Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (19 page)

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF ICE

B
UCKLE PULLED
S
ABRINA BACK FROM
the brink of the
Arabella
’s envelope as the corpse of the kraken fell away into the swirling vortex of the Bloodfreezer, taking swathes of ratlines and rigging with it. It was a great relief to have ahold of her, rumpled as she was, gripping her knife, awash in both yellow and red blood. Their lives had just been hanging by threads—threads that the kraken had nearly cut—and they had saved each other.

For one instant—as Buckle dragged her back, the sudden softness of her breasts under layers of leather and fur against his arms, the dulcet swirl of her red hair in his nostrils—he was blindsided by an intense desire for the girl. Shocked, he shoved the feeling away. His blood was up and he was half-crazed. It was improper. Unmentionable. Insane.

Buckle grabbed Sabrina roughly by the collar, lifting her to her feet. He shoved his mouth close to her ear. “Are you still in one piece, Navigator?” he asked.

“Aye, Captain!” Sabrina yelled back, kicking the last suckers of the severed kraken tentacle loose from her bloodstained boot.

The world suddenly shifted from darkness to light, zapping Buckle’s brain. The
Arabella
had breached the backside of the storm, escaping the lightning-fraught maelstrom and
bursting out into the bright grayness of the daytime sky. His wide-open irises slammed shut, injured by the sudden brilliance even through his goggles’ polarizing lenses, forcing him to squint. They hurtled high above an earth of endless snow-covered mountains, one pierced by the faraway purple tower of the Sequoia obelisk. He breathed easily, his tortured lungs no longer laboring against the brutal vacuum of the Bloodfreezer.

The zeppelineers on the roof of the
Arabella
, blinking in their ice-encrusted goggles, were thrown into weightlessness as the airship, heavy with jackets of ice and no longer suspended by updrafts, fell into a precarious drop.

As the crew of the
Arabella
battled for their lives against the kraken, the ice had collected voluminously on her gondola and flanks. Now it loomed in great, ghostly white humps on every surface—thick, deep, dense stuff, hard to crack, defiant of the axe. The weight was too much for the hydrogen-socked cells, too much for the engines and propellers, even as they churned up to screw-rattling whirls.

It was quite something, Buckle thought as he and Sabrina scrambled up onto the
Arabella
’s slick spine board. It was quite something to fight off a kraken, fly through a Bloodfreezer, and then go down to your doom, story untold, legend unforged, in an inglorious block of ice.

Buckle swung his axe, jagged cold bits biting into his face when the blade struck, as the rest of the crew continued whaling about the roof with axe, hatchet, and bayonet, left and right, the air around them exploding upward with glittering bursts of ice chips.

But Buckle knew no one could save the
Arabella
with the blade. “Reaper’s breath, Mister Darcy!” Buckle shouted as the airship plunged. “We start amidships! Now!”

“Aye! Aye!” Darcy shouted, and took off toward the bow in a bent-low run, his broad body bearlike in his heavy greatcoat.

“But Captain,” Sabrina shouted at Buckle’s shoulder. “We have holes!”

“Get to the bridge, Lieutenant! Shut off the valves on the leakers and flush the pipes! Go! You have got one minute! Go!” Buckle shouted.

Aye!” Sabrina replied, and set off at a slippery run toward the observer’s nacelle.

“Mister O’Brian, you are with me!” Buckle shouted. “And Mister Headford, you shall second Mister Darcy! Assist with the reaper lines!”

“Aye, Captain!” O’Brian and Headford, the hydroman, yelled back, hurrying forward. They were big men, and Buckle wanted big bodies anchoring the hoses.

“Mister Faraday!” Buckle howled.

“Aye, Cap’n!” Faraday answered, clutching an arm that looked to be broken against his chest.

“Get the rest of the hands below, you hear me? All hands below! Axemen work the keel and the gondola, but eyes up!” Buckle ordered.

“All hands below, aye!” Faraday replied. He spun and herded the rest of the crew forward with him. “If you ain’t on the hoses, you are with me! Move! All hands below!”

Buckle peered toward the stern as the towering black wall of the Bloodfreezer fell away at considerable speed, though still blocking out everything to the southeast. He turned toward the bow, figuring the that the Arabella was now at twelve thousand feet altitude and dropping fast—they had a little time, but not much.

Darcy, O’Brian, and Headford, pink-faced and gasping, hauled two rubber reaper hoses out of the observer’s nacelle,
the ignition flames flickering restlessly in glass cases under the chins of the nozzles. Buckle took one hose as O’Brian jumped behind him. Buckle clamped his hand on the firing trigger—he did not want the hose going off before he was ready for it.

“Darcy,” Buckle shouted. “We work out from here. You sweep aft. I’ll take forward.”

“Aye, Captain,” Darcy yelled.

“The jackline is snapped! Attach your safety lines to the stanchions!” Buckle shouted over the wind. “And do not broil anyone by mistake.”

Darcy waved at the mountains below, rising up with terrifying speed. “I’d much rather be toasted than cracked open like an egg, sir.”

“Aye!” Buckle answered. Over the thunder of the rushing air, he heard a deep, metallic boom; glittering walls of water rushed upward past both flanks and disappeared. Sabrina had dumped the white-water ballast tanks. The
Arabella
bobbed, slowing her descent, but she was still in free fall.

Buckle clamped his safety hook to the rail of the observer’s nacelle. He wrapped his gloved fingers around the heavy brass firing handle of the hose and aimed the nozzle at the wall of ice below, rippling in murky-white waves along the starboard flank, the weight of its mass already ripping the fabric loose of its stitchings. Reaper’s breath—he had never been in a situation where he was required to use it before; it was the nastiest stuff imaginable for a zeppelineer, a pressurized mix of hydrogen, oxygen, and gelatin that, once fired through the ignition flame at the mouth of the nozzle, hurled a jet of liquid fire up to twenty-five feet in distance. Pure hydrogen was a safe commodity—near impossible to ignite—but hydrogen mixed with oxygen was as dangerous as any soup could be, an
invisible phantom that could incinerate entire airships if given the opportunity.

Buckle hoped that Sabrina and Windermere had sealed off and flushed the leaking hydrogen cells and closed the valves; if not, once the reaper hoses engaged, they would all be launched into the afterlife in a blinding flash.

Buckle set his feet and slapped the copper firing handle back. The reaper hose thrashed, becoming violently alive in his hands as the nozzle erupted in a jet of fire. Leaning into the force of the recoil with O’Brian’s husky weight at his back, he swept the geyser of flame across the roof and down the slope of the starboard flank. The ice splintered in resounding cracks, exploding in hissing sprays of water droplets, with big chunks of ice falling away under the steaming clouds. The envelope skin beneath, its fabric thickly doped with chemicals for strength and fire resistance, bubbled and curled and scorched black, sending up a stink like burned hair, but if one could maintain the angle of the jet at just the right height, one could destroy the ice and move away before the singed material actually caught fire.

It took three minutes for Buckle and Darcy, working both flanks, to clear the amidships envelope of ice—three minutes and five thousand feet of altitude. Buckle kept an eye on Darcy’s progress aft, for too much clearance on one end would tip the
Arabella
precariously out of trim.

Buckle and O’Brian advanced on the bow, reattaching their safety lines to the forward grappling-cannon post. The axe team had done some good work on the roof here—the ice was hacked away in rough trenches—but when Buckle leaned over the port side and peered down, his stomach knotted: ahead, on the chin of the rounded envelope, where the canvas under the nose-hub window plunged down to the nose of the gondola, the ice had
accumulated in a fantastic, grotesque riot, bulky and silvery white, deep as a man’s arm.

Buckle signaled O’Brian and they rappelled down the wind-buffeted flank to the ratlines just above the gondola bulwarks. The airship fell at a dizzying speed, and the mountains, the bloody mountains, now looked huge, filling the horizon with sharply defined, snowbound peaks and valleys. They were now close enough for him to make out the black dots of individual trees.

There was no more than four thousand feet between the
Arabella
’s hull and the peaks. Her propellers could do her no more good, roaring beyond the limits of their manufacture, the port-side prop throwing bursts of smoke and making an unhealthy rattle.

Buckle slapped the reaper hose’s firing trigger open, releasing the flame. He aimed low to counter the wind, and swung the blazing orange stream up and down the bow of the
Arabella
’s envelope. Wreathing waves of mist swept upward. Buckle worked his way topside, laying the column of fire as close to the skin as he dared, trusting O’Brian to support his back as the hose kicked at him. After a minute, the port side of the bow was relatively clear, a singed wall of smoking black. Buckle gave the top of the envelope a quick scrape of flames before he and O’Brian crossed the roof and rappelled down the starboard side.

The starboard side of the envelope was trapped under a massive iceberg, a curving wall of ice towering four stories high.

In his bones Buckle could feel the
Arabella
finding her wings, pulling out of her fall as her lift and propulsion escaped the terrible weight of the ice. But was it too late? Through his water-streaked goggles, Buckle saw the mountains heaving up over the airship on both flanks. Sabrina had turned the
Arabella
down the throat of a valley, buying them a few more seconds. Buckle could easily see the rocks in the ravines, the irregular patterns of the fir trees, the dotting of animal trails, the wide scars of countless avalanches scarring the slopes.

Three hundred feet left to fall, perhaps.

Buckle yanked the hose firing trigger and ripped the fire stream into the huge edifice of ice. The vortex of steam and water flooded back, battering him and O’Brian, now that the
Arabella
had gained forward momentum. Buckle raised and lowered the nozzle, seeking the seam between the canvas and frozen water.

The
Arabella
was almost level now, hurtling at a tremendous speed that bent the girders in the bow, but she was still slipping lower and lower. Their lives were now down to a matter of inches.

A long swath of pine trees, dark and green and dense, suddenly appeared under the bow nose. The prow of the gondola plowed into the treetops, instantly filling the air with the explosions of snapping branches, shearing rigging, popping tackle, and the sharp, sappy smell of pine.

It was as if the very world were coming apart right under Buckle’s feet.

Buckle swung the river of fire against the envelope, separating the ice where it clung to the skin. Flame appeared in splotches across the blistering canvas, blinding Buckle with smoke, but the giant slab of ice shifted as it was separated from its perch. The frozen glass on the nose hub blew apart—a shivering belch of shards. The massive block of ice groaned, then dropped away from the airship in a long, canvas-tearing shiver, plunging into the trees in a hail of splintering wood and gunshot cracks.

The
Arabella
gradually lifted, found her stride, and swung up into the open sky.

Buckle shut off the reaper hose and hung still on his safety line, wafting in the slipstream of black water droplets and smoke, listening to the roar of the passing air and the sounds of the propellers and engines being throttled back a step. A surge of exhilaration dissolved into exhaustion as the sprawling earth fell away below the bow. He realized that both he and O’Brian were covered in ice and broken glass.

“Well done, Mister O’Brian,” Buckle said, looking back at the stoker, whose left goggle was scarred black, the right one frosted white.

“Aye. And you as well, Cap’n,” O’Brian said.

Buckle smiled, but he was suddenly worried about Max.

FORMULAE

M
AX WAS BACK IN THE
Tehachapi Mountains, where the sabertooths had bitten her, standing in the chamber of numbers, surrounded by the endless, charcoal-scribbled formulae. The cave overhead was roofless, open to a cloudless sky ablaze with stars. She knew she wasn’t conscious but she was
there in the cave
, in mind, at least. Her body was lying on a hospital bed, far, far away.

Something was bubbling. Pinging. Boiling water in metal.

She had a lantern in her right hand, a lantern filled with golden morphine. Inside it, three wicks burned, three flames surging inside the liquid, casting gold-yellow light on the walls.

Everything was still. The fire in the potbellied stove was frozen in midflare, its pipe soaring straight up, disappearing into the sky.