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

Haunch, would have left them disoriented by song, fiddle, and rotgut—and impossible to collect quickly.
    Sabrina breathed in through her nose, trying to smell the intentions of the weather. Somewhere a dog barked, the familiarsound instantly muted by the overwhelming presence of the surrounding wilderness.
    Sabrina tossed the cold coffee over the side and strode down the wooden stairs of the companionway, the one known for wailing like a mad cat in heavy weather. She arrived in the long tubular main hold of the
Arabella
, her stern end a beehive of activity as the engine crew stoked the boilers, the open hatches flooding the hold with a furious red-orange glow.
    Danny Faraday, the lead engineer, gave Sabrina a coal-stained salute. “We shall be all fired up in a jiffy, ma’am!” he shouted.
    “Aye, Mister Faraday,” Sabrina replied, and hurried forward to the bridge. There, the sprawling banks of instruments glowed green with bioluminescent boil, standing out brilliantly against the blackness of the night outside the glass nose dome, a darkness broken only by the swirling gleam of two buglight lanterns that rocked back and forth as their lines were hauled back up into their coil barrels under the envelope’s bow pulpit.
    Caspar Wong and Charles Mariner were already at their stations at the elevator and rudder wheels, and Alison Lawrence, the ballast officer, turned to Sabrina as she entered. “Cells at ninety percent, ma’am,” she said.
    “Flood to one hundred,” Sabrina ordered, plunking the empty coffee mug on the chart table. “It is damnably cold.”
    “Aye, aye,” Lawrence responded, turning her valve wheels.
    “Has anyone seen Lieutenant Max?” Sabrina asked.
    “No, ma’am,” came the universal response.
    Sabrina’s sixth sense tingled. She suspected, perhaps even
knew
, that the newly unpredictable Martian female had popped off on her own and followed Buckle up the mountain. Sabrina had seen Max’s eyes flash green and disturbed inside her goggles when Buckle made his decision—in his typical fashion—toclimb the dangerous heights alone, with only the wild-eyed mountain scout to accompany him.
    Sabrina heard footfalls moving quickly, coming toward the bridge from the main hold. She turned to find her assistant navigator, Ensign Wellington Bratt, dashing onto the bridge, near breathless, his face flushed, with Windermere and Lansa Lazlo, one of the riggers, close at his back. They were pulling a local man, dressed in thick sheepskins, with a leather slouch hat in his hand, along with them.
    “Lieutenant!” Welly shouted. “We have word on the captain!”
    “No need to shout, Mister Wellington,” Sabrina said calmly, as she turned about to face them, but the frightened look on Welly and Lazlo’s faces made her stomach grip hard.
    “Old Caruthers here, he owns the stable,” Welly said hurriedly. “He says that Captain Buckle’s horse came back a few minutes ago, riderless.”
    Of course. Damn that reckless Romulus Buckle, Sabrina thought. “And there is no sign of the captain or his mountain man?”
    “Nothing,” Welly breathed.
    Sabrina looked at Windermere, whose face was pale. The fear that she had anticipated had materialized. Captain Buckle was in trouble. “Damnable curses! Master of the Launch—screw in the hawsers and cast off on the double quick.”
    “Aye!” Windermere replied, striding forward onto the bridge, barking orders.
    “What about me horses?” Caruthers snapped. He was a skinny stableman with a light brown beard, who reeked of manure, horse sweat, and hay, and when his breath hit Sabrina, it was vastly more vile than all the other stinks put together. “You sky dogs paid for only one! Yer captain only rented my black, and if he dies I want satisfaction!”
    “The captain’s horse,” Welly said. “The horse named Cronos that the captain was riding, it was badly clawed across the haunches. Caruthers says it is a sabertooth wound, says beastie wounds often