Goliath

FORTY

The first shell landed at the edge of the compound, sending a length of barbed wire fence flailing and coiling in the air. A cloud of dust rolled outward from the explosion, and Alek heard pieces of torn metal hitting the rooftops around him.

He cupped his hands against the glass as the dust cleared, and saw the attacker striding through the trees—a smaller walker, a four-legged corvette. Two searchlights bore down from the Leviathan, revealing the deck gun on the machine’s back, its barrel spilling smoke.

“Mr. Tesla,” Alek called. “Perhaps we should evacuate.”

“Your British friends may have deserted us, but I shall not abandon my life’s work.”

Alek turned. Tesla’s hands were on the levers on the central bank of controls, his hair sticking out in all directions. Sparks flew about the room, and Alek felt the air humming with power.

“You haven’t been abandoned, sir!” He pointed at the window. “The Leviathan’s still here.”

“Can’t you see they’re too late? I have no choice but to fire.”

Alek opened his mouth to argue, but another boom sounded in the distance, and the shriek of the incoming shell sent him into a crouch. This one landed inside the compound, throwing dirt and debris against the control room windows.

Suddenly the night turned red outside, the Leviathan’s searchlights changing color, and then glimmers of metal were streaking from the sky. The men on the deck of the walker twisted and fell as the fléchettes struck home. A moment later the gun was unmanned, rolling from side to side with the machine’s gait.

The metal rain swept closer and closer, slicing through trees and sending up clods of dirt. As the torrent dwindled, one last fléchette hit the window with a smack. A crack slithered across the glass, and Alek scrambled a few steps backward, but the attack had ended.

He cleared his throat, willing his voice to stay firm. “The Leviathan has silenced that German gun, sir. We can stand down.”

“But the walker is still coming, isn’t it?”

Alek took a wary step closer to the window. The spikes had done nothing to the corvette’s metal armor, of course. But in the sky above, the Leviathan was still closing in, its bomb bay doors already open.

Then he remembered what Tesla had said about firing Goliath in earnest—any aircraft within ten kilometers would be in danger. The Leviathan was no more than a kilometer distant, and Deryn was still aboard, thanks to Alek and his deal with Eddie Malone.

This madness had to stop.

Alek turned and strode to the main bank of controls, taking Tesla by the arm. “Sir, I can’t let you do this. It’s too horrific.”

Tesla looked up. “Don’t you think I know that? To destroy a whole city… It’s the most horrible thing any human could conceive.”

“Then, why are you doing it?”

Tesla closed his eyes. “It will take a year to rebuild this tower, Alek. And in that year, how many more will die in battle? Hundreds of thousands? A million?”

“Perhaps. But you’re talking about Berlin… two million people.”

Tesla stared down at his controls. “I can dampen the effect, I think.”

“You think?”

“I won’t destroy the whole city, just enough to prove my theories. Otherwise Goliath will be lost forever! No one will invest money in a smoking crater.” He looked out the window at the walker scrambling across the dunes. “And the Germans will only grow bolder. If they aren’t stopped now, do you think their assassins will let either of us live out the year?”

Alek took a step closer. “I know what it is to be hunted, sir. I have been hounded since the night my parents died. But proving your invention isn’t worth this!”

A clamor of gunfire came from behind Alek, and he spun about. In the red glare of the Leviathan’s searchlights, the Pinkerton walker was venturing out to meet the German machine. A Gatling gun had popped up on its back and was chattering away.

But bullets were useless against steel armor, and the Pinkerton was far too small to stop the water-walker with brute force. It could only buy them time.

The Leviathan’s vast shape had slowed to a halt and was starting to reverse course. The corvette was inside the compound walls now—too close to Goliath for Leviathan to drop an aerial bomb. The airship’s officers had to know that Tesla’s weapon would be deadly to anything in the sky.

But there wasn’t time to fly ten kilometers away. The air in the control room had begun to crackle, and Alek felt his hair standing on end. The buttons of his jacket softly glowed as the electrikal lights faded around them.

The weapon would be ready to fire soon.

Alek turned to Tesla. “The people of Berlin haven’t had fair warning! You said we’d give them a chance to evacuate!”

The man pulled on a pair of thick black rubber gloves. “That chance has been stolen, but by their own kaiser, not by me. Please go back down to the dining room, Your Highness.”

“Mr. Tesla, I insist that you stop this!”

Without looking up from his controls, Tesla waved a gloved hand at his men. “Show His Highness back to the dining room, please.”

Alek reached for his sword, but he hadn’t worn it tonight. The two men approaching were much larger than him, and there were another dozen that Tesla could call upon in the control room.

“Mr. Tesla, please…”

The inventor shook his head. “I’ve dreaded this moment for years, but fate has taken control.”

The men took Alek firmly by the arms and led him to the stairs.

Most of the guests had fled the dining room, but Klopp was still there, a cigar in one hand, his cane in the other. Miss Rogers sat with him, scribbling madly.

“Sounds like quite a battle up there,” she said.

Alek sat heavily, staring at the empty chairs around the table, all askew. Even down here the floor was humming.

“He’s going to fire at Berlin. Not a test, the real thing. What have I done?”

Klopp said in German, “The others should be back in a moment, young master.”

“Back? Where in blazes have they gone?”

“To check on the luggage,” Klopp said simply.

“What?”

“Your Highness?” Miss Rogers asked. “Would you say that Mr. Tesla has become unhinged?”

Alek spun to face her. “He means to destroy a city, without warning or negotiation. What would you say?”

“That this is what you signed up for. You and the chief, and all those investors in their motorcars, headed for Manhattan as we speak. This is something you all knew might happen.”

“This is not what we planned!” Alek shouted. “This is murder!”

“The whole city of Berlin…,” Miss Rogers said, shaking her head and scribbling.

But Alek wasn’t imagining a city leveled by fire. He could think only of the Leviathan in the sky above, and of Deryn’s nightmares of her father’s death.

The wine trembled in the abandoned glasses around him. The whole table was vibrating.

“We can’t let him do this.”

“Don’t worry, young master. Here they are.”

Alek turned. Volger, Hoffman, and Bauer came storming in, carrying the long cases they’d brought from New York.

The wildcount tossed one down onto the dining table. Dishes smashed and clattered, and wineglasses fell over, spilling red across the white table cloth.

“I take it we haven’t much time?”

“Only a few minutes,” Alek said.

“And you want to stop him?”

“Of course!”

“Glad to hear it.” Volger popped the case open. Inside was a pair of dueling swords.

Alek shook his head. “He has at least a dozen men up there.”

“Have you forgotten your father’s watchword?” Volger asked.

“Surprise is more valuable than strength.” Klopp said, and reached into the case that Hoffman had brought up, drawing out a black cylinder with a long fuse. “I made this little surprise myself, in Tesla’s own laboratory.”

Klopp hobbled over to the staircase leading up to the control room, then touched the tip of his cigar to the fuse and grinned as it sputtered to life.

“Good heavens!” Miss Rogers looked up from her writing pad. “Is that a bomb?”

“Not to worry, young lady,” Count Volger said, tying a dinner napkin across his nose and mouth. “It’s only smoke. But lots of it!”

“Oh, dear,” Miss Rogers said.

Hoffman threw a napkin to Alek as Bauer opened the other sword case.

A deeper rumble came up through the floor and set the walls quivering. The air itself seemed blurry now.

“Ready yourself, Your Highness.” Volger hefted one of the swords.

Alek lifted the other sword from Volger’s case. Its hilt was trimmed in gold, and its blade was carved with gears and clockwork. “Another of my father’s heirlooms?”

“Hardly a century old. But sharp enough.”

Alek thrust the sword through his belt and hurriedly tied the napkin across his mouth. The smoke bomb had begun to sputter and spark in Klopp’s hand, and had only a few centimeters of fuse left. But the old man waited, calmly staring at it. Finally he heaved it up the stairs.

A whoosh came from above, and then a chorus of shouts and cries. Klopp stepped back as a few engineers came stumbling down the stairs, coughing and spitting.

“Wish I could join you, sirs,” the old man said, reaching for his cane.

Alek shook his head. “You’ve all done more for me than I can repay.”

“We remain at your service, sir,” Volger said, and bowed to Alek. Then he went charging up the stairs, with Hoffman and Bauer behind.

As Alek followed, the smoke rolled down to sting his eyes and lungs. The hum in the air grew with his every step.

The control room was smoke and bedlam. Electrikal sparks were flying, and someone was yelling “Malfunction,” which only added to the chaos. Tesla’s men seemed to think that the weapon itself had overloaded and set the room ablaze. The floor was shuddering, as if the whole building had turned into a vast engine.

Alek led Volger and his men through the smoke toward the central panel of controls. Tesla stood there calmly, ignoring the pandemonium around him.

“Sir, shut your machine down!” Alek ordered.

“You, of course.” Tesla didn’t look up. “I should have known not to trust an Austrian.”

“Trust, Mr. Tesla? You’ve gone against all our plans!” Alek raised his sword, and his men followed suit. “Turn off your machine!”

Tesla glanced up at their sword tips, and laughed. “Too late for second thoughts, Prince.”

With a rubber-gloved hand he spun a dial, then ducked behind the panel. The crackling in the air suddenly built to a snap, and a spiderweb of lightning leapt out of the smoke from all directions, striking the tips of the drawn swords.

The hilt of Alek’s weapon turned searing hot, but he couldn’t drop it—every muscle in his hand was suddenly clenched tight. A wild and unstoppable force seized him, twisting his heart in his chest. A lance of agony shot from his right hand down through his body, down to the soles of his feet.

Alek stumbled backward until he slipped, the dancing cord of electricity breaking as he fell to the ground. His lungs were seared by the smoke, and the palm of his sword hand was charred and stinging. The smell of burned hair and flesh filled his nose.

Alek lay there on his back a moment, but there wasn’t time to be stunned. The floor was still shaking beneath him, stronger every second. He staggered to his feet, looking about for his sword, but the control room was a mass of smoke and flickering lights.

He stumbled over a prone form—Bauer, clutching his burned sword hand to his chest.

“Are you all right, Hans?”

“There, sir!”

Bauer pointed his blackened fingers at a silhouette in the smoke. It was Tesla, his long arms working the levers, and propped beside him on the controls was his electrikal walking stick. Alek lurched toward him and grasped the stick, then rose to his full height.

He nestled his finger around the trigger and pointed it straight at Tesla.

“Stop, sir.”

The man stared at the metal tip a moment, then gave an arrogant snort and calmly reached for the largest lever among the controls….

“No,” Alek said, and pulled the trigger.

Lightning slashed out across the room. It took Tesla’s body and shook him like a puppet. Fingers of white flame spilled out of the cane to dance across the controls. Sparks spat in all directions, and the smell of burned metal and plastic filled the room.

In seconds the walking stick sputtered out. Tesla lay slumped across the controls, not moving. Tiny bolts of lightning skittered across his body, and his hair twitched and quivered.

The rumble in the floor beneath Alek began to shudder, surging and falling, rattling the whole building in shock wave after shock wave, as if a giant were staggering past. Alek’s vision blurred with every pulse, and he heard the windows shattering all around him.

He called out Volger’s name, but the trembling air itself seemed to shred the sound apart. The smoke thinned as the smell of salt water rolled in through the broken windows, and Alek staggered toward the nearest one, his lungs crying out for fresh air. His boots skidded, shards of glass cutting him through his burned boot soles. But at least he could breathe.

He stared up at Goliath looming over the compound. The pulsing beat beneath his feet was echoed in the crackles of electricity coursing the tower’s length. The whole machine was bursting with power, and Alek realized what he’d done….

Goliath was like a steam boiler under pressure. It was ready to fire, but he had stopped Tesla from loosing the massive energies building up inside it. The chimneys were still spitting smoke, the generators sending more power to the already brimming capacitors. As Alek watched, he saw more windows shattering across the compound.

In the middle of it all, the German corvette stood over the wreckage of the Pinkerton walker. It had torn two of the smaller machine’s legs off, and seemed to be performing a bizarre victory dance. Its legs were shivering, its body lurching back and forth.

Then Alek saw the webs of lightning on its metal skin—the walker’s control systems had been addled by the wild energy that was setting the air aquiver. He looked into the sky.

The Leviathan itself was glowing, like a cloud catching the setting sun. The airship’s cilia were rippling, slowly pulling it away, but the engines were silent, their electrikals also overwhelmed.

Would the hydrogen catch fire? Alek grasped the edge of the window, hardly feeling the broken glass against his palms.

“Deryn,” he sobbed. Anything but this.

Then another shape loomed in the distance, something huge lurching over the horizon. It was the first walker, four times the size of the corvette, a tattered German naval jack fluttering from its spar deck. The machine was advancing slowly, its two right legs swinging uselessly. But the kraken-fighting arms were flailing at the ground, dragging the walker across the dunes as though it were a dying beast.

Alek wondered for a moment how its electrikals hadn’t shorted yet, but then the walker stumbled onto the tangled metal of the perimeter fence, and a circuit was completed. A single jittering finger leapt from the nearest small tower, striking an upraised kraken-fighting arm of the German machine.

The lightning from the other towers followed, their built-up charges hungry for a way out, and within an eyeblink five streams of electricity were pouring into the huge water-walker. The machine shuddered for a moment, its limbs rattling mindlessly as sparks swept across its metal skin. The air itself tore open in one long peal of thunder. The scrub trees around the walker burst into flame, the white fire consuming even the soil and sand beneath it.

The ammunition magazines must have caught then. The walker began to shake harder, and jets of fire burst from its hatches. Flames spat from the smokestacks as the fuel tanks caught all at once, and black smoke roiled out of the engine vents.

When the thudding of explosions had finally faded, Alek could hardly hear, but he could feel that the trembling beneath his feet was gone. The control room behind him was dark and silent, save for dazed human voices. Goliath had expended itself on the German walker.

Alek looked up again. The Leviathan’s glow was fading, the airship whole and alive with all its crew.

He shook with another sob, sinking to one knee and realizing that the survival of that one ship—one girl, really—had been for a moment more important than the war itself, or a city’s millions. Then the wind shifted, and Alek breathed in the burnt-meat smells that filled the room behind him.

Important enough for him to kill a man, it seemed.