Of playing word games with Lucia.
Something drops onto the leather cover of the book and runs into the cracks. Severina puts her hand to her face and brushes away a tear. She is so angry. So sad. So worn and damaged, just like the book. She takes hold of the leather cover of the book and runs her hand down the face of it, then she hooks her fingers beneath it and pulls until the cover buckles. Until the spine breaks and the binding comes unbound. Then she tears the pages out in handfuls and lets them fall to the floor around her like snow. Like spent shells. She tears and tears until there is nothing left to break and then she sits there breathing and aching and trying not to cry again.
And that is when she hears it. The ticking, soft and regular like a heartbeat, coming from the box beside her.
She turns and looks into the box. The timepiece is settled into a corner like a frightened thing, the brass casing catching the lumen light. Severina puts her hand into the box and takes hold of the timepiece. She looks at the bone and glass of its face, the beautiful brass casing and chain. She thinks of all the times she woke before Lucia to see her gripping the timepiece tightly, even in her sleep, the chain looped between her fingers like a noose.
Severina turns it over. The back of the case is plain and unmarked. She takes her training knife from her belt, and holds the timepiece steady as she pushes the point of it into the brass. She does it slowly, and jaggedly, slipping once and nicking her hand. One letter at a time, she carves Lucia’s name into the brass. When it is done, her hands are bloody, and so is the timepiece. It stings. All of it.
Severina gets to her feet and goes over to the window. It is a narrow opening in the wall, like an arrow-slit. The wind howls through unimpeded, carrying tiny flakes of snow with it. Severina holds the timepiece out of the window. It spins by the chain. Below, the hungry ocean roars, waiting for her to drop it. To let go. Under the sound of the wind and the ocean, Severina hears that ticking. Regular. Like a heartbeat. She wills her arm to move and her hand to open. She wills herself to hurl the timepiece into the ocean and her memories with it. To be unbreakable.
But she can’t.
A pained noise escapes her, and Severina draws her arm back inside. She sinks to her knees and drives her closed fists into the floor until they are bloody too. Until there’s a breaking in her fingers and in the face of the timepiece she is still holding. That is when she stops. When the glass goes. A tiny crack, in the top of the face.
Broken, like she is.
Severina stays like that a while. Long enough for the cuts to slow their bleeding and for snow to gather on her clothes and in her tangled hair. Then she slowly lifts her hand and puts the timepiece into the pocket in the chest of her tunic.
The one close to her heart.
Nineteen
A jagged peak to conquer
Raine stands in the strategium aboard the battle-cruiser Wrath Unending and looks upon the Laxian shipyards. The jagged peak that they have been tasked with conquering. The legend, waiting to be written.
The battle that is intended to be her last.
The schematic is rendered in ink on parchment in excruciating detail, and is so large that it lays over the massive strategium table like a shroud. Recent pict captures lie scattered on top of the parchment, taken by the fleets sent to the shipyards before this one. Those who failed.
‘Your objective is the command core,’ Juna Keene says.
The Antari general is standing on the opposite side of the table from Raine, with three of her captains. Hale and Devri and Sun. It feels strange to Raine to attend a briefing with only three, and not four.
Without Andren Fel.
Keene leans forward and points to the command core. It is a spherical chamber connected by two bulkheads to the outer core – a ring of adamantium and void-safe armourglass that is linked to the shipyard’s multi-layered docks and berths and build basilica by void-sealed gantries. Looked at in abstract, the shipyards are insectile. A central body, surrounded by many jagged, jointed legs. On the schematic, the command core looks small, but going by the scale indicator on the schematic, that chamber alone is the size of the strategium hall on the Bale’s Heart. Taken as a whole, the shipyards are bigger than the forges on Laxus Secundus were.
‘Where are we to land, sir?’ Hale asks.
Hale is out of his dress greys now, and back in his fatigues where he is comfortable. He leans on the edge of the table, taking in the schematic’s details.
‘Not at the core, I bet,’ Devri says, with a grin. ‘Or this would hardly be worthy of a legend.’
Keene smiles thinly. ‘Not at the core,’ she says. ‘Each company will land at a different location on the shipyards’ voidward side.’
She has to move a short way down the table and the schematic to point them out.
‘Blue will hit the upper docks,’ she says. ‘Gold, the repair berths beneath.’
Keene leans a little further to indicate a massive chamber on one of the shipyard’s docks.
‘Grey, into Build Basilica Delphi.’
Keene picks up a handful of the scattered picts from the table.
‘The last fleet to hit the shipyards was combined Navy and Astra Militarum,’ Keene says. ‘Two full companies of Paxar soldiery, and Tempestus support.’
‘And what happened to them?’ Devri asks.
She hands the picts around. The one that she passes to Raine is blurred and monochromatic, but it still sets her on edge. She hears Karin Sun mutter an Antari curse under his breath.
‘The Sighted turned the shipyards against them,’ Raine says, looking at the hundreds of frozen, floating dead in the pict. ‘Sent them into the void.’
Keene nods. ‘The magos, Axhon-Pho, is in control of the shipyards’ systems. Connected to them. That is only possible from the command core, even for one of the Nine.’
‘So, it will see where we are, and what we are trying to do?’ Hale asks.
‘Yes,’ Keene says. ‘But there is an advantage in the magos’ connection to the shipyards.’
She traces one of the finely inked lines on the schematic with her finger. It leads from the command core to a location in the shipyard’s upper reaches, not far from Blue Company’s landing zone.
‘Axhon-Pho is connected to all of the systems. For all intents and purposes, it and the shipyards are one and the same.’
Devri rubs at his unshaven jaw, thinking. ‘So, we hurt the shipyards, and we hurt the magos,’ he says.
‘Precisely,’ Keene says. ‘That’s your aim, and Sun’s. Blue will go for the spinal auguries and blind it. Gold will destroy the auxiliary power nodes and starve it.’
‘And Grey?’ Hale asks.
‘Yours is the kill, captain,’ Keene says.
Yuri Hale smiles, then. It pulls at the scars on his face. ‘Aye, sir,’ he says.
Karin Sun puts down his pict and looks at Keene. ‘I have a question, general,’ he says.
Keene glances at him and folds her arms across her broad chest. ‘If it is about destroying the shipyards, then don’t ask it. This is capture and control. We preserve as much of the facility as we can.’
Sun shakes his head and goes back to frowning at the schematic. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Then I do not have a question.’
Devri claps Sun gently on the shoulder. ‘One day,’ he says.
A smile breaks the thunder of Sun’s face, then, just for a moment.
‘So how do we get close enough to kill the magos?’ Hale asks.
‘The flotilla will exit the warp as close to the shipyards as they can, at the outer limits of the system’s Mandeville point. They will push through the long-range defences, drop you at your landing zones and then proceed to target non-critical areas on the opposite side of the shipyards from you in an effort to draw the magos’ eye.’
‘Nothing like running under fire, sir,’ D
evri says, and he grins.
‘You will need to run, too,’ Keene says. ‘The flotilla will only be able to maintain position for so long before they have to retreat. Command can ill afford to lose the ships.’
But they can afford to lose the Antari, Raine thinks. For the sake of Serek’s lie. She has to put down the pict before she creases it in her hands.
‘How long do we have?’ she asks.
‘Six hours,’ Keene says. ‘At most.’
Devri gives a low whistle. He’s not quite grinning now.
‘It will be enough,’ Raine says, firmly.
She needs them to believe it, because belief is what will get them through this fight, and the one to follow. To lose this battle would not just be to lose the shipyards.
It would be to lose the Bale Stars altogether.
‘This legend is ours to write,’ Raine says. ‘We will not fail in that. We will fight fiercely, and we will endure. In the Emperor’s name.’
All four of the officers echo those last four words together, with their closed fists held over their hearts.
‘Warp exit is in two hours,’ Keene says. ‘See to your companies and make good your oaths. The Laxian shipyards are the gateway to the western arm of the sector. Victory here changes everything.’
Raine looks down at the vast shape of the Laxian shipyards again. A reckoning, written in black ink.
‘Yes, general,’ she says. ‘It will.’
Twenty
A legend, waiting to be written
The void unfolds on the viewscreen in front of Taran Vadri like a painted backdrop. Like a flag, being shaken out and made to fly. The pressure that comes with warp travel fades, the nausea recedes like the tide going out and Vadri sees the Laxian shipyards, a massive, jagged star of iron and steel set against the real stars. They dropped from the warp as close as they could. As close as they dared to. Beyond the shipyards Laxus Primary is a dull, grey orb. Orbital defences hang in the planet’s orbit, glittering like bright stones.
‘Status, augur-master.’
The voice belongs to the shipmaster. Kasumi Sho never seems to need a moment to recover from translation. Vadri has heard her say that she relishes the jolt of it, and he can believe it. Sho relishes everything. Gambling. Debate. Drinking.
But especially battle.
‘Translation successful,’ Vadri says, as data tracks down one side of his vision, fed straight into the lens that replaces his left eye. ‘Just waiting for the others to catch up, sir.’
Sho laughs loudly, like she always does. She is standing, because no Navy officers born of Paxar have command thrones, just a pulpit to shout from. Sho’s regalia of green and gold is bright under the bridge lumens.
‘And we once again prove the value of our name,’ she says. ‘Far Runner!’
Everyone on the bridge knows how to answer, Vadri included. It is a reaction, like blinking.
‘Far Runner!’ he shouts with the others, as the other ships in the flotilla tear their way from the warp and join them in real space. Their sister-ship, the Sword-class Equinox. The Gothic-class Blade of Coris, and lastly, the Wrath Unending. The grand cruiser is a bullish slab of old wounds and armour plating, scored and scarred from hundreds of years of being at the heart of a fight.
Vadri has never in all his years of service seen a more beautiful ship.
‘Flotilla translation complete. Positioning within tolerances.’ Data flares red in the false lens of Vadri’s eye. Long-range augur chimes ring. ‘And we appear to have drawn the station’s ire.’
At first it is just the station’s long-range automated defences. Lance fire that splashes across the shields as the escorts move into position to protect the larger ships.
‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Sho says. ‘Put out their eyes, please, Daxx.’
‘Aye,’ the gunnery officer replies. ‘Forward lances, firing.’
‘Forward lances,’ slur the gunnery servitors in unison.
They fire a split second before the Equinox does, collapsing the long-range defence systems as they push towards the iron tangle of the shipyards in formation. It feels close, to Vadri, as if he could reach out and touch the Wrath, or the Blade, but in reality they are hundreds of kilometres apart. As the flotilla breaches the outer defence lines, Vadri’s augurs start to sing again.
‘Enemy movement,’ he says. ‘They are launching escorts. Two Cobras on an intercept heading.’
Sho laughs again. ‘Two Cobras,’ she says. ‘I thought this was a shipyard. I thought this was a legend, waiting to be written. Give me an intercept course and shunt power to the forward lances. We will soften them for the Wrath.’
The bridge is noisy with acknowledgements and relayed orders. With vox-chatter from the attack squadrons preparing to launch. Vadri feels the Far Runner thrum in his bones as they enter the outer range of the Cobra-class destroyers. The shields flicker. Lance fire lights the void. Vadri sees it and he acknowledges it, but he does not focus on it, because he is trying to understand the augur readings and the data that is tracking across his vision. He frowns.
‘More movement, shipmaster,’ he says.
The bridge shakes and the lumens gutter. Sho curses emphatically in her own tongue. Just like the Wrath Unending, it’s a beautiful thing.
‘If you can’t tell me what it is, Taran, then I don’t know what you’re sitting there for,’ she says. ‘Daxx, get me a firing solution on those Cobras before they slip by us.’
There’s an aye from the gunnery officer. The attack squadrons have launched now, too, and are engaging with the enemy’s own. They are tiny specks in the starlight. Vadri half-sees one of the enemy Cobras light and list as Daxx’s lances punch through her shields. She vents air and debris into the void like blood into water. Their sister is baring her teeth at the other Cobra, but Vadri sees what is beyond them too, now, and he wants to curse like Sho.
‘Shipmaster,’ he says, feeling warp-tense all over again. ‘The movement is a battleship.’
Vadri takes a breath. He can see it now, massive even at distance. A gloried skeleton, with some of her bones still open to the void. Old and angry and made for the kill.
‘Apocalypse-class,’ he shouts. ‘It’s the Starforged Sword.’
Vadri knows the Sword. Every Navy soul does. She was one of the most honoured battleships of the Bale Stars fleet before her near destruction at the Coris Belt. Before her relocation to Laxus for refit and repair.
And now the damned Sighted have her.
Vadri feels a tear trace from his remaining unaugmented eye as the augurs ring louder in his head. Deafening.
‘She is preparing to fire,’ Vadri yells. ‘Nova cannon!’
Sho cries an order from her pulpit that Vadri only hears half of over the impact alarms. Something about forward shields. It’s not enough. Nothing they can do is. Not against a nova cannon. Vadri makes sure not to blink as the fire comes for them.
Because that infernal fire, like the Wrath Unending and Sho’s violent cursing, is beautiful.
Toka sees the Far Runner and the Equinox go in an instant through the armourglass of his cockpit. The explosion shakes his Fury Interceptor around him and puts her into a roll. Shakes through his body and makes him bite his tongue. Even with the glare visor in his helmet dipping, it still momentarily blinds him. A good number of the other fighters are caught in it and vaporised in an instant. Dark shadows against the white.
‘Emperor’s mercy,’ he says, between breaths.
Toka has time for nothing else, because the battle won’t wait for grief. He puts the Fury into a steep, spiral climb to get clear of the spreading debris, and to try to shake the traitor interceptor still hanging on his tail. Ahead of them, the Starforged Sword churns forward in the blackness like a creature of myth, pushing past her ailing Cobra escorts.
‘Evris,’ he shouts. ‘
Clip that hawk or we’ll be as dead as the Far Runner!’
‘On it!’
The gunner’s voice is thick, as if he’s injured. Toka feels a flare of concern, but he doesn’t have time for that either. He’ll just have to check on Evris when the battle is done.
Or find him by the Emperor’s side if they don’t survive it.
Toka pulls the Fury over and around, spiralling into a steep fall that puts them past the enemy interceptor at speed. Not too fast for Evris, though. Lascannon fire splits the dark and splits the enemy interceptor too, right along her hull. She crumples and detonates and breaks into pieces and Evris whoops, like he always does. It makes Toka do the same. He can’t help it. It’s all instants, a fight like this. An instant of grief. Of worry. Of fear. Of joy.
Then Toka sees the two remaining ships of the flotilla engage the part-repaired Apocalypse-class. The Blade of Coris and the Wrath Unending are massive ships, but they are dwarfed by the Sword. That difference means danger, but it also means they can outmanouvre her. As Toka watches, they pass alongside the Starforged Sword, and open up with their broadsides. The Sword replies in kind, and his visor dips all over again.
It’s another instant to count with the others.
One of pride.
‘Missile count,’ he says to Evris.
‘One rack,’ Evris replies. ‘It’s the last of them.’
‘Then let’s not waste them,’ Toka says, and he pushes for the Starforged Sword.
They take fire from enemy interceptors that Evris answers in kind. He catches most of them and clips the rest. They take hits from debris and from pieces of the Far Runner and the Equinox. Even at speed, with the starlight and the lance fire and the roar of the Fury, Toka catches split-second glimpses of bodies in the void.
And then they are on top of the Starforged Sword. Beneath them, the battleship bleeds. The Blade of Coris and the Wrath Unending do the same. They are made for punishment, but they cannot endure indefinitely.
Nothing can.
‘Fire when I say,’ Toka says. ‘We will only get one shot.’
Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Page 35