Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  The crew responded with wild, bloodthirsty cheers as Buckle planted his helmet on his head and sprang up the ladder. Valkyrie was close at his heels, her Imperial rapier at the ready. Buckle had not wanted her to accompany him, had not wanted the princess so exposed to the extreme peril of a boarding attempt, but she had been regally adamant, stating her case with one boot on the bridge stairwell and her scabbard in her hand. The second officer’s place was with the captain, according to the rules of engagement, she had informed him, with her calm, infuriating correctness, should he choose to join the boarding party.

  At least Buckle had convinced Valkyrie to replace her Imperial pickelhaube with the Crankshaft pith and its red puggaree, lest the crew mistake her blues for the enemy in the confusion of the fight.

  Buckle hurled himself up the ladder and scrambled out the low forward hatchway of the amidships observer’s nacelle. He barely felt any pain in his legs, already burning from the physical exertion of charging up fourteen flights of stairs and ladders, for he was now driven by adrenaline. The sudden openness of the sky fueled him, the ceiling of the world aglow in a blanket of dimpled, high-altitude clouds illuminated by the falling sun’s incandescent colors of molten gold.

  The freezing wind was thick with the stench of blackbang powder. Buckle coughed as he scurried forward along the spine board, passing his scattered skinners and marines, the fluttering canvas of his great airship’s roof dwarfing him on both sides. There was no need to bend low against the wind—the Pneumatic Zeppelin was running slow, perhaps fifteen knots, as her massive canvas back slowly edged closer to the monstrous hump of the smoking Bellerophon, not more than one hundred feet to starboard. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was higher than the Bellerophon by perhaps thirty feet, hedging her bulk above the maximum inclination of the Bellerophon’s main guns.

  The Bellerophon’s envelope was an anthill, crawling with defenders assembling to repel the coming attack. The musket of a Founders marine, perched on the Bellerophon’s roof, flashed with a boom, and the whistling ball passed just over Buckle’s head as he stopped beside a grappling cannon.

  “Snipers, Captain,” Valkyrie shouted over the wind at Buckle’s back. “I would suggest you keep your head down, sir.”

  Buckle glanced back at Valkyrie as she stood on the spine board, tall and blond and jarringly conspicuous in her Imperial powder blues amidst the tans and reds of the Crankshaft crew members. She was a lioness among wolves, and by her mere presence, gripping her long, gleaming silver sword, she dominated the hardy air dogs scrambling about her, assembling at their action stations or hastily unwrapping the oilskin covers of the pepper guns and grappling cannons.

  “Assemble by divisions! Man the grapnel launchers!” Buckle shouted. He was counting the numbers of Founders crewmen collecting on top of the Bellerophon, the flashes of their marines’ muskets offering tiny white bursts here and there along the long sweep of the envelope. “You might duck a touch yourself, Chief Engineer,” Buckle replied to Valkyrie. “You make for quite a target in that uniform.”

  The Crankshaft boarders grouped at their stations at the bow and amidships. A marine named Cartwright—conspicuous in his gold-buttoned red coat and white pith—knelt clear of the gathering ranks and, after carefully aiming, fired his long-barreled musket. Buckle saw the phosphorescent trail of the ball zip toward the Bellerophon, but it missed whatever target the marine had marked it for.

  Buckle eyed the distance between the Pneumatic Zeppelin and the Bellerophon, which was no more than seventy-five feet now. Windermere and De Quincey were laying them alongside perfectly. The huge Founders airship, her skin holed and streaming with smoke, looked intensely battered—the guns of the Czarina had perhaps crippled her even more badly than Buckle had first estimated.

  The battle was already under way, with muskets blazing on each side. A Founders crewperson, a woman in a gray coat, fell away from the Bellerophon, dropping into the gaping void between the towering flanks as they crept toward each other.

  “Founders’ dreadnaughts, ha! She’s a big old coal bucket!” Ivan shouted, arriving at Buckle’s shoulder in a great huff, his metal face piece and goggle gleaming under his ushanka and second set of goggles. Ivan gripped a monstrous cutlass in the hand assisted by his clockwork arm, a pistol in the other.

  “Ivan!” Buckle exclaimed. “I failed to notice your name on the boarding-party lists.”

  “And a damned shameful error it was, sir!” Ivan answered, testing the edge of his blade with his thumb.

  “Just do not get yourself killed,” Buckle snapped. “I have no desire to contend with Holly Churchill regarding the loss of your sorry hide.” Buckle’s words worried him a bit, for Meagan Churchill was also somewhere on the roof with them.

  “Do not worry about me, Captain.” Ivan laughed, tapping the metal plate on his cheek. “I can walk through bomb blasts with little more than a dent these days.”

  “Well, while you are at it, why do you not join Ensign Yardbird and lead the bow division across?”

  “Aye!” Ivan grinned, and took off toward the bow at a run, dodging crewmen as they perched in wait for the attack.

  “Ready the hooks!” Buckle shouted, his order passed along by his officers and midshipmen to the stern. He saw Darcy, the olive-skinned boar of a boilerman, manning the handles of the forward grappling cannon. “Ready to have at ’em, Mister Darcy?”

  “Aye, Captain! Aye!” Darcy yelled back, his wide, white-toothed smile made even more dramatic by the roundness of his chin.

  A musket ball punched through the envelope skin near Buckle’s boots, leaving a small, black, smoldering-rimmed hole. The musket battle continued as pistols, with their higher-pitched cracks, joined the fray. A few bodies dropped on both sides.

  “We are within pistol shot!” Valkyrie shouted. The whalelike roof of the Bellerophon was no more than fifty feet away, with the bottomless crevasse of air between the two zeppelins darker than the evening sky. Buckle could see the faces of the Founders crew, pale in the weak light, teeth bared as they hurled insults, or strangely calm as they aimed down pistol and musket barrels.

  “Fire grapnels! Fire all harpoons and hooks!” Buckle howled, and his officers echoed his order down the line.

  Time to grab hold of the tiger’s tail.

  GRAPPLING HOOKS

  THE SIX GRAPPLING CANNONS FIRED, with shallow hippopotamus-belly-flop whumps, the charges on the barrels sending the fifteen-pound grappling hooks in high arcs, their ropes trailing over the top of the Bellerophon.

  Buckle paced along the spine board. “Retract! Bring us in!”

  The grappling cannon operators yanked back the retracting levers at the base of each gun, which sent up screaming blasts of steam as the pneumatic winches below began recovering the lines. The grapnels caught hold of the Bellerophon, their sharp claws hooking into canvas and rigging, lines snapping taut with the tension of the winches.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin rocked to port with a lumbering groan as her steam-driven machines drew the great masses of the two zeppelins together in a slow, sideways glide. The gap was quickly down to twenty feet, the Pneumatic Zeppelin being cinched down from her higher position, coming more level with the back of the Bellerophon.

  Buckle lifted his sword into the air overhead. Bullets zipped past like bees. “Steady! Steady!” he shouted at his boarders—about forty in number, more than half the zeppelin’s complement—all bent at the knee, leaning forward, muskets and pistols poised. He eyed the Founders aircrew across from him, similar in number, their independently discharged guns and pepper cannons quiet on the hasty reload—the Founders had wasted much of their shot at too great a distance. They crouched on the roof or hung on the ratlines, swords and pikes glittering in the sunset, a frozen tableau hung in a translucent void, holding their breath just before the two gigantic zeppelins collided.

  “Fire pepper guns!” Buckle screamed. The two forward pepper cannons—small guns packed with canisters full of grape shot—erupted in an i
rregular volley. Knots of the Founders crew staggered, men and women screaming at terrible wounds, the dead, perhaps three or four, falling, gratefully silent.

  “Fire weapons!” Buckle shouted. Forty Crankshaft muskets and pistols discharged as one, the line of muzzle flashes bright in the darkening evening. The ranks of the Founders staggered. The Crankshaft boarders laid down their firearms and rose, knives, axes, pikes, and swords gleaming in their hands.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin and the Bellerophon crashed together, their flanks meeting below where their envelopes were at their fattest, two mountains of canvas, ropes, and iron trundling into each other with a rumbling shake and a roar of bending metal. The airships bounced apart, perhaps five feet, and slammed into each other again, this time staying tight, pinned by the winches, creating a vertigo-inducing chasm between.

  A low howl rose in Buckle’s throat, ending in the bellow of “Attack!” He charged, sprinting down the slope of the starboard zeppelin roof, and just as the canvas fell away, threw himself into the air with a great leap, sword raised, pistol pointed directly in front of him. He dropped, for the spine of the Pneumatic Zeppelin was a good fifteen feet higher than the back of the Bellerophon. In midair he fired his pistol into the face of a Founders crewman, a short, stubby fellow clinging to the ratlines, who was waiting to impale him on some kind of pike. The Founders man plummeted away. Buckle landed on the sloped port side of the Bellerophon’s roof, bouncing on the canvas skin; he snatched at the ratlines, tossing aside his empty pistol.

  Sword high, Buckle climbed as his crew flung themselves across the gap, their flying leaps silhouetted against the glowing clouds, swarming the Bellerophon in a din of screams and hurled orders, of clashing swords and pistol shots, their shouts near lost under the whistling wind and the moans of the airships grinding at their flanks.

  Buckle snapped his head toward the bow just in time to catch sight of a Founders rigger swinging for him on a rope, bouncing along the skin like a demented spider with a long sword.

  Buckle raised his second pistol, but a single shot rang out from behind. The Founders rigger bent over at the stomach, toppled off his line, and fell only a few feet, his lifeless body hanging upside down, his boot entangled in his line.

  Buckle glanced back to see Sergeant Salgado perched on the Pneumatic Zeppelin, musket smoking, offering him a wide grin. His grin disappeared. He jumped to his feet, desperately drawing his pistol. “Captain! Look out!” he screamed.

  Buckle looked up. A Founders officer, dressed in black with silver piping on her collar and sleeves, was charging down at Buckle from above, leading with her saber, flanked by two Bellerophon crewmen—stokers, by the looks of their blackened faces and leather coveralls—both gripping smithy hammers.

  Salgado’s pistol cracked. The whistling ball missed, leaving a tiny hole in the canvas between Buckle and the Founders officer.

  Buckle fended off the officer’s sword thrust with his saber; he raised his pistol and fired it point-blank into the woman’s chest. The force of the ball slammed her backward, her cap spinning away to reveal short-cropped orange hair streaked with gray—her body bounced off the envelope and catapulted limply down upon Buckle, rolling into his legs and slamming him face-first into the canvas, before tumbling off into the chasm below.

  Buckle tried to arrest his fall, landing hard on the angled skin that stank of mold, the iron frame beneath delivering a bruising blow to his abdomen. He had no time to catch the breath that had just been slammed out of his lungs—the first Founders stoker was on him, swinging his hammer in a low arc, aiming to bat Buckle’s skull off his shoulders. Buckle was up, thrusting his saber to deflect the hammer blow, and as the man’s momentum carried him forward, Buckle smashed the side of his head with his pistol butt, probably cracking the skull, and the man somersaulted past, rolling away.

  The second stoker was on Buckle an instant later. Buckle brought his saber up, but the man’s powerful swing slapped the sword out of his grasp, the blade plunging into the canvas and sticking there, out of his reach. The stoker laughed, swinging his hammer again. Buckle threw himself flat to avoid it, but the stoker kicked him in the jaw, and he rolled down the ratlines. Buckle looked up, half stunned, and saw the flash of a dagger in the stoker’s hand as he leapt upon him.

  The stoker suddenly jerked still. A silver flash burst out of his chest, splattering Buckle with blood. The man’s eyes rolled up white. Valkyrie stepped out from behind him, planting her boot on his back to kick him off her blade, sending the body over the side. She leaned down and offered Buckle her gloved hand. “I heard you were notorious for falling off airships, Captain Buckle.”

  “An odd time to find your humor, Princess,” Buckle said, not sure if he had any teeth left in his mouth or not.

  THE BELLEROPHON

  VALKYRIE YANKED BUCKLE UP ON his feet. He retrieved his saber and they clambered up to the crest of the spine, where the hand-to-hand battle was now in full swing. The numbers might have been close, but it seemed as though the half-pirate Crankshafts were already gaining the upper hand. Salgado and his marines remained perched on the higher roof of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, potting the Founders officers as fast as they could reload and aim again.

  Buckle and Valkyrie waded into the fray, catching a group of Founders off guard as they held the foremost section of the bow. Buckle stepped over the facedown body of Regina Ford, a somber but competent member of his propulsion crew, her blood running in rivers that pooled in the depressions of the topside canvas. He closed ranks with hydroman Murray Collins and stocking man Sylvester Turpin, both hardy veterans and near surrounded on their edge of the roof.

  Buckle glimpsed the flash of Valkyrie’s red-and-gold-laced blue cuff at his side as she deftly wielded her blade. She was fighting one stride behind him, covering his back, in the same fashion Max or Sabrina would have.

  Hurdling a grappling line, Buckle cut down an enemy crewman—nearly chopping the poor fellow in half—before he was rushed by a Founders officer in a well-tailored uniform with cuffs resplendent in silver lace; he was a strawberry-haired youth with blue eyes and a red-whiskered mustache, oiled to curl at the tips. The strawberry-haired officer handled his sword well—Buckle was hard-pressed to hold him—but he did not keep his adrenaline in check and swung too high and too hard, allowing Buckle to lunge under his guard and dispatch him by running the point of his sword deep into his innards. The Founders officer cried out and dropped, curling up in a ball as Buckle stepped over him.

  The forward roof of the Bellerophon was a killing ground. The deck was awash in blood and fallen rigging, littered with bodies both motionless and crawling, while the zeppelineers still standing trampled them. Men and women screamed in agony as swords and axes bit into their bodies and broke them, followed by the vengeful, animal cries of the victors, howling up their courage.

  With the bow section lost, the surviving Founders backed up, retreating slowly in good order toward amidships, exacting a toll with sword and pike on the Crankshafts who charged them.

  Buckle heard a chorus of “Hurrah, musketeers!” on his left, from the roof of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. It was uttered by the second wave—the port-side gun crews and the remaining boilermen and stokers—led topside by Wellington Bratt and the boatswain Richard Aubrey, bringing nearly a dozen fresh Crankshaft muskets and cutlasses to the fight. Welly shouted “Ready ranks!” and his division lined up near amidships, directly opposite the clustered Founders defenders.

  Shoving his way forward in the mass of Crankshaft boarders, Buckle waved his saber above his head and shouted. “Founders! Lay down your arms and you shall be spared! Surrender!” Buckle’s response was a well-aimed pistol ball that whizzed just past his skull, the streak of its phosphorus mere inches from his eyes.

  “Aim!” Welly screamed. The musketeers lifted their dozen rifles as one.

  The Founders defenders cringed, perhaps fifteen of them still standing, still fighting, but now with one eye on the Crankshaft firing squad on
the opposite roof: they compacted, which was the wrong response to the danger, but all their officers were down.

  “Crankshafts!” Buckle yelled as loudly as he could. “Stand fast! Do not move forward! Stand fast!”

  Buckle’s crewmen eased back, and a small gap appeared between the attackers and the Founders.

  “Fire!” Welly yelled. The small line of muskets boomed in a burst of black smoke and snake-tongued orange flames. Phosphorescent trails streaked into the tightly bunched Founders—many crumpled, some motionless, others screaming as they gripped bloody legs and arms—shattering the glass bubble of the observer’s nacelle.

  Buckle expected the Founders to break, to retreat, to drop down the nacelle hatchway in a panic, crashing down upon one another on the landing below. But they did not. They closed their ranks and stood their ground. Not one offered to surrender. Not one begged for mercy.

  “Have at them!” Buckle bellowed, and the Crankshaft boarders around him surged forward, closing in, bloodthirsty after the casualties they had suffered, overwhelming the remaining handful of Founders even as they swung their weapons about them.

  The last Founders crew member left standing, a small woman wearing the leather belts of a rigger, threw her sword, a spinning flash of silver, into the mass of advancing boarders before a pistol ball cut her down.

  “Form up!” Buckle shouted, a furious animal pleasure working in his brain as he hurried aft to the nacelle, stepping over bodies, fallen weapons, and dark splashes of blood. “Secure the roof, Mister Bratt!” Buckle shouted across the gap. “Transfer the wounded and prisoners immediately!”

  “Aye, Captain!” Welly responded; his gunners and stokers were already leaping across, fastening gurney clamps to one of the grapnel ropes to establish transport for the severely wounded. Buckle saw Meagan Churchill among them, for she was part of the number-two gun crew, and her right hand was dripping with blood, though whatever the nature of the wound, it was light enough for her to ignore it.