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.
Chapter 25
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 fléchette 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 fléchettes 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 pilot."
"What?"
"You think I've never wrecked a walker?" Klopp laughed. "It's all part of learning the craft, young master."
Alek blinked, not sure if the man was kidding.
A metal plink rang through the cabin. Klopp looked up as another, then more, followed, like a hailstorm slowly building.
"Fléchettes," Dr. Barlow said.
"Let's hope they get those zeppelins," Klopp said softly. "Otherwise Count Volger will be very unhappy with us."
"I'll take a look outside," Alek said. "We might be able to stand up and rejoin the fight."
Klopp shook his head. "Not likely, young master. Stay here till the battle's over."
"That sounds like wise advise," Dr. Barlow said in German.
But the rain of fléchettes was tapering off, and Alek heard the sound of airship engines close by.
"I have to see what's going on," he said. "We've still got a working machine gun!"
"STANDING FIRM."
Klopp tried to argue, but Alek ignored him, shoveling a few handfuls of snow aside and shimmying out the viewport.
The sunlit snow was blinding for a moment, except for the dark crater left by the zeppelin's aerial bomb. Almost a direct hit. The Stormwalker's trail of footprints went straight into the blackened hole, then zigzagged to where the machine lay in a crumpled heap.
Alek flexed his hands, remembering his struggle to keep the walker upright. He'd almost done it. But almost meant nothing now. The engine casing was cracked; hot oil steamed out onto the snow. One giant metal leg was twisted wrong. The machine couldn't possibly stand again.
He tore his eyes away, scanning the sky. The Kondor that had bombed them was barely a hundred meters away. It was flying just above the snow, its gasbag fluttering, full of holes from the fléchette attack.