Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) Read Online Free
Author: Richard Ellis Preston Jr.
and slender and graceful, but their appearance took a little getting used to if you had not grown up around one of them. The stripes on every Martian face, which tapered to points about the temples, cheeks, and throat, were always unique to the individual. Max was only half Martian, but the Martian genes dominated her appearance: her white skin and black stripes were quite pronounced, and she wore the aqueous-humor-filled goggles that the Martians always wore because their sensitive eyes were irritated by thedryness of the earth’s atmosphere. The clear, soothing water completely filled the goggles and made her hypnotically black eyes look bigger than they actually were.
Max wore a black leather flying helmet of the old style; it lacked the excessive cog and valve trappings of the pilot’s, but its brass-tubing system for her goggles’ aqueous-humor reservoir gave it a streamlined flash, and lining the crest of the helmet were a series of oval metal lockets that housed the sensitive devices she used to tinker with the most delicate parts of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s vital systems.
From underneath the helmet flowed the long black locks of Max’s hair, always unruly but sheer as silk, dropping to swirl about her shoulders. She wore a black turtleneck sweater under a knee-length, raven-black leather coat lined with ebony bear fur, black pants, and slim black boots that cupped just under her knees. All of the blackness in Max’s clothes accentuated the white quality of her face and the swirling black stripes at the edges of it. In a way, it made her more alien than she needed to be.
But perhaps that was the point.
The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was about to land in the Boneyard. Max wanted to be on the bridge, but she could not help trying to scrutinize every inch of girder, wire, pipe, bolt, and baggywrinkle along the long keel corridor that was the spine of the entire sky vessel, running nine hundred feet and nine inches from bow to stern. The huge hydrogen cells, twenty-eight of them in all, in fifteen compartments, loomed overhead, fabric cathedrals fourteen stories high, each strapped into position within a spider’s nest of girders, wires, catwalks, ladders, and blast panels, always groaning and grinding under the stresses placed on such a city-sized contraption in flight.
Max’s sharp eye caught a tiny jet of steam issuing from under the Axial catwalk over her head. A small feeder pipe had burst, probably under the stress of the crash dive. Stress. Managing structural stress was a big part of the chief engineer’s job. Max was the master of a surgeon’s array of tools designed to measure the amounts of force being applied to every inch of wire, rope, fabric, and metal inside the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
. Countering the effects of altitude, windstorms, and temperature fluctuations was an intellectual battle. She constantly assessed hydrogen flows and steam and water pressures in miles upon miles of pipes and tubes: there was always a leak springing up somewhere as the rigid but supple airship frame constantly shifted against the wind.
And the engines. The engines! The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s six immense coal-black furnaces and boilers had been well built—her compliments to the Imperial clan’s shipbuilders—but there was always a fine line between stoking them up to maximum efficiency and actually blowing them up.
As much as it pained the chief engineer, the feeder pipe would have to wait.
Max arrived at the forward circular staircase that wheeled down into the piloting gondola. Descending two steps at a time, she was in a rush to jump into the revolving turret of the hammergun—a pneumatic cannon—slung under the gondola’s waist. The hammergun was not the chief engineer’s official battle station, but Max had claimed the honor early on and Buckle had not been inclined to fight her on it.
Max alighted on the gondola deck behind Buckle, and with one smooth motion swung her body down into the hammergun turret.
Max wore a black leather flying helmet of the old style; it lacked the excessive cog and valve trappings of the pilot’s, but its brass-tubing system for her goggles’ aqueous-humor reservoir gave it a streamlined flash, and lining the crest of the helmet were a series of oval metal lockets that housed the sensitive devices she used to tinker with the most delicate parts of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s vital systems.
From underneath the helmet flowed the long black locks of Max’s hair, always unruly but sheer as silk, dropping to swirl about her shoulders. She wore a black turtleneck sweater under a knee-length, raven-black leather coat lined with ebony bear fur, black pants, and slim black boots that cupped just under her knees. All of the blackness in Max’s clothes accentuated the white quality of her face and the swirling black stripes at the edges of it. In a way, it made her more alien than she needed to be.
But perhaps that was the point.
The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was about to land in the Boneyard. Max wanted to be on the bridge, but she could not help trying to scrutinize every inch of girder, wire, pipe, bolt, and baggywrinkle along the long keel corridor that was the spine of the entire sky vessel, running nine hundred feet and nine inches from bow to stern. The huge hydrogen cells, twenty-eight of them in all, in fifteen compartments, loomed overhead, fabric cathedrals fourteen stories high, each strapped into position within a spider’s nest of girders, wires, catwalks, ladders, and blast panels, always groaning and grinding under the stresses placed on such a city-sized contraption in flight.
Max’s sharp eye caught a tiny jet of steam issuing from under the Axial catwalk over her head. A small feeder pipe had burst, probably under the stress of the crash dive. Stress. Managing structural stress was a big part of the chief engineer’s job. Max was the master of a surgeon’s array of tools designed to measure the amounts of force being applied to every inch of wire, rope, fabric, and metal inside the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
. Countering the effects of altitude, windstorms, and temperature fluctuations was an intellectual battle. She constantly assessed hydrogen flows and steam and water pressures in miles upon miles of pipes and tubes: there was always a leak springing up somewhere as the rigid but supple airship frame constantly shifted against the wind.
And the engines. The engines! The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s six immense coal-black furnaces and boilers had been well built—her compliments to the Imperial clan’s shipbuilders—but there was always a fine line between stoking them up to maximum efficiency and actually blowing them up.
As much as it pained the chief engineer, the feeder pipe would have to wait.
Max arrived at the forward circular staircase that wheeled down into the piloting gondola. Descending two steps at a time, she was in a rush to jump into the revolving turret of the hammergun—a pneumatic cannon—slung under the gondola’s waist. The hammergun was not the chief engineer’s official battle station, but Max had claimed the honor early on and Buckle had not been inclined to fight her on it.
Max alighted on the gondola deck behind Buckle, and with one smooth motion swung her body down into the hammergun turret.
Readers choose
Sloane Kennedy
Jon Sharpe
John Lanchester
Tim Dorsey
James van Pelt
Victor LaValle
Glendon Swarthout
Jerusha Jones
K.D. Fleming