Leviathan

Alek to tell him when to fire.

“Stuff this. I’ll be back in a squick,” Deryn said, pulling herself up through the hatch again.

Both Kondors had dropped commandoes now. One group was storming toward the Leviathan, their zeppelin supporting them with machine-gun fire. The other bunch was assembling some sort of artillery, a long-barreled field gun that was pointed straight at the Stormwalker.

“Oh, blisters,” she said.

“DIE ANTI-WANDERPANZER TRUPPEN.”

The Clankers worked swiftly, and a moment later the gun’s muzzle erupted with flame. The walker twisted beneath her, throwing her hard against the side of the hatch. She barely kept from falling back through, her feet flailing below.

For a moment Deryn thought they’d been hit. But then she felt the shell whiz by, her ears popping as its passed. The Stormwalker staggered into a long turn, finally regaining its balance on the snow.

Alek was either barking brilliant at the controls, or he was completely mad. They were headed straight for the anti-walker gun, lurching back and forth across its sights while the crew desperately reloaded.

Deryn dropped back inside and took her machine gun, aiming it low. She reckoned they’d be among the Germans in another five seconds, if they hadn’t already been blown to blazes.

“Get ready!” Alek shouted.

Deryn didn’t wait, and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped and rattled in her hands, spewing death in all directions. A few dark shapes slipped past her peephole, but she had no idea whether they were men or rocks or the anti-walker gun.

A metal clank shook the cabin, and suddenly the world was staggering to port. Deryn was thrown from her gun, her feet slipping on spent casings rolling across the floor. She landed on something soft, which turned out to be Dr. Barlow and Tazza huddled in the corner.

“Sorry, ma’am!” she cried.

“Not to worry,” the lady boffin said. “You really are quite insubstantial.”

“I think we hit it!” Alek said, still twisting at the controls.

Deryn scrambled to her feet and pulled herself up and out the hatch again. Behind them the anti-walker gun lay wrecked in their giant footprints—overturned, the barrel bent. Its crew were scattered, a few motionless, the white snow about them flecked with vivid red.

“You stomped it, Alek!” she shouted down, her voice hoarse.

She spun around to face forward. The Stormwalker was headed for the other group of commandoes now. They were hunkered down in the snow, an aerie of strafing hawks skimming over them, razor talons glimmering in the sun.

A few of the commandoes turned and saw the walker coming at them, and Deryn wondered if she should drop down to fire her murderous weapon again. But then the Stormwalker shook beneath her. A cloud of smoke spewed from its belly, billowing over Deryn and filling her mouth with an acrid taste.

Her eyes stung, but she forced them open as the shell hit. It exploded among the commandoes, throwing men in all directions.

“Barking spiders,” she murmured.

When the smoke and snow flurries subsided, nothing moved except a few strafing hawks flapping back toward the Leviathan. Deryn glanced back at the field gun. The remaining crew were running away, a Kondor coming down to skim them from the ice.

The Clankers were in retreat!

But where was that other zeppelin?

She scanned the horizon—nothing. Then a shadow flickered on the snow, due west, and Deryn looked straight up. The airship was directly overhead, its bomb racks bristling. A cloud of flechette bats swirled farther up, and she saw a concussion shell arcing its way from the Leviathan, its big harmless boom about to scare the clart right out of them.

She grabbed the hatch handle and dropped, pulling it shut behind her.

“Bombs coming!” she cried. “And barking flechettes as well!”

“Vision to quarter,” Alek said calmly, and Klopp started turning a crank over at his side of the cabin. Deryn saw an identical one beside her, and wondered which way it was meant to go.

As her hand reached out for it, the world exploded… .

A blinding flash lit the cabin, followed by a peal of thunder that threw Deryn off her feet again. The floor was tipping, everything sliding to starboard. The shriek of gears and Tazza howling filtered into her half-deafened ears, and her shoulder struck metal as the whole cabin lurched once—hard.

Then an avalanche of snow was pouring in through the viewport, a rush of cold and sudden silence burying her …

THIRTY-THREE

Alek tried to move, but his arms were pinned, wrapped in a freezing embrace of snow.

He struggled for a moment, then realized he was still strapped into the pilot’s seat. As he opened the buckles and slipped from the chair, the world seemed to reorient itself.

The viewport was sideways, like the vertical slit of a cat’s eye.

Now that he thought of it, the whole cabin was sideways. The starboard wall was now the floor, and the hand straps all hung helter-skelter.

Alek blinked, unable to believe it. He’d wrecked the walker.

The cabin was dark—the lights had failed—and strangely silent. The engines must have shut down automatically in the fall. Alek heard breathing beside him.

“Klopp,” he said, “are you all right?”

“I think so, but something’s …” The man lifted one arm. Tazza crawled out from beneath it with a plaintive whine, then shook himself, spraying snow across the cabin.

“Do stop that, Tazza,” Dr. Barlow’s voice came from the darkness.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Alek asked.

“I am, but Mr. Sharp appears to be hurt.”

Alek crawled closer. Dylan lay with his head in Dr. Barlow’s lap, his eyes closed. A fresh cut stretched across his forehead, blood running into his black eye from the crash. His thin features were pale behind the bruising.

Alek swallowed. This was his fault—he’d been at the controls.

“Help me find some bandages, Klopp.”

Shoveling snow aside, they managed to get the storage locker open. Klopp pulled out two first-aid kits and handed one to Alek.

“I’ll see to Mr. Sharp,” Dr. Barlow said, taking the kit from him. “I’m not as hopeless a nurse as I pretend.”

Alek nodded and turned to help Klopp with the belly hatch, which was now in the wall of the upended cabin. The mechanism resisted for a moment, then opened with an angry metal screech.

Hoffman, strapped sideways into the gunner’s chair, called out that he and Bauer were bumped and bruised, but whole. Alek breathed a sigh of relief. At least he hadn’t killed anyone.

He turned to Klopp. “I’m sorry I fell.”

The man let out a snort. “Took you long enough, young master. Now we can finally call you a proper