Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) (34 page)

Musket balls with their phosphorescent trails whizzed through the miasma, ricocheting off metal, biting into granite with nasty whacks of pulverized rock, smacking holes in the mottled glass of the tar-pit domes.

Buckle lifted his pistol, waiting to shoot at a musket muzzle flash. He saw a section of fog burst with a circle of light. He jerked his pistol to the mark and fired. Whether he hit anything or not he would never know.

“Just cannot stay out of the party, can you, Captain?” Sabrina shouted, biting the top off a paper cartridge as she appeared at Buckle’s shoulder. “I think they are forming up to the east!”

“Where the hell is that Martian with your airship?” Scorpius bellowed.

“She shall be here,” Buckle replied.

“My airship,” Smelt howled nearby.

A Ballblaster at Buckle’s shoulder cried out and fell backward. It was Reyes. Buckle knelt beside the man to check his pulse. He was dead. The Founders soldiers, Buckle thought as he jammed his ammunition into his pistol barrel and ramrodded it home, were surely more proficient at fighting in the fog than his clansmen were.

A roar of musketry boomed overhead. The slender keel of the
Arabella
had cleared the fog ceiling, and her gunwales, jammed from bow to stern with muskets, had opened up in a barrage of flashes.

“Our transportation has arrived, children!” Balthazar shouted.

The
Arabella
was coming down to land in an excellent position: the length of her hull would roughly straddle the western end of the eastern causeway, placing the airship like a wall between Buckle’s force and the Founders soldiers, collected under the huge phoenix statue at the center.

“Good work, Max!” Buckle shouted.

Seeing the arrival of the Crankshaft reinforcements, the Founders on the eastern end of the causeway started pressing.
The vapors rippled with gunfire that was suddenly much closer and heavier in its volume. An Alchemist trooper fell, screaming as he clutched a leg split wide open. His companions dragged him back. Buckle stepped into the breach and discharged his pistol at the shadows in the fog.

The battlefield suddenly fell silent.

Sabrina had been right. The enemy was forming up for an assault.

Buckle drew his sword, the saber blade ringing as it slid out of the scabbard. It was going to be close.

“Form up on me!” Pluteus screamed, striding back and forth. “Double ranks!”

The Ballblasters and Alchemists, hastily reloading their muskets, fell back into two lines.

Buckle hurried into a position at the end of the front line. He stuck his empty pistol into his belt. There would be time for only one volley—and then the fight would be hand-to-hand.

“Fix bayonets!” Pluteus ordered. The troopers drew their bayonets from their belt frogs. “Bayonets!” Bayonets were snapped onto the musket barrels with a resounding
click
.

Buckle heard a gravelly-throated Founders officer shout in the mist ahead, his orders as loud and clear as if he were on parade: “Charge!”

What seemed like a hundred men and women screamed a battle cry, their voices rolling from the fog like an ocean wave.

“Front rank, kneel!” Pluteus yelled. The front rank of troopers dropped to one knee.

“Take aim!” Pluteus shouted.

The troopers lifted their musket stocks tight to their cheeks, barrels unwavering, leveled at the mass of shadows rushing at them through the mist.

“Hold!” Pluteus shouted.

The Founders came on, their shadows getting darker and more defined, the pitch of their battle cry growing. There were a lot of them.

“Hold! Wait for it!” Pluteus shouted.

A wall of black-uniformed Founders soldiers, both men and women, burst out of the fog, their muskets spattering yellow with a volley of fire.

“Fire!” Pluteus shouted. The Ballblaster and Alchemist ranks boomed in a solid volley of musketry, blowing up a cloud of dark powder smoke. Buckle saw casualties drop from the Founders line—but they had barely dented their numbers.

“To the bayonet! Have at ’em, old salts!” Pluteus yelled.

Buckle squared his feet and raised his sword. The Founders would surely overrun them. But all they had to do was buy enough time for the leaders to board the
Arabella
.

A rip of musketry and the deep roar of cannon opened up high at Buckle’s back. A hail of phosphorus musket-ball traces sliced into the Founders line. He heard the low
chunk, chunk, chunk
of the hammergun, the whirs of its harpoon darts passing over his head. The Founders staggered and slowed. A series of explosive shells rolled across their leading rank from left to right, mowing them down, tearing them to pieces.

Buckle looked overhead: the massive keel of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
had emerged, as big as a sky city, dwarfing the grand phoenix statue beyond. Her gondolas and umbilical bridges rippled with the flashes and phosphorus flicks of musket fire. The gunnery gondola, cannon hatches flung open, the twelve-pounders drawn back for reloading, was wreathed in rivers of blackbang smoke. The hammergun slung beneath the piloting
gondola swung from side to side, barrel bouncing, expending ammunition in violent puffs of superheated steam.

And suspended by dozens of thick ropes and cables fifty feet beneath the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was the
Arabella
, her descent slowing to a hover, the bottom of her hull mere inches above the causeway. Along with her musket-wielding crewmen on the weather deck stood the hulking form of Newton, the rotating cannon on his arm spinning, spewing currents of black smoke as barrel after barrel discharged blast after blast, raining his explosive shells on the Founders. Zwicky stood at Newton’s side, grinning like a madman.

“Fall back and embark!” Pluteus howled through the din.

The troopers backed up toward the
Arabella
, carrying their wounded as they retreated. Scully had a firm grip on Balthazar, making sure he was one of the first in line to board the launch.

Sabrina took ahold of Buckle’s arm and pulled him with her. “Let’s go, Captain!”

The
Arabella
’s main loading door swung down and slammed on the causeway. Ivan leapt down the ramp, the earflaps of his ushanka askew, waving his pistol. “What are you waiting for? An invitation? Come on!” he shouted.

Kepler was the first up the ramp, carrying Andromeda in his arms, followed closely by Wolfgang, then Scully and Balthazar.

For a moment, as he approached the
Arabella
, Buckle worried about the black Founders uniform he was wearing, his regular gear tucked away in Sabrina’s haversack. One of his own crewmen might pot him. Or, more disturbingly, Newton might pot him. He realized that was why Sabrina was holding him by the arm.

“Move!” Pluteus yelled.

Buckle glanced back down the causeway. Musket flashes popped in the mist, but the Founders charge had melted back into the fog, which was still being pummeled by Newton and the Crankshaft guns.

Buckle and Sabrina arrived at the ramp as the troopers embarked in a stream. The air was swimming in gunpowder haze, with sparks and burning wadding streaming down from Newton’s hot barrels directly above.

“Let’s get it moving!” Ivan shouted. His pet wugglebat, Pushkin, popped its furry head out his breast pocket for an instant, then ducked it back in.

Pluteus followed the last trooper up the ramp, shoving Ivan’s pistol out of the way as he passed him. “I told you to watch that thing, Gorky!” he snapped.

“Captain!” Sabrina shouted, halfway up the ramp. “It is time to go!”

Buckle looked back at Smelt, trailing last, taking one last shot into the fog. “Smelt! Get your arse up the ramp!” he yelled.

Smelt spun around. He holstered his pistol and calmly strode toward the ramp.

A Founders soldier, half crazed with bloodlust, his face and uniform spattered with the blood of his massacred fellows, charged out of the fog at Smelt’s back. His musket led the way, the bayonet leveled straight at Smelt’s spine.

Buckle snapped out his pistol, aiming it just past Smelt’s right ear.

Smelt narrowed his eyes in rage. “Assassin!”

Buckle pulled the trigger. The hammer dropped with a useless
click
. Empty. Smelt was one instant away from being skewered. Buckle clenched his fingers around his sword hilt and
lunged, shoving Smelt hard to the right. The Founders man howled, adjusting the angle of his bayonet attack to catch Smelt, even as he stumbled.

Buckle slashed his sword across the soldier’s musket barrel, knocking the bayonet thrust aside. Then, driving his left forearm up to catch the man under the chin, he stepped into his forward momentum and drove his blade into the man’s stomach.

The Founders soldier stopped cold, his face twisting on Buckle’s sleeve. Buckle saw the blood-red point of his saber protruding from the man’s back—he had run the poor bastard through. The dying soldier gurgled. Buckle felt the wheeze of the man’s last breath hot on his cheek, saw the light in his brown eyes extinguish. The man dropped; Buckle yanked his sword free as the body fell.

Buckle turned and saw Smelt staring at him like a man who had just witnessed an unspeakable outrage. Smelt spun on his heel and marched up the ramp.

Sabrina grabbed Buckle, her ringlets of red hair striking as they bounced around her green eyes and pale, sooty face. “Get aboard, Captain! Hurry!” Buckle turned and raced up the ramp with Sabrina.

Ivan, perched in the doorway, yanked at all of them as they passed. “Get lost, Smelt. Nice to see you, Serafim. Nice uniform, Captain—a perfect way to get yourself potted by one of your own!”

Buckle and Sabrina stumbled into the dark hold of the
Arabella
. Buckle sensed the crowd of people within more than saw them. The loading door cranked shut as fast as its steam-powered gears could spin.

Ivan swung to a chattertube and shouted into the hood. “Launch secure! Haul away!”

The
Arabella
jerked, nearly throwing everyone off their feet, the winches high above in the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
being thrown to full power immediately.

Buckle leaned against a bulkhead; he could feel the slaps of Founders bullets thudding against the
Arabella
’s wooden hull. He still clenched his saber in his hand; in the weak light he could see the long span of the blade, dull with its wash of blood. He would have to wipe it clean before he returned it to his scabbard—that was all the thought he gave the macabre souvenir.

“Launch ascending!” Ivan shouted into the chattertube. “Fish us out of this mess, will you?”

Buckle strode forward, unsteady on his feet as he bumped through the soldiers across the gently rocking deck. He worked his way forward to the empty bridge. Blackbang bullets smacked the glass nose panels here and there, sometimes cracking the dense glass.

Something drew Buckle to the front starboard side of the nose. He peered down through one of the less rippled sections of glass, observing the waves of fog as they rapidly thickened over La Brea Square below. In the surrounding city he glimpsed the sparkle of glass rooftops, and the dark, hulking roundhouses that served the myriads of railroad tracks that coiled and gleamed in all directions. Directly beneath, he saw the great black lagoon of the tar pits, the amber domes, the scurry of people on the causeways, and the small orange pops of their weapons. For an instant, and only an instant, the fog broke, and he saw a dozen cavalrymen galloping along the causeway. The riders wore black cloaks and rode black horses—all except the leader, scarlet cloak whirling, whose horse, a powerful stallion, was all white.

A dark presence cast a shadow over Buckle’s soul. A terrible, untouchable, unreasonable fear whispered to him.

And then the fog closed in. La Brea Square vanished under a gray tide.

A blackbang bullet hit the glass, smack in front of Buckle’s face, leaving a bull’s-eye crack.

“Romulus! For crying out loud, get your arse away from the windows!” Sabrina snapped as she emerged from the hatchway.

Of no mind to argue with Sabrina, Buckle turned and strode into the safe twilight of the hold. He took a deep breath. The stuffy atmosphere was still. The twisting ratchet of the heavy ropes creaked above. The groans of the wounded men sounded a heartrending chorus. Almost every single man was injured in some way, everyone coughing, grimed with soot, gunpowder, and sweat, bloody and exhausted. But they had saved Balthazar.

Buckle brightened with relief and pride.

They had saved Balthazar.

“WE ARE NOT OUT OF TROUBLE YET, ANDROMEDA, MY DEAR—NOT BY A LONG SHOT.”

A
S SOON AS
B
UCKLE’S BOOTS
hit the deck of the piloting gondola, he felt rejuvenated. It was exhilarating to be back on board his sky vessel, with the familiar metallic smell of the hot boilers, the oily scent of the engine lubricants, and the chemical odor of the envelope-fabric stiffeners in his nostrils, the ring of the chadburn in his ears, the airy swing of her great mass that rolled through every fiber of his body.

The deck was on a steep rise: the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was nose up, reaching for altitude, her engines and propellers pitched to full, roaring at maximum power. And now that the rescue expedition was aboard, with Balthazar, Andromeda, and Smelt his precious cargo, it was his responsibility to get them and his crew home alive; with all of his zeppelin-captain arrogance, he knew that he would.