Leviathan

When her boots clanged against the metal support struts of the pod, Mr. Hirst looked up from the jumble of gears. He was hanging off the edge of the engine, no safety line in sight.

“Mr. Sharp! What’s all this howling about?”

“Another walker’s been spotted, sir,” she said, then turned to Alek. His face was streaked with grease, like stripes of black war paint. “We’re not sure what kind. But it’s got eight legs, so we reckon it’s big.”

“Sounds like the Herkules,” he said. “We passed her at the Swiss border. She’s a thousand-ton frigate, new and experimental.”

“But is she fast?”

Alek nodded. “Almost as quick as our walker. You say she’s here in Switzerland? Have the Germans gone mad?”

“WARNING THE NEW ENGINE TEAM.”

“Mad enough—she’s ten miles east, and has scouts with her. How long do you think we’ve got?”

Alek spoke to Hoffman a moment, translating into German and metric. Deryn felt her foot tapping as she waited, her stinging palms wrapped tightly around the rope. One jump and she’d be sliding toward the bridge.

“Maybe twenty minutes?” Alek finally said.

“Blisters!” she swore. “I’m heading down to tell the officers. Is there anything else they should know?”

Hoffman reached out and took Alek’s arm, muttering in hurried Clanker. Alek’s eyes widened as he listened.

“That’s right,” he said. “Those scout craft you mentioned—we saw them too. They’re armed with spotting flares, full of some sort of sticky phosphorous!”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Phosphorous … the perfect stuff to roast a hydrogen breather.

Maybe the Germans didn’t plan on capturing them after all.

“Well, get going, lad!” Mr. Hirst shouted at Deryn. “I’ll send a lizard to the other engine. And you two, let’s get this contraption started up!”

Deryn took one last glance at Alek, then stepped from the strut. She dropped toward the bridge, the rope sizzling hot between her gloved hands.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“But the engine’s not warmed up yet!” Alek cried. “We could crack a piston in this cold!”

“It’ll work or it won’t,” Hirst shouted back at him. “The ship’s going up either way!”

The Leviathan’s master engineer had a point. Below them ballast sparkled in the sunlight as it spilled from the forward tanks. The metal deck rose beneath Alek’s feet, like an ocean vessel lifted by a wave. Men were streaming back toward the airship across the snow, the howls and whistles of godless animals echoing like a jungle around them.

The airship shifted again, ice snapping from the ground ropes as they stretched and tightened. Mr. Hirst was darting about outside the pod, cutting the pulley lines they’d used to haul the engine parts up. In a few moments all connections with the earth would be severed.

But the engine wasn’t fully oiled yet. Half the glow plugs were still untested, and Klopp had forbidden starting up before he’d personally inspected the pistons.

“Will it run?” Alek asked Hoffman.

“Worth a try, sir. Just start it slow.”

Alek turned to the controls. It was still strange, seeing the Stormwalker’s needles and gauges out of their usual place in the pilot’s cabin, and the gears and pistons that belonged in the walker’s belly splayed in the open air.

When he primed the glow plugs, sparks flew around his head.

“Slowly now,” Hoffman said, putting his goggles on.

Alek took hold of the single saunter—the other was over on the starboard engine with Klopp—and pushed it gently forward. Gears caught and turned, faster and faster, until the rumble of the engine set the whole pod shivering. He glanced over his shoulder to see the plundered guts of the Stormwalker spinning before his eyes, black smoke rising from the exhaust tubes.

“Wait for the order!” Mr. Hirst called above the roar. He pointed at the signal patch on the airship’s membrane. It was made of cuttlefish skin, the master engineer had explained, connected by fabricated nervous tissue to receptors down on the bridge. When the ship’s officers placed colored paper on the sensors, the signal patch would mimic the hue exactly, like a camouflaged creature in the wild. Brilliant red meant full speed ahead, purple meant half power, and blue meant quarter speed, with other shades in between.

But with these untried engines, Alek doubted that his notion of “half speed” would be the same as Klopp’s. It might take days to get the balance right, and the Germans would be here in minutes.

The ground ropes were flailing as riggers cut them loose, and Alek felt another lurch beneath his feet. The cold wind was tugging at the ship now, the great beast skidding sideways along the glacier.

“Quarter speed!” Hirst yelled. The signal patch had turned dark blue.

Alek slowly pushed the foot pedal down. The propeller engaged. It spun lazily for a moment, and then gears meshed and caught, the blades disappearing into a blur.

Soon the propeller was drawing an icy wind across the uncovered pod. He ducked lower, pulling his coat tight. What would full speed feel like?

“Down a notch,” Hirst cried.

Alek looked at the signal patch, which had turned paler. He eased the saunter back a bit, careful not to stall the engine.

“Hear that?” Hoffman said in the relative quiet. “Klopp’s engine.”

Alek listened hard—and made out a distant roar. While his own engine idled, Klopp’s was going strong, pushing them into a gradual left turn.

“It’s working!” he cried, amazed that the Stormwalker’s engines could move something so vast through the sky.

“But why are we turning east?” Hoffman asked. “Isn’t the frigate coming from that way?”

Alek translated the question for Mr. Hirst.

“It might be that the captain wants to build up speed down the valley. We’re a bit heavy, thanks to your engines, and forward motion gives the ship lift.” Hirst hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Or it might be that he’s spotted those blighters back there… .”

Alek turned, peering through the blur of propeller blades. Behind them a fleet of airships was rising over the mountains—Kondors, Predator interceptors, and a giant Albatross assault ship dangling gliders from its gondola. A vast aerial attack, timed to descend just as the Herkules and its scouts arrived from Austria.

The master engineer leaned back on the struts, lazily resting a foot on the main joint. He slipped his goggles on and said, “I hope these noisy contraptions of yours are ready.”

“I hope so too.” Alek adjusted his own goggles and turned back to the controls. The Leviathan’s nose swung slowly eastward, till finally the airship was aimed down the length of the valley.

“FULL THROTTLE.”

The signal patch turned bright red.