“Then we’ll draw them out,” Charlotte replied. “If we can separate them, we’ll have a better chance of taking them down one at a time.”
“Or three at a time,” Linnet offered. When Jack threw her a withering look, she added, “I’m not saying I want to fight more than one at a time. It’s simply prudent to be prepared.”
“We can’t afford the time it will take to fight them all by playing hide-and-seek in the woods,” Ash said. “The French fleet is on its way. The Wheel has to be taken down before they arrive.”
“The way the mission was presented, I think we could interpret that bit as optional,” Jack offered.
“What are you talking about?” Ash asked.
“Well, they did keep saying if you succeed,” Jack replied. His tone was teasing, but Charlotte suspected he was at least a little bit serious.
Charlotte waved off the suggestion. “Unpleasant as it may be, you know as well as I that if meant ‘if you don’t die,’ not ‘if you don’t give up.’”
“No one’s giving up.” Ash’s sudden anger caught Charlotte by surprise. “I know we don’t all share the same opinion of the Resistance, but I still believe in their cause. I still say the Empire must fall.”
Charlotte put her hand on Ash’s arm. “We aren’t going to abandon the mission, and you’re right that time is working against us.”
Addressing the group, Charlotte said, “The priority is getting Pip inside the fence and up to the Maintenance Platform. Linnet and Io will go with Pip. Linnet picks the lock. Io can offer any last-minute changes to the device. Both of you, if needed, will defend Pip as she climbs.
“Before you make a run for the gate, the rest of us will draw as many of the guards into the forest as we can. Hopefully we’ll eliminate them or hold their attention long enough for Pip to place the device and detonate it. Once that happens, I doubt the guards will care about catching us.”
“Probably not,” Jack said.
“Pip’s group, head to the far eastern edge of the forest and wait until the guards have left,” Charlotte said. “If some stay behind, you’ll have to take them down.”
“We’ll manage,” Scoff told her.
“It’s time,” Charlotte told them. “Good luck.”
When the infiltrators had gone, Jack began to laugh.
“What?” Charlotte frowned at him.
“It just occurred to me that we’re about to create a diversion for our diversion,” he said with a grin.
“Ugh.” Charlotte rolled her eyes.
“Let’s divert, then,” Ash said. “I’ll take the north side.”
“I’ll draw them to the west,” Scoff said.
“Near east side sounds good to me,” Jack added.
Birch looked at Charlotte. “I guess that leaves us the south approach.”
“I’ll take the south,” Charlotte replied. “I need you to climb a tree at the edge of the forest and keep an eye on the situation at the Wheel. You’re good with the long rifle. Take out any threats to Pip’s squad.”
“I can do that.” Birch selected the sleek-barreled gun from their array of arms and went to seek a suitable perch.
Charlotte looked to her remaining friends. “Anything else?”
No one spoke.
Charlotte nodded, and the group broke apart.
• • •
The southern approach to the Wheel’s base was the very point from which she’d first assessed their opponents. The eight guards she’d observed earlier were still there. Charlotte watched them, trying to get a sense of their alertness. They rarely spoke to one another and moved with quick, jerky reflexes. High tension, then. That could work to her advantage. Fear easily gave birth to confusion and chaos, and the Iron Forest was a catalyst for those unstable emotions.
Charlotte fitted the carbine to her shoulder and took aim. Another shot rang out before she pulled the trigger, but the sound didn’t startle Charlotte, nor did it mar her aim. She squeezed the trigger, and one of the guards crumpled.
Shouts filled the air, and the remaining seven guards charged toward her position, guns at the ready. Charlotte dashed from the edge of the forest, trying to stay within the cover of its shadows.
More shots rang out.
After a brief sprint, Charlotte ducked behind a tree and raised the carbine again. She could hear the guards crashing through the forest, but she had yet to find a second target.
A flicker of movement caught her attention.
A flicker of movement behind her.
Charlotte threw herself to the ground, and a moment later, metallic rings sounded from the tree trunk as bullets struck the place she’d been standing. She rolled over and scrambled to her feet. Her eyes tracked through the trees, searching for her assailant. The guards from the Wheel hadn’t overtaken her, so it had to be one of the patrols.
At her back, the seven guards she’d led into the metal woods drew closer. Charlotte needed to fire at them again, but she couldn’t risk turning her back on this new threat.
She continued to track south, moving with stealth rather than speed. The men pursuing her were running. Before long, they would overtake her.
“Halt!”
The shout came from her left. Charlotte froze, turning her head. A guard had his rifle trained on her, but what arrested her attention was the creature held back by its master.
Charlotte couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was an armored rat. The rat clawed at the ground, straining against the chain gripped by its master.
“Drop your gun.” The guard shook the rat’s chain, and it reared up as though it had been given a promise of imminent release. “You don’t want me to set her on you.”
Charlotte agreed. The rat’s beady eyes were already devouring Charlotte in anticipation of sinking its teeth into her flesh.
She could try to run, and she might be able to evade the rat, but not if the guard shot her legs out from beneath her. Charlotte began to lower the carbine. She didn’t know what to watch more carefully, the guard whose gun was trained on her or the rat.
Shots still rang through the air at irregular intervals. Some of the blasts were closer than others.
The drum of footfalls was closer still.
“Identify yourselves!” the rat guard shouted. He kept his gun aimed at Charlotte, but she could tell he was nervous, unsure whether the approaching din signaled the arrival of friends or foes.
The guard’s gaze slipped from Charlotte toward the noise coming from the woods.
Knowing this might be her only chance to flee, Charlotte bolted. A rifle report boomed in her ears, but the guard’s shot had missed. She ran faster.
Charlotte kept the line of her flight jagged, darting behind trees, changing direction. Angry, confused shouts filled the woods. She turned again and then pivoted around a large tree. She crouched against its trunk.
Running had been a temporary solution, but it wouldn’t serve the larger aims of Charlotte’s mission. She needed to lessen the threat that followed her. And that meant waiting for the guards to catch up.
And the rat.
I wish I had Pocky.
It was a fleeting desire. Pocky would have served Charlotte well against the rat, but wouldn’t have been much use against the guards.
Charlotte could hear their approaching steps now. She raised the carbine. A guard appeared between the trees ahead. Charlotte took aim, waiting for him to come in range. She fired. The bullet’s impact knocked him off his feet. He didn’t get up again.
Answering shots rang out all around. The guards weren’t bothering to aim, but all it would take was one lucky bullet to bring Charlotte’s mission to an end.
She stayed low when she moved to the cover of another tree trunk. She changed her position one more time.
Another guard came into her sights. She fired an
d immediately dropped to the forest floor in anticipation of the volley to come. Shots filled the air once more, but not as many.
Charlotte crawled to the next tree. Another soldier fell prey to her carbine. She dared to maintain her position and was rewarded with another successful shot.
As she scrambled to another site of cover, a searing pain lanced along Charlotte’s upper right arm. She heard the gunshot in the next moment. Dropping to the ground, Charlotte rolled several times until she was curled against a tree trunk.
One glance at the wound told Charlotte the shot had only grazed her. She sat up, pressing her back to the tree as she contemplated what her next move should be.
The woods had grown strangely quiet. She no longer heard boots stomping through the trees. Either the soldiers had decided Charlotte was no longer worth pursuing or something else had claimed their attention.
I have to get back to the Wheel.
If somehow the remaining guards had been alerted to the threat posed by Pip’s squad, they could be returning to their posts.
Charlotte stood up, but went still when she heard a soft scuffling nearby. She’d only begun to turn in the direction of the sound when the rat’s head appeared from around the opposite side of the tree trunk. Its muzzle was crimson with gore, and its nose was lifted, twitching as it scented Charlotte’s blood.
There was no time to aim. The rat was too close. Charlotte grabbed the gun’s barrel as the rat leapt. She swung the butt of the carbine as hard as she could, and it vibrated in her hands at the impact. The rat squealed in pain and then it was on her.
The creature was weighty on its own, but the armor gave its body a crushing force. Charlotte smashed into the ground. She would have been pinned had her blow to the rat’s head not forced it to the side. Charlotte was on her feet while the rat still shook its head, dazed from the blow.
Charlotte raised the gun once more and brought its butt down between the rat’s eyes. There was an awful crack before it slumped to the ground. Charlotte’s fingers still gripped the barrel tightly. Her heart was pounding as she watched the rat, waiting for any sign of life. It remained still.
• • •
By the time Charlotte reached the Wheel, whatever battle had been fought there was over. From what she saw, Charlotte guessed it hadn’t been much of a contest. Guards lay at random places in the stretch of ground between the forest and the Wheel’s base. Birch had done his job well.
Scoff and Ash had taken up sentinel posts in front of the entrance to the Wheel’s mechanical stations. Ash waved as Charlotte approached, but frowned when he saw she was bleeding.
“It’s not bad,” Charlotte told him before he could ask.
“There’s Jack.” Scoff nodded toward the eastern edge of the forest.
Jack wasn’t so much coming toward them as stomping his way out of the trees.
“Please tell me someone else had to fight a rat.” He was scowling.
“A rat?” Scoff asked.
Ashley looked puzzled as well.
“I did,” Charlotte said.
“What?” Ash gave Charlotte a curious glance. “Rats?”
“Armored rats,” Jack told him. “Just like the good old days.”
“Heap rats?” Ash shook his head in disbelief. “The Empire doesn’t train Heap rats.”
“Apparently they do,” Jack said. “Though not very well. The one I faced turned on its master as soon as it smelled blood. Took care of two guards for me.”
Charlotte wondered if the guards who’d been behind her hadn’t given up the chase after all.
“How’s Pip doing?” Jack asked.
“See for yourself,” Scoff pointed at the Wheel’s axis.
High above them a tiny figure was approaching the heart of the Wheel. The sight stole Charlotte’s breath. She rushed through the gate to join Io and Linnet, whose eyes were fixed on Pip.
Charlotte marveled at Pip’s speed. The ascent was even longer than Charlotte had imagined, but Pip was practically flying up the ladder. Charlotte wanted to laugh at how much Pip did mirror the nimble motions of a squirrel.
When Pip reached the Maintenance Platform at the wheel’s axle, her body was almost too small to see. Charlotte squinted as she tried to follow the girl’s progress. At last, Pip’s tiny form moved away from the giant axle. But rather than returning to the ladder, Pip walked to the edge of the platform.
Io took Charlotte’s arm. “Now you’ll want to scream, dear. But please don’t.”
Pip jumped.
A scream did rise in Charlotte’s throat, but sheer disbelief in what she was seeing stopped her cry’s escape.
Pip raised one arm, and Charlotte saw that the girl was holding an object that looked somewhat like an umbrella. The top of the umbrella was spinning, and Charlotte realized that Pip wasn’t falling. She was floating.
“Hephaestus’s hammer,” Linnet murmured. “What is that contraption?”
“She invented it.” Io clucked like a proud mother hen. “Heaps of potential in that one. So creative.”
Pip’s feet touched the ground, and she twisted the handle of her device. The whirring of a motor slowed and then stopped, as did the spinning petal-like canopy above her head.
Pip ran up to Charlotte, breathless with excitement.
“That was astonishing,” Charlotte said.
“Did you like it?” Pip brandished the device with pride. “I call it a Pinwheel. It’s very useful.”
“You’re quite the clever little thing.” Linnet eyed Pip. “You should speak to Lord Ott. I think he’d be eager to employ you.”
Pip grinned.
Linnet grabbed Pip’s hand. “Yes, yes, huzzah for Pip, but we have to go!”
Charlotte blinked away her amazement as she remembered the ticking clock high above them, counting down to massive destruction.
“Time to run,” Birch said.
He took off. Scoff and Birch were at his heels, with Io, Linnet, Pip, and Charlotte close behind.
Birch shouted a warning to Jack, Ash, and Scoff when he passed them, and a second later, they were running too. They didn’t stop until they’d reached the wide tree trunk that housed Ott’s secret elevator shaft. Linnet moved to pull the branch that would reveal the elevator door, but Birch stopped her.
“We need to wait for the explosion,” he said. “We don’t want to be stuck in that elevator if the blast radius is great enough to interfere with its machinery.”
Linnet’s eyes widened slightly, and she nodded.
“Are you sure we’re far enough away?” For the first time that night, Pip sounded afraid.
Birch put his arm around her. “It will be loud, and the ground might shake, but we aren’t in danger.”
They stood, huddled together beneath the metal tree, and waited. A terrible quiet seemed to fill the forest, like the sudden silence of woods when a predator appears.
A bright flash illuminated the wheel before the roar of the explosion reached them. Charlotte covered her ears. All around them, the metal forest vibrated with the power of the blast. The ground shuddered.
Then, again, quiet. For several moments, Charlotte could only hear the rapid strikes of her heartbeat.
Something low began to swell in the air. A long, weary groan followed by a keening that pierced through Charlotte’s ears, making her wince.
Pip gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth.
The Great Wheel began to tip away from the Floating City.
What had been a horrendous, shrill noise became a chorus of shrieks as metal screamed and carriages dropped from the outer rim of the wheel, falling like overripe fruit to the earth. Beneath the ceaseless high-pitched cries rose a deep groan. The death bellow of some mythic beast. And the Great Wheel fell.
31.
THE MARKET PLATFORM was in chaos. Fearful cries mi
ngled with blaring alarms as panic seized New York’s citizens.
Smoke billowed at the edge of the platform where the Great Wheel had once taken on passengers.
Witnessing it all, Charlotte was suddenly filled with grief. She understood what was happening and why, but her mind clung to other memories of the Floating City. And while its platforms suffered the bloat of the Empire’s indulgences, the city could also claim true beauty, real innovation. Its inhabitants weren’t all blind servants of the Empire, hateful of the Resistance. They lived and worked, surviving and thriving in whatever ways they could. But now all the city’s residents would be subject to the same violence, destruction, and suffering. They would bear the responsibility for decisions over which they’d had no control.
How many here would die without purpose?
The buzz of aircraft filled the sky as Dragonflies zoomed toward the wreck of the wheel.
“This is where we part ways,” Linnet said.
Charlotte nodded. They had no time for sentiment or fear. Jack met Charlotte’s gaze briefly before he went to find his mother. Ash was bound for the Temple.
Though the city had already begun to tilt toward chaos, for the moment its quotidian functions were still in operation. Grave’s rescue party boarded the trolley and rode it to the Military Platform. The scene they encountered upon disembarking was one of panic, but the organized sort. Uniformed men and women ran in every direction, responding to whatever orders they received.
“Follow my lead,” Linnet told them. “Walk swiftly and keep your head up. Act as if you belong here.”
They moved in an orderly fashion, lined up in pairs, and kept a clipped pace as they crossed the platform toward the air dock. Far fewer vessels were stationed at the platform than when Charlotte had last been there. Many were now smoldering ruins outside the walls of New Orleans. Those that remained were rumbling to life, preparing to answer the attack they believed was already under way.
Linnet’s assessment of the situation proved accurate. They were largely ignored as they made their way toward the warehouses. It wasn’t until they reached the door that gave entry to Grave’s prison that they encountered an obstacle. The guards posted outside had not abandoned their posts, despite the alarms sounding beyond the walls of the warehouse.
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