First things first: this universe and its characters are all the invention of Scott Westerfeld, a very talented author who has produced a phenomenally interesting alternate WW1 universe. Unfortunately the publishing process is slow and it will be well over a year before the final book of HIS series comes out (to be named "Goliath" hence the name of my story). I could not wait that long so I started a sort of pseudo-sequel to keep me going. The first two chapters are done. Another three are in the works and many, many more are planned. I will try and update once a week (I'm sure everyone says that) but I will try, GCSEs allowing.
So, without further ado, Goliath!
The first they heard was from Volger. Somehow (the threat of a pair of broken engines and a
career ending "diplomatic incident" seemed the most likely) he had persuaded Captain Hobbes to give him back his wireless set. The German radio codes were different from the Austrian ones but Volger was anything but unprepared. Deryn had balked at the size of the "borrowed" German codebook that sat by the wireless set. It certainly looked heavy enough to warrant a ballast entry of its own. But a bare few days out of Istanbul, it proved its usefulness.
Deryn had been feeding the flechette bats, sadly depleted during their attack on the Goeben and Breslow. The wee beasties used to be able to cover the entire nose of the whale but now she had to rappel off the hard dorsal scales to find any, the biting wind threatening to rip away her feeding bag. As the last of the little coves yielded their occupants, an intrepid lizard crested the airbeast's nose and began to crawl towards her, eyes narrowed against the wind an tiny sucker feet scrabbling for purchase.
"Mister... Arp... Vol... No... Cab... Alek."
It spoke in Dr Barlow's voice but the wind snatched away the words. Deryn climbed up and snatched the wee thing up, keeping it warm inside the collar of her flightsuit. It curled up around the back of her neck and made a contented sigh that sounded worryingly like Newkirk when he was in the latrines (or heads, as the Manual of Aeronautics referred to them). That was not a pleasant thought. Back in the calm of the gondola, Deryn pulled the lizard out.
"Begin Message."
The lizard looked at her with big black eyes, unblinking. Then it began to speak in Dr Barlow's voice. There was a strange edge to the lady boffin's voice.
"Mister Sharp. Volger has given me some news. Nothing good, I am afraid. See me in the Count's cabin and bring Alek." Deryn frowned. She had never heard the boffin talk like that. When the Leviathan was lying on a barking glacier with the Germans boring down on them and no hope of rescue for a few weeks, the lady boffin had only mustered some calculated irritation at the delay. The closest had been in the throne room of the Sultan after his automaton had crushed her poor beastie but even then she had been more shocked and angry. But this time it was different. For the first time Deryn had ever heard her, Dr Barlow sounded afraid.
Alek's cabin was its usual mess of maps, engine schematics and other paraphernalia. Deryn always wondered how he managed to find anything at all. But he seemed perfectly fine, lying on his bed with her borrowed "Manual of Aeronautics". He was reading through it carefully, examining each airflow diagram with limitless curiosity. Bovril sat on his shoulder, his wee eyes looking down on the book too. Could the beastie read barking books now?
"Alek?"
The boy looked up, his green eyes opening in surprise as he saw her standing in the doorway.
"Dylan!"
He put the book aside. Bovril gave him an annoyed look and clambered down his piloting jacket onto the bed and towards a bowl of fruit on the bedside table.
"Thank you for lending me that book."
Deryn nodded. She could see a certain sadness in his eyes. He had confessed, back before they reached Constantinople, that he was in love with the Leviathan. But he was heading for a cage back in England. There was no way he would ever use what he had read. But then he blinked and the sadness was gone, replaced with genuine warmth at the sight of his friend. She actually had to make a conscious effort not to blush. Barking bloody princes! But still, the look helped lessen unease she had been feeling about Dr Barlow's message.
"Bovril! Stop that!"
Alek scolded. The wee beastie scurried away and up Delyn's clothes, secreting itself behind her neck. It peeked out at Alek with mischievous eyes and a large grape held in its hands. Alek shook his head.
"Good thing we didn't have that thing in Switzerland or we would have run out of supplies already."
Deryn smiled at that, remembering the huge store rooms in the prince's Swiss castle.
"Anyway, Dr Barlow wants to see us in Volger's Stateroom."
"Volger's?"
"Aye."
Alek frowned.
"Those two are clever enough on their own. God alone knows what they've been cooking up together."
"Dr Barlow, Alek and I..."
The lady boffin silenced them with a glare. She was sitting at the state room's desk which was covered with sheets of paper. The German codebook was open and she was going through a pile of Morse code and translating it into letters. Which had the added complexity of being in Clanker. Volger was also at the desk, his eyes closed and a headpiece pressed tightly against his head. With his other hand, he wrote an incomprehensible mass of tiny dots and dashes which Dr Barlow was decoding. Alek and Deryn watched them for a few long minutes until Volger dropped his pen and opened his eyes.
"Alek."
He looked across at Dr Barlow who was just finishing with the Morse code. With a flurry of pen strokes, she completed the page and relaxed in her chair. Volger tugged away the finished papers and handed them to Alek. He scanned through them, his green eyes widening as he read. Deryn tried to read over his shoulder but her grasp of written Clanker was still basic and Dr Barlow's rushed penmanship did not help either.
"What does it say?"
"They are reports from the German military command in Brest-Litovsk. The Eastern Front has folded. The Russians are surrendering."
His voice was deadpan.
"What?"
It seemed the most appropriate response. Count Volger and Dr Barlow looked equally upset.
"Tsar Nicholas..."
"No." Alek replied. "When the German army reached St Petersburg, the Tsar abdicated. Now Russia is ruled by the Petrograd Soviet which has made peace a first priority."
"But how? The last I heard, the Russian fighting bears were tearing the Germans apart! We sunk the Breslau so the Russians could stay supplied!"
Alek stared at the documents, his eyes blank. Deryn stared at him. None of it made sense!
"How did they manage to destroy every Russian army unit from Latvia to Moscow in a matter of days?"
Alek laughed, a humourless noise.
"What does it matter? Now Germany and Austria-Hungary have an extra million and a half men to send to France."
The implications suddenly hit home.
"So we might..."
"Lose the war."
Dr Barlow spoke for the first time. Her voice was cracked. Bovril made an unhappy noise.
"But how? How did the Germans do it so quickly?"
Deryn insisted. Volger looked at her with bloodshot eyes. But despite the fact that both he and Dr Barlow had been at the wireless set for several hours at least, he had not managed to lose his haughty air.
"How indeed, Mr Sharp."
"'Mr' Sharp!" Bovril chuckled. Dr Barlow gave it an odd look. Alek continued to skim through the sheets, sitting on the bed.
"Count Volger?" he asked at last, "Have you ever heard of this 'Curling Project' before?"
Volger shook his head. "Ask Klopp, he's our resident German secret weapons expert."
Deryn noticed Dr Barlow go quite pale, like something Alek had said had drained the colour out of her face.
"Are you all right, ma'am?"
She shook her head slowly.
"'Curling'? As in Dr Charles Curling?"
Alek looked up.
"It mentions a C. Curling. Why, have you heard of him?"
Dr Barlow nodded.
"I worked with him in Oxford for many years. But then there was a terrible scandal."
Deryn suddenly remembered the name too.
"Wasn't Dr Curling the man who attempted to change the lifethread of his daughter?"
Dr Barlow nodded again.
"It is a very sad story and one that I feel I could have averted. You see, Dr Curling was a brilliant fabricator, a protégée of my grandfather and one of my closest colleagues back before I received my position at His Majesties London Zoo. He had a wife, a clever American woman whom he loved a great deal. Anyway, his wife, Charlotte I believe, became pregnant and some tests were run. It was revealed that both Charles and Charlotte carried a recessive disorder in their lifethreads, one that was linked conclusively with near total paralysis. Needless to say, Charles was horrified. He wanted that child more than anything. I should have noticed the signs. When the child was born, however, she did not suffer from paralysis. Instead, there was a much stranger issue. The girl spent long periods inconsolably crying, twitching and screaming. Eventually they had to inject her with sedatives to prevent her from hurting herself. She spent the first four years of her life in a hospital bed, drugged into semi-consciousness. There was no way to cure her. Charles stayed with her almost every day. He read stories, drew pictures, played with puppets. He did everything he could to try and give her a normal life. But her symptoms grew worse. She was in terrible pain nearly all the time. Eventually Charles broke. Near her fifth birthday, he stole some muscle relaxant from the hospital and administered it to her heart while she slept. A terrible tragedy. During the trial it emerged that he had attempted to modify his daughter's lifethread when she was an embryo so as to prevent her from being paralysed. A group of esteemed fabricators were asked if Charles's alterations were the cause of her disorder. They said yes but were unable to pinpoint why. They therefore made the conclusion that the act of altering a human lifethread is the cause as opposed to any specific alteration. Modifying human lifethreads is one of the most heinous of crimes in Britain for this very reason. His license was revoked and he was sent to prison for manslaughter. I haven't heard from him since."
The room was silent. Then
"Sad." muttered Bovril.
"Sad." Dr Barlow's Loris agreed.