I'm sorry this one took longer than usual. I'm back at school and was hit with two 2000 word essays on Nazi war-crimes and Victorian poetry. So I have been pretty tired and started getting the two mixed up with... strange results. Anyway, you aren't hear to listen to someone else whine. That's what twitter is for.

I'm sorry the story is taking a while to warm up but don't worry. I do have a plan. Expect chapter 7 during the weekend. Finally, I know there is a big difference in tone between the sections with Alek and Deryn and the ones with Lilit. For the most part, I wanted to preserve some of the Leviathan's original style and sense of humour but I'm having too much fun writing as Lilit to give up now. And yeah, I am pretty sick like that. I might need to bump up the rating at this rate.

Part 6

"Please look away, gentlemen. This is hardly a ladylike moment."
The rest of the party dutifully turned as Dr Barlow crawled out of the trunk Captain Hobbes had allowed them to bring. Alek still had no idea what that woman was thinking but she had been quite insistent and with Volger unusually nonchalant on the matter, they had been coerced into smuggling her back to Britain.
"You all right, ma'am?"
The lady fabricator dusted herself off and stood up straight. She shot an angry look at Volger.
"You could have been a little gentler with the winch."
He smiled.
"I didn't want it to appear suspicious. And I expected slightly more elegance on the planning side. Hiding in a piece of luggage is a little," he paused, searching for the right word, "cliché."
Dr Barlow's Loris made an annoyed noise but the lady fabricator smiled.
"Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best."
The two of them might have kept at it for a while longer but a group of seven was going to be an easy target for any German reconnaissance planes as Klopp pointed out.
"Let's keep moving."
The trunk was abandoned, the wireless set and pile of supplies divided up and the party began to move east. Twenty miles was just the width of a fingernail on a map but over the rocky hill-scape, it was going to be tricky.

It had been a long day. It would be so much easier if Lothar didn't insist on flying like a complete lunatic. Perhaps it was just residual envy on the part of his younger brother's uncanny capacity to recover from even the most grievous of wounds in a matter of weeks. For months now, Manfred had been stuck behind a desk. Whenever one of his men or Lothar asked him, he would laugh and joke about all the women who have fallen for his eye patch and his Iron Cross, both a product of that ill fated mission over the Swiss Alps. They humoured him, pointing out the lack of such women in this remote airbase, pretending they did not see the pain in his eyes as he saw the agile L9 Sparrow Hawks trace tight loops in the clear desert skies. It was a stupid game, from the viewpoint of an outsider, but one the unit had played for ever. It helped but it could never erase the uncontrollable jealousy, hatred almost, that he felt whenever he saw his brother in the cockpit. The feeling was disgusted him but nothing could prevent it. Manfred sighed. It had been a long day. The desk job did have perks and however meagre the comfort was, Manfred was still glad for the quiet and privacy of his own house, set away from the barracks and the runway. The door was ajar as always, allowing in the cool night air. He pushed it fully open and entered, one hand groping for matches. Only the workshops and the landing strip had electriks, the living quarters used gas lights. He thought he had a box by the door but where...?
Out of nowhere, a hand gripped his wrist. He let out an involuntary cry that was muffled instantly by his assailant. He bucked and the grip slipped. Some instinctual part of his brain roared into action. He caught the man's hand and threw him bodily over his shoulder. It was not as elegant as he had hoped. The figure sprawled on the hard sandstone and Manfred's grasping hands found his holster.
"What in god's name?"
The room was suddenly filled with light. Someone stood in the doorway, a lamp held in one hand. Manfred made for his pistol but then realised the fallen man's outstretched arm held a sword point to his throat. The man in the doorway lowered his lamp. It was Lothar. His younger brother stared at the two men in understandable confusion. Then a cold, familiar voice came from deeper in the house.
"I suppose you two are Richthofen's boys."
From the doorway into the kitchen, a tall, vaguely familiar form appeared his eyes catlike in the darkness. Manfred narrowed his eye, squinting in the darkness.
"Volger?"
"The very same."
"Goddamn it man! Can't you just leave a note or something?"
"Unless it has escaped your notice, we are not the most fashionable of houseguests. Hoffman, get up."
The shadow on the floor sheathed his sword with a metallic grating noise and disappeared into the living area. Lothar followed with his lantern and Manfred went with him. If he had not owed the count a significant favour over a certain incident with the daughter of Austrian ambassador, he would have shot "Hoffman" there and then. But he holstered the pistol and stepped through the door. Volger was seated in his favourite wicker chair. Three other men and two boys had spread themselves across the sparse furniture and a woman was seated on his desk.
"I got that bulletin. Seems like I could just turn you in and live the rest of my life in comfort and dignity."
The corners of Volger's mouth twitched.
"I have a better offer."
"I don't know. Is it in gold bullion or just a Swiss bank account?"
For some reason, the wild count laughed and a boy, the dark haired one, looked down at his boots sheepishly.
"A new eye."
It was the woman of the group, a middle aged brunette with unreadable dark eyes and, of all things, a bowler hat.
"A new eye?"
He claimed the eye patch won him women (not untrue) but the damn thing also stood between him and a return to piloting.
"Of course."
She spoke German very well but her accent betrayed her.
"And why does a British fabricator want from me?"
"We need passage to London. In return, I will find you a doctor willing to replace your eye."
Lothar exchanged glances with his brother.
"You can do that?"
The other boy, the blonde one, spoke up. His German was far less fluent than the woman but he made up for it with enthusiasm.
"Of course you can! I had my arm done two years ago!"
"What!"
The other boy looked at his fellows arm in horror.
"That isn't your arm?"
"Of course it's mine! It's just not the one I was born with."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I was ten, I made the mistake of wrapping a landing rope around my arm instead of just holding it. So when the balloon inflated, the rope went taunt and snapped my forearm. It was really nasty, all shattered. So instead of waiting for it to heal naturally, the doctor used my lifethread to grow a new one and he grafted it on. Took three days of waiting for it to grow and then a half an hour operation. Easiest thing in the world!"
The dark haired boy looked like he was going to be sick. Manfred did not feel too confident about the procedure either. The Darwinists were a sick bunch all round but he trusted Volger and the hope of flying again was too much.
"You can do that?"
The woman nodded.
"It's a common enough battlefield procedure and probably the only reason our infantry can hope to take on yours."
That was true. The British infantry equipment and training was woeful compared to their German counterparts. But if the Darwinists could recover from crippling wounds in mere days, it explained why they had so much trouble with them.
"And you won't mess with my..." he struggled for the right word, "...lifethread?"
"No! We just use your normal one. The cells in your body are replaced every relatively often so its just a matter of isolating the right ones, forming a colony, accelerating its growth with specific hormones and then grafting it on."
Lothar made as if to say something but Manfred cut him off.
"Volger? You trust these Darwinists?"
The count nodded.
"All right then. Lothar? We need to prep a Z-22. Cargo, so Command doesn't make a fuss about passports."
His younger brother tried to speak once more but Manfred had one final thing to say.
"And Lothar, you'll be the pilot."
"What!"
"That's an order, soldier."
"So now you're pulling rank?"
"I've been pulling rank since I was four years old. You should get used to it."
The British woman turned to Volger as the two Richthofens argued.
"Are you sure about this?"
The count laughed.
"I am sure."

The Germans had widened Istanbul's sewers as part of their Mekanzimat program five years ago. She could see their hateful mechanical eagle glare at her from each brick in the wall, each door and manhole. The things were everywhere, staring, watching, waiting. She closed her eyes and slid down the damp brick wall to the floor, unable to bear their empty eyes a moment longer. But her imagination filled her exhausted brain with more eagles. The iron belly of a walker, the armour plates of the Sultan's new war elephants, the metal girders of a huge wireless tower wreathed in dancing flames, the cuirass of a dying German soldier, a dirty gold bar held by a smiling boy...
Her brown eyes flew open. Amplified by the strange acoustics of the tunnel, indistinct voices drifted down the sewer. Her left ear was a mass of congealed blood so she twisted, searching for the direction of the noise. It was on her right.
With a heavy low moan, she pulled herself to her feet. Her stomach had stopped bleeding but she had been feeling feverish. Moving tore at her clotted side and she winced, almost allowing herself to slide back to the floor. But the voices were getting nearer. In the distance, she saw a flash of white light like an electrik torch. Gritting her teeth, she stood. Warm blood began to seep through her ruined jacket and she gasped with pain. The torch danced nearer and panic began to overtake her other senses. She staggered onwards, her piloting slippers flapping as she blundered through the semi darkness. The torch seemed to stop. She did not dare check. Moving was bad enough. The blood on her fingers was congealing into a sticky mess. Good. That meant it would soon stop bleeding. She hazarded a look over her shoulder. The man with the torch was crouched down, shining his torch on the floor. In the bright white light, she saw what he was examining: a bloody smear on the wall where she had almost collapsed. He stood and shouted something. In German! Someone in the darkness answered and she could hear running feet. Suddenly the adrenaline was gone, replaced by cold paralysing fear. She could not run or move or even think. They had found her. The electrik torch flicked past her, illuminating her for a moment in a harsh white light. Somehow, the light snapped her out of her reverie. An intake pipe, much smaller than the main sewer sat on her left. She fell into it, crawling through the filthy water, desperate to avoid the dancing light. She could hear the man shouting. Had he noticed her? Running feet. The light danced past her hiding space. In her curled up position, she felt something hard in her jacket. It was the pistol she had taken off a German soldier two nights ago, just after the destruction of her walker. It felt good in her hand. She held it in her left, not willing to pull her right away from the clotting wound. She could hear her own panicked breathing and she tried desperately to hide it. Seconds passed, she sucked air through clenched teeth. The footsteps had slowed.
A figure appeared in her field of vision, holding a rifle. He did not seem to notice the intake pipe. She pointed the pistol and squeezed the trigger.
The trigger would not move. Was it gummed up with blood? She should have checked it or at least wrapped it in a clean piece of her shirt. She tried to scrape away some of the congealed blood, one of her fingernails breaking as they clawed at the metal. Then one of her fingers felt a switch on the side, just above the trigger guard. The safety! For some strange reason, she found it very funny. Perhaps it was just the stress of the past few weeks showing through. She let out a shrill laugh.
The figure jumped at the noise and turned, his head ducking to peer into the pipe. That horrible eagle stared at her from his helmet.
She flicked the safety off and fired three times into the man's surprised face. The pistol exploded, the muzzle flash blinding her, the gunshots almost deafening her. She blinked away the purple flash and looked down at the dead soldier. She had blown a hole in his helmet, straight through that accusing eagle and into his head. That felt good. The man's body slid backwards out the pipe. As if far away, she heard the anguished cry of the man's partner. That felt good too.

Thank you for the reviews. If any of you are interested in proof reading or a similar advisory position, feel free to say something. I need someone to bounce ideas off. Even if you don't feel like doing something like that, please review anyway.