Chapter 29
"Release"
Graz, Austria
February 2nd, 1917
All it took were the faintly-heard threats that Dietrich hurled at Volger to send Alek into a desperate panic. Without a thought for self-preservation or his team's quiet infiltration of the prison, he bolted for the closest stairwell to him, barely keeping himself from stumbling down the damaged steps in search of Volger, all while Deryn bolted after him and yelled at him to get back with the rest of them.
"No, no, no," Alek nervously muttered to himself, trying to keep calm even as Volger was staring down death. "Not now, not like this. Please, anywhere but here…"
As he and Deryn had discovered upon leading their rag-tag band of confidants into the rebel-held prison, fighting had already engulfed the complex. Though the multi-story building had its fair share of wear and tear from the war, it looked far better in the photographs they had been given than it did in person. With all of its cracks and damaged supports, he was amazed that the place hadn't collapsed in on itself yet.
He shook the thought away. "Best not to tempt fate…"
He didn't have a plan of action for when he confronted the Germans. Best case scenario, he would be able to talk some sense into their leader and have them stand down. He doubted they would listen to him, which meant it would boil down to one short-sighted ex-prince against a group of highly-trained German commandos carrying experimental weapons. Deryn might've liked those odds, but he didn't get his hopes up whenever he was horrendously outnumbered.
"Alek!" the cries behind him grew closer. "Get back here, you barking ninny!"
Speaking of Deryn…
"Have you lost your mind?" she cried, huffing and puffing after speeding ahead of him and cutting him off. "You're the one who told us to stick together! This isn't the time to be splitting up!"
Alek tried to slip past her, only for her to block his every move. "Didn't you hear anything that German said?" he asked, trying to push past Deryn without much progress. "We don't have time to wait! Volger can't stall those people forever! I'm going to help him, and you're not going to stop me!"
Deryn briefly faced Alek, conflicted as she eventually said, "Then I'm coming with you. We stand a better chance if we work together." She pulled a Disruptor fab from her satchel and dropped it onto her right arm. Its legs quickly wrapped around her, securing itself for the inevitable fight ahead.
Below them, Volger's comments to Dietrich were getting cut short, with him trying to appeal to the colonel's sense of Clanker comradery and human decency in vain. All the while, Dietrich sounded less and less amiable, as if he couldn't bring himself to shoot them yet, but was looking for an excuse to do so. Alek and Deryn shared a look of pure dread before descending the next flight of stairs. Alek wondered how long the wildcount could distract Dietrich before the German lost his patience. The two of them crept out into the hallway, which put them behind Volger, Jung, and a few prisoners who had tagged along with them.
And, as it turned out, in the same direction the Germans were facing.
A frightening smirk cemented itself on Dietrich's face. "Well, well, well! Prince Aleksandar has graced us with his presence after all!"
Alek shivered. The German colonel had made his desires to "help" Alek clear by breaking off the ex-prince's connections to the Darwinists by any means necessary. He hadn't assumed Dietrich would go this far, though.
"Good thing you arrived in time," Dietrich continued, acting as if he hadn't just threatened to kill his closest ally and frame it on the Darwinists, "Wildcount Volger was nearly attacked by one of Gottschalk's elite guards! My men and I disposed of him, of course, in the fashion any good ally of yours would."
Volger, still holding Jung up, had the sense to fall back behind Alek and Deryn. Relief washing over Alek, he resisted the urge to take his mentor up in a sweeping hug.
"You shouldn't have come here, Your Serene Highness," Volger muttered. "Gottschalk's trapped in Loyalist territory, and unless you can find your way there and end the offensive, this war might escalate even further."
Alek vigorously shook his head. "I won't leave you behind, Volger. You mean far too much to me!"
"And your survival means more to me than my own life! I promised your father I would ensure your safety, and thus far, I have been going about it poorly!"
Deryn nudged Alek. "Both of you, talk it out later! We've got bigger issues right ahead of us!"
Both Alek and Deryn had their weapons pointed at the German, which didn't amount to that much of a threat compared to his dozen-man commando group's array of machine pistols and armor-piercing rifles at their disposal. Even with the nigh-unlimited energy of Deryn's Disruptor and his Mauser carbine, they wouldn't hold up long if one side or another started shooting.
"Colonel, I mean you and your men no harm," Alek forced out, trying not to step on any toes. "Wildcount Volger's life is dear to me, and I would rather not have him endangered by your actions."
"My actions? Why, Aleksandar, whatever makes you think I was going to harm him?"
Before Alek could stop her, Deryn railed at Dietrich, "Don't be daft! We heard you going on about how much you wanted to blow Volger's brains out and blame it on the rebels! You're nothing but a coward trying to come off all proper and polite!"
The colonel pursed his lips. "I have been called a lot of rude names before, but 'coward' is a new one for me. Tell me, would a coward risk his life – and career – to help reform a wayward prince who helped my allies lose the war?"
Alek wished that the rest of his followers would figure out where they went and arrive soon. With them on his side, they might be able to distract Dietrich long enough to escape. Or, if the worst happened, then they would have enough manpower to stand their ground against the Germans.
Until then, he would have to play Dietrich's game and keep him talking.
"You're utterly daft," Deryn hissed. Alek appreciated having her distract Dietrich while he was mulling over potential escapes, though he was growing worried that she would push the colonel too far. Her Disruptor wavering between Germans whenever one would step out of line. "Alek didn't join the Darwinists because he hated the Clankers! He only did it because you lot killed his family, then tried to kill him! Maybe if your friends hadn't stabbed him in the back, then he would have helped you!"
"You are correct. A stabbing-in-the-back did occur, but Alek's mother and father were only precautions taken to ensure the war wouldn't continue to escalate. It was all for a selfless cause, something you should understand."
A shot of anger surged through Alek, but he kept quiet while Dietrich continued talking. "There is a traitor in this room, a man who poisoned young, naïve Aleksandar's mind into believing his countrymen would harm him. Isn't that right, Count Volger?"
"Oh, come off it!" Deryn cried, continuing to provoke the Germans against Alek's wishes. "You can spin it any way you'd like, but Alek made his own choice when he came to our side! His – not Volger's, or Klopp's, or Barlow's, or even mine! And he won't bend over backwards to make you happy, I can tell you that much!"
For the first time since they had arrived, Jung spoke up. He used Volger to straighten himself up while he said, "Look, whatever your name is - Colonel Dirtbag, Dimwit, I honestly can't remember - you're wasting your time threatening Alek and Volger here! I have no idea what you hope to gain by passively-aggressively threatening us, but every second here costs us a chance to nab Gottschalk! If you remember, the last time you Krauts went around attacking Clankers, it cost us the war! Or, have you already deluded yourself into thinking it was a minor setback, like those pipes on your back you probably think look anything other than moronic?"
Initially taken aback at Jung's remarks, Dietrich chuckled, muttering a faint order: "Make sure he survives; I'd like a private word with him." His followers treaded carefully behind him, weapons at the ready to strike them down at any signs of a struggle. Unconsciously, Alek backed up, but stood his ground when he saw the others not budging an inch.
"I don't think you understand the situation, so let me break it down for you. First of all," Dietrich swept his arms around the hall, "look around at this place! You can't hope to put up a good fight here, not with my numbers and your sub-par equipment. Second, even if you try to run, there's a good chance the Darwinists will finish you off before I can. Third – and this is the most important point – you won't put your allies at risk, Aleksandar. You know it, I know it, and they should know it by now.
"So, please, hand yourself over to me, and we can put this sad story to a close. I enjoyed it at first, but now it's gone on so long that it's grating on my nerves."
Torn between his distrust and resentment for the Germans and his devotion to Deryn and Volger, Alek was so consumed by his thoughts that the next few moments seemed to mesh together and come at an instant.
Barreling down behind Dietrich's men came a band of Black Hand guards accompanied by a few fabs, yelling about a riot that was threatening to overtake their airfield. The Serbian fellow from Gottschalk's ill-fated meeting with him, Adrian, was leading the front. Many of them were clutching one of their blood-stained ears with an expression of overwhelming discomfort plastered on their faces.
The Germans, overhearing the threat, barked at each other and split themselves between keeping Alek and the others covered and focusing on the new threat. Dietrich seemed more amused than anything, turning away from Alek to face the not-quite-as-stalwart rebel commander.
Stopping themselves short, the Black Hand guards seemed unsure of what to make of the Germans at their doorstep. Adrian stomped close to Dietrich, making an effort to seem intimidating, and failing miserably due to his roughed-up and uninspiring appearance. He yelled at the German colonel that they were interfering with the affairs of Anastasia Gottschalk, and that they had no quarrel with the Germans after their non-aggression pact, and that he would see to it that the Kaiser hear of their rudeness in a strongly-worded letter.
Then Adrian caught glimpses of Volger, Jung, and Alek, hissing, "You people…you ruined everything!" at them.
Dietrich drew a long officer's pistol from his coat and shot one of Adrian's subordinates in the chest.
With that, the gunshots began ringing out in a rapid, staccato pace, sending the cramped hallway into a vicious firefight. Volger and Jung dropped to the ground just as Deryn and Alek fell into prone positions. The prisoners behind them, too slow to react, were quickly blasted to shreds in the ensuing chaos.
A frenzy of mechanical and fabricated weapons fired in an unending frenzy, bullets flying alongside electrical bolts and acid bursts, all impacting with such force that the unstable walls of the compound seemed unlikely to hold up much longer.
Alek wanted all of the killing to stop. Gottschalk's words affected him more than he cared to admit, but he saw no other way out of the battle. He jammed on the trigger of his carbine until it clicked empty, just as Deryn was exhausting the poor Disruptor by forcing it to release bolt after bolt of electricity.
Both sides fell quickly, though time stretched on slowly and deliberately during the fight. In a few moments of clarity amid the chaos, he noticed that Dietrich's coat was blocking bolts of electricity from the rebels and Deryn, the energy fading out as it connected with it. His metallic arms whirred and his exhaust pipes churned out more steam as he tore through the closest Black Hand guards.
He only stopped to grab Adrian by his throat. With a flourish, his hand began spinning, and the rebel commander's neck was twisted in a way the human body wasn't meant to support. As soon as Dietrich let go of him, the Serbian man plopped on the ground lifelessly.
Everything else blurred, and it wasn't until all of the Germans and Darwinists lay dead or heavily-wounded that he realized Dietrich had only suffered minor injuries, but was also within an arm's reach of them.
A powerful blow from Dietrich knocked Alek onto Volger and Jung. Stars seemed to float around his eyes as he rapidly blinked, trying to regain control of his senses. The carbine had fallen out of his hands somewhere next to Deryn, who-
-Mein Gott, Alek thought, Deryn. Her Disruptor crushed to a pulp, Deryn desperately parried Dietrich's blows with a fallen lead pipe, losing ground with each of his attacks.
She was strong, especially for a girl, but her odds against a mechanically-augmented soldier with more than a decade of combat experience were slim. Her swings with the pipe, whichever way they were angled, were all effortlessly dodged by Dietrich. In turn, every one of his blows were too fast to dodge, forcing her to block blow after blow with too little time to strike back. Every time she blocked a series of punches she attempted a counterattack, only for her strikes to be narrowly evaded at each turn. Left, right, up, down – it didn't matter, he always reacted quicker than she could. She yelled at the colonel as she broke free from another barrage, attempting an overhead strike with both of her hands grasping the pipe.
Dietrich smirked and struck the Scottish girl hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her and leaving her gasping for air.
Alek screamed her name as the colonel backhanded her against a wall.
Ignoring every protest his body gave – the blurriness of his vision, the pain shooting along his face – he got on his feet, taking Deryn's improvised melee weapon up as he charged Dietrich.
"Will you ever learn?" Dietrich sneered at him, casually sidestepping Alek's swipe and gripping the boy's neck when he faltered.
"You're no fighter-" he threw Alek against the cold floor, the ex-prince crying out as his back crashed into the ground.
Somehow, Volger managed to take hold of Alek's fallen gun. He pointed it at the colonel and ordered him to stand down. However, by the time he had pulled the trigger and realized it was empty, Dietrich had delivered an uppercut that knocked him out cold.
Alek barely had time to get up before he was roughly shoved to the floor.
"-You're no soldier-" Dietrich kneeled over Alek, punching him repeatedly in the face. Alek felt himself slipping away from consciousness with each hit.
"-And you're certainly no hero! You're a traitor to your own people, and an expendable asset to our enemies." Dietrich stopped striking Alek to draw out a long-barreled Luger pistol. The cold end of the barrel was pressed against his forehead. "And I had such great plans for you…"
Behind them, Deryn dragged herself to the fallen Darwinists, turning over bodies and barely-living guards in search of a still-functioning beastie to use. On the opposite side, Jung took hold of Volger and tried to drag him to safety, his missing leg preventing them from moving.
"N-no," Alek whispered, forcing himself to remain conscious amid the painful thumping in his head. "I'm not a traitor. Everything I did was to ensure that no one else would have to die for the Darwinists or Clankers. I wanted to make peace for our time."
A bitter, surprised laugh came from Dietrich. "And where has that gotten you? Back where it all started you, with enough blood on your hands to keep a hemophiliac going for months!" He pulled the gun away from Alek and aimed it at Volger and Jung. Alek's head was pushed to the other side, tilting his view towards Deryn, who had a fresh Disruptor attached to her arm. "You're a failure, plain and simple. And, had it not been for that traitor of a count, you would have accomplished much more."
To his own surprise, Alek laughed along with him. "You know what? You're right. In that sense, I am a failure."
Deryn pulled herself up, her fabricated weapon shaking as she aimed it at Dietrich.
"But, unlike you, I'm going to survive long enough to fix that."
Deryn tore off Dietrich's coat and, upon twisting him around to face her, kicked him off of Alek and blasted him again and again with the Disruptor, shocking the German colonel with enough volts to fry a walker's internal components. He could barely let a scream out before it was cut short, his own mechanical parts shorting out and failing on him. The force pushed him against a wall, Deryn continuing to electrocute the German all the while. Unable to control himself, he twitched involuntarily from the sudden malfunctions of his artificial limbs. Even after he stopped responding, she continued to let loose with the Disruptor until he had nearly ignited.
Still shaken from the vicious beating, Alek exerted the last bits of his strength to limp beside Volger. Alek breathed easier when he heard Volger's heart continuing to beat. The wildcount was coughing lightly and shaking off the blow to the head he had been dealt, but he was still alive.
Deryn weakly smiled at Alek, and he returned the favor, keeping a stupid grin plastered on his face even as his legs gave out.
She yelled something at him that he couldn't quite make it out. He also became faintly aware of Boesch, Ashton, and Goldstein clamoring around beside him. Alek saw Boesch removing some items from his medical satchel while his eyes closed against his will. The sensation of hands gripping his sides and lifting him up became less noticeable every second.
A barrage of images hit him as he fell in and out of focus: a dirty prison cell that looked ready for an execution, a blinding light, a number of airbeasts taking flight, a group of dissenting Austrian Darwinists surrounding them.
Then, before sleep overtook him, he could barely make out the hushed sounds of air rushing all around him.
Alek awoke in a stiff, though not entirely uncomfortable, bed that had been lightly furnished by a faded blanket and some threadbare sheets. A dull pain wracked his brain, and he groaned as he lifted his head up to see his surroundings.
Judging by the assortment of airbeast equipment and the sun shining at a much lower angle through the windows, he assumed he had been taken aboard a rebel fabrication. The captain's room, or whatever equivalent there was for this, was scarce compared to the lavishness of the Leviathan's. Only the bare essentials were stocked for an emergency.
By his side sat Deryn, who gently took his chin in her hand after he had got up. "Rise and shine, Alek," she whispered. "You feeling alright?"
"I'm fine." A sharp, brief jolt of pain in his head forced him to reconsider. "Well, I've been worse. Where are we, anyway?"
"You're aboard one of the beasties the dissenting rebels commandeered. They've been fancying me a hero since I almost nabbed Gottschalk, so…" She beamed at him, proudly proclaiming, "You're looking at the captain of the newly-coined Nephilim."
"God's wounds…this airbeast is yours?" he replied, utterly shocked at both the rebels' generosity and their own good luck.
"Aye, and I'm using it to get our lot where they're needed. That means Volger, Boesch, Ashton, the other Clankers we brought with us…oh, and that Jung fellow I can't stand."
Taking hold of Alek's arm, Deryn helped him on his feet. They both faced the windows, where they skimmed over puffy white clouds over the Austrian countryside. The green hills and dense forests stood as still as always, damaged by the fighting but not destroyed. Far ahead of them, thick plumes of smoke rose over the haze-covered blip of a city in the distance.
"Vienna," Alek muttered to himself. He didn't want to imagine the destruction the capital must be experiencing from the battle.
"Aye, where the Darwinist rebels and the Clankers have massed together to duke it out. Gottschalk's somewhere in that mess. If I had to guess, I would say she's in Loyalist hands right now. Otherwise, the rebels would have backed down a long time ago."
They were going to keep fighting until one side dropped dead, Alek realized. The Clankers would fight tooth and nail to hold onto their new prize. If they could get Gottschalk to a safe location, they would be able to make any demands with the Austrian Darwinist Alliance. Perhaps the major Darwinist powers would be eager to trade for her as well. Given the sheer number of advances she made with fabricated weapons, organizations like the Zoological Society would pay top dollar to have that kind of expertise on their side.
On the opposite side of that coin were the rebels, still reeling from the failed coup d'état against Gottschalk. He had no idea how many of them would be willing to fight for their former leader, or how many would abandon the prospect of fighting for a woman intent on dragging out the war as long as she could. Maybe they would simply take advantage of the chaos to strike at the Clankers' largest arteries, the airstrips outside of Vienna.
Fueled by the revelations, Alek came to a conclusion. "It has to stop here, Deryn. The fighting, the killing, this whole civil war. If this goes any further, Austria will be cast into the Dark Ages for years to come."
"I agree, but…how do you suppose we'll stop it?"
Flatly, he said, "I haven't the faintest clue."
Deryn's hand squeezed his. "Then we'll figure it out as we go along, like we always do."
Taking her in his arms, Alek surrounded himself with her warmth. He rested her head against his shoulder, which was rather difficult given the difference in height they shared. Still, he felt reassured in his convictions, which was more than enough to keep him going.
"Love you, mein leuchtender stern."
"Love you too, you daft ninny."
A/N: Apologies for the two-month long gap between 28 and 29. I got sidetracked from writing for most of June and July, and forgot to get back to work on the fanfic until recently. Special thanks to eisceire for helping to edit this chapter!
Deryn calling her airbeast the Nephilim continues the tradition of naming airbeasts biblical and mythical names. In this instance, the Nephilim were giants that inhabited the land of Canaan in the Old Testament.
Up next - well, best not to make any promises that I might end up breaking...
