by Ryan Muree
“Caster Adalai has known the order, sir.”
“What?” she asked, heart breaking. She took a foot back.
Adalai had lied.
I’m sorry, Emeryss.
And Sonora, too, apparently. Adalai had said she’d wanted to come visit her, all the while knowing she’d never reach there. And when was Adalai planning to tell her? Never? Right before they put her on the airship?
No, after she was already with the escort and had nowhere else to go. And without Grier, too, obviously.
Was that why Adalai had been so willing to help her learn how to cast? To absolve her guilt for lying about sending her to Stadhold behind her back?
The skinnier Caster lifted his hand, but Grier was already knocking it out the way, shield bashing him in the face. The Caster stumbled and fell onto his back, out cold.
Grier took her hand and pulled her between them and outside.
A roar echoed from the clouds with white-orange light, and a metal fin poked through, skimming the underside of the sky until it formed into a raging ball of flames. It took only a second to piece together that it was a downed airship careening across the night with a trail of smoke and fire several feet behind it. It was falling toward Marana.
Grier took her hand. “What do we need to do, Sonora?”
No answer.
“Sonora?” Grier shouted. “Should we head back to the wedding?”
What sounded like the screams of a hundred people rang through their heads, forcing them to grab their heads and recoil.
Ingini! Sonora screamed. Ingini are here! We’re under attack!
Chapter 28
Above Fort Damned — Ingini
Clove struggled with the controls. Pigyll’s fins were off-kilter. The whole airship swayed left and right, up and down. Too many airships had left the vicinity at the same time, leaving her non-combat, bottom-heavy, mid-size airship partially adrift on the remaining air currents. Not to mention the storm had also contributed to the air quality for flying.
Cayn white-knuckled the dashboard and the arm of his chair. “Can’t you pull up faster?”
The short whipping sound of airships slicing past them mixed with the thunder made it impossible to detect if she was being shot at or not.
“I can’t see a damn thing through this rain. Turn on the locators!” She pointed to the green panel on the far side of the dashboard. “1000 units.”
Cayn pressed the button, adjusted the radius and signal strength, and waited for the image to update.
Pigyll chugged along, finally managing to get itself above the slipstreams caused by the other airships.
“We need to know if these are our ships or Revel’s.” She adjusted the engine speed and moved forward into a thick gray sheet of hail and rain. The lights of the other airships were the only indication of what was in front of her, making it almost impossible to navigate by sight.
“Green,” Cayn said with a slight tinge of relief. “They’re all ours.”
“Tell me if I’m getting too close to something that can’t move out of the way faster than I can.” It’d been a while since she’d flown Pigyll manually, but being able to dart between UA fighter-ships in the middle of a severe storm might be necessary.
She scanned her navigation panel and adjusted its distance. The Revel border was still to the west, and ships were to the east.
“Where should we go?” Cayn asked.
“You don’t see any red on the locator?” She was still squinting through the rain and hail pounding against her window.
Cayn watched the locator for a few more seconds. “Nothing.”
She shook her head. “How? How can there not be any red? They wouldn’t have blown the air horns for nothing. Officer Vorris said Revelians were coming. I do not want to run into any of them.” She slapped the button on the radio to reach the tower that had approved her at the gate.
Nothing.
She tried again.
Silence.
“They’ve got their hands full,” Cayn said.
“I can’t see anything.” Her heart pounded in her ears. The rain was too thick, the hail too heavy. The storm was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Almost unnatural. There was no way the front windshield would hold if it got any worse.
“Keep moving north,” Cayn suggested. “I’ll tell you if we’ve got trouble.”
With poor vision and so much to watch for, it was damn near impossible to maintain north without help. She had to keep checking the panel for her own position.
“It’s blinking in and out.” Cayn pounded the dash with his fist. “Come on.”
The storm was too strong. Pigyll’s sensors couldn’t get a good signal off any of the towers.
Cayn kept his eyes plastered to the locator screen. “There! There! Watch your left side!”
An A-class ship with a UA logo plastered on the hull speared past them in a blur, nearly clipping Pigyll’s side-fins. She swerved right with a twist. Her fingers were trembling so badly she could barely keep hold of the engine knobs and dials.
“Green,” he blurted. “Still green. Just really damn close.”
“I can’t see anything.” Nothing through the windshield. Nothing on the sensors. “We’re stuck.”
“Just keep heading north until we see a hole or something to break through.”
The radio crackled to life.
She pounded the button. “Fort Damned? You there? This is the Ingini ship Pigyll. We need—”
A voice crackled on the other side. She repeated herself.
“Are you doing it right?” Cayn asked. “Maybe you’re supposed to start with the identification—”
“I don’t know how to talk to the military, Cayn! I’m doing the best I can!”
Another voice crackled on the line. “—taking fire—equipped personnel shoot. Shoot them down!”
Cayn hopped up out of his seat and left her for the gunnery basket below with the laser.
“I’m taking us up above the storm,” she screamed to him, straining against the controls and fighting crosswinds to get them higher.
It was a risk. The air might not be any more stable, and the storm could be too high to fly over, but she had to try. She couldn’t shake the uneasy sense that they were sitting in the open, unable to see anything but obvious to everyone else.
“Can you see anything from there?” she called down to him.
“Nope. It’s too dark,” he called back.
The air pressure dropped the higher they climbed. She hadn’t had to fly like this since Scuffle had trained her in the summer storms and cyclones that ripped through the mountains on the backside of his property.
The closer they got to the clouds, the rain was heavier, the hail bigger.
“Almost there!” she screamed.
A massive chunk of ice crashed into the front windshield and cracked the glass straight through the middle.
Alarms went off, buzzing and blinking across the dash, alerting her to the high altitude and the very obvious crack.
“Need me to come back up?” Cayn shouted.
Finally, they broke through the clouds above the wind, rain, and hail into a clear night sky with millions of twinkling stars. A bold bright moon illuminated the Ingini’s United Architects fleet in a full-scale battle with Revelian airships.
The fighter airships from Fort Damned darted from the right, and the Revelian fleet entered from the left, breaking through the clouds like eerie spiritships on a wake of fog. Except there shouldn’t be fog this high, or a storm this organized and violent hovering under the airships.
It was unnatural. It was man-made—Revelian-made.
Ether of all colors shot out and around the ships, back and forth. It was a battlefield of clouds and color. The navigation panel blinked solid red to the west.
“Oh shit,” Cayn muttered from below. The laser whirred on.
“Wait!” she shouted. Nerves frozen, she had to think.
Think.
If they went back down below the cover of the storm clouds, the windshield wouldn’t withstand the rain and hail with the new crack, and it’d probably burst apart. It’d ruin the integrity of the ship.
Think.
If they fired the laser, they’d have the entire Revelian army thinking they were part of the war. They’d be dead for sure.
“Clove?”
“I’m thinking,” she yelled back, voice trembling.
No one was focusing on them yet.
“Don’t fire the laser unless I tell you!” she called down. Through was the only way.
She dropped Pigyll until they were back on the surface of the clouds. Not taking the rain or the hail, it’d protect the ship. But hopefully, the clouds, the lightning, the battle would provide enough cover for them to skim by underneath unnoticed.
The navigation panel blinked in and out. They were probably too far from the towers, but when it flickered back on, the screen blinked with the tiniest bit of red to the north. One by one, it located every Revelian ship within 1000 units and gave it a relevantly sized red dot. Within seconds, the screen was flooded with red. Through the windshield, a solid wall of fighting RCA ships stared back.
“Shit.” She’d heard Cayn say it with her.
“Can you turn around?” Cayn called out.
“I can try.” She turned Pigyll slowly south.
“It’s endless fog. I can’t see shit,” he said.
It was better than the rain and better than the fight.
Alerts started all over again, blinking on the locator panel. More red to the south, to the north... “There is no turning around. We’re surrounded.”
Cayn turned the laser on as two beams of green light shot past the ship.
“They saw us!” he screamed.
She wasn’t sure, but she pushed Pigyll forward anyway. “I think it was random fire from the—”
The airship shook violently, knocking them right.
“Oh, no they won’t.” They would not blow apart her Pigyll.
“The left fin is smoking!” he shouted.
“You think you’re going to shoot my ship,” she muttered. Regaining their orientation, she turned the engines up to full speed, pushing Pigyll to its limits.
“Two o’clock!”
She saw the flash of light, and she swerved left.
“Dead at twelve!” he shouted.
She twisted Pigyll up and over the other ship’s hull just in time.
“Keep it up. You got this! Two coming up—one left, one right.”
If he shot that ether-laser, there was no turning back. It either worked, or it didn’t. And if it didn’t, they were dead anyway.
She gripped the dials and twisted in the correct direction. “I can’t dodge two. Take one!”
“I got right!”
Pulses of ether, flame, and hail whizzed by the ship, nicking the hull here and there. Not enough to take her down. The RCA airship coming for them from the left was small, agile, and probably carried no more than two Casters. She adjusted the dials and held on as Pigyll pulled tighter left to miss it.
A loud thrumming noise echoed from Cayn, and then there was an explosion in the sky beside them.
“Whoa!” Cayn shouted. “Did you see that? Holy shit, that was incredible! Did you see it?”
“I saw the explosion.”
“Yes!” Cayn laughed and cheered as the weapon hummed and blew a few airships out of the sky. “I love this thing!”
Several dots on the locator screen had turned for them. “Cayn! Behind us!”
She swerved and dodged flying ether, banking hard left and right.
“I think they saw us,” he shouted.
“No shit.”
A loud slow chirp started from the locator screen. Ahead were several red dots mixed into one. Was it a swarm? A glitch?
“Do you see anything?” she asked him.
The hum of Cayn’s laser cut off. “Clove…”
An enormous Revel ship parted through the clouds ahead of them. It was the biggest ship she’d ever seen. Bigger than a Super-S Class airship, bigger than any hangar in Ingini.
“What is that?”
“Clove, get us out!” Cayn shouted. “Get us out now!”
A webbing of light crawled through the clouds toward them.
She gasped and gripped the handles to lift Pigyll above it, but it was too late. The electrifying field rattled through the hull, shorting and popping equipment. Smoke billowed out of the dashboard, shocking her and igniting fires.
She screamed and jerked her hands back.
Pigyll began to fall.
“No, no, no, baby.” Nothing on the panel would respond without a shock of electricity. She yelped and shook the pain away. “Cayn!”
No answer. Her heart plummeted as Pigyll dropped out of the sky.
“Cayn!” she shrieked, tears forming. “Get up here! Get in the seat!”
The storm whirred past them as they descended. Pigyll was picking up speed, and the hull was shaking violently. She couldn’t get out of her seat. She couldn’t get to him.
Nothing was responding. Nothing would turn on.
She choked and coughed on the smoke from the fires, holding her arm over her mouth. “Cayn!”
The crack in the windshield fractured again and again. There were no more airships around them, no more pulses shooting past. There was nothing but the lights in the distance getting closer by the second.
“Cayn!” she called while fumbling with her seat belt.
Strapped down in her pilot’s chair, she closed her burning eyes, tightened herself into a ball, and covered her head the best she could.
Chapter 29
Marana — Revel
Grier took Emeryss’s hand as more blazing airships fell like falling stars around them. “You can hide—”
“No! I’m coming with you. Don’t even act like me staying on the ship is an option.”
It was his worst nightmare. Ingini this close to Emeryss.
She squeezed his hand. “I’m not a Scribe anymore, remember? And we could die at any moment.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re any safer, and that doesn’t mean we should die right now.”
A clang of debris hitting the Zephyr echoed and startled them.
“It’s not safer in here, and they could need our help.”
Hand in hand, they ran back toward the wedding venue. “Sonora? Sonora, are you there?” he cried out.
Wedding guests screamed as they ran from the tent. Airships crashed into the ground with flames erupting several feet in the air and tremors rocking through the soil. Trees caught fire. Grass burnt to a crisp. Smoke blew across the clearing.
“There, Grier.” Emeryss pointed to a huddled group at the back of the tent.
“Sonora?” Grier squinted at them.
We’re here. The Ingini are in the city, and we’ve got stragglers at the wedding, possible assassins. We can take them, but we’ll need your help with the rest.
Shouts and commands from people who must have been near Sonora also came through her casted whispers.
They tore through the meadow to the group. Grier pulled her along with his shield-arm out in front of them just in case. Floating embers caught his shirt, but he quickly patted out any budding flames.
An airship plummeted into the ground just off the tent, shooting rocks and flaming metal.
Grier curled around Emeryss and willed his ether-shield to spring up from his bracer to protect their heads. Emeryss covered her ears at the deafening whine and crunch of the metal under such incredible force. Explosions shook the ground, and waves of heat rolled toward them.
“Come on.” He pulled her forward.
Once inside the back of the tent, grunts of RCA members and pops of ether cluttered the chaos. The far wall of the canvas tent had been burned away, revealing the expansive gray wall beyond the city of Marana and several Ingini troops filtering in.
There was a distinct smell or feeling, l
ike the morning after a thunderstorm. Ether.
Sonora and Kayson were behind a turned-over table for a barrier, as Kayson was bent over a sprawled wedding guest, his hands trying to revive him.
Grier pulled Emeryss behind the cover of the table, making sure to position his shield protectively.
“Where’s everyone else?” Emeryss asked.
Sonora’s fingers were trembling as she watched over their shoulders. “The Harpies were rerouted to help. Everyone’s out fighting the stragglers invading the party. Adalai was making sure the guests and O’Brecht were safe and away. The worst of it is in the city. Reports coming in are terrible. I can… I can hear them.” She swallowed and flicked her hand in a direction away from the tent, helping Vaughn topple someone running past.
“What’s the plan?”
“Fight and win.” Sonora’s dress had been splattered with blood in several places. “I know you didn’t sign up for this, but they need you, Grier.” Sonora handed Emeryss the gauze she’d been holding for Kayson as he patched another person’s bleeding arm. She kissed Kayson on the cheek and headed out into the fray.
The need to help gripped him. Grier itched to get in there, clear some Ingini, save anyone running out of ether.
“Go, Grier,” Emeryss said. “I’ll stay here with Kayson.”
His eyes scanned the crowds fighting ahead of them outside of the tent. His hands balled into fists. He could make a difference. He could help them.
Small lighter explosions echoed from Marana.
But he couldn’t leave Emeryss.
“I can’t scribe,” she said. “I can’t cast. They have no reason to target me. For all they know, I’m nobody and just at risk as everyone else, so go!”
He knew better than to ask Adalai to move Emeryss to the same place as the advisor. Emeryss might kill him herself for suggesting it.
“Go,” she urged again.
A stray Ingini had managed to slip past an RCA Caster throwing white light from his hands.
Grier met the Ingini’s stare from across the tent. He rose and walked toward him. Striking the length of his forearm with his thumb, he materialized his swordstaff from the ethereal realm. The weight of it was solid in his palm.