Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “I am sure your matters are equally pressing,” Buckle said. “It is not a good time to be far from home.”

  “No,” Andromeda replied. She slid closer to the candle and Buckle could now see her fairly well, her elegant face with the appealing, gentle smile, the light hair, the still-healing scars from the prison-cell blast jagged but healing on her forehead, the hypnotist’s violet-black eyes, now made even more powerful in the delicate half-light of the lantern flame. “As such, though it is a pleasure to see you again, please forgive me for being blunt.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know who you truly are? And who your sister is?” Andromeda asked. “From the time before Balthazar adopted you?”

  Buckle blinked. He had not expected that question. “We are the offspring of Alpheus and Diana Buckle.”

  “Yes,” Andromeda said, but she shook her head. “I do not mean to insult you, dear Captain, but that cannot be the entire story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is a reason why the Founders took Elizabeth, and we must find out why. It is imperative. Yes, your mission to Spartak is essential. But you must find a way to rescue Elizabeth, and rescue her quickly.”

  “Of course,” Buckle said. “I would welcome any opportunity to rescue her. And I shall.”

  “And you must. I do not know very much, but I know that Elizabeth is the key to winning this war, the key to all of our futures. She must be rescued at all costs.”

  “Elizabeth is the key to everything?” Buckle asked. “How?”

  “I do not know how, or why—but she is.”

  “Does Balthazar also believe this?”

  “He has not confided such knowledge to me,” Andromeda said. “What I am to recommend to you here and now, to ask you, is if you get the opportunity, no matter how risky, you must make every effort, even abandon your duties to the Alliance, to reclaim your sister from Isambard Kingdom Fawkes.”

  “Abandon my duties,” Buckle repeated, as if the words needle-pricked his tongue. He was confused by Andromeda now, especially the certain feeling in his gut that she was telling him the truth.

  Andromeda leaned forward and took his hand firmly in the grasp of her long, white, smooth-skinned fingers. “And, dear Captain, if you get to Elizabeth but she cannot be freed, you cannot leave her to the Founders. You must kill her rather than leave her to them—it will be a far more merciful fate than the one awaiting her as their prisoner.” Andromeda leaned even closer, her voice preternaturally present in his ears, her fingers tightening around his bigger hands. “Romulus, there exists an ancient wickedness, the nature of which is unknown to me, but some terrible, awful evil has risen—and the Founders have made this horror their master. They need Elizabeth to achieve their goals, and if she cannot be rescued, then she must be destroyed, or all else, including all of us, will be ruin.”

  Buckle paused, staring into Andromeda’s pleading eyes, eyes that promised that they understood. He heard himself breathing, heard the little crackle of the candle inside the lamp and the snorting of the horses outside. For a moment, he could sense the massive weight of the zeppelins looming around them in the night, the colossal void of the sky; he felt as if her hands were the only thing anchoring him on the brink of a bottomless pit of eternity. “I shall, Lady Andromeda,” Buckle said, “profoundly consider what you have said to me here.”

  Andromeda sighed. It was as if she had used up much of her strength delivering her argument. She released her hold on Buckle’s hand and leaned back into the shadows. Now Buckle could more hear her voice than he could see her.

  “I can ask nothing more of you, Captain Romulus Buckle,” Andromeda whispered. “I can only tell you what I believe, and promise every support from the Alchemist clan. It is up to you to choose your own course of action.”

  Buckle nodded.

  “Look deep into your own heart, Romulus,” Andromeda said. “You will find the answers to your questions only there.”

  “I shall, Lady Andromeda. But now I must go,” Buckle said, standing, but still bent enough to avoid bumping his head on the low ceiling.

  “Of course. I pray the fortune of the Oracle shall be with you.”

  “Thank you, Lady Andromeda,” Buckle said, kissing her cool hand, which bore a lovely, unrecognizable perfume. “Farewell.” He pressed the carriage handle down, swung the door open, and stepped outside where General Scorpius stood waiting in the lantern-lit snowfall.

  The deep cold that had refreshed Buckle only moments before was now an icy slap in the face.

  CAPTAIN ROMULUS BUCKLE AND HIS ZEPPELIN

  ROMULUS BUCKLE WAS NEAR INFURIATED. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was ready, lock, stock, and barrel, the Arabella launch secure in her berth, and now they had to wait.

  The Crankshaft ambassador, Rutherford Washington, had yet to arrive aboard.

  Buckle strode along the Hydro catwalk as it plunged through the mountainous heart of the airship, a massive elliptical cavern of canvas fourteen stories high, housing the huge gas cells and their spidery stockings, blast shields, ladders, catwalks, girder rings, pipes, valves, and wires sheathed in baggywrinkle, all creaking and hissing with their own gigantic life.

  Kellie pranced at Buckle’s heels, her bat ears pricked up through her leather flight helmet and goggles, following so close she bumped his calves. She was needy; she smelled the blood on the back of his neck, perhaps even the lingering scent of the kraken on him, and it worried her, but he could not carry her all the way through the inspection.

  Buckle saw the newly promoted chief hydroman, Douglas Headford, hurrying along the Castle deck catwalk, high overhead. The airship was in good order—her hydrogen tanks at maximum pressure, her ammunition stocked, and her coal bunkers full—but Buckle could not escape an undercurrent of dread. It was odd—once he set foot on his zeppelin, he always felt free. But the saboteur, what the saboteur might have done, had left Buckle feeling heavy. Even though repeated investigations had found no evidence of tampering, the security of the sky vessel had been violated, putting everyone at risk.

  And having an Imperial officer aboard did not lift his spirits, either.

  Buckle drew out his pocket watch: five fifteen in the morning. Where the hell was Washington?

  Buckle reached the forward staircase and headed down, his boots clumping on the metal steps. His second inspection in a row was complete. He decided to go to his quarters and fill in the logbook, and perhaps take some hot tea.

  When Buckle reached his quarters and pushed the door open, Kellie dashed in and yipped happily at someone.

  “Hello, you flea-bitten mongrel,” Ivan said good-naturedly.

  Buckle strode in to find Ivan sitting in a chair with his boots up on the Lion’s Table, drinking Buckle’s rum from a large glass. It appeared that Ivan had buried his sadness and replaced it with his usual obnoxious self.

  “Now, witness the truly inappropriate, eh?” Buckle grumped.

  Ivan slammed his boots on the floor, his ushanka cocked on his head, goggle lens gleaming, machine-encased arm lifting the rum glass, and saluted with his good hand. “Captain, sir!” he announced. The glass in his machine hand shattered in his metal-plated grip, falling to the deck in a tinkling of shards and a splat of liquid. “Blast it!” Ivan huffed.

  “You are certainly full of piss and vinegar,” Buckle said, stepping past the ruins of the glass to face out the towering nose window, folding his hands behind his back. The Pneumatic Zeppelin’s bow was pointed at the mountains, their masses darker than the predawn sky above. The two nose mooring ropes, attached to docking hooks on the bow pulpit overhead and lined with buglights, ran down to their anchors in the airfield earth, where the ground crews and provisioners were loading tool kits and empty barrels into their carts, preparing to roll away.

  The other zeppelins on the airfield rested easy on their mooring lines, sleeping behemoths skirted with firefly lanterns, dwarfing all things on the earth beneath them. The Imperial and Brineboiler a
irships had already departed. The Gallowglass corvette, the Cork, was in the process of lifting off, her gondola hulls seventy feet above the ground, her docking lines jerking as they were winched aboard, her portholes dimly aglow with the reflection of bioluminescent boil. For an instant Buckle envied them, for they were in the air again and he was not.

  Buckle heard the gurgle of rum being poured into glass. “Have a shot of grog with me, shall you, Romulus?” Ivan asked.

  “It is a bit too early in the morning for me, thank you.”

  “Early? It is late,” Ivan said.

  Buckle stepped down from the platform and took a glass from Ivan. Buckle wanted tea—Howard Hampton was supposed to be arriving with a fresh pot, along with sugar cubes and fastmilk—but he knew how happy Ivan was. Holly Churchill happy. It was rare to see his taciturn, socially awkward brother in such fine fettle—after he had gotten over leaving her behind.

  “To the sweet ladies!” Ivan proclaimed, raising a new glass in his good hand.

  “To Holly Churchill,” Buckle said.

  “Aye!” Ivan said.

  Buckle and Ivan drank, and set their glasses on the table. The rum bit Buckle’s esophagus all the way down to his stomach.

  A rap sounded at the door.

  “Enter!” Buckle said.

  Sabrina and Windermere strode in, their hats tucked under their arms. Sabrina had been outside—snowflakes flecked her long black coat with the fleurs-de-lis on the collar and sleeves. Buckle was glad to see her at the rough and ready. But he was almost disappointed that he could not view her one more time in her brilliant-emerald ball gown.

  “Captain, may we have a word?” Sabrina asked. The way Sabrina made certain that the door shut securely behind her signaled that something was up.

  “Not unless you are bringing tea,” Buckle replied, feeling grumpy. “And look out for the mess,” he said, pointing to Ivan’s broken glass on the deck. “Gorky has been wild this morning.” Sabrina stepped to the Lion’s Table. “Mister Windermere, where is the Imperial princess now?”

  “On the bridge,” Windermere replied.

  Sabrina nodded, then turned to Buckle. “Captain, we know that we are acting on behalf of the Grand Alliance, and in that capacity the Imperials are our allies. And while, as such, we must trust them, we must also not leave ourselves completely exposed to acts of treachery.”

  “Imperial treachery?” Buckle said, both startled and exasperated. “Really? Do you have evidence of this?”

  “No,” Sabrina replied. “But—”

  “Captain—” Windermere stepped in. “The Pneumatic Zeppelin is an Imperial airship, designed by them, built by them, and her extreme value, especially in a time of war, might warrant trickery in order to get her back.”

  “And lose us as allies in the process?” Buckle asked. “Such an act would seem self-destructive.”

  “Not if they took the airship and sided with the Founders,” Ivan countered.

  “I tend to think that the Imperials are with us,” Buckle said. “Especially with no evidence to the contrary.”

  “I simply wish to be careful,” Sabrina said. “After all, we took this zeppelin as a prize by force, in a night raid that turned out to be a mistake. And now we are going to sail her, big, fat, and happy, right back into their harbor?”

  “I think you two are too suspicious by a foot and a hair,” Buckle said. “But I understand your concern. We have to land at New Berlin to embark the Imperial ambassador. In the unlikely case they do attack, they will not destroy their own airship, but would try to take her back by boarding.”

  “Agreed,” Sabrina said.

  “We cannot risk insulting the princess,” Buckle continued. “As we make our landing approach I want you, Ivan, and Mister Windermere to quietly assemble an antiboarding team on the Axial deck. Arm them with muskets and swords from the forward weapons lockers.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Ivan said, suddenly quite somber. Pushkin the wugglebat poked his furry little head out of Ivan’s pocket and chirped a little. “One cannot trust the damned Imperial lobster tails, sir.”

  Buckle looked at Ivan. “If we are attacked, we cut the hawsers, blast away the anchors, and get the Pneumatic Zeppelin back up in the air immediately.” There was a pause, and Buckle slapped his hands together. “Good. I wager such precautions shall not prove necessary, but I agree one must watch one’s back in times such as these. Now, where is that damned tea?”

  A loud rap rattled the door.

  “Ah, there Hampton is! About time!” Buckle said. He really wanted some tea, especially to settle his squeezing stomach. “Enter, Howard, and save me!”

  The door swung open, hard on the hinges, and in strode Valkyrie Smelt. She was dressed in her stiff powder-blue Imperial uniform, her face and body all straight lines except for the swell of her hips and breasts. Her blond hair was pulled back severely and she was bareheaded, her pickelhaube jammed under her left arm, spike gleaming, the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s engineering logbook tucked under her right. She was long legged, her height amplified by the black leather jackboots that rose to her knees, and her double-breasted uniform jacket gleamed with gold lace and buttons. At her waist she wore a thick black leather belt lined with instrument pouches. Her cuffs and collar were heavily embroidered with red and gold braid, and her high cheekbones emphasized the disapproval burning in her cold blue eyes.

  “Princess. Welcome,” Buckle said, but his words sounded hollow to him. It could be of no comfort to Valkyrie, acting chief engineer, and therefore one of the airship’s most senior officers, to find the Crankshaft bridge crew huddled in a meeting from which she had been excluded.

  Valkyrie halted, eyeing everyone in the way a prison guard might scrutinize a cell full of prisoners where the sounds of digging had been heard. She cleared her throat. “Captain, may I have a word?”

  “Of course, Chief Engineer,” Buckle replied.

  “In private, Captain,” Valkyrie said flatly.

  A PICKELHAUBE AND TEA

  ONCE THE DOOR SHUT AND Valkyrie and Buckle were alone, Buckle wondered if the Imperial princess might prove more dangerous to him than the missing saboteur.

  Valkyrie placed the logbook and her helmet on the Lion’s Table with a heavy metal thump, as if she owned it. Her pickelhaube’s silver spike, rubbed with oilskin to a brilliant gleam, loomed over the front plate with its iron cross. “I do not appreciate being excluded from officer meetings,” Valkyrie said, bristling, and turned to glare at Buckle, the edges of her hair glowing orange in the illumination from the lanterns outside the nose window. “Unless, of course, they are nothing more than insider whisperings, Crankshaft machinations meant to be hidden from me.”

  “You must expect,” Buckle said evenly, disliking his words even as he spoke them, “that the Crankshaft clan carries out business that the Imperials are not privy to.”

  Kellie hopped off the bed and trotted up to Valkyrie’s knees, tail wagging. Valkyrie looked down her nose at the dog. Kellie hopped up on her back legs, stretching her paws up onto Valkyrie’s thighs.

  “As long as your cloak-and-dagger conferences do not impede the efficient running of this sky vessel, then I shall ignore the insult implied by my exclusion,” Valkyrie said. She knelt and rubbed the dog’s ears roughly, in the way a person who is familiar with dogs knows how to rub them.

  Valkyrie’s unguarded, kind reaction to the animal surprised Buckle. The silly dog had broken the ice.

  “You have an affection for dogs, I see,” Buckle said. He considered people who disliked dogs to be lacking in fundamental humanity.

  Valkyrie patted Kellie on the head and stood up in one smooth motion. “A dog would run into a burning building to save you. A horse would run itself until its heart bursts for you. One can rarely expect such loyalty from another human being.”

  “There is truth in that,” Buckle said. “And what do you expect from me?”

  Valkyrie’s eyes flashed with both challenge and humor. “I see in y
our eyes the same thing you see in mine, Captain—distrust.”

  “Not a good condition between a Captain and his second,” Buckle said. He did like Valkyrie’s straightforward style, even if it was somewhat off-putting.

  “No,” Valkyrie answered slowly.

  Buckle smiled. He could tell that his grin caught Valkyrie off guard, just a touch, by the slight rise in her yellow eyebrows. “It is as it must be, then, is it not? At least, for starters.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have faith in you regarding your care of my airship,” Buckle said. “Just resist any urge to tinker with it.”

  “I do live my life to tinker,” Valkyrie replied.

  “As for the rest of it, well, my faithful dog is an excellent judge of character—and you seem to have made a smashing impression on her.”

  “I see,” Valkyrie replied, narrowing her eyes. “I do feel it is important to inform you that I do not agree with my father’s decision to allow you to keep possession of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Captain. However, that said, I am your most humble junior officer and I shall act in perfect accordance with my duties.”

  Like her father, she considers me a pirate and a thief, Buckle thought. Well, he allowed himself some empathy regarding their position. Had somebody taken the Pneumatic Zeppelin from him—in a raid that would later turn out to be unprovoked and misguided—he supposed that he would be rather prickly about it as well. “I understand your position, Princess, and I would expect nothing less,” Buckle replied. “May I offer you a drink?”

  Valkyrie looked at the open rum bottle. “I think not, Captain. Thank you.” She pointed the toe of her polished boot and nudged the glass shards on the floor. “I am not one for rum in the morning.”

  “Yes,” Buckle said. “I am supposed to have tea coming, and I am getting grumpy about it.”