Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “Where is your sister?” Chelsea asked. “She would not want to miss this.”

  “I do not know, Mother,” Sabrina replied, her mouth watering. She wanted to eat all the strawberries.

  Outside, the low hum of the cloudbuster stopped. The sunlight wavered overhead, lost its brightness, and faded away into the familiar soft grays of the clouds. Everyone in the atrium sighed, pausing to enjoy the last pulses of sunlight, only moving again when the shade had completely returned.

  “Oh, well. That wasn’t very long this time, was it?” Chelsea said, folding her skirt down her legs as she sat upright. “But lunch does look lovely, and fun!”

  Sabrina glared at the miniature locomotive puffing on the rail, the shine of its polished brass and copper muted in the overcast light, and she felt angry with herself for having waited so long to come in and get some sun.

  In the last second, Sabrina knew she was going to die. The dead kraken had slipped off into the void, and the great tentacle wrapped around her leg was dragging her over the precipice with it.

  Suddenly, she jerked to a joint-popping stop, the heels of her boots dangling off the stern, the tentacle still coiled around her leg falling into a quivering heaviness of dead weight. Something bounced her calves, a pressure from below, and she knew that a gasbag had been pierced and was venting hydrogen, venting with a fury, for the bags had been overpressurized in the battle against the ice.

  Sabrina looked up: Romulus Buckle stood over her, coated with ice and kraken blood, tall and handsome as ever, his blue eyes piercing behind his rimy goggles. He leaned into the wind with a yellow-splattered axe in his hand, having just severed the tentacle with one titanic blow, a blow that had also punctured the Arabella’s skin and the gasbag beneath it, and he gave her a victorious, white-toothed grin.

  THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF ICE

  BUCKLE PULLED SABRINA BACK FROM the brink of the Arabella’s envelope as the corpse of the kraken fell away into the swirling vortex of the Bloodfreezer, taking swathes of ratlines and rigging with it. It was a great relief to have ahold of her, rumpled as she was, gripping her knife, awash in both yellow and red blood. Their lives had just been hanging by threads—threads that the kraken had nearly cut—and they had saved each other.

  For one instant—as Buckle dragged her back, the sudden softness of her breasts under layers of leather and fur against his arms, the dulcet swirl of her red hair in his nostrils—he was blindsided by an intense desire for the girl. Shocked, he shoved the feeling away. His blood was up and he was half-crazed. It was improper. Unmentionable. Insane.

  Buckle grabbed Sabrina roughly by the collar, lifting her to her feet. He shoved his mouth close to her ear. “Are you still in one piece, Navigator?” he asked.

  “Aye, Captain!” Sabrina yelled back, kicking the last suckers of the severed kraken tentacle loose from her bloodstained boot.

  The world suddenly shifted from darkness to light, zapping Buckle’s brain. The Arabella had breached the backside of the storm, escaping the lightning-fraught maelstrom and bursting out into the bright grayness of the daytime sky. His wide-open irises slammed shut, injured by the sudden brilliance even through his goggles’ polarizing lenses, forcing him to squint. They hurtled high above an earth of endless snow-covered mountains, one pierced by the faraway purple tower of the Sequoia obelisk. He breathed easily, his tortured lungs no longer laboring against the brutal vacuum of the Bloodfreezer.

  The zeppelineers on the roof of the Arabella, blinking in their ice-encrusted goggles, were thrown into weightlessness as the airship, heavy with jackets of ice and no longer suspended by updrafts, fell into a precarious drop.

  As the crew of the Arabella battled for their lives against the kraken, the ice had collected voluminously on her gondola and flanks. Now it loomed in great, ghostly white humps on every surface—thick, deep, dense stuff, hard to crack, defiant of the axe. The weight was too much for the hydrogen-socked cells, too much for the engines and propellers, even as they churned up to screw-rattling whirls.

  It was quite something, Buckle thought as he and Sabrina scrambled up onto the Arabella’s slick spine board. It was quite something to fight off a kraken, fly through a Bloodfreezer, and then go down to your doom, story untold, legend unforged, in an inglorious block of ice.

  Buckle swung his axe, jagged cold bits biting into his face when the blade struck, as the rest of the crew continued whaling about the roof with axe, hatchet, and bayonet, left and right, the air around them exploding upward with glittering bursts of ice chips.

  But Buckle knew no one could save the Arabella with the blade. “Reaper’s breath, Mister Darcy!” Buckle shouted as the airship plunged. “We start amidships! Now!”

  “Aye! Aye!” Darcy shouted, and took off toward the bow in a bent-low run, his broad body bearlike in his heavy greatcoat.

  “But Captain,” Sabrina shouted at Buckle’s shoulder. “We have holes!”

  “Get to the bridge, Lieutenant! Shut off the valves on the leakers and flush the pipes! Go! You have got one minute! Go!” Buckle shouted.

  Aye!” Sabrina replied, and set off at a slippery run toward the observer’s nacelle.

  “Mister O’Brian, you are with me!” Buckle shouted. “And Mister Headford, you shall second Mister Darcy! Assist with the reaper lines!”

  “Aye, Captain!” O’Brian and Headford, the hydroman, yelled back, hurrying forward. They were big men, and Buckle wanted big bodies anchoring the hoses.

  “Mister Faraday!” Buckle howled.

  “Aye, Cap’n!” Faraday answered, clutching an arm that looked to be broken against his chest.

  “Get the rest of the hands below, you hear me? All hands below! Axemen work the keel and the gondola, but eyes up!” Buckle ordered.

  “All hands below, aye!” Faraday replied. He spun and herded the rest of the crew forward with him. “If you ain’t on the hoses, you are with me! Move! All hands below!”

  Buckle peered toward the stern as the towering black wall of the Bloodfreezer fell away at considerable speed, though still blocking out everything to the southeast. He turned toward the bow, figuring the that the Arabella was now at twelve thousand feet altitude and dropping fast—they had a little time, but not much.

  Darcy, O’Brian, and Headford, pink-faced and gasping, hauled two rubber reaper hoses out of the observer’s nacelle, the ignition flames flickering restlessly in glass cases under the chins of the nozzles. Buckle took one hose as O’Brian jumped behind him. Buckle clamped his hand on the firing trigger—he did not want the hose going off before he was ready for it.

  “Darcy,” Buckle shouted. “We work out from here. You sweep aft. I’ll take forward.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Darcy yelled.

  “The jackline is snapped! Attach your safety lines to the stanchions!” Buckle shouted over the wind. “And do not broil anyone by mistake.”

  Darcy waved at the mountains below, rising up with terrifying speed. “I’d much rather be toasted than cracked open like an egg, sir.”

  “Aye!” Buckle answered. Over the thunder of the rushing air, he heard a deep, metallic boom; glittering walls of water rushed upward past both flanks and disappeared. Sabrina had dumped the white-water ballast tanks. The Arabella bobbed, slowing her descent, but she was still in free fall.

  Buckle clamped his safety hook to the rail of the observer’s nacelle. He wrapped his gloved fingers around the heavy brass firing handle of the hose and aimed the nozzle at the wall of ice below, rippling in murky-white waves along the starboard flank, the weight of its mass already ripping the fabric loose of its stitchings. Reaper’s breath—he had never been in a situation where he was required to use it before; it was the nastiest stuff imaginable for a zeppelineer, a pressurized mix of hydrogen, oxygen, and gelatin that, once fired through the ignition flame at the mouth of the nozzle, hurled a jet of liquid fire up to twenty-five feet in distance. Pure hydrogen was a safe commodity—near impossible to ignite—but hydrogen mixed with o
xygen was as dangerous as any soup could be, an invisible phantom that could incinerate entire airships if given the opportunity.

  Buckle hoped that Sabrina and Windermere had sealed off and flushed the leaking hydrogen cells and closed the valves; if not, once the reaper hoses engaged, they would all be launched into the afterlife in a blinding flash.

  Buckle set his feet and slapped the copper firing handle back. The reaper hose thrashed, becoming violently alive in his hands as the nozzle erupted in a jet of fire. Leaning into the force of the recoil with O’Brian’s husky weight at his back, he swept the geyser of flame across the roof and down the slope of the starboard flank. The ice splintered in resounding cracks, exploding in hissing sprays of water droplets, with big chunks of ice falling away under the steaming clouds. The envelope skin beneath, its fabric thickly doped with chemicals for strength and fire resistance, bubbled and curled and scorched black, sending up a stink like burned hair, but if one could maintain the angle of the jet at just the right height, one could destroy the ice and move away before the singed material actually caught fire.

  It took three minutes for Buckle and Darcy, working both flanks, to clear the amidships envelope of ice—three minutes and five thousand feet of altitude. Buckle kept an eye on Darcy’s progress aft, for too much clearance on one end would tip the Arabella precariously out of trim.

  Buckle and O’Brian advanced on the bow, reattaching their safety lines to the forward grappling-cannon post. The axe team had done some good work on the roof here—the ice was hacked away in rough trenches—but when Buckle leaned over the port side and peered down, his stomach knotted: ahead, on the chin of the rounded envelope, where the canvas under the nose-hub window plunged down to the nose of the gondola, the ice had accumulated in a fantastic, grotesque riot, bulky and silvery white, deep as a man’s arm.

  Buckle signaled O’Brian and they rappelled down the wind-buffeted flank to the ratlines just above the gondola bulwarks. The airship fell at a dizzying speed, and the mountains, the bloody mountains, now looked huge, filling the horizon with sharply defined, snowbound peaks and valleys. They were now close enough for him to make out the black dots of individual trees.

  There was no more than four thousand feet between the Arabella’s hull and the peaks. Her propellers could do her no more good, roaring beyond the limits of their manufacture, the port-side prop throwing bursts of smoke and making an unhealthy rattle.

  Buckle slapped the reaper hose’s firing trigger open, releasing the flame. He aimed low to counter the wind, and swung the blazing orange stream up and down the bow of the Arabella’s envelope. Wreathing waves of mist swept upward. Buckle worked his way topside, laying the column of fire as close to the skin as he dared, trusting O’Brian to support his back as the hose kicked at him. After a minute, the port side of the bow was relatively clear, a singed wall of smoking black. Buckle gave the top of the envelope a quick scrape of flames before he and O’Brian crossed the roof and rappelled down the starboard side.

  The starboard side of the envelope was trapped under a massive iceberg, a curving wall of ice towering four stories high.

  In his bones Buckle could feel the Arabella finding her wings, pulling out of her fall as her lift and propulsion escaped the terrible weight of the ice. But was it too late? Through his water-streaked goggles, Buckle saw the mountains heaving up over the airship on both flanks. Sabrina had turned the Arabella down the throat of a valley, buying them a few more seconds. Buckle could easily see the rocks in the ravines, the irregular patterns of the fir trees, the dotting of animal trails, the wide scars of countless avalanches scarring the slopes.

  Three hundred feet left to fall, perhaps.

  Buckle yanked the hose firing trigger and ripped the fire stream into the huge edifice of ice. The vortex of steam and water flooded back, battering him and O’Brian, now that the Arabella had gained forward momentum. Buckle raised and lowered the nozzle, seeking the seam between the canvas and frozen water.

  The Arabella was almost level now, hurtling at a tremendous speed that bent the girders in the bow, but she was still slipping lower and lower. Their lives were now down to a matter of inches.

  A long swath of pine trees, dark and green and dense, suddenly appeared under the bow nose. The prow of the gondola plowed into the treetops, instantly filling the air with the explosions of snapping branches, shearing rigging, popping tackle, and the sharp, sappy smell of pine.

  It was as if the very world were coming apart right under Buckle’s feet.

  Buckle swung the river of fire against the envelope, separating the ice where it clung to the skin. Flame appeared in splotches across the blistering canvas, blinding Buckle with smoke, but the giant slab of ice shifted as it was separated from its perch. The frozen glass on the nose hub blew apart—a shivering belch of shards. The massive block of ice groaned, then dropped away from the airship in a long, canvas-tearing shiver, plunging into the trees in a hail of splintering wood and gunshot cracks.

  The Arabella gradually lifted, found her stride, and swung up into the open sky.

  Buckle shut off the reaper hose and hung still on his safety line, wafting in the slipstream of black water droplets and smoke, listening to the roar of the passing air and the sounds of the propellers and engines being throttled back a step. A surge of exhilaration dissolved into exhaustion as the sprawling earth fell away below the bow. He realized that both he and O’Brian were covered in ice and broken glass.

  “Well done, Mister O’Brian,” Buckle said, looking back at the stoker, whose left goggle was scarred black, the right one frosted white.

  “Aye. And you as well, Cap’n,” O’Brian said.

  Buckle smiled, but he was suddenly worried about Max.

  FORMULAE

  MAX WAS BACK IN THE Tehachapi Mountains, where the sabertooths had bitten her, standing in the chamber of numbers, surrounded by the endless, charcoal-scribbled formulae. The cave overhead was roofless, open to a cloudless sky ablaze with stars. She knew she wasn’t conscious but she was there in the cave, in mind, at least. Her body was lying on a hospital bed, far, far away.

  Something was bubbling. Pinging. Boiling water in metal.

  She had a lantern in her right hand, a lantern filled with golden morphine. Inside it, three wicks burned, three flames surging inside the liquid, casting gold-yellow light on the walls.

  Everything was still. The fire in the potbellied stove was frozen in midflare, its pipe soaring straight up, disappearing into the sky.

  Max peered at the numbers, but she could not see them well—they were blurred, distant, out of focus. Yet they drew her in, endless strings of questions ending in infinity symbols or furious slashes of charcoal. Everything, every number, was a quest to solve the immortality equation.

  Furious charcoal scratches.

  The immortality equation was a chimera, a dead end, an unsolvable wish.

  Who were you? Who was the mathematician who locked himself or herself on a mountain for what must have been months, perhaps years, to struggle with a mystery he must have known he could not solve?

  And yet, there was something there, something hiding under the streams of numbers that Max could sense but could not grasp, something that did suggest an answer. It was seductive, inviting obsession.

  Immortality.

  The bubbling grew louder.

  A sharp metal clang echoed somewhere. Someone in the infirmary had dropped a bedpan, and it rang a wallowing note as it wobbled on the floor. The stink of disinfectant wafted past.

  The numbers started moving, skimming slowly around the walls, positioning and repositioning themselves in never-ending columns, pausing at times, but never locking down.

  Max stepped forward, lifting the lantern closer to the wall. Something bumped against the toe of her boot.

  Max looked down. A small metal pot sat on the floor, shoved into the middle of a roaring campfire. The pot was full of boiling water, the surge of bubbles rising so violently that they rattl
ed against the iron. A knife rested in the pot, the blade gleaming in the superheated roil.

  The water was red. The pot was not full of water. It was full of blood.

  Not matter how she tried, Max could not stop moving forward. Her boot struck the pot again, and this time it tumbled over. The blood spilled into the fire, sizzling, flashing, burning. Boiling blood flooded across the frozen floor, melting jagged channels in the ice as it coursed across it.

  The floor was awash in blood. Her boots were sloshing in it.

  Far away but coming closer, the sabertooths were roaring.

  OLD FRIENDS

  MARTIANS LOOKED IMPLACABLE WHEN THEY slept, perhaps due to the expansive sweep of the white eyelids over the large eyes, Buckle thought. He sat alongside Max in the Arabella’s sick bay, his arms crossed on the back of the chair, his chin tucked on his left forearm, where the sleeve smelled of the rum he had just spilled across it. He felt the urge to close his eyes, to rest, but he did not shut them.

  Max was far, far away. She lay buried under the launch’s rough wool blankets, her breathing deep and slow under the morphine drowse. Her skin had lost a fraction of its paleness; her parted lips provided a glimpse of a reassuringly pink tongue nestled behind.

  The stillness of the cabin, with the buglight motionless on its hook, encased Buckle in its warm cocoon, and he allowed himself to be lost in it. His body ached, he realized—the muscles racked by effort against ice and beastie, the ribs bruised, the back of his neck a blood-encrusted, stinging mess. He had been leading the Arabella’s repair teams for hours, as the crew stitched holes and hammered props up against deformed girders. But the noise of battle fell away from him now; there was only a zeppelineer’s quiet in his ears, the cruising-airship lullaby of throbbing propellers, coursing wind, and creaking decking, matched by the low, soft beat of his heart.