Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) (24 page)

XLI

THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK ATRIUM

Buckle dove through the doorway, bounced off a Praetorian hedging against the hatch and crashed into Cicero, knocking both of them sprawling.

“Now!” Horatus shouted.

The Praetorians slammed the hatch shut. Horatus whirled the locking wheel.

The corridor shook with a deafening boom so immense Buckle was shocked the structure didn’t collapse around them. The hatch sprung leaks but its seals held.

The Praetorians hauled Buckle and Cicero to their feet.

“Get going, damn you,” Horatus gasped. The Praetorians took hold of Cicero and raced down the passageway.

Buckle turned to follow but Horatus hauled him back. “Captain,” Horatus said, “the Keeper must not fall into enemy hands. The secret of the aether must be preserved at all costs. If the enemy overwhelms us we must make certain the Keeper does not survive to have his secrets extracted. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Buckle replied.

“Good,” Horatus answered, and set off running. Buckle followed at a sprint, breathing in air rich with the salty stink of seawater and wet ambergris. He emerged in the Black Atrium where Sabrina, Welly, Penny, and four Praetorian guards waited, swords drawn, looking confused. Buckle found himself splashing through ankle-deep seawater as he crossed the room—he saw a low torrent pouring in from the opposite blue hatchway, pooling shallow but flowing fast, turning the red carpet to a dark, ugly shade of purple.

Twelve red-cloaked Atlantean soldiers led by a man with a sideways crimson brush on his helmet charged in through the Mars gate. Buckle noticed the Mars gate—and the Neptune gate opposite—were closing, slowly, as big metal hatches slid into position to seal the passageways.

“Horatus—what has happened?” the officer with the crimson brush on his helmet asked.

“The Senate chamber is lost, Centurion Numa—breached by a Founders submarine,” Horatus said quickly. “We have reports of Founders soldiers entering the domes.”

“Impossible!” one of the soldiers snapped, more out of rage than disbelief.

“All watertight doors are closing,” Numa said. “We’ll cut them off and drown them, we will, General.”

The dome shuddered again, making Buckle’s stomach clench. The aether tubes vibrated and the fountain spouts splattered droplets into the shallow water on the floor. Buckle heard the sound of torrents of water roaring though the interior of the dome, coming somewhere from above. Buckle picked up Penny Dreadful without breaking stride and she clung to him like a human child.

“Is it as bad as it looks?” Sabrina asked.

“Worse,” Buckle said.

“We must get the Keeper to the First Consul’s escape pod,” Horatus told Numa. “The Founders must not take him.”

“Ah, but we already have him!” A voice boomed from the Neptune gate.

Buckle spun around to see the Vicar entering through the half-shut watertight door, arms thrown open, a rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. He wore a wide leather belt stuffed with pistols of which there must have been at least ten. A company of cutlass-armed, blue-coated Founders seamen poured in around him.

“Atlanteans!” Numa shouted. “Form up!” The dozen solders, drawing their swords, formed a line in front of the arriving Founders. “Go, Horatus! Go!” Numa barked.

“I am afraid the Keeper has nowhere to go,” the Vicar said as his seamen formed a line in front of him, teeth gritted, poised and ready to pounce. “Surrender or die.”

“Atlanteans do not surrender,” Numa replied.

Horatus grabbed Cicero, lifting the portly Keeper off his feet as he raced to the blue hatchway where seawater now gushed calf-deep across the threshold. Buckle, Sabrina, Welly, and the six Praetorians raced after Horatus. Buckle heard splashing coming down the throat of the blue passageway. Odessa leapt out, clad in her silver steampiper breastplate, sword in hand, leading a half dozen tall, blond-haired steampipers.

“Fight your way through!” Horatus shouted, shoving Cicero behind him as he drew his sword. “Cut them down and do it quickly!”

Releasing Penny, Buckle swept his saber free of its sheath in one smooth motion of swishing steel, as did his crewmates and the Praetorians.

“She’s mine!” Sabrina said, loud and clear, lunging to the fore. “Leave my sister to me!”

Buckle heard a crash of steel as the Founders sailors rushed the Centurion’s company behind them. Glancing back, he saw more blue-clad seamen streaming in through the steadily decreasing gap in the closing Neptune gate. Numa and his Atlantean guards were now outnumbered. Buckle cursed inwardly—their best chance would have been to fight in the doorways, to restrict the enemy to the corridors where their greater numbers could not be brought to bear, but it was too late for that.

Sabrina and Odessa collided first, swords clashing, as Buckle, Welly, Horatus, and the Praetorians spread out to meet the steampipers. Buckle slashed his blade from side to side, deflecting the well-delivered thrusts of the steampiper swords. The steampiper charge stalled. Horatus and his Praetorians were proving their worth. But, behind them, amidst shouts, rings of metal and agonized screams, Buckle sensed Centurion Numa and his soldiers were backing up, desperately trying to avoid being surrounded.

The watertight metal doors thudded shut in the gateways of Neptune and Mars.

Buckle knew they only had a few seconds to cut their way through the steampipers if they wanted to get out of Atlantis alive. He feinted right and slashed left, cutting the sword arm of the steampiper in front of him, following up with a backhand swipe across the throat. The steampiper fell back in a spray of blood.

Wheeling to his right, Buckle blindsided a female steampiper engaged with a Praetorian, wrenching her sword arm up and plunging his blade into her armpit, driving it deep into the thick muscles and bones of her upper chest. The Praetorian thrust his gladius under her breastplate and into her lower abdomen, finishing her off. Buckle struggled to free his blade as the woman fell, for it was angled tight against her bones and the armhole of the breastplate.

“Kill the Keeper!” Numa shouted. “Kill the Keeper!”

Pulling his bloody sword free, Buckle turned to see the Centurion and six of his soldiers—the ones not down and dying—laying about them with their swords as the Founders sailors flooded around their flanks.

Cicero, having had lost all color from his ruddy face, hunched against the fountain as a female Praetorian gripped him by the collar. “I am prepared!” Cicero shouted. Buckle saw him pluck a glass ampule out of his gold dolphin ring and jam it into his mouth.

Buckle felt calm as the Founders sailors rushed him; he was calculating, fueled by a sizzling but coiled anger. His little group had almost fought their way out. They had almost made it. But Odessa and the steampipers still blocked the escape route. “To hell with this!” He bellowed. He charged in front of Cicero, cutting down the first Founders seaman he met, sending the man tumbling into the water, his cutlass spinning away.

“To hell with them, yes!” the Praetorian who had been holding Cicero shouted, stepping alongside Buckle with her blade at the ready. “Watch your back and have at them!”

“Kill the Keeper!” Numa shouted again, clubbing a Founders seaman with his fist. “Kill him, damn you!” The chest of Numa’s breastplate exploded in a burst of blood, flesh and black smoke and he toppled face-down in the water. The Vicar stepped over Numa’s body, tossing aside a smoking pistol and drawing another from his belt.

“Take the Keeper alive!” The Vicar howled. “He’ll have a poison ampule in his mouth. Cut his tongue out before he finds the brass to swallow it!”

Whipping his blade back and forth, Buckle found himself besieged on the left and right as the Founders swarmed and closed in on both sides, the cohesion of the lines collapsing in the thrashing chaos of combat. Welly was on his left, wielding his saber with excellent control, keeping two opponents at bay. Buckle was infuriated with himself. Even as he slashed and parried, the stench of saltwater in his nostrils and the fire of combat in his veins, his brain hammered like a difference engine gone mad. He had put his crewmembers in this situation, into dire straits, in his obsessive pursuit of Elizabeth. He could not allow them to be captured. “Offer no quarter and ask for none!” he shouted. “To the death!”

Buckle glimpsed Penny Dreadful, looking small as she stood against a bulkhead, unnoticed at the fringe of the battle. Head down and quivering, she glowed red at the seams, firing bolts of steam from vents in her ribcage and neck. She was attempting to pull her manacles apart.

Buckle wanted to help Penny—they desperately needed her fighting skills—but he had no idea which Praetorian had the keys. Retreating as more and more Founders cutlasses hacked at him, he backed up against Cicero. The surviving Atlantean guards and Praetorians, bleeding and hard-pressed, had formed a circle around the Keeper. The doomed circle. The last stand. This was it.
Damn it
, Buckle thought as he deflected a sailor’s pike swung at his head. If they were to die he would make certain Marius’ last request was honored. Cicero was behind him. If he couldn’t save Cicero—and if the man had lost his nerve and couldn’t bite down on his poison ampule properly—Buckle would have to kill him. And it was going to have to happen now.

Buckle made a series of aggressive sword thrusts, forcing the Founders sailors in front of him to hedge back. With his opponents on their heels he had a moment, the only chance he was going to get, to spin around and execute Cicero. He lowered his sword as he turned, anticipating a merciful kill, an instant kill, a thrust up under the Keeper’s sternum to sever the vital organs in his upper abdomen. Then, in turn, the Founders would skewer Buckle through the back, multiple blades, rewarding him with his own instant death.

I have failed you, Elizabeth. Forgive me.

Cicero, still in the clutches of the Praetorian, saw Buckle come at him with his leveled sword and did not raise his hands to defend himself. There was fear in Cicero’s face but also acceptance.

A coppery blur whipped through the space between Buckle and Cicero like a springing metal jaguar. The force and speed of it was enough to stall Buckle’s hand. It was Penny Dreadful on the launch, snapped manacle chains trailing from her wrists, shining nests of blades jutting from her forearms. The automaton landed in the water and as Buckle spun around he saw her slam a knife into the knee of an onrushing female sailor. The woman screamed and dropped to her knees in front of Penny who, yanking her knife loose, chopped the woman’s head clean off with a double armed scissoring of her two longest blades.

Penny was on the attack again before the female sailor’s head hit the water, ricocheting into the Founders like a whirling dervish, her body a dodging blur, her arms delivering a hundred devastating snake strikes at once. Blood filled the air in fountains—splatters and fine, pinkish sprays. Screaming and shouting, the leading sailors—the ones still standing—hacked wildly, panicked at the sight of the golden eyed, half-submerged hellion savagely chopping at their thighs and knees, and clawed back into the crowd of their fellows behind them.

Welly moved to follow Penny but Buckle grabbed him by the collar. “No, Welly,” Buckle shouted. “She can hold them.”

Penny Dreadful took down nearly a dozen screaming sailors who fell, shins and thighs split wide open. She ignored the cutlass and pike blows raining down upon her. Anyone lucky enough to land a strike was rewarded with an ineffective bang of metal against unforgiving metal.

“For once one of the little monsters is on our side,” Horatus shouted, yanking Cicero by the collar so roughly Buckle feared the poor Keeper might bite down on his death ampule by accident. “It’ll hold them long enough for us to break out. We must clear the hatchway now!”

“Aye!” Buckle yelled, noticing the seawater was almost up to his knees as he turned to join Welly in the attack on the last few steampipers holding the blue hatchway.

But where was Sabrina?

XLII

BLOOD IS NOT THICKER THAN TIME

Sabrina may have moved to engage Odessa first but her sister was the one determined to finish it. They had exchanged only a few blows before the surge of the charge shoved them apart. A minute later, out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina saw Odessa chop down a Praetorian and come straight at her, blade straight up, a perpendicular, shining slash in the aether light, coming at her blind side in the way a sabertooth beastie cuts its victim out of a herd.

Sabrina already had her hands full battling another steampiper, a tall woman with a wicked thrust and immense power in her arms. Sabrina took a quick step back, rotating her body so she was facing both the steampiper and her onrushing sister. Sabrina had no doubt that Odessa intended to kill her. But still, as the soldiers whirled around them in a maelstrom of blades, armor, blood, and water, she hesitated slightly, a fraction of a second, in the presence of her only sister. Sabrina’s hesitation nearly cost her life.

Odessa’s first swing, aimed to cut Sabrina’s throat, was perfect.

Sabrina parried Odessa’s blade at the last instant and Sabrina held it locked against hers, locking them together in the moment, their faces mere inches apart. Odessa’s hot breath seemed to scald Sabrina’s cheek. Her green eyes offered no pity, no empathy, no quarter.

Where are you, sister
? Sabrina thought.
Where is my Odessa
?

If Odessa had to die, if Sabrina had to kill her sister, then it was something she was ready to do.

Sabrina jumped back to avoid being skewered from the right by the female steampiper whose sword thrust missed her stomach by an inch. Sabrina knocked the woman’s blade away but stumbled, unable to adjust her footing in the sucking water now up to her knees.

“Capture the Keeper!” Odessa shouted at the woman. “This one is mine.”

The steampiper nodded and swung away. Sabrina lunged at Odessa with the thrust and parry, the low cut and high, exploiting every line of attack—but Odessa matched her every move. Again and again Sabrina lunged for the kill but Odessa countered her each time, often nearly slicing her on the return. They were now, even as they were then, evenly matched.

A memory darted through Sabrina’s mind, fighting over a doll.

A Praetorian backed up against Sabrina’s left, barely holding off a swarm of Founders. Their company was about to be overwhelmed. She felt the battle turning, the squeezing of the middle as Welly, Buckle, and the Atlanteans grouped tighter and tighter behind her. If they could not cut their way through to the blue corridor now they would be surrounded and annihilated.

Sabrina also realized that the little automaton, Penny Dreadful, was loose and in the thick of it but she doubted even the fast blades of the living machine could save them if they could not win the blue passageway.

Advancing, Sabrina rained such a reckless flurry of blows upon her sister that Odessa, parrying, retreated a few steps to the black wall. Odessa’s pommel struck the bulkhead as she swung her sword, knocking her rhythm off-kilter and unsettling her guard.

Sabrina saw her chance and she stepped into it. But before her muscles drove her saber home she was hammered from the right, the brutal slam of a bigger body plowing into her smaller one, the clunk of skull upon skull, a blur of blue uniform and brass buttons. The world jumped and heaved over. Sabrina fell sideways into the churning water, the icy cold biting at her pounding heart—but it also slapped her mind clear. A Founders seaman loomed over her, his axe coming down, halfway through the descending arc that would end her existence at the end of its swing.

Sabrina’s reaction was instinct, muscles firing, remembering ten thousand training repetitions, and it saved her life. Though she was halfway submerged she swept her sword up and parried his blow, though just barely, the axe blade glancing off of her saber, missing her nose by barely an inch and plunging into the water.

“Fool!” Odessa shouted.

The sailor had thrown too much of his momentum into what must have looked like an easy killing blow. Now he was off-balance and bent over Sabrina, the brass buttons on his coat pressing down on her head. She threw her left hand around his neck, forcing him to support her weight and toppling him over on top of her. With her right hand she released her sword, drew her dagger and drove the blade up into his stomach. The sailor grunted as he fell on top of her, plunging them both under the freezing water. Holding her breath, Sabrina rolled the man to her left as she wrenched the blade around inside the bulk of him. He convulsed and kicked, thrashing up foam and screaming a gargled, ghostly howl into the water.

Sabrina was already out from under the man’s weight, her head breaking the surface as she scrambled to get back on her feet, gasping as she felt around for her sword which now lay somewhere on the bottom of the churning water.

Sabrina saw a flash of movement on her left. A burst of red hair. The silver of a whirling blade.

Sabrina raised her knife, deflecting a finger-stinging blow which would have decapitated her had it not been interrupted. Odessa swung again. Sabrina dove to her left, avoiding the slash by completely exposing herself to the next. She plunged her hands under the floating body of the Founder’s seaman she had just gutted. She found her sword and raised it from the water in time to deflect Odessa’s swing at her head.

Agony shot through the fingers on Sabrina’s left hand. She had picked her sword up by the blade, her hand wrapped around the steel just above the guard and not on the grip beneath it. The force of Odessa’s blow had sunk the cutting edge into the joints of her fingers. Thin rivers of blood poured down her wrist, racing fast and bright across the water-drenched skin.

Sabrina ignored the pain. The sword, no matter how she held it and no matter the cost, had saved her life; it had bought her time. She was on her feet now, tossing the saber from her bloody left hand into her right and her knife from right to left in the same motion.

Without pause, Odessa came on. Sabrina tried to back up, to buy herself a fraction of time and space but her effort nearly sent her backwards into the water again. Her right foot had been locked down. The Founders sailor, half-submerged, his mouth blubbering foam, curses and blood, had grabbed her ankle and would not let go.

Sabrina tried to kick loose of the man’s grip but failed. Now she was off-balance and pinned. In a moment she would be dead. Odessa, raining down blow after furious blow, had her.

“Lieutenant!” Welly shouted, rushing Odessa from the right. Odessa, quick as a cat, knocked Welly’s saber thrust aside and punched him squarely across the jaw with her free hand. Welly crashed against the bulkhead and tumbled into the water.

Welly’s charge bought Sabrina an instant—and it was enough.

Sabrina lunged, stomping on the Founders sailor’s face as she broke free of his failing clutch, and brought her sword down upon Odessa with all of the strength she had, chopping clean through Odessa’s sword arm just above the wrist.

Odessa’s hand, still clenching the sword, dropped into the water. Odessa screamed, springing backwards, her arm spraying blood. Sabrina kicked Odessa in the chest, slamming her against the bulkhead as she drew back her sword to drive the point through Odessa’s throat.

Sliding to her knees as she clutched her wound, Odessa looked at up Sabrina, her green eyes flooded with agony. In those unveiled, brightly drawn depths Sabrina saw her sister looking up at her from the past.

Sabrina halted her attack. She would not deliver the killing the blow. She would not.

Sabrina remembered her own arm, small and thin, when she was six years old; an angry Odessa had raked Sabrina’s forearm with her fingernails, leaving four long, thin, bloody lines that barely hurt but offered great dramatic pretext for wailing in the presence of their mother.

And now she had chopped Odessa’s hand away.

Welly, rose up from the water beside Odessa, lifting his sword.

“No, Welly!” Sabrina shouted, grabbing Welly’s arm. “Mercy!”

Welly lowered his sword.

Sabrina saw the way to the blue hatchway was clear. Horatus and three surviving Praetorians had dispatched the last of Odessa’s steampipers. Already the female Praetorian was hauling Cicero into the passageway.

Sabrina sheathed her knife, grabbing Welly by the collar and pulling him through the red and black water. She saw Buckle, Penny Dreadful, and the few remaining Atlantean guards backing up, keeping the Vicar and the Founders in front of them as best they could. “We are leaving!” she shouted at Buckle.

No!” howled the Vicar, advancing with sword and pistol. “Do not let them escape or your backs will bleed for it!” The blue-coated mass of sailors behind him lunged forward, threatening to overrun what was left of the Atlantean defense.

Penny Dreadful jumped forward to meet the Vicar, her streamlined body slicing through the water, arms whirling, blades flashing.

“Damned machines!” the Vicar bellowed without breaking stride. He pointed his pistol at Penny Dreadful’s chest, point blank, and fired.

The concussion of the weapon blast in the enclosed space bludgeoned Sabrina’s ears. The belch of black smoke from the muzzle seemed to lift Penny Dreadful, blowing her small metal form out of the water and hurling it between Buckle and an Atlantean soldier; she crashed into a black-curtained bulkhead and tumbled into the water.

“Penny!” Sabrina screamed, rushing toward the bubbling water where the automaton had disappeared.

“Go!” one of the three remaining Atlantean soldiers ordered. “Go! We shall hold them! Go!”

Buckle had already run to Penny and lifted her out of the water. A dense black powder burn covered Penny’s chest. Her eyes had gone black but, much to Sabrina’s relief, they fluttered to life again, as bright and golden as ever.

“Stop them, damn you!” the Vicar boomed. “Sabrina!” He strode at her through the surging water, yanking another pistol from his belt. “Come to me, child,” he urged. “Come to me and I shall return to you to your family. I am your beloved uncle!”

Sabrina snatched her dagger from her belt with her bloody fingers. In one smooth motion, a motion practiced a thousand times in the back room of Marter’s shop in Refugio, she hurled the knife at the Vicar’s head. The blade flashed in the aether light as it spun. The Vicar uttered the first hissing fricative of a curse before the dagger buried itself between his eyes. He fell backwards with a great splash.

The Founders paused, their swords and pikes wavering. Both of their officers were down.

“Do not let the Keeper escape!” Odessa shrieked, hauling herself up from the water, gripping the bloody stump of her left arm, her face so white she looked like a fire-haired ghost, her light brown freckles looking like black specks of rot. “Capture him and Isambard shall make you rich!”

“Make it quick!” Horatus bellowed as he stood at the blue hatchway. Two Praetorians and Cicero had already vanished into the passageway and Buckle was on his way in, carrying Penny.

Sabrina pulled Welly into the hatchway and with her last glimpse back she saw Odessa glaring after her with the ominous coldness of a gallows tree.