Leviathan (25 page)

“CLAMBERING UP INTO THE GEARS.”

Finally she was close enough to reach up and take Bauer’s hand. Hoffman grabbed hold, and the two of them pulled her inside in a squick.
“Willkommen an Bord,”
Bauer said with a smile, meaning “Welcome aboard,” of course.
Blisters, but Clanker-talk was easy.

THIRTY-TWO

“You’re white as a ghost!” Dr. Barlow said.
“It’s only flour.” Deryn pulled herself the rest of the way into the pilot’s cabin with a groan. Her hands ached from clinging to the flailing ladder, and the muscles in her arms were howling. Her heart still beat like a hammer.
“Flour?” Dr. Barlow said. “How odd.”
“Well done, Dylan!” Alek was twisting at the controls. “I’ve never seen anyone come aboard a walker that way!”
“I wouldn’t recommend it.” She plonked down on the lurching cabin floor, panting hard. Tazza crept over to nuzzle her hand, then sneezed out a snootful of flour.
Within moments Deryn felt dizzy from the walker’s motion. The trip out to the castle had been bad enough— the screech of metal against metal, the smell of oil and exhaust, and the endless, murderous noise of the engines. But at full trot, riding in the walker was like being shaken in a tin snuffbox. No wonder the Clankers wore those silly helmets; it was all Deryn could do to keep her head from banging against a wall.
Klopp, who was peering out the viewport through field glasses, said something in German to Alek.
“I thought
he
wasn’t helping,” Deryn muttered.
“That was when we could hide,” Dr. Barlow said. “Now that the Germans have certainly seen us, he’s changed his tune. If we don’t shoot both of those zeppelins down, they’ll report about our Austrian friends.”
“Well, he might have made up his mind a bit faster.” Deryn looked down at her aching hands. “I could’ve used some help cutting that chain.”
Dr. Barlow patted her shoulder. “You did well, Mr. Sharp.”
Deryn shrugged off the compliment and stood up. She’d had enough of being bounced about blindly. Grabbing on to two hand straps that hung from the ceiling, she pulled herself up and out the top hatch.
The cold hit her full in the face. It was like being on the spine of the airship in a storm, the horizon lurching around her with every step.
Deryn squinted into the eyeball-freezing wind. The zeppelins were skimming low, dragging ropes along the ground. Men slid down them, landing in the snow with guns and equipment on their backs.
But why bother? If they wanted to destroy the
Leviathan
, they could stay up high and use phosphorous bombs.
She dropped back inside. “They’re putting men down.”
“Those are Kondor Z-50s,” Alek said. “They carry commandoes instead of heavy weapons.”
“It seems their objective is to capture our ship,” Dr. Barlow said.
“Blisters!” Deryn swore. A live hydrogen breather in the Clankers’ hands would be a disaster; they’d learn everything there was to know about the great ship’s weaknesses. “But aren’t they afraid of
us
?”
“They’ll have anti-walker guns aboard,” Alek said grimly. “They can’t fire them from the air. But from the ground, they’ll give us a fight.”
Deryn swallowed. It was bad enough, riding in this contraption. But the thought of being broiled alive by some armor-piercing shell made her ill.
“We need your help again, Dylan.”
She stared at Alek. “Do you want me to
drive
this barking contraption now?”
“No,” he said. “But tell me, do you know how to fire a Spandau machine gun?”
Deryn knew no such thing, but she’d fired an air gun plenty of times.
This was quite different, of course. Like everything else made by Clankers, it was ten times louder, shakier, and more cantankerous than it looked. When she gave the trigger a test squeeze, it rattled like a piston in her hands. Bullet casings spewed from its side, bouncing from the cabin wall in a hot metal hail.
“Cripes!” she swore. “How do you hit anything with this?”
“Simply point it in the general direction,” Dr. Barlow said. “What the Clankers lack in finesse they make up for with blanket ruination.”
Deryn leaned forward, squinting out the tiny peephole. All she could see was snow and sky bouncing along. She felt claustrophobic and half blind. It was the opposite of watching from the
Leviathan
’s spine, with the battle spread out below like the pieces on a chessboard.
She glanced over at Klopp, who was manning the other machine gun. Instead of looking out, he was waiting for Alek to tell him when to fire.
“Stuff this. I’ll be back in a squick,” Deryn said, pulling herself up through the hatch again.
Both Kondors had dropped commandoes now. One group was storming toward the
Leviathan
, their zeppelin supporting them with machine-gun fire. The other bunch was assembling some sort of artillery, a long-barreled field gun that was pointed straight at the Stormwalker.
“Oh, blisters,” she said.

“DIE ANTI-WANDERPANZER TRUPPEN.”

The Clankers worked swiftly, and a moment later the gun’s muzzle erupted with flame. The walker twisted beneath her, throwing her hard against the side of the hatch. She barely kept from falling back through, her feet flailing below.
For a moment Deryn thought they’d been hit. But then she felt the shell whiz by, her ears popping as its passed. The Stormwalker staggered into a long turn, finally regaining its balance on the snow.
Alek was either barking
brilliant
at the controls, or he was completely mad. They were headed straight for the anti-walker gun, lurching back and forth across its sights while the crew desperately reloaded.
Deryn dropped back inside and took her machine gun, aiming it low. She reckoned they’d be among the Germans in another five seconds, if they hadn’t already been blown to blazes.
“Get ready!” Alek shouted.
Deryn didn’t wait, and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped and rattled in her hands, spewing death in all directions. A few dark shapes slipped past her peephole, but she had no idea whether they were men or rocks or the anti-walker gun.
A metal
clank
shook the cabin, and suddenly the world was staggering to port. Deryn was thrown from her gun, her feet slipping on spent casings rolling across the floor. She landed on something soft, which turned out to be Dr. Barlow and Tazza huddled in the corner.
“Sorry, ma’am!” she cried.
“Not to worry,” the lady boffin said. “You really are quite insubstantial.”
“I think we hit it!” Alek said, still twisting at the controls.
Deryn scrambled to her feet and pulled herself up and out the hatch again. Behind them the anti-walker gun lay wrecked in their giant footprints—overturned, the barrel bent. Its crew were scattered, a few motionless, the white snow about them flecked with vivid red.
“You stomped it, Alek!” she shouted down, her voice hoarse.
She spun around to face forward. The Stormwalker was headed for the other group of commandoes now. They were hunkered down in the snow, an aerie of strafing hawks skimming over them, razor talons glimmering in the sun.
A few of the commandoes turned and saw the walker coming at them, and Deryn wondered if she should drop down to fire her murderous weapon again. But then the Stormwalker shook beneath her. A cloud of smoke spewed from its belly, billowing over Deryn and filling her mouth with an acrid taste.
Her eyes stung, but she forced them open as the shell hit. It exploded among the commandoes, throwing men in all directions.
“Barking spiders,” she murmured.
When the smoke and snow flurries subsided, nothing moved except a few strafing hawks flapping back toward the
Leviathan
. Deryn glanced back at the field gun. The remaining crew were running away, a Kondor coming down to skim them from the ice.
The Clankers were in retreat!
But where was that
other
zeppelin?
She scanned the horizon—nothing. Then a shadow flickered on the snow, due west, and Deryn looked straight up. The airship was directly overhead, its bomb racks bristling. A cloud of fléchette bats swirled farther up, and she saw a concussion shell arcing its way from the
Leviathan
, its big harmless
boom
about to scare the clart right out of them.
She grabbed the hatch handle and dropped, pulling it shut behind her.
“Bombs coming!” she cried. “And barking fléchettes as well!”
“Vision to quarter,” Alek said calmly, and Klopp started turning a crank over at his side of the cabin. Deryn saw an identical one beside her, and wondered which way it was meant to go.
As her hand reached out for it, the world exploded… .
A blinding flash lit the cabin, followed by a peal of thunder that threw Deryn off her feet again. The floor was tipping, everything sliding to starboard. The shriek of gears and Tazza howling filtered into her half-deafened ears, and her shoulder struck metal as the whole cabin lurched once—hard.
Then an avalanche of snow was pouring in through the viewport, a rush of cold and sudden silence burying her …

THIRTY-THREE

Alek tried to move, but his arms were pinned, wrapped in a freezing embrace of snow.
He struggled for a moment, then realized he was still strapped into the pilot’s seat. As he opened the buckles and slipped from the chair, the world seemed to reorient itself.
The viewport was sideways, like the vertical slit of a cat’s eye.
Now that he thought of it, the whole cabin was sideways. The starboard wall was now the floor, and the hand straps all hung helter-skelter.
Alek blinked, unable to believe it. He’d wrecked the walker.
The cabin was dark—the lights had failed—and strangely silent. The engines must have shut down automatically in the fall. Alek heard breathing beside him.
“Klopp,” he said, “are you all right?”
“I think so, but something’s …” The man lifted one arm. Tazza crawled out from beneath it with a plaintive whine, then shook himself, spraying snow across the cabin.
“Do stop that, Tazza,” Dr. Barlow’s voice came from the darkness.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” Alek asked.
“I am, but Mr. Sharp appears to be hurt.”
Alek crawled closer. Dylan lay with his head in Dr. Barlow’s lap, his eyes closed. A fresh cut stretched across his forehead, blood running into his black eye from the crash. His thin features were pale behind the bruising.
Alek swallowed. This was
his
fault—he’d been at the controls.
“Help me find some bandages, Klopp.”
Shoveling snow aside, they managed to get the storage locker open. Klopp pulled out two first-aid kits and handed one to Alek.
“I’ll see to Mr. Sharp,” Dr. Barlow said, taking the kit from him. “I’m not as hopeless a nurse as I pretend.”
Alek nodded and turned to help Klopp with the belly hatch, which was now in the wall of the upended cabin. The mechanism resisted for a moment, then opened with an angry metal screech.
Hoffman, strapped sideways into the gunner’s chair, called out that he and Bauer were bumped and bruised, but whole. Alek breathed a sigh of relief. At least he hadn’t killed anyone.
He turned to Klopp. “I’m sorry I fell.”
The man let out a snort. “Took you long enough, young master. Now we can finally call you a proper pilot.”
“What?”
“You think I’ve never wrecked a walker?” Klopp laughed. “It’s all part of learning the craft, young master.”
Alek blinked, not sure if the man was kidding.
A metal
plink
rang through the cabin. Klopp looked up as another, then more, followed, like a hailstorm slowly building.
“Fléchettes,” Dr. Barlow said.
“Let’s hope they get those zeppelins,” Klopp said softly. “Otherwise Count Volger will be very unhappy with us.”
“I’ll take a look outside,” Alek said. “We might be able to stand up and rejoin the fight.”
Klopp shook his head. “Not likely, young master. Stay here till the battle’s over.”
“That sounds like wise advise,” Dr. Barlow said in German.
But the rain of fléchettes was tapering off, and Alek heard the sound of airship engines close by.
“I have to see what’s going on,” he said. “We’ve still got a working machine gun!”

“STANDING FIRM.”

Klopp tried to argue, but Alek ignored him, shoveling a few handfuls of snow aside and shimmying out the viewport.
The sunlit snow was blinding for a moment, except for the dark crater left by the zeppelin’s aerial bomb. Almost a direct hit. The Stormwalker’s trail of footprints went straight into the blackened hole, then zigzagged to where the machine lay in a crumpled heap.
Alek flexed his hands, remembering his struggle to keep the walker upright. He’d almost done it. But
almost
meant nothing now. The engine casing was cracked; hot oil steamed out onto the snow. One giant metal leg was twisted wrong. The machine couldn’t possibly stand again.
He tore his eyes away, scanning the sky. The Kondor that had bombed them was barely a hundred meters away. It was flying just above the snow, its gasbag fluttering, full of holes from the fléchette attack.
Shouts came from up on its topside. Two airmen had seen him, and were swinging a machine gun around.
Then Alek realized where he was standing—right in front of the walker’s breastplate, the Hapsburg coat of arms proclaiming exactly who and what he was …
An utter fool.
Before he could move, the Kondor’s machine gun erupted. Bullets rang from the walker’s steel hull and kicked up snow around his feet. Alek froze, waiting for hot metal to rip through his flesh.
But then the air began to crinkle around the zeppelin. The dazzling flash of the machine gun was spreading, shimmering down the airship’s flanks. Too late, the German airmen realized what was happening. The gun fell silent.
But the flame was a living thing now, dancing in the hydrogen spilled from the torn skin. The Kondor dropped, its gondola thudding against the snow. The gasbag crumpled, squeezing more hydrogen from the holes, and a hundred fiery geysers erupted.
Alek squinted and covered his face. The whole airship glowed from within as it rose up, carried back into the sky by its own heat. The aluminum skeleton inside was melting. The Kondor twisted, then broke in the middle, a huge mushroom of fire bellowing from the split.
And then the two halves were swirling downward again.
They seemed to hit the ground gently, but the snow shrieked and hissed as melted metal and burning hydrogen turned it to steam. White clouds billowed around the two halves of wreckage, and Alek heard awful cries over the roar of flame.
“You Clankers really should use air guns.”
Alek turned. “Dylan! Are you all right?”

“AS THE KONDOR BURNS.”

“Aye, you know me,” the boy said. His forehead was bandaged, his eyes bright as he watched the inferno. “A bit of smelling salts and I’m back on my feet.” He smiled, then swayed a bit.
Alek put an arm around the boy’s shoulders to steady him, but their eyes were drawn to the dying airship again.
“Horrible, isn’t it?” Alek whispered.
“Too much like my nightmares.” Dylan looked around. “Look, the other one’s scampering.”
Alek turned. The second zeppelin was in the distance, headed away. A few of the
Leviathan
’s larger hawks were giving chase, harrying the crew on its back. But soon it had slipped over the mountains, making for the floating hangars on Lake Constance.
“We beat them,” Dylan said with a weary smile.
“Maybe. But now they know where we are.”
Alek looked at the Stormwalker again—broken and silent, except for a hiss where hot oil was leaking onto the snow. If Klopp couldn’t fix it, the Germans would have two prizes waiting when they returned: the wounded
Leviathan
and the missing prince of Hohenberg.
“When they come back,” he said, “they’ll bring more than a pair of Kondors.”
“Aye, maybe.” Dylan clapped his shoulder. “But don’t worry, Alek. We’ll be ready for them.”

“Perhaps the Darwinists can help us,” Klopp said.
Alek looked up from the engine hatch, where he was passing tools to Hoffman. The transmission wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. Every drop of oil was spilled, but none of the gears had cracked.
The real problem was standing up again. One of the walker’s knees was twisted. It might have the strength to walk, but scrambling to its feet was a different matter.
Alek shook his head. “I doubt they have any creatures strong enough to lift a walker.”
“They have one,” Klopp said, gazing at the vast bulk of the airship. “When that godforsaken beast goes up, we can run cables to the Stormwalker. Like lifting a puppet on strings.”
“A thirty-five-ton puppet?” Alek wished that Dr. Barlow were still here; she would know the
Leviathan
’s lifting capacity. But she and Dylan had headed off to check her precious eggs.
“Why not?” Klopp said, looking back at the castle. “They’ve got all the food they could ask for.”
Across the glacier the Stormwalker’s abandoned cargo was swarming with birds. The Darwinists had sent a work party to chop open the boxes and barrels, and hungry flocks had soon descended.
The
Leviathan
’s creatures seemed to know there was no time to lose.
“Young master?” Hoffman said quietly. “Here comes trouble.”
Alek looked up and saw a figure in a fur coat coming across the snow. He felt his mouth go dry.
Count Volger wore a cold expression. One hand was clenched around the pommel of his sword.
“Do you know what you’ve done to us?” he said.
Alek’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“It was my—,” Klopp started.
“Be silent.” Volger held up a hand. “Yes, you should have knocked this young idiot on the head to keep him out of sight. But I want to hear
his
explanation, not yours.”
“In point of fact they knocked
me
on the head,” Klopp mumbled, heading off to help Bauer.
Alek drew himself up. “It was the right choice, Count. Shooting down both of those zeppelins was our only chance to stay hidden.” He pointed at the charred remains across the snow. “We got
one
of them, after all.”
“Yes, bravo,” Volger said, acid in his voice. “I witnessed your brilliant strategy of standing in front of its guns.”
Alek took a slow breath. “Count Volger, you will kindly keep a civil tone.”
“You abandon your post, you ignore your own safety, and now this!” Volger pointed at the broken walker, his hand quivering with anger and disgust. “And you’re telling me to be
civil
? Don’t you realize that the Germans will be back soon, and you’ve left us with no way to escape!”
“It was a risk I was willing to take.”
Volger’s voice dropped. “It’s one thing to risk yourself, Alek, but what about the lives of your men? What do you think will happen to
them
when the Germans come?”
Alek glanced at the spot where Klopp had been standing, but the other three men had found work for themselves out of sight.
“Klopp says we can repair the walker.”
“I may be a cavalry officer, Alek, but I can see that this machine won’t stand on its own.”
“No. But the Darwinists can pull us upright, once they reinflate the airship.”
“Forget your new friends,” Volger said bitterly. “After this last attack their ship is beyond repair.”
“But the zeppelins hardly touched it.”
“Only because they wanted to capture the airbeast alive,” Count Volger said. “So they focused their fire on the mechaniks. From what I’ve overheard, the engines are shot to pieces—impossible to fix.”
Alek peered at the giant black shape splayed across the snow, the birds whirling overhead. “But they’re reinflating the ship. They must be planning something.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Volger said. “They’re going up without engines, like a hot-air balloon. An east wind will carry them over France. It should work, as long as that wind arrives before the Germans do.”
Alek looked at the Stormwalker, despairing. Maybe they could still pull the walker upright … but the
Leviathan
would never have enough control to set the walker on its feet.
Volger took a step closer, the anger fading from his face. Suddenly he looked exhausted. “It’s up to you to decide, Alek, if you want to surrender.”
“Surrender?” Alek said. “But the Germans would hang me.”
“No—to the Darwinists. Tell them who and what you are, and I’m sure they’ll take you with them. You’ll be a prisoner, but you’ll be safe. Perhaps they’ll win this war. And then, if you’ve been obedient, they might install you on the throne of Austria-Hungary, a friendly puppet emperor to keep the peace.”
Alek took a step backward in the snow. Volger
couldn’t
be saying this. It was one thing to stay hidden—no one expected a fifteen-year-old to fight on the front lines. But surrendering to the enemy?
He’d be remembered as a traitor for all time.
“There must be another choice.”
“Of course. You can stay here and fight when the Germans come. And die with the rest of us.”
Alek shook his head. It made no sense, Volger talking like this. The man
always
had a strategy, some plan to bend the world to his will. He couldn’t be giving up.
“You needn’t decide yet, Alek,” Volger said. “We have a day or so before the Germans return. You might have a long life in front of you, if you surrender.” He shrugged again. “But I’m done with giving you advice.”
With that, the man turned and walked away.