Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  Always pushing everything—and everyone—beyond their limit, Sabrina thought as she braced for impact.

  THE CHRYSALIS

  “ROMULUS!” MAX SCREAMED. BURSTING FROM the snowstorm, her horse near berserk with fear, she saw the sabertooth charging him.

  She jerked her jouncing musket level and it boomed in her hands. She saw the huge beastie’s head snap away, the eyes on the right side of the head disappearing, the spray of green blood in the blizzard. The sabertooth’s lifeless body crashed into Buckle, rolling over him.

  “Romulus!” she screamed, hurling the musket aside and unholstering her pistol, reining the horse to a stop just before it trampled Buckle where he lay, flattened in the snow, lying in a ghastly bed of ice-coated human bones. “Captain! Get up! You must get up now if you can!” She grabbed at the reins of Buckle’s tethered horse, but they would not yank free.

  Buckle was up, on his feet, pistol and torch in hand.

  Both horses shrieked—loud, terrified whinnies. The sabertooths were on the prowl. Max swung her pistol around.

  A locomotive hit her in the back, a heart-stopping mass of fangs and claws. She was falling, the horse was falling, in a blur of darkness and snow. Somewhere in the awful thud of the landing, in the blinding blow to her head on the ice and the suffocating lungful of snow, she felt the bite sinking into her shoulder, the foul heat of the monster’s breath on her neck, the claws ripping her flesh.

  She fought back in the agonizing blackness. She fought back by hating the beastie.

  A pistol blast flashed, illuminating the lids over her eyes, the nearness of it concussing her ears.

  A great weight fell upon her, pressing the last traces of air out of her lungs, squeezing the blood out of her mouth.

  “Captain, go. Leave me.”

  “Miss Max!” Miss Max!” the weak voice of Cornelius Valentine poured into the dark snowstorm surrounding Max. “It’s just a bad dream, girl. Just a bad dream.”

  Had she just been screaming? Wailing? She could not tell. Her mouth was open and she was breathing hard. And her cheeks were wet. Doctor Lee had removed her aqueous-humor-filled goggles—there was no need to moisten her eyes while she slept.

  “You awake, Miss Max?” Valentine asked.

  Max opened her eyes. It was evening, perhaps—the light at the window curtains was dim and gray, though the night lanterns had yet to be lit. She tried to move. She could, but to do so made every muscle ache terribly. She held still, shifting her eyes so she could see Valentine in the reflection of the silver water jug on her bedside table.

  “Yes,” Max rasped, her voice sounding like it came from somewhere nearby. She focused her aching eyes on Valentine’s mirrored reflection. He was situated on the opposite side of the middle aisle, perhaps four beds down. A privacy curtain was set up at the head of his bunk, but no one had drawn it. Max could see the disheveled outline of Valentine’s long hair about his pale face on the pillow, the long ridge of his body under the infirmary sheets—and the flat place on the bed where his right leg should have been.

  “No doubt we both will have nightmares for a while. We’ve both had a bit of a rough go up on the mountain,” Valentine muttered. “You havin’ your run-in with the sabertooths, and I with the kraken.”

  Max heard Valentine’s words, but they jumbled when she tried to understand them. She caught a glimpse of the powder-blue hummingbird egg and the butterfly chrysalis Buckle had brought for her, nestled on the table. Beside them, she saw the yellow gleam of the sabertooth-claw bracelet he had fashioned for her.

  The sight of the claws made Max shudder. Despite the pain, she raised her arm and pushed Romulus’s bracelet behind the water jug, where she could no longer see it.

  Buckle. Max could not remember where Buckle was. But the alarm twisting in the pit of her stomach when she thought of him tortured her. She closed her aching eyes, but the darkness there was full of floating flashes.

  “We are quite the pair,” Valentine said, shambling in his own morphine haze. “Both broken, both having a piece of us bit off by a beastie. You’ll be fine, Miss Max. But me, me—they drum one-legged dogs out of the air corps straight away.”

  Max opened her eyes again, forcing the nerves and worry away, and focused on the chrysalis. Her brain washed clear as a mountain stream, though swept along as a floating leaf, without control. What kind of engine drove the brainless worm to build its own sarcophagus of silk and bury itself alive? she mused. What kind of biological engine, what magnificent impulse of genetics, transformed the worm into the butterfly?

  Such were the mysteries of the universe that occupied Max when she had time to indulge them—not the hunt for mathematical solutions.

  But in math she now saw a sanctuary. A quiet cloister in the storm. A path to escape the pain.

  Valentine was talking again, but Max lost track of him. She gave in to her Martian instinct, careening through an endless galaxy of numbers. The formulae rolled back and forth in her brain, numbed as it was by the morphine, and she kept losing track of her computations.

  She had known of the immortality equation all her life. She had never been interested in it. Who would be interested in an unsolvable trick of digits? She was familiar with the Martian penchant for mathematics and numbers, but she was only half Martian, and that characteristic did not seem to be a part of her makeup. She was excellent at math, but it did not intrigue her.

  Until now.

  If only her memories of the chamber of numbers were something more than morphine-soaked blurs.

  COLLISION COURSE

  BUCKLE READ THE SWING OF the deck; the Pneumatic Zeppelin was running fast, gaining immense speed out of her turn. He was in imminent danger of ramming the Czarina, yes. But he was not going to lose the Bellerophon.

  “I do not think the Russian captain saw your request, Captain,” Sabrina said, far too calmly. “Ten seconds to impact.”

  “Prepare for emergency ascent,” Buckle said. “Prepare to dump all ballast.”

  “Aye, aye!” Nero answered, gripping the red velvet handles of the emergency ballast-release levers over his head. Valkyrie moved to the ballast boards, placing her hands on the hydrogen feeder wheels.

  The twenty-story-high envelope of the Czarina rushed perilously close, rapidly filling the nose dome window like a mountain cliff.

  “Up ship!” Buckle shouted. “Emergency ascent!”

  The cry of “Up ship!” sounded around the gondola. Nero slammed his ballast levers down like a madman, Windermere spinning his elevator wheel with equal urgency. Valkyrie slapped the hydrogen valve controls up and open, flooding the gas bags to higher pressure.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin lunged upward, her nose raised, arching for the sky above the Czarina’s envelope. Suddenly they were above her, the long, broad length of her canvas back, a small planet hurtling beneath the nose window, passing mere feet below the keels of the Crankshaft gondolas and the blades of their propellers, the Spartak skinners and snipers running and throwing themselves flat before they disappeared behind. “Level off!” Buckle shouted. “We shall soon have the angle, sky dogs! Look sharp!”

  “There she is!” Windy exclaimed as the Pneumatic Zeppelin hurtled out over the forward port quarter of the Czarina’s roof. The Bellerophon came into view just below, racing to port, the long, massive bulk of her envelope pale against the darkening earth.

  With the Bellerophon in his sights, Buckle was in no mood to squander his chance. It seemed too easy. If he could, with his vastly superior tactical position, he would cripple the Bellerophon, board her, and take her as a prize. The Founders warship would make a desperately needed addition to the armada of the Grand Alliance.

  They had cleared the Czarina. “Down ship!” Buckle shouted. “Emergency dive! Mister Windermere, put me level, and Mister De Quincey, put me on that devil’s stern!”

  “Aye, aye!” Windermere and De Quincey replied.

  “Jettisoning hydro!” Nero announced, winding the valve wheels.
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  Buckle felt his mind firing as the Pneumatic Zeppelin, plunging, decks rattling, wind wailing in her rigging and over her gunnels, bore down upon the enemy. The Bellerophon’s captain was turning in to the Pneumatic Zeppelin, hard a’port, attempting to defeat Buckle’s angle. Bad airmanship, clinging to a failed tactic, Buckle thought.

  Both of the Bellerophon’s gunnery gondolas released a simultaneous port broadside—from the muzzle flashes it looked to be three cannons apiece—but the severe traverse of their barrels, probably cranked hard up against the aft frame of their gun ports, sent the shots just wide, the cluster of caterwauling cannonballs hurtling past the port side of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s piloting gondola in glittering phosphorescent trails.

  Kellie barked, emerging from her armored cubby. “In, girl!” Buckle snapped, and the dog scurried back in.

  Buckle studied the discharge of the guns, never taking his eyes off the Bellerophon and her gunnery gondolas, wreathed in rivers of smoke. It would take the port-side Founders gun crews three minutes to reload—if they were any good at all. No matter. In two minutes, Buckle would have ripped off the Bellerophon’s wings, grappled her close, and leapt to board her.

  “Hard a’port, Mister De Quincey,” Buckle ordered. “Line up his flank on our starboard beam, sir.”

  “Aye, Captain,” De Quincey responded.

  “Starboard guns double-shotted and ready to fire, Cap’n!” Considine’s voice rang breathlessly from the chattertube hood.

  “Guns doubled and ready to fire,” Valkyrie repeated.

  Buckle leaned into his chattertube. “Gunnery! We shall broadside the engineering gondola to starboard. Take out their propulsion!”

  “Broadside propulsion, aye!” Considine replied. Sabrina’s head snapped toward Buckle, her green eyes wide under the chestnut curve of her bowler. She knew what he was up to. It was no time to attempt to take a prize, Buckle knew, and she disapproved. Ah, well, Sabrina often disapproved.

  BROADSIDES

  THE PNEUMATIC ZEPPELIN WAS LABORING hard to port now, as De Quincey pinned the rudder wheel over, bulling the airship around onto the Bellerophon’s port flank, to match her turn as she tried to outrun them.

  “Turret! Prepare to fire into the propellers!” Buckle yelled into the chattertube.

  “Propellers, aye!” Geneva Bolling replied from the turret below.

  Buckle felt the Pneumatic Zeppelin roll slightly into her port-side turn. It was only a degree or so, a small hedging of the deck under his boots, but one degree off zero bubble was a measurable discrepancy he did not want his gunners having to compensate for. “Mister Windermere,” Buckle boomed. “Hold her steady as you please. Chase the bubble, sir—keep the platform steady.”

  “Aye, sir!” Windy answered, rocking his elevator wheel back and forth with his eyes on his inclinometer bubble in its ornate glass tube in front of him. “Zero level, aye!”

  “Stern observer reports the Spartak airship has descended, Captain,” Sabrina announced. “In pursuit of the Industria.”

  The mighty Bellerophon, not yet up to full speed and handicapped by extensive damage sustained from the Czarina’s guns, seemed to crawl as the Pneumatic Zeppelin hurtled down upon her. Buckle heard Banerji’s bow chaser cannon thump, a distant, round wallop high above on the nose.

  “Steady as she goes, lads and ladies,” Buckle said, folding his hands behind his back and squaring his feet at his station, with the master gyroscope floating in its great metal-framed glass orb in front of him.

  Buckle eyed the length of the Bellerophon as the Pneumatic Zeppelin closed in on her—she was a big war bird, but up close she looked worn, her skin mottled and stained, her copper gondolas encrusted with green oxidization. Sniper muskets flashed here and there from the envelope, trading shots with the Crankshaft skinners and marines.

  A wild spattering of sparks and flame burst out of the Bellerophon’s high port-side propeller nacelle, the one being hammered by a glittering stream of harpoons from the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s hammergun; one of the steel points must have sunk home in the mechanism and jammed it. The propeller quickly tore itself apart in a scream of wrenching metal, kicking up and out of its seating and nearly tearing the entire nacelle loose of the main frame before it seized up and toppled over, smoking, motionless, ruined.

  “Nice shooting, turret!” Buckle shouted.

  The Bellerophon, her propulsion out of balance, began to yaw to port as the propellers on that side were overdriven by the opposite flank. The result enhanced the rotation of the Bellerophon’s turn, swinging her stern away from Buckle and bringing her gunnery gondolas around for a better broadside.

  “Curse the luck!” Buckle snapped. “Helm, hard a’port! Keep us on his beam!”

  “Aye, Captain!” De Quincey said, whipping the rudder wheel around, excitement flowing through his voice with the timbre of a plucked violin string.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin swung hard to port, coming around so she once again ran parallel to the Bellerophon, who had straightened out her course.

  “Get us close, helm,” Buckle said.

  “Aye, Captain,” De Quincey replied.

  “Gunnery—ready for a broadside to starboard!” Buckle said into the chattertube.

  “Aye, Captain! To starboard!” Considine responded.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin caught up with the Bellerophon, the flanks of their envelopes no more than one hundred feet apart, the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s nose at the amidships of the Founders sky vessel, her guns lined up with the enemy’s aft engineering gondola.

  “Match speed!” Buckle ordered.

  “Matching and maintaining speed, Captain!” Valkyrie replied, her hand on the chadburn handle.

  “Closer, Mister De Quincey, damn your hide! Bump ribs with the charlatan!” Buckle yelled; he dashed to the starboard gunwale, thrusting his head out into the freezing wind, anxiously awaiting the sound of his own guns.

  Buckle glanced back to see the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s two starboard twelve-pounders fire. The red-yellow flashes of their cannon muzzles slapped the air, their puffs of smoke and burning wadding snatched away in the slipstream between the two gigantic machines. He felt the force of the muzzle blasts shove the airship aside. The cannonballs sliced between the Pneumatic Zeppelin and the Bellerophon, and while one missed, hurtling off into the sky in a descending arc of rapidly dissipating phosphorus, the others struck the target.

  Three twelve-pound cannonballs tore into the Bellerophon’s engineering gondola, ripping through its copper plating and blowing out terrible holes on the opposite side in great flashes of burning oil, armor shards, and shattered wooden boards. Fire instantly rose in the breaches. Sparkling water cascaded down from above, likely from a ballast tank burst open by a wrench of the airframe. The entire gondola began to shudder, as if every piece of machinery within her had gone off its tracks. Within moments, the shuddering stopped.

  “Another propeller has shut down, Captain!” Sabrina shouted. “Their number one, closest to us, port side!”

  “They’ve stopped all engines!” Windermere shouted.

  “Aye!” Sabrina affirmed. “All propellers are shutting down!”

  “Slow and match speed! Bring us alongside. Grappling position!” Buckle shouted, watching the Bellerophon as she rapidly slowed.

  “Grappling position?” De Quincey repeated, his eyes widening. “Aye, Captain.”

  Buckle saw the massive propellers rotating down to a lazy stall under the port-side stern of the Bellerophon. With her propulsion center severely damaged, the Bellerophon could not escape him; her choices were now to surrender or fight it out. Buckle figured they would choose the latter.

  “Grappling position, sir,” Windermere said. “Up ship fifty feet, sir!”

  “Aye!” Buckle nodded. It was best to board high, out of reach of the maximum elevation of the enemy’s gondola cannons. “Order boarding parties to assemble on Eagle deck, by division.”

  “Pardon me, Captain,” Windermere asked
, incredulous. “We are to board her?”

  “Yes, Mister Windermere—I mean to board her and take her.”

  BOARDING PARTY

  “HERE WE ARE, MATES!” BUCKLE shouted robustly at the dozens of faces clustered on the Eagle deck catwalk: expectant, determined, fearful faces, pinked by their hasty charges up the ladders, ratlines, catwalks, and stairwells, their red puggareed helmets near brushing the underside canvas of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s roof as it rippled overhead, the tops of the massive hydrogen gasbags heaving on both sides, their laces of metal and rubber stockings spiderwebbed across their massive backs. Muskets, pistols, and cutlasses from the weapons lockers gleamed in the half-light, alongside axes, hatchets, and boat hooks. “The war is upon us!” Buckle continued. “The war is here. Either we fight them here, in the sky over Muscovy, or we fight them in the streets of the Punchbowl. It is they who have chosen this path, but it us Crankshafts who shall determine where it ends!”

  Buckle raised his sword. The crew responded with a throaty, nervous, energy-rousing cheer.

  “Fight them, lads and ladies, fight them knowing that it is they who bombed us at Tehachapi, who destroyed our airships and murdered our innocents. We turn our fire and sword upon them now. Now it is our turn to take one back!”

  The boarders responded with a wholehearted “Hurrah!”

  “And watch out for tanglers.” Buckle grinned. “I have been known to forget about the beasties now and again!”

  Nervous laughter and guffaws bolstered the crowd.

  Buckle swung up onto the amidships observation-nacelle ladder. “Keep your divisions together. Stay close to your officers. Discharge your weapons at the point of attack, then close as quickly as possible hand to hand. Bring the fight to them, mates. Have at them, the cursed Founders dogs, and I guarantee you the Bellerophon is ours!”