Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (49 page)

“Nice shooting, turret!” Buckle shouted.

The
Bellerophon
, her propulsion out of balance, began to yaw to port as the propellers on that side were overdriven by the opposite flank. The result enhanced the rotation of the
Bellerophon
’s turn, swinging her stern away from Buckle and bringing her gunnery gondolas around for a better broadside.

“Curse the luck!” Buckle snapped. “Helm, hard a’port! Keep us on his beam!”

“Aye, Captain!” De Quincey said, whipping the rudder wheel around, excitement flowing through his voice with the timbre of a plucked violin string.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
swung hard to port, coming around so she once again ran parallel to the
Bellerophon
, who had straightened out her course.

“Get us close, helm,” Buckle said.

“Aye, Captain,” De Quincey replied.

“Gunnery—ready for a broadside to starboard!” Buckle said into the chattertube.

“Aye, Captain! To starboard!” Considine responded.

The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
caught up with the
Bellerophon
, the flanks of their envelopes no more than one hundred feet apart, the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s nose at the amidships of the Founders sky vessel, her guns lined up with the enemy’s aft engineering gondola.

“Match speed!” Buckle ordered.

“Matching and maintaining speed, Captain!” Valkyrie replied, her hand on the chadburn handle.

“Closer, Mister De Quincey, damn your hide! Bump ribs with the charlatan!” Buckle yelled; he dashed to the starboard gunwale, thrusting his head out into the freezing wind, anxiously awaiting the sound of his own guns.

Buckle glanced back to see the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s two starboard twelve-pounders fire. The red-yellow flashes of their cannon muzzles slapped the air, their puffs of smoke and burning wadding snatched away in the slipstream between the two gigantic machines. He felt the force of the muzzle blasts shove the airship aside. The cannonballs sliced between the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
and the
Bellerophon
, and while one missed, hurtling off into the sky in a descending arc of rapidly dissipating phosphorus, the others struck the target.

Three twelve-pound cannonballs tore into the
Bellerophon
’s engineering gondola, ripping through its copper plating and
blowing out terrible holes on the opposite side in great flashes of burning oil, armor shards, and shattered wooden boards. Fire instantly rose in the breaches. Sparkling water cascaded down from above, likely from a ballast tank burst open by a wrench of the airframe. The entire gondola began to shudder, as if every piece of machinery within her had gone off its tracks. Within moments, the shuddering stopped.

“Another propeller has shut down, Captain!” Sabrina shouted. “Their number one, closest to us, port side!”

“They’ve stopped all engines!” Windermere shouted.

“Aye!” Sabrina affirmed. “All propellers are shutting down!”

“Slow and match speed! Bring us alongside. Grappling position!” Buckle shouted, watching the
Bellerophon
as she rapidly slowed.

“Grappling position?” De Quincey repeated, his eyes widening. “Aye, Captain.”

Buckle saw the massive propellers rotating down to a lazy stall under the port-side stern of the
Bellerophon
. With her propulsion center severely damaged, the
Bellerophon
could not escape him; her choices were now to surrender or fight it out. Buckle figured they would choose the latter.

“Grappling position, sir,” Windermere said. “Up ship fifty feet, sir!”

“Aye!” Buckle nodded. It was best to board high, out of reach of the maximum elevation of the enemy’s gondola cannons. “Order boarding parties to assemble on Eagle deck, by division.”

“Pardon me, Captain,” Windermere asked, incredulous. “We are to board her?”

“Yes, Mister Windermere—I mean to board her and take her.”

BOARDING PARTY

“H
ERE WE ARE
,
MATES
!” B
UCKLE
shouted robustly at the dozens of faces clustered on the Eagle deck catwalk: expectant, determined, fearful faces, pinked by their hasty charges up the ladders, ratlines, catwalks, and stairwells, their red puggareed helmets near brushing the underside canvas of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s roof as it rippled overhead, the tops of the massive hydrogen gasbags heaving on both sides, their laces of metal and rubber stockings spiderwebbed across their massive backs. Muskets, pistols, and cutlasses from the weapons lockers gleamed in the half-light, alongside axes, hatchets, and boat hooks. “The war is upon us!” Buckle continued. “The war is here. Either we fight them here, in the sky over Muscovy, or we fight them in the streets of the Punchbowl. It is they who have chosen this path, but it us Crankshafts who shall determine where it ends!”

Buckle raised his sword. The crew responded with a throaty, nervous, energy-rousing cheer.

“Fight them, lads and ladies, fight them knowing that it is they who bombed us at Tehachapi, who destroyed our airships and murdered our innocents. We turn our fire and sword upon them now. Now it is our turn to take one back!”

The boarders responded with a wholehearted “Hurrah!”

“And watch out for tanglers.” Buckle grinned. “I have been known to forget about the beasties now and again!”

Nervous laughter and guffaws bolstered the crowd.

Buckle swung up onto the amidships observation-nacelle ladder. “Keep your divisions together. Stay close to your officers. Discharge your weapons at the point of attack, then close as quickly as possible hand to hand. Bring the fight to them, mates. Have at them, the cursed Founders dogs, and I guarantee you the
Bellerophon
is ours!”

The crew responded with wild, bloodthirsty cheers as Buckle planted his helmet on his head and sprang up the ladder. Valkyrie was close at his heels, her Imperial rapier at the ready. Buckle had not wanted her to accompany him, had not wanted the princess so exposed to the extreme peril of a boarding attempt, but she had been regally adamant, stating her case with one boot on the bridge stairwell and her scabbard in her hand. The second officer’s place was with the captain, according to the rules of engagement, she had informed him, with her calm, infuriating correctness, should he choose to join the boarding party.

At least Buckle had convinced Valkyrie to replace her Imperial pickelhaube with the Crankshaft pith and its red puggaree, lest the crew mistake her blues for the enemy in the confusion of the fight.

Buckle hurled himself up the ladder and scrambled out the low forward hatchway of the amidships observer’s nacelle. He barely felt any pain in his legs, already burning from the physical exertion of charging up fourteen flights of stairs and ladders, for he was now driven by adrenaline. The sudden openness of
the sky fueled him, the ceiling of the world aglow in a blanket of dimpled, high-altitude clouds illuminated by the falling sun’s incandescent colors of molten gold.

The freezing wind was thick with the stench of blackbang powder. Buckle coughed as he scurried forward along the spine board, passing his scattered skinners and marines, the fluttering canvas of his great airship’s roof dwarfing him on both sides. There was no need to bend low against the wind—the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was running slow, perhaps fifteen knots, as her massive canvas back slowly edged closer to the monstrous hump of the smoking
Bellerophon
, not more than one hundred feet to starboard. The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was higher than the
Bellerophon
by perhaps thirty feet, hedging her bulk above the maximum inclination of the
Bellerophon
’s main guns.

The
Bellerophon
’s envelope was an anthill, crawling with defenders assembling to repel the coming attack. The musket of a Founders marine, perched on the
Bellerophon
’s roof, flashed with a
boom
, and the whistling ball passed just over Buckle’s head as he stopped beside a grappling cannon.

“Snipers, Captain,” Valkyrie shouted over the wind at Buckle’s back. “I would suggest you keep your head down, sir.”

Buckle glanced back at Valkyrie as she stood on the spine board, tall and blond and jarringly conspicuous in her Imperial powder blues amidst the tans and reds of the Crankshaft crew members. She was a lioness among wolves, and by her mere presence, gripping her long, gleaming silver sword, she dominated the hardy air dogs scrambling about her, assembling at their action stations or hastily unwrapping the oilskin covers of the pepper guns and grappling cannons.

“Assemble by divisions! Man the grapnel launchers!” Buckle shouted. He was counting the numbers of Founders crewmen collecting on top of the
Bellerophon
, the flashes of their marines’ muskets offering tiny white bursts here and there along the long sweep of the envelope. “You might duck a touch yourself, Chief Engineer,” Buckle replied to Valkyrie. “You make for quite a target in that uniform.”

The Crankshaft boarders grouped at their stations at the bow and amidships. A marine named Cartwright—conspicuous in his gold-buttoned red coat and white pith—knelt clear of the gathering ranks and, after carefully aiming, fired his long-barreled musket. Buckle saw the phosphorescent trail of the ball zip toward the
Bellerophon
, but it missed whatever target the marine had marked it for.

Buckle eyed the distance between the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
and the
Bellerophon
, which was no more than seventy-five feet now. Windermere and De Quincey were laying them alongside perfectly. The huge Founders airship, her skin holed and streaming with smoke, looked intensely battered—the guns of the
Czarina
had perhaps crippled her even more badly than Buckle had first estimated.

The battle was already under way, with muskets blazing on each side. A Founders crewperson, a woman in a gray coat, fell away from the
Bellerophon
, dropping into the gaping void between the towering flanks as they crept toward each other.

“Founders’ dreadnaughts, ha! She’s a big old coal bucket!” Ivan shouted, arriving at Buckle’s shoulder in a great huff, his metal face piece and goggle gleaming under his ushanka and second set of goggles. Ivan gripped a monstrous cutlass in the hand assisted by his clockwork arm, a pistol in the other.

“Ivan!” Buckle exclaimed. “I failed to notice your name on the boarding-party lists.”

“And a damned shameful error it was, sir!” Ivan answered, testing the edge of his blade with his thumb.

“Just do not get yourself killed,” Buckle snapped. “I have no desire to contend with Holly Churchill regarding the loss of your sorry hide.” Buckle’s words worried him a bit, for Meagan Churchill was also somewhere on the roof with them.

“Do not worry about me, Captain.” Ivan laughed, tapping the metal plate on his cheek. “I can walk through bomb blasts with little more than a dent these days.”

“Well, while you are at it, why do you not join Ensign Yardbird and lead the bow division across?”

“Aye!” Ivan grinned, and took off toward the bow at a run, dodging crewmen as they perched in wait for the attack.

“Ready the hooks!” Buckle shouted, his order passed along by his officers and midshipmen to the stern. He saw Darcy, the olive-skinned boar of a boilerman, manning the handles of the forward grappling cannon. “Ready to have at ’em, Mister Darcy?”

“Aye, Captain! Aye!” Darcy yelled back, his wide, white-toothed smile made even more dramatic by the roundness of his chin.

A musket ball punched through the envelope skin near Buckle’s boots, leaving a small, black, smoldering-rimmed hole. The musket battle continued as pistols, with their higher-pitched cracks, joined the fray. A few bodies dropped on both sides.

“We are within pistol shot!” Valkyrie shouted. The whalelike roof of the
Bellerophon
was no more than fifty feet away, with the bottomless crevasse of air between the two zeppelins darker
than the evening sky. Buckle could see the faces of the Founders crew, pale in the weak light, teeth bared as they hurled insults, or strangely calm as they aimed down pistol and musket barrels.

“Fire grapnels! Fire all harpoons and hooks!” Buckle howled, and his officers echoed his order down the line.

Time to grab hold of the tiger’s tail.