Goliath (18 page)

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 instant 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 before!

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.

Her boots landed with a
clang
against the boom.

Ahead of Deryn the hatches and windows of the engine pod were all thrown open, and smoke was gushing out and spilling back into the
Leviathan
’s wake. She entered through the nearest hatch, her eyes stinging.

“It’s Middy Sharp. Report!”

An engineer appeared from the smoke, wearing goggles and an ember-tattered flight suit. “It’s bad, sir—we’ve called for a Herculean. Grab on to something!”

“You called for a . . . ,” Deryn began, her voice fading. A rushing sound was building overhead. She stared up at the belly of the airbeast, and saw the ballast lines swelling.

She’d never seen a Herculean inundation before. They were called only when the ship was in serious danger of burning, because they were barking dangerous themselves.

“FIREFIGHT IN THE AIR.”

“It’s coming!” Deryn cried, pushing into the pod to look for a handhold.

The engineer turned and stepped through the thick smoke to a rack of gears and parts, where another man with engineering patches stood. Deryn knelt behind the main turbine, taking hold as the first spume of water exploded into the engine pod. The inundation came straight from the gut, briny and fouled with the clart of a hundred species. The torrent grew, the burning engine spitting white steam to mingle with the smoke and brackish water.

The inundation lifted Deryn from her feet for a moment, trying to sweep her out the open hatch and into the void. The water filled her boots, churning up to force itself into her nose and eyes. But she held fast until the last sparks in the engine sputtered out and the flood finally began to slacken. The briny water slowly drained from the engine pod, dropping below her waist, then her knees.

One of the engineers let out a sigh of relief, letting go to take a step toward the blackened mass of gears.

“Keep hold, man!” Deryn said. “We’ve lost our rear ballast!”

He grabbed the rack again just as the ship began to tilt. With thousands of gallons of ballast gone from its stern, the
Leviathan
was out of balance, tipping the airship into a steep dive.

“A HERCULEAN INUNDATION.”

The remaining water coiled past Deryn’s feet, pouring out the forward hatch. She heard the creak of the ratlines overhead as the airbeast strained, bending its nose upward against the dive. But out the nearest porthole she saw the glittering sea rushing toward them.

Then Deryn heard a growl like a pair of hungry fighting bears—the Clanker engines shifting into reverse. The whole ship shuddered, its descent slowing to a crawl. The
Leviathan
hovered aslant in the air for a moment, until the ballast lines began to swell again with water pumping toward the tail. Gradually the floor of the engine pod leveled off.

A lizard popped its head from a message tube and spoke with the captain’s voice. “Ventral engine pod, help is on the way. Please report your status.”

The two engineers looked at Deryn, perhaps a bit nervous that they’d just sent the whole ship plummeting toward the sea.

She cleared her throat. “Middy Sharp, sir, just arrived here from the rookery. The pod was set aflame, so the engineers called for a Herculean. The fire’s out, but by the looks of things, we won’t be giving you any power for a while. End message.”

The lizard blinked, then scampered away. Deryn turned to the men. This was her station for the rest of the battle, it seemed.

“Don’t look so sheepish,” she said. “You may have saved the ship. But if you want to be proper heroes, let’s get this engine running again!”

“Hard to starboard,” the captain said, and the pilot sent
the master wheel spinning.

As the
Leviathan
turned, the deck shifted beneath Alek’s feet, but it was nothing like the sickening dive of a moment before. The ocean had filled the front windows of the bridge, and he and Mr. Tesla had skidded forward on their dress shoes. Not for the first time Alek was envious of the crew’s rubber-soled boots. Bovril was still clinging tight to his shoulder, scared into silence.

The zeppelin that had fired at the
Leviathan
swung into view below, still falling. A swarm of strafing hawks had spilled its hydrogen from a thousand cuts, and the German airship settled on the ocean like a feather on a pond. As the
Leviathan
’s shadow passed across it, a pair of canvas lifeboats emerged from beneath the billowing membrane.

An awful thought occurred to Alek. “Will the kappa attack those lifeboats as well?”

Dr. Barlow shook her head. “Not unless the submarine sends out another fighting pulse.”

“And we’re close enough to shore,” Dr. Busk added. “Those chaps should be fine, as long as they don’t mind a bit of rowing!”

“A bit of rowing,” repeated Dr. Barlow’s loris from the ceiling, and had a chuckle. Bovril looked up and joined in, relaxing its grip on Alek’s shoulder a little.

“The others aren’t so lucky,” Mr. Tesla said, staring at the
Kaiserin Elizabeth
in the distance. She looked like a haunted ship. Her decks were awash with blood and were glittering with spikes, and kappa roamed freely across them, searching for prey. If any crew had survived, they must have hidden belowdecks behind metal hatches.

The second zeppelin hovered over the warship, sending a last shower of darts down onto the kappa. But the first strafing hawks were arriving, hacking at the zeppelin’s fragile skin. Its engines soon fired up, and the German airship began to pull away.

“We won’t pursue them, will we?” Alek asked.

“I doubt we shall bother.” Dr. Busk nodded to Tesla. “Getting you to Japan is more important than this sideshow.”

Alek let out a quiet sigh. As Count Volger had suspected, this long voyage had all been for show. The Admiralty wanted to prove that British air power was global, and that the Great War was a contest among European powers, not upstart empires in Asia.

But at least now that the Union Jack had been waved, the
Leviathan
could turn around and head for Tokyo—and then America, if the Admiralty allowed it.

“I don’t suppose those creatures recognize the white flag,” Tesla said.

“The submarine will call them off,” Dr. Barlow replied. “Exactly how is known only to the Japanese, for obvious reasons.”

“Wouldn’t want the enemy figuring out how to turn your beasties peaceable, would you?” Dr. Busk scanned the ocean’s surface through a telescope. “Some sort of sound would be my guess. One that humans can’t hear, a bit like a dog whistle.”