Author's Notes:
More than half a year since my last update! Thank you to the readers who still had faith in me, and sorry to let you wait for so long. It's increasingly hard to get in time to write with the curriculum getting exponentially more challenging, but I'll try to squeeze in bits of writing here and there. As such, I can't promise when the next update is, or which story it will be; I hope you'll forgive me.
Also, I know I said Alek will debut this chapter but apparently not. He will definitely debut the next, though!
The aerial alarm rang in persistent triplets.
"I have to run, ma'am," Dylan said quickly. "Can you make it back to your cabin alone?"
"I'd think not, Mr. Sharp," said Dr. Barlow. She caught Kate's eyes and they nodded at each other. "I shall be with my cargo."
"I'll go with you," Kate said. Her own promethacytes were all dormant, strapped down safely in neat stacks of culture dishes, awaiting sunlight to start electrosynthesis. "I think you might need help."
Dylan looked aghast. "But—but… this is an alert! You can't go to the machine room!"
"The cargo is more important," Kate said. "We won't break our necks, I promise."
"But passengers are supposed to stay —"
"And midshipmen are supposed to be sixteen years old," Dr. Barlow retorted, waving her hand dismissively. "Don't you have some sort of battle station to go to?"
The lad let out a growl, before turning away and running off, his footsteps fading fast in the cavernous digestive track. The alarm was still blaring, loud and incessant. Sensing no time to lose, Dr. Barlow headed aft towards another small exit, and Kate followed.
"I hadn't expected the Germans to find us this quickly," Dr. Barlow said, sighing, as they reached the trapdoor. Cold air rushed into the cavity as she lifted it open on its well-oiled hinges. Tazza jumped through the opening with an expert ease, having mastered maneuvering aboard the ship, and Dr. Barlow climbed down after him. Kate waited until she was a safe distant down before lowering herself as well, closing the trapdoor on the way. As she passed from the beast to the gondola, she saw that the small swath of sky was being illuminated by searchlight, and very distantly, she spotted metal wings and a painted iron cross.
"German aeroplanes!" she exclaimed as she rejoined Dr. Barlow on the relatively more solid ground of the gondola.
"I saw," the Doctor said grimly, striding forward. "I don't know how many."
"How high are we?" Kate asked. Matt had mentioned something about the maximum height of aeroplanes before, somewhere around eight or ten thousand feet. The same as ornithopters, he'd said, and definitely less than airships.
"I have no idea," Dr. Barlow said. "But evidently not high enough."
A couple of crewmen ran past, hydrogen sniffers bounding after them in a mad dash towards open air. Tazza bounced around uneasily, sensing their anxiety. The entire ship was bustling like an agitated bee hive, every man desperate to get to their battle stations. There was the clacking of machine guns, and a second later a tremor passed through the ship. Distantly, as if muffled through water, there came shouts and cries of pain.
"Already, the War claims its first casualties," Kate said quietly, stopping for a moment to hope that whoever that was, he was alright.
Dr. Barlow only nodded, her footsteps not slowing, and soon enough they reached the machine room. Electrical parts and metal bits were arranged and assembled chaotically all over the walls, and haphazard heaps of utensils lay stacked in toolboxes all around the metal gratings and in little cabinets. The egg box was in the center, strapped down with rope.
"It looks secure enough," Dr. Barlow said, though Kate thought she was a tiny bit doubtful. "I should hope —"
Another round of rattling, and somewhere from down the hallway came shouts and the sound of a window being broken, the crisp tinkling of shattering glass. The ship tilted a little, and they had to grab on to the walls to balance themselves.
"I think we were caught off-guard," said Kate, and then, "Watch out!"
A hail of glass burst from the machine room windows as bullets pierced the air. Kate dropped herself to the ground, protecting her stomach. It was a strange thing being pregnant — she was now more aware of her child's safety than her own. Fortunately, none of the shards landed anywhere near her, and she waited for a second before getting up again. Through the porthole she could see the culprit, a glint of metal with a spotlight trained on it, a German fighter aeroplane; probably the one they'd seen coming down. Besides her, Tazza whined piteously.
"That we definitely were," said Dr. Barlow. "But part of a warship's duties is to retaliate swiftly — Where are our flocks?"
A few bats flitted pasted the porthole as if in response. Kate frowned, because that would be nowhere near enough, but before she could wonder why the flocks weren't larger, an uproarious din of flaps echoed across the room like thunder, and wings blocked out the entire sky all at once, and screeches exploded the air into cacophonous pandaemonium. It was like the very wrath of nature made manifest, a smothering storm cloud of fabricated fury, and the floor trembled in the wake of its turbulence. There was the tell-tale whirr of the sonar beam generator, and as it aimed, thousands upon thousands of fléchette bats hurtled out towards their target. Far overhead, Kate heard the whistling of an air gun bolt being fired, the Leviathan joining in for the counter attack.
The beam generator picked up a few notches. The sonar intensified, and with terrified screeches, the flock loosed their deadly hail of spikes, the metal rain melodious almost as it struck the aeroplane. Through the porthole Kate saw the propellers rip and the engines stop, and the entire contraption crumpled and fell out of sight, a small first victory.
"How many are there?" she asked as she got back to work, clearing away the boxes of gears.
"I only saw the one while coming down," Dr. Barlow replied. She had been looking at the battle as well. "A standard aerial squadron is five aeroplanes. Let us hope that is all the Germans have sent."
They piled the extra boxes in a small cabinet they've found. Not daring the stuff the eggs in there, they cleared as big a space as they could around it, and added extra ropes for security. Just as they were about to tie in the sides, however, the airship gave a sickening lurch, tipping to the side. The box slid along a little, threatening to escape the confines of the ropes.
"Careful!" Kate cried as she steadied it from one end. Dr. Barlow quickly got to the other end and proceeded to wrap it in rope.
"This is why we ought to have departed earlier," the scientist said crossly as she finished a very respectable airman's knot. "Winston thought we could keep it a secret for as long as possible, make up excuses for the Ottomans, but he might as well be trying to hide an elephantine in an attic."
"Perhaps we shouldn't have gone with such a conspicuous vessel, either," Kate mused. The floor was vibrating now, and in the distance came a dull boom of an exploding fuel tank. "God, why do they have to keep so many boxes in here?"
"Not my first choice either, the Leviathan," agreed. "We're all the more noticeable, and it's practically inviting attack. If it were up to me, a small comfortable diplomatic vessel should've done."
"Another of the Admiralty's ideas?"
"Yes. Not that I'm unconfident in the Leviathan's combat capabilities, but —"
Somewhere above, a screech pierced the night — the strafing gliders were on the offensive. Manned by a pilot and modified from the golden eagle, each carried an air cannon which shot a plethora of different biological weaponry, and can form offensive nets of acid-coated spider silk. The claws, as well, were deadly to zeppelin skin. Aside from hydrogen breathers, gliders formed the backbone of Britain's aerial superiority, and no wonder: it must be a fearsome sight to see eagles as large as long-extinct pteranodons flying head on towards your aeroplane.
Kate listened to the strange calls from the glider beasts, their enormous wings creating whooshing noises audible even through the general chaos. She heard battle cries, the men's screams, and the patter of the machine guns. There was once more a distant explosion, and she knew the gliders had taken down another aeroplane.
"That's two," she said breathlessly, the cold Alpine air rushing in through the shattered windows starting to freeze her. "If they sent a squadron, we should be clear soon."
"Let's hope so," Dr. Barlow said tersely. They had finished securing the room and were leaning against the wall, listening to the raging battle. The klaxon had died down; without its wails, the whole affair sounded eerily far away, and primal. Only faint tuts of machine guns, coughs of engines, along with screeches, screams, flaps, and men's voices snatched way by the wind before they could make any sense. Kate turned the glowworms on brighter, but the soulless green light did nothing to chase away the blanket of night. As the battle went on, the hallway lights flickered and went out, the result of some electrical component hit.
It was cold, and the air was starting to have whiffs of the bitter almond characteristic of leaks. It wasn't actually the hydrogen itself, but a kind of by-product which was deliberately kept in during the refining process so sailors didn't have to rely completely on sniffers. Knowing there was hydrogen in the air, though, likely didn't make anyone feel safe.
Suddenly, there was a singularly massive boom from the distance. For an impossible moment Kate expected fire to engulf the ship as the hydrogen caught, but it wasn't them. It wasn't even a hydrogen explosion.
"What was that?" she wondered.
"I do not know," Dr. Barlow said. "As long as it wasn't us."
"It might be —"
Another boom, and this time, a brief orange flash of light . Kate actually felt her ears ringing after the shockwave passed through, and the ship lurched. Tazza gave an alarming yelp and scampered over all the loose parts to hide beside Dr. Barlow.
"That was German artillery," the scientist said breathlessly, recognition in her voice. "They've installed artillery on air?"
"But that's impossible! Are aeroplanes even large enough to carry them?"
"Good point. They are not — we must be in range of a war zeppelin, and we just lost an engine."
The ship gave them the answer. Another lurch, a distant sound of ballast dumping, and they were rapidly climbing, the best evasive action when being faced by an aerial vehicle of similar class. The German zeppelins used hydrium, so this must have allowed them to mount considerably heavier equipment onboard, without the fear of explosions. Except up until now, no one had seen actual artillery on an airship.
The sky howled, and there was a heaviness in her ears. Kate watched the mist form out of her breath, holding her abdomen and concentrating on her heartbeat. She wasn't exactly afraid, but she was certainly anxious. A rising lump in her chest reminded her how much she hated not being able to do anything. She could only trust in the ship, and it was the sort of helpless feeling that she loathed.
Through the crisp air came a screech, and then a different screech. Another boom, this one muffled by clouds and wind, and then like a thin tendril through the howling chaos, a ragged cheer from the Leviathan's crew.
"That sounded good," Dr. Barlow said. "Perhaps the gliders managed to sink it."
"Perhaps," Kate agreed. There was the whirr of the sonar beam again, the screeches of the bats now too distant to be heard, but a second later she registered the sound of yet another aeroplane going down. She let out a breath. Dr. Barlow was right — they were winning.
She ventured to where the broken windows lay, careful to avoid stepping on the shards, and looked out. Swirling clouds and flecks of absurdly large snowflakes raged in view, and nothing was in sight — not the ground, not the aeroplanes, and not the zeppelin. It was like they were adrift in the heart of winter, and if she closed her eyes for a second, the scene was even peaceful.
But no. There was one aeroplane. It wove in and out of the clouds, their silver-grey linings making it seem almost like a graceful aquatic creature jumping through the waves. A spotlight trained upon it like a lasso hooking onto a peg, and Kate heard the whirr of the sonar beam that would surely spell its doom.
The plane seemed to know what was happening. With a brief burst of speed, it overtook the spotlights, but instead of taking off into the cloud cover, it came rushing out, and set itself on a path — straight towards the Leviathan.
Kate watched the aeroplane, transfixed, as shouts of alarm erupted from up top, and the klaxon started to ring. Another spotlight cut through swaths of cloud to target the small vehicle, seemingly so insignificant in the night sky. Its machine guns roared and peppered the ship's flanks.
Contrary to popular belief, hydrogen wasn't as dangerous as most people made it out to be. Kate knew that if the hydrogen caught fire in an open area, it would not be very harmful, since it dispersed almost immediately. The real danger was the hydrogen bladders — an explosion ignited in a closed space would cause massive damage by virtue of pressure. Only a contained hydrogen blast could threaten the entire airship.
And this pilot, whether by chance or by choice, was heading straight towards the central dorsal hydrogen bladder.
The fléchette flocks were responding, rapidly regrouping at the edge of the clouds like pinpricks of darkness gathering into a ball. But it was not fast enough. Many of the creatures seemed sluggish, tired and perhaps confused of all the conflicting sonar signals which must seem to them like a relentless and capricious god, changing his divine orders every five seconds. There was always a time lag, a sort of randomness in the system, that was inherent to using life forms or life mimicry. It was part of what made biology so beautiful and unpredictable.
And it was going to get them all killed.
There were no other creatures in the vicinity of the Leviathan. The might of the airbeast's flocks had kept all other aeroplanes at bay, and she had confidently sent her fabrications deep into the clouds for pursuit as she herself rose and avoided the perils from directly facing an aerial German artillery. And now, something not even a twentieth of her size threatened to bring the jewel of the British Air Service to her knees.
The airship was rolling, turning, as the captain realized the grave danger they were all in. Venting gas now, it managed a swift vertical drop, but the size of the Leviathan meant that distances were all very relative. A swift drop translated to a slight change in angle for the aeroplane. Air gun bolts whistled as they pierced the night air, and fell uselessly far from their intended target. Without flocks to keep the aeroplane from maneuvering, an air gun had no hope of scoring a hit.
Some straggling bats flitted past, attracted by the sonar beam, which was roaring at full might; a last, desperate plea. They crashed into the propellers of the aeroplane in a sickening screech, and were churned into shreds in a second. For a moment, Kate thought that the metal spikes in their bellies would catch the gears and the tiny animals' sacrifice would be enough to save the ship, but that was not to be. The aeroplane plowed on, determined to drag two hundred-odd souls with it into the grave.
"We are going to die," she said, as the fact of it slowly dawned on her. Dr. Barlow had joined her at the window, and they watched together with helpless fascination as the aeroplane, pursued by swarms of confused bats, closed the distance. Seventy feet. Sixty feet. Kate felt Tazza nuzzle her hand, and she reached down the scratch the thylacine's ears.
"How ironic," Dr. Barlow said. "And how heroic. It's almost a shame he wouldn't survive to tell the tale."
They laughed. Kate thought of everyone back home, of Matt, and decided that she would rather not. There should be no time wasted regretting something she couldn't change, and she didn't plan to die weeping. She was just so sorry that she'd have to break her promise to him, and he would never know that, for a few months, they had created a life together. The wait felt like hours, though it was simply seconds.
A red-orange spark ignited in the cockpit, and the vehicle gave a lurch. Smoke was billowing out its engine compartment, and its propellers slowed. It dipped in the air, stalled for a second, before its machines resumed their diabolical mechanics.
But the brief slow had — finally, mercifully — been enough. First a few, then a group, then a horde, and finally the entirely seething mass, the swarm of the Leviathan's fury caught up at long last. The sonar beam kicked up a notch, and what was left of the fléchettes got loosed in a musical hailstorm of death and life. The engines were drowned out, and the aeroplane, like an angel falling from grace, plummeted into the depths of the howling wind.
Kate crumpled onto the floor and breathed out a long breath. Unintelligible cries rippled through the air until they merged and grew powerful enough to penetrate the elements, and aggregated into a cheer thrice that of when the zeppelin went down, roaring in competition with the snowstorm outside. Flakes of snow blew into the engine room and dimly, Kate thought they should probably cover the loris eggs with something, but that could be done later. Beside her, Dr. Barlow said, "Oh," and sat down as well.
They were saved.
And then there was an explosion from the dorsal hydrogen bladder, and the ship tipped violently to the side, and the world erupted in heat.
ooo
Kate closed her eyes and was brought back to the night, three years ago now, when the Aurora was sinking into the Pacific. The panic and the chaos around them, the fear of pirates turned into the fear of nature's power. Life vests readied in a mad scrambling brace for the inevitable.
And how Matt had been beside her, saying how they were in the same muster group, and giving her the strength to be calm. If she had to pinpoint a moment when she began to fall for him, that particular moment was a likely candidate.
This was also a shipwreck. There was also fear in the air. And this time, Matt was not beside her.
How funny was it, that she were not scared when death had stared at her in the face — when the aeroplane had been flying towards them head-on. Just a few moments later, when the same death came upon her, except creeping and stealthy, she became afraid. Afraid for herself, for her work, for her colleague and friend and mentor, and most of all for her husband. She was suddenly so scared she could bawl, so scared because she really will have no chance to grow old with Matt, to watch their unborn child start to crawl, to talk, to walk, and eventually to marry, to have children of his or her own. She didn't even want to think of his face when the news reaches him a week or two from today. She was starting to hyperventilate.
"Calm down, Kate," Dr. Barlow said gently as a firm hand gripped her shoulder. "Nothing caught on fire. It was a flash burn. We're going to be alright. Take a deep breath — too much stress hormones is bad for the baby. Breathe in, breathe out."
Kate did as she was told, and the crisp air slowly soothed her frantic heart. Dr. Barlow was right. The brief heat and the flash had long since burned away, leaving them and the machine room intact aside from a few light chars on some of the panels. Tazza was hiding in a corner now, whining profusely, a few patches of his fur scorched darker. He didn't seem to be hurt, if only a bit traumatized by his first taste of a hydrogen flash burn.
"I'm calm now," Kate said, standing up with shaky legs. "What happened?"
"My guess is that the pilot managed to land a grenade on us before he went down."
"We're not damaged?"
"We are, but we must have been lucky. The grenade probably did not ignite the entire bladder or we would all be dead now. Can you move?"
Kate tried her steps. "Yes, I think so."
"Good. I'll need help securing more ropes onto these boxes. When we land, it will not be smooth."
Kate nodded. Outside, the mountains had already risen up to meet them, and a mere thousand or so feet separated the Leviathan from a crash landing, and this too dwindling each second. Klaxons blasts sounded in waves, punctuated by howls of hydrogen sniffers. Their descent may seem calm, but that was because an airship was always calm in the air.
They worked to bring more ropes around the box, and tied it to whatever fixed pieces of machinery they could fathom in the small room.
A dark shape passed by the windows, and with a start Kate realized it was the peak of a mountain. They had flown into some sort of valley, and the howling of the sky stilled a little. It was probably as good of a landing place as they could manage.
"The calm before the storm," Kate said quietly.
"Yes. Any moment now. What an eventful trip this is turning out to be."
"Do you think we can get out of here again?"
Dr. Barlow laughed. "We shall see, my dear Dr. Cruse. We shall see."
They spoke no more, and just as well, for a few seconds later, with an initial skid, the airship trembled. And then gravity shifted, and the crash was upon them.
Kate wasn't sure what she did in the ensuing chaos. Either herself or Dr. Barlow had shrieked in alarm, and Tazza howled in distress, but the noise was drowned by the shattering of glass, the groaning of splintered wood splitting under strain, and the metallic clink as boxes upon boxes of toolkits spilled onto the floor. They rolled over a few times, bumping into everything in ever which way, and it was all she could do to curl into a ball and do her best to protect her belly. Shouts and screams could be heard occasionally, but the groan of the airship was too great and the resounding crash too terrible for one to make sense of them. For a few seconds snow flooded in from the windows, chilling her, then the airship rolled again until, with a finality almost like death, it crashed for the last time onto the ground, sending a shockwave through the gondola, and fell silent.
Then she sat there in the dim green glow of the warms, holding on to her stomach and feeling too tired to move, until sleep took her and she submerged into the darkness.
Author's Notes:
1. I thought sonar beams made more sense for directing bats, because humans cannot hear it, as opposed to lights which the enemy could clearly see.
2. Strafing gliders are still fuzzy in my mind, but I liked the idea of gigantic eagles armed with cannons and other biological gadgets. Let me know of your own suggestions, because I do believe that the Darwinists need some form of flight more maneuverable than a Huxley to truly stand up to aeroplanes.
3. Kate's description of the properties of hydrogen is correct. It is a colorless, tasteless, and odorless gas that's frequently odorized by some unusual smell (e.g. garlic) as a safety precaution. It's actually not that dangerous if you handle it correctly. Only a high concentration buildup in a confined space has the possibility to threaten an entire airship, especially so since the Leviathan would have organic tissue that's harder to ignite compared to something like the Hindenburg, which was made from fabrics. Because it is so small and so flammable, if it burns out or escapes before any materials around it catch fire, it poses no significant risk. Also, pure hydrogen flames are invisible, which I thought was very neat.
(This means that if Alek had fired a gun with hydrogen in the open air, the whole place would likely just ignite in a flash burn that leaves the airbeast and everyone else pretty much intact… although the sheer amount of hydrogen may cause an explosion that damages the ship further.)
