Behemoth (2 page)

It hardly seemed fair, thinking of Alek as an enemy after he’d saved the airship—two times now. Once from an icy death, by giving them food, and the second time from the Germans, by handing over the engines that had allowed them all to escape.

The Germans were still hunting Alek, trying to finish the job they’d started on his parents.
Someone
had to be on his side.…

And, as Deryn had gradually admitted to herself these last few days, she didn’t mind if that someone wound up being her.

A fluttering in the sky caught her attention, and Deryn let her aching sword arm drop.

“Hah!” Alek said. “Had enough?”

“It’s Newkirk,” she said, trying to work out the boy’s frantic signals.

The semaphore flags whipped through the letters once more, and slowly the message formed in her brain.

“Two sets of smokestacks, forty miles away,” she said, reaching for her command whistle. “It’s the German ironclads!”

She found herself smiling a little as she blew—Constantinople might have to wait a squick.

The alarm howl spread swiftly, passing from one hydrogen sniffer to the next. Soon the whole airship rang with the beasties’ cries.

Crewmen crowded the spine, setting up air guns and taking feed bags to the fléchette bats. Sniffers scampered across the ratlines, checking for leaks in the
Leviathan
’s skin.

Deryn and Alek cranked the Huxley’s winch, drawing Newkirk down closer to the ship.

“We’ll leave him at a thousand feet,” Deryn said,
watching the altitude markings on the rope. “The lucky sod. You can see the whole battle from up there!”

“But it won’t be much of a battle, will it?” Alek asked. “What can an airship do to a pair of ironclads?”

“My guess is, we’ll stay absolutely still for an hour. Just so we don’t fall into any bad habits.”

Alek rolled his eyes. “I’m serious, Dylan. The
Leviathan
has no heavy guns. How do we fight them?”

“A big hydrogen breather can do plenty. We’ve got a few aerial bombs left, and fléchette bats …” Deryn’s words faded. “Did you just say ‘we’?”

“Pardon me?”

“You just said, ‘How do
we
fight them?’ Like you were one of us!”

“I suppose I might have.” Alek looked down at his boots. “My men and I
are
serving on this ship, after all, even if you are a bunch of godless Darwinists.”

Deryn smiled again as she secured the Huxley’s cable. “I’ll make sure to mention that to the captain, next time he asks if you’re a Clanker spy.”

“How kind of you,” Alek said, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “But that’s a good point—will the officers trust us in battle?”

“Why wouldn’t they? You saved the ship—gave us engines from your Stormwalker!”

“Yes, but if I hadn’t been so generous, we’d still be
stuck on that glacier with you. Or in a German prison, more likely. It wasn’t exactly out of friendship.”

Deryn frowned. Maybe things
were
a squick more complicated now, what with a battle coming up. Alek’s men and the
Leviathan
’s crew had become allies almost by accident, and only a few days ago.

“You only promised to help us get to the Ottoman Empire, I suppose,” she said softly. “Not to fight other Clankers.”

Alek nodded. “That’s what your officers will be thinking.”

“Aye, but what are
you
thinking?”

“We’ll follow orders.” He pointed toward the bow. “See that? Klopp and Hoffman are already at work.”

It was true. The engine pods on either side of the great beastie’s head were roaring louder, sending two thick columns of exhaust into the air. But to see the Clanker engines on a Darwinist airship was just another reminder of the strange alliance the
Leviathan
had entered into. Compared to the tiny British-made engines the ship was designed to carry, they sounded and smoked like freight trains.

“Maybe this is a chance to prove yourself,” Deryn said. “You should go lend your men a hand. We’ll need good speed to catch those ironclads by nightfall.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “But don’t get yourself killed.”

“I’ll try not to.” Alek smiled and gave her a salute. “Good luck, Mr. Sharp.”

He turned and ran forward along the spine.

Watching him go, Deryn wondered what officers down on the bridge were thinking. Here was the
Leviathan
, entering battle with new and barely tested engines, run by men who should by all rights be fighting on the other side.

But the captain didn’t have much choice, did he? He could either trust the Clankers or drift helplessly in the breeze. And Alek and his men had to join the fight or they’d lose their only allies. Nobody seemed to have much choice, come to think of it.

Deryn sighed, wondering how this war had got so muddled.

As he ran toward the engines, Alek wondered if he’d told Dylan the whole truth.

It felt wrong, hurrying to join this attack. Alek and his men had fought Germans—even fellow Austrians—a dozen times while fleeing to Switzerland. But this was different—these ironclads weren’t hunting him.

According to wireless broadcasts that Count Volger had overheard, the two ships had been trapped in the Mediterranean at the start of the war. With the British in control of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, there’d been no way for them to get back to Germany. They’d been running for the past week.

Alek knew what it felt like to be hounded, trapped in a fight that someone else had started. But here he was, ready to help the Darwinists send two ships full of living, breathing men to the bottom of the sea.

The vast beast rolled under his feet, the tendrils that covered its flanks undulating like windblown grass, pulling it into a slow turn. Fabricated birds swirled around Alek, some already harnessed and carrying instruments of war.

That was another difference. This time he was fighting side by side with these creatures. Alek had been raised to believe they were godless abominations, but after four days aboard the airship, their squawks and cries had begun to sound natural. Except for the awful fléchette bats, fabricated beasts could even seem beautiful.

Was he turning into a Darwinist?

When he reached the spine above the engine pods, Alek headed down the port side ratlines. The airship was tilting into a climb, the sea falling away below him. The ropes were slick with salty air, and as he strained to keep from falling, questions of loyalty fled his mind.

By the time he reached the engine pod, Alek was soaked in sweat and wishing he hadn’t worn fencing armor.

Otto Klopp was at the controls, his Hapsburg Guard uniform looking tattered after six weeks away from home. Beside him stood Mr. Hirst, the
Leviathan
’s chief engineer, who was studying the roaring machine with a measure of distaste. Alek had to admit, churning pistons and spitting glow plugs looked bizarre beside the undulating flank of the airbeast, like gears attached to a butterfly’s wings.

“Master Klopp,” Alek shouted over the roar. “How’s she running?”

The old man looked up from the controls. “Smoothly enough, for this speed. Do you know what’s going on?”

Of course, Otto Klopp spoke hardly any English. Even if a message lizard had brought the news up to the pod, he wouldn’t know why the airship was changing course. All he’d seen were color codes flashed from the bridge to the signal patch, orders to be obeyed.

“We’ve spotted two German ironclads.” Alek paused—had he said “we” again? “The ship is giving chase.”

Klopp frowned, chewing on the news for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, the Germans haven’t done us any favors lately. But it’s also true, young master, that we could blow a piston at any time.”

Alek looked away into the spinning gears. The newly rebuilt engines were still cantankerous, with unexpected problems always cropping up. The crew would never know if a temporary breakdown were intentional.

But this was no time to betray their new allies.

For all the talk of Alek saving the
Leviathan
, the airship had really saved him. His father’s plan had been for Alek to hide in the Swiss Alps for the entire war, emerging only to reveal his secret—that he was heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. The airship’s crash landing had rescued him from long years of skulking in the snow.

He owed the Darwinists for saving him, and for trusting his men to run these engines.

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, Otto.”

“As you say, sir.”

“Anything wrong?” Mr. Hirst asked.

Alek switched to English. “Not at all. Master Klopp says she’s running smoothly. I believe Count Volger is assigned to the starboard engine crew. Shall I stay here and translate for you two?”

The chief engineer handed Alek a pair of goggles to protect his eyes from sparks and wind. “Please do. We wouldn’t want any … misunderstandings in the heat of battle.”

“Of course not.” Alek pulled on the goggles, wondering if Mr. Hirst had noticed Klopp’s hesitation. As the airship’s chief engineer, Hirst was a rare Darwinist with an understanding of machines. He always watched Klopp’s work on the Clanker engines with admiration, even though the two didn’t share a language. There was no point in arousing his suspicions now.

Hopefully this battle would be over quickly, and they could head on to Constantinople without delay.

As night fell, two dark slivers came into view on the horizon.

“The little one’s not much to look at,” Klopp said, lowering his field glasses.

Alek took the glasses and peered through them. The smaller ironclad was already damaged. One of its gun turrets had been blackened by a fire, and an oil slick spread in the ship’s wake, a shimmering black rainbow in the setting sun.

“They’ve been in a fight already?” he asked Mr. Hirst.

“Aye, the navy’s been hunting them all over the Mediterranean. They’ve been shelled a few times from a distance, but they keep slipping away.” The man smiled. “But they won’t escape this time.”

“They certainly can’t outrun us,” Alek said. The
Leviathan
had closed a gap of sixty kilometers in a few hours.

“And they can’t fight back either,” Mr. Hirst said. “We’re too high for them to hit. All we have to do is slow them down. The navy’s already on its way.”

A
boom
rang out on the spine above, and a swarm of black wings lifted from the front of the airship.

“They’re sending in fléchette bats first,” Alek said to Klopp.

“What sort of godless creature is that?”

“They eat spikes,” was all Alek could say. A shudder passed through him.

The swarm began to muster, forming a black cloud in the air. Searchlights sprang to life on the gondola, and as the sunlight faded, the bats gathered in the beams like moths.

The
Leviathan
had lost countless beasts in her recent battles, but the airship was slowly repairing itself. More
bats were already breeding, like a forest recovering after a long hunting season. The Darwinists called the ship an “ecosystem.”

From a distance there was something mesmerizing about the way the dark swarm swirled in the searchlights. It coiled toward the smaller ironclad, ready to unleash its rain of metal spikes. Most of the crew would be safe beneath armor plating, but the men at the smaller deck guns would be torn to pieces.

“Why start with bats?” Alek asked Hirst. “Fléchettes won’t sink an ironclad.”

“No, but they’ll shred her signal flags and wireless aerials. If we can keep the two ships from communicating, they’re less likely to split up and make a run for it.”

Alek translated for Klopp, who pointed a finger into the distance. “The big one’s coming about.”

Alek raised the field glasses again, taking a moment to find the larger ship’s silhouette against the darkening horizon. He could just read the name on her side—the
Goeben
looked far more formidable than her companion. She had three big gun turrets and a pair of gyrothopter catapults, and the shape of her wake revealed a set of kraken-fighting arms beneath the surface.

On her aft deck stood something strange—a tall tower that bristled with metal rigging, like a dozen wireless transmitters crammed together.

“What’s that on her back side?” Alek asked.

Klopp took the glasses and stared. He’d worked with German forces for years, and usually had a lively opinion on military matters. But now he frowned, his voice hesitant.

“I’m not sure. Reminds me of a toy I once saw …” Klopp squeezed the glasses tighter. “She’s launching a gyrothopter!”

A small shape hurtled into the air from one of the catapults. It banked hard and came whirring toward the bats.

“What’s he up to?” Klopp asked softly.

Alek watched with a frown on his face. Gyrothopters were fragile machines, barely strong enough to lift a pilot. They were designed for scouting, not attack. But the little aircraft was headed straight at the cloud of bats, its twin rotors spinning wildly.

As it neared the fluttering swarm, the gyrothopter suddenly kindled in the darkness. Bolts of flame shot from its front end, a spray of brilliant crimson fireworks that stretched across the sky.

Alek remembered something that Dylan had said about the bats—they were deathly afraid of red light; it scared the spikes right out of them.