Deryn had hardly just reached topside when a large bang! resonated from the starboard engine. The taste of smoke was in the air. Smoke was not good. Smoke was fire. And on an airship filled to the brim with hydrogen gas, a single spark could be deadly. Their fate was already sealed. Barking Clanker machines, someone should have known that one of the unpredictable pieces of unliving clart would have erupted into flame eventually. Clanker… Alex! Barking spiders Alek is working in the engines! They had only seconds before the fire would reach the skin and burn through, enveloping the airbeast – and everyone on it – in a giant inferno of flame. Deryn moved faster than Tazza on one of her arm-wrenching walks above deck, and rounded the side of the ship just in time to see the starboard engine come loose from the skin of the enormous beastie and begin to plummet to the ground.
"Aleeeek!" And in that very second Deryn was no longer the brave, cocky midshipman Dylan Sharp, but a terrified 15 year old girl, and anyone who sole a glance at her would see her exposed from the inside out. With no regard for her personal safety, the now very female Deryn Sharp leapt from her hold on the ratlines. If we are all to die someday after all, why not take one last flight with the one you love?
