Flotsam

by R J Theodore

  Not very eloquent, but she’d pushed aside the part of her mind responsible for coming up with quips.

  “Captain.” Dug’s voice was a warning. His hand was on her shoulder, firmly tugging her backward.

  “Let me finish this, Dug.” She pressed harder.

  But Dug moved his hand to her head and attempted to turn it. She fought it, instinctively, but even with adrenaline running electric through her body, she was no match for Dug’s strength.

  She acquiesced before he hurt her, though she pushed harder on the scimitar buried in Hankirk’s forearm as she let Dug turn her gaze upward.

  Meran stood on deck, her legs squared, fists at her side, wind whipping at her pant legs, jacket, and loosened hair.

  Hovering several feet beyond their railing, baring fangs in a feral, hungry smile, Onaya Bone regarded the scene.

  Chapter 37

  “You have brought me my weapon,” spoke the goddess. Her voice was richer in person than it had been on screen back at the temple. It echoed off the deck, coursed through the engines, rattled inside Talis’s head.

  Onaya Bone moved toward them, reducing in size until she could fit on the deck, though she was still larger than life, taller than Dug and Scrimshaw by a few heads. An elegant golden gown flapped about her in the high winds, wrapped about the torso with strings of turquoise beads. Her feet were shod in heavy-soled boots, covered in steel plates and held fast with shining golden buckles. Her black feathered mane flashed iridescent shifts of color as the winds played it about her head.

  It took a moment for the shock to fade. For Talis to remember the wounded man pressed against the deck beneath her, the ring still on his hand.

  She opened her mouth to shout a warning, but Wind Sabre bucked beneath her.

  The aliens were firing on her ship. On the goddess floating above its deck.

  Onaya Bone turned her head toward the barrage, momentarily distracted as the beams of yellow-hot light cut at Wind Sabre’s port, across the hull and the midship lift line.

  A narrow path of flame danced along the blackened trail left behind by the weapons fire. There was a groan and then a snap as the line severed. The other lines took on the weight, an unevenly distributed burden on those that remained. The deck sloped toward the broken line.

  Wind Sabre couldn’t take much more of this.

  Hankirk moved, taking advantage of Talis’s distraction. He clenched his jaw, roaring through his teeth, and pushed up against the blade. His left arm was in ruins, the blade deep in the bone and stuck there, but he threw Talis off balance enough that he got his right hand free, and it went for her throat.

  She clawed at his hand, abandoning the immovable blade, and pried at the fingers that compressed her airway.

  Sophie ran to her aid. She didn’t slow down as she got close, instead wound up and kicked Hankirk hard across his face. He lost his grip on Talis as he was propelled against the deck. Dug’s scimitar slid out of reach, but Hankirk didn’t go after it. He lay on his side, clutching his arm weakly. His head lolled back, and he groaned as his eyes fluttered and closed.

  Crouched on all fours, Talis coughed and gasped for air. It did not make her abused throat feel any better, but it was beyond her control.

  She saw Sophie grab the scimitar and wondered where Dug was.

  The deck beneath her was covered in Hankirk’s blood. She slipped a bit as she turned to look behind her, back at the scene that had distracted them all in the first place.

  Dug kneeled before Onaya Bone, his arms crossed in front of his chest. His head bowed before his goddess. His creator.

  And she certainly made an impression that demanded worship, exuding confidence and righteous pride. She gently settled onto the deck, her smile fierce and hungry. Her dark eyes watching Meran.

  The simula held her arms aloft, fingers splayed.

  The alien barrage continued, but it no longer rocked the deck. A blue glow ran along the grain in the wooden hull, filled the space between the planks of the decking, and coursed through the air. Like feeling the warmth from a campfire on her face and the night’s chill at her back, Talis could sense that the power emanated from Meran. It pulsed out of her.

  As though Wind Sabre had turned to air, the weapons fire from the Yu’Nyun ships passed through the hull without leaving a mark. Talis looked down at her hands, saw the tiny veins beneath her skin glowing blue, just as one of the alien energy beams passed through her torso, passed through the deck beneath her and off into the empty skies beyond. She felt a tickle of electricity, and her skin prickled and itched, as though she were too close to lightning.

  She looked up again. At Meran’s posture, her concentration. It was not Onaya Bone who was defending them.

  Meran was their salvation now.

  The sky around Wind Sabre flashed. The moving shapes of Nexus, ships both alien and Imperial, and battling gods filled Talis’s vision over the ship’s port-side railing.

  The Veritor line had taken critical damage, their hulls dangling from their lift balloons like useless limbs. They had neither the alien weapons nor their shields, and so were open to the gods’ attacks. They tossed about in the high winds, their buoyant envelopes tugging the hulls beneath in jerking bursts of movement. They fired their cannons, but the shots either went wide, or struck impotently against the gods’ defenses.

  If the aliens had the kind of control over Silus Cutter’s wind that Onaya Bone suggested, they’d spared no thought to protect their purported allies from it.

  Lindent Vein punished the Veritor fleet. With a roar that seemed to come from every direction, tendrils of icy water whipped outward from the bands surrounding Nexus and sliced through their lift balloons. Through their hulls. Splinters exploded from the airships as the onslaught ripped through the wood. Frigid saltwater spray misted across Talis’s face, even though they were outside cannon range.

  One Veritor ship dangled, nose-down, from the last line of its lift envelope, the balloon pulled vertical. Lifeboats deployed, only to be smashed back against the ship’s hull, bursting in showers of wood and bodies.

  The remaining airships attempted to pull back, only about a third of the fleet still sky-worthy. Some that could stay aloft had broken keels and rudders. The ships that were able left their crippled allies to die; made no attempt to rescue the crews from the foundering ships. The lashing of water sliced through those that trailed behind.

  The lift envelope of the hindmost ship took a direct hit and all its heated air escaped, steaming into the skies. The full weight of the hull did the rest, its flaccid canvas flapping over the heads of the panicked crew. Buoyancy faded like a mirage, and gravity claimed them. Their ship fell out of the sky, trailing the last of the envelope’s released steam: wisps of vapor that braided with black smoke from the engines.

  Arthel Rak and Helsim Breaker each attacked the alien ships. Talis knew next to nothing of alchemy or the extent of the gods’ abilities, but as a fighter she was keen enough to see that their attacks were uncoordinated. Movements borne of anger and frustration, with no sense of tactics.

  Arthel Rak enveloped the ships fully in ballistic flames. The temperature of the air rose around Talis, though the fight was far off and the spouts of flame that shot from Arthel Rak’s armor-plated hands were directed away from Wind Sabre. He volleyed fireballs that should have consumed everything they touched, but as they cleared, Talis saw that the Yu’Nyun ships had taken no damage. They did not so much as blacken, or show any signs of being affected by the heat.

  The Creator of the Rakkar, Lord of Fire, Master of Igneous Islands, furiously bombarded the ships with long streams of fire. He tried erecting a wall of flame to contain them. Each time, the starships were surrounded by a net of yellow-white light that looked like it had been woven by some enormous spider. The flames popped and hissed over the net, extinguishing almost as fast as Arthel Rak could conjure
them.

  Helsim Breaker summoned layers off of Nexus, armored himself in them so that he appeared to be made of the green energy. Only the blurred dark form at the center indicated otherwise. He gathered more and more of Nexus into himself, enlarging until he towered in the sky before the alien ships, twice the size of their largest. With green gauntlets, he pummeled at the nearest Yu’Nyun vessel. The ship was knocked about by the strikes, bobbing in the air wildly under each blow. Helsim Breaker threw a right hook, then a left. He tried a two-fisted smash from above, then followed with a strike from each side, clapping the ship between his hands. The ship bounced as if he’d slapped at a toy on the surface of water.

  Yet none of his attacks touched the immaculate shining surface of the ship beneath its shields.

  Talis felt a knot in her gut. It seemed impossible that the barrage of heavily armored strikes could make no dent, no scuff on the shining ships. Even if they could not wield Nexus as a weapon, a barrage like that should still do damage. That the alien weapons could hurt the gods—kill them—she knew. But despite what she’d been told, she had not imagined that their powers would be so ineffective against the invaders.

  Turning from the retreating Veritors, Lindent Vein gathered up the entire ocean in a single enormous bludgeon and sent it crashing into the alien ships. They were tossed, at least, disappearing momentarily into the depths as the waters passed over them. But as the ocean receded, pulled once again into orbit around Nexus, the invasion fleet righted itself and continued to fire.

  The air was split by a low tone, like the call of an impossibly large horn. It washed over them like a physical thing. Talis felt a tremble in her bones and vibrations in her aching joints. Sophie covered her ears and hunched her shoulders. Tisker craned his neck to see out from under the wheelhouse. Dug remained genuflected in front of his goddess.

  Talis looked around for Scrimshaw and finally spotted xin beside the engine house. Xe stood tall, xist back pressed against the structure, staying out of sight of Onaya Bone and the alien ships beyond the railing. Talis wasn’t sure she knew how to tell for certain, but xe didn’t seem frightened. Just cautious, guarded. Xe caught her watching xin, and xist mouth opened as though xe was trying to convey something, but she couldn’t read the immovable lips.

  Nexus shifted, changed shape. Formed layers of concentric partial spheres, slipping and separating along the geometric markings along its surface. It rotated, expanding. The layers spun at different speeds and angles, their edges crossing each other again and again. Talis’s headache increased in intensity. Her teeth hurt. The bones of her feet hurt.

  Sophie collapsed to her knees on the deck, gripping her head.

  Beneath the spinning layers, in an open cavity at the center, an unruly mass of swirling green light pulsed. Instinctively, Talis knew this was the source of their pain. Her jaw clamped shut, sending spikes of agony into her head. It seemed as if her heart was trying to push its way out of her and would split her open like a dried cocoon in order to be free.

  Lindent Vein, Helsim Breaker, and Arthel Rak retreated behind the first layer of Nexus energy. But even that crackled under the constant alien fire, absorbing the yellow energy. The attack’s power dissipated along the contour of the shield, but Nexus overall looked more jaundiced than it had before. The shield would only protect the gods, and the swirling core of energy within, for so long.

  Nexus held Peridot together. If it was breached, destroyed, harvested.…

  Onaya Bone did nothing. She only watched, exultant, as Meran protected Wind Sabre against the assault of energy beams cast by the nearest ships. In the body that the aliens had provided.

  Three more of the alien ships broke formation and turned their attention to Wind Sabre. Bursts of yellow-green light lit the deck beneath Onaya Bone, strafing across the ship. The aliens began an attack from the bow, sweeping across to the stern. Concentrating on the lift envelope, trying desperately to find a weak spot.

  The goddess laughed, and the sound echoed around her. She lifted her chin high, stretching her bejeweled neck. Her chest expanded with triumphant laughter. Her arms straightened, fingers spread at her side. As though she was enjoying the sensation. As though any of it was her doing.

  Meran’s power, which still limned the ship with glowing blue capillaries, rippled and sent a shockwave of energy across the deck. Talis felt it in her stomach. Nauseated, she stumbled as she tried to rise to her feet. The breath she had recovered after Hankirk’s assault on her windpipe caught in her chest again as her stomach lurched in response to Meran’s pulses.

  A sphere of blue light enveloped Wind Sabre, extending up around the lift envelope and underneath the hull. Within the sphere they were becalmed. Tisker relaxed at the helm, his chest heaving. He leaned one hand against the console, his head dipped in exhaustion. Kept the other on the wheel.

  The alien fire no longer passed through the deck. Instead it reflected, burst off the blue dome with a flash, and ricocheted off in a new trajectory.

  A beam from one ship careened back and hit one of its allies, cleaving the petal-shaped weapon housings clean off one side of its body. The alien ships could at least be damaged by their own weapons. Sparks flared within the breached hull. It listed to that side, off balance. Talis watched as the tiny forms of several Yu’Nyun scrabbled for purchase but fell free of the tilting deck and plummeted into the darkness below.

  “Yes,” spoke Onaya Bone. “Yes!” Her eyes flashed. She proudly surveyed Meran’s work.

  Talis felt the vibrations of her words in the decking, up her arms, and into her teeth. The goddess’s voice was intoxicating. Heady, strong, invigorating. She felt the surge of bloodlust again, as she had on Fall Island, but without the need of drugs. The branded flesh on her arm radiated heat, pulsing with the quickening beat of her heart.

  Dug rose to his feet, knives in his hands. Sophie gripped the scimitar she’d claimed and stood. Tisker abandoned the wheel. Their shoulders rose and fell with heaving breaths. Onaya Bone’s influence would turn them all to berserkers.

  Talis was unsteady. Wanted to give herself over to these impulses that were not hers. It was easier than feeling Nexus’s pull on her chest, or the fear that her reasoning mind sent coursing through her veins.

  She clamped down against the bloodlust. Refused to be betrayed by that again. She cleared her throat.

  “Keep your heads about you,” she called out to her crew. Her strained voice was small against the noise of battle and the hum of Meran’s energy.

  Meran. Talis focused on her. The pulses of her power, washing in every direction across the deck, sent thrills up Talis’s spine. Her arms tingled. The back of her neck prickled with it. But it didn’t muddy her mind. The two forces battled within her, but she clung to Meran’s presence like a lifeline.

  The damaged alien starship erupted in flame. It hung in the sky a moment longer, the hull warping and popping, before it started to spin along its vertical axis, then dropped out of the sky in slow motion.

  The two closest Yu’Nyun ships pulled back, holding their fire a moment. Then the barrage resumed, the shots angled to avoid each other when the blasts refracted off Meran’s shield. Talis thought of the alien bridge and its flashing screens of plotted courses, sensor information, and running calculations. Damned fancy systems, and likely a press of a button was all it took to adjust the angle of fire. No need to physically move heavy cannons or bring the ship about to change their attack. And that communications system would let them coordinate between ships in an instant.

  Meran closed the distance between her hands. With another ripple, the blue light around Wind Sabre warped again, and the aliens’ next hits reflected on a direct path, each striking the other ship squarely.

  She’s stronger than they are, Talis thought, her shoulders bouncing with a small surprised laugh that scraped at her throat. The rush of adrenaline was fading, and she feared it would
give way to exhausted mania.

  The weapons discharge impacted the small main hull of each ship with precision. One went down without fuss, as incapable of flight as something without a lift envelope should be. The other burst into flame from one side of its small main compartment. Pockets of fire erupted in sequence along each of the petal-like appendages until it was consumed, a flaming silhouette that spit smoke into the darkness above them, a twin to the solid shape within, traced in the yellow-red glow of the flames.

  As the ship followed its allies down toward flotsam, Talis noticed the skies around them were quiet. Nexus still spun, but slower, as if only from stored momentum. Helsim Breaker, Lindent Vein, and Arthel Rak were still, hovering. Watching. The remaining alien ships were also silent. The very air held its breath.

  All eyes were on Meran.

  Onaya Bone, chest expanded, pride evident in the curl of her dangerous smile, took a step across Wind Sabre’s deck toward the simula.

  Meran let her arms fall and turned to face her. The blue shield remained in place, pulsing around them. Through them. Talis could still feel it. She finally climbed to her feet.

  The Bone goddess stepped directly up to Meran and cupped her chin in taloned fingers.

  Meran withstood the inspection. Talis could not see the simula’s face at that angle but could well imagine the defiant expression the untamable woman would be wearing.

  She had asked what Meran would do—which of the terrible possibilities that the woman was capable of might be unleashed.

  The answer was heartbeats away.

  Talis felt the influences on deck change. The blood that pounded in her ears stopped whispering of loyalty to Onaya Bone. Dug and Sophie took a step forward.

  Too late, Talis thought of the ring and looked back to where Hankirk lay unconscious on the deck, but he wasn’t there. A trail of blood led off around the deckhouses. Scrimshaw was gone from xist cover, too. Panic caught her breath and tore it away from her.