Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) (33 page)

Buckle heard Elizabeth’s voice in his head, distant and urgent. “Wake up, Romulus! Wake up!” she cried. “Wake up!”

Buckle gasped—it was an out-of-body, visceral, stabbing kind of gasp, as if he had just sucked in the ember-filled air over a campfire.

The world crashed back in on Buckle. He choked for breath. He was being dragged by the back of his collar, and it was garroting him. The thunderstorm of a musket battle rolled back and forth against his head. Pain stabbed him from all directions, but he could not tell exactly where in his body it was coming from. He flung his eyes open, looking straight up, and saw nothing but fog.

THE WRETCHED AIR ABOVE LA BREA SQUARE

M
AX SAW A PHOSPHORUS-FLARE ROCKET
above the fog bank and burst a hundred yards ahead of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, exactly where Welly had calculated the evacuation point over La Brea Square should be. The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was gliding a good fifty feet above the surface of the fog bank, and the Ballblasters’ messenger pigeon, popping up from the miasma, had already arrived aboard, scooting into the gondola signals room through the access tubes it was trained to enter. Signalman Fitzroy had confirmed the rescue expedition’s location on the ground.

“Signal flare dead ahead. Twelve o’clock low. Directly over the evacuation point,” Welly announced matter-of-factly.

“Aye, confirmed,” Max replied. Their oxygen masks were stowed now that they had cleared the mustard, and it felt good to talk without the warm but stifling tubed helmet.

The sputtering flare slid away, its dying glow reflected in Max’s liquid-filled goggles. She pressed the chadburn handle forward to ahead one-quarter, ringing the bell. The engineers acknowledged and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
responded smoothly, her propellers humming, the oil lanterns swinging lazily on their posts along the gondola gunwales and the forward spar. The huge airship coasted over an endless sea of greasy fog below
and under an endless ceiling of dark gray overcast above: evening was on its way. They slipped through a strange, gloomy slice of the universe.

“Two hundred feet to evacuation point,” Welly said.

“All stop,” Max ordered as she pulled the chadburn handle back to all stop. The engineering bell responded and the driving propellers went silent, leaving only the sigh of the wind. Applying only the small maneuvering propellers to adjust for drift, she would let the airship glide over the evacuation point, reverse the engines, and set her into a hover to down ship.

Max thought she heard the faint rumble of gunfire below, but she could not be sure. Kellie pressed her ribs against Max’s shin, aware, as always, that her master was coming home. Max patted the dog on the head, more out of obligation, she told herself, than sympathy—but when the dog turned her soft brown eyes up to hers, Max turned her head away, lest the creature discover the truth buried inside her goggles.

“One hundred feet to evacuation point,” Welly said without looking up, his eyes glued to his map, airspeed indicator, compass, and watch.

“Aye, one hundred,” Max confirmed. “Correct for drift, Mister De Quincey.”

“Aye,” De Quincey responded, ever imperturbable.

Max was going in a little heavy, a little faster than she might have liked, but her crewmates below were likely involved in a running gunfight. Every second would bring more and more of the enemy upon them. She needed to get the
Arabella
lowered, and fast.

The piloting gondola prow skimmed the fog bank, throwing a rolling curl of mist in its wake. To the south, the fog was laced with hundreds of long, wobbling rivers of filthy black
smoke, running roughly from west to east, the issue of a sprawling complex of industrial smokestacks. If the stories of the Founders tearing down their highest watchtowers to hide the city under the fog bank were true, it was a wasted effort, Max mused, for the oily spill of their chimneys betrayed its location with gigantic black stripes over a mile long. The reek of the foul pollution assaulted her sensitive Martian nose, and she felt sick. For a moment she considered putting her oxygen mask back on.

“Airspeed five knots. Fifty feet to evacuation point,” Welly said.

“Back one-third,” Max said, cranking the jangling chadburn handle to that position.

“Back one-third,” engineering repeated on the chattertube, ringing the chadburn bell with the daughter dial.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s engines revved up, the propellers gently whirring in reverse, the vibration jiggling the boil in its tubes.

“Airspeed four knots. Thirty feet to evacuation point,” Wellington said. “Twenty feet…airspeed three knots…ten feet…airspeed two knots…five feet…dead stop.”

“All stop!” Max ordered into the chattertube as she swung the chadburn lever. “Hover.”

“All stop and hover!” came the engineering response.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
now hung motionless above the fog bank.

“Directly above evacuation point,” Welly said, scratching a line on his map with pencil and ruler.

Max glanced at her watch and leaned in to her chattertube mouthpiece. “Lower the launch.”

“Lowering launch! Aye, Captain!” It was Ivan’s voice coming to her on the chattertube. Ensign Glantz was chief of the
boat on the launch. The chief mechanic was not supposed to be there, but there was no stopping him now.

The great winches and winding gears of the launch’s lowering mechanism creaked and groaned behind the piloting gondola.

“Launch descending. Fifty feet of rope. Aye!” Ivan reported through the chattertube.

The
Arabella
was to be lowered fifty feet, and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
would descend the rest of the way down with it. This would allow the mother airship to provide covering fire for the rescue expedition as they boarded the grounded
Arabella
. The crew were already at their battle stations; the rear hatch of the gondola had been opening and shutting as musket-armed crew members clambered out onto the umbilical bridges.

“Ballast, vent hydrogen five percent for vertical descent,” Max said. “Down ship.”

“Down ship!” Welly shouted into the chattertube.

“Venting hydrogen, five percent, aye,” Nero Coulton repeated, cranking his gas-release wheels on the hydro board.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
sank, slow and easy, and the piloting gondola was once again swallowed up in the gray nothingness of the fog bank. The vapors, impregnated with a vile stench of coal smoke, dead fish, sea salt, and rotten onions, made Max gag—it was not the released hydrogen, which was odorless and colorless—and she wondered if the entire city smelled like this.

The fog thickened overhead: it suddenly got much darker inside the gondola. The phosphorescent coating on every dial, register, and control surface glimmered a soft yellow green.

It was quiet. Max could hear the indistinct patter of the tiny mechanical agitators stirring inside the hundreds of boil-filled
instrument spheres, vials, and cylinders on the bridge, each one generating its own green bioluminescence.

“Hydrogen five-percent vent complete,” Nero said, scrutinizing the instrument gauges on the hydro and ballast boards.

“Aye,” Max responded.

Welly had his face pressed into the drift scope. “Rate of descent two feet per second. Estimate launch to make landfall in approximately thirty-five seconds.”

Max watched her gyro, compass, and inclinometer.

“Thirty seconds to launch landfall,” Welly said. “Zero bubble.”

Ivan’s voice came rattling down the chattertube. “Launch has cleared the fog ceiling. We are over the landing site. Thirty feet to landfall. Thirty feet.”

“Thirty feet, aye,” Max repeated back to Ivan though her chattertube hood.

“Rescue team sighted—but we’ve got a hornet’s nest down here!” Ivan yelled.

Max’s stomach muscles tightened. The fight they had expected was on. The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, coming down like a big, fat, slow duck, would not fare well if there was anything down there bigger than muskets. She heard the sounds of blackbang muskets blazing, faint at first, but rapidly gaining in intensity.

“Twenty feet,” Welly reported.

“Twenty feet to launch landfall!” Ivan said almost simultaneously on the chattertube, most likely peering down the
Arabella
’s drift scope.

“Twenty feet, aye,” Max said, turning to Nero. “Hydro—ready to replenish hydrogen in all sections, five percent.”

Nero already had his hands resting on his controls. “Five percent, aye. Hydro ready for the bounce, ma’am.”

The fog thinned out and disappeared under the glass observation window at Max’s feet. Looking down past the dog, she had a bird’s-eye view of La Brea Square below. It was designed as a huge hexagon, with the massive phoenix sculpture at the center, and four causeways leading away from each side. The wide causeways, built to span the massive pool of black tar over which the entire square rested, were bordered near the center by irregular pumping structures capped with amber-stained glass domes.

Directly below, grouped in a defensive circle on the eastern causeway, was the rescue expedition, muskets afire. A considerable force of Founders had the Crankshaft and Alchemist intruders surrounded—and Max could see dozens more racing to the scene from the adjoining streets.

Outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded, Buckle’s expedition was not going to last much longer.

NEWTON AND THE
ARABELLA

R
OMULUS
B
UCKLE
’
S EYELIDS FLUTTERED, BATTLING
against the acrid cordite that stung his eyes. He caught glimpses of shadows moving in a fog lit up by bright yellow muzzle flashes. He was confused for a moment, until he remembered where he was. He was being carried—or, more descriptively, dragged—as his heels scraped along the ground. Powerful hands laid him down against a wall, and the sudden stillness made his head swim violently. He forced his eyes open, focusing on Corporal Druxbury and Sabrina as they kneeled over him. Druxbury was wrapping Buckle’s head with bandages.

“You okay, old salt?” Druxbury shouted, realizing that Buckle had regained consciousness.

Buckle tried to say something—he wasn’t sure what—but his mouth would not form the words. A musket ball struck the wall above his head, showering him with sharp bits of granite. Anger flooded through him. He had to get up and fight. He clawed at his pistol holster and tried to pull his body up.

Sabrina shoved Buckle back down, hard enough to bang the back of his head against the wall. “Romulus! For the sake of mercy, stay down!”

Buckle took a deep breath. He tasted blood in his mouth. He could see one of the amber glass domes towering over the
opposite wall of the causeway. A line of finely formed letters, corroded with green rust but still quite prominent, were chiseled along the dome’s high copper collar:
S
TEAM
P
OWER FOR
O
UR
B
RAVE
N
EW
W
ORLD OF
P
EACE AND
B
ROTHERHOOD
.

Buckle turned his head to the left. Andromeda was lying beside him, with Kepler and Wolfgang crouched over her. Her blood-streaked face rested mere inches from Buckle’s, her depthless eyes of violet-black staring into his. The white of one eye was soaked by blood, but that ghastly detail now escaped Buckle’s notice: the Alchemist leader was not looking at him, but rather
into
him.

The clouds in Buckle’s head suddenly melted away, replaced by clarity.

Buckle suddenly knew things. He knew that Andromeda could not speak. But he knew she was urging him to act.

Buckle turned his head to the sky and saw a long, ellipsoidal shadow growing darker and darker in the fog ceiling: it was the
Arabella
making her descent. Grabbing ahold of the low causeway wall, Buckle yanked himself to his feet, drawing his pistol as he rose. Druxbury and Sabrina now had their backs to him, part of the rough circle of Ballblasters and Alchemist troopers who, under the direction of Pluteus, Scorpius, and a somewhat recovered Balthazar, were returning fire at flashes in the gloom that came from every direction. Katzenjammer Smelt stood in the center of the formation, arrogantly heedless of any danger, aiming, firing, and reloading his pistol with the calm ease one might see on a practice range.