Leviathan (28 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

The struts leading to the airship were vibrating like piano strings, pulsing in time with the engine. The metal shivered in his hands, and Alek held tight against the icy winds, climbing quickly past the startled master engineer.
“Where are you going?” the man shouted.
Alek didn’t answer, his gaze fixed on the ground slipping past below. He couldn’t see how Dylan scrambled about on those ropes so casually. The leather safety harnesses the Darwinists wore hardly seemed thick enough to hold a man’s weight. Of course, they were probably made of
fabricated
leather, but that was only more unnerving.
The cilia rippled wildly on the creature’s flank, an ocean of shimmering grass, the ratlines fluttering in the wind. At least he wouldn’t have to dare the ropes. The struts led straight to an access hatch, which sat between the two ribs supporting the engine’s weight. Alek crawled through and headed down.
After the freezing wind outside, the warmth of the creature’s innards was welcoming, even with its odd and bitter smells. The ribs had a set of cross-ties between them, so Alek could imagine he was simply climbing down a ladder instead of crawling beneath the skin of a huge beast.
He’d been a fool not to realize that Volger would smuggle everything he could aboard the airship. The man never stopped scheming, never left the next step unplanned. Volger’s preparations for this war had taken fifteen years, after all. He wasn’t going to leave a quarter ton of gold behind without a fight.
Alek reached the bottom of the ladder, then dropped through another hatch into the main gondola. But then he paused, looking up and down the swaying corridors of the ship… .
Where was Volger’s cabin? Working all night on the engines, Alek hadn’t even slept in his. It didn’t help his sense of direction that crewmen were running everywhere, carrying furniture and spare uniforms to be tossed overboard.
Then he noticed that the gondola floor was tipping slightly to the left. Of course. The cabins they’d been given were all on the port side. And toward the bow—so the gold was dragging down the airship’s nose!
He ran forward until he spotted the familiar corridor. He threw open the door of Volger’s cabin. It was empty, except for a bed, a storage locker, and the Stormwalker’s wireless receiver on the desk.
Volger hadn’t left the gold in plain view, of course. Alek pulled out the desk drawers, but found nothing. The locker held only clothes and weapons from the castle stores.
Dropping to the floor, he spotted a map case under the bed. Alek reached underneath and tried to drag it out, but it wouldn’t budge—as heavy as a solid block of iron. He braced his feet on the bed and pulled at the case with both hands, but it still wouldn’t move.
Then Alek realized that the bed had to be far lighter than the gold, and flung it aside. But the latches of the map case were locked. He’d have to throw the whole thing out. Alek stood and pushed open the window, then tried to pick up the case.
It wouldn’t lift a centimeter off the ground. It was far too heavy.
“God’s wounds!” he swore, kicking at the lock.
“Looking for this?”
Alek looked up. Count Volger stood in the doorway, holding a key.
“Give me that, or we’re all dead!”
“Well, obviously. Why do you think I’m here?” Volger shut the door and crossed the room. “Beastly business, getting down from those engine pods.”
“But why?”
Volger knelt by the map case. “Klopp needed some translating.”
“No!” Alek groaned. “Why did you
do this
?”
“Bring along a vast fortune in gold? I should think that would be self-evident.” Volger unlocked the case with a flick of the key, then opened it.
The gold bars shone dully, a dozen of them—more than two hundred kilograms. Volger lifted a bar with both hands, grunting as he hurled it through the window. They both leaned forward, watching it flash in the sunlight as it fell.
“Well, that’s seventy thousand kroner gone,” Volger said.
Alek bent and lifted one, the muscles in his hands screaming as he heaved it up and out. “You almost got us all killed! Are you mad?”
“Mad?” Volger grunted, lifting another bar. “For trying to save what little of your inheritance you haven’t already thrown away?”
“This is an
airship
, Volger. Every gram makes a difference!” Alek pulled another bar from the case. “And you bring gold bullion aboard?”
“I didn’t think the Darwinists would cut it so close.” Volger grunted again, another gold bar spinning away. “And just imagine how pleased you’d have been if I’d been
right
.”
Alek groaned. Working alongside the
Leviathan
’s crew, he had absorbed the airmen’s mania about weight. But Volger thought in terms of heavy cannon and armored walkers.
Alek pushed another bar through the window—only six left.
“But we may as well finish the job,” Volger said. “Throw it all out, like the walker and the castle and ten years’ worth of supplies!”
“So
that’s
what this is about?” Alek said, lifting another bar. “That I’ve thrown away all your hard work? Don’t you realize we’ve gained something more important?”
“What could be more important than your birthright?”
“Allies.” Alek pushed the gold bar out the window. As it fell, he thought he felt the deck leveling beneath him. Maybe this was working.
“Allies?” Volger snorted, then lifted another bar and flung it out. “So your new friends are worth throwing away everything your father left you?”
“Not everything,” Alek said. “All my life you and my father prepared me for this war. Thanks to that, I don’t have to hide from it. Come on, there are only four left. The two of us can lift them all at once.”
“Still too heavy.” Volger shook his head. “Your father was an idealist and a romantic, and it cost him dearly. I always hoped you’d inherited a bit of your mother’s pragmatism.”
Alek looked down at the case.
Only four gold bars
… . He wondered what a boy like Dylan would say to such a fortune. Maybe it wasn’t entirely mad, what Volger had done.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps we could save one.”
Volger smiled as he knelt, pulling one of the bars out and sliding it back under the bed. “There may be hope for you after all, Alek. Shall we?”
Alek knelt across from him, and together they heaved the case up, Volger’s face turning red with the effort. Alek felt his own muscles throbbing in his arms.
Finally the case was resting on the windowsill. Alek took a step back, then threw himself against the case as hard as he could.
The last three bars spilled out as they fell toward the snow, spinning wildly and glittering with sunlight. Alek felt Volger’s grip on his shoulder, as if the man thought he would go tumbling after them. The airship pitched up beneath Alek’s feet, rolling to starboard as the weight of his father’s gold fell away.
“But I truly didn’t think it would matter, not on a ship this huge,” Volger said quietly. “I never meant to endanger you.”

“JETTISONING THE LAST INGOTS.”

“I know that,” Alek sighed. “Everything you’ve done has been to protect me. But I’ve chosen a different path now—one less safe. Either you recognize that or we part ways when this ship lands.”
Count Volger took a deep, slow breath, then bowed. “I remain at your service, Your Serene Highness.”
Alek rolled his eyes, and started to say more. But a light flickered outside, and they both leaned out the window again.
Flares were arcing up from the ground. The
Leviathan
had reached the first German scouts. Their mortars were firing, sending bright cinders aloft. Alek breathed in the sharp, familiar scent of phosphorous, and the rumble of nearby cannon reached his ears.
“I just hope we weren’t too late.”

THIRTY-NINE

“Off your bums, beasties!” Deryn shouted, sending another cluster of bats fluttering into the air.
Mr. Rigby had sent the middies forward to lighten the bow. Something heavy was holding the airship’s nose down. Either that or the forward hydrogen cells were leaking like mad. But the sniffers hadn’t found the slightest rip.
From up here Deryn could see the whole valley, and the view was barking dire. The Clanker walking machine had come to a halt a few miles away. Its scouts stretched in a line across the glacier, waiting for the airship to fly into their guns.
Suddenly the membrane reared beneath Deryn’s feet. The nose had tipped up a bit.
“Did you feel that?” Newkirk yelled from across the bow.
“Aye,
something’s
working,” she called back. “Keep rousting the beasties!”
Deryn unclipped her safety line and ran toward another cluster of bats, shouting and waving her arms. They turned to stare at her skeptically before scampering—they hadn’t been fed their fléchettes yet.
And they wouldn’t be anytime soon. When the ballast alert had sounded, Mr. Rigby had tossed two whole bags of spikes over the side. If the zeppelins caught up, the
Leviathan
would be defenseless, her flocks stuffed with plenty of food—but no metal—and now scattered to the winds.
At least the borrowed Clanker engines were working, so far. They were noisy and smelly, and threw out enough sparks to give Deryn the mortal shivers, but blisters could they push the ship along!
The old motivator engines had only nudged the airbeast in the right direction, like a plowman flicking a donkey’s ears. But now that was upside down: The cilia were acting like a rudder, setting the course while the Clanker engines propelled the ship.
Deryn hadn’t realized the whale could be such a clever-boots, adapting to the new engines so quickly. And she’d never seen an airship move this fast. The pursuing zeppelins—some of them small, nippy interceptors— were already falling behind.
But the German land machines still waited dead ahead.
The ship bucked again, and Deryn lost her footing, skidding down the slope. Her foot caught in a ratline, jerking her to a nasty halt.
“Safety first, Mr. Sharp!” Newkirk called, snapping the shoulder straps of his harness like suspenders.
“Pretty smug, for a bum-rag,” Deryn muttered, snapping her clip back onto a ratline. She gave the bats another halfhearted shout, but the ship didn’t seem to need it anymore. The airbeast’s nose was pulling up in starts, another jolt skyward coming every ten seconds or so.
It felt as if they were chucking officers out the bridge front window! But at least the ship was climbing.
Deryn eased forward a bit, until she had a good view of the Germans.
The little scout craft, skittering machines like metal daddy longlegs, were shooting off their mortars. But the barrage was only flares, which weren’t designed to climb very high. They arced a few hundred feet up and burned there uselessly, singeing the air beneath the gondola’s belly.
But now the big eight-legged walker’s guns were elevating, tracking the airship but holding their fire. At the speed the
Leviathan
was making, they’d only get one shot before she flew past them.
A command whistle began to scream, one long note, pitched almost too high to hear. The all-hands-aft signal!
Deryn turned and ran. On either side of her, sniffers scuttled along the membrane, headed toward the tail. The spine was crowded with men and beasts all running in the same direction, the air gun crews pulling up their weapons to carry them along.
It was a last, desperate attempt to move every squick of weight to the rear of the ship. Done all at once, it would tip the ship’s nose up, driving her still higher into the air.
Halfway back, Deryn saw flickers on the snow below, and glanced over her shoulder. The muzzles of the walker’s guns were blazing, smoke billowing out in clouds.
Before the rumble even reached her ears, the airship bucked again—harder this time, as if someone had tossed a grand piano overboard. The nose flew up, hiding Deryn’s view of the German walker, and the deck rolled hard to starboard. Whatever they’d tossed away, it had been on the port side.
She heard the tardy thunder of the guns then, and shells started arcing past. They were huge incendiaries, igniting the sky like gouts of frozen lightning.
One flew past so near that Deryn felt its heat on her cheeks and forehead. The air was instantly burned dry, her eyes forced half shut by the shell’s fury. The light from the flaming missiles threw the shadows of men and beasts across the membrane, stretched and misshapen by the airship’s curves.
But the entire barrage was flying too far to port.
The sudden loss of weight, whatever it had been, had rolled the airship out of the way just in time. And the riggers’ work over the last few days had held—not a squick of hydrogen was flaring from the skin.
But Deryn kept running for the ship’s tail, as did the rest of the topside crew. Not just to pull the ship up harder, but to see behind them.
There it was again, the eight-legged walker, now sliding into the distance astern. Its guns were swiveling, trying to spin around and fire once more. But the
Leviathan
’s new Clanker engines were carrying her away too fast.
By the time the guns blazed again, the burning shells fell hundreds of feet short. They dropped into the snow and expended their anger there, the walking machines vanishing behind a veil of steam.
Deryn joined the cheer that rose up along the spine. The hydrogen sniffers howled along, half mad from all the ruckus.
Newkirk appeared, panting and covered with sweat, and clapped her on the shoulder. “Blistering good fight! Eh, Mr. Sharp?”
“Aye, it was. I just hope it’s over.”
She raised her field glasses to gander at the zeppelins, now silhouetted by the setting sun. They’d fallen still farther behind, hopelessly outmatched by the Stormwalker engines.
“They’ll never catch up now,” she said. “Not with night falling.”

“THE
HERKULES
’ SHELLS GO WIDE.”

“But I thought those Predators were fast!”
“Aye, they are. But we’re faster, now that we’ve got those engines on us.”
“But haven’t they got Clanker engines too?” Newkirk asked.
Deryn frowned, looking down at the
Leviathan
’s flanks. The cilia were stirring madly, weaving the airflow around the ship, somehow adding the currents of the sky to the raw power of the engines.
“We’re something different now,” she said. “A little of us and a little of them.”
Newkirk thought a moment, then
hmph
ed and clapped her on the back again. “Well, frankly, Mr. Sharp, I don’t care if the kaiser himself gives us a push, as long as it gets us clear of this iceberg.”
“Glacier,” Deryn said. “But you’re right—it’s good to be flying again.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of freezing air, feeling the strange new thrum of the membrane beneath her boots.
Already, her air sense told her, the beast was veering south, setting course for the Mediterranean. The zeppelins behind were an afterthought; the Ottoman Empire lay ahead.
Whatever sort of tangled crossbreed the Clankers had made her into, the
Leviathan
had survived.