Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  A musket ball banged off the iron barbette just in front of Banerji’s face, the flash of sparks near blinding him for an instant. He saw a Founders crewman, dressed in black, standing in the center of the stern window, hatch open, gripping a smoking musket.

  Bogdanovitch’s musket cracked. The Founders crewman dropped his musket and fell away into the dark interior.

  “Bravo, marine!” Banerji shouted. He peered down his gun barrel, though there was no need to aim—it was pointed straight down the Industria’s axial line, where, thank the Oracle, there was no stern gun waiting to pot them. “Fire!” Banerji shouted.

  Shielding the slow match as he yanked it from its tub, Garcia eased it across the barrel’s vent field and jammed the flame down into the touchhole.

  The touchhole flashed. The gun erupted with a heavy boom, hurling scarlet-and-yellow flame and bits of fiery wad from the muzzle. The carriage recoiled, flung backward like a mad rhino along the turret rails, passing under Banerji as he leaned over it.

  The oncoming wind snatched the muzzle smoke and hurled it into their faces before carrying it away an instant later. Banerji saw the shot shatter one of the Industria’s big rear windowpanes upon entry—satisfyingly close to the round center pane—followed by a small but bright white flash, as the ball hurtled through the inside of the airship. Whether the flash had been a momentary hydrogen breach before the rubber stockings stoppered the hole, or a ricochet off a metal girder, Banerji did not know.

  “Stopping the vent!” Banerji shouted as he plugged the smoking touchhole with his vent piece. He hoped that his crew did not hear in his voice the obvious twinge of disappointment that their shot had not popped the enemy. “Reload!” he howled.

  HARD A’STARBOARD!

  ROMULUS BUCKLE HAD NOT SEEN the course of the bow chaser’s raking shot through the Industria. But he did see her drop—not much, ten feet perhaps—the telltale sign of a sudden loss of hydrogen pressure.

  “Heel! Hard a’starboard!” Buckle shouted.

  “Hard a’starboard!” De Quincey shouted back, heaving the helm wheel to the right, the deck instantly threatening to roll as the airship’s port-side maneuvering propellers turned and wound up. Windermere was busy on the elevator wheel, for it was difficult to keep the bubble level in a rapid rotation at high speed.

  The looming backside of the Industria swung to the left as the Pneumatic Zeppelin heeled sharply to the right, turning at a good rate. De Quincey would bring the Crankshaft twelve-pounders to bear on the Industria’s stern to deliver a broadside rake with the bigger guns. Buckle caught a nose full of blackbang smoke as it flowed in over the gunwales. It stung his eyes and nose, and exhilarated him. The nasty stink of battle, of cannons pouring loose their red-hot iron and flaming wad, both braced and beckoned him.

  Buckle saw the Industria’s steam exhausts pillow violently and her propellers flash at a faster rotation as more power was applied—the first sign of an evasive maneuver from her captain. He had not disengaged, had not broken away instantly once raked. It was sloppy work. Fatally sloppy work.

  Snapping a toggle on his chattertube hood, Buckle spoke directly to the gunnery gondola. “Mister Considine, once we have them on the beam, you may fire at your discretion.”

  “Aye, Captain!” Tyler Considine’s booming shipyard foreman’s voice quickly bounced back up the tube. “We’ll have at them, sir!”

  “Be ready to depress to follow her drop, if her captain is worth any salt at all!” Buckle added.

  “Aye!” Considine replied.

  “Altitude thirteen hundred,” Sabrina said.

  “Ready ahead all flank,” Buckle said calmly.

  “Ready ahead all flank, aye,” Valkyrie repeated.

  Buckle stepped to the port gunwale, sticking his head outside as he kept the stern of the Industria in full view.

  “Captain!” Sabrina shouted. “Snipers, off the beam!”

  “Occupational hazard, Lieutenant,” Buckle shouted back. The massive stern of the Russian war zeppelin was on his right, her guns still blazing. He eyed the Industria: with her emergency steam power applied and the Pneumatic Zeppelin slowing as she turned, she was increasing the distance them, but not enough to matter to the guns. One hundred to 150 feet was still point-blank range to a twelve-pounder, more or less.

  The Industria began to ascend, her scuppers pouring great cascades of ballast water, waterfalls sparkling in the late-afternoon sun, as the great zeppelin began to lunge for altitude, to escape on the rise.

  But it was too late.

  Buckle understood the Industria’s dilemma; although her rubber stockings had withstood the four-pounder’s raking shot, the airship was still in dire condition. Surely there were hydrogen leaks—even if small ones—and the captain had to assume that he now had volatile pockets of gas pooling under his roof in amounts larger than his venting system could immediately disperse. Dumping ballast was the safest tactic, but it was also the slowest.

  De Quincey and Windermere slowed their manhandling of the rudder and elevator wheels, and the maneuvering propellers brought the Pneumatic Zeppelin nicely steady as she ascended level with the fleeing Industria’s stern.

  “We are abeam!” Buckle shouted, the freezing wind on his cheeks, barely aware of the little flashes of the Founders sniper muskets on the Industria’s roof.

  The sound of the two twelve-pound cannons firing in unison from the gunnery gondola 250 feet aft of Buckle erupted with a low, muffled, heartwarming ba-boom. Two streams of glittering yellow-white phosphorus ripped between the Pneumatic Zeppelin and her target. Two holes appeared in the stern of the Industria: one shattering the port side of her stern window, the other punching a small black hole in the envelope beside.

  Buckle winced. It was difficult to witness that kind of a hit, even inflicted upon an enemy. In his mind’s eye, he saw the two cast-iron balls hurtle through the guts of the zeppelin, cutting gasbags wide open, shattering the ligatures of the rubber-stocking mechanisms, tearing away rigging, shearing high-tension wires into slashing whips that could easily cut a man or woman in half, and such things were nowhere near the worst of it. Any frame girders or supports in the path of the cannonballs would be smashed apart, taking elements of the envelope with them, the jagged edges of the shorn metal plunging into the gasbags. The cannonballs would continue, roughly parallel to the Axial corridor, sending up huge sprays of sparks wherever they might hit metal, shrugging off waves of phosphorus as they passed through the massive caverns within the gasbags they punctured. For humans they brought nothing but agony, either in the splintering shrapnel of pulverized wood and iron that shredded limbs, faces, and spines or, for those physically unscathed, the terrifying realization of the incineration awaiting them in the inescapable pop.

  And within a second the pop came.

  Buckle raised his arm to shield his eyes. Two huge explosions racked the Industria, the force of the ignited hydrogen and air funneled outward by her compartment blast shields, belching surging eruptions of bright-yellow fire out into the sky. The heat hurt Buckle’s face, so close was his zeppelin to the conflagration.

  The Industria’s amidships gunnery gondola, sundered by a blast immediately overhead, broke away from her pins and dropped loose of the airship frame—she hung for a terrible moment, her brass-and-copper armor gleaming in a hammock of its own rigging and cables. The ropes and wires snapped, and the gondola dropped silently away, flashing in the muted sunlight as it spun into the void.

  The Industria lurched, heeling oddly to port, smoke spewing from the burning edges of her gaping envelope holes. She began to drop away, falling into a slow, uncontrolled spiral.

  Buckle observed the plunge of the Industria coldly, with a detached blend of horror and satisfaction. A cheer rose on the bridge, joined by a howl from Kellie. Buckle did not join in; he ducked inside, secretly angry with the instant of self-congratulation, of inaction.

  “All ahead flank!” Buckle screamed. “Helm, bring us across the Russian�
��s stern as tight as you dare! Bring me on that second Founders’ arse as quick as the devil, Mister De Quincey, you blackjacket hound!”

  ASTERN THE CZARINA

  SABRINA TOOK A FIRM HOLD on her drift-scope handles as the Pneumatic Zeppelin surged forward with the wind at her back, sweat-drenched stokers hurling coal into her overheating engines, her turbines spinning so hard their vibration threatened to rattle loose the deck bolts, her driving propellers winding up to a screw-bending pitch. Sabrina felt the raw power of the zeppelin surge through her from the madly creaking deck, fueled by the cacophony of groaning, screeching, and grinding sounds the airship made when suddenly pushed so hard.

  Sabrina ignored the protestations of the airship, for she knew every noise sounded the way it should.

  Within the piloting gondola, the driving wheels whirled. Orders and reports sounded back and forth, but Sabrina barely heard them, peering out the nose dome as she was, watching the Industria corkscrew away in flames. Burn in hell, she thought. Burn.

  The stern of the huge Russian war zeppelin loomed to port. She saw the arch board of the Russian airship and the name Czarina upon it, a name she had heard before. The Czarina was battered, leaving a wide trail of gray smoke in her wake, now and again streaking with black when she fired her cannons, and her propellers—six big bronze monsters—were in danger of fouling in a whipping mass of trailing ropes and wires blown away from the airship body, and now foundering in her slipstream.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin, advancing at an angle to just clear the Czarina’s stern, was making up the ground she had lost in her broadside swing—the distance between her port beam and the Czarina’s rudder was no more than a cable’s length as it was—and Sabrina’s airship was closing the gap far more quickly than she would have anticipated. The Czarina had slowed, now making no more than twenty-five knots. Was she badly damaged? Had her boilers taken a hit? Or could the Russian captain have cut back his engines, knowing the Founders zeppelin would match him, thus allowing Buckle’s airship the opportunity to charge the enemy’s vulnerable tail?

  Balthazar had often expressed his admiration for the dogged, selfless courage of the Russians. If so, it was an excellent tactical move by the Spartak captain, but his airship would pay the price for keeping the Founders glued to his flank.

  The piloting gondola passed through the wall of smoke pouring back from the Czarina, momentarily blinding Sabrina. She ducked her head and held her breath against the gusts of furnace-hot, ember-laden smoke as they poured in through the open ventilation ports. They were gone in a couple of seconds, when the Pneumatic Zeppelin escaped the trail.

  “We are directly abaft the Czarina’s stern, Captain!” Sabrina shouted. “Forward lookouts report the Founders zeppelin, the Bellerophon, still in position to her starboard side!”

  “Aye!” Buckle replied.

  Sabrina could not yet see the Bellerophon beyond the bulk of the smoking Czarina, but the forward lookouts could. Still in position, eh? The Bellerophon’s captain, either too preoccupied with the Czarina or simply unable to see past her mass and smoke to witness what was unfolding on the opposite side, had left his sky vessel a sitting duck for the Pneumatic Zeppelin.

  Sabrina eyed the Czarina as they passed, her six huge driving propellers chopping slow, gleaming in the dull sunlight, the rear of her engineering gondola a mass of pipes and vents, like the devil’s factory of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. The Czarina’s envelope was badly singed and holed, but the white-gray smoke streaming out of some of the rents suggested that although she had fires aboard, her crew was beating them down with hoses.

  Sabrina saw a group of men, dressed in rust-colored or olive leather jackets, clustered in the stern window of the Czarina. It was not a circular, domed structure as in most airship designs, but rather a square box of glass, like a greenhouse set in a projecting frame of wood that was beautifully carved and gilded. Sabrina’s eyes widened—in the center of the stern window, glass firing port flung open, stood a large cannon muzzle; a stern chaser had been run out, an iron twelve-pounder, closely attended by its crew.

  Sabrina suddenly wondered whether the Russians considered the Crankshaft airship a friend or foe. Surely they had seen the Pneumatic Zeppelin blast the Industria and come on past them to ambush her partner? Buckle had given them his exposed flank while his guns were being reloaded. If he had been mistaken, if they had not marked him as a friend, then they were in a very bad state of affairs. To her relief, she saw the Russian gun crew waving their hats, furry ushanki and sailor caps with blue ribbons; she thought, though it was surely impossible, that she heard the vague, faint howls of their cheering.

  “Signalman!” Buckle shouted back at the signals room. “Ensign Fitzroy!”

  “Aye, Captain!” Jacob Fitzroy shouted, poking his head out of the signals cabin, with Meagan Churchill’s head alongside.

  “Flag the Russians! Signal to disengage and down ship immediately!”

  “Aye, Captain! Disengage and down ship!” Fitzroy yelled, ducking back into the cabin with Meagan.

  “Founders vessel disengaging, accelerating on the level!” Sabrina shouted.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin’s piloting gondola cleared the stern of the Czarina to reveal the towering cream-colored rump of the second Founders airship, the Bellerophon, her canvas holed and crawling with snipers, her six propellers spinning up to gleaming whorls as she surged forward. She was damaged, with black holes in her skin—one had punctured the huge emblem of the silver phoenix on her flank, potting the head. She looked as if she had suffered horribly under the Czarina’s big guns.

  The Bellerophon was a graceful beast of a machine, equal in length to the Czarina and Pneumatic Zeppelin, but sleeker in diameter, carrying a vastly more complicated rigging system, with masts, yards, and sails furled at her nose and stern. Five gondolas gleamed with green-rusted copper plating under her belly, two of them lined with gun ports.

  The Bellerophon’s captain had finally realized his situation. He was charging to cut in front of the crippled and lumbering Czarina—and from the way his airship lunged at the bit, she looked damned fast—attempting to place the bulk of the Spartak airship between him and the Pneumatic Zeppelin until he could improve his position. It was a good maneuver. The Pneumatic Zeppelin, passing astern of him at high speed, could not match his turn to port—her momentum would sweep her wide.

  The hammergun under the piloting gondola opened up on the Bellerophon with its harpoons, pounding with its low chunk chunk chunk—fired by Assistant Engineer Bolling instead of Max, who normally would have been in there. Sabrina suddenly missed Max with an unexpected pang.

  “Fitzroy! Any response from the Russians?” Buckle shouted.

  “No response yet, sir!” Fitzroy shouted back from the back of the gondola, where he and Meagan had run out the flag hoist.

  The gunnery gondola, having now cleared the Czarina, fired a double-shotted broadside at the fleeing Bellerophon. The four cannonballs punched a tight cluster of holes in the enemy envelope, but to no apparent effect.

  “Black-eyed devils!” Buckle cursed. “All ahead standard. Rotate. Hard a’port, Mister De Quincey. Come about and bear on the Russian!”

  The bridge rang with the sounds of the chadburn bell and officers responding. Sabrina leaned over Welly, peering into the glass point of the nose, gripping the instrument panels of the navigator’s station as the airship swerved violently to port, eyes glued to the escaping Bellerophon as she started to disappear behind the Czarina’s bow.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin, thrown into a severe rotational turn at high speed, vibrated violently. Superstructure girders screamed. Wires and ropes snapped and popped overhead, slashing away in high-pitched whistles. Two instrument tubes shattered on the bridge, leaking little waterfalls of greasy boil water. Sabrina glanced back to see De Quincey and Windermere both hauling over their driving wheels as hard as they could, snatching at the wheel spokes, both steaming with sweat that stained their heavy jackets at the neck
s and sleeves.

  “Superstructure is overstressed, Captain!” Valkyrie yelled. “Pneumatic joint pressure is off the scale.”

  Sabrina grinned. Valkyrie was not yet familiar with Buckle’s propensity to push everything beyond its limit. He believed that the Pneumatic Zeppelin was indestructible.

  “She can take it,” Buckle answered. “You Imperials make fine airships.” Sabrina knew that Buckle would be damned if he was going to lose his position on the Bellerophon’s tail. There was no telling if the Spartak captain had seen their signal to disengage, and no telling if he would be willing to accept it. Buckle was asking the Russian, after taking a beating at the hands of the Bellerophon, to drop out of the fight while Buckle, set up with a near-perfect attack position, went for the glorious kill.

  Buckle could not wait, or the Bellerophon would escape him. The Spartak captain had already slowed to bait the Bellerophon into a vulnerable position—surely he would drop off to allow the trap to close.

  The rattling and shaking Pneumatic Zeppelin, her maneuvering propellers screaming as they pitched up to maximum on their nacelles, swung around at a dizzying rate, straightening out to bear on the stern of the Czarina.

  “All ahead flank!” Buckle shouted. “Straight at the Russian!”

  Valkyrie rang the bell. The Pneumatic Zeppelin surged forward.

  “Collision course, Captain!” Sabrina shouted.

  “Aye! Collision course,” Buckle replied, watching the great mass of the Czarina’s envelope hurtling toward them, the double-headed eagle symbol a burst of gold on her dark-gray flank. The Spartak airship was still holding her course and altitude. And the Bellerophon had utterly disappeared behind her. “Hold fast!”

  Sabrina looked back at Buckle. He stood with his hands behind his back, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes lowered, looking for all the world like a bull about to charge.