My heartfelt apologies for my disappearance. I partially blame it on Real Life but the main story has also undergone some significant reconstruction. The Istanbul and Berlin sub-plots have become more significant and filled with their own mix of action, intrigue and delicious moral-ambiguity. On that subject, we will be seeing the infiltration of the War Ministry in a chapter or two which is expected to be several thousand words of old-fashioned survival horror goodness (back in the days where you were armed only with a dim flashlight and an even dimmer companion). At least, it will end up that way for Alek and Deryn. Volger will OWN as is only natural for a sarcastic, moustachioed nobleman with a penchant for fighting with sabres. ANYWAY, enough of my meaningless rambling and enjoy the story!

The man on the doorstep wore the grey uniform of a German Army Colonel. His holster held a dull metal Mauser C96. The gun held the Minister's gaze. He wondered if the man was going to shoot him, there and then. But he could not let it happen. Not in front of Liesl. The image of his daughter watching wide eyed as her father bleed to death in their own home was too much for him to take.

"Do it outside."
The military man seemed surprised.
"Frederich?"
The Minister felt it slightly odd that the man would address by his first name.
"Do it outside." he repeated.
The man grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him slightly.
"Frederich! Look at me, man!"
The Minister looked up. His dull eyes widened.
"Johann?"
The soldier smiled his traditional tight lipped grimace.
"About bloody time. Is there somewhere we can talk?"
His eyes gestured over the Minister's shoulder. Liesl stood at the top of the staircase, clutching at her mother. As she saw her father was not going to be taken away, she smiled.
"Hello Mr Soldier-man!"
She waved enthusiastically. Johann waved back.
"Your study all right?"
Listening devices were still a new development in the field of espionage but the Prussian State Police had a budget to rival the entire public transport office.
"I had it swept a week ago."
"A week is a long time."
"You're telling me."
A week had been enough to catapult him from the top of the political hierarchy to a condemned criminal in all but name. The Colonel pulled off his cap and closed the front door heavily. As the cap came off, the Minister wondered how he could have missed his old friend's patrician Silesian features. He sighed. Sometimes it scared him that a uniform could obscure someone's face quite so effectively.

"What is Daddy doing with the soldier-man?"
"Colonel Fauster is an old friend of your father. They studied together at the university."
"If he's such a good friend, why haven't I seen him before?"
"He has been busy I suppose. I heard he was attached to the 103rd so that means he was in Britain."
"Really?"
The girl hopped excitedly from one foot to the other.
"I wonder if he saw some of the beasts. Maybe he took photographs!"
"Maybe, Liesl. Listen, Mommy needs to speak to the Colonel about something. Can you go and play upstairs for a while?"
Liesl looked at her suspiciously.
"Don't do anything silly, mommy. The soldier-man has a gun you know!"
The woman gave her daughter a quizzical look.
"What do you mean, Liesl?"
"Soldiers are very good with guns. Daddy said so."
The girl disappeared down the stairwell, headed for the kitchens. Her mother watched her go with a strange expression on her face. Inside her dress, she shifted the revolver to a more comfortable position.
The door to the study had been soundproofed. At least, almost soundproofed. On the mid left panel just to the right of the knob, there was a small area that was left deliberately untouched. Ilse pressed her ear to this space and heard the muffled voices of her husband and Colonel Fauster.
"...chill seems to have authorised unrestricted kraken warfare all over the North Atlantic. The blockade is still in place and we lost another two of our latest kraken-hunting submarines to that Behemoth monster. Things are bad and yet von Heste insists we secure France before he lets the Luftstreitkräfte start patrolling the North Sea."
"So rationing is continuing?"
"No. When I said the blockade is in place, I meant it is intact."
"I heard we broke through last week! They had grain brought in from the US."
"A lovely piece of fiction. That grain was probably the last of the famine reserve. I am surprised you believed it. You used to be sharper than that."
"I suppose... I suppose I was just glad that Liesl got to eat properly for a while."
"Ah. I understand."
The faintest hesitation betrayed the soldier's lie. They were silent for a moment. Then the Minister thought aloud.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I think it's time."
"A little late for that..."
"No. Don't tell me you have forgotten those years we spent in the university, plotting the reforming of the world."
"The Cassius Protocol?"
"We sure gave things ridiculous names back then... Anyway, four of the five necessary factors are already in play."
"Civil unrest among the general public?"
"Hunger Riots in Munich, Dresden even Berlin is having problems containing it."
"Mutiny in the army?"
"The regular Army units, especially the conscript divisions, just want to get sent home now the war is over. Most of the smart officers realise that trying to occupy all of Europe and the Near East is simply implausible. If a push comes to a shove, they will be happy to side with us as long as we prove we have Germany's best interests at heart. Paul von Hindenburg is probably our best bet. He's a national hero for storming London and commands a great deal of respect from the army and the bureaucrats back in Berlin. As long as we give him a suitable target."
"And the target is von Heste? He's the third factor?"
"Naturally. He's the man who twisted the Kaiser's arm into making him sign Order 6024."
"Hmm. I almost feel sorry for the man."
"Von Heste?"
"No, the Kaiser. He tried to start reforms but he was too weak in the end. Still, he will make a fitting enough figurehead for our revolution." the Minister sighed. "And the fourth factor is of course..."
"You."
"Ah. I see now."
"I came to you as your friend and as a fellow believer in the liberation of our nation."
"I don't do that sort of thing anymore. Besides, I stopped with the Blankers..."
"I brought you some in case you ran out."
There was a noise like something being placed firmly on a table. It rattled like it was filled with beads. Her husband's voice lost some of its confidence.
"That is not the main problem. I can't take them."
"What? But how do you expect to function..."
"I promised Liesl!"
"You also promised Liesl you were going to make the world a better place!"
"But I can't do this to her..."
"For god's sake man! We are talking about the liberation of an entire nation, an entire continent even! I thought you had just gone soft in your comfortable family life but instead I see you have become a coward."
"Don't you dare speak to me like that!"?
"Well prove it then! Do what you have to do! Or was all the rhetoric just lies?"
There was an endless silence. Ilse wanted to move, to storm into the room and tell her husband not to take those goddamn pills. Those little black monsters that had almost taken him away from her. She wanted to but something deep down held her back and until the day she died, she would never know whether it was just the shock or the worry of the past few days or even, just maybe, that she realised some small truth in Colonel Fauster's words.
The study door opened. The Colonel stepped out, looking at Ilse with suspicion. A man with cold grey eyes appeared behind him. His expression was stony. The army officer spoke:
"How much did you hear?"
The woman shook her head, tears beginning to blur her blue eyes. He couldn't have... He had promised...
His aloof, mocking voice swept away her last desperate hopes.
"She won't betray us. She loves me."
There was something terribly wrong about the way he said "loves". His lip twitched in strange half smile at the word. The man turned and began to walk down the stairs, the Colonel trailing him with an apologetic grimace at the woman at the top of the stairs. When he reached the hall, a small figure with blonde hair appeared from the kitchen door.
"Daddy?"
The man continued to walk towards the door, ignoring the confused child yelling after him.
"Daddy! Don't leave!"
The girl ran forward on her little legs and began to snatch at his clothes. One of her hands grabbed his trouser leg and she clung on with tiny fists.
"Daddy! You said they wouldn't take you away! You said..."
"Get off of me."
The man's voice was imperious and as cold as steel.
"Daddy?"
The girl's voice quavered.
"But daddy..."
His open palm struck her across the face. The girl fell backwards, her pale blue eyes filling with tears and a red mark forming on her cheek.
The man did not even look down. He just shook his trouser leg back into its original creases and marched out the door, leaving a terrible silence behind him.

Blankers were an experimental combat drug, first pioneered during the Balkans Wars. The major school of thought before then was that combat drugs should turn men into mindless dervishes, unable to feel fear or pain. During the course of the war, these drugs were abandoned. Machineguns and barbed wire meant soldiers needed to be sensible, not psychotic. Blankers, or Emotion Suppressants as they are formally known, were designed as a result. In a battlefield situation, a soldier needs to make clear minded decisions without the effects of stress, anger or compassion. These emotions can result in actions which are not tactically sound and counter-productive on a strategic scale. Attempting to recover a friend's body is a common example. It has no strategic value or merit and can be very dangerous to the persons undertaking it. A soldier on Blankers will recognise the dangers and not attempt it. It also cuts down on the effects of battle fatigue and "shell shock", at least as long as the drug is still being taken. Some soldiers have been known to grow heavily dependent on them. Unable to come to terms with actions they committed while under the drug's influence, they are forced to keep on taking the drug in larger and larger doses so that they need not feel the emotional trauma such actions would normally incur. These cases frequently end in suicide.

Alek's mouth was slightly open, his expression one of complete shock. Volger's nostrils flared and anger cast dark shadows across his gaunt face but he held still, every muscle relaxed. Deryn recognised it very well from her fencing lessons. It was the position he assumed just before he drew his sword, a habit born from decades of practice. Bauer's hand had disappeared into his jacket where his black Clanker pistol was concealed. His eyes flicked from Malone to Volger to Alek, waiting for some sign of how to proceed.
Deryn herself did not feel any of their shock. She wondered if she should but with all the raucous of these past few weeks, she had difficulty feeling anything. She felt as if her emotions were wrapped in a layer of thick cotton, as if the whole world was just some bizarre dream and she was wondering through it, waiting to awaken.
It happened too quickly for Deryn to realise until after the fact. The blade made only a faint whistle as it flew from its case, the eerie scratch of steel followed by a cruel clang that smashed the stunned silence into jagged shards.
Volger stood with his knife a bare inch from Malone's throat. The reporter's outstretched arm held a strange American pistol pointed straight into Volger's chest. It was notched on the barrel where Malone had used it to parry Volger's thrust. The man's face was unchanged like a mask but Volger's showed an ugly snarl.
"I never thought you would be stupid enough to follow us here."
"Now come on Count..."
"You're American Intelligence, aren't you? A spy! I guessed when I saw your article. The assassination of the Archduke by the German military was the real story, not Alek. Except you Government must have thought that the information would make a better bargaining chip if it wasn't released to the public."
Malone smiled faintly. Deryn's woozy brain suddenly clicked back into gear like some Clanker machine.
A spy! Malone was a barking spy for the Americans? This time, a squick of shock and alarm squeezed through the barrier of her despair. Bauer's pistol was out now, the man's finger tensed over the trigger. Alek's eyes were wide with anger and betrayal. Deryn knew why. Alek had trusted Malone with his secrets, thought that he was a member of the American "free press" that his father had praised so much. But he was just from another government trying to manipulate him to help its own cause. Volger's voice was as sharp as the knife he held.
"Get out of this place before I..."
Malone ignored him and addressed Alek directly.
"I have a proposition for you, Prince Aleksandr von Hohenburg."
"I am not interested in your games, Mr Malone."
Alek spoke softly but deadly serious. He turned to the Count.
"Volger!"
The man nodded without taking his eyes off of Malone. Then, with a blur of motion, Volger twisted his arm down, the knife snagging the sleeve of Malone's tailored suit. As his right hand pulled the man's arm to one side, Volger's left delivered a sharp blow to the American's wrist, causing him to drop the pistol. He brought the knife up again and Malone stepped backwards, almost falling on to the thin bed.
"I said, enough, Volger!"
There was a hard edge to Alek's voice, one Deryn had never heard before. Even Volger's eyes widened in surprise before resuming their impenetrable coolness. Deryn suspected that it was a tone he had inherited from his father, one which demanded total and unconditional obedience. Alek motioned for the others to follow him out the door. As his hand touched the doorknob, Malone spoke to his turned back.
"Generalfeldmarshal Klaus von Heste."
Alek stopped but did not turn. Encouraged, the American continued.
"Generaloberst von Barker. Generaloberst Löss.
Landadmiral von Ronn. Generalleutnant von Stael. Landvizeradmiral Kaisan. Oberst Frummer..."
"Don't play your ridiculous games with me! Who are these people?"
"Frummer? He was their liaison to the Black Hand in Serbia."
Deryn's mind raced. Black Hand? Weren't they the terrorists who murdered Archduke Ferdinand?
Alek turned. His expression was colder than Deryn had ever seen. It was just wrong, for Alek to be looking like that. It was as if his regular, kind features were being distorted through a misshapen lens.
When Alek finally spoke, his words were filled with such bitter hatred Deryn almost stepped backwards.
"I see."
His green eyes bored into Malone. His eyes were like twin spotlight beams guiding a kraken to its prey. For a moment, he just stared. Malone tried to meet his gaze but it was like looking into a furnace. At last:
"What do you propose, Mr Malone?"
To his credit, Malone managed to reply without a tremor.
"An exchange. Information on your parents' killers in return for your assistance in an operation I have been entrusted with."
"What sort of operation?"
"My government is very interested in a document, housed in the old War-Ministry building."
Deryn mind reeled. Malone couldn't possibly be referring to...
"It's called Goliath."
"Goliath?"
Alek's voice had slowly lost its fury as the boy's inherent curiosity began to get the better of him.
"A project the Royal Society was working on before the war, originally a joint effort with the Wudnt Institute in Leipzig. Much like the Leviathan was initially a deal between the Royal Aerological Society and the German aircraft company: Rapp Motorenwerke. So was the Behemoth for that matter. All of them started off as civilian projects that promised a mutually beneficial fusion of Clanker and Darwinist technology."
Deryn snorted.
"The Leviathan doesn't have any Clanker parts! At least, not before Alek turned up..."
"But it did adapt marvellously quickly, did it not? Just a few minutes, barely an hour? Remarkable unless you take into account the fact it was designed to be fitted with a pair of high performance Type 1 BMW engines, not the primitive pieces of scrap you Darwinists fitted it with. But of course, once the Triple Entente was formed, all diplomatic relations between Clankers and Darwinists fell apart. The plans were seized by the War Office and weaponised. The Clankers decided to cut their losses and flee. So the Leviathan lost its magnificent engines and the Behemoth lost its original companion ship: SMS Tapferkeit."
Deryn looked at Malone disbelieving.
"The Admiralty double crossed the Germans just like that?"
"Why are you so surprised? They practically stole two and three quarter million pounds from the Turks and then went around sabotaging their defences and assaulting their navy."
"But what does that have to do with Goliath?"
Alek's voice was raised but the fiery anger which had consumed him seemed to have burnt itself out somewhat. Deryn was glad. The transformation had unnerved her somewhat. Still, she wasn't sure what to make of all this. Captain Hobbes had said that she could entrust the Goliath documents to the Americans but...
"No-one knows. The War Office shut down and confiscated all the Royal Society's research on the subject and the scientists from the Wudnt Institute disappeared soon after. It's all very mysterious. That's why we're all so eager to get their hands on that document."
"But you must know something about it other than its name?"
"All we know was that it was bigger than both the Leviathan and the Behemoth put together and the project was headed by one of old Darwin's own protégés: Dr Charles Curling."

One final note, I am still wavering over how the story should end so I have been trying to keep it open ended. Any original ideas would be appreciated although I won't confirm anything until the final few chapters. That would spoil the fun! Remember, the only way you (insert imposing picture of Lord Kitchener) can save Alek and Deryn from the horde of sadistic fates I have imagined is to review. So do it!