Free Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

mug.
    “Lovely shite, then,” Sabrina said, and shivered inside her wolf-fur coat. It was inordinately cold on the partially exposed weather deck of the moored
Arabella
, and as she listened to the rattle of the anchor chains through their capstans, she could only imagine how uncomfortable the cold was for the crew members on the envelope ratlines above, as they prepared to launch the little airship.
    “Envelope is swept,” Windermere reported. The snowstorm had forced the crew to sweep the snow off the fragile skin and spars as it collected throughout the night. “And sentries are in.”
    The crew dashed past Sabrina and Windermere in the lantern-lit darkness, boots plumping across the deck boards,coiling ropes and valving the hydrogen cells. The crew knew that the captain had not returned from the mountain by nightfall, as was planned. And now Sabrina deeply regretted giving him a few extra hours to make it back.
    “Mooring ropes are ready to be detached at your order, Lieutenant,” Windermere said. “Boilers are about two minutes shy, and after that we are ready to be away.”
    “Well done, Mister Windermere,” Sabrina replied, giving him a smile. Lieutenant Andrew Windermere, or Windy, as his crewmates called him, smiled back at her over his ruined coffee. His was a smile both stern and appealing, and he often used it. He was a tall, rail-thin man, twenty years of age, with a handsome, pleasant face, intelligent eyes, and a laugh like a donkey. His skin and eyes were a milk-chocolate brown, his hair short, black, and tightly curled—his family bloodline was heavy with something his mother described as Cajun. Nobody knew what Cajun was, but her dinner meats were dense with spices burned black.
    It was then that Sabrina wondered where Max was—she would normally have been in the thick of it, with the engineers. “Tell me, have you perchance seen the chief engineer?” Sabrina asked.
    Windermere shook his head. “No, ma’am, I have not.”
    “Very well. Prepare to cast off. I shall be on the bridge.”
    “Aye, Lieutenant,” Windermere said, jumping to assist a crew woman as she heaved a rope through a ratchet block. He was an excellent junior officer, just transferred to the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
, and promoted by Buckle from ensign to lieutenant. He was the chief elevatorman, replacing the late Ignatius Dunn. Buckle had also made him the acting master of the launch. Buckle had given Windermere a big role to fill—difficult fora new crewman who was not yet familiar with the Imperial-designed
Pneumatic Zeppelin
and her boisterous launch—but Buckle liked to vet his new officers early, overloading them without pity.
    Windermere did look a bit tired.
    Sabrina looked out into the night. The
Arabella
’s weather deck was open to the freezing air at her flanks, through the rigging-laced gaps between the fabric arches of the envelope skin overhead. The air was clear, and the cloud cover blanketed the pristine white snow with moonlight, while the rock-strewn world slumbered its ancient sleep. It was the kind of night in which men and women might feel their insignificance, and painfully so.
    Damn it, Romulus. Where are you?
    Over Sabrina’s head, the hydrogen cells rapidly inflated, hissing loudly through their wide-open supply valves, their tops pressing and creaking against the doped canvas skin, ribbing girders, and baggywrinkle-wrapped wires. The crew was hard at work at the winding wheels of the hawsers and anchors, planting their boots against the ballast tanks as they pushed. The airship bobbed, near imperceptibly, growing more buoyant. The buglight lanterns swung easily on their hooks, illuminating both sides of the deck at intervals of five yards.
    Sabrina was glad she had kept the crew aboard. The launch carried a standard complement of nineteen loyal souls, to be sure, but they tended to get scattered in the night if allowed to patronize local taverns. Tehachapi’s infamous watering hole, the Bloody