arabella took a sudden, stomach-lifting drop, nosing down; three seconds later, the updraft caught the launch again, and hurled the little Arabella upward into the storm.
“Captain! Captain!” Sabrina howled, her shout a bare hint under the thunder. “We are a’scudding, sir!”
“Aye, Navigator!” Buckle yelled back. His shout tore out through his throat, rough and loud, but he paid a price for it.
“Altitude one thousand, five hundred! Fifteen hundred and rising fast!” Sabrina yelled, her voice shrill. “Faster than the dials can spin, Captain!”
Buckle saw Sabrina’s shadow in the nose dome, her goggles gleaming green in the light of the surviving boil spheres, a lightning flash illuminating her for an instant in silhouette. “Aye!” he replied. He straightened out his back and thighs, but now the ship was being shoved from port and starboard, threatening to roll, Windermere and Wong’s efforts notwithstanding.
“Damage report!” Buckle shouted, hurting his throat.
Sabrina looked back at Buckle, shaking her head in an exaggerated fashion. “Cannot hear the voice tubes! Two thousand, five hundred feet and climbing!”
Buckle nodded, the underside of his chin scratching a line of ragged frost on his collar. Certainly the Arabella had taken shearing damage at various points, but her flight controls were responding, and that was all that mattered. If so—if the Arabella was truly intact and sound—then it was a miracle that the Bloodfreezer updraft had not ripped away the fragile cruciform fins and rudder.
“Hydrogen pressures all good!” Alison Lawrence shouted. “Buoyancy unknown!”
“Three thousand, nine hundred feet!” Sabrina bellowed.
“Hold her steady, mates!” Buckle commanded, his spine aching against the pummeling lift, somewhere in the back of his mind glad that he had not brought the ship’s mascot, Kellie, along for the trip. “We’ll let her spit us out, aye!” He rubbed at the glass surface of the water compass, which was now frosting over.
“Five thousand feet. Ice, Captain! Ice!” Sabrina shouted.
Ahhh, shite, Buckle thought. The insanely freezing, moisture-laden air of the Bloodfreezer—which would render the airship as heavy as a stone once it stopped lifting her—meant that every inch of the Arabella was coating up with ice. This added weight, immense when taken in its totality, would soon send the launch plummeting to earth, even with engines overdriven, ballast tanks empty, and hydrogen cells socked full.
Buckle leaned into the chattertube hood and yelled, doubting anyone aboard could hear him as he did so. “All axemen to the assembly station! I repeat, all axemen to the assembly station!” He took a staggering step toward Robinson at his aft signals station. “Mister Robinson! Axemen to stations! Pass the word!”
“Pass the word, aye!” Robinson answered, then turned and ran through the small passageway, veering to maintain his balance.
The big inclinometer above the helm, encased in ice, burst open, the glass splitting down the seams of its copper casing. Bright-green boil spewed forth, splattering Buckle and the deck with running splotches of glowing green liquid that vibrated and rolled with every punishment the superstructure took. Buckle smelled the boil—it had an ocean-water, fishy, seaweed stink.
“Seven thousand feet and rising, but I think rate of ascent is slowing!” Sabrina announced. “Seven thousand!”
Buckle tucked his top hat in a cubby and buttoned his leather coat up to the chin. “First Lieutenant! You have the bridge! I am going topside!”
Sabrina stumbled back toward Buckle in the darkness, her boots sliding in the greasy boil and shards of glass as Welly slid into the navigator’s station behind her. “No, Captain!” Sabrina scolded. “Send Windermere or me on the roof! It is our job!”
“Aye!” Windermere affirmed.
“Captain stays on the bridge, sir!” Sabrina continued. “And you are already exhausted, sir!”
“I shall have none of it!” Buckle howled, annoyed. “The bridge is yours, Lieutenant—you have nothing better to do in this black hole as it is, Serafim, you bloody mutineer!”
AXES
ROMULUS BUCKLE CHARGED UP THE Arabella’s main companionway, pulling on a pith helmet and a topman’s greatcoat, a heavy tan coat with a high collar and a waist lined with safety clamps, hastily securing its clasps. The companionway, screaming like a cat in heat, as it always did in inclement weather—some annoying effect of design—shuddered and rocked. It was dark, the lantern curiously missing from its hook, and crowded with crew members—mostly the hastily dressed engine rats, smelling of coal and fire. Signalman Robinson carried a storm lantern; the black iron banister rail gleamed evilly under its soft, weaving, orange light, glazed with scant frostings of ice.
They burst up onto the weather deck and found it a howling cavern, unnaturally dark, except for a few undamaged buglights swinging wildly on their posts. Vertical rents thrashed about the envelope’s flanks, ripped along several of the frame girders towering five stories above, the patching and needles hanging, barely begun, abandoned by the skinners who had been called away to the axe teams. The long fabric shell billowed in and out in violent ripples and billows, surging with such force that Buckle was amazed the envelope had not been ripped away. As Buckle turned, he slipped and nearly fell, but managed to catch himself on the frame of the belfry: the decking, already slick with a thin sheet of clear ice, gleamed treacherously as the airship bucked, and powerful gusts of wind tunneled in over the open gunwales.
Montgomery Muhammed Darcy led the six-member topside axe team, mostly riggers and skinners. Darcy was a barrel-chested, brawny-forearmed boilerman, with tawny skin and heavy-lidded eyes. He was bald as a billiard ball but furred with a dense brown beard he liked to chew on. He handed Buckle an ice axe. “Here, Cap’n,” Darcy said. “Your weapon, sir.”
Buckle hefted the axe; the long wooden haft was well weighted, the steel head forged into a sharp blade with a blunt pick on the back end, the pick the more effective implement when one was trying to bash ice away from the envelope. “Thank you, Mister Darcy,” Buckle shouted.
“Aye, sir!” Darcy replied.
Buckle turned to face the group huddled around him on the heaving deck. The crew members resembled grotesque beetles in the wavering yellow buglight, snapping their leather breathing masks up under their topmen’s goggles, completely shielding their faces, and shoving the small oxygen canisters into cloth pouches stitched into the greatcoat waists, taking care not to foul the rubber tubes. Lothian Blake, propulsion airman, passed out firefly lanterns. Carmen Steinway, skinner, was responsible for sounding the warning should the Arabella climb higher than breathable air, and had a bulky quicksilver altimeter strapped to her forearm, its long glass tubes lit up with bioluminescent boil.
“Iron up, lords and ladies,” Buckle yelled. “How about we trim this beauty clean?”
“Aye, Cap’n!” came the response.
“Current altitude eight thousand, six hundred, sir!” Steinway screamed into Buckle’s ear as Blake handed him a lantern.
“Eyes up for tanglers! Mind your safety lines!” Buckle shouted, looping the axe handle’s leather strap around his wrist. “Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” the shout returned.
Buckle clambered up the amidships ladder, his greatcoat and equipment making his boots and gloves heavy on the metal rungs; he ascended into the surging, roaring envelope cavern where the stressed superstructure rattled and the gasbags heaved, their whalelike backs appearing half-alive in the swaying buglights, glittering with the copper lacings of their stockings, grinding and squeaking against their backstays and securing wires.
The noise, the earsplitting rip of the storm, threatened to stun the mind. Buckle sensed that the Arabella was already getting heavy, weighted down, sluggish—icing up fast.
He caught the scent of blood, or rather, the memor
y of the smell of blood. It was not his blood, not even human blood, but rather the sharper, sweeter odor of Martian blood. It was only for a heartbeat, but for one instant he felt a fear for Max’s life, as she lay helpless in her bunk below.
Buckle reached the observer’s platform as the Bloodfreezer coursed above the glass of the nacelle bubble, its black churn lighting up with erratic, ominous flashes of blue-white. Buckle slammed the securing bolt aside. When he opened the hatch, it was nearly torn out of his hands.
“Let us dance, you surly devil!” Buckle shouted, knowing only he could hear his words, and plunged up into the maelstrom with his lantern at the fore.
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
BUCKLE EMERGED FROM THE HATCH of the amidships observer’s nacelle into a gauntlet of whips, of lashing wind, ice particles, and snow. The maelstrom sucked at his goggles, trying to tear them off his head. It was difficult to see. The Arabella’s canvas roof rippled and billowed like a surging sea, every stitch straining at the seams; even the two grappling cannons seemed to be rocking. Visibility was no more than forty feet, and Buckle experienced a sensation of falling as the walls of churning snow swept upward over the flanks and into the churning obscurity above.
And everything was coated in ice, clear, thin, glassy ice.
Buckle moved aside in a crouch, hooking his iron safety-line clasp onto the heavy cable of the main jackline—smashing that section of its ice sheath—as Darcy crawled out of the hatch behind him. Their lanterns whipped about their hands, the fireflies scattering inside the glass as they were walloped about.
“Nasty weather, Cap’n!” Darcy howled, pulling the next crew person—the rigger, Lansa Lazlo—up onto the roof with a powerful tug. “Nasty!”
“And I neglected to bring my parasol!” Buckle shouted back; he did not snap his oxygen mask up to his face, although he already felt the frostbite sinking in—he needed to be able to shout and be heard. Darcy had not attached his face mask either.
Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War Page 10