Was Dr. Barlow here to ask about her fight with Alek?
“If you would, Mr. Sharp, please describe the object you discovered in Mr. Tesla’s room.”
Deryn turned away with a stack of empty dishes, hiding her relief. “Oh, that. As I said, ma’am, it was round. A bit bigger than a football, but much heavier—probably solid iron.”
“Most certainly iron, Mr. Sharp, perhaps with some nickel. What of its shape?”
“Its shape? I didn’t get that good a look at it.” Deryn cleared away a pair of aluminum tea mugs. “I was under a bed in the dark, trying not to get caught!”
“Trying not to get caught,” the boffin’s loris said. “Mr. Sharp.”
Dr. Barlow waved a hand. “At which you succeeded admirably. But roughly what form did this iron football take? Was it a perfect sphere? Or a misshapen lump?”
Deryn sighed, trying to recall those long minutes of waiting while Tesla had drifted back to sleep. “It wasn’t perfect at all. It was knobbly on the surface.”
“Were these ‘knobbles’ smooth or jagged to the touch?”
“Mostly smooth, I suppose, like that bit I sawed off.” Deryn reached out a hand. “If you’ve still got it, ma’am, I’ll show you what I mean.”
“The sample is on the way to London, Mr. Sharp.”
“You sent it to the Admiralty?”
“No, to someone with intellect.”
“Oh,” Deryn said, a bit astonished that even Dr. Barlow needed help to solve this mystery.
The loris crawled down to sniff at the empty milk jug. The lady boffin’s eyes followed the beastie, her fingers drumming on the table.
“I am a species fabricator, Mr. Sharp, not a metallurgist. But what I’m asking is simple enough.” She leaned forward. “Would you say that Mr. Tesla’s find was natural or man-made?”
“You mean, was it cast iron?” Deryn remembered her hands on the object in the darkness. “Well, it was close enough to a sphere. But it was awfully banged up. Like a cannonball, I suppose, after it’s been shot through a cannon.”
“I see. And a cannonball is man-made.”
Dr. Barlow fell into silence, and the loris picked up the teacup in its tiny paws and studied it.
“Man-made,” it repeated softly. “Mr. Sharp.”
Deryn ignored the beastie. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but that doesn’t make sense. To cause all that wreckage, a cannonball would have to be as big as a barking cathedral!”
“Mr. Sharp, you are forgetting a basic formula of physics. When calculating energy, mass is only one variable. And the other?”
“Velocity,” Deryn said, recalling the bosun’s lectures on artillery. “But to knock down a whole forest, how fast would a cannonball have to fly?”
“Astronomically fast. My colleagues will know exactly.” The lady boffin leaned back in her chair and sighed. “But London is a week way, even for our swiftest courier aquilines. And in the meantime Mr. Tesla spins his tales and takes us on a wild goose chase.”
“But we’re headed to fight the Germans, aren’t we?”
Dr. Barlow waved a hand before her face, as if a fly were bothering her. “We may briefly show the flag, but Mr. Tesla and Prince Aleksandar have convinced the captain to proceed to Tokyo. From there we can contact the Admiralty by underwater fiber.”
“What in blazes for?”
“Tesla will try to convince them to order us to New York.” The lady boffin snapped for the loris, which scampered back up her arm and onto her shoulder. “Where Goliath waits to stop the war.”
“What . . . go all the way to America?”
“Indeed, and all for a delusion.”
Deryn’s mind was spinning at the thought of crossing the Pacific, but she managed to ask, “You think Mr. Tesla’s lying?”
The lady boffin stood, straightening herself. “Lying, or simply mad. But at the moment I have no proof. Do keep your eyes open, Mr. Sharp.”
She turned and swept out the door, the loris on her shoulder staring back through slitted eyes.
“Mr. Sharp!” it said.
Deryn went back to the window, fretting over what the lady boffin had said. If Mr. Tesla were up to some deception, then he must have tricked Alek into helping him. And little wonder—Alek was angry and alone, feeling betrayed by everyone he’d trusted. Tesla had appeared at just the right moment to take advantage.
And it was all Deryn’s fault. . . .
But there was no point telling him that Tesla was lying. Alek would never take her word for it, especially as Dr. Barlow had admitted that there wasn’t any proof. Deryn stood there for a long minute, her fists clenched, trying to think of what to do.
It was almost a relief when the Klaxon began to sound, calling her to battle.
The ratlines were full, the ropes groaning with the weight of men and beasts. The whole crew seemed to be scrambling topside, eager to fight after a week of flying across the Russian wasteland. The sun was bright, the wind blowing across the Sea of Japan crisp and cool, nothing like the freezing gales of Siberia.
Deryn paused to scan the horizon. A dark silhouette lay ahead—two tall funnels, and turrets bristling with guns—a German warship for certain. To her relief there was no sign of a spindly Tesla cannon on its decks. The ship was making for the Chinese coast, which stretched across the horizon, the haze of a Clanker city rising from a nest of steep-sided hills.
She continued climbing, following the sound of the bosun’s voice.
“Reporting for duty, sir!” she called when she reached the spine.
“Where’s Newkirk?” Mr. Rigby asked.
“Last I saw, he was seeing to the lady boffin’s pet, sir.”
The bosun swore, then pointed down at the water. “There’s a Japanese submarine somewhere down there, in pursuit of that warship. It’s tending a school of kappa, so we can’t put any fléchette bats into the air. Let the men on the forward gun know, then report back here.”
Deryn saluted and turned, running for the bow, where two crewmen were erecting an air gun. She jumped in to help when she arrived, tightening the screws and cleats, feeding a belt of darts into the weapon.
“There are kappa in the water, so the captain doesn’t want any spikes.” Deryn spun the shoulder stock into place. “Mind you don’t scare the bats when you fire!”
The men looked at each other dubiously. Then one said, “No bats, sir? But what if the Clankers have got aeroplanes?”
“Then you lads will have to shoot straight. And we’ve still got the strafing hawks.”
She returned the men’s salutes and headed aft, passing the word along. By the time she got back to Mr. Rigby, Newkirk had arrived with a pair of field glasses. Mr. Rigby was staring at the horizon through them.
“Pair of zeppelins over Tsingtao,” he said. “Never seen them this far from Germany.”
Deryn shielded her eyes. Twin squicks of blackness hovered above the city harbor, where the warship was coming to a halt. But the guns of Tsingtao would offer no protection from the kappa.
As she watched, the zeppelins seemed to lengthen against the horizon.
“Are they turning away, sir?” she asked. “Or toward us?”
“Away, I’d think. They’re tiny compared to the Leviathan. But that warship won’t be happy to see them go. Without air cover the kappa will make short work of her.”
Deryn stared down at the sea, her heart beginning to race. Except for the doomed sailors of one unlucky Russian fleet, no Europeans had ever seen kappa in action. The Manual of Aeronautics contained no photographs of the beasties, only a few paintings based on rumors and stories.
“The attack signal will come soon,” Mr. Rigby said, handing Deryn the field glasses and scanning the city below with his naked eyes.
She raised the glasses and peered at the Clanker warship. The name Kaiserin Elizabeth was painted on its side, and it flew an Austrian flag.
“Not German after all,” she murmured, wondering if Alek had spotted that, and i
f he’d go back to dithering over which side he was on. Of course, he had a new Clanker friend to share his worries with, so he didn’t need Deryn’s shoulder to cry on.
“Not German?” Newkirk asked. “What do you mean?”
“It’s an Austrian ship,” Mr. Rigby said. “The Germans have got their own ships out and left their allies here to face the siege. Not very kind of them.”
Deryn squinted through the glasses. The sea around the Kaiserin Elizabeth was starting to look unsettled, like water coming to a boil. The kappa swam just beneath the surface, like dolphins riding the waves.
With a distant roar the smaller deck guns of the Kaiserin opened up, a torrent of bullets chopping the water into a white froth. Austrian sailors stood at the rails, peering down and fixing bayonets to their rifles.
Suddenly Deryn was very glad to be up in an airship, and not down there.
“Have you spotted the Japanese submarine?” Newkirk asked.
“We won’t,” Mr. Rigby said. “Her periscope must be up, but it’s too small. All we’ll see is . . .”
His voice faded as a sliver of a wave slid across the water, like a ripple in a cup of tea.
“That’s the submarine now,” Mr. Rigby said, nodding. “As the boffins suspected, they use an underwater explosion to send the kappa into a battle frenzy.”
As Deryn watched, the first beastie scrambled out of the water and up the side of the ship. It climbed with both hands and feet, four sets of webbed fingers splaying wide on the metal. Somehow the kappa ascended the smooth expanse as easily as it would a ladder, and was upon the men at the railing almost before they’d seen it.
Its long fingers grasped the ankle of a sailor, and a dozen shots rang out, his fellows on either side blasting away at the monster. The poor beastie twisted for a moment in the volley of lead, but its claws stayed locked on its victim. Finally the kappa fell dead into the sea, dragging the unlucky Austrian along.
Deryn held the field glasses tighter, ignoring Newkirk’s pleas for them. The kappa were swarming up by the dozens now, their wet green skin shining in the sunlight. A few larger ones shot from the water and arced through the air, descending on the Austrian sailors from clouds of spray.
“KAPPA SURFACING.”
From the blazing guns of the defenders, a veil of smoke arose, like some makeshift, flimsy barrier. More sailors were pulled into the sea, and a few kappa broke past them and bounded across the deck. Soon the broad windows of the bridge were shattered, and as the beasties leapt through them, Deryn saw the flash of drawn cutlasses within.
Her stomach twisted, and finally she handed the field glasses to Newkirk, wondering why she’d watched for so long. Battle was always like this, excitement and fascination turning to horror as the reality of bloodshed set in.
And this wasn’t a proper battle at all, just the extermination of an overmatched foe.
“Are they coming about?” Mr. Rigby cried, pointing across the water to the zeppelins.
Newkirk lifted the glasses a bit. “Aye, they’re turning back. And from the way their engine smoke is carrying, there’s a wind at their tails.”
“Of course,” Deryn said, and swore. “They were waiting for the kappa!”
Now that the water was swarming with Japanese beasties, the Leviathan couldn’t deploy its fléchette bats. There was nothing to stop the smaller, faster zeppelins from closing in and using their rockets. . . .
“Blisters,” Deryn said.
This was turning into a real battle, after all.
“Quick, lads, to the strafing hawks!” shouted Mr. Rigby.
He picked up a coil of rope and flung it into Deryn’s arms, then set off for the aft end of the ship. The two middies followed, lugging the heavy lineas fast as they could.
As the three headed for the airship’s tail, the spine sloped away beneath them. They hurtled down the decline, Mr. Rigby roaring at the other crewmen to jump aside.
Directly above the rookery he slid to a halt and pulled the rope from the middies’ arms. Kneeling to tie one end off, the bosun clutched his side in pain. He’d taken a bullet there two months before, just before the Leviathan’s crash landing in the Alps.
“Are you all right, sir?” Deryn asked.
“Aye, but I won’t be sliding down with you.” Mr. Rigby thrust a handful of carabiners at her and Newkirk. “Half the hawks are fitted with aeroplane nets, which are barking useless against zeppelins. Get down there and help the rook men switch them into talons. And hurry!”
“Aye, sir,” Deryn said. “Me first!”
Snapping her safety harness to the rope with three carabiners, she turned and ran straight for the edge. The great whale was narrow here, halfway to the tail, and within seconds she was flying off into thin air.
Rope hissed through the carabiners like an angry viper, and Deryn let herself fall fast. The first moments of descent were glorious, her worries about Tesla, his iron football, and barking Prince Aleksandar of Hohenberg all left behind. But soon Deryn twisted in midair, tightening the grip of the carabiners, and came to a long and skidding halt. Momentum swung her inward toward the airship’s underbelly, where she reached out and grabbed the ratlines with one gloved hand.
As she climbed down toward the rookery, the cilia were in furious motion beneath her hands. The Leviathan was nervous about the zeppelins closing in. Deryn wondered how the great whale saw the Clanker airships. Did they look like a pair of fellow airbeasts? Or like inexplicable things, in a familiar shape but queerly devoid of life?
“Don’t worry, beastie,” she said. “We’ll take care of them.”
The rookery was in a state, the birds squawking like mad inside their cages. Somehow they always knew when battle or bad weather was afoot. As she hauled herself through the aft window, Deryn called out to rearm the hawks.
“Aye, the bridge sent orders!” answered Higgins, the head rook man. He was inside one of the cages already, pulling an aeroplane net harness from a large and fluttering bird. “We’ve launched all the hawks we had in talons, and we’re switching the rest!”
“I’ll give you a hand, then.” Deryn slid down the access ladder, fighting a squick of nerves. She’d handled birds of prey before, but only one at a time. And she’d never set foot in a cage full of stirred-up strafing hawks.
With a deep breath Deryn opened a cage door and stepped into a blizzard of wings. It was hard to keep her eyes open, hard not to leap back out, but she managed to grab one of the hawks and smooth its wings. She worked quickly then, unclipping the tiny harness that held a folded net of spider silk. Its acidic strands would slice through the fragile wings of an aeroplane in an instnt but had little effect on a huge and stately airship.
Once the harness was off, she moved on to the next bird, leaving it to the rook men to attach the talons. Every rook man she’d ever met carried nasty-looking scars from handling razor-sharp steel, and she wasn’t keen to learn the art in the heat of battle. As Deryn moved on to her third hawk, she saw Newkirk at work in the cage beside hers.
Long minutes later the first aerie of hawks had been fitted, and Mr. Higgins opened a chute to discharge them into the air. The rook men gave a quick cheer before setting back to work. Deryn felt the ship climbing, and she wondered if the captain had turned tail and run, or stayed to guard the kappa from the Clanker zeppelins.
Suddenly a boom shook the floor beneath her feet, and the frenzy of the birds redoubled. Deryn was blinded by beating wings but managed to grope her way out of the cage. She climbed up to the rookery windows and peered sternward.
One of the zeppelins was a few miles behind and a thousand feet below, a horde of strafing hawks swirling around it, tearing at its skin with their talons. But as Deryn watched, a streak of red fire shot from its gondola straight at her. The distance was too great, though—the rocket began to arc away before it could reach the Leviathan. It burst well below the ship, throwing out burning tendrils in all directions.
“Another close one, but they missed!�
� Deryn cried down to the rook men, but as she turned back to the window, her eyes went wide.
One of the sputtering tendrils was reaching up from the center of the explosion, climbing straight toward the rookery!
At the last moment the bright ember veered away, drawn toward the ventral engine pod by its whirling propeller. Fire struck metal, and a sheet of sparks shot out from the pod. The engine ground to a halt, spilling a cloud of smoke into the ship’s wake.
The Clanker airship was losing altitude quickly now, its shredded gasbag fluttering in the breeze. The other zeppelin was much farther back, hovering over the Kaiserin Elizabeth and raining metal darts onto the frenzied kappa.
The Leviathan was safe from the two zeppelins, but the ventral engine was still spitting smoke and flame. Deryn spun about and called to Newkirk, “We’re hit! I’m headed aft. But keep those birds coming!”
Not waiting for an answer, she hoisted opened the window and looked down. A stabilizing boom connected the gondola to the engine pod, wide enough to walk on in a pinch. But it was a good ten yards below the rookery, and Deryn didn’t fancy jumping. If she missed the boom, nothing would stop her fall but the open sea.
Luckily Mr. Rigby had made her draw the ship in profile a hundred times, and she remembered a steel cable connecting the rookery to the boom. It was anchored just overhead, almost close enough to reach. . . .
Almost, but not quite.
Deryn swore. With smoke still pouring from the ventral engine pod, this was no time for caution. Crawling out the window, she saw a set of handholds leading up to her goal—some poor blighter had done this trick beforerd v height="0em">
Deryn grabbed the nearest hold and swung off into the air. She pulled herself hand over hand up to the cable and threw out her legs to wrap them around it. Then she was sliding down fast, the steel cable as hot as a teakettle in her gloves. Half a mile below, the plummeting zeppelin fired again, but the rocket burst uselessly low, sending a dozen sizzling threads into the sea.
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