Goliath

FOURTEEN

“Are Japanese sea beasties as big as ours?” asked Newkirk.

“Aye, they’ve got a few krakens,” Deryn said through a mouthful of ham. “But their wee beasties are deadlier. It was kappa monsters that captured the Russian fleet ten years ago.”

“Aye, I remember that lesson.” Newkirk was pushing his potatoes across his plate, feeling a bit twitchy here in enemy territory. “Funny how the Japanese and Russians are on the same side now.”

“Anything to beat those Clanker bum-rags.” Deryn reached over to spear one of Newkirk’s potatoes, but the boy didn’t complain.

Deryn couldn’t see any point in not eating. She’d had four huge meals since the Leviathan had resupplied at Vladivostok, and she still felt empty from those two awful days of no rations.

Of course, there was another void inside her, one that food couldn’t fill. She and Alek hadn’t spoken since he’d learned her secret. Whenever they bumped into each other, he only looked away, his face as pale as a mealyworm.

It was as if she’d transformed into something awful, a stain on the deck of the Leviathan that someone—not a prince, of course—ought to clean up. Alek had thrown their friendship straight out the window, just because she was a girl.

And, of course, he’d taken Bovril for himself. Bum-rag.

“Where’s Alek, anyway?” Newkirk asked, as if reading her thoughts.

“Clanker business, I suppose.” Deryn tried to keep the anger from her voice. “I saw him with Mr. Tesla this morning, in a meeting with the officers. All very hush-hush.”

“But we haven’t seen him in days! Did you two have a fight?”

“Get stuffed.”

“I knew it,” Newkirk said. “He’s been hiding from us, and you’re as grumpy as a bag of wet cats. What in blazes happened?”

“Nothing. It’s just that, now that everyone knows he’s a prince, he’s too important to hang about with us middies.”

“That’s not what Dr. Barlow thinks.” Newkirk stared down at his food. “She asked me if you two’d been fighting.”

Deryn let out a groan. If the lady boffin was ordering Newkirk to spy for her, she had to be barking curious. And for a sticky-beak like Dr. Barlow, there wasn’t much distance between curiosity and suspicion.

“It’s none of her business.”

“Aye, nor mine. But you have to admit it’s a bit odd. After you two got back from Istanbul, you seemed as close as…” Newkirk frowned.

“As a prince and a commoner,” Deryn said. “And now that he has Mr. Tesla to scheme with, he’s got no more use for me.”

“That’s Clankers for you,” Newkirk said. “I suppose.”

Deryn stood and went to the window, hoping the conversation was at an end. The Sea of Japan spread out beneath the ship, glimmering with the afternoon sun, and beyond it the coastline of China. Scouting birds dotted the blue horizon, on the lookout for enemy craft.

The Leviathan was headed toward Tsingtao, a port city on the Chinese mainland. The Germans had a naval base there, whose warships could raid shipping across the entire Pacific. The Japanese were already besieging the city, but it seemed they needed a hand.

Newkirk joined Deryn at the window. “It’s funny how Mr. Tesla didn’t get off in Vladivostok. When I was laundering his shirts, he wanted them folded for packing.”

Deryn frowned, wondering what had caused the change in plans. She’d spied enough to know that Alek was spending a lot of time with his new friend. According to the cooks the two of them had eaten at the captain’s table last night.

What in blazes were they all up to?

“Ah, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Newkirk. Here you are.”

As the two middies turned from the window, Tazza bounded forward through the door. Dr. Barlow was behind him, her loris sitting primly on her shoulder. The dark stripes under its eyes somehow gave the beastie a snooty expression.

Deryn knelt to give Tazza’s head a rub, glad for once to see the lady boffin, who might know something about Tesla and Alek’s plans. Sticky-beaks could come in handy sometimes.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. I hope you’re well.”

“I am annoyed, at present.” Dr. Barlow turned to Newkirk. “Would you be so kind as to give Tazza his morning walk?”

“But, ma’am, Dylan already—,” the boy began, but a look from Dr. Barlow silenced him.

A moment later Newkirk was gone, having shut the door behind him without being told. The lady boffin sat down at the mess table and gestured at the remains of the middies’ lunch. Deryn set to clearing them, her brain spinning.

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 if 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.

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.