Leviathan

As flares light up the sky, Alek sees a row of German walkers shaped like horses that fire flares into the sky and at the stormwalker. A phosphorous flare hits the walker and sticks to the armored machine, billowing smoke that gives away their location no matter how unpredictably the machine moves. Alek grabs an ancient saber from a locker and climbs out the top hatch, ignoring Volger’s shout that the saber is an heirloom from Alek’s father. He uses the saber to cut away the burning phosphorous.

The fire transfers to the saber, and Alek throws it into the woods. The German walkers fire at the smoke streaming from the saber as the stormwalker escapes toward the Swiss mountains. Alek climbs back into the walker and collapses into a chair, noticing the burns and bruises on his skin. He closes his eyes and hopes that his life starts making sense again once they reach safety in Switzerland.

Back aboard the Leviathan, Deryn pretends to shave, leaving her door open so other crewmen can witness her act. Halfway through her fake shave, Dr. Barlow enters and asks Deryn to escort her to the gastric chamber of the Leviathan, where bees are kept. Deryn wipes the lather from her face and guides Dr. Barlow through the ship. Deryn and Newkirk are the only middies aboard; the others were left in London to make room for Dr. Barlow and her mysterious cargo.

The gastric chamber is covered with thousands of bees, which make honey to feed the Leviathan. Dr. Barlow says that her grandfather fabricated this specific kind of bee, and she eats the honeycomb Deryn cuts for her. Dr. Barlow says her grandfather was one of the first Darwinists and studied the relationship between living things. He was specifically interested in how clover only grew close to towns and not in the wild because mice would eat the bees which pollinated the clover. Cats lived in towns and ate the mice, so the bees were able to create more honey and pollinate more flowers.

Dr. Barlow equates this knowledge to what is happening in the war, saying that if you remove one element, a system collapses. She equates this to the murder of the Archduke and his wife.

Dr. Barlow then changes the topic, noting how Deryn’s cheeks are equally smooth, even though she interrupted Deryn halfway through her shave. Dr. Barlow assumes that Deryn lied about her age to enter the Air Service, and Deryn confirms this. Dr. Barlow comments that knowing Deryn’s secret will make it easier for Dr. Barlow to share her own. At that moment, an alarm blares through the Leviathan, meaning that Britain and Germany are officially at war.

The alarm signals an aerial attack. Dr. Barlow hurries to the machine room with her cargo, and Deryn dons a flight suit to climb to the topside of the Leviathan to feed the fléchette bats. Once outside, Deryn sees multiple German airplanes surrounding the Leviathan. The airplanes open fire and tear through the airbeast, releasing hydrogen and injuring several crewmen.

Despite the chaos of the battle, Deryn manages to fall into position with Newkirk and Mr. Rigby, who are feeding the bats. Mr. Rigby links Deryn and Newkirk’s safety tethers to his own as they feed the bats. The Leviathan’s searchlight guides the bats to the enemy airplanes, but instead of signaling for the bats to release the fléchettes, the bats are guided directly into the airplane, shredding the plane and killing the bats at the same time.

Newkirk is thrilled by the battle, but Deryn feels sick. At Mr. Rigby’s command, she climbs to another deck to feed more bats, but she finds there are no bats left. The last two airplanes fly directly toward the Leviathan. The gunmen aboard the Leviathan fire, and the airplane splinters apart. Pieces of it pierce the membrane of the airbeast, and Deryn feels it shudder beneath her feet.

Mr. Rigby screams and falls, clutching his stomach. Newkirk runs after the bosun, but Deryn runs in the opposite direction, realizing that Mr. Rigby’s weight will drag Newkirk and then herself off the airbeast. Despite her preparations, she feels the harness pull her backward as the combined weight of Mr. Rigby and Newkirk drags her backward. She clutches onto a rope until she sees a line of crewmen pulling Newkirk and Rigby back to the deck. She breathes, relieved, but soon realizes that the entire airbeast is falling toward the Swiss mountains. The highest peak is only 100 feet away.

Alek, Count Volger, and Master Klopp arrive at an old castle buried deep in the Swiss Alps that Alek’s father purchased two summers ago. Volger takes Alek to the castle’s tower, which overlooks the valley below, and tells him that they will be staying at the castle until the war is over. When they reach the tower, Volger tells Alek that he tried to stop Alek’s father from marrying his mother, but his father insisted. Archduke Ferdinand married Sophie Chotek in a “morganatic marriage,” a marriage agreement between people of unequal ranks that prohibits the titles or estates of the wealthy party from being passed onto any children that come from the union.

However, Volger tells Alek that the Pope adjusted the marriage and named Alek to be his father’s heir, on the condition that the marriage adjustment remains a secret until Emperor Franz Joseph dies. Volger shows Alek the documents that prove that he is heir to the empire and reveals that this is why the Germans have been hunting him so ruthlessly. Volger also reveals that he treated Alek so poorly as a deception to protect Alek, and he now bows, saying that he is Alek’s servant. They must keep the secret until the war is over and Emperor Franz Joseph dies. Volger stops halfway through his sentence and tells Alek to listen as a massive, blimp-like ship falls from the sky.

Watching from below, Alek thinks that a zeppelin has found them, but as it gets closer, he sees that it is a Darwinist fabricated beast, riddled with bullet holes. Alek and Volger watch as the airbeast crash lands on a glacier below. Volger doesn’t think anyone saw them, but the crash means that they will have to refrain from using cooking fires and continue to set a watch each night until they leave, starve, or freeze to death. Alek wants to help, but Volger reminds him that the Darwinists are the enemy, and Alek’s duty is to Austria-Hungary. Alek wants to argue but remembers everything Volger has sacrificed for Alek and the Empire.

After dinner, Alek volunteers to take the first watch and returns to the tower to look at the airbeast. He had been taught that the Darwinist beasts are soulless, demon-inhabited creations that speak and reason like humans. However, he had also been taught that his granduncle, the Emperor, was good and kind, that the people of Austria-Hungary loved him, and that Germany was his ally.

Alek decides to help the crashed crew and disguises himself as a commoner. He grabs medicine and an automatic pistol, and he sneaks past the sleeping men. Using snowshoes, he reaches the part of the glacier where the airbeast crashed. He is mesmerized and terrified by the airbeast and wonders if the Germans were right, if Darwinist creations are unnatural and ungodly and it is worth a war to eliminate them. However, the beast also looks powerful and magnificent, like a legend that has come to life.

Alek slinks along the unlit side of the airbeast and sees a small airman leaning against the creature. The airman has sandy hair and fine features and has dried blood caked around his nose. Alek grabs smelling salts from the medical kit and waves them beneath the airman’s nose, waking him. The boy is unfocused at first but soon asks who Alek is.

Alek pretends to be from a nearby village that speaks a Swiss dialect of German, and though the airman is suspicious, he is friendly and grateful for Alek’s help. Alek helps the airman to his feet, and the boy introduces himself as Dylan Sharp.

Deryn holds out her hand to the strange Swiss boy, and he eventually shakes it, introducing himself as Alek. She asks him where his village is, thinking that the crew will need machine parts and rope. Alek hastily backs away, hands her the medicine packs, and says he needs to go. Deryn continues to ask questions, and Alek gives increasingly suspicious answers as he begins to run. Alek tries to make Deryn promise not to tell anyone she saw him, but Deryn blows her command whistle, alerting the other crewmen.

The six-legged hydrogen sniffers begin running toward the sound of the whistle, and Alek pulls out a gun, aiming at the animals. Deryn runs toward him, knowing that if he fires the gun, the entire airbeast will explode because of the spilled hydrogen in the air. When she reaches him, Deryn throws herself at Alek, feeling the barrel of the gun against her ribs.

The rest of the crew catches up, and one man recognizes the gun as Austrian-made. Alek demands that they let him go because he only came to help, but the crew takes him aboard the airbeast. The crewmen then tell Deryn to take the medical bags to the sick bay, and she shakily climbs the ropes to the top of the airbeast’s shipwrecked body.

On her way to the sick bay, Deryn stops in the machine room to ensure Dr. Barlow is safe. The woman is fussing over her cargo and puts Deryn to work immediately. To Deryn’s surprise, the mystery cargo is eggs. Deryn asks what the eggs contain, but Dr. Barlow says that it’s still a military secret. All but four of the eggs are broken, and Dr. Barlow is trying to keep them warm after the electrical heater broke. She tells Deryn to find a new thermometer, and Deryn pulls three from the medical packs Alek gave her.

At once, Dr. Barlow recognizes them as Clanker technology, and Deryn tells Dr. Barlow about Alek, though the boffin finds Deryn’s story unlikely. When Deryn comments that the repairs to the Leviathan will take several days, Dr. Barlow despairingly states that they will not be able to leave because there is no food on the glacier for the airbeast to consume to produce hydrogen. Despite this, Dr. Barlow resolves to keep the four remaining eggs warm and then wants to meet Alek.

Alek is locked in a small, cold room and interrogated by multiple crew members. He refuses to tell them who he is because they wouldn’t believe him. He curses himself for his stupidity and knows that Volger and Klopp will soon wake up and realize he is gone.

Alek’s one comfort is that he helped the young airman. The boy would’ve died of frostbite if Alek hadn’t been there to save him, and he wonders if one maintains mental health during war by completing small, noble acts. However, that same airman betrayed him and got him into this situation.

Soon after, Dylan enters with a woman, who introduces herself as Dr. Nora Barlow. While Dr. Barlow asks him questions, Alek accidentally reveals that he is Austrian, his family is nearby, and he was raised with wealthy tutors because his English is so refined.

Dr. Barlow and Dylan bring Alek into the Leviathan’s digestive tract and show him the Huxley, demonstrating how easy it would be for someone to locate Alek’s “family.” Dr. Barlow reveals that without Alek’s help, the airbeast and the crewmen will die, and she suggests returning to Alek’s home under a truce. Alek reluctantly agrees.

Dr. Barlow tells Dylan to escort Alek to the machine room, but before leaving, she says half of a phrase to Alek in Latin, to which he instantly responds. The phrase is “Bella gerant alii,” which means “let others wage war” and is famously associated with the Hapsburg family (163). He then realizes how foolish he was to reveal that he understands Latin, and he decides to get away from the Darwinists as soon as possible.

On their way to the machine room, Alek and Dylan bicker about who was in the wrong, but they are both able to see from the other’s perspective and stop arguing. They then argue about the superiority of machines or fabricated beasts but again must agree to disagree.

In the machine room, Alek is fascinated and disgusted by the giant eggs for which Dylan is caring. Dylan says that the eggs were engineered in a lab, and the different life threads put in them are making a new kind of beastie, but Dr. Barlow won’t say what it is. Dylan checks the thermometers and then gathers the medical bags to deliver to the sick bay, where he hopes to find the bosun and the other midshipman.

Over the course of the conversation, Alek reveals that his parents are dead. Dylan shares that his father is dead as well, and his mother didn’t want him to become a soldier. Alek remarks that most mothers want their sons to be soldiers, but Dylan doesn’t respond. Alek hopes that whoever Dylan is looking for is still alive.

After finding Mr. Rigby resting in the sick bay, Deryn straps into a Huxley to scout out the glacier. Before she ascends, she hears the captain address the crew and tell everyone that they may need to let the Leviathan die while they await a rescue party. Deryn refuses to let it come to that and assures herself that Alek will help. Dr. Barlow plans to escort Alek home under truce after Deryn scouts out the glacier. Once Deryn is high in the air, she sees a massive machine quickly running toward the Leviathan and assumes that Alek’s family is coming to rescue him.

With a pair of field glasses, she sees the Austrian symbol on the stormwalker’s chest and realizes Alek is not Swiss like he pretended. She uses a messenger lizard to tell the crew that the enemy is approaching with two machine guns and a cannon, but the lizard moves slowly due to the cold. Deryn is afraid that no one will think of Alek in the rush to prepare defenses. She thinks the only way she can ensure that they remember him is by going back down.

To get to the ship in time, Deryn performs a dangerous sliding escape and lands on the Leviathan’s half-inflated flank. She sees the walker glimmering on the horizon and rushes to the machine room, where Dr. Barlow and Alek are working with the eggs.

Ignoring Dr. Barlow, she tells Alek that his family is here, grabs him, and drags him out of the room. They make their way outside and run toward the oncoming walker, ignoring the soldiers burying bombs in the snow. Alek says that the Leviathan is well within range of the walker’s guns and cannon, but they haven’t fired because they don’t want to hurt him. Deryn says that’s exactly what she was counting on, apologizes, and holds a knife against Alek’s neck. She whispers that she won’t actually hurt him, and with Alek’s instructions, she calls for Volger to enter negotiations aboard the Leviathan.