Goliath

“What in blazes are you doing up here?”

“I’d like to interview you!” the woman yelled, then pulled out a notepad. The pages fluttered furiously, and her unsecured fedora lifted off and shot away. “Oh, dear.”

“Now’s not the barking time!” Deryn shouted. “As you can see, we’ve got a bit of trouble brewing!”

Miss Rogers peered into the distance. “Our ‘enemy’ ships would appear to be Mexican. Do you suppose they mean us harm?”

Deryn took the lady reporter by the arm, but pulling her back toward the hatchway proved impossible. The woman’s skirts caught the headwind like a frigate at full sail. It was a wonder she was standing at all.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Mr. Sharp.” Miss Rogers frowned. “Is there something moving in your jacket?”

“Aye, a message lizard.”

“How odd. Now, please tell me about these airships.”

Deryn glanced back at the Leviathan’s pursuers, then sighed. “If I answer a few questions for you, will you be sensible and go back down?”

“It’s a deal. Let’s say . . . three questions.”

“All right, then! But hurry!”

“Who is following us?”

“Mexicans.”

“Yes, but under which of the generals?” Miss Rogers asked. “You realize there’s a revolution on, don’t you?”

“I don’t know which general, and yes, I do realize there’s a revolution on. That was three questions. Now let’s go!”

She tried to pull Miss Rogers toward the hatch, but the woman stood firm. “Don’t be preposterous! That was only one question, which required two follow-ups due to your vagaries. My father was a lawyer, you know.”

“Barking spiders, miss! Why can’t you just—”

A metal shriek shattered the air, and a cloud of acrid smoke whipped across them both. Deryn turned into the wind, and saw the starboard Clanker engine spitting flame. With an awful groan its propeller seized, coughing out one last flurry of sparks.

“What in—,” Deryn began, but with one engine halted, the ship went into a sudden starboard turn. The spine rolled beneath them, and Deryn grabbed Miss Rogers’s arm and yanked them both to their knees. Tesla’s antenna slithered beside them, stretching tighter as the airbeast bent hard along its length.

A moment later the port engine coasted to a halt, and the ship began to straighten again.

“What’s going on?” Miss Rogers asked.

“No idea! But you’ll have to wait here.”

The airflow was already fading as the Leviathan slowed, and Deryn unclipped herself and ran forward toward the pods. Had the captain run the Clanker engines too hard this last week? Or was this sabotage?

But Mr. Francis had been followed from the first minute he’d come aboard, and the engines were manned at all times. It had to be a coincidence. . . .

Deryn reached the hump above the engines and pulled the message lizard from her jacket. “Starboard engine pod, this is Middy Sharp. Report!”

She set the beastie down, and it scampered toward the pod, making good time. Even with the electrical engines still churning, the wind of the ship’s passage was quickly dying. The airbeast’s cilia never pushed while the Clanker engines were at full-ahead, so they’d been quiet for the better part of ten days. It might take an hour to wake them up again.

“Barking Clankers,” she swore. Those contraptions had made the airbeast lazy. ='0em' width='1em'>To the west the Mexican airships were spreading out, taking time to surround their quarry. At this range Deryn could see their full wings and long whiplike tails, definitely based on the life threads of the manta ray. A brace of gasbags beneath the wings provided lift, with the Clanker engines slung in the middle. She recalled something like them from the Manual of Aeronautics, an experimental Italian craft, perhaps.

The manta ships weren’t large; they didn’t even carry a gondola. The crews rode in the ratlines on their backs, rifles in hand. The ships’ only heavy armament was a pair of Gatling guns for each ship, mounted fore and aft.

A line of strafing hawks was streaming out from the Leviathan, but not in attack formation yet. The birds encircled their airship home with a glittering ring of talons.

The starboard engine had stopped belching smoke, and Deryn saw a familiar spiked helmet down in the pod—Master Klopp’s. The Clanker machinery must have been acting up already, then. Since old Klopp’s injury, the engineers never called him to the pods unless things were going pear-shaped.

The message lizard scuttled back up, speaking in the master mechanic’s gruff German. “There’s something wrong with the fuel, Dylan. It tastes funny.”

Deryn frowned. Though she’d seen Klopp dip his finger into fuel and give it a sniff, she’d never seen him taste the stuff.

“The port engine will also be damaged if it keeps running,” the lizard continued. “Tell them to shut down.”

“What’s wrong with that critter?” came a voice from behind her. “Sounds like it’s talking German.”

Deryn sighed as she picked up the lizard. “Yes, Miss Rogers. One of Alek’s men is working down there. That’s a Clanker engine, after all.”

“And you understand German?”

“Well enough. I’ve worked with Master Klopp for more than two months now.”

“What a fine coincidence! You’ve got a German fellow working on your engine that just broke down!”

“Master Klopp is Austrian!” Deryn said, pushing past the woman and heading across the hump.

Miss Rogers followed, notebook in hand. “Mr. Sharp, do you still suspect Mr. Francis of German sympathies? While ignoring the actual Clankers on your ship?”

Deryn waved at the riggers, hoping one would take the reporter away, but they were scrambling to set up an air gun. She swore, storming to the far side of the hump to set the lizard down again.

“Port engine pod,” she told it. “This is Middy Sharp. Klopp says your fuel supply has something wrong with it. Don’t go to speed unless absolutely necessary! End message.”

As she shoved the lizard on its way, she realized the engineers would never obey herrders over the captain’s. Maybe she should have sent the lizard to the bridge instead.

Miss Rogers was scribbling in her notebook. “Fuel supply, eh?”

“Exactly.” Deryn stood up. “That’s the fuel that Mr. Hearst gave us, and it’s damaged our engines right in the middle of an ambush! Now does that sound like a coincidence to you?”

Miss Rogers scratched her nose with her pencil. “Hard to say.”

Deryn looked back at the Mexican airships. One was drawing abreast of the Leviathan, no more than a mile away, a line of semaphore flags running out across its wings.

G-R-E-E-T-I-N-G-S—L-E-V-I-A-T-H-A-N, they said.

“So now you’re being friendly,” she muttered.

“Who is?”

Deryn pointed at the flags. “They’ve sent us greetings.”

Another string followed, and she read them out to the reporter.

E-N-G-I-N-E—T-R-O-U-B-L-E—W-E—C-A-N—H-E-L-P.

“Well, that sounds friendly,” Miss Rogers said.

Deryn frowned. “Maybe so, but this is all a bit convenient. They knew just where to find us, and this is a barking big desert.”

“Young man, this is also a rather big airship.”

Deryn started to retort, but another string of flags was running out. “It says these airships follow the orders of General Villa.”