by Eric Asher
Furi waited at the base of one of those steel towers, two groups preceding her before she finally managed to catch a lift. Even in times of celebration, the lifts weren’t enough to meet the demand for them.
“What in the three hells happened to your tunic?”
Furi stiffened and looked around at her fellow passengers. At first she thought the voice belonged to her commanding officer, but a knot of dread untied itself when she saw Beck’s hooded eyes filled with mischief.
“Dammit, Beck. Almost gave me a heart attack.”
The lift lurched into motion, causing most of the occupants to stumble. But not Furi or Beck. Growing up on the docks taught you something about balance that earthers didn’t have.
“Did you see the flags?” Beck asked. “Looks like they called for us to come aboard early.”
“What?” Furi asked, squinting as if that would help her see through the fast-moving mesh on the lift.
“Are you telling me you just happened to wander back here when they were calling for us to return to ship?”
Furi pursed her lips. “Maybe.”
Beck shook his head. “The first call was almost half an hour ago. You really are the luckiest soldier in the company. Let me see that tunic.”
Furi didn’t argue when Beck slid his hand just inside her collar to better inspect the bite from the beetle. She trusted him, having grown up near the second gas chamber atop the airship docks. He’d been a friend and a regular sight before that.
Beck opened the pouch at his waist, flipped through two pockets, and pulled out a needle and thread.
“Are you serious?” Furi muttered.
“This is for my sake too. You think I want to run laps around the Nightingale with our squad? You think the squad wants to run laps?”
Furi rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine.”
Beck worked on the pull, deftly adding stitches in just the right places so when he pulled it tight, Furi could scarcely tell where he’d patched it. He bit his lips as he often did when he was thinking, folding the collar of her tunic out and slicing the thread on the edge of his ring.
Furi adjusted her tunic when he leaned away, nodding at his work. “There. Now I won’t have to run laps.”
“You two are adorable,” said an older woman beside them.
Whatever Furi had been about to say fled in a moment of horror, embarrassment, and maybe a little disgust. Beck was like a brother. An annoying brother.
So when he said, “Yeah, next week is our fifth anniversary,” and the woman just said, “Aww,” Furi wanted to leap out of the lift to whatever fate awaited someone who fell from those great heights. Thankfully, the lift stopped, and she didn’t need to do anything quite so dramatic.
CHAPTER TWO
Relief flooded Furi’s chest when her tunic passed inspection. She didn’t have time to empty her satchel in the barracks, so she headed for the briefing hall instead. After boarding, not even an hour went by before they weighed anchor and the Nightingale took to the sky. She’d have to thank Beck later.
Walking along the outer rail, past the upper bank of massive fore-cannons, Furi watched an entire squadron of destroyers pull away from the docks, skirting the huge gas chambers that supported the structure’s edges. Sailors hurried in and out of the armory below the towering smokestacks, prepping the cannons before they’d so much as cleared the docks. Furi’s suspicions that this was no routine mission sharpened.
She reached the armored door near the center of the ship, flanked by enormous fuel cells, gas chambers in their own right, but armored to withstand most any attack. Inside, the auditorium was already filled. She looked for Beck, but their company was spread out in no conceivable order. That was unusual.
Sailors were still filing in when one of the ship’s commanders stepped to the podium.
“I am sure many of you are wondering why our deployment has been rushed. We have received word that the holy terror, the one named Charles von Atlier, was struck down in Dauschen by our alliance with Fel. With Bollwerk’s most powerful ally removed, it is time for us to bring the armored city to its end.
“The fleet makes for Bollwerk, and the glory of Ballern. Once Bollwerk is secured and reinforced, Belldorn will be surrounded, and we will remove the stain of their legacy from this world.”
Sailors erupted into applause and shouts, but something didn’t sit well with Furi. Bollwerk and Belldorn were different, to be sure, but they were still home to people, families, and children. That was not the kind of target she ever wanted in her sights. Give her the soldier, the faceless few who had signed up for war.
But never the children.
“Once the bombing of Bollwerk is complete, our priority is to secure the airship docks. You have your orders, and the cannons are already prepped. Say your prayers, to the gods or the Great Machines, and make your peace with whatever may come. This is your moment of victory, and the long-awaited triumph of Ballern!”
After the group was dismissed and started filing out of the auditorium, someone elbowed Furi. She turned to find Mei, one of the Nightingale’s gunners and someone she’d come to think of as a friend.
“You look like someone just ate your favorite pet.”
Furi grimaced. “I just, you know, there are kids in those cities.”
“Kids who will grow up to be holy terrors, you mean. Easiest way to deal with that is to remove the threat before it becomes a threat.”
Furi cringed at those words. “That’s terrible, Mei.”
Mei smirked. “No, Furi, that’s war. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“You’re nineteen. That’s literally one year older than me.”
“And all the wisdom that comes with it!” Mei laughed and hurried on ahead when another gunner motioned for her. “Bye, Furi!”
She waved, but Mei’s words grated on her mind. How could anyone think like that? Mei had a little brother. How would she feel if someone killed him just to keep him from growing up? It was a stupid question, she knew, but was it any more so than what they had just been asked to do?
Furi ground her teeth and made her way to the bow of the ship. The Nightingale’s flag flew beside her, the massive green cloth snapping in the wind. She wondered if it was the same flag the vendor had used to make her hair tie. She remembered the little girl with the beetle and shivered at the thought someone might murder a child to save a future that might never be.
* * *
They had been hours in the skies. Half the crew thought Bollwerk would never see an attack coming until it was far too late. Furi doubted that very much. No city survived without spies and scouts. And Bollwerk had survived for several decades.
The destroyers formed a magnificent V, made up of the finest ships Ballern had ever produced. It was an imposing sight, and one Furi had never seen outside of the festivals and parades around her own city. What would it look like to an enemy?
She smiled at the thought before she remembered where they were heading and how many innocents might die. There was no turning back now. She could only help bring a quick and decisive victory. Keep the casualties to a minimum, and perhaps when this tour ended, she could find a new job. Get a place to live off the docks, or maybe teach music to some of the Skyborn again. She wasn’t bad on an ocarina, and music could soothe her on the worst days.
A glint near the horizon to the south interrupted Furi’s thoughts. She frowned and leaned down to one of the many telescopes mounted along the bow.
Nothing. There was nothing there but clouds.
But then the clouds thinned enough for the flash to come again. She shifted the telescope, latching onto a sight she didn’t fully understand: a small airship, its gas chambers sleek and contained by a wide metal band until it almost formed a puffy number eight. The cabin sat at the bow instead of below the chambers, and something like wings extended from the sides.
Shadows appeared at the edge of the small craft—three faces she couldn’t fully make out. Two vanished.
/> “We have an airship above us,” Furi said, pointing with the full length of her arm.
A nearby commander took the scope from Furi. “Tourists,” he muttered. “That ship is far too small to be a military vessel. Not much larger than a clipper.”
He handed the scope back to Furi a second before the first explosion rocked the Nightingale. Screams rose around them as two sailors dashed onto the deck near the bow, covered in flames.
Furi stared, horror warring with the need to do something. It was only a moment before she grabbed one of the fire blankets from a brass compartment at her feet and dove toward the screaming sailors. She didn’t even have the first one extinguished when another explosion tore the far side of the deck out from under the commander. He fell into nothing, chased by a burning man.
Nothing felt real. The world slowed as Furi’s heart hammered in her chest.
A secondary explosion deafened the world around her, and one of the giant fore-cannon mounts spiraled off the Nightingale in streamers of black smoke and brilliant flame.
“Mei!” Furi cried, her voice cracking. Mei was stationed at those cannons.
“Raise the flags!” a surviving commander screamed. “Attack!”
The brilliant green of the Nightingale’s colors was quickly replaced by red flags along the sides of the warship. Through the smoke and flame, Furi could see the other destroyers mimicking the signal flags.
The deck of the ship shuddered and dipped, sending the crew stumbling about as they tried to adjust the remaining cannons. But the destroyer’s cannons were huge, slow, and took time to aim. They weren’t meant to lock onto a ship so small and so fast.
It wasn’t long before the Nightingale leveled out and started rising again as other destroyers fired on their attacker. More than once, it looked like the tiny ship would be blown to pieces before it lurched to the side.
Furi tried to spot the attackers again, following the aim of a surviving cannon. She was surprised to find the ship nearby, just inside a cloud bank, before another explosion rocked the deck and brought the cannon to a grinding halt.
A rapid staccato came to life, the sailors grabbing small handheld cannons to fire back at the ship. But a moment later, the pattering of those shots was drowned out by more explosions tearing through men and armor alike as Furi dove to the deck, too close to the hole so many had already fallen through.
Even as she thought it, a bloodied sailor tumbled and fell. There was no scream, no flailing, just a red-stained rag doll hurtling toward the earth. Furi took one more glimpse at the ship as she braced herself against the bow.
Two faces, younger than she was, stared out from the ship. A young girl, pale with brilliant red hair, and a boy with dark hair—an Ancoran, she was almost sure.
Another destroyer fired as the small ship shot into the clouds, faster than any airship Furi had ever seen. There was only so much training could prepare them for. And this had gone far beyond that.
The ship broke down into panic and fear and chaos. Furi threw two extinguisher grenades into the worst of the flames, but they did almost nothing. Once those were spent, she hurried toward the opposite side of the deck, horrified to see both sides of the ship were now on fire.
It was a scene repeated time and again, as her burning shipmates flung themselves off the sides or through the damaged floors. She made her way up to a storage well where the cannons held their ammunition. She immediately wished she hadn’t. Nothing could have survived in that scorched and blackened ruin. Mei was gone.
Furi took a few rapid breaths and hurried down a ladder. She was nearly to the deck when they collided with another airship, the screams of metal joining the screams of her shipmates. She lost her grip and slammed onto the deck, losing every last bit of air in her lungs. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gasped for breath. A handful of sailors had reached the racked emergency gliders, and they leaped from the destroyer wherever they could.
The Nightingale was in a death spiral now, a terrible dance between two flailing destroyers. If the last of the gas chambers were compromised, it would be a much quicker end.
Streaks of light cut through the sky, and one of the distant destroyers exploded as if its entire structure had been forged from cannon powder.
Two of Ballern’s destroyers returned fire. Thunder drowned out the screams and cries all around her.
Furi caught a glimpse of their target, an impossible hulk covered in more cannons than she thought might exist in the entirety of Ballern’s fleet. And there were two of the insane ships. She’d heard the stories. She knew what they were.
Porcupines.
One of the hulks flashed with light as multiple cannons fired at once, and another of Ballern’s destroyers took a pounding. It did not crash. Its red flags switched to white, and the other surviving destroyers followed suit, rising higher and making a slow turn in retreat.
The Nightingale’s flag broke away, burning the air above Furi, even as the blood of her friends and allies pooled across the deck around her. Flames burst from the sides of the destroyer, turning the escaping gliders into screaming balls of fire and ash.
Her only hope was to hang on until they were close enough to slide down the landing lines. But even then … even then the ship might crumble down on top of them all.
Furi wept.
* * *
“Furi?” a voice called out. “Furi!”
Her eyes flashed open, shocked to find Beck standing above her.
“We have to go! Come on.” He pulled her up, leaning against the railing as the ship spiraled closer to the earth.
“Give me the glider or you’re dead.”
Beck turned slowly, pausing when he found a sailor with a handheld cannon leveled at him. “You shoot me with that, this glider isn’t going to do you much good.”
“Give it to him,” Furi hissed. “I have another way.”
Beck frowned and glanced at Furi before sliding out of the glider. The sailor took it and backed away, keeping the cannon locked on the pair until he reached the far side of the deck.
Furi grabbed the nearest landing line and tossed it over the edge.
“That’s your other idea?”
“Put your gloves on. We have to time this right. Slide to the bottom and wait until we can drop into a sand dune or something.”
“Or something,” Beck muttered, but he still slid his iron-palmed gloves on.
Furi glanced over the edge. They didn’t have too long now. She hopped up, took a deep breath, and slid down the steel line. Her gloves sparked when they hit frayed bits of the landing line, and she had no illusions that the sting on her legs from hitting them was going to need time to heal.
She was almost at the bottom when Beck joined her.
The ship’s spiral was slow now, but the descent was accelerating. They needed to drop soon, or they might as well have been on the destroyer that exploded.
“Furi, we’re still five stories in the air.”
“Look. Aim for the tall dune when we circle around.” It was almost clear but for one bulbous cactus the size of a Pill-Bug.
Beck followed her gaze and grimaced. “I’m going to hit the cactus.”
Even as the ailing ship turned, swinging them out in a blistering breeze, Furi loosened her grip and fell.
One thing she learned immediately was that sand dunes were not as soft as the snow in the north. Her teeth rattled together, sprays of rock and sand flying into the air as she rolled over in a violent spiral. She came to a stop a third of the way down the hill, and despite her pain, laughed when she saw Beck.
“I hit the damn cactus!”
He was bloody and his arm had half a dozen stickers impaling it, but they were alive. And that was something.
* * *
They hadn’t made it far from the dune and the cactus when the first of Bollwerk’s defenders arrived. Only, they didn’t wear the colors of the city of rust. They wore the colors of Belldorn.
“Don’t move,” a woman
said, raising her visor. “Surrender and we’ll get your wounds treated. Despite whatever you may have heard of our city, you’ll find sanctuary with us.”
Furi and Beck exchanged a glance. She gave him a small nod and the tension in Beck’s posture loosened.
“I’m Furi,” she said, dropping her armored gloves into the sand.
“Beck.”
The woman nodded. “Call me Eva. Let’s get you some water.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Sure you don’t want to come with us?” Jacob asked. He rubbed at his arm without thinking, pulling on a bandage and wincing.
Samuel gave him a small smile from the doorway to Bat’s house. “No, kid. I have to get things in order here. And they’re going to need some help reorganizing the guard. I’ll head to Cave in a few days.”
Alice hesitated, then threw her arms around the Spider Knight, crushing him in a quick hug. “You better.” Her brilliant red hair stood out like a fire next to Samuel’s dark strands.
“I’ll keep the workshop ready for you.” Samuel traded grips with Jacob. “Once Smith and Mary get back to help with the reconstruction, I figure you’ll both want to use it.”
Drakkar offered a shallow bow and inclined his head. “Cave will welcome you, my friend. We welcome all who stand against tyrants, and all who flee from them.”
George the Walker reared up, flexing dozens of legs in a rolling, mesmerizing pattern. Drakkar patted the Walker’s head before loading their last pack of canteens. It had been a surprise to see Drakkar returning from the stables with none other than their trusty George. Jacob hadn’t been sure if the Walker had survived, and he was happy to hear Bessie was still in the stables as well.
“We’ll be back,” Jacob said. “I want to help with the reconstruction too. I think some of Charles’s old friends will help. Try Baddawick. Then maybe we can go back to Cave together.”
Samuel waved as the group hopped onto the back of the Walker and surged forward, weaving through the people walking down the streets of Ancora, until they reached the front gates. The damage in the Highlands wasn’t insignificant. Some of it had been patched over by the people who lived there, and by the innkeepers, but broken weathervanes and blood still stained the streets. As they passed through the gateway to the Lowlands, Jacob’s chest tightened.