Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (45 page)

The mortar barges were easy pickings, but Buckle passed them up—he wanted the big fish. He was certain the two Founders war zeppelins had yet to see him; he still held the advantage of surprise. The slug-like fixed-carriage mortar barges posed no threat in the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s rear, though the Founders sloop commander, if brash enough, might make a run at her. The lookouts would keep an eye on that gnat.

“Two hundred and fifty feet,” Sabrina reported.

Windermere spun his elevator wheel back to its neutral position as the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
pulled out of her dive. “Leveling out to two hundred, aye.”

The heavily forested ground flooded past below, splotched with white clearings. Buckle felt the zeppelin return to level in his stomach, her decks creaking and the girders overhead groaning, the canvas envelope rippling with the sharp snaps of a flag in a wicked wind.

“Two hundred,” Sabrina announced.

“Maintain speed and chase the bubble,” Buckle said softly. “Two degrees starboard.”

“Two degrees starboard, aye,” De Quincey repeated, nudging the helm wheel.

“Riggers, skinners, and snipers on the ratlines,” Buckle said. He could now hear the low, rumbling thumps of the mortar ships as they launched their horse-size bombs on the city.

Suddenly Washington was at Buckle’s flank. “Captain Buckle, I demand a word.”

“Impeccably bad timing, Ambassador,” Buckle said, hiding a sudden infuriation at having the squawking old Washington in his ear. “Please return to your cabin, sir.”

“I shall not retire. I demand a word,” Washington pressed.

“The sloop has seen us, Captain,” Wellington reported. “She is coming round!”

“Stay the course,” Buckle answered. The sloop could not carry more than a few four-pounders, and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was well out of her range. “Prepare for up ship, rapid ascent.”

“Aye, Captain,” Windermere said.

“We are at war with no one, Captain Buckle,” Washington blurted.

“We are engaged, sir!” Buckle snapped. “Now kindly retire from my bridge!”

Washington’s eyes flashed. “Break off your attack immediately, Captain, or I shall relieve you of command!”

The words shocked Buckle, though he did not show it. “Surely you jest, sir,” he said.

AN ACT OF WAR

A
CLAN AMBASSADOR HAD NO
real authority over a zeppelin captain in the field; the man was exasperated, indignant—and out of line. The bridge crew whirled their heads about to glare at Washington with hostile eyes; even Valkyrie looked on with disapproval.

“You presume too much authority here, Ambassador,” Buckle said curtly.

“Turn around,” Washington pressed. “Turn around, Captain, while we still have time to disengage.”

“I shall not,” Buckle answered. “We are committed.”

“Admiral Balthazar expressly forbade engagement with the Founders. If we are not attacked we must not attack. We must not provoke,” Washington continued, breathlessly.

Buckle felt a nasty surge of fury beneath his skin. Who was Washington to need remind him of the words of his own father? “If Spartak is lost, then all is lost.”

“The admiral’s orders are specific and binding. Turn back,” Washington ordered.

“Leave my bridge this instant, sir,” Buckle said.

“This is an act of war!” Washington exclaimed, his eyes wide, his face flushed a purple-tinged red. “You have no right to declare war on your own for the clan—no right!”

“Corporal Nyland,” Buckle ordered. The corporal, a burly fellow who obviously relished being a marine, his brown eyes young over a great blond mustache and sparse but well-groomed muttonchops, jumped forward from his post at the stairwell.

“Sir!” Nyland said.

“The ambassador is confined to his quarters. Kindly remove him from my bridge,” Buckle said.

“Yes, sir,” Corporal Nyland replied; he turned to Washington. “Let’s move along, sir. There’s a good fellow, sir.”

Buckle turned his back on the damning gaze of Washington’s eyes as Nyland ushered him away. Forget Washington. He stepped forward into the nose bubble to scan the sky. The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was now hurtling in full view between Muscovy and the startled crews on the mortar barges. The Founders sloop had swung her bow to the south, her engines straining for speed and altitude, her captain abandoning the fat barges as he took his ship on the run; it seemed the fellow lacked the brass balls necessary to take on the much larger
Pneumatic Zeppelin
. The sloop’s signal mirrors flashed at the war zeppelins high overhead, but Buckle doubted that the big ships would see the warning.

“You should not expose the Imperial princess to such danger,” Washington shouted, grabbing at the railing as Nyland bulled him politely up the staircase. “Your duty is to carry her and me to negotiations with Spartak, not start your own private little war!”

Valkyrie straightened up from the engineering boards, the lift of her chin lengthening her form. “Chief engineer is on her battle station, Captain,” she said.

“Thank you, Chief Engineer,” Buckle replied, then turned and yanked down the viewing apparatus of the “giraffe,” a periscope containing a long series of mirrors that ran in a crooked tube all the way up to the zeppelin envelope’s domed nose window. The
device lost a lot of light in the transmission of the reflections, the images usually soft and muddy and easily knocked out of alignment, but it gave the piloting crew a view of the sky above the bow envelope, which they otherwise could not see.

Buckle turned the giraffe’s focus ring and found the three war zeppelins, their ellipsoidal silhouettes black against the gray sky, eleven hundred feet above and immediately in front of them. The two Founders airships still maintained their favorable positions on both sides of the Russian—which meant that they had not yet seen the sloop’s warning mirrors, nor come to realize a Crankshaft zeppelin was close at hand under their keels.

“Speed?” Buckle asked.

“Running at seventy-one knots, sir,” Sabrina replied. “I estimate the ships engaged above are running at forty.”

“When we catch them, propulsion,” Buckle said to Valkyrie, “match their speed.”

“Aye,” Valkyrie said.

Buckle calculated his acceleration against the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s best rate of ascent; he wanted to pop up on the stern of the port-side Founders sky vessel, rake her from aft to fore with bow chaser and broadsides until she fell, and then, hopefully with some element of surprise still remaining—there was a good chance that the massive bulk of the Russian airship might block the view of the port-side zeppelin’s fate from her sister—swing behind the Russian and hammer the stern of the second Founders airship with another round of raking fire.

The enemy rarely was kind enough to accommodate one’s battle plans, however.

“Ready to up ship. Rapid vertical ascent,” Buckle ordered. He could smell the gunpowder now, the acrid cordite of the blackbang, and his mouth watered, he wanted to be in the dustup so badly.

“Ready up ship! Rapid vertical ascent!” Sabrina repeated.

“Ready up ship, aye,” Windermere replied.

Buckle’s hands tingled as he squeezed the giraffe’s leather handgrips, trying to keep the overhead zeppelins in view as his vessel charged them from below. His shoulders ached with excitement, and he took deep, calming breaths that no one could see. He was not afraid, but a crew would pick up on a quivering word or twitch, any sign of a captain’s fear, and instantly be disheartened; they all knew that he, the dashing young Crankshaft captain, had never faced the likes of a real war zeppelin before, never mind three of them.

Buckle was confident. As far as he was concerned, he already had the sloppy bastards by the throat. “Helm! One point to port,” he ordered.

“Aye!” De Quincey shouted. “One point a’port!”

Buckle leaned into the chattertube and shouted, “Number-five gun!”

“Aye, Captain, number five!” came the response from Howard Hampton. He was posted at the envelope nose-dome hatch, just inside the Axial corridor and only a foot away from the giraffe periscope’s lens, and he was the only member of the bow-chaser gun crew who could hear orders on the chattertube. The other four gunners had run the long four-pounder out onto its turret on the bow pulpit and, despite the windscreens and iron barbette, would be near deafened by the torrents of wind.

“Tell Mister Banerji he gets the first shot,” Buckle yelled. “But tell him to wait until we level out.”

“First shot and level, aye Captain!” Hampton replied.

Buckle leaned back to the giraffe’s eyepiece. He pressed his weight down into the bottoms of his boots, nailing his feet to the deck. “Chase the bubble on the way up, Mister
Windermere,” he said. “I want a level firing platform when we arrive behind that Founders devil.”

“Aye, Captain,” Windermere replied, stretching out his fingers as he kept his palms planted on the elevator wheel.

“The mortar ships have pulled anchor and turned about off our port beam, sir,” Sabrina said. “Turned tail and run.”

“Good,” Buckle answered. “Keep an eye out for that sloop. He might try to bounce us once we are engaged, but I doubt it.”

The overhead silhouettes inched back into position inside Buckle’s eyepiece. “Up ship!” he shouted. “Rapid ascent!”

“Up ship! Up ship!” Sabrina bellowed.

“Up ship!” Windermere grunted, whirling the elevator wheel with every ounce of strength in his shoulders, his gloved hands slapping the spokes as he snatched them through swing after swing.

Valkyrie stepped alongside Nero, slapping hydrogen feeder valves as he cranked his ballast wheels. The roar of water cascading from the scuppers joined the rumble of the engines and propellers and the resounding rattle and groan of the gigantic zeppelin as she catapulted up into the sky.

Buckle held on to the giraffe periscope, lest the force of the ascent drive him to his knees. Everybody was half-bent, holding on to something. Kellie had already curled up inside her cubby, chin on the deck, looking a bit dismayed.

“Three hundred and sixty feet,” Sabrina yelled, watching the spin of her bronze altimeter as the sky rushed downward outside the nose-dome window. “Rapid ascent of fifteen feet per second and accelerating.”

“Piece of cake!” Buckle shouted at Sabrina over the din.

“Just peachy!” Sabrina replied.

THE BOW CHASER

M
IDSHIPMAN
D
ARIUS
B
ANERJI WAS THE
captain of gun crew number five, in charge of the long four-pounder that served as the airship’s bow chaser. He crouched in the bow-pulpit gun turret, one hand gripping the lip of the iron barbette, the other on the brass cannon’s cascabel. A freezing torrent of wind pummeled Banerji and his three-member gun crew as the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
rocketed up into the sky. Banerji was a slight fellow, and in their exposed position, the rush of wind battered every inch of his heavy coat, threatening to tear away his helmet and goggles.

It was quite something to be perched on the very nose of an airship on a rapid ascent; it was exhilarating, the sky enclosing them in a bottomless gray, as the dark shapes of the enemy war zeppelins grew larger and larger overhead, their gunnery gondolas spitting fire, their cannons shivering the air with deep-throated booms.

“Stay crackerjack!” Banerji shouted at his gun crew, who nodded at him from their crouching positions, packed in the small spaces between the gun carriage and the pulpit rails, wrapped in sheepskin coats, their bright red puggarees flapping on their helmets. The sponger was the ship’s apprentice engineer, Lionel Garcia, a good friend of Banerji’s from the midshipman’s
mess. The loader was the burly chief cook, Perriman Salisbury. The new man, the winder, was a mystery to Banerji, though his eyes looked steely enough; he was Adrian Pasternak, the new mechanic and the replacement for Henry Stuart, who had been killed by the kraken. Pasternak, strong looking, with burn scars on his forearms and throat, was reported to have been an excellent gunner aboard the
Hood
, the Crankshaft scout ship from which he had transferred, but Banerji relied little on prior reputation when it came to his gun crew.