Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) (5 page)

“Aye, Captain!” Gustey said, retaking her station and planting the mufflers on her ears.

“Felix—” Kishi started in the dribbling silence.

“Shhhh,” Felix said.

Gustey cocked her head and closed her eyes, turning a direction finder dial in front of her. “He’s drifted forward, just forward of us by a league or a league and quarter,” Gustey answered. “Depth still holding at five hundred.”

Another depth charge detonated off to starboard. The
Dart
reeled against the punch. Buckle and the others were thrown toward the port bulkhead. A voluminous gush of seawater burst down around the periscope housing, fresh with the fish-salt stink of the sea.

Gustey screamed and threw off her headphones, gripping her ears. Blood rushed out between her fingers. She collapsed. Felix caught her before she hit the floor.

“Gustey!” Felix shouted, lowering her gently. “You, scarlet,” he said, looking at Sabrina. “Hold her—keep her head off the deck!”

Sabrina scrambled forward to cradle Gustey.

“We’re flooding!” Kishi coughed as she reached for a set of wooden handles. “Engaging emergency pumps.”

“No!” Felix howled, lunging through the smoke to peer at the engineering station instruments beside Rachel. “Don’t’ waste the pressure left in the boilers. Ready to blow tanks!” He jumped to the chattertube. “Torpedo room! Flood tubes one and two and ready to fire!”

“Aye, Cap’n,” came the breathless response. “One and two!”

Felix fired a grim-jawed smile at Kishi. “Shall we ride the monster, my dear?”

The fear in Kishi’s face dropped away, replaced by a buccaneer’s grin. “That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me.”

VIII

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP

The
Dart
’s metal heart boomed as Felix and Rachel wound two control wheels around, releasing pressurized air into the ballast tanks. The submarine responded, jumping upward into the darkness, rising at the nose so abruptly everyone had to grab hold of the nearest bolted-down object or risk sliding away.

The wounded
Dart
heaved to port, threatening to roll over on her back. No matter. Buckle was relieved to be moving
up
.

“Trim! Trim! Maintain even keel, damn it!” Felix ordered.

Kishi, her neck reddening as she fought the stabilizer controls, made a sound like a choked-off guffaw. “Get over here and do it yourself, jackass! You keep this overinflated bitch from rolling!”

“I’m docking your pay!” Felix replied, rather ineffectually.

“I’ll dock your manhood with a gutting knife!” Kishi countered.

“It’s an asylum down here!” Sabrina yelled.

The
Dart
lurched onto a more even keel, accelerating, hurtling upward as if shot out of a cannon. A harsh vibration rattled through the boat.

“You’re doing a fine job, Kishi!” Buckle shouted. “Captain Felix, what’s the plan? You do have a plan, correct?”

“We’re going to put a pair of torpedoes right up that Founders’ arse,” Felix said. “His stern observer will see us, he’ll try to run—blow his tanks, even—but we’ll get the angle on his tail before he can get that behemoth going.”

“Doesn’t he have stern tubes?” Sabrina asked.

“Won’t help him,” Felix replied. “Not at the speed we’re going. But we can’t stop our ascent. We’ll only get one shot at this. If we miss we’ll be stuck on the surface and he can sink us at his leisure.”

“I do like being on the attack after all of this punishment, Captain,” Buckle said.

“So do I,” Felix answered, slapping two levers shut above his head and leaning into the chattertube hood. “Torpedo room, on my mark—ready to fire!”

“Ready to fire, aye!” came the hearty response.

The
Dart
continued to rise, faster and faster, the upward rush against gravity making Buckle feel heavy on his feet. A blast of hot, coal-smelling air hit him, expressed from one valve or another, but it did clear the smoke out of his face.

Hints of light fluttered on the windows and then the great green-blue sunlit surface of the iceberg-laden sea exploded into view. The brightness of it hurt Buckle’s dark-accustomed, smoke-irritated eyes and made him blink. But he would much prefer to die on the surface, with the light on his face, with decent air for a last breath.

Three hundred feet above them, a huge black oval silhouette blocked the sparkling surface illumination. The Founders submarine, a spiny metal leviathan fluked and bristling with hatches and glass, amber-lit window ports, arrays of tubes belching streams of black, white, gray and clear bubbles, sat motionless in the ocean sky. The
Dart
was rising so tightly under the Founders’ stern Buckle began to worry they might collide with the enemy’s motionless propellers.

The
Dart
continued to rocket up and up.

“If we hit our mark and sink this bastard we buy ourselves time,” Felix said. “Once we breach the surface we’ll vent for air and submerge to periscope depth to effect repairs. All we have to do is get one shaft back on line. We’re inside the blockade area now. Atlantis isn’t much more than a thousand leagues ahead.”

“They’ve seen us,” Rachel reported.

In a sudden, cyclonic explosion of air bubbles, the Founders submarine began to ascend. The captain, realizing his situation, had blown her tanks.

But the little
Dart
was much faster. Buckle watched through the mist-wreathed interior of the bridge as they rose behind the submersible’s two huge bronze propellers, both mottled light green and bigger than the
Dart
itself. The blades began to turn. Buckle saw two navy blue uniformed figures moving around inside the submersible’s stern observation window, located in a bulge on the keel twenty feet forward of the propellers.

“Ready to fire!” Felix shouted into the chattertube.

“We’re too close!” Kishi screamed.

“No matter,” Felix said. “This is our only chance.”

Buckle looked up. They were now tantalizingly close to the surface of the ocean and rising at such a speed that they would surely throw themselves into the air before coming back down again. The stern of the Founder’s submarine loomed squarely in front of the
Dart
, and no more than thirty feet away.

Felix leaned into the chattertube hood. “Fire! Both tubes! Fire!”

Buckle heard the buzz of propellers, the sudden wallop of compressed air, the scrape of long metal objects rattling out of metal tubes.

“Fish away!” shouted the voice on the chattertube. “Numbers one and two away!”

“We’re too damned close!” Kishi screamed.

“Brace for impact!” Felix shouted.

Buckle saw the torpedoes race through the water: long, dark tubes with flashing propellers, both striking the Founders submersible just above her screws. On impact the projectiles exploded in great flashes, the detonations throwing up gigantic, cathedral-like pressure bubbles filled with fire. The two propellers wrenched apart, swinging sideways as the stern section of the Founders boat split at the seams.

The sound, the deep, horrible sound of the collapsing bulkheads was as if the ancient bed of the sea itself was ripping apart.

“Victory!” Rachel howled.

A concussive wall of roiling white bubbles rolled back into the
Dart
, cracking her bridge windows as it hurled her backwards. Buckle and everyone grabbed for handholds as the submarine tipped back almost on her tail, the deck shifting into a near vertical position under them. The force of the breakneck ascent kept Buckle pinned to the spot; he had some sense that the metal body of Penny Dreadful was under his boots, that he was standing on it.

“Pressure hull compromised!” Rachel shouted. “We’re taking water in forward compartments one, two and three!”

“Bilge pumps inoperative!” Kishi shouted. “You’ve killed us, Felix—you soddy bastard!”

Small, tight jets of cold water shot into the bridge through the jagged fissures in the windows and a hundred other piping cracks, filling the cabin with spray. His eyes stinging with sea salt, Buckle felt the
Dart
breach the surface and launch into the air. For that moment the forces of gravity which had so sorely pressed him in the ascent suddenly released and he was weightless—floating, flying, with the cabin suddenly filled with brilliant sunlight, all of the people and objects suspended around him in whirling, glittering arcs of spray—until the submarine, captured once again by gravity, dropped, slamming into the water with bone-crushing force.

Stunned, Buckle looked up from where he lay on the deck. He saw the shimmering light of the surface darken as sea flooded over the windows, sucking the
Dart
down. As they plummeted he shouted something—he never would remember what—at the wonderful, dappling surface light as it turned greener and blacker as they fell further and further away into the depths.

“Hold on!” Felix shouted. “We’re going straight to the bottom!”

It didn’t feel like a victory to Romulus Buckle.

IX

AN IRON COFFIN

Buckle clawed his way to his feet, his vision blurred, the bridge a running cascade of seawater. Boil spilled into the flow everywhere, growing brighter and brighter as it streamed in the deepening darkness. The
Dart
waffled downwards, leading with her stern.

“We’re descending into the Rift!” Kishi shouted. “Abandon ship!”

“Belay that order!” Felix roared. “Hold fast!”

“We’re doomed!” Kishi yelled. “We must detach the lifeboat now!”

“There isn’t time!” Felix replied. “The blast threw us clear of the chasm. We’ll land on the sandy bottom, easy as you please. Hold fast!”

“Damn you to hell if you’re wrong,” Rachel said.

Kishi slid across the deck to assist Sabrina as she held Gustey “There’s no bottom here!” Kishi groaned. “We’re going into the Rift, I tell you!”

“Show some faith, woman!” Felix howled.

The starboard forward window cracked again under the renewed pressure, this time in a thousand spiderwebbing, glittering white fractures. More water sprayed in from a dozen new fissures.

“Clear the bridge, damn it to hell!” Felix shouted, pointing to the rear hatch. “Clear the bridge!”

Buckle lifted Gustey’s legs while Sabrina and Kishi, slipping on the tilted, wet deck, maneuvered her limp body through the hatchway.

“Come on!” Felix hissed through clenched teeth as he fought the stabilizer controls. “Back on the bubble, little lady—that’s it!”

The
Dart
righted somewhat on her keel, making the going easier on the deck. The starboard window cracked again, loudly, the sound of thick glass breaking. Pin-point streaks of water turned into small torrents.

“Get out!” Felix roared. “We’ve got to seal the hatch!”

Buckle let go of Gustey’s legs, letting them trail along the grating as Kishi and Sabrina stumbled down the flickering passageway. He leaned back into the bridge as Rachel hurried out of the green-lit waterfalls and slid past him. “Welly!”

“Coming, Captain!” came Welly’s reply as he emerged from the watery tumult, lugging Penny Dreadful with him.

“You need not carry me, Ensign,” Penny said.

“Leave the damn thing behind!” Felix shouted as he crowded behind Welly. “It’s a damned Jonah, it is!”

“Damn your eyes, sir!” Buckle replied. “Move, Ensign! Move!”

Once they had all piled into the passageway, Felix took hold of the hatch and pressed it against the rapidly growing torrent of water. “Lend a hand!” he shouted. “We must seal this hatch now, before the water overwhelms us!”

Buckle and Welly threw their weight against the hatch. Slowly they forced it back against the monstrously dark fall of water. The
Dart
continued to level out, easing the weight of the water against the hatch, and they heaved it shut. Felix wound the locking wheel until the handle clanged against the end of its wind.

Buckle felt relief but he knew one sealed door would not save them if the
Dart
was plummeting into the rift.

A metallic boom deafened Buckle. The deck grating leapt up and slammed the wind out of him. Everyone dropped as if the strength had gone out of their legs, joining him in a heap.

The
Dart
had hit bottom.

Buckle blinked and lifted his head slightly to pull his front teeth out of the places they had sunk into his forearm. Smoke hung heavy and thick in the
Dart
passageway, the boil emergency lights casting a ghostly green illumination into the writhing haze. The roar of floods crashing into bulkheads was gone, replaced by the patter of dripping water and the rustling of the others as they struggled to rise. Buckle focused on the bright sheen of boil on his hand and sleeve; it smelled fishy.

“See?” Felix grumbled as he stood up and wound an overhead wheel. “Soft bottom. No Rift.”

Buckle peered up to see Penny Dreadful standing over him, its eyes glowing under the iron lashes, the glistening metal of its skin dimly reflecting green.

“Are you alright, Captain Buckle?” Penny asked, and there sounded like genuine concern in its childish voice.

“Yes.” Buckle answered, tasting blood in his mouth as he drew himself up onto one knee.

“It seems we are lucky this day, Captain,” Penny said.

“Luck?” Felix snorted. “Bah! I saved our skins. I did. I should have turned and ran but I did what you paid me for. And it’s taken a mighty chunk out of my profits.”

A deep, metallic groan swept in and shook the
Dart
. Buckle gripped a water-dripping rail and hunched, expecting the bulkheads to collapse in upon them in one brutal, cold heave.

“That’s not us,” Felix said. “The Founders boat. Implosion.”

Buckle found Penny Dreadful pressed at his flank. Sabrina and Rachel assisted Gustey, who seemed to have recovered her senses enough to stand. A faint glow of aqua-colored sunlight rippled in the observation parlor hatchway. “Where do we go from here?” Buckle asked. His tongue dragged, stuck with salt.

“There’s always options when one isn’t dead,” Felix said. “José! I want a report!” he shouted at two crew members cranking a watertight door shut at the far end of the passageway. One of them was Marsh.

“Aye, Cap,” the other crewman responded, a dark brown fellow with a thick black mustache—he had to be José. “It ain’t good.”

“You don’t say?” Felix barked. “Come with me.” He ducked into the observation parlor.

Buckle followed Felix into the cabin, blinking at the ocean-filtered sunlight as it poured ever-so-softly from above. A dozen silver-white fractures laced the round porthole glass but it had not sprung a visible leak.

“Your window has a lot of cracks in it,” Sabrina grumbled.

Felix smiled and tapped the glass. “Purchased special from the Friars. Four inches thick. Lady Fortune is both a witch and an angel. The blast of the explosions wounded us, yes, but it also threw us clear of the chasm.”

Buckle looked out into the ocean—a great expanse of sandy bottom, populated by large rocks and outcroppings of tall, dancing seaweed, undulated away as far as the eye could see. But what grabbed his attention was the sight of the Founders submarine, slowly sinking into the maw of the Rift, her stern spilt apart, spilling oil and debris. Another shriek of her bulkheads collapsing echoed through the depths. It was an awful thing to witness, the death of a huge sea machine.

“Look at that,” Sabrina muttered at Buckle’s shoulder. “Look at that.”

They stood in silence until the corpse of the submersible vanished into the crevasse. Buckle again saw the soft, glimmering lights of Atlantis beyond, thousands of lights surrounding a complex of domes glinting glass, gold, green and white. Despite the peril of their own situation the group needed this pause, gasping and dripping, the strangely intimate sounds of trickling water soothing their battered nervous systems.

Rachel opened a medical cabinet and took a roll of gauze to wrap around Gustey’s head and ears.

“My report is that we’re sunk, Cap,” José announced from the hatchway, glaring at Penny. He was a short fellow, a boilerman from the look of the sweaty flush of his skin and his soot-stained blue coveralls. His hands, streaked with coal dust and blood from a wound on his palm, were far too big for his short arms. Coughing, he sucked in lungfuls of air under his prodigious mustache as if the smoky cabin offered a vastly preferable atmosphere to what he had been breathing in the engine room.

“Casualties?” Felix asked.

“No more than a bump on the nob for Marsh,” José answered.

“And damages?” Felix asked. “Give it to me straight.”

“Straight is we’re dead in the water, old salt,” José said, glancing back at Marsh, who, rubbing a bloody spot on his head, watched them from the passageway. “Negative buoyancy and no power. Propulsion is inoperable. Port shaft is bent. Propeller packings leaking and aft bilge flooded. I purged the combustion systems to save the oxygen and kept the seawater out of the boilers. Pumps are no good.”

Felix looked at Buckle. “By default I shall still get you to Atlantis, Captain. Kishi, muster the crew in the airlock and gear up. Help José prepare a sling for Gustey.”

“Aye,” Kishi replied, ducking out of the hatchway with José.

“Everyone into the corridor,” Felix said, turning to Buckle. “We are in sight of Atlantis, at the edge of the latifundium, so we continue the rest of the way in diving suits.” He tucked his chin into his chest and muttered. “I’ll have to pay for the Atlanteans to send a team to recover the
Dart
. The damned greedy fishmen will stick me for it. But they probably won’t risk it until the blockade is over. Damn it,” he added softly.

“You have enough suits for everyone?” Buckle asked.

“Yes,” Felix answered. “We use them for hunting expeditions. Wealthy sea merchants love underwater safaris. But we need to hurry. Follow me.”

Felix screwed the observation hatch shut and led the group aft, down the passageway to an open deck hatch where a column of yellow-orange light shot up into the smoke-filled air. Felix swung down the ladder and Buckle followed, landing in a spacious chamber lit by three lanterns on hooks, a compartment dense with the smell of seawater and salt-saturated leather. Bulky copper diving helmets lined the bulkheads, their thick glass viewing ports glowing greenish orange in the lamplight. Leather-strapped sealskin diving suits, air tanks and scuffed weight belts hung in rows. A cylindrical iron chamber, half sunk in the deck, waited with its hatch swung open like a massive nautilus shell.

Kishi, José, Marsh and the tall black female cook worked hastily amidst the gear, preparing air tanks and opening suits.

“Captain!” Welly shouted from the top of the ladder hatch. “Automaton coming down!”

“Aye,” Buckle replied, taking hold of Penny as Welly swung it down. Once again, Buckle was surprised at how light the robot was.

“I can climb ladders on my own,” Penny complained.

Buckle and Welly helped Gustey down the ladder as Sabrina and Rachel lowered her from above.

“Over here, Captain,” Felix said. “Tonda will get you into your diving suits.” He pointed at the black cook as she pulled a diving suit open like a narwhal hide, its shoulder buckles attached to hooks so he could step into the heavy boots and have the suit drawn up around him to the neck. “There’s a waterproof satchel for your pistols and put your swords in as well,” Felix added. “The Atlanteans don’t allow anyone but their soldiers to have firearms inside the city. They’ll confiscate them. But you can keep your swords.”

Buckle placed Penny on the deck and stepped into the diving suit. The weighted diving shoes were large enough to accommodate his boots and once he was in position Tonda yanked the squeaking suit up against his back and began stuffing his hands into the armholes. The suit was reasonably light, made of sealskin and doped canvas leather strappings; it smelled like every inch of it had been saturated by the sea, as if the materials, even left in a desert, would never completely dry out again. “I’ll carry Penny,” Buckle said to Welly, who was disappearing into another diving suit under Marsh’s supervision.

“No need,” Penny said. “I am designed to function underwater.”

“All Atlantean robots were made to walk on the ocean floor,” Felix said. “Quite the inventor’s dream, they were, to start with.”

“She’s not dangerous,” Sabrina said, looking tentative as Rachel tugged, snapped and buckled her into a diving suit.

“The Atlanteans won’t accept it,” Felix answered as he screwed his feet into his diving boots. “It’ll doom your negotiations before they even begin. Why risk it? I’ll pay you one hundred gold coins for it. I’ll keep it here and collect it once the
Dart
is salvaged.”

Buckle shook his head. “Enough on that. The automaton is coming with us.” Penny Dreadful was so old and banged up he wondered if its shell was still waterproof. He half-suspected its ancient seals would fail under the pressure and the cold seawater pouring into its little onboard boiler would blow it to pieces, claiming it forever in the depths. Though that, in a way, Buckle suspected, would be a sort of return home.

“Never say I didn’t try to take that Jonah off your hands,” Felix grumbled, now helping the one-armed Tonda secure the raft of leather fasteners running up and down Buckle’s torso and legs. Each expert tug of a strap squeezed Buckle a little tighter, the hug of the leather promising safety from the sea.

“This is far too fine a mess for me.” Sabrina planted her chin on her diving suit collar, her green eyes bright, nervous as she watched Kishi seal her in. “Don’t you have another submarine? A little one? A lifeboat? Skiff?”

“We walk from here, Lieutenant,” Buckle said with a grin. Chains rattled behind his ears as Gustey lowered a diving helmet onto his head.

“Just peachy,” Sabrina replied, and she didn’t look happy about it.