25. The Last Line of Defence
The Last Line of Defence
“Get up,” she repeats. “Didn’t you hear me? I need to get to The Bridge. So, you’ll have to come with me.”
I bolt from the bed, following her as she races out of the cabin. At least I was already dressed.
“What’s on fire?” The smell of smoke is stronger out here.
“For now, some of the plating outside Deck 6. But it’s rising fast, and the engineers can’t get to it while the ship is surrounded.”
I struggle to keep up with her on the stairs. Outside The Bridge, Meg turns a numbered dial on the vaulted door to a specific combination. It clicks open, and she runs in.
The standing clock tells me it’s the hour of nineteen.
The sky through the glass panels is smeared with stars, but it’s far from a peaceful scene.
More and more ships are flying out from the hive’s docking pods at speed, heading towards the Rhavnan fleet descending on us. I can see flames in the distance.
Soon, at least fifty of our ships are assembled in what must be a coordinated formation around us. Smaller ships keep tighter to the hive, larger ships hover further afield or move out to meet the ambushers, who they’ve managed to push back.
Most of the officers are at the control table. Dezeeves is right in the centre of it, shouting instructions into the radio band he’s wearing. Ephraine is slightly away from the controls, searching the skies through a telescope.
Meg joins him. I shuffle in behind her, hating being back here, where I was subjected to osimidite, and Cosmer was taken.
“What do you need?” Meg snaps at Ephraine.
“For you to stay out of this,” he replies.
“What about the fire?”
“Under control.”
“Doesn’t sound under control from the engineers’ frequency.”
“It will be. The baths are being drained. The LCs are ready for whenever there’s a gap.”
“Are we warping?”
“We should hold.”
Dezeeves’ voice booms out from the control table.
“Is Meg here now?”
Meg rushes over to him – and Ephraine now has a perfect view of me. He straightens up from the telescope.
“Headache?” he asks.
“No,” I answer.
He slicks back his hair with something of a sneer.
“Yet anyone who had inhaled the quantity of osimidite Dezeeves claims you were given just a few hours ago would have a killer of one right about now.”
Is that true? Did Dezeeves not give me as much osimidite as he thought he did?
It had still felt so strong. Cooked my brain. I can’t imagine being given even more than that.
Pretending to wince, I say, “I meant yes. I do have a headache.” I hit my head for good measure.
“I’ve never seen someone lie so terribly,” he says, smirking.
“I’ve never seen someone smirk so arrogantly,” I retort, and enjoy the scowl he gives me.
Movement catches my eye. I look out of the window properly for the first time. A hawker like Cosmer’s is advancing towards a similar ship with a longer tail, which is fast approaching and violently shooting. It’s painted with the watery crest of Rhavna.
The Hevallan hawker swerves widely but neatly, avoiding every shot. The base of the ship extends, revealing a cannon.
The hawker fires – and hits the Rhavnan ship direct to its window, which shatters. Within seconds, flames spring upwards and outwards and the machine hurtles down, down, spinning and heavily smoking. It’s over in seconds.
Dezeeves is beside himself. “Excellent work, Rike,” he calls into his band. Some of the other officers even clap.
That was Rike?
I try to get a closer look – but I’m distracted by the sound of the bell outside the door ringing. Samson opens it, and Riss runs through it. Drake appears behind her.
“I’ve brought him,” she says, panting.
“Good,” Dezeeves says. He indicates a chair opposite. “Drake, please take a seat.”
Riss asks, “You still want me in the air?”
“We need more pilots. And, since you particularly enjoy acrobatics…”
“Don’t you need me on radios?”
“We have Ara,” Dezeeves states, looking at me for the first time. “She is in Intelligence, is she not? Let’s allow her to start being intelligent.”
Riss sprints out of the room.
“Frequency blue wave, when you’re ready, Ara,” Dezeeves says, sliding a radio band across the floor, towards me.
I pick it up, feeling… I have no idea how I feel.
On one hand, I feel like a dog being made to pick up the scraps.
On the other hand, I feel strong. Flattered, somehow, that I’ve been asked to be part of this.
And then, part of me – most of me – is horrified.
These are my people, out there. Maybe even people I knew. Being shot out of the sky like pigeons for sport.
I shouldn’t want to fight Rhavna. Even if it means protecting myself.
Protecting Cosmer, who must still be in the brig. What happens if the fire spreads, or another is started? He would have no chance in hell of escaping.
A mad thought comes into my mind.
That maybe this ambush, in itself, is somehow part of Integration.
But that seems impossible. The ambush unfolding in front of my eyes is undeniably real.
But what might be possible, is that Dezeeves – ever the opportunist – has found a way to make it be part of it.
The Card of The Choice.
The Queen shouldn’t have been so stupid as to try to come after The Emperor.
But this isn’t as simple as a choice between Rhavna or Hevalla.
Because right now, I’m only thinking about Cosmer, and everything he’s done for me. The debt I owe him. The loyalty I have to him, now we’re together.
I slip the radio band over my head.
I start translating.
Twenty minutes later, the fighting still hasn’t stopped, and I’m squeezed between Meg and Dezeeves, clutching paper and a pen.
I’ve seen Rike a few more times – I can recognise his hawker now.
I’ve seen the sleek ship known as a termite, which I recognise as belonging to Riss, too.
She flies well. I get the feeling – from how she always seems to be able to tell which direction a shot is coming from – that her hearing gives her an advantage.
I even witness her perform the same side to side then up-and-down feinting manoeuvre I’d seen her make for fun, now on the battlefield.
Doing that gets the ship following her into the firing line of one of The Emperor’s own cannons on the deck below us.
I watch with a mix of horror and awe as the large cannonball ploughs through the ship, forcing it out of the air while setting it ablaze.
I just hope the pilot’s death was quick.
Every so often another ship goes up in flames or is simply shot down from the impact of cannonballs. I see one Hevallan pilot who looks only my age fall right out of her ship simply because her window got shattered by falling debris from another crash, and she got sucked out of it.
Sentences spoken in Rhavnan keep littering my frequency. Some of the messages are clearly codes that I have no chance of deciphering, although I write them down anyway. Some are clearer.
Like the one I’m getting right now. I translate it instantly.
“They’re going to target Termite Twenty,” I tell Dezeeves.
“And Five,” Meg adds, who’s on the same frequency.
Dezeeves nods, then issues an instruction of his own into his own frequency, to his pilots.
I’m getting to know which number correlates to which ship, and it helps that their wings are numbered.
I spot them – and my chest tightens. Because Termite Twenty had sounded familiar, and now I know why. It’s Riss’ ship.
Just ahead of her, a group of three ships have breached the defence by flying in tandem while shooting in a fast, scattered way that sends three or four ships jerking to avoid the cannonballs. Riss and the other pilot try to shoot at them, but both miss and end up having to do the same.
“Tell all pilots to stop flying up,” Meg cries out. She’s leaning right over the table. “We’re exposed on the lower decks.”
That makes me think.
I straighten.
“These frequencies,” I say to Meg. “The Rhavnans know they’re open, don’t they? That we can hear them?”
“They would. They’re in range of us. They can probably hear some, or all, of ours.”
I say, louder, “Meg is right. We should protect the lower decks. I think they fed us that information deliberately.”
“It took you all far too long to realise that,” Drake’s voice says.
He sounds so close it makes my heart stutter. When did he creep up on us?
I turn. He’s looking out, past me, to where Riss and the other pilot are now struggling to get back into their original positions.
The Rhavnan ships keep blocking them – and I realise they’re low down enough, and close enough to us, that they must be out of range of our own cannons on the hive.
And, for some reason, Riss and the other pilot seem reluctant to shoot at them.
Then I understand why – at the same time that I think a lot of people in the room do.
“They’re right by the Osimidite Chamber,” I breathe.
Officers glance at each other. Meg is stiff as a rod.
Samson says, a little dumbly, “But we’d light up like a torch.”
Dezeeves doesn’t look concerned.
He says, through gritted teeth, “They won’t hit the Chamber.” As if he can command it just by thinking it.
Ephraine has also drawn closer. He stands slightly stooped, like a giant vulture, beside Drake. “What, can I ask, makes you so sure, Dezeeves?”
Dezeeves lets out a pained laugh. “The blast radius, Ephraine. Look at us. We’re surrounded. It would wipe out half a fleet of their own, too.”
“But we have the weapon,” I remind him, strangely calm for the situation. “Isn’t half a fleet a good enough price for the Queen to pay, for the freedom of her whole country?”
My own words frighten me.
Because it’s a decision I would make, too. If I had to.
“Ara is correct,” Drake states. “You are trying to defeat an opponent when you have no idea the way they play.”
His face turns dangerous. “I can assure you I know how the Queen plays. I have been her opponent for years. And to blow us up now, when we have…”
“Have what, Dezeeves?” Drake asks. Simply. But pointedly.
“When we have so many men and women on board, including her own soldiers, as our prisoners of war—”
“Who are no longer loyal to her,” I remind him, nodding slightly at Drake. Because he’s absolutely right. Dezeeves is playing a game he doesn’t know how to win.
Vikemy had warned Dezeeves his complacency would get him killed.
I hadn’t thought, until now, that it would get us all killed.
“Dezeeves,” Ephraine growls. “Are you letting the prisoners – who really, shouldn’t even be here – question your authority?”
Dezeeves looks between the three of us like he’s searching for something. Grasping for it.
Then he stares down – at the obvious, and growing, gap in our defence.
Termite 5 approaches, again. Gets close to one of the ships, maybe even close enough for a shot that won’t hit the Chamber.
But rather than swerving, the ship accelerates – right at the pilot.
My mouth falls ajar as the ship slams straight into the other, and they collide in the air.
Become a ball of rolling fire against the night sky.
Then they’re falling, and the fire seems to grow, black smoke billowing like sleeves on Rhavnan dresses.
My knuckles, gripping the table, go white.
“W-Why?” I can’t even speak.
“The pilot protected the gap,” Drake replies. “It is what we are taught on Rhavnan ships. Do not swerve. Sacrifice. The last line of defence if there is a plan being enacted.”
“That…”
I could throw up.
I’m trembling. Drake must notice, because he touches my shoulder, in a gesture I suppose is intended to be comforting. But the skin through my blouse immediately prickles with heat from the contact, and rather than comfort, I feel something more like dread.
Because the sparks remind me of Cosmer, and how this connection between Drake and I is a definite problem.
I was mildly interested by the link between us before.
Now, I’m disgusted by it.
Maybe sensing my unease, his hand slips off me.
“Do you still believe you know your opponent, Captain?”
“She. W-We—” Dezeeves stammers. He’s deathly pale. Gaping.
“Instructions, Dezeeves!” Meg demands.
Drake addresses Ephraine instead. Speaks as if reciting from a book. “You need some hard hitters down there. Rike is good. Work at getting the gap closed, even if it means losing defence elsewhere for now.”
That snaps Dezeeves back to attention. “I will remind you all I am the captain.”
To my relief – and I think, to the relief of everyone else in the room – he focuses again on the sky, and sends an instruction, quickly, into his radio band. “Defences breached. Deck 1, starboard. Rike and any open frontline pilots – support the effort. Protect the Chamber.”
Pilots begin manoeuvring, and for a minute the sky looks like a playroom being rearranged – and we’re the toys.
But I freeze. Because a single word comes through my own radio band in a voice I recognise.
“Darling?”
I look around, my heart pounding.
No one else seems to have noticed. Apart from Meg, who’s still on my frequency. She’s frowning.
I don’t know what that was, I try to tell her, with my eyes.
But the voice comes again.
“I’m here, Darling.”
The word flies out of my mouth before I can think properly about the million reasons that saying it would be a bad idea.
“Mother?”