Deryn moved faster than she ever thought possible. In a matter of seconds her hands and feet carried her away from the bats and up on to the spine of the giant air beast. Bodies lay strewn in endless mounds; it was impossible to tell where one corpse ended and the next began. Men stood, silently frozen in place as they began to accept their fate. The next spray of bullets would ignite the leaking hydrogen and they would all go up in flames, just like that.
All of a sudden the silence was shattered by a ruffled looking boffin rushing across the surface of the ship. The aero plane was angling back around now and it would be upon them in seconds. Dr. Barlow spotted Deryn standing at the edge of the spine and rushed towards her.
"Mr. Sharp! Where is the leak? Point me to it, now that's a good lad!" As the boffin scrambled off and Deryn stood there, with her finger outstretched, she couldn't help notice that, in her haste, the boffin had dropped her bowler hat. She couldn't say why she noticed the minor detail; it just must have been the heat of the moment. Now, in her last moments, she didn't even bother to scowl at the woman doctor for calling her 'lad'. She was a Midshipman, for heaven's sake! And serving on the Leviathan, to boot!
Really, had the woman gone bonkers? Of course it was inevitable, but Deryn had thought she would hold out a little longer. Now Dr. Barlow stood next to the expanding rip and pulled something from within her many layered skirts that resembled a tin can with some sort of nozzle. To Deryn's immense surprise, the boffin began spraying the contents of the can on the hole, which was miraculously beginning to seal. She snapped out of her reverie and sprinted over to the woman.
"Barking spiders, what is that stuff?"
"Spray-on skin, my own invention. You see, it's really quite simple…" But the sound of the returning aero plane drowned out the doctor as she started to launch into an explanation – if you could even call it that – of the invention. The sound of the motors reminded Deryn that the danger was not yet over, and she launched herself at the boffin, knocking them both to the ground, bullet spraying just where they had stood a moment ago.
"My dear boy!" But the cross-dresser was already sprinting towards the starboard engine. Towards Alek. Right when the plane fired at it.
Teehee :D just had to add an invention somewhere in there... and sorry about the cliche "heat of the moment" but I just couldn't help myself. Review please!