Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (14 page)

THE TALE OF THE BAROMETER

B
UCKLE FELT A TOUCH OF
weightlessness and the downward tilt of the deck under his feet as he, Sabrina, and Robinson raced along the lantern-lit passageways leading back to the
Arabella
’s bridge. Windermere was on the fast descent: the first instinct of a zeppelineer pilot when faced with an oncoming storm was to try to fly under it. Buckle shook off a wave of lightheadedness—exhaustion. Between the sabertooths and Max’s condition, sleep had been a rare commodity. What is this? he scolded himself, stowing his weaknesses away. Captains never tire. Never.

As they burst onto the bridge, Windermere spun to face them and threw a finger at the starboard sky. “Off the starboard beam, Captain! I have never seen anything like it!”

Buckle looked to his right to see a wall of black, a towering wave of dark, churning clouds, fast approaching, blocking out the horizon and the sky.

“Engines are all ahead flank, sir,” Windermere reported. “We have battened down, and storm lanterns are lit. I initiated descent to one hundred, but she looks to be a ground hugger—I do not think we can get under this one.”

Buckle glanced at the plummeting quicksilver in the barometer. Sabrina’s worries about the weather had proven prophetic.
They were in a world of trouble now. “Level out and maintain altitude. Zero bubble.”

“Aye, aye!” came the chorus of shouts from the bridge crew, driving wheels and ballast wheels spinning.

“You are correct, Mister Windermere,” Buckle said as the deck swung up under their feet. “There is no getting under a blizzard.” He felt his stomach tighten. He had been caught in a blizzard once before, when he had been the navigator aboard the Crankshaft trader
Bromhead
, and it had nearly been the end of both him and the entire crew.

“Altitude holding at two hundred seventy-five,” Sabrina reported from the navigator’s station. “Bearing, west-southwest.”

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Buckle muttered, folding his hands behind his back and setting his feet. The
Arabella
was roaring down the mountain, pushed beyond her maximum steam, furnaces roaring, driving propellers throbbing—but it was not going to be enough. The storm was going to catch them. And the only way for a zeppelin crew to be certain of surviving a winter storm was…to not let it catch them.

Sabrina had rolled the dice, bringing the
Arabella
up the mountain to rescue Buckle and Max, and she had rolled snake eyes.

“Take us up; emergency ascent,” Buckle said. “If we cannot fly under this devil, then we shall fly over it.”

“Up ship! Emergency ascent!” Windermere howled, both to the bridge and into the chattertube, as Elevatorman Wong heaved his elevator wheel.

“Valving hydro to one hundred and five percent. Dumping blue ballast,” Alison Lawrence shouted as she cranked the wheels on the ballast board. The
Arabella
surged upward, her decks trembling.

Buckle eyed the approaching storm, so much closer now that it startled him. They could not fly under the blizzard, and any attempt to ground or moor would only result in the
Arabella
being torn to pieces on the earth. Reaching for altitude was risky when he stood no chance of topping the storm clouds before they hit, but he needed the height; the superfreezing air was heavy, robbing an airship of buoyancy, not to mention the icing that would plague her. Engines and extra hydrogen valving could compensate to a point, but the vertical face of the blizzard was immense, the thunderheads perhaps a mile high. If the
Arabella
was to stand a chance, she needed all the altitude she could get.

“Four hundred feet, sir, and climbing,” Sabrina reported.

“Clear the weather deck,” Buckle ordered.

“Weather deck clear, Captain,” Windermere said, having just taken the elevator wheel from Wong; he craned his neck back to catch glimpses of the storm as it approached from starboard.

“Eyes up, Mister Windermere,” Buckle said calmly. “Watch the bubble, like a good gentleman.”

Windermere snapped his face back to port and held it there. “Aye, Captain. My apologies, sir.”

Buckle stared straight ahead, through the clear sky in front of the nose, at the jagged sweep of the mountain slopes as they zigzagged to the valley far below. He did not need to look to starboard to see the storm coming, perpendicular to the starboard beam, for its sweeping black mass was already advancing into his peripheral vision.

“Five hundred feet,” Sabrina reported.

“Cells at one hundred and five percent capacity, sir,” Lawrence said.

“Valve to one hundred and ten, Miss Lawrence,” Buckle said. “And continue valving to maintain buoyancy.” That kind of pressure risked blowing a bag, he knew, but to hell with it—he needed altitude.

“One hundred and ten. Aye, Captain!” Lawrence replied.

It was imperative that Buckle swing the
Arabella
hard a’starboard, leading with her nose to meet the teeth of the maelstrom, rather than being caught broadside, corkscrewed, and ripped apart. But every yard he purchased that brought him farther southwest off the mountain might prove precious at a critical moment. Buckle stood still, his hands clamped together behind his back, sensing a fast-rising tension gripping his crew.

“Stand fast, mates,” Buckle said. “Hold your course.” He could smell the storm coming now. He knew that smell, knew it from his years living on the mountain, that burned-metal, moist, churned-atmosphere, cold freshness that always preceded the most brutal blizzards.

“Looks bad, sir,” the helmsman, Mariner, muttered.

Buckle whipped a glare at Mariner that made the young man physically shrink. “Watch your tongue, Mister Mariner! Do not look at it, damn your hide!” Buckle leaned forward, addressing the entire bridge. “Just a bit of a blow! Piece of cake! Am I not accurate, Navigator?”

“Crumbly pudding on a plate. Just peachy,” Sabrina replied.

Buckle clenched his hands together behind his back so hard they hurt. He had gotten as far southwest as he was going to get. As the furious thundering of the storm washed over them, he gathered every church bell in his voice and bellowed. “Hard a’starboard! Heave to! Put your back into it and put our nose into it, Mister Mariner, you miserable sky dog!”

Mariner needed no prodding. He spun the rudder wheel to the right in a blur that threatened to break a poorly placed finger as he snatched at the passing spokes. “Hard a’starboard, aye!”

Buckle leaned on the binnacle for support as the airship swung nimbly, despite the heavy air. He had not flown in the
Arabella
for a while—he had forgotten how much more agile she was than the vastly larger
Pneumatic Zeppelin
.

“Coming around on new bearing, due northwest, aye! Six hundred and fifty feet!” Sabrina yelled.

As the
Arabella
straightened her course, her nose pointing northwest, she faced a churning wall of surging gray and black that blocked out the entire sky. The deafening roar of the maelstrom, drowning out all but the most strident shouts, set Buckle’s ears to ringing. The deck vibrated, rattling with such violence that it blurred his vision—he had to keep blinking to clear it. He leaned into the chattertube hood. “All hands brace for impact!” he shouted. “Goggles on! All hands brace for impact!”

“Ten seconds!” Sabrina shouted. She glanced back at Buckle, her red curls swinging about her temples under her derby as her green eyes met his, her face shadowed and soft under the impending shade of the storm, and—for an instant that he would only recall later—Buckle was stunned by how beautiful she truly was.

She smiled and lowered her goggles over her eyes.

Buckle smiled back.

The bridge began to darken rapidly, as if night was falling at great speed.

“Eyes on your gyro, Mister Mariner,” Buckle said. “You will not have a horizon in there.”

“Aye!” Mariner replied, his voice rattling.

“Steel your spine, Helmsman!” Buckle shouted, planting his hand on Mariner’s shoulder. “This is what you signed up for!” The madness was on Buckle, the exhilaration, the surging bravado he felt when faced with insurmountable odds; it was not a suicidal urge, nor a reckless one that might endanger his beloved crew, but a confidence born of necessity. If the captain surely believed things would shake out all right, then the crew could believe it as well.

“Leveling out!” Windermere shouted, winding the elevator wheel to neutral. “Leveling out at eight hundred!”

Eight hundred feet. Nowhere near the altitude the
Arabella
needed. “Equilibrium, drivers! Keep a tight grip on the wheel, Mister Windermere!” Buckle yelled. “This cold devil is going to try to shove the nose down!”

“Aye, Captain!” Windermere answered.

“Five seconds! Engage boil!” Sabrina shouted, though Buckle could barely hear her any more.

“Boil engaged!” Lawrence cried, flipping her agitator switches.

The
Arabella
began to rock back and forth, lanterns swinging and floorboards groaning. Buckle saw a rippling flash rip through the interior of the miasma and disappear.

Buckle’s pounding heart missed a beat. Electricity. The myths of lightning were true.

The sprawling array of instruments crowding the dark bridge stations lit up with the gentle green glow of the bioluminescent boil, rapidly brightening as the agitators stirred up the algae soup.

The instant before the
Arabella
’s nose plunged into the churning maelstrom, Buckle realized that the snow and mists
were hurtling upward—
upward
—at a breathtaking rate, as if the storm were upside-down.

The wood of the hull started seizing up, sounding off with loud, restless cracks. The nose dome suddenly clattered as a burst of silver-white frost erupted on the glass, rippling in long, crackling fingers across the panels, obscuring the view in jagged tributaries of ice.

This was no blizzard. It was far worse than that.

“Bloodfreezer,” Buckle whispered to himself in utter, despairing awe. He then screamed “Bloodfreezer!” as he yanked his goggles down over his eyes. He shouted it again, though he could not tell if anyone could hear him over the cacophonous rush of the atmosphere.

And then the storm swallowed them whole.

BLOODFREEZER

I
F A MAN WERE TO
die and be cast into hell, he might not find himself in a place so uninviting, Buckle thought. Almost hurled to the deck as the airship shot upward like a crossbow bolt, his head was forced down in near-utter darkness as he clung to the binnacle, planks splintering at his knees, overhead pipes bursting with scalding steam, glass instruments splitting into shards and collapsing into glittering streams of fantastically bright-green boil, cuffed about the eardrums by the terrific roar, his lungs agonized as they fought to keep from freezing solid in sucking air unfathomably far below zero.

Buckle breathed shallowly, through gritted teeth, preventing the air from overwhelming his lungs. The moisture in his nose and eyes had immediately frozen, and it felt like a hundred tiny daggers stabbed his eyelids whenever he blinked. His goggle lenses were half iced over, but they were of the highest quality—Alchemist glass—and there were still enough clear spots for him to see. And what he saw was a nightmare: the figures of the crew were shadows in a black hole lit brilliantly green by the thousands of glass boil spheres, tubes, feeders, and liquid dials that were still intact on the bridge. But outside, outside the icebound glass nose, the darkness heaved and
writhed in upward-driven torrents of snow and small, frightening flashes of light.

Flashes of light. An electrical storm. It was said that the Bloodfreezers generated charges of the mysterious force called
electricity
at altitude, within their bodies, but few had ever survived seeing such things to verify the tale. Electric charges loose in the clouds were not a good thing—such things surely blew up zeppelins.

Buckle fought to find his voice again. “Maintain equilibrium!” he tried to shout, but his cold-seized vocal cords failed him. It did not matter; the bridge crew clung to their stations, each knowing what most absolutely had to be done.

Buckle clawed his way up the binnacle and peered at the still-intact gyroscope in front of him, dipping around in its glowing green sphere, as were the bubbles in their inclinometer tubes alongside. The
Arabella
was still pointing northwest, but drifting to port, up at the nose by about five degrees, rocking with an odd sharpness, but they were upright and close to an even keel. The mere fact that the Imperial-built launch was still in one piece was impressive; she had bowed a bit on impact, yes, but she had taken the punch—her spine had held. The hull was good, but the brutal updraft might have torn the entire envelope away, for all Buckle knew.

Buckle wrenched his head toward the ballast board: the glowing boil in the hydrogen-pressure tubes read well, so his concern for the envelope was momentarily eased. Pushing up to his feet, Buckle heard his crew shouting reports through iced-up throats, but he could not make them out. He cleared his throat again and again, trying to heat up his voice box, and choked—the freezing air was thick with a vile, sulfurous, skin-itching smell, which he first feared was a shipboard fire, then knew to be the atmosphere itself, rife with sizzling energy.