Author's Notes:

Second to last chapter of the Leviathan arc! It was supposed to be the last, but went on longer than I thought, and turned into another action scene… (I'm so sorry, you must be getting really tired of all those! I realized too late I've made the German forces too numerous, that it took about 5 chapters' worth of fighting to whittle them down).

But next chapter will be the end of everything, I promise. Read and review as always, and thank you!

Deryn all but pressed her ears into the speaking tube.

"What is it?" Ross asked weakly. The man was all over blood, having been struck by a few shards of glass, but Deryn had helped him bandage up a bit, and it looked like he would make it. Unlike Andrews, and the other crew member who had fallen through the bomb bay doors when he'd lost his balance. Deryn thought his name might've been Smith.

"Seems we're to be ready to bomb the gun," she answered, eyes wide. She felt completely bewildered by the situation — first the Skycrusher had appeared out of nowhere, then they got hit and she got knocked out, and then when she came to, they were flying straight at it, until at last another shell hit them and they stopped.

She had been busy helping the crew drop bombs to lighten the airship. Next thing she knew, Hemmingfeld had woken up and taken back control. She thought she remembered some arguing on the bridge in the frenzy, but they had been busy securing the bombs in case one went off due to all the moving about and brought everyone to an early grave.

"What's to stop them from shooting us?" Ross asked.

"That's a good point," Deryn said uneasily. She looked ahead through the bomb bay doors. The moon was still shining brightly, and against the snowy reflection, the Skycrusher stood proudly, its maw angled away from them.

"What do you see?" Ross asked, noticing the surprise on her face.

"It's not pointed at us!" Deryn said. "It's pointed away! What are those Clankers thinking?"

"Well, at least that's good to know," said Ross. He slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. "I'll leave the bombing part to you, Middy Sharp."

"Aye aye," said Deryn. "Don't fall asleep though, you might never wake up!"

She checked on their remaining three crates of explosives. Two were nestled against the back wall, but one was standing close to the still-open bomb bay doors. The Valkyrie had been dropping slowly all the while, which Hemmingfeld said was something to do with strategy, but their engines hadn't slowed down much.

"Bomb bay ready!" Deryn said. She didn't get a response, and she was about to repeat herself when Hemmingfeld suddenly roared.

"Sons of Britain!"

Everyone in the bomb bay stared. The Lieutenant must have said this into the central speaking tube, for it seemed everywhere on the ship his voice echoed. Through the freezing hallways, bouncing between struts and poles, reverberating off the alumiron catwalks.

"Tonight's battle marks the greatest aerial odds any nation has ever fought," Hemmingfeld said, his voice still booming. "And we are almost at its end. We have taken out six zeppelins against a fleet of ten. The enemy has surprised us with their puny Skycrusher, but we have survived its challenge. And now, we have a chance to end it now. Are we ready to take it down?"

"Sir, aye sir!" shouted Deryn into the speaking tube, as the rest of the bomb bay crew shouted into the air. She felt a complete ninny for sounding so bloodthirsty, but there was a warm rush in her heart that had been stirred up despite herself.

"If we should fail, not only will we be shot straight out of the sky, the Leviathan will also be destroyed to prevent it from falling into enemy hands."

Deryn felt confused but determined at the same time. She wanted to stop killing any more people, but duty was duty, and if she didn't do it, her friends and everyone she knew on these ships would die. She thought of those back on the Leviathan. Captain Hobbes. Mr. Rigby. Monkey-luddite Newkirk. And the people who'd died, who she'd never gotten to know, like poor Andrews, or Smith who'd fell. She thought of the lady boffins, both of them, and Matt who'd stood up for her when everyone wanted to kill the ship, and even Tazza, that daftie probably hanging about somewhere barking scared.

And Alek, who'd saved her from frostbitten bum.

"Will we let that happen?" roared Hemmingfeld. "Will we fail in our duty "

And the rush grew stronger, warmer. She never much bothered with the notion of patriotism; she knew she'd swore an Oath to King George, and that she was technically fighting for him, but she didn't know a fig about the King. But this, this was different. If patriotism was about protecting the people you cared for, then she supposed she had the right idea.

It's either us, or them, she told herself.

"Sir, no sir!" she shouted with everything she had.

"I do not deny that it will be dangerous," Hemmingfeld continued. "Any time now, the Germans may see through our plan. But I trust there is not a coward among you. Many have already lost their lives tonight, and they will be remembered. Even now, the sailmakers are risking theirs in the bowels of this great ship, keeping her airworthy. Do we let their sacrifices end in vain?"

The entire ship seemed to be humming now, and Deryn couldn't tell if it was the ship's engines or all of their emotions stirring up the cold air.

"Sir, no sir!"

"So will you fight now? For the Service, for Britain, for the Empire?"

"Sir, aye sir!"

"Then prove it to me! We are in position — turrets out, bombs ready, full speed ahead — and let's destroy some German arses for ol' Darwin!"

"Sir, aye sir!"

They were all riled up, every one of them. Even though she knew the speech was more or less generic yackum, Deryn found it very difficult to resist. Fighting spirit was evident in all of their eyes, glowing with duty, pride, and determination. The bomb bay crew were all cheering, and Deryn supposed all the crew were cheering. Even Ross, who'd been on the verge of fainting, opened his eyes and smiled.

That was when Deryn noticed the two zeppelins. One of the Kondors, and the single Albtraum remaining. Blisters! They were coming in hot! And they were only a little bit lower than the Valkyrie! The Polaris ship no longer had the significant height advantage that had enabled her to take down so many zeppelins so efficiently — in airship warfare, no height advantage meant no bombing… and getting bombed.

But then there was no time to think. "Bomb bay ready drop!" said Hemmingfeld. "Cruse, take us straight to those sons of bitches!"

"Ready drop!" Deryn could only yell, and then the engines switched into overdrive, and the ship roared, and the wind howled. Wisps of cloud whipped by the windows, and they were going as fast as they ever would.

"They suspect something!" Deryn heard a voice cry. It was from another speaking tube, the sound carrying across the bridge and into hers. "They demand that we stop moving!"

It was posh daft Alek! She thought the boy was still in the central machine room! What was he doing?

The urgency in his words still prompted her to cast a glance at the direction of the zeppelins. They were engaged in hot pursuit, nothing's changed. And then she caught a glimpse of the gun through the bomb bay door — its maw was rotating back to them, slowly but visibly.

"Barking spiders!" she said. They were still a short distance off. She didn't know what trickery Hemmingfeld had used to convince the Germans to point it away, but she did know what would happen if it pointed back.

"We will make it," said Hemmingfeld. "Aft turrets activate, put yellow signaling smoke with black powder, and wait for my mark."

The German zeppelins were racing to them now. There was a dull boom and a series of flashes, and Deryn saw that the Albtraum was firing its artillery at them; they were almost in range. The Kondor was further away, and since it was meant for carrying troops, it didn't have an effective long range weapon. Its machine gun bullets fell far short of the Valkyrie.

"Two more minutes until we can drop," Deryn heard Matt say. "Hemmingfeld, that thing's turning too fast, we won't make it; we don't have enough height."

"We will make it," the Lieutenant said.

A cannonball whistled by the bomb bay doors, clearing the ship by twenty or so feet.

"Sir! They're almost on us!" cried Deryn. The Albtraum was close enough to fire on them accurately, and with a little calibration, she was sure the next time they won't miss.

"Turrets, fire!" snapped Hemmingfeld. Deryn looked through the bomb bay doors; a volley of small dots had been released, and were making their way in a downward arc from the Valkyrie to the Albtraum. Before they reached it, the shells exploded into five distinct clouds of yellow mist.

It was a delaying tactic. Deryn waited, almost certain the Germans would see through this simple trick. At first, the Albtraum seemed on track to bulldoze straight through. But then it slowed, and slowed, and finally stopped about thirty yards before the yellow clouds.

It worked! It wouldn't be long — the Germans had only to shoot something at the clouds to discover it wasn't corrosive, but was instead harmless yellow ink — yet the short minute of delay would make all the difference in the world.

The Kondor, unhindered by the mist, charged fearlessly at them, a far cry from the cowards they had been a mere hour ago. The Valkyrie's engines must have been damaged because the Kondor was catching up feet by feet, yard by yard, though it had a lot of distance to make up, and wasn't yet a threat.

Was it time to drop yet? Deryn looked down, and found the Skycrusher almost directly beneath them, but almost meant nothing as they needed more time, more time, more time… and degree by terrifying degree, the machine was turning, and surely it must have finished turning by now, yet they were still not overhead and the bombs would miss — more time —

Until it stopped turning.

She stared hard at the gaping hole of its barrel. They were not so high now, and she had almost the illusion that it was pointed straight at her. She wondered if her face were like the face of the men aboard the Albtraum they had bombed. The face of someone who saw their death approaching. She felt the ship respond, but they were too low, and the Germans weren't aiming at the bridge anymore. They were aiming to take her down.

It fired.

"Everybody brace!" Deryn screamed, and a second later her voice was drowned out by the sonic boom as the shell slammed into the Valkyrie's flanks. The entire ship lurched. This time, Deryn was prepared, so she didn't get thrashed around too badly, but she still lost her balance when the floor rushed up to meet her. Beside her, Ross barely managed to cling to a support strut, face white with strain as he got crumpled against the wall.

Another boom, and then they dropped, the sudden tightness of her heart at her throat, and a single half-second of weightlessness. When the empty feeling of falling broke, she slammed onto the floor, holding onto whatever she could for dear life.

"Multiple gas breaches!" someone was shouting from the bridge. "Port bow!"

It was entirely unnecessary. The faint waft of acrid almond told her as much. "Is everyone okay?" she called out hoarsely. "Ross!"

Nobody answered her. For a moment, all she could hear was the hiss of gas, the rumble of the engines, and the howling of the wind. Then she picked up moans, and saw the bomb crew more or less where she last saw them.

"I'm fine," said Ross, five feet away, and several crew members grunted their presence.

"Come on, up! We need to be ready!" Deryn shouted. She glanced at the Skycrusher again. It was so close. So incredibly close. The yards sped by as the Valkyrie, injured heavily but still flying, went bravely on.

"Albtraum incoming!" one of the bomb crew hollered, and sure enough, through the bomb bay doors, the dark silhouette of the zeppelin loomed impossibly large, like a kraken coming from the murky depths to swallow them whole.

Deryn saw the massive gun ahead of them. She saw her crew, most standing and seeming okay, one or two still trying to get up. She saw the Albtraum trying to reach them, having cleared the yellow mist faster than she expected, and guns already firing at them again, creating a two-pronged attack. Skycrusher in front, Albtraum at the back, and nowhere to go except down, down into the earth and blooming like fiery flowers upon the glacial ice.

But no.

Not if Deryn Rosemary Sharp had any barking say in it.

"Bomb bay's yours!" she yelled at Morrison, a crew member she'd known from the Leviathan. "Be ready to barking drop, and take care of Ross!"

Before Morrison could say anything, Deryn dashed out of the bomb bay exit and down the keel catwalk, disoriented and dizzy as the living machinery inside the airship assaulted her senses, and choking, coughing, trying to expel the almond-scented air.

It was an unfamiliar ship, and for a moment she feared her air sense had failed her. But there was still some oxygen left in the frigid cold, and her mind cleared enough, and she raced aft, through a doorway, dropping down a ladder, another doorway, mentally mapping and mapping, recalling the way the Valkyrie had landed, the way it sent out…

And then there it was, the single machine, half fabricated and half mechanical, lodged in the ship's smooth hull. It looked like a hemisphere three feet across, with handles that you could rotate with. She'd read about these on the Manual, but had never seen one for real. A thin long slit sat atop the sphere, nestled into its white surface — the viewfinder. Beside it was a circular pad in the wall where one could put their hand, the surface shiny like velvet — the control pad.

She practically dove at it, and found the device was about as high as her chest; perfect. She bent down and squinted through the viewfinder at the top. The snow and sky spread out ahead of her, infinitely vast yet contained in that those few measly degrees of view. She grabbed onto the handles and found the sphere turning fluidly, half of it still inside, half of it out. Her view of the world tumbled with it. She swiveled to point the device backwards and downwards.

How many seconds has it been? This was the closest one she could find, and she had hardly stopped, running as fast as she could all the way. She was still panting. Twenty seconds? Fifteen? Surely not long until the next shell from the Skycrusher reached them and turned practically everything she cared about into a glob of roasted metal and flesh.

She scanned the sky through the viewfinder. Black, black, black… more black, some white… and then, there it was, the grey of the Albtraum's skin, a little behind them and below them at a slight angle. She swiveled the device all the way, as close as she could get in the Albtraum's direction. There was a tiny crosshair printed on the viewfinder glass, and it latched squarely onto the Albtraum's form.

No time for a finer aim. She would just have to trust the viewfinder and its crosshair.

Deryn slammed her palm down onto the control pad, pressing hard. It was made of a strange organic substance, almost slimy, yet still dry. Like touching water with thin gloves on. Like gelatin.

Like modified squid's skin.

The skin contracted around her hand, as if alive. It wriggled, and pressed up against her, until finally it relaxed. There was a soft twanging sound, almost like a bowstring being loosed. A tremor passed through the machine.

Through the viewfinder, Deryn saw a single thin rope of whitish material — fabricated spider silk — spill forth in front of her, attached at its head to a gleaming metal tip. Like the great whalers' harpoon of the last century, the metal tip shot straight, going a little high but following the crosshair, sailing on and on almost indefinitely, until it pierced the taut fabric of the Albtraum's skin, sank deep into the zeppelin, and lodged inside.

The whale had been hit.

"Matt!" she yelled at the speaking tube beside her, the first person on the bridge that came to mind. She knew he was at the helm, though — he had to be. "Winch-down!"

There was no time to explain. A terrifying split-second passed where she thought he wouldn't hear, or he wouldn't get her, or he wasn't even there —

Matt understood. He must have seen the landing gauge indicators, or something, Deryn didn't care. He understood, and the machine in front of her whirred, drawing in the line fast. Exactly like a winch-down landing.

But then the great Skycrusher fired again, she could see its flash from the viewfinder, and she was entirely certain he had done it too late, and they would all burn and die —

The ship gave a lurch stronger than any she'd felt before. The silk rope was abruptly stretched so tight Deryn could barely see it, just a completely straight whiteness going from her to the Albtraum. She was momentarily afraid it would break, but spider silk was the strongest fabricated rope known to man, and it held fast, yanking the entire ship as it did.

The crack of the sonic boom ripped open the night air. It was on the other side of the ship, though Deryn's ears still rang with pain. Did they get hit? She strained for the second boom of the shrapnel explosion; if it were outside, they were safe. If it were inside —

Boom. It was distant. Outside.

They'd dodged the shell.

It was like being dragged around by a whale in the storm. Nantucket sleigh ride, the whalers called it. The ship heaved and dipped as the machine continued to do its job, reeling in and reeling in, drawing the Albtraum closer to the Valkyrie, and the other way around.

"Dylan!" Matt was shouting. "Dylan! You have to get the bow lines attached! Do you understand? We can use her as a shield!"

Her dazed mind struggled to fit together the picture. The landing rope she just fired attached their aft flank to the Albtraum's. If they attached a bow rope to the Albtraum's bow, they could balance the two lines, and keep the larger ship more or less underneath them.

… Thereby blocking the line of sight of the Skycrusher. A gigantic zeppelin of a meat shield.

"Barking brilliant!" she yelled, before she was out and dashing forward. The ship kept lurching and she almost lost her footing a few times, but she held onto the walls and kept sprinting.

The keel catwalk was not easy to get lost on, fortunately, and she reached the bow landing gear, slamming into its doorway, feeling like her sides had knives stabbing into her ribcage. The same hemispherical device was there, waiting for her.

Deryn wasted no time. She pushed her head into the viewfinder, swiveled downwards and rightwards to scan —

They were too skewed; the two ships now formed a sort of L shape, with the spider silk linking them as the pivot. Deryn couldn't get the crosshair to fix on the Albtraum's bow, no matter how far right she swiveled. She was afraid she would break the machine clean from its spot.

But Matt must have noticed the same. The ship was turning, and then the bow of the Albtraum appeared in the viewfinder, and when it had just entered the region of the crosshairs, Deryn pressed her palm once again into the squid skin.

The spider silk harpoon hurtled into the vast darkness. It struck the Albtraum almost squarely on the tip of its nose, sinking through the fabric and thin alumiron plate,

"Winch!" Deryn yelled, just as Matt said, "Great shot!" — he must've been watching from the bridge.

And the machine whirred into life. The ship gave another lurch, though not as strong as the first. The L shape tightened into a V as the gap between the ships began to close.

The Skycrusher fired one desperate shot at them, but with both lines winching in, the Valkyrie's position was shifting rapidly, and the shell grazed the ship's side. There was honestly too much barking movement going on — the gas leaks, the winching, the ships turning, the cannons — that Deryn didn't think it made much of a difference.

"We need more lines — Dylan, go for the fore starboard one and work your way aft!" Matt said, the same time Hemmingfeld roared out "We are in position, bomb bay begin drop!"

"I'm on it!" Deryn shouted, dashing out onto the catwalk again, brushing past crewmen running to attend to one thing or another. She only hoped Morrison and the bomb crew had the state of mind to carry out the bridge's orders. They'd better barking be dropping them bombs! The last she saw, the angle between the ships was only fifty degrees or so, and narrowing by the second. It was great news — the Albtraum would soon block them entirely — but it meant they would lose sight of the gun, with the great bulk of the zeppelin in between. The window for bombardment was fast vanishing.

The Albtraum's own guns spoke defiantly, refusing to be taken in. A cannonball struck them, somewhere above, but they had too much on their hands already to care about that. Deryn wasn't sure if the first Skycrusher shot had taken out any of the sailmakers; she hoped not. She shuddered to imagine the men deep in the bowels of the ship, patching her up, when suddenly greeted by a hailstorm of shrapnel.

The fore starboard line took Deryn all of thirty seconds to reach, and another twenty to launch, and then she was off once more. The brief glimpse of the situation while she was aiming through the viewfinder proved too chaotic for her to be sure if the bomb bay had managed to destroy the gun.

Then it was the mid starboard line. She was so engrossed in her work, breathing in almond-spiced air in heavy puffs, that it took her two seconds to realize she was being hailed.

"Mr. Sharp!"

"Yea?" she said as she palmed the control pad again, peering through the viewfinder at the anchor sailing away and into the Albtraum. The two ships were more or less overlapping by now, and machine gun fire sounded nonstop as the zeppelin tried to dislodge its unwelcome tag-along guest. But like all airships, it was mostly defenseless on the topside. All around them was the cacophonous pings of bullets bouncing off the chitin armor plates.

Then she realized it had been a woman's voice. She turned around and met the inquisitive grey eyes of Dr. Cruse. The young scientist's dress was covered in blood, and she was breathing heavily.

"Miss, what are you doing here?" Deryn asked, shocked. "Blistering bollocks, are you hurt?"

"Me?" Dr. Cruse looked down at herself, as if noticing her state of appearance for the first time. "Oh, not at all. I was helping the wounded and ran out of peroxide, so I set out to find some and chanced upon you. Do you know where the medical bay might be?"

Deryn nodded, still eyeing the blood with a wary eye. Blisters, it was barking weird thinking of her as Matt's wife, what with both of them being so barking young. It was like Jaspert having a wife! Deryn then tried to imagine that, but the concept was so bizarre, she spent a second scrubbing that image out of her mind. "It's through that walkway there, on the other side of the ship," she said, pointing. "Do you need help?"

"No, I think I can manage," the young woman said, giving her a smile. "There aren't so many left to treat —"

There was a noise that sounded somewhat like fabric tearing, an explosion, and high pressured air all at once, along with a mighty boom that shook the fragile ship with its ferocity. They smashed into the side walls.

"What was that!?" Deryn shouted, trying to will her ringing head to calm down.

"I don't know!" shouted Dr. Cruse. She too was pressed against the wall, but had managed to put her hand between her belly and the hard surface to soften the impact.

"Well, I'm going to find —"

There was another boom, and the air in the corridor washed over them.

And it had a squick of warmth.

"Barking spider's bloody arse," Deryn said. "We've blown a gas bladder! It's got to be."

Hemmingfeld's voice confirmed everything. "Fire ventral stern, fire ventral stern!" he bellowed over the general speaking tube.

"Blisters!" Deryn said. The ventral stern gas cells, right next to the bomb bay! If the fire spreads to the bombs, not even old Darwin could save them from the hell that would be unleashed.

"Ventral stern? But how?" Dr. Cruse was saying, brows furrowed in thought. "The Skycrusher shouldn't have been able to hit us!"

"I don't know, but I've got to run, miss!"

"I'm going with you," said the young scientist, nodding like it's already been decided.

"Aren't you getting peroxide?" Deryn was already on her way towards the bomb bay, her footsteps barely audible in the fury of the machine gun strikes.

"That can wait until we're not in danger of spiraling into a fiery death," Dr. Cruse puffed alongside her, cheeks red with exertion. "Don't worry; the ship gas cells are flame resistant, so it shouldn't spread so quickly."

"So what got the ventral stern ones to catch in the first place?"

"Machine gun rounds?"

"Not barking likely!"

"Maybe a grenade. Guess we'll have to find out!"

They passed the living quarters, the navigation room, and the cargo bay which had almost been destroyed. The air around them rose sharply in temperature, from subzero to ten, twenty, then finally above freezing — which, considering the fact that they were on a glacier in the middle of the night, was almost blisteringly hot.

They burst through the bomb bay entrance.

The room was awash with heat. What used to be the ink blue night had become a blazing inferno, its pulsating orange light casting flickering shadows on the wall. Palpable waves of heat buffeted them from the open bomb bay doors, gushing in from below.

Deryn stared at the sight in front of her. The air smelled dangerously of almond, and seemed like it would ignite at any moment. Massive tongues of flame danced perilously close to the floor of the ship. From below them, she heard the wind, screams, and cursing in German.

It was the Albtraum. The once-proud zeppelin was being bathed in fire, its backside crackling and twisted. Thanks to the spider silk attaching them, the Valkyrie was less than ten yards above the German ship, hovering like a pilot fish over a shark.

"Sharp!" cried Morrison. The airman was a poor sight, his hair sticking up in all sorts of places and his face soot-stained. The rest of the bomb bay crew were also looking worse for wear than when Deryn had left them.

"What the Darwin happened!" Deryn shouted, gesturing wildly at everything. "Did you bomb them?"

"Aye, we was trying te get at least a crate off," said Morrison. "We hit half o' it onto the gun; but the other half exploded on the zepp!"

"That wouldn't have been so bad," Dr. Cruse said. "Except…"

"'Cept the zepp is too bloody close!" Morrison said as he directed the crew to push the remaining crate further from the bomb bay doors. "An' there's a big hole over in the cargo bay, and some embers flew in and sparked some electronics. The next thing we knew, vent stern cell's blown!"

"That's barking bad luck!" Deryn said.

"Aye, reckon we'd have to detach before it all went up in an almighty —"

"Matt!" Dr. Cruse shouted, already by the speaking tube. "Did you hear?"

"Why are you always running about?" came the young sky sailor's reply, half worried, half exasperated. "And hear what?"

"That we'll have to cut ourselves loose, to avoid the fire jumping to other places!"

"But the gun's still working!" Morrison interjected. "We'll get blown to smithereens if another shell hits us while we're trying to put out a fire!"

"We have to bomb it again," said Deryn, a sudden flash of clarity in her mind.

"What?" said Dr. Cruse. "How would that help anything?"

"We're still right over the gun, right?" Deryn asked.

"Yes," Matt answered. "We should still be — Oh. I get it. We bomb the zepp until it starts to drop —"

"And it'll drop straight onto the gun, cover it — and make it useless!"

"I'll try to reverse the engines to keep us in the spot!" Matt shouted, his voice fading. "Trenton, take the helm!"

"Well," said Deryn, already jumping to the nearest crate, "what are we all barking waiting for?"

Author's Notes:

1. Deryn's middle name was never given in canon. So it's Rosemary, because her Ma wanted a girly-girl who would do girl stuffs, and Rosemary was the first girly name I came up with. Fight me.

2. In case anyone forgot due to the very long span between updates, the Valkyrie uses a winch-down landing system composed of shooting out spider silk and then lowering itself. That's what Deryn used to drag the ship to (temporary) safety.