Chapter 11
“Lockwood! Shields!” Will barked from where he stood on the upper deck.
The weapons master pulled a lever on the main deck, causing the blue force field to flicker to life around the Maelstrom just before the first cannonball from the Stormrunner struck with a deafening crack.
The shields hummed as they repelled the projectile, sending it plummeting to the ground. But they wavered, blinking in and out of existence.
That wasn’t good.
“Why aren’t the shields charged?” Will asked.
“We didn’t have time to fully charge them in Aereasead after they snatched Mouse, and then we equipped them for the Bitterwind,” Sebastian said.
Will’s shoulders tightened like a bowstring about to snap. Unlike their fight with the Bitterwind, he wasn’t sure they could win this one. Not with failing shields.
“That was a warning,” the Stormrunner pilot said through a loudspeaker. “Hand over the Skystone and the girl, and no one dies today.”
The demand didn’t come as a surprise, but a grim foreboding settled in Will’s core nevertheless.
Lockwood joined them on the upper deck. “We’re low on firepower, Captain. We used too much on the Bitterwind.”
Will clenched his jaw at the additional condemnation. He sensed what everyone was thinking, but no one dared suggest they hand over the Skystone or Amaya. Giving Graven the key to the Skyvault and the way to activate it wasn’t happening.
Besides that, Will wasn’t going to hand over an innocent girl just because some idiot on a loudspeaker told him to.
“Bas, send Ford and Crowe to the brig,” he said. “Mouse, too. And get Serena to monitor the engines.”
“Aye.” Sebastian left to fulfill his orders, and Will nodded at Quintus to give their response to the Stormrunner. He didn’t have to tell the pilot which line to read from his script.
“An unprovoked attack constitutes a breach of the codex,” Quintus said. His voice thundered from the loudspeaker above. “Surrender now, or no mercy will be shown.”
The Stormrunner’s response was another cannon. The Maelstrom’s shields shuddered at the blow, barely withstanding it. They could flee, but that would only delay the inevitable, and Will wasn’t about to start running from fights today.
His decision settled on his shoulders, heavy and final.
“Don’t hold back,” Will said to Lockwood. “I don’t want them to know we’re running low. Let’s make this quick.”
“Aye.” Lockwood turned to head back downstairs, ordering the men into formation.
“Quin, I need you to get as much height on them as you can,” Will directed. “Get above their shields, as close as possible.”
Without question, Quintus tilted the helm to start climbing.
Below, Lockwood gave the first order to fire, sending a volley of cannonballs at the Stormrunner. None broke through the other ship’s shields. The Stormrunner fired back without delay, a projectile grazing the Maelstrom’s keel as Quintus continued to pull up.
Sebastian returned a moment later, face flushed from his errand.
“Will, what’s your plan? Why are we climbing?”
“Mid-air boarding,” Will revealed, speaking as if he did it every day. “I’m going to tear it apart from the inside before they get a chance to swarm us.”
“Great. You mind explaining what mid-air boarding is?”
Will met Sebastian’s eyes and watched as horrified understanding dawned on him.
“You’re going to jump?”
Quintus whirled around at Sebastian’s words, equally alarmed. “Captain, are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Stay on course. And put up the glass.”
The retractable panes of tempered glass that protected the helm and the pilothouse rose as Will clapped Quintus on the back, leaving the pilot to his work.
As Will left, Sebastian predictably raced after him.
“Will! What the hell are you thinking?”
“I told you, I’m going to board.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Will scoffed and shook his head, a little offended at the lack of confidence.
“No, I’m not. I’ve got Hellsgate and Sixth Sense.”
“Yeah, and who knows what they have? You can’t take the entire ship by yourself.”
The volleys continued, one after the other. Will engaged his core to maintain his footing as the ship shuddered. The Maelstrom was still ascending, but the Stormrunner was fighting to match their altitude. They wouldn’t have much time to pull this off.
Will ignored Sebastian’s jab at his competence, finding Edmund hovering near the rail away from the line of fire.
“Edmund! Relics?” Will said, stepping alongside the artificer. Edmund peered through a pair of binoculars he’d designed that located energy signatures from afar.
“Several,” he confirmed to Will’s chagrin. “Most of them small,
but . . .”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Will finished for him. There was no correlation between a relic’s size and its power.
“Right. But there’s something in the bottom of the ship, too,” Edmund said. “It has a yellow signature, so not a relic, but it is big.”
All the more reason to ground the Stormrunner as quickly as possible.
“Will! We’re not done talking about this.” Sebastian circled in front of Will to block the view of the approaching ship. He narrowed his brown eyes. “You didn’t even sleep last night, did you?”
In response, Will raised an eyebrow.
No, but when did he ever?
“When was the last time?” Sebastian pushed.
The answer was close to two days ago. Recent events hadn’t exactly helped. Exhaustion seeped into Will’s bones like molasses, viscous and heavy. But once the adrenaline rush hit, he’d be fine.
Probably.
“There’s no time. We don’t have any other options,” Will said. He began making his way to the bow of the ship, where he planned to jump from. Sebastian followed on his heels.
“At least take one of the skiffs.”
“And lose the element of surprise?” Will grabbed a length of rope swinging from the sails and leapt onto the rail, leaning over to see how far the drop was.
Not just anyone could make that jump and survive, but using Hellsgate at just the right second would soften his landing. The timing of the jump would be equally essential. He had to get this right, or else plummet thousands of feet to his death.
“Closer, Quin!” he hollered, directing his order to the pilothouse. The Maelstrom edged nearer to the Stormrunner, narrowly avoiding its sails.
“I’m coming with you,” Sebastian decided abruptly, joining Will on the railing.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not. That’s an order from your captain.”
“I don’t care what my captain says. I’m worried about my friend.”
Will scowled. Only Sebastian could get away with refusing a direct order. What was he going to do, dismiss his best, oldest, and most loyal friend? The very friend who’d once saved him from Graven?
“How do you intend to board?”
“I can use Whiplash to grapple the masts.”
“We take them all out, or we ground the ship,” Will said, accepting Sebastian’s decision and moving on. “No prisoners. No survivors.”
Sebastian grinned. “Now that’s an order I can get behind.”
“You really are a terrible first mate.”
The Stormrunner drew within reach; Quintus’s maneuver was perfect. Will made a split-second calculation, assessing the speed of both ships and the distance of the fall.
Three, two, one . . .
“Now!” Will summoned Hellsgate, Sebastian drew Whiplash, and they leapt into the empty air. The wind rushed past them, blowing up Will’s red coat and making his hair stand on end. They were free-falling, the Stormrunner rapidly rising to meet them.
They were going to make it. They were going to make it . . .
“Uh, Will?” Sebastian called, the wind catching his voice. Will had just come to the same conclusion: the Stormrunner would pass before they were within range.
They weren’t going to make it. His calculation was off.
Will scrambled for a solution. He’d planned to use Hellsgate at the last second to briefly disappear and soften his landing, but that wouldn’t work now. Instead, he’d have to throw it to adjust his position in the air more significantly, and make sure he actually got on the damn ship.
With no particular target, Will flung Hellsgate onto the Stormrunner as he and Sebastian fell past the ship’s rail, nothing but clouds beneath them. He didn’t see where the sword landed.
Sebastian activated Whiplash, the blade disconnecting and stretching into a grappling hook that shot up, notching itself in the Stormrunner’s railing. Not ideal, but he’d make it.
Will closed his eyes . . . and vanished in a plume of black smoke.
When he opened them again, he found his feet firmly planted on the Stormrunner’s main deck with Hellsgate in hand. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Sebastian swinging his leg over the railing.
Triumph surged in Will’s chest, and despite the gravity of their predicament, he grinned at his friend. Doing the impossible together never got old.
But that was all the time they had to celebrate their death-defying stunt; the Stormrunner crew was already closing in. Sebastian brandished Whiplash and met Will’s eyes, a familiar gleam in his own.
Will sprung into action, cleaving the first pirate who dared challenge him in half and pushing through the resulting fountain of blood. He ran his next target through before the other man could swing, coating Hellsgate in crimson. The blood lingered only a moment before soaking into the onyx blade.
Although Will didn’t need much help dodging swords, it was Sixth Sense that helped him dodge the things that were too fast to see. And just then, a signal pinged his brain.
To the right.
Will’s body jerked to the side as a bullet flew past his shoulder.
He dodged another projectile, then another, until he lost track of how many men he cut down in between the shots fired.
He became nothing but a vicious, lethal tornado of black and red, surrounded by corpses and drenched in his victims’ blood.
Some had relics and some didn’t, but it made no difference.
None of them were a match for a Sky Lord.