Leviathan

eyes, shielding them from distractions and the sting of bullets.

Another aeroplane roared beneath them, its machine gun firing at the port engine pod. The sound of shrieking gears rang in the cold air. In answer, two searchlight beams swept to follow the plane, full of dark and fluttering shapes… .

Deryn watched with horror. The searchlight crews weren’t bothering to turn the beams red, the signal for the bats to release their flechettes. They were guiding the flock straight into the path of the Clanker aircraft. The bats themselves weren’t very heavy, but the metal spikes in their guts were enough to shred the aeroplane. The sickening shrieks of the poor wee creatures carried over the noise of ruined engines and tearing wings.

As Deryn watched the aircraft fall, her feet slipped. The ground was shifting beneath her.

“We’re diving, lads!” Mr. Rigby shouted. “Get hold of something!”

Snow-covered mountains tilted into view ahead, and Deryn’s stomach twisted. The airship had never dived this fast! Deryn dropped flat, fingers scrabbling for purchase. The feed bag skidded away, spilling figs and flechettes into the night sky.

She was still sliding … falling.

Then the safety line jerked, bringing Deryn to a halt. She looked up to see Newkirk and Rigby settled in a nesting cove, bats swirling around their heads.

She pulled herself up into the warmth of the cove. It was full of bat dung and old flechettes, but there were plenty of handholds, at least.

“Glad you could join us, Mr. Sharp,” Newkirk said, grinning like a loon. “This is brilliant, isn’t it?”

Deryn frowned. “When did you get so brave?”

Before he could answer, the world rolled beneath them again.

“We’ve lost an engine,” Mr. Rigby said.

Deryn closed her eyes, listening to the pulse of the airship. The ship sounded weak. It flew at an odd angle, the airflow turbulent around them.

Clanker aeroplanes still rumbled out there in the darkness—two of them, by the sound—and the Leviathan’s searchlight beams looked almost empty of bats. The beasties were uselessly scattered across the night sky, too scared by gunfire and collisions to reform.

“We need more bats in the air!” Mr. Rigby shouted, and swiftly unwound a rope from his belt, replacing the line connecting Deryn and Newkirk with a fifty-foot length. “There’s a big cove below us, Sharp. Swing down and see if you can scare up a few more of the little blighters.” He shoved his own feed bag into her hands. “Make sure the beasties are stuffed before you boot them out.”

“What about me?” Newkirk complained. Battle seemed to agree with him, but Deryn just felt airsick from it all.

“When I’ve got a longer line on you,” Rigby said, still working his ropes. “Don’t fancy losing my last two middies.”

Deryn climbed over the edge of the cove, trying to ignore the mountain peaks rising steadily toward them. Had the airship lost too much hydrogen to stay aloft?

She forced the thoughts from her head, carefully making her way down toward a dark rift in the airbeast’s skin. The growl of a Clanker engine was building in her ears, but Deryn didn’t dare look away from her feet and hands.

Only a few more yards …

A machine gun erupted behind her, and she pressed flat against the Leviathan, closing her eyes and whispering, “Don’t worry, beastie. I’ll get these bum-rags sorted for you.”

Searchlights flashed across her closed eyelids, and the machine roared away, leaving the foul smell of its engine fumes mixed with leaking hydrogen.

Deryn let herself drop the last few feet, her boots barely catching the lip of the cove. She clung to the rope and swung inside, skidding onto her knees.

The cove was empty. Not a single bat remained to take the air.

“Barking spiders,” Deryn swore softly.

The floor shifted beneath her, and she turned and looked back out. The horizon tilted. Then the mountains disappeared, replaced by the cold and starry sky… . The Leviathan was climbing again!

She pulled herself out of the cove. The slope she’d descended was almost level now that the ship was climbing again. Rigby and Newkirk were out in the open, their harnesses joined by a long rope.

“No luck, sir,” she cried up. “I think they’re all gone!”

“Come on, then, lads.” Mr. Rigby turned and started back up toward the spine. “Let’s get off the bow before she dives again.”

The three of them spread out to the full length of their safety lines, rousting the last few bats on the way up. Deryn climbed as fast as she could. With the airship twisting and turning like this, being topside didn’t seem quite so brilliant anymore.

The last two aeroplanes still skulked in the distance, and Deryn wondered what they were waiting for. A few strafing hawks were in the air, but their nets looked tattered. Only one searchlight was lit—the crew trying to gather the flechette bats into a single flock.

Up on the spine things had got worse. The forward air gun was being pulled apart by a repair team. Wounded men were everywhere, and the sniffers were in a frenzy from so much spilled hydrogen. The whale’s huge harness was frayed with bullet holes.

Deryn knelt beside an injured man, whose hand clutched the leash of a hydrogen sniffer. The beastie whined at her, looking up from its master’s pale face. She looked closer. The man was dead.

“CARNAGE ON THE SPINE.”

Deryn felt herself start to shake, unsure whether it was the cold or the shock of battle. She’d been aboard only a month, but this was like watching her family dying, her home burning down in front of her.

Then the inevitable roar of Clanker engines built again, and all eyes turned toward the dark sky. The last two aeroplanes were coming in together, hurling themselves against the airship one more time.

Deryn wondered what the crews in those machines were thinking. They’d seen their fellow airmen fall from the sky. Surely they knew they were about to die. What madness made killing the Leviathan so important to them?

The lone searchlight swept across their path, and one of the aeroplanes shuddered in the air. The small black shapes of bats tore through its wings and the plane banked hard. An impassive part of Deryn’s brain saw how the airflow around the wings had changed, how the plane would soon crumple and fall …

She turned away as it burst into flame.

But the noise of the other growling engine still drew closer.

“Blast! She means to ram us!” Mr. Rigby cried, running ahead for a clearer view.

Someone at the front air gun swore. Its compressors had failed again, but other guns fired from farther aft. Suddenly all the searchlights flared back to life and lanced into the darkness, until the approaching plane glowed like a fireball in the sky.

Tiny black wings fluttered along the searchlight beams, and the aeroplane shuddered and shook as it plowed through the bats. But somehow it kept coming.

A hundred feet away the machine finally twisted in the air. The wings folded, and pieces fluttered in all directions. The gunner’s cockpit broke off, his weapon still blazing. The propeller somehow wrenched itself from the engine, spiraling away like a mad insect.

Deryn felt a trembling under her feet, and she pulled off a glove, kneeling to place her palm on the freezing dorsal scales. A low moan shook the airbeast. Bits of the disintegrating plane were tearing into the Leviathan, rupturing the membrane. Deryn closed her eyes.

One stray spark would turn them all into a ball of fire.

She heard a cry. Mr. Rigby was staggering away down the slope of the airship’s flank, clutching his