great swarm of bats directly over the schooner ...
... and suddenly the light turned blood red.
Deryn heard the shrieks of the bats, the sound reaching her ears above the engines and war cries of the Leviathan's crew. Fléchette bats were mortally afraid of the color red - it scared the deadly clart right out of them.
As the spikes fell, the horde began to scatter, exploding into a dozen smaller clouds, the bats swarming back toward their nests aboard the Leviathan. At the same time the searchlight dipped toward the target.
The fléchettes were still falling. In their thousands, they shimmered like a metal rain in the crimson spotlight, cutting the schooner's sails to ribbons. Even at this distance Deryn could see the wood of the deck splintering, the masts leaning as their stays and shrouds were sliced through.
"Hah!" Newkirk shouted. "A few like that should teach the Germans a lesson!"
Deryn frowned, imagining for a moment that there were crewmen on that ship. Not a pretty picture. Even an ironclad would lose its deck guns and signal flags, and an army in the field would be savaged by the falling spikes.
"Is that why you signed up?" she asked. "Because you hate Germans more than fabricated beasties?"
"No," he said. "The Service was my mum's idea."
"But isn't she a Monkey Luddite?"
"Aye, she thinks fabs are all godless. But she heard somewhere that the air was the safest place in a war." He pointed at the shredded ship. "Not as dangerous as down there."
"That's certain enough," Deryn said, patting the airship's humming skin. "Hey, look ... now we're going to get a show!"
The kraken tender was going to work.
Two spotlights stretched out from the Gorgon, flicking through signal colors as they swept across the water, calling up their beast. When the lights reached the schooner, they shifted to a dazzling white, illuminating the damage the Leviathan's bats had done. Hardly anything was left of the sails, and the rigging looked like a tangle of chewed-up shoelaces. The deck was covered with splinters and glittering spikes.
"A KRAKEN FINISHES THE JOB."
"Blisters!" Newkirk cried. "Look what we ..."
His voice faded as the first arm of the beast rose from the water.
The huge tentacle swept through the air, a sheet of seawater spilling like rain from its length. The Royal Navy kraken was another of Huxley's fabrications, Deryn had read, made from the life chains of the octopus and giant squid. Its arm uncoiled like a vast, slow whip in the spotlights.
Taking its time, the tentacle curled around the schooner, its suckers clamping tight against the hull. Then it was joined by another arm, and each took one end of the ship. The vessel snapped between them, the awful sound of tearing wood bouncing across the black water to Deryn's ears.
More tentacles uncoiled from the water, wrapping around the ship. Finally the kraken's head rose into view, one huge eye gazing up at the Leviathan for a moment before the beastie pulled the schooner beneath the waves.
Soon nothing but flotsam remained above the waves. The guns of the Gorgon roared in salute.
"Hmph," Newkirk said. "I suppose that's the ocean navy having the final word. Bum-rags."
"I can't say anyone on that schooner would have been bothered by that kraken," Deryn said. "Being killed a second time doesn't hurt much."
"Aye, it was us who did the damage. Barking brilliant, we are!"
The first bats were already fluttering home, which meant it was time for the midshipmen to climb down to get more feed. Deryn flexed her tired muscles. She didn't want to slip and wind up down there with the kraken. The beastie was probably annoyed that its breakfast hadn't contained any tasty crewmen, and Deryn didn't fancy improving its mood.
In fact, watching the fléchette strike had left her shaky. Maybe Newkirk was itching for battle, but she'd joined the Service to fly, not to shred some poor buggers a thousand feet below.
Surely the Germans and their Austrian chums weren't so daft as to start a war just because some aristocrat had been assassinated. The Clankers were like Newkirk's mum. They were afraid of fabricated species, and worshipped their mechanical engines. Did they think their mob of walking contraptions and buzzing aeroplanes could stand against the Darwinist might of Russia, France, and Britain?
Deryn Sharp shook her head, deciding that war talk was all a load of blether. The Clanker powers couldn't possibly want to fight.
She turned from the scattered wreckage of the schooner and scrambled after Newkirk down the Leviathan's trembling