Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (44 page)

“If we are all members of the same alliance, are we not then bound to fight for each other?” Fogg posited. Sabrina liked Fogg; if he had not been a surgeon, he would have made for a fine zeppelin officer.

“If the documents were signed and sealed, of course,” Washington replied. “But the Russians have made an offer to the Imperials only. We have no sense of what they may offer us as terms.”

“They are under attack, Ambassador,” Buckle said quickly. “The fat is in the fire. A plea for assistance has come at great price from the battlefield. The time for negotiating fine points is over.”

“That is not your decision to make, Captain,” Washington answered.

“If the Russians are attacked, I shall not stand off, sir, with all due respect,” Buckle said.

“Damned right,” Sabrina said, earning a glare from Washington in so doing.

“Cheers to that,” Ivan grumbled, tapping the metal fingers of his glove against his glass.

“Stop it, Ivan,” Sabrina said. “Bloody annoying.”

Ivan stopped tapping.

Washington folded up his napkin and placed it on the table. “I know you, Captain Buckle, you and all of our young lions. I have known you since you were brought in to us, a brat at Calypso’s knee, and while your independent streak has always been one of your greatest assets, it has also been one of your greatest challenges. It bears repeating that although we may
have just inked an alliance with the Imperial camp, we have no such commitment to or from Spartak. And we are not—we are
not
—in a state of war with the Founders.”

“Well elucidated, Ambassador,” Buckle replied. “I think we all know Balthazar’s position on the matter.”

“I say we blast the Founders out of the sky before they blast us,” Salgado offered. Sabrina feared the sergeant might offer up a toast—he was an egregious toaster. “Why keep the gloves on when war is inevitable?”

“Because we need the time, Sergeant,” Washington responded. “We are not prepared for war. We need time for the alliance to organize and assemble. There is a possibility, though perhaps remote, that the Founders might allow us some space if we do not provoke them.”

Buckle was on his feet; Sabrina felt the anger rising in his mood. “If Spartak is destroyed, if the Imperials are destroyed, then all of our organizing and assembling will not save us.”

“I expect you to obey Admiral Balthazar—your father’s—wishes, sir,” Washington replied.

“My father—” Buckle started, then bit his tongue.

Realizing that the argument was about to take a negative turn, Sabrina hopped to her feet, and in the same moment Fogg did the same, their chair legs scraping across the deck.

“I think we are all finished here,” Sabrina announced pleasantly.

“Yes,” Fogg concurred. “My thanks, Captain, but I must be on my way to finalize preparations in sick bay.”

“We should make our way to the bridge, sir,” Sabrina added quickly. “We should be within sight of Muscovy’s eastern outposts in a matter of moments.”

Buckle turned around to the window platform, folding his hands behind his back as he scrutinized the towering vault of the sky. “Very well. I thank all of you for your gracious attendance. Please report to your stations.”

Everyone offered a chorus of “Thank you, Captain” and filed out of the cabin—everyone except Sabrina and Washington.

“Captain Buckle,” Washington began.

“Please confine yourself to your quarters, Ambassador,” Buckle interrupted. “In the remote possibility of action, you are best protected there, under the armor line of the envelope.”

“Captain,” Washington pressed.

Buckle reached up and tapped his pearl-colored fire horn—the one he had brought back with him from the Tehachapi Mountains—so it swung lazily on its leather strap at the side of the window. “That will be all, sir,” Buckle said harshly, watching the arc of the horn.

Washington glanced at Sabrina, and she saw many things in his eyes—frustration, worry, regret. “Thank you for the lovely meal, Captain,” he said quietly, and made his exit.

As soon as the door shut behind Washington, Sabrina turned to Buckle. “You should be more gracious with him, Romulus. He is an elder, after all.”

“I take it that you are of the same mind as I, Sabrina?” Buckle asked.

“If you mean how to approach the Founders? Yes,” Sabrina replied. “They are nothing if not creatures of treachery. Do not trust them to respect treaties or statements of neutrality.”

Buckle turned around, his eyes alive with their wild expectation again, and snatched up his hat. “Come with me, Serafim,” he enthused. “I doubt we are going to want to miss a second of this one.”

Sabrina followed Buckle out the door, bubbling with a bloodthirsty expectation and dread that she was not accustomed to. If there was any sort of fight to be had that day, it seemed likely that Romulus Buckle would soon have the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
in the thick of it.

The Seasonal ball, with all its silk and joy and yearnings, seemed like a thousand years ago.

RUN OUT THE GUNS

“C
REW AT ACTION STATIONS
, C
APTAIN
,” Sabrina announced.

“Very well,” Buckle replied, standing on the bridge with Kellie seated at his toes. It was all beginning to feel real now. He could smell a hint of bloodlust on Sabrina, a thread of the gung ho in her voice. It was odd. She and Max were normally the calming hands on the wilder tendencies of his tiller…but, then again, soon the clouds might be raining blood.

“Visibility remains excellent,” Sabrina continued. “No sign of the
Cartouche
.”

“Aye,” Buckle answered, detaching his telescope from his hat as he stepped over the dog and into the nose alongside Sabrina and Welly, who already had their glasses trained straight ahead. There was no reason to expect to see the
Cartouche
; the fast Imperial scout ship was probably already docked in Muscovy by now. Buckle scanned the horizon, with its undulating brown-and-white mountains, and the hazy glimmer of the dark-purple sea beyond. Muscovy, one of Spartak’s southern strongholds, had yet to be sighted. If Rostov had truly been captured by the Founders, then Muscovy would be the next target.

The bridge was silent for a moment, in a way that Buckle enjoyed—filled with the unbroken, reassuring drone of the forward maneuvering propellers, and the steady rip of the wind
running through the rigging and against the massive envelope overhead. The guns were ready, the crew tense. Since the day Buckle had won the captaincy of his zeppelin, this was the first moment she felt like a war machine to him.

“Bridge! Airships sighted!” the lookout cried down the chattertube. “One point off the starboard bow! Silhouettes and smoke!”

“Good eye, nest!” Buckle shouted into the chattertube. Finally the barrelmen had seen something first. He peered into his telescope and heard Sabrina suck in air at his shoulder.

“Sighted!” Sabrina said. “Two airships, no, make that three, at thirteen hundred, just northwest of the city.”

Buckle caught the small dots in his eyeglass and, flipping down the trigger on his magnifying lens from his hat, could make out three big war zeppelins, the middle one bracketed by smoke, the tiny flashes of cannon muzzles sparkling along their gondolas.

“We have got an engagement,” Buckle shouted. “Battle stations.”

“Battle stations!” Sabrina shouted into the chattertube. “All hands to battle stations!”

“Gunner to the turret,” Assistant Engineer Geneva Bolling shouted, leaving her station alongside Valkyrie to clamber into the hammergun pod just behind the helm.

“The stronghold is afire, sirs,” Welly said.

Buckle swung his glass to the ground—the view was rapidly improving, with the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
coming on so fast. He saw great columns of black smoke, drifting westward, low across the earth, flowing from the pale-brown walls of Muscovy.

“Aye, she is burning up,” Buckle muttered under his breath.

“Mortar barges to the south of the city!” the lookout shouted on the chattertube.

Buckle swung his lens to the south and quickly found the lumbering, squarish envelopes of two mortar barges, the Founders phoenix visible on their flanks, bombarding the city with their huge guns.

“No sign of an escort with the mortar barges, Captain,” Welly said.

Welly was right. The slow-moving mortar barges should be protected by a fighting sloop or scout, but he could not locate any other airship nearby.

“Watch for him. He is surely there,” Buckle said. Already the scenario felt slippery. Either the Founders were very sloppy, or he was charging into a trap.

“Aye,” Sabrina said, swinging her telescope at Buckle’s side.

Buckle observed the three war zeppelins battling it out over the city. The middle vessel was a big Spartak warship, holed and afire, bracketed on both beams by two Founders war zeppelins of similar size. The Russian was doomed—doomed unless Buckle joined the fray.

“All ahead flank,” Buckle shouted.

“All ahead flank, aye!” Valkyrie repeated into the chattertube as she cranked the chadburn dial, ringing the bell. The engine room shouted its response as the stokers hurled coal into the fireboxes. The propellers drove up to a higher roar, the overdriven boilers rattling so hard that they vibrated the airship’s decking.

“Run out the guns, Mister Considine!” Buckle shouted into the chattertube.

“Run out the guns! Aye, Captain!” Considine answered from the gunnery gondola.

Buckle figured that all three of the war zeppelins ahead had him outgunned—the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s armament of four
twelve-pounders on the gun deck and a long brass four-pounder bow chaser were respectable, but just average. Her hammergun and the handful of swivel guns on the roof did not add much punch in a scrap between heavies. But Buckle knew that his gun crews were crackerjack—they would make every shot count.

“Mister Windermere, take us down to two hundred. Fifteen degrees, down bubble. Crash dive.”

“Aye, Captain,” Windermere replied, spinning the elevator wheel, depressing the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s massive fins. “Down ship! Crash dive!”

“Hydro! Vent twenty percent,” Sabrina shouted. “Across the board.”

“Venting twenty percent, aye!” Nero replied, cranking the master wheel on the hydrogen board.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
plunged, nose level on an even keel. The stomach-lifting suddenness of her drop exhilarated Buckle, with all her unhappy creaking and groaning as she exceeded her specifications for rate of vertical descent. Buckle was daringly testing her constitution. He was not worried, not one whit.

Kellie yelped, circling around Buckle’s knees—she did not like crash dives overmuch. Buckle patted the dog, feeling the hard edges of her vertebra through his gloved fingers as his mind’s eye observed his zeppelin from outside, checking her trim and line. He was going to duck down, come in low and fast. It was not hard to spot a zeppelin, but the best way to approach an enemy unobserved—especially when that enemy was preoccupied in an air battle—was low against the ground, from behind, and as fast as the devil might let you lash your boilers.

“Captain Buckle, I must insist,” Washington barked at Buckle’s back. “Battle stations? We are on an ambassadorial mission!”

Washington. The kraken wound on the back of Buckle’s neck prickled painfully. How did Washington get on the bridge? He should have posted a guard on his door.

“Not now, Ambassador,” Buckle said, then leaned into the chattertube. “Gunnery! Double-shot your guns!”

“Double-shotted, Captain! Aye!” Considine’s voice careened back up the tube.

Buckle raised his telescope to his eye. The battle above was emerging in detail as the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
closed the gap. The Russians built big warships, ponderous behemoths with heavy cannons, famous for their ability to absorb copious amounts of punishment. That durability was something the Spartak zeppelin badly needed at the moment, for the two Founders war zeppelins flanking her were hammering away with broadside after broadside, the flashes of the individual cannons now visible as tiny red licks of flame, instantly followed by rivers of black powder smoke that drifted under their keels.

“The Russian is being peppered, Captain,” Sabrina said at Buckle’s shoulder. “Not a good place to be alone.”

“No,” Buckle answered. He swung his glass south of the Muscovy stronghold to the two mortar ships as they lofted massive, phosphorus-coated bombs into the city. Where was their armed escort? Surely they had one. Then he found her, flying so low that her gondola was near skimming the treetops, inching along to the west of the mortar vessels; she was a sloop, small, sleek, and fast. “There you be, you slippery little rat,” Buckle said, then shouted, “Escort beyond the barges. Armed sloop low and in the hover.”

Buckle scanned the earth, half-expecting a Founders armored train to be steaming up the old rails, its huge cannons far larger than any found on the weight-limited airships, but no locomotives steamed into view. “Keep an eye out for locomotive smoke, mates!” Buckle said.

A glimmer of light on a distant ridge caught Buckle’s eye. He trained his lens upon it—fire burning in the trees, difficult to make out in the distance. But he recognized the long, oval shape of the flames: the wreck of a small airship. The
Cartouche
; somehow Buckle was sure it was the
Cartouche
. He glanced back at Valkyrie, who had her head down over her station. There was no point in telling her now. There would be time for sorrowful confirmations later.