There it was again, the eight-legged walker, now sliding into the distance astern. Its guns were swiveling, trying to spin around and fire once more. But the Leviathan's new Clanker engines were carrying her away too fast.
By the time the guns blazed again, the burning shells fell hundreds of feet short. They dropped into the snow and expended their anger there, the walking machines vanishing behind a veil of steam.
Deryn joined the cheer that rose up along the spine. The hydrogen sniffers howled along, half mad from all the ruckus.
Newkirk appeared, panting and covered with sweat, and clapped her on the shoulder. "Blistering good fight! Eh, Mr. Sharp?"
"Aye, it was. I just hope it's over."
She raised her field glasses to gander at the zeppelins, now silhouetted by the setting sun. They'd fallen still farther behind, hopelessly outmatched by the Stormwalker engines.
"They'll never catch up now," she said. "Not with night falling."
"THE HERKULES' SHELLS GO WIDE."
"But I thought those Predators were fast!"
"Aye, they are. But we're faster, now that we've got those engines on us."
"But haven't they got Clanker engines too?" Newkirk asked.
Deryn frowned, looking down at the Leviathan's flanks. The cilia were stirring madly, weaving the airflow around the ship, somehow adding the currents of the sky to the raw power of the engines.
"We're something different now," she said. "A little of us and a little of them."
Newkirk thought a moment, then hmphed and clapped her on the back again. "Well, frankly, Mr. Sharp, I don't care if the kaiser himself gives us a push, as long as it gets us clear of this iceberg."
"Glacier," Deryn said. "But you're right - it's good to be flying again."
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of freezing air, feeling the strange new thrum of the membrane beneath her boots.
Already, her air sense told her, the beast was veering south, setting course for the Mediterranean. The zeppelins behind were an afterthought; the Ottoman Empire lay ahead.
Whatever sort of tangled crossbreed the Clankers had made her into, the Leviathan had survived.
FORTY
The pistons were the trickiest bits to draw. There was something about the way they fit together - the Clanker logic of them - that blistered Deryn's brain.
She'd been sketching the new engines all afternoon, imagining the drawings in some future edition of the Manual of Aeronautics. But even if no one ever saw them, the warm day was excuse enough for lounging here. The airship was only a hundred yards above the water, the afternoon sun bouncing from the waves and setting everything aglitter. After three nights shipwrecked on a glacier, it seemed the perfect afternoon to lie in the ratlines, soak up the heat, and draw.
But even with the Mediterranean Sea stretching out in all directions, the Clankers never seemed to relax. Alek and Klopp had been busy down on the pods since noon, fashioning windshields to protect the engine pilots. That's what they were calling themselves - pilots, not engine men or any proper Air Service term. They'd already forgotten that the real pilots were on the bridge.
Then again, she'd heard it rumored that the ship didn't need pilots these days, Darwinist or Clanker. The whale had developed an independent streak, a tendency to choose its own way among the thermals and updrafts. Some of the crew wondered if the wreck had rattled the beastie's attic. But Deryn reckoned it was the new engines. Who wouldn't feel feisty with all that power?
A bee was crawling across her sketch pad, and she waved it away. The hives had come out of their three-day hibernation hungry, gorging themselves on the wildflowers of Italy as the Leviathan headed south. The strafing hawks looked fat and happy this afternoon, full of wild hares and stolen piglets.
"Mr. Sharp?" came the master coxswain's voice.
Deryn almost snapped to attention. But then she saw the message lizard staring at her, its beady eyes blinking.
"Please report to the captain's quarters," the lizard continued. "Without delay."
"Aye, sir. Right away!" Deryn winced as she heard her voice squeak like a girl's. She lowered it and said, "End message."
Gathering her pad and pencils as the beastie scampered away, Deryn wondered what she'd done wrong. Nothing bad enough to earn an audience with the captain - not that she could remember. Mr. Rigby had even commended her on taking Alek hostage during the Stormwalker attack.
But her nerves were twitching nonetheless.
The captain's quarters were up near the bow, next to the navigation room. The door was half open and Captain Hobbes sat behind his desk, the wall charts rustling in the warm breeze from an open window.
Deryn saluted smartly. "Midshipman Sharp reporting, sir."
"At ease, Mr. Sharp," the man said, which only made her more nervous. "Please come in. And shut the door."
"Aye, sir," she said. The captain's door was a solid piece of natural wood, not fabricated balsa, and it thumped shut with a heavy finality.
"May I ask you, Mr. Sharp, your opinion of our guests?"
"The Clankers, sir?" Deryn frowned. "They're ... very clever. And quite determined about keeping those engines running. Good allies to have, I'd say."
"Would you? Then it's lucky they aren't officially our enemies." The captain tapped his pencil against the cage that sat on his desk. The carrier tern inside it fluttered, its tongue slipping out to taste the air. "I've just learned that England is not at war with Austria-Hungary, not yet. At the moment we need only concern ourselves with the Germans."
"Well, that's handy, sir."
"Indeed." The captain leaned back and smiled. "You're rather friendly with young Alek, aren't you?"
"Aye, sir. He's a good lad."
"So he seems. A young boy like that needs friends, especially having run away from home and country." The captain lifted an eyebrow. "Sad, isn't it?"
Deryn nodded, saying carefully, "I suppose so, sir."
"And all quite mysterious. Here we are at their mercy, mechanically speaking, and yet we don't know much about Alek and his friends. Who are they, really?"
"They are a bit cagey, sir," Deryn said, which wasn't a lie.
"THE CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS."