Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) (40 page)

The leading Founders steampiper skidded into the mouth of the envelope gap, feet forward, almost on his back, swinging his steampack around to halt his trajectory. His steampack funnels spewed streams of white flame that forced Buckle to duck or be roasted. The other two steampipers sailed in behind the leader, one angling up and out of sight above the Eagle deck, the other veering inside the envelope and hurtling off in the direction of the bow.

Rolling to his left—Buckle could not roll right, lest he plummet off the sheared end of the catwalk—he jumped to his feet with pistol aimed. The steampiper leader and his spewing contraption hovered over the smoldering compartment vault. The moonlight gleamed on his brass helmet—its rectangular eye slits dark with smoked glass—and on his silver cuirass, emblazoned with the Founders phoenix.

The steampiper snatched a sawed-off musket from his right hip and swung it to bear on Buckle.

Buckle fired his pistol at point-blank range, ignoring the zeppelineers’ oath never to discharge a weapon inside a hydrogen
airship. Through the burp of powder smoke, he saw a flash at the cheek of the steampiper’s helmet as it deflected the ball.

With the steampiper leader’s musket muzzle now leveled at him, Buckle tensed to lunge, but there was little he could do to make the fellow miss.

Blam!
The steampiper leader jerked sideways, the tunic cloth on his right shoulder erupting with a burst of stuffing and pinkish blood; his musket went off, the flash nearly blinding Buckle, but the shot missed, the ball ringing off the safety rail mere inches from Buckle’s waist.

Buckle snapped his head to the left. Sergeant Scully, musket barrel smoking, raced toward him along the catwalk, with four crewmen close at his heels. Scully yanked a pistol from his belt and aimed. “Take that, you fogsucking scum!” he bawled, and fired again.
Blam!

Ballblasters were no slouches when it came to killing their enemies. Having spun the well-armored steampiper leader with his first shot, Scully sent the second pistol ball into the unprotected armpit hole of the cuirass, drilling the man through the chest. The dead steampiper leader’s engines cut out as he went limp and dropped, vanishing into the steaming maw of compartment number nine.

“What’s this, Captain?” Scully shouted, his face pink with exertion, as he arrived at Buckle’s side. “You gonna take ’em all on by yourself, sir? How about leaving a few for the old salts?”

“I greatly appreciate your shooting ability, Sergeant,” Buckle said.

Midshipman Vincent Callas, the apprentice helmsman, came charging down the catwalk with four winded crew members at his heels. Callas looked overly frightened—Buckle did not like that.

“We have at least two steampipers under the roof,” Buckle snapped as Callas handed him a loaded pistol. “Take up a defensive position here.”

“It’s a brawl down below, sir,” Scully said, deftly reloading his musket as he spoke. They’re crawling in everywhere, sir!”

“Aye, Sergeant. Hold this position no matter what, Mister Callas,” Buckle said, hurrying forward to the companionway. “I am going up to Eagle deck.”

“Have at ’em, Captain!” Scully shouted. “The fogsuckers won’t find a warm welcome here!”

“Mind what you are shooting at!” Buckle yelled back as he charged up the circular stairwell. When he leapt up onto the Eagle deck, he found himself alone, creeping along under the fluttering envelope roof. He saw a steampack and harness cast on the catwalk grating.

Buckle ran toward the bow, covering fifty yards. The enemy had to be close.

A slender steampiper stepped into view in the blast-shield hatchway of compartment four, not more than thirty feet away. The steampiper strode straight at him, helmet and cuirass gleaming, a pistol in each hand.

Buckle raised his pistol. He saw the steampiper, same as he, turn sideways to him, the duelist’s method of presenting as small a target as possible for the opponent to hit. They fired their pistols in the same instant.

Buckle missed and so did the steampiper. The inaccuracy of blackbang pistols beyond twenty paces was proven once again.

But the steampiper had another pistol, and Buckle did not.

When the steampiper pulled the trigger on the second pistol, Buckle threw himself to the catwalk grating. The
phosphor-laden ball whizzed over his head in a yellow streak, and he heard it ricochet off metal.

Buckle jumped to his feet, tossed his empty pistol aside, and drew his saber. The steampiper, short sword drawn, was already rushing him. Buckle charged: the longer arc of his sword swing would win him the initiative if he was aggressive. It worked. As soon as swords were crossed, the metal blades fracturing sparks as they clashed over and over, the steampiper had to back up or be overwhelmed.

But the steampiper, though considerably smaller than Buckle, clearly female, and wielding a shorter sword, was left-handed and dangerously good. Along with the advantage of helmet and armor, the female steampiper’s counterstrokes were so quick that Buckle barely had time to whip his sword around and parry the stabs away. Yet Buckle slowly won the advantage, forcing the steampiper back on her heels.

Realizing her predicament, the steampiper lunged with a frantic thrust, and when Buckle hopped back, she used the tiny breathing space to vault over the catwalk rail, leaping across a ten-foot gap to grab ahold of a support rope and slide down to the Castle deck thirty-five feet below.

“Are you kidding me?!” Buckle howled. Even he wasn’t desperate enough to make a jump like
that
. He raced to a companionway.

Buckle leapt down the last four stairs. His boots landed hard on the Castle deck grating. The female steampiper was on him in an instant, her sword blade waving back and forth, glimmering gold in the yellowish illumination of the firefly lanterns on the railing hooks. Buckle backed up, getting his bearings. From the way she balanced the weight of her blade in her arm and wrist, he knew that he was up against an elite
swordswoman. He could hear the battle raging below: muskets blazing, swords clanging, shouts of men and women locked in mortal combat.

The fight for the life of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was in full swing.

The female steampiper lunged at Buckle. He backed up, parrying her blows, noticing in the flurry that her sleeves were thick with silver lace—a high-ranking officer.

A sharp vibration hit Buckle’s boots along the grating: he realized that someone else had just landed on the catwalk behind him.

Buckle bobbed low, bending at the knees just as an arc of silvery steel sliced the air over his head. Buckle whirled around and kicked the second steampiper, a tall, powerful male, in the stomach, staggering him backward.

Buckle stood up, holding his sword in front of him, sideways to each of the steampipers, who moved in as a pair, like lions, stalking each flank.

Buckle had been suckered into a trap. He would have cursed himself, but there wasn’t time.

BALTHAZAR, RESURRECTED

S
ABRINA GRIPPED THE FRAME OF
the drift scope as she leaned forward, craning her neck to peer over the green glow of her instruments and catch a glimpse of the steampipers swarming under the glass nose of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s piloting gondola. She saw nothing except flashes in the fog bank. Muskets thundered on the umbilical behind, and up the stairwell above. The sounds made her cringe. Many stray bullets, smoking with hot phosphorus, would be puncturing more hydrogen cells, straining the stockings. Even if the zeppelin survived another hydrogen explosion, Sabrina doubted that they could stay aloft for long.

Sabrina itched to grab her saber, to charge up the stairs and join in the fight, but she had her hands full just keeping the damaged zeppelin in the air. Besides, the brawl might well come to her—the piloting gondola was a prime target for any attacker. The gondola was well defended: Geneva Bolling was down in the hammergun turret, while the crew had been issued pistols at their stations; two musket-toting crew members and a Ballblaster had been posted aft, covering the stairwell and the umbilical ramp hatch; even Kellie was primed for action, pacing at Sabrina’s calves, ears pinned back, growling.

“How is the rudder, Mister De Quincey?” Sabrina asked.

“As long as she doesn’t snap off, we are fine, ma’am,” De Quincey replied. Sweat trickled down his face from under his hat, leaving cold trails on his skin as the subzero air froze them in channels of salty ice. It took nearly every ounce of his considerable strength to keep the zeppelin steady.

“Elevators, Mister Dunn?” Sabrina asked.

“Holding, ma’am,” Dunn replied, but the strain in his voice was unmistakable.

Every member of the bridge crew was in a battle at his station. Ripped open and dragging hard to port, without blue-water ballast for the trim tanks, and with three of the six main boilers out of action, it was a real balancing act to keep the gigantic hydrogen airship level. Over and over again, the bubbles danced, and time and time again, they fought the air vessel back into line.

The fog bank beneath the gondola disappeared as if they had driven off a cliff, the mist falling away to the endless, black-as-ink Pacific Ocean below. Good, Sabrina thought, eyeing the mammoth Catalina Obelisk that loomed almost dead ahead, a massive pillar of purple-black stone thrusting up from the channel waters and disappearing into the clouds, whose course it cleaved high above.

“Hold course due south, one mile,” Sabrina said. “Then we turn due west.”

“Aye, south one mile to course change due west,” Welly said, working the drift scope and charts.

Sabrina could now clearly see the blue-white comet tails of the steampipers streaking below. She leaned to the open port gunwale and peered down at the ocean.

“Do not expose yourself in such a fashion, Navigator!” Balthazar bellowed, his boots banging down the stairwell,
making the crewmen flinch until they realized who it was. “Fly your foundering zeppelin! Let the rest of us put our eyes on the sky! The last thing we need is for you to stick your head out the window and get potted!”

Sabrina ducked her head back from the gunwale as Balthazar stepped up beside her, breathing hard, stinking of blackbang smoke, pistol and sword in his hands.

“Father!” Sabrina said, suddenly angry, wanting to scold him. What was he doing out of bed and fighting steampipers? She bit her tongue. He looked hale, his face flushed, his eyes hard—he usually did recover quickly from his episodes. But she did not like it. “What is the situation up topside?” she asked evenly.

“They have latched on and cut their way in everywhere, but the crew is holding their own,” Balthazar said. With the help of the troopers, we have kept the pressure on so they cannot form up and get a foothold. It is down to knives and swords now, for the most part.”

“Aye,” Sabrina replied. No more pistols. Good.

Balthazar wiped his face with his sleeve. “Watch your hull. They’re buzzing under the gondolas, looking to plant grenades. Our sky dogs on the umbilicals are giving them what for, but we’ve taken casualties, and they have blown some gaps in the antiboarding nets, I’m afraid.”

“How of them many are there?” Sabrina asked, her voice squeezing off as she jumped to help De Quincey strong-arm the lurching rudder wheel.

“Thirty, maybe thirty-five, as far as I could tell,” Balthazar replied, grabbing a wheel spoke to assist. “And some of the dead ones I have seen—their bandoliers are loaded with bombs.”

The skin on the back of Sabrina’s neck tingled. If only one steampiper managed to slip away into the vast catacombs of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
and detonate a bomb in the right place, it would most likely be the end of them all.

SWORDS

R
OMULUS
B
UCKLE WAS A MASTER
of the blade, trained from boyhood by the Crankshaft sword mistress Gweneviere Gray. Gweneviere was a tall, lovely woman, not a day over forty years, her youth preserved by outdoorsmanship, but a woman entirely described by the nature of her own name: her hair was silver-gray, her boots were gray, her jackets were gray—even her dog was gray. Her entire person might easily have lifted up and drifted away into the clouds, if it were not for the exceptional green of her eyes, a young ivy color made doubly striking by her own gravity, and the way she anchored anyone to the spot simply by looking at them. She had expected much from Buckle as Balthazar’s adopted son, and he had delivered. Endless hours of thrust and parry had evolved into a wickedly easy dance for him.