A/N: Hello, everyone! I'm taking a break from writing Between Two Giants to begin work on this fanfic: a Newkirk-centric story taking place a little over a year after Goliath. Why, you ask? Well, I've had this idea on my mind for a while, and I've found Newkirk to be an interesting yet under-appreciated character as a whole. There's a lot of untapped potential about his backstory and why he acts the way he does in the trilogy, and I intend to explore that throughout this.
Just a heads-up for future reference: Alek, Deryn, and Volger do not appear at any point in this fanfic. They will be mentioned from time to time, but they will never make any physical appearances. Dr. Barlow may make a minor appearance at some point, but that's up in the air for now. Newkirk will have the sole POV of the story, and the plot will mostly revolve around him.
As always, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated by me. Please leave a review so I can fix any errors or listen to your advice/constructive criticism!
Also, I'd like to thank Julia456 for clarifying aspects of Newkirk's mannerisms and speech, and for letting me run some ideas by her. To conclude the note: I am not Scott Westerfeld, nor do I claim ownership to any of his characters.
Aboard the H.M.S. Leviathan, a tense standoff was underway in the lower decks. It had been going on for the past ten minutes, and showed no sign of stopping anytime soon. One lone midshipman found himself face-to-face with several undesirable objectives, and they were in the way of his relief shift. The air was thick with uncertainty and danger as Eugene Newkirk slowly approached his target.
Well, to be more accurate, the air was thick with uncertainty, danger, and the scent of ham.
"Alright, beastie," he slowly said, carefully pushing another piece of meat towards the hydrogen sniffers. "I don't like you, and it's pretty clear you don't like me. I'm going to give you this meat, and then I'll be out of your hair. Just please, please, don't try to gnaw my face off again!"
The dog-like fabrications tilted their heads at his remark, indifferent to his pleas and solely interested in the tasty chunks of ham he was carrying. Sweat was dripping down Newkirk's face. As he was stared down by several ungodly abominations with six legs and two mouths, he wondered why in the world Mr. Rigby had assigned him to feeding duty. They knew that beasties like these ones scared the ever-loving clart out of him, so why torment him like this?
He slid the fifth piece of meat to them, leaving him with only three more to distribute. The sniffers tended to avoid eating in front of people, possibly out of a peeve with being watched while stuffing themselves, or just so they could fight amongst each other for the remaining scraps. Of course, he knew why he had been assigned to this job. Ever since Sharp and Aleksandar left the Leviathan, Newkirk's fear of fabrications became even more of a detriment to the crew than during the Great War. Even with their replacements on-board now, Mr. Rigby and Captain Hobbes figured it was time for him to shape up or ship out.
As he picked up the sixth piece, one of the sniffers barked loudly and leaped up at him. Newkirk squealed with fear, dropping the ham and falling back into the corner of the airbeast's sniffer pound, which also happened to be their bathroom of sorts. The offending sniffer, not interested in mauling him, bit two pieces of meat and dragged them over to the others.
So, there he was again. Hunched up in terror of the creatures he was supposed to be a master of, pants stained with beastie piss, and his head hung in shame. "I'm still a complete ninny," he muttered, getting up steadily and nudging the last bite of ham over to the hydrogen sniffers. Their eyes were focused on him, giving him a look that said, "You should probably get going now." His duty was done, even if he still found the fabs repulsive.
Newkirk brushed the excess liquid off his pants, salvaging whatever dignity he had left as he approached the stairs. All he wanted to do was to plop in bed and think about the good old days, back when his duties aboard the airbeast involved taking down hordes of Germans.
At the top of the stairs was Midshipman Fitzroy, snickering at him with that cocky look he always had on his face.
"Still having trouble feeding the dogs, eh Newkirk?" he mockingly asked, glancing at Newkirk's stained clothes and overall terrified appearance.
So much for salvaging his pride. "They're sniffers, Fitzroy. A lot different than dogs, you know!" he shot back, aware that he wasn't helping his case at all.
"And, to think, they shipped me off this dump and left a Monkey Luddite like you to handle this! I'm glad they had the sense to bring me back."
Robert Fitzroy had been stationed on the Leviathan early on with Newkirk, and they had begrudgingly worked together until Mr. Sharp's arrival necessitated a transferring of a few members of the crew. Despite Fitzroy's parents' connections with the Admiralty, he had been shipped off to an outpost in Australia until the war died down. After he and Alek left the Leviathan for the Zoological Society, he had been brought back on with the new recruit, O'Donovan.
To put it lightly, Fitzroy was a pompous git. While he was clean-shaven and respectable-looking, he was unmistakably cocky. He believed himself to be superior to all of his fellow crewmen, and somehow thought he was irresistible to women. While he and Newkirk got along decently, he relentlessly ribbed Newkirk about his fear of the beasties aboard, calling him a Monkey Luddite and other nicknames for non-Darwinists.
"I mean, listen to yourself! You squealed like a girl at a fab not built for combat, and now you've wet your pants as well?"
"I did not barking wet my pants! I just fell into a puddle of their urine!" Once again, Newkirk realized too late that this wasn't improving his argument in the slightest.
Instead of giving him another verbal jab, Fitzroy laughed and propped open the upstairs door for him. Newkirk quickly ascended the wooden staircase, grateful to be away from those disturbing abominations down below. Now, they were in the hallway connecting each beastie habitat with one another.
Looking back, Newkirk said, "I never understood why that stairway doesn't creak."
"That's because it's fabricated wood, Newkirk! You're supposed to know these sorts of things by now!"
"That's also confusing me. How in the world do you fabricate wood? I mean, the beasties come out of eggs, but where does the wood come from? And if it's so sturdy, how do they even carve it out?"
"Easy! They just…" Fitzroy paused, scratching his head. "They…I guess they somehow…" He stamped his foot several times in frustration. "I don't know either," he eventually said, shrugging off the question as quickly as it came.
It wasn't worth dwelling on, anyway. It was just one of many other questions plaguing Newkirk ever since his best friend left the ship. With Mr. Sharp…no, Dylan…gone from active duty, he no longer had a go-to friend for beastie-related issues, or someone to talk to when he needed advice. That, and the airbeast wasn't quite the same without a decorated war hero gracing its presence.
Was Dylan Sharp the greatest hero Newkirk had ever met? Well, once he pulled him out of a burning Huxley balloon before he was incinerated, so maybe he was a bit biased on the matter. But, he also rescued several defecting Austrians from their German harassers, and destroyed an entire German strike force as they ambushed the Goliath during its test fire. The evidence didn't lie: the boy was a barking hero. He was a manly man, larger than life in his exploits yet humble enough to be close with the likes of him.
And he was gone, probably never to return while he did God-only-knows-what in the Zoological Society of London.
Newkirk hadn't changed much in the year since his departure. He had grown an inch or two, sure, and his brownish hair had gotten a bit longer, but he was overall the same. Much to his disappointment, he hadn't gotten any more independent or brave. Instead, he found himself pawning off most of his work with the beasties to Fitzroy or Matthews, in exchange for menial or strenuous tasks.
Fitzroy nudged him and pointed to another boy walking towards them. "Look, the stiff-neck's coming this way," he told him.
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Walking down the hallway was none other than Midshipman Matthews, looking as distant and impenetrable as ever. His eyes were cold, and his lips were curled in that snarl he tended to wear whenever something unsettling was on his mind.
"Either of you two know why we're heading back to that sandbox?" he asked, his voice low and authoritative.
Fitzroy chuckled, and said, "Nice to see you too, Matthews."
Ernest Matthews and Newkirk had been acquaintances during the war, often swapping stories of their lives in Cardiff and Edinburgh, respectively. However, he had the unfortunate luck of being on a sabotage mission with Dylan in the Ottoman Empire when they were ambushed, killing Midshipman Robins and leaving him and one other crewman in captivity. Matthews was the only one to make it back alive.
Something happened to Matthews in there that warped him. He went from a friendly, sociable person to a no-nonsense, cynical type. In addition, he had become prone to fits of rage and acts of violence against people that pushed him too far. He was still tolerant of Newkirk, but he had nothing but disgust for Fitzroy's self-importance and O'Donovan's inexperience with airbeasts. Whatever the Ottomans had done to him must have caused him a great deal of agony.
Not wanting to set him off, Newkirk spoke up. "The captain said that we were supposed to deliver those aid packages as soon as we got there, then wait for the German defector to contact us. He'll sneak aboard the ship, and we'll take him back to London with the Ottomans none the wiser."
Fitzroy raised his eyebrows curiously. "That's it? We just play the waiting game and sit around until this egghead pops up on our front door? I don't know, that seems like a waste of a ruggedly-handsome midshipman like myself…"
Matthews sighed, audibly frustrated at him. "Fitzroy, do you ever even think about the nonsense you say before it spews out your mouth?"
"No, Matthews, I do not. I prefer to do things, not think them over."
Newkirk had to give him credit: that was the most accurate thing he had said in his entire life. Although, it wasn't accurate in the way he had meant it.
"At least the mission sounds easy enough," Matthews said, adjusting the rigging knife attached to his pants. "What about the killings around that place? Are we supposed to worry about those?"
"If we were, Captain Hobbes would have told us."
Newkirk didn't know this for sure, though he didn't want Matthews to worry any more than he had to. Everyone aboard the Leviathan knew about the rumors swirling around: the Committee of Union and Progress had supposedly turned against a minority of its people, rounding up hundreds of "Armenians" and executing them without a hint of remorse or pity. The more the rumors got out, the worse the situation sounded: families dragged out of their homes, women and children shot in the streets for being reported as part of that race, dozens of victims marched into the desert to die of thirst while their tormentors watched. It made him worry sick when he thought about it. Who, in the right mind, would slaughter people just because their race was different than the majority? It was barking mad!
Of course, no nations had acknowledged this so far. With the Ottoman Empire politically isolating itself from the other Clanker nations and gruffly abandoned by the Darwinists, it simply did what it wanted without opposition from other nations. With no official evidence other than stories from refugees, outside groups had no grounds for intervention, only investigation.
"Who cares what's going on there?" Fitzroy questioned them. "If we're only going to be there for a day or two, nothing's going to happen to us! The Germans won't know we were there until it's too late to stop us, and the Ottomans won't care about us picking up the defecting guy. Besides, it's not like any of us are Armenian, right?"
Newkirk hadn't the faintest clue what Armenians were like. He couldn't shake the feeling that he would find out sooner or later, though.
Out of one of the tubes in the wall came a message lizard, crawling on all fours as it approached the trio. "Midshipman Newkirk," it said in Mr. Rigby's crisp voice, "I hope all is well with your feeding duty. We will be docking in the ports of Constantinople – sorry, Istanbul – within the half-hour. I need you to throw figs to the flechette bats immediately, as Midshipman O'Donovan has been reassigned to lookout for the time being. End message." It immediately crawled back up the tube, leaving as quickly as it arrived.
Newkirk's heart sank. Feeding the flechette bats? Was Mr. Rigby serious? It was hard enough to give food to three or four walking beasties, but feeding a swarm of flying ones? The first time he tried loading the bats with spikes, he nearly fainted, which forced Dylan to pick up the slack for him.
"Barking spiders!" he moaned in despair. "Nothing's going my way today…"
Fitzroy snorted at him. "Jesus, Newkirk, way to keep those stupid phrases Sharp used to say going. I mean, I've never heard anyone say that in my entire life! Who in blazes says something like 'barking spiders?'"
His cheeks flushed with humiliation, and his gaze averted from the others. He had been mimicking Dylan's way of speaking since the two became close friends. Although they were both from Scotland, he had rarely heard terms like "clart" and "barking" until he first joined the crew. Unconsciously, he began saying them as well, though he was unsure whether or not Dylan found it complimentary or annoying. In many ways, he wanted to be more like Dylan, to be braver than anyone else and to go on over-the-top adventures with unusual companions. His emulation of Dylan's slang was no doubt a reflection of that.
More than anything, he wanted to feel like he belonged aboard the Leviathan. Until he managed to overcome his extremely-conservative upbringing and deathly fear of fabrications, it was just a pipe dream.
Matthews lightly kicked his leg, getting his attention. "Better get on it, Newkirk. Looks like we'll be on a timetable again, and you know how pear-shaped that gets when we go off-schedule."
Newkirk nodded, turning his back on the others and making his way to the flechette bat nest. Now that he was away from the vitriolic nature of Fitzroy and the brooding of Matthews, his mood lightened a touch. Maybe this mission in Constantinople, or Istanbul, or whatever they called it, was precisely what he needed. There wouldn't be too much to the job: get into the port, draw the defector's attention to their airbeast, and get him out under the cover of the night. The impact would be so great in comparison: imagine, a medal pinned on his chest for successfully retrieving a Clanker defector! He might even make the papers if they decide to declassify the operation! He would be the hero he had dreamed of being for years, and his life would never be in danger at any point.
After all, their mission was nothing more than a glorified snatch-and-grab. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Optimistically expecting the next few days to breeze without issue, Newkirk opened the door to the flechette bat nest, greeted by their nauseating, unsettling shrieks. Shaking with terror, he grabbed the bag of figs left by the entrance and closed the door. Before anything else, he had to feed these disgusting insults to God and mankind.