Author's Notes:

I think the story is moving beyond its introductory phase now. As usual, German courtesy of Google Translate, so yeah. By the way, I'm under the impression that Meister means "master craftsman" instead of "my liege lord", so I've been using junge Herr instead of junge Meister; if anyone has any knowledge of the nuances of the use, please correct me.

Edit: I'm sorry, I forgot that in this version Tazza didn't come along for the ride. I've now corrected the issue.

(This chapter contains excerpts from Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, chapter 32 & 33.)


No sooner had Dylan grasped the rope ladder before Alek heard him bellow.

"Start it, start it!" the Scottish boy yelled. "Go, go, go!"

Alek heaved his weight forward in the saunters. The mighty legs of the Stormwalker surged forth in a groan, and as he repeated the motion with his other leg, the machine was soon off, aided by the steep downhill run in front of the castle. He heard Dr. Cruse urging Dylan to climb faster, their voices all but drown out by the walker engine's thunderous roar. On the quiet glacier, this would no doubt be extremely noticeable.

Well, he thought grimly. There's no going back now.

In truth he wasn't quite sure what help they could bring to the downed ship, though a cannon and a pair of machine guns was probably better than nothing. Alek decided to not think so much, and instead concentrated his efforts on the trek ahead, squinting through the viewport.

In the sky, the two airships cruised in slow circles. Alek thought they might be Kondors, sleek and predatory like their namesake, but they may also be Harpyien Air Assaulters, judging from the form. Then again, one dropped soldiers, the other dropped high explosives, so he wasn't sure which was worse.

He was just about to ask Klopp to verify, but the old Master Mechanik was steps before him, already peering intently through the viewport with a pair of field glasses.

"Kondor Z-50," Klopp announced, a few seconds later.

"I thought he wasn't helping," Dylan said tartly.

"What do you mean?" the young fabricator, Dr. Cruse, asked, puzzled. They had both just climbed onto the pilot deck, looking out of breath.

"Long story short," Dylan said, "he wouldn't let us go help the ship because that shifty count fellow thought this might happen. I had to thump him on the head before he let me cut the chains."

"My family is only concerned for my safety," Alek interjected, not wanting to hear his men talked about in such a fashion, though he had to admit: the way Dylan had Klopp shut up secretly felt quite good. "In any event, there's no point in any of that now. We've certainly been spotted, and we need to take out those Kondors."

Dylan shrugged and stood up. "Well, as long as we're going back to help," he said, before heaving himself out of the top hatch. A few seconds later he popped back down again. "They're putting men down! One group for the ship, one for us."

"Those are Kondor Z-50s," Alek answered. "They carry commandoes instead of heavy weaponry."

"Very well-prepared, this commander of theirs," Dr. Cruse remarked. "And ambitious, too. It seems their objective is to capture our ship."

"Blisters!" swore Dylan. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Yes, in fact," Alek said. "Do you know how to fire a Spandau machine gun?"

He nodded sideways towards the other machine gun post. With Volger gone, they had been short one man from the Stormwalker's optimal combat crew configuration.

"Of course not," Dylan said, snorting. "But how hard could it be?" He jumped into place by the gun post and peered through the peephole, before giving the trigger a test squeeze. There was a loud rattle and the characteristic "putputput" sound of bullets being spewed out, and casings flew from the sides, bouncing around the cabin in a hot metal hail.

"Oh, so you do know how to use it!"

"Cripes, no!" the boy exclaimed. "How do you hit anything with this?"

"Simply point it in the general direction," Dr. Cruse said. "What the Clankers lack in finesse they make up for with blanket ruination."

Alek wanted to argue, but something in the viewport caught his attention — something large and heavy being dropped from one of the circling Kondors.

"What is that?" he shouted. "They just dropped something, and it's not a soldier!"

"On it!" said Dylan before anyone else could respond, pulling himself up through the hatch again. Alek suspected that the boy just wanted an excuse to get some air, but almost immediately he heard Dylan curse in the distinct Scottish accent. "Blisters!"

"What is it?" Alek shouted up.

"Some sort of big gun! Very big. They're assembling it, and fast!"

"What?" Alek tried to peer through the viewport to get a glimpse himself, but the walker's motions made that difficult. He thought he could see the outlines of a half-erected field gun, and felt his face twist into a grimace. Klopp was again looking with his field glass, and a moment later their fear was confirmed.

"Anti-Wanderpanzer Kanone," the old man said grimly.

To carry a unit of anti-walker guns on board a search mission for a downed Darwinist airbeast meant only one thing; the Germans must have been hoping for this encounter. They knew he'd escaped into this area of Switzerland, and they were obviously hoping for a chance to score two birds with one stone. Curse the pragmatism of the commander, whoever he was.

Klopp went straight to the machine gun controls and did not offer any sort of advice. Everyone knew that the best way for a small machine such as the Stormwalker to overwhelm an established Anti-Walker position was by speed and evasion techniques. Austria had learned that too late during the Fraternal War — the only large scale Clanker-Clanker war in recorded history — at the cost of many walker pilots.

Alek was breathing fast. He stared at the field gun, saw its muzzle slowly rotate their way. The trick was to anticipate where the shell would hit, though there were tales of master pilots using feints to bait out rounds. Alek didn't much fancy trying that; not in this snow, anyway.

The muzzle stopped. Mentally correcting for the leaps of bounds of the walker, Alek made a line in his mind's eye, and by instinct saw the shell aiming for the left leg. There was no time to think; before he could analyze further, he slammed the saunters to the right, and the entire walker toppled in that direction.

The boom came a split second later, and the shell whistled past the walker's left flank, missing its bulk by mere meters. But there was no time to feel any elation, for already the gun was being reloaded and re-aimed. Alek felt his pulse pound at his temple, and the tell-tale rush of adrenaline. He barely managed to right the walker again, before a subtle shift in the field gun's angle prompted him to swivel left.

Boom. Another close call. Alek almost imagined that he could feel the tailwind of the shell rocking the walker's right flank. They were close now, and the gun had at most two more shot before they would be upon it, but the short range would make those the hardest to avoid.

"Get ready!" he shouted. Faintly he heard Dylan drop back into the cabin and rush to the machine gun, ready to fire into the sides as they bulldozed through the enemy position.

Fire erupted from the field gun, and this time there was a substantial tremor that threw everyone off their feet. The shell must have grazed the armor, but a moment later Alek realized they were safe; nothing was pierced. He heard Dylan yell an unintelligible cry before the boy's machine gun rattled in a symphony of metal and death. The walker dove straight for the anti-walker gun; so close now that Alek could see the soldiers frantically try to reload, a shot that would surely pierce the boiler if it were to fire.

"Diesmal nicht," he grunted, and slammed down on the saunters. The walker's leg connected with something solid, and with a satisfying metallic groan, drove it down into the snow.

And then they were out in the clear, and the machine guns stopped. Behind him, Dylan scrambled to his feet, having been knocked sideways by the motion. The young airman pulled himself up through the hatch again and took a peek outside. "You stomped it, Alek!" he shouted back down, his voice hoarse with excitement.

Alek nodded to himself, satisfied with the way things turned out, but of course it was far from over. He made a rough turn to the direction of the Leviathan, and sure enough, the other squadron of commandoes were making a mad dash towards the airbeast — thankfully not too fast in the thick snow. They were bunched up nicely, and without the armored plating of the anti-walker gun, made for an easy target with the main cannon.

"Schießen!" he roared down, but Hoffman and Bauer must have been watching too, and as the word left his mouth, a singularly massive boom burst from the main cannon nestled in the Stormwalker's belly. The entire machine shook, and Alek had to slow down his pace to avoid toppling over. A cloud of smoke spewed forth, rushing out of the exhaust pipe into the pilot's deck before clearing out quickly through the top hatch. Alek heard Dylan coughing.

There was almost no need to survey the damage — Alek was certain the shell had exploded right in the center of the formation. Dark shapes of bodies were strewn against the red-flecked snow, an entire squadron taken out in one shot.

Alek was about to congratulate his men on a job well done, before Dylan suddenly ducked inside, slamming the top hatch shut behind him.

"Bombs coming!" he cried, "and barking fléchettes as well!"

"Quartal Vision," Alek said. They must be under one of the Kondors, so he tried to make a dash for the open to avoid the aerial explosives. Klopp grabbed the viewport handle and started cranking, but the order had come too late. Before the viewport could close sufficiently, a blinding flash lit the cabin, followed by a peal of thunder that seemed as if Thor himself hammered the sides.

Alek wasn't sure what he did in the ensuing time. He felt the Stormwalker, felt its injury — one of its legs had been crippled. In those final desperate seconds, he struggled to right it, and he put his whole weight into this leg, but the saunters wouldn't go higher. They staggered around a bit like a heedless drunkard, the world spinning and tilting, but finally gravity won out. With a gigantic groan, they fell to the right, and the shriek of gears and metal parts barely registered in his head before the entire machine landed hard in the snow, and clouds of the stuff poured in from the half-closed viewport to obliterate all sight and sound.

He'd wrecked the walker.

Alek thought he might have blacked out for a minute or two, but when his disoriented mind got themselves around his bearings, the horror of it slowly sunk in, like the cold seeping in from all around him. He tried to move, but his arms were pinned, wrapped in a freezing embrace.

He struggled for a moment, then realized he was still strapped into the pilot's seat. With some difficulty, he opened the buckles, and could finally slip free from the icy clutch.

The entire cabin was sideways. The starboard wall was now the floor, and the hand straps all hung helter-skelter. He didn't even want to count the things that had come loose.

The cabin was dark — the lights had failed — and strangely silent. The engines must have shut down automatically in the fall. Alek heard breathing beside him.

"Herr Klopp?" he asked. "Bist du in Ordnung?"

"Ich glaube schon," came the old man's muffled reply.

"Alek? I will need some bandages, please," Dr. Cruse's voice came from the darkness.

"Are you all right, miss?" Alek asked.

"More or less. But Mr. Sharp is injured."

Alek crawled closer. Dylan lay with his head in the young fabricator's lap, his eyes closed. A fresh cut stretched across his forehead, blood running into his black eye from the crash. His thin features were pale behind the bruising.

Alek swallowed. This was his fault. He set out sifting through the snow to get at the buried storage locker, trying not to think about the extents of Dylan's injuries. Klopp joined him to help. They found the bandages after they forced open the locker door, and handed it to Dr. Cruse.

"Don't worry," the young woman said with a small smile. "It's just a superficial cut, and on the forehead, those bleed like a ruptured dam."

Alek nodded and turned to help Klopp with the belly hatch, which was now in the wall of the upended cabin. The mechanism resisted for a moment, then opened with an angry metal screech.

"Hoffman? Bauer?" he said into the darkened room, his heart suddenly in his throat.

"Junge Herr!" a voice called. A moment later Alek made out Hoffman, strapped sideways into the gunner's chair. "Wir sind in Ordnung," Hoffman said, and from somewhere deeper in Bauer grunted in acknowledgement.

Alek breathed a sigh of relief. At least he hadn't killed anyone.

A metal plink rang through the cabin. Everyone looked up, and soon another, then more, followed, like a hailstorm slowly building.

"Must be the fléchettes," Dr. Cruse said.

"I hope they got the zeppelins, at the very least," Alek muttered. He didn't like to think what Volger would say to the battle had they not even managed to take down one ship. "I'll take a look outside," he decided out loud. "We might be able to stand up and rejoin the fight."

"I might not be well versed in walker mechanics, but I don't think this machine is getting back up," Dr. Cruse said.

Klopp didn't understand the exchange, but having known Alek for so long, the old man simply shook his head. "Drinnen bleiben, bis der Kampf ist vorbei," he said. "Bitte, junge Herr."

Alek ignored them both. The shame of wrecking his walker and injuring his men and his friend was still fresh, and it pounded at him to go outside, to be active, to do something. "I have to see what's going on," he said. "We've still got a working machine gun!"

Klopp tried to argue, but Alek pushed past him, shoveling a few handfuls of snow aside to clear the viewport. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but he climbed the small snow mound and then shimmied out of the opening.

The sunlit snow was blinding for a moment, except for the dark crater left by the zeppelin's aerial bomb. Almost a direct hit. The Stormwalker's trail of footprints went straight into the blackened hole, then zigzagged to where the machine lay in a crumpled heap.

Alek flexed his hands, remembering his struggle to keep the walker upright. He'd almost done it. But almost meant nothing now. The engine casing was cracked; hot oil steamed out onto the snow. One giant metal leg was twisted wrong. Klopp and Dr. Cruse were right; the machine couldn't possibly stand again.

He tore his eyes away, scanning the sky. The Kondor that had bombed them was barely a hundred meters away. It was flying just above the snow, its gasbag fluttering, full of holes from the fléchette attack. The faint mango smell of hydrium was in the air, intermingled with acrid gunpowder and the metallic tang of steel.

Shouts came from up on its topside. Two airmen had seen him, and were swinging a machine gun around.

Then Alek realized where he was standing — right in front of the walker's breastplate, the Hapsburg coat of arms proclaiming exactly who and what he was…

An utter fool.

Before he could move, the Kondor's machine gun erupted. Bullets rang from the walker's steel hull and kicked up snow around his feet. Alek froze, waiting for hot metal to rip through his flesh.

But then there was a piercing twang, and in an almost graceful arc, an air ballista bolt sailed through the clear sky and pierced both soldiers like a skewer piercing meat. Having barely lost any momentum, it then carried them clean off the top of the zeppelin, startling a few fléchette bats away from its path. The German soldiers didn't make a sound beyond the initial surprised yell — their lungs had been punctured.

The rest of the ship immediately noticed the commotion, and more crew members leapt to the machine gun posts belowdecks. Before they could do anything, though, a shell from the same direction hit the zeppelin, and exploded in a cloud of yellow mist.

The destruction was swift and brutal. The metal walls and skeleton of the ship hissed, and before Alek's eyes they began to melt, drooping down in rivulets of viscous ooze. The mist was eating away large chunks of the gasbag's fabric as well, and the smell of mangoes intensified even as the doomed vessel dropped into the snow. Machine gun barrels twisted this way and that, reduced to slag in mere seconds, and the men — oh, the men.

They were screaming. Screaming in agony as their flesh got eaten off by the mist, as their faces peeled off from their skulls, and as their lungs got corroded into nothing, until they couldn't scream anymore. Blood splattered the sides of the white canvas, and Alek thought he would be sick as he witnessed a man groping desperately for his eyeballs, which had fallen out of their sockets. If ever there was a picture of Hell, this would be it.

Thankfully, the work was done quickly, and soon there was no one left to scream. The gasbag, with the last of the hydrium having escaped and iron cross still prominent, fluttered down to cover the mess of melted metal and melted flesh like a giant white cloth preserving the scene of crime.

Alek stood there, gape-mouthed, still stunned and shaken over the zeppelin's quick demise. But then a sleek black airship came from behind him and flew towards the other Kondor, and he realized he was looking at his savior. Her slender form was interspersed with engines barely protruding from her side, all functioning with an almost quiet whir. To her port side, a solitary turret poked out, sweeping the air to refocus on the new target. Barely visible on the bridge, the distinct colors of the Union jack pronounced her allegiance.

The Kondor sensed danger. Her ballast doors opened and out poured salted water — pure water would freeze in this cold — splashing onto the soldiers she was about to pick up, those of the anti-walker gun squad who survived the close encounter with the Stormwalker. The men let out despaired cries as they realized what was going to happen, even as the Kondor rose swiftly like a homesick angel, and her engines kicked into high gear.

She turned tail to flee.

Alek couldn't believe it. They'd abandoned their soldiers! With their aerial advantage now gone, to be left on the glacier meant certain death for those soldiers. But then again, the gruesome display of power with the acidic yellow cloud was still fresh on everyone's mind. Alek had never heard of a Darwinist weapon so deadly, and judging from the Kondor's reactions, neither had the Germans.

The Leviathan, seeming as stunned as Alek had been, belatedly organized what remained of her bats to give chase. For a moment it seemed that the Germans would make it over the nearest mountain range, but then the strange black ship accelerated.

It was like watching a falcon speed into a dive. Like an ancient predator the black ship surged forth, riding invisible currents of air generated by her powerful engines — seven in total, which seemed rather excessive for a ship scarcely a hundred meters long. But the Kondor was half again that size and only had four, and despite the superior horsepower of Clanker engineering, the difference in quantity was quickly telling. The Kondor did not have an air defense system, and all she could do was to spew machine gun bullets at her pursuer, which bounced off, leaving no more than faint white scars on the black armor plates.

The contact was ugly. This time, the acidic mist was not deployed, and instead the sleek ship rammed into the Kondor from the stern, crumpling her alumiron skeleton as it plowed its way forward. It was like watching a killer whale make quick work of a humpback, and all the while German airmen fell like rain from their dying ship. The disruption was enough for the Leviathan's flocks to catch up, and a single hail of fléchettes announced the end of the battle.

"Wow," said a voice beside him; Dr. Cruse had ventured out of the protection of the walker cabin, and was looking at the scene of carnage with wide eyes. "We thought you might have been shot! This is certainly a dramatic turn of events."

"Have you seen that ship before?" Alek asked her. "They released a bomb with a yellow acid mist, and it just ate the other Kondor away!"

"Vitriolicoccus extremus aerium," the young woman said, frowning. "But that species hasn't been approved for deployment!"

"What the bloody clart is Vitrioli-whatever?"

Alek turned. "Dylan! Are you all right?"

"Aye, you know me," the boy said as he climbed out of the half-buried viewport. His forehead was bandaged, his eyes bright as he watched the last Kondor go down. "A bit of smelling salts and I'm back on my feet." He smiled, then swayed a bit. Alek put an arm around the boy's shoulders to steady him. "You still haven't told us what that Vitrioli-gobber thing was, miss."

"Huh?" Dr. Cruse said, drawn out of her intense focus. "Oh. It's a bacteria. The most potent kind of acid-producing bacteria we've engineered, in fact; more specifically the airborne variant. But that's not the point; the point is, those are supposed to be sitting safely inside guarded laboratories, not thrown around inside a bomb!"

"I don't see why not," Dylan remarked, nodding towards the melted mass of the first unfortunate zeppelin. "A few of those tossed at them Clankers and we probably wouldn't have ended up here in the first place."

"It is an extremely mobile specimen. It's lucky we're on a glacier, so most of the bacteria will die before it gets spread anywhere. Use it near the lowlands, and we could have half of France dying of skin ulcers within a month. Fabrication is a dangerous power to wield, Mr. Sharp."

"Cripes! Our boffins never told us about this!"

"That's because we only let the Service use what we deem safe — Oh, my."

"What?" Alek asked, and followed her stare.

The sleek black airship detached itself like a panther backing off from its kill, judging the bats to be enough to finish the job. As it turned to the setting sun, elegant golden letters displayed her name in a brilliant reflected glow: HMS Valkyrie.

"Never heard of that name before," Dylan remarked. "Nor seen something like her, least not in the Service."

"That's because it's a new top secret design," Dr. Cruse said. "I'm such a fool. I should've recognized her shape, I've seen the pictures… She's from the Polaris Division."

And before the two confused boys could react, she took off into the snow, running towards the Leviathan as fast as she could.

"Wait!" Alek cried, dumbstruck by her speed. She wasn't even wearing snowshoes! "What's gotten into her?"

Dylan shrugged. "Maybe she's just excited to see a Polaris airship. I never thought she had it in her, to be honest. Blisters, I'm excited too. My Da's told me about them — he wanted to join them too when he was a laddie, you see."

The Scottish boy continued on in this fashion, his voice high and shrill, as they trekked behind Dr. Cruse, making their way back to the Leviathan. Alek grunted from time to time, but was mostly lost in his own thoughts and unable to share the spirit.

Of course he'd heard of the group. The Polaris Division was as well known to the Clanker nations as the Leviathan class airbeasts, and even more fear-inspiring. The Germans have been tinkering with a similar elite air force called "der Zorn Gottes", but so far it has fallen short of its auspicious name. The arrival of such a ship from such a division changed the balance of power dramatically, and with the walker down, Alek wondered if the Darwinists would still honor their promise, or if chains and bars now awaited them.

He decided to not think too much about it, but then something distracted him. There was a series of squeaks and sharp calls, and as he turned back to examine the source of the noise, he saw that a single machine had broken free from the cloud of fléchette bats. It had four wings and a propeller, like some sort of hybrid ornithopter, and a pilot was barely visible in its cramped cockpit.

His gaze made Dylan stop talking, and turn around as well. The escape craft was making very good speed.

"He's going to leak our location!" Dylan cried.

The Leviathan evidently realized the same thing. With a screech, one of the strafing gliders that had been protectively circling the airbeast broke off, and sped towards the small contraption. The cloud of bats made the same effort, but with their tiny wings and fatigued after the previous ordeal, the odds of them reaching the machine was not high. Strangely, though, the Valkyrie only hesitated a moment, before resuming its course to the Leviathan, making no effort to give chase.

Everyone seemed to watch, with bated breath, the progress of the strafing glider, but the speed of the contraption was too great, and it soon slipped over the mountains, making for the floating hangars on Lake Constance.

"Barking spiders," Dylan swore. "Now they know where we are."

"And where we are, as well," Alek said, glumly. He wasn't sure if the Darwinists would consider offering them assistance, now that their allies were here. He needed badly to discuss this with Volger — he felt alone and scared, and like a child. He took a look at the downed walker, their greatest bargaining chip now destroyed. "Come on, let's get some help out here."

They continued to tread after Dr. Cruse, who, despite stopping to watch the whole escape of the German ornithopter, had gained an additional thirty-meter lead.

"What's her hurry anyway?" Dylan wondered out loud. "Does she want to see the bees on the Valkyrie as well? Wait… look, it's stopped!"

Alek looked up and saw that the sleek black ship had indeed reached the Leviathan. It was hovering above a patch of relatively flat snow, motionless. Just as he was about to ask Dylan what was going on, bolts shot down from its bow and stern, each attached to a strand of thick white rope and an anchor. They lodged themselves deep within the snow, creating a foothold in the glacial reach.

Then about ten more thinner ropes shot down in similar fashion, and when they were all secured, the airship started to lower itself by pulling them in. "A winch-down landing," Dylan said. "They've got some fancy-pant equipments alright."

It took another minute for the ship to completely lower itself to where it was hovering about two meters from the snow. There was already a small crowd of officers gathered in front of her bomb bay gangway, including the Captain. Alek and Dylan melted inconspicuously to the back of the group, but Alek noticed Dr. Cruse was standing at the very front, looking as anxious as a little girl, the expression so out of place on her face that he couldn't help but do a double-take.

Then the gangway started to lower, but before it had barely dropped a third of the way, as if impatient of the wait, a figure squeezed out from the crack and landed lightly on the snow. Through the faint light, Alek barely made out a tall young man wrapped in an aviator's jacket.

The Captain stepped forward. He cleared his throat, and was about to speak when Dr. Cruse said, "Oh," and rushed towards the young man the same time him to her, and the two met in the middle, and — Alek felt his mouth drop open — and Dr. Cruse simply leapt into his embrace.

"Wait a wee second…" Dylan said beside him. "Isn't that…"

He didn't finish, because at that moment Dr. Cruse reached up, and pulled the young man in for a full kiss on the lips.


Author's Notes:

The Austro-Prussian War of 1866, also called the German War or the Fraternal War, was a major event in the unification of Germany and her transformation from the loose coalition of the German Confederation into a modern empire. It ended in a Prussian victory, and marked the shift of Austrian to Prussian domination over the German scene.