Leviathan

Leviathan’s biggest Huxley. She was exhausted and half frozen, but for the first time since the wreck things felt under control.

She and Alek had found Mr. Rigby in the sick bay, alive and well and shouting orders from his bed. A bullet had passed clear through him, somehow missing all the important bits. According to the ship’s surgeon he’d be back on duty in a week.

A message lizard had found them there, relaying the captain’s plan in Dr. Barlow’s voice: A well-armed party would escort Alek home under flag of truce, but not until a Huxley had gone up for a good look. So Alek was stuck on egg-watching duty and Deryn was here on the spine, ready to ascend.

She tightened the rig across her shoulders, glancing up at the Huxley. The beastie looked healthy, its membrane taut in the thin mountain air.

Good for a mile of altitude at least. If Alek’s family lived anywhere in this valley, Deryn would spot them in a squick.

“Mr. Sharp!” a voice called from halfway down the flank. It was Newkirk, smiling as he climbed toward her. “It’s true—you’re alive!”

“Of course I am!” Deryn called back, cracking a smile. Mr. Rigby had told her Newkirk was unhurt, but it was good to see him with her own eyes.

He ran the rest of the way up, carrying a pair of field glasses in one hand. “The navigator sends these with his compliments. They’re his best pair, so don’t break them.”

Deryn frowned at the maker’s mark on the leather case: Zeiss Optik. Everyone said Clanker binoculars were the best, but it was annoying to be reminded of it. At least Alek wasn’t here to make some stuck-up remark. Orphan or not, she’d had enough of his Clanker arrogance for one day, and the sun wasn’t even up yet.

“Mr. Rigby and I were beginning to think you’d fallen off before the crash,” Newkirk said. “I’m happy to see you were just dawdling.”

“Get stuffed,” Deryn said. “If it weren’t for me, you’d both be wee splotches in the snow. And I haven’t been dawdling. I’ve been escorting important prisoners about the ship.”

“Aye, I’ve heard about your mad boy.” Newkirk narrowed his eyes. “Is it true he says an army of abominable snowmen are coming to his rescue?”

Deryn chuckled. “Aye, his attic’s a wee bit scrambled. But he’s not that bad, I suppose.”

Seeing Mr. Rigby with his shirt cut open around the wound, Deryn had realized how lucky she’d been. If Alek hadn’t woken her up, it might have been her laid out on a bed in sick bay. And even if it had only been a squick of frostbite, the surgeons might’ve stripped off her uniform … and seen exactly what was hidden beneath.

She owed the boy for that, Deryn reckoned.

A whistle sounded, and the two fell silent.

On the glacier below, all hands were assembling, sheltered by the huge crescent of the airbeast’s bulk. The captain was going to address the crew at first light.

To the east the sun was just cresting the mountains, bringing a squick of warmth to the air. The Leviathan’s membrane was already turning black, ready to absorb the heat of the day.

“I hope the captain’s got good news,” Newkirk said. “Don’t want to be stuck on this iceberg too long.”

“It’s a glacier,” Deryn said. “And the lady boffin seems to think we might be.”

There was a stir among the men below, and attention was called as the captain came out onto the snow.

“The last patch went on at six a.m. this morning,” he announced. “The Leviathan is airtight once again!”

The riggers arrayed along the spine raised a cheer, and the two middies joined them.

“Dr. Busk has checked her insides, and the beast seems healthy enough,” the captain continued. “What’s more, our Clanker friends hardly dented the gondolas. There may be a lot of broken windows, but our instruments are in fine shape. Only the motivator engines need serious repairs.”

Deryn glanced down at the port engine pod, riddled with bullet holes and leaking black oil onto the snow. The tail engines looked bad as well. The Germans had focused most of their fire on the mechanical parts of the ship— typical Clanker thinking. The starboard pod lay beneath the whale, of course, smashed against the glacier.

“We’ll need two working engines to control the ship,” the captain said. “At least we have no shortage of parts.” He paused. “So our greatest test will be reinflating the ship.”

Here it comes, Deryn thought.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have enough hydrogen.”

An uncertain murmur spread through the crew. The wee beasties in the whale’s gut made hydrogen, after all, the same way people breathed out carbon dioxide. Even after a long winter’s hibernation the ship always swelled back to her old size within a few days.

“THE CAPTAIN ADDRESSES THE CREW.”

It was normally so simple that everyone had missed the obvious—hydrogen didn’t come from out of the blue. It came from the airship’s bees and birds.

The head boffin stepped forward.

“The Alps were once the bedrock of an ancient sea,” he said. “But now these peaks are the highest in Europe, not fit for man or beast. If you look around, you’ll see no insects, plants, or small prey for our flocks. For the moment our fabs are living off the ship’s stores. As long as they remain alive, the ship will process their excreta and slowly refill her hydrogen cells.”

“Excreta?” Newkirk whispered.

“That’s boffin-talk for ‘clart,’” Deryn replied, and Newkirk snorted a laugh.

“But when the Leviathan was designed,” Dr. Busk continued, “none of us imagined landing in a place so bleak. And I’m afraid that the equations are indisputable: All the hydrogen in our ship’s stores isn’t enough to lift us into the air.”

Another murmur spread through the crew. They were getting the picture now.

“Some of you may be wondering,” Dr. Busk said with half a smile, “why we don’t simply take hydrogen from the snow around us.”

Deryn frowned. She’d been wondering no such thing, but it seemed like a fair question. Snow was just water, after all—hydrogen and oxygen. It’d always seemed a bit suspect to her, that two gasses mixed up made a liquid, but the boffins were dead certain on the issue.

“Unfortunately, separating water into its elements requires energy, and energy requires food. The ecosystem that is our home depends on sustenance from nature to repair itself.” Dr. Busk’s gaze swept across the glacier. “And in this awful place, nature herself is empty.”

As the captain stepped forward again, Deryn heard no sound but the wind in the rigging and the panting of hydrogen sniffers. The crew had gone dead silent.

“Early this morning we loosed a pair of homing terns to carry our position to the Admiralty,” the captain said. “No doubt one of our sister ships will reach us soon enough, provided the war doesn’t get in the way.”

A chuckle rose up from the crew, and Deryn began to feel a squick of hope. Maybe things weren’t as bleak as Dr. Barlow thought.

“But mounting a rescue mission for a hundred men in wartime may take weeks.” The captain paused, and the head boffin beside him looked grim. “We don’t have much food in our stores—a little more than a week at half rations. Longer if we use the other resources at our disposal.”

Deryn raised an eyebrow. What other resources? The head boffin had just said there was nothing on the glacier.

The captain drew himself up taller. “And my first responsibility is to you, the men of my crew.”

The men—not the fabricated creatures. Did he mean taking the beasties’ food? But surely the captain wasn’t saying …

“To save ourselves we may have to let the Leviathan die.”