Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (47 page)

“All ahead flank!” Buckle screamed. “Helm, bring us across the Russian’s stern as tight as you dare! Bring me on that second Founders’ arse as quick as the devil, Mister De Quincey, you blackjacket hound!”

ASTERN THE
CZARINA

S
ABRINA TOOK A FIRM HOLD
on her drift-scope handles as the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
surged forward with the wind at her back, sweat-drenched stokers hurling coal into her overheating engines, her turbines spinning so hard their vibration threatened to rattle loose the deck bolts, her driving propellers winding up to a screw-bending pitch. Sabrina felt the raw power of the zeppelin surge through her from the madly creaking deck, fueled by the cacophony of groaning, screeching, and grinding sounds the airship made when suddenly pushed so hard.

Sabrina ignored the protestations of the airship, for she knew every noise sounded the way it should.

Within the piloting gondola, the driving wheels whirled. Orders and reports sounded back and forth, but Sabrina barely heard them, peering out the nose dome as she was, watching the
Industria
corkscrew away in flames. Burn in hell, she thought. Burn.

The stern of the huge Russian war zeppelin loomed to port. She saw the arch board of the Russian airship and the name
Czarina
upon it, a name she had heard before. The
Czarina
was battered, leaving a wide trail of gray smoke in her wake, now and again streaking with black when she fired her cannons, and her propellers—six big bronze monsters—were in danger of fouling
in a whipping mass of trailing ropes and wires blown away from the airship body, and now foundering in her slipstream.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, advancing at an angle to just clear the
Czarina
’s stern, was making up the ground she had lost in her broadside swing—the distance between her port beam and the
Czarina
’s rudder was no more than a cable’s length as it was—and Sabrina’s airship was closing the gap far more quickly than she would have anticipated. The
Czarina
had slowed, now making no more than twenty-five knots. Was she badly damaged? Had her boilers taken a hit? Or could the Russian captain have cut back his engines, knowing the Founders zeppelin would match him, thus allowing Buckle’s airship the opportunity to charge the enemy’s vulnerable tail?

Balthazar had often expressed his admiration for the dogged, selfless courage of the Russians. If so, it was an excellent tactical move by the Spartak captain, but his airship would pay the price for keeping the Founders glued to his flank.

The piloting gondola passed through the wall of smoke pouring back from the
Czarina
, momentarily blinding Sabrina. She ducked her head and held her breath against the gusts of furnace-hot, ember-laden smoke as they poured in through the open ventilation ports. They were gone in a couple of seconds, when the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
escaped the trail.

“We are directly abaft the
Czarina
’s stern, Captain!” Sabrina shouted. “Forward lookouts report the Founders zeppelin, the
Bellerophon
, still in position to her starboard side!”

“Aye!” Buckle replied.

Sabrina could not yet see the
Bellerophon
beyond the bulk of the smoking
Czarina
, but the forward lookouts could. Still in position, eh? The
Bellerophon
’s captain, either too preoccupied with the
Czarina
or simply unable to see past her mass and
smoke to witness what was unfolding on the opposite side, had left his sky vessel a sitting duck for the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
.

Sabrina eyed the
Czarina
as they passed, her six huge driving propellers chopping slow, gleaming in the dull sunlight, the rear of her engineering gondola a mass of pipes and vents, like the devil’s factory of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
. The
Czarina
’s envelope was badly singed and holed, but the white-gray smoke streaming out of some of the rents suggested that although she had fires aboard, her crew was beating them down with hoses.

Sabrina saw a group of men, dressed in rust-colored or olive leather jackets, clustered in the stern window of the
Czarina
. It was not a circular, domed structure as in most airship designs, but rather a square box of glass, like a greenhouse set in a projecting frame of wood that was beautifully carved and gilded. Sabrina’s eyes widened—in the center of the stern window, glass firing port flung open, stood a large cannon muzzle; a stern chaser had been run out, an iron twelve-pounder, closely attended by its crew.

Sabrina suddenly wondered whether the Russians considered the Crankshaft airship a friend or foe. Surely they had seen the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
blast the
Industria
and come on past them to ambush her partner? Buckle had given them his exposed flank while his guns were being reloaded. If he had been mistaken, if they had not marked him as a friend, then they were in a very bad state of affairs. To her relief, she saw the Russian gun crew waving their hats, furry ushanki and sailor caps with blue ribbons; she thought, though it was surely impossible, that she heard the vague, faint howls of their cheering.

“Signalman!” Buckle shouted back at the signals room. “Ensign Fitzroy!”

“Aye, Captain!” Jacob Fitzroy shouted, poking his head out of the signals cabin, with Meagan Churchill’s head alongside.

“Flag the Russians! Signal to disengage and down ship immediately!”

“Aye, Captain! Disengage and down ship!” Fitzroy yelled, ducking back into the cabin with Meagan.

“Founders vessel disengaging, accelerating on the level!” Sabrina shouted.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s piloting gondola cleared the stern of the
Czarina
to reveal the towering cream-colored rump of the second Founders airship, the
Bellerophon
, her canvas holed and crawling with snipers, her six propellers spinning up to gleaming whorls as she surged forward. She was damaged, with black holes in her skin—one had punctured the huge emblem of the silver phoenix on her flank, potting the head. She looked as if she had suffered horribly under the
Czarina
’s big guns.

The
Bellerophon
was a graceful beast of a machine, equal in length to the
Czarina
and
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, but sleeker in diameter, carrying a vastly more complicated rigging system, with masts, yards, and sails furled at her nose and stern. Five gondolas gleamed with green-rusted copper plating under her belly, two of them lined with gun ports.

The
Bellerophon
’s captain had finally realized his situation. He was charging to cut in front of the crippled and lumbering
Czarina
—and from the way his airship lunged at the bit, she looked damned fast—attempting to place the bulk of the Spartak airship between him and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
until he could improve his position. It was a good maneuver. The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, passing astern of him at high speed, could not match his turn to port—her momentum would sweep her wide.

The hammergun under the piloting gondola opened up on the
Bellerophon
with its harpoons, pounding with its low
chunk chunk chunk
—fired by Assistant Engineer Bolling instead of Max, who normally would have been in there. Sabrina suddenly missed Max with an unexpected pang.

“Fitzroy! Any response from the Russians?” Buckle shouted.

“No response yet, sir!” Fitzroy shouted back from the back of the gondola, where he and Meagan had run out the flag hoist.

The gunnery gondola, having now cleared the
Czarina
, fired a double-shotted broadside at the fleeing
Bellerophon
. The four cannonballs punched a tight cluster of holes in the enemy envelope, but to no apparent effect.

“Black-eyed devils!” Buckle cursed. “All ahead standard. Rotate. Hard a’port, Mister De Quincey. Come about and bear on the Russian!”

The bridge rang with the sounds of the chadburn bell and officers responding. Sabrina leaned over Welly, peering into the glass point of the nose, gripping the instrument panels of the navigator’s station as the airship swerved violently to port, eyes glued to the escaping
Bellerophon
as she started to disappear behind the
Czarina
’s bow.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, thrown into a severe rotational turn at high speed, vibrated violently. Superstructure girders screamed. Wires and ropes snapped and popped overhead, slashing away in high-pitched whistles. Two instrument tubes shattered on the bridge, leaking little waterfalls of greasy boil water. Sabrina glanced back to see De Quincey and Windermere both hauling over their driving wheels as hard as they could, snatching at the wheel spokes, both steaming with sweat that stained their heavy jackets at the necks and sleeves.

“Superstructure is overstressed, Captain!” Valkyrie yelled. “Pneumatic joint pressure is off the scale.”

Sabrina grinned. Valkyrie was not yet familiar with Buckle’s propensity to push everything beyond its limit. He believed that the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was indestructible.

“She can take it,” Buckle answered. “You Imperials make fine airships.” Sabrina knew that Buckle would be damned if he was going to lose his position on the
Bellerophon
’s tail. There was no telling if the Spartak captain had seen their signal to disengage, and no telling if he would be willing to accept it. Buckle was asking the Russian, after taking a beating at the hands of the
Bellerophon
, to drop out of the fight while Buckle, set up with a near-perfect attack position, went for the glorious kill.

Buckle could not wait, or the
Bellerophon
would escape him. The Spartak captain had already slowed to bait the
Bellerophon
into a vulnerable position—surely he would drop off to allow the trap to close.

The rattling and shaking
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, her maneuvering propellers screaming as they pitched up to maximum on their nacelles, swung around at a dizzying rate, straightening out to bear on the stern of the
Czarina
.

“All ahead flank!” Buckle shouted. “Straight at the Russian!”

Valkyrie rang the bell. The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
surged forward.

“Collision course, Captain!” Sabrina shouted.

“Aye! Collision course,” Buckle replied, watching the great mass of the
Czarina
’s envelope hurtling toward them, the double-headed eagle symbol a burst of gold on her dark-gray flank. The Spartak airship was still holding her course and altitude. And the
Bellerophon
had utterly disappeared behind her. “Hold fast!”

Sabrina looked back at Buckle. He stood with his hands behind his back, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes lowered, looking for all the world like a bull about to charge.

Always pushing everything—and everyone—beyond their limit, Sabrina thought as she braced for impact.

THE CHRYSALIS

“R
OMULUS
!” M
AX SCREAMED
. B
URSTING FROM
the snowstorm, her horse near berserk with fear, she saw the sabertooth charging him.

She jerked her jouncing musket level and it boomed in her hands. She saw the huge beastie’s head snap away, the eyes on the right side of the head disappearing, the spray of green blood in the blizzard. The sabertooth’s lifeless body crashed into Buckle, rolling over him.

“Romulus!” she screamed, hurling the musket aside and unholstering her pistol, reining the horse to a stop just before it trampled Buckle where he lay, flattened in the snow, lying in a ghastly bed of ice-coated human bones. “Captain! Get up! You must get up now if you can!” She grabbed at the reins of Buckle’s tethered horse, but they would not yank free.

Buckle was up, on his feet, pistol and torch in hand.

Both horses shrieked—loud, terrified whinnies. The sabertooths were on the prowl. Max swung her pistol around.

A locomotive hit her in the back, a heart-stopping mass of fangs and claws. She was falling, the horse was falling, in a blur of darkness and snow. Somewhere in the awful thud of the landing, in the blinding blow to her head on the ice and the suffocating lungful of snow, she felt the bite sinking into her
shoulder, the foul heat of the monster’s breath on her neck, the claws ripping her flesh.