Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) Read Online Free Page B

themselves: it was a pleasant sound, a sort of a mix of a cat purring and a dove warbling. Max was a master of the coo because she was usually amused by herself and annoyed by everyone else. It was also her version of laughter, unless one could really get her splitting her sides. Sabrina could remember seeing Max laugh like that only once, when Sabrina was seventeen.
    “Pleased with ourselves, are we, Max?” Buckle said, also aware of the cooing.
    The cooing stopped. “Just be careful with my airship, Captain,” Max replied, her voice hollow but loud over the chattertube connection. As far as any crew member was concerned, the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was “my airship.” “Another hole would surely ruin my day.”
    Buckle leaned in to his chattertube mouthpiece and shouted, “Eyes up! Wait for the signal!” He pulled his saber down from its gargoyle pegs and clipped it to his belt.
    A signal flare rocketed up into the sky directly in front of the zeppelin’s cockpit dome, leaving a curling trail of black smoke until it popped, its burning magnesium casting an intense white arc as it floated down and disappeared into the bones below.
    “Signal flare sighted,” Sabrina commented dryly. “Thirty feet to ground.”
    Welly spun a hand crank. “Lowering static lines,” he said.
    “Pluteus sighted!” Max’s voice rang in the chattertube from her position in the belly turret. “Ten o’clock low.”
    Kellie barked, her tail wagging, ears bolt upright.
    “Right on time,” Sabrina said, nodding her approval as she eyed the copper-winged clock at her station. And sure enough, here came Pluteus B. B. Brassballs and his twenty-man company, filing through the snowdrifts, rubble, and bones. They were close, but Pluteus and his Crankshaft clan troopers, referred to as the “Ballblasters,” were never easy to see: the soldiers wore dun brown and white to match the dirty snow, and dulled the brass on their rifles to prevent them from gleaming in the diffused sunlight.
    Pluteus and his men were the closest thing the Crankshaft clan had to an army, an uneven collection of brawny ne’er-do-wells who excelled at the art of war, infantrymen who traveled light and struck hard at any target Admiral Balthazar Crankshaft ordered them to hit.
    Pluteus and his Ballblasters had been hunting for a Gallowglass clan airship that had reportedly crashed in the Boneyard a week before. The troopers carried pressurized tanks, hoping that they could locate the wreck and tap whateverprecious hydrogen might be left in the reservoir tanks before the yellow-fingered Scavengers tore everything to shreds. Hydrogen was lighter than air, but in the Snow World it carried more weight than gold.
    And now, with great suddenness, both the Ballblasters and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
had been called upon to embark on a mission that verged on suicide.
    “Prepare to take the passengers aboard with all good speed,” Buckle ordered.
    “Ten feet to ground,” Sabrina announced.
    Buckle ducked back inside the gondola, snapping his telescope shut and tucking it back into his hat. “All stop,” he ordered, leveraging the chadburn dial to its vertical slot.
    “All stop, aye,” engineering repeated, ringing the chadburn bell as their sister dial matched the first.
    Sabrina heard the whirling propellers go silent as they wound down to a lazy roll. Low as an earthworm’s balls and just as slow. Her stomach felt like there was a rock in it.
    “Be ready to bounce,” Buckle told Nero through clenched teeth. “I’ll want air and I’ll want it precipitously.”
    Buckle hated being on the ground like this. So, for that matter, did Sabrina.
    “Ready to bounce. Aye, Captain,” Nero replied.
    “We stop for nothing after this,” Buckle grumbled.
    “Airspeed zero. Hull at ground,” Sabrina said.
    Kellie started barking. It wasn’t a good bark. The hair jumped on the back of Sabrina’s neck.
    They were at their most vulnerable position. Stalled, with the gondola hulls