Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) (4 page)

VII

THE GLOOM

The
Dart
fell into a gray-green darkness, her iron skeleton groaning as the ocean welcomed her descent, reaching up to crush her. Water streamed down the inside of the bulkheads. A peculiar odor arose, similar to the smell of a hot gun barrel, and Buckle wondered if the pressure hull, compressing down at a molecular level, was emitting some sort of frictional heat.

“Seven hundred and falling,” Kishi said, her  voice thin, tight.

“Be quiet,” Felix whispered. He leaned into the chattertube. “Running silent,” he ordered.

For thirty seconds there was no sound except the aching complaints of the hull, the bursting of pipes, the trickle of water. Buckle screwed his fingers around in his ears, cranking open his jaw. The descent seemed to be concentrating in his eardrums—the increasing pressure, the puttering rattle of bubbles escaping the submarine as it descended into their grave.

“Seven fifty,” Kishi said, almost breathless.

“What’s the exact rating on this thing?” Buckle asked, watching the darkness deepen rapidly by degrees.

“You don’t want to know.”Rachel replied.

“Ratings are subjective,” Felix said. “Right now, vanishing into the gloom is the only chance we have.”

“Gloom?” Sabrina asked.

“Six hundred and fifty-six feet and below,” Felix replied, staring at lines of silver mercury rising in a bank of glass pressure tubes. “Where the sunlight fails and the true darkness of the sea begins. Where the monsters live.”

“You’re not helping,” Sabrina grumbled.

“The Founders boat can’t see us now but he must suspect that he crippled us,” Felix said. “We have to get under his depth charges.” He opened a small cabinet door set in the binnacle and drew forth a bottle of rum, which he uncorked with a pop and tipped up for a big swallow.

“That cork was a bit loud,” Sabrina whispered.

Felix grinned. “If the blokes up there hear it, they’ll understand.” He offered the bottle to Buckle, who shook his head as he stared straight up. Buckle couldn’t stop staring straight up.

“I’ll take a swig of that,” Sabrina said, and Felix handed her the bottle. Sabrina took a large gulp.

A weird, unsettling moan echoed through the ship, followed by a loud crumple of metal.

“She’s a finicky boat she is,” Felix whispered. “But she’s tough. Her sides are dimpling, but they’re not giving way.”

Sabrina took another long gulp and handed the bottle back to Felix.

The bulkhead rivets started rattling. The glass plate on the compass cracked with a sudden, sharp smack.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Buckle said. “I shall take a snort of that rotgut if the offer is still open.”

Felix handed the bottle to Buckle, who tipped the bottle and swallowed one, big, syrupy-sweet slug of rum.

Outside the windows the last hints of light vanished. The ocean went black.

“The gloom,” Rachel muttered.

Buckle could see no more dim glow overhead. It was if the
Dart
had dropped through a curtain and into a void, the only light now provided by the small sea lantern and the green bioluminescence of the boil-lit instrument panels.

“Eight hundred,” Kishi whispered.

“Level out, stop descent,” Felix ordered.

“Aye,” Kishi replied.

Kishi and Rachel wound a set of hand cranks and threw a lever. The glass cover on the ship’s compass shattered and fell in on the bobbing, phosphorescent needle.

Felix took a deep breath as Buckle handed him the bottle. “Well, this trip is surely eating away at my profit.” He corked the bottle and tucked it back into the binnacle cupboard.

Gustey lifted her mufflers. “Enemy boat slowing to three knots, almost directly above us at five-fifty.”

“Ah, he isn’t in the mood to test his iron, is he?” Felix said through gritted teeth. “The coward.”

“Cavitation,” Gustey said as she listened hard in her earphones. “Engines reversed. He’s stopped.”

Everyone peered up at the dripping ceiling.

“He’s a suspicious sort, he is,” Felix muttered. “I’ll give him that.”

“What do we do now?” Welly asked.

“We wait,” Felix whispered. “We can stay down much longer than he can. Once he is forced to surface we’ll be clear of him.”

A metal bolt fired out of the aft bulkhead and ricocheted off of the chadburn.

“Is your little submarine going to last?” Buckle asked.

“You’ll know it if she doesn’t,” Felix said. “I see no reason for her to let me down.”

Buckle’s ears ached in the following silence, so intent was he upon listening. He heard the huge Founders submarine’s boilers, a low, distant, constant rumble.

“Enemy boat holding position, directly above us,” Gustey said.

“He knows where we are,” Welly whispered.

“He heard our propeller shafts clang when they became unseated but he does not know our depth,” Felix said grimly. “He’s listening. Don’t make a peep.”

The
Dart
shuddered along her entire hull, a long shriek of tortured metal.

“Well, I’m pretty sure he heard that,” Sabrina said dryly.

Felix took a seat in his captain’s chair. Buckle wasn’t sure, but in the sea lamp and boil-lit darkness it seemed that Felix’s face had paled. Buckle coughed, his lungs irritated by the thickening atmosphere, contaminated with burnt coal smoke and agitated mold.

“He needs to flush us out before he is forced to surface,” Felix said. “Ready yourselves for a rough ride.”

“I hate depth charges,” Rachel said.

“Depth charges?” Welly asked. “What kind of weapon is that?”

“Underwater canister bombs,” Felix replied, scanning his instruments as he spoke. “Devil crackers. They are expensive—only big clans can afford them. They’re unreliable: the internal fuse is set so close to the powder charge that I’ve heard tell of entire ships and zeppelins being obliterated after they lit their poorly sealed ordnance. But if a live one catches a submarine, well …”

“Iron coffins,” Rachel whispered.

Buckle shot a glare at Rachel. The woman was no ray of sunshine, to be sure. The sourness of her personality seemed entirely at home in the gloom.

Gustey slapped her hands against her ear mufflers as she strained to hear. “Hatches opening, Captain,” she said. “Metal rolling on metal.”

“Here we go,” Felix whispered.

Kishi slipped her pocket watch out of her coat and started counting silently, her lips moving but making no sound.

Felix placed his hands on the armrests of his chair, his fingers digging into the leather coverings. “They’ll have set the timers on these bastards.”

“Big objects coming down,” Gustey said. “I hear hissing. Fuses in cans.”

Buckle’s heart started pounding. “How closely can they estimate our depth?” he asked Felix.

“They’ll have a good sense of it, unfortunately,” Felix replied. “They’ll suspect that I can’t go far beneath the gloom ceiling, and that my hull is ready to pop. They’ll set the charges to blow at six seventy-five or thereabouts. No more I hope—it won’t take much more than a granny’s squeeze to finish us off down here.”

“So we just sit here and take it, then?” Sabrina asked. She sounded pissed off.

“Felix ignored Sabrina. “Gustey—is the Founders submersible stationary or drifting?”

Gustey recalibrated her equipment and listened. “She hasn’t stopped entirely. Momentum and the current are carrying her forward from her last position, perhaps a quarter knot, by my calculations.”

Felix nodded and made eye contact with Buckle, who saw Felix hatching a desperate plan, the kind of plan requiring Lady Fortune’s good graces to work. Buckle grinned, feeling his bravado fueling up. Felix offered a smile back, a wild, we’re-in-this-mess-together kind of grin.

Gustey discarded her listening equipment and crouched beside her chair.

Felix also crouched, clamping one hand around the helm wheel stanchion. “I would suggest that you all find something solid to grab ahold of,” he said. “But stay away from the bulkheads—the force of a depth charge blow against the hull will kill you.”

Taking a firm grip on the periscope housing, Buckle knelt. Sabrina and Welly tucked in beside him. Penny Dreadful huddled with them, its eyes glowing in the dark.

“I am quite frightened,” Penny Dreadful said.

“As are we all, Penny,” Sabrina answered, patting the automaton’s metal shoulder.

Everyone looked up at the piped ceiling, cringing, waiting. Water trickled and sprayed but the wetness of clothing and skin was forgotten now.

“I hope somebody sold the Founders a nice set of duds,” Welly whispered, his voice hoarse.

They listened and they waited. Time for Buckle became suspended in the wavering dark. He felt the approach of the unseen depth charges, fuses burning inside watertight barrels packed with explosives, falling upon them at great speed. A group of strange underwater creatures floated past the bridge windows, their near transparent, jelly-fleshed bodies glowing a faint purplish-red, propelling their fragile bodies by thrusting water out of dozens of tubular appendages. Buckle did not know if they were earth animals or alien transplants.

The dull thud of an underwater detonation made Buckle tense, with Welly and Sabrina clutching alongside him, but the distance of it took the bite out of his apprehension. The
Dart
rocked gently, pressed down from above.

“Too shallow,” Kishi muttered. “Maybe this captain thinks we didn’t have the brass.”

“He’d never suspect we’re this deep,” Felix said.

“There are two canisters,” Gustey said. “And they have probably dropped more. I’d suspect that first charge’s fuse detonated prematurely.”

“Always the pessimist, Gustey,” Kishi said.

An elephant—at least, that was what it felt like—landed on Buckle’s back and if he hadn’t been holding on to the periscope he would have been driven flat to the deck. In the wallop of sound and pressure that hit him, the bridge shuddered so violently that everything blurred. Metal screamed and braces twisted. Pipes burst, spraying water and steam. Instruments cracked, firing splinters of glass and fountains of green glowing boil.

“Fire in the engine room!” a voice shouted from the chattertube.

“Damn it to hell!” Felix roared, throwing himself to the chattertube hood. “Shut down all boilers! Shut them down!”

“We’ve lost all internal pressure readings,” Rachel shouted as loose mercury wiggled across her instrument panel. “All gauges are shot.”

“Stand fast,” Felix answered. “We’re either dead or we’re not.”

“Fire extinguished,” the voice on the chattertube rang out.

Felix leaned back into the hood. “Good show!”

“Brace yourselves,” Gustey said, back on her headgear. “Two more coming down!”

“We’ve got to move, Felix,” Kishi said, clicking her stopwatch, her face etched with fright. “They’ve got us on the hook, you hear me? We’ve got to move!”

“We can’t move,” Felix snapped. “We sit here and take it. We take it.”

Gustey placed her headgear aside and crept under the map table.

“We’re between the devil and the deep now,” Felix muttered, eyes shining, looking up.

Buckle took a good hold of the periscope housing. It was dripping with boil and now his hand glowed with little green rivers. Thick smoke crept onto the bridge, the result of the engine room fire, and made him and everyone else cough. Take it, Felix had said. Sit down and take it. Buckle grew angry. Iron coffins indeed.

Another concussion hit them, more violent that the last. The force of its hammer blow through the deck slapped Buckle’s heels so hard it felt like his foot bones had separated from their ligaments. Knocked reeling through the spray of boil and debris, he grabbed ahold of Sabrina and she grabbed hold of him, both of them toppling into a heap.

The second depth charge went off within two seconds of the first. There was nothing to do but cringe. A wooden cabinet near Buckle’s head splintered with a loud crack. Boiling steam rocketed from a dozen compromised pipes, churning the bridge atmosphere into a dense, choking fog.

The sound of the depth charge echoed away and the submarine went still. But the quiet, with what it promised to bring with it again, was almost as loud as the explosions. “Blue blazes!” Buckle said as he rolled to his feet, slapping at his stinging ear. “Is everyone alright?”

“Aye,” came the uneven response from Sabrina and Welly.

“I am undamaged,” Penny Dreadful announced.

Buckle looked at Felix; the man’s face was calm, his mouth working. At first Buckle thought Felix had gone into shock—and that was most disturbing—but then he realized the
Dart
’s captain was counting, maintaining some equation of time and distance in his head. “How many more, Gustey?” Felix asked.

I don’t know, Felix,” Gustey replied. “I only heard the two before I took my gear off.”

Felix leapt to the forward windows, peering upwards. “Quickly, very quickly, Gustey—I need to know exactly where that submersible is. Then get those earpieces off.”