37. The Final Battle
The Final Battle
The first thing I see is the sky. It’s flashing with lights from ships and bursts of flames. Tiny stars surround them, but the sky itself is more blue dye than it is black ink. In fact, if it brightened up anymore, it would be the perfect shade of Rhavnan blue.
Seeing the colour once made me calm. Hopeful.
Now, it fills me with dread.
The lights in The Bridge are low, and it’s quieter.
I quickly see why. I’ve always seen it full of first officers, but there are less than ten of us here, which makes the space feel too big.
Exposed. Everyone here but Dezeeves is Rhavnan.
He stands at the centre of the control table, flanked by Meg and Drake.
Meg is wearing a radio band and transcribing fast onto paper while Drake speaks into his ear. Advising him, I realise.
I don’t belong here.
But I need to make myself belong.
I take a single unsteady step into the room, and Drake snaps his head back to me. He must have sensed me coming through our bond – the bond I would give anything not to have been given.
He stands straighter, practically gaping. I’ve never seen him look at me like that. Like he can’t believe I exist.
“That surprised to see me?” I bite out.
“I thought you left,” he states, that unsettling look I’m trying to ignore still on his face.
“How could I? When I’m one half of the weapon?” I round on Rike, sitting by Meg. “Shouldn’t you be out there?”
“I probably would be,” he replies. Pointing at his knee, he says, “You can blame Cosmer if anything goes wrong.”
Dezeeves raises his arms above his head. “Thank the Sisters and the Maiden. She’s finally come to her senses.” He holds his bony hand out to me. It’s like a claw. “Come, Ara. We still have crew trying to evacuate. Drake has managed to turn back some of the ships. But the next wave is upon us.”
I step up to the control table, just as one of our cannons goes off beneath us.
The scene beyond the window is similar at first glance to the Rhavnan ambush.
A few frontline pilots are protecting us, keeping tight to us.
But there aren’t many of them – most of our pilots must have realised something was amiss when the attackers turned out to be Hevallan ships, and maybe took their chance to flee instead.
Other ships including non-combat damselflies and beetles are hovering just outside of their pods, trying to find gaps in the combat to escape themselves.
A sleek ship, manoeuvring neatly, crosses right by us, shooting at an attacking ship that was getting too close.
My dread deepens.
No.
No.
No.
“Why is Riss out there?” I ask, my voice high. Shrill.
Meg slows her writing. Says, aggravatingly calmly, “She wanted to wait until the last of our own ships got away.”
“That’s insane. She’s going to get herself killed.” I glare at Dezeeves with the full loathing I feel for him. “Tell her to get away, while she still can.”
“Honour, when inspired, is not something that can – or should – be deterred by others.” His gaze hardens.
“Now, Ara. I need you to stand here,” he indicates the space in between himself and Drake, “and work with Drake to extend your magic outwards and force a ceasefire. We still have around twenty percent of our fleet to evacuate.”
I stand beside Drake.
But at the same time I do, a voice – the very voice I’m longing to hear, but thought I’d never hear again – floods the frequencies. I can hear it through both Dezeeves and Meg’s bands.
“Dezeeves, are you receiving?”
Dezeeves sighs with pure irritation. Like he’s noticed lice in his hair – and not for the first time.
Cosmer doesn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m outside Deck 3, coming up to port side.” Forced-polite – but I can tell his teeth are gritted – he says, “Can you open one of these pods, please? I need to get back on the ship.”
Dezeeves clucks his tongue. “You had the chance to be here with us, Cosmer. Hence why I’d asked you to wait in Meg’s cabin. But it’s too late now, and the pods are locked – and I’ve changed my mind. It would be better to go back to your mother—”
“She’s dead Dezeeves,” he yells, breathy and loud, making static erupt. “How do you expect me to go back home, when you’ve razed it to the ground?”
Dezeeves jumps, like a shockwave has gone through him. “Dead?”
“The bombs. Ara felt them.”
His face drains to white. His eyes are as wide as when the Queen attacked our ship. “I had been informed Vikemy Village would be spared—”
“You were informed wrong,” Cosmer spits. “Did Ara not tell you this? Where is she?”
Another wave of ships approaches. Riss gets a direct hit on one, and so does a cannon from under us. The ship it hits spins out, then collides with another. The blaze lights up the sky, which is now blooming faintly purple, with petals of pink.
Taking advantage of the gap, a few more of our ships depart in the shadow of a large supply ship.
I slip a loose radio band over my own head.
“Cosmer, it’s me. You can see we’re a little busy right now. Just go home. Like I said.”
Meg perks up. Speaks into her own band. “Or help buy us more time, if we really can’t get rid of you. Like Riss.”
“Riss?” he echoes, before the frequency goes dead.
Dezeeves has pulled out the tube connecting all of our radio bands to the ship.
“What about the pilots in the sky?” I ask, concerned.
“I will reinstate the radios soon. But I can’t have any more distractions while you and Drake do what must be done.”
I face Drake. He’s already holding his hand out to me. I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less than take it right now.
But I do. It’s my duty.
Through the window, I scour the sky for the pilots we need to halt in the air before they destroy us.
And I realise what an impossible task this will be.
As these are all Hevallan ships, I’m struggling to tell apart which are our ships, and which are those from The Mantis.
Even those clearly attacking us are moving so fast around the cannonfire and the ships protecting us that I keep losing track of them.
We have been swarmed.
“I don’t think we can only target the enemy ships.”
“No,” Dezeeves agrees. “They will all need to be halted.”
Our magic won’t be strong enough for this. Nowhere near strong enough.
I know that.
Drake knows that.
Why does Dezeeves think it can?
But, as Drake’s magic is already warming my clammy palm, I have no choice but to try.
I see the white lights. Feel the pressure in my head, the stabbing in my scars, the fire in my veins. I cast the magic between us outwards through the glass, like a fishing line into water, even though the sensation it brings on in me is more like I’m the fish being dragged out.
Cease your fire, I command the air. Cease your fire.
The ship nearest to us twitches as it chases Riss. Stops, barely.
But then the ship is moving again. At least freezing it momentarily has given Riss time to swerve up and out of its line of fire.
But now the enemy ship is too close to the Osimidite Chamber.
My eyes widen.
It’s the Rhavnan ambush all over again.
Drake groans, like I’m causing him pain. I meet his eyes, which are stone cold. His jaw is locked.
“I’m trying,” I promise him.
“No,” he snarls. “You are working against me. Work with me. It should not feel like you are fighting me. It should feel—”
“Like what?”
“Like giving in. Letting things be the way they’re meant to be.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Try,” he strains. “Or you’re going to get Riss – and maybe all of us, once she’s gone, since she’s the only one doing any damage out there – incinerated.”
“If we die, it won’t be because of me,” I hiss out of the corner of my mouth, in Dezeeves’ direction.
Dezeeves chimes in. “You have accepted the union, and your duty, have you not, Ara? I had thought that is why you came. And why you sent Cosmer away.”
“Yes,” I say. “Obviously.”
Outside, Riss is circling back around again. She aims at the same ship, which is now facing the Chamber.
But a familiar hawker ship soars into the scene, beating her to the kill with a single perfect shot.
My heart – and my magic – surges. Cosmer.
Seeing his ship, Riss’ termite does a sort of dance in the air. I’ve seen the exact manoeuvre before. She’s challenging me, Cosmer had said. I can almost hear Riss’ own nasally voice talking to him over the radio. It’s going on the winners’ board.
Mediocre at best. Cosmer would reply. I give it a five.
Meg removes her radio band and shakes out her tumbling hair. “Maybe they should kiss, Dezeeves. Ara and Drake.” In the brightening sunrise, the smooth skin on her soft face is glimmering. “Maybe that would spark something.”
“An interesting idea, Meg,” Dezeeves exclaims.
I part my mouth, about to tell them both to go to hell.
But Drake speaks before I can.
“No,” he says, tightly. “That would just stall Ara more. But…”
Drake does something strange. He brings my hand, still in his, to his lips.
He brushes them against the back of my hand. He does it softly. Respectfully. As if we are not about to end a battle, but a dance.
Eyes drowning mine, he says one word to me.
“Please.”
It’s a word I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use. Hearing it brings on a rising, solid feeling in my ribs, like something is constructing itself.
“The magic can work, and be powerful, Ara,” he insists. “It has worked. When you wanted it to. Allowed it.”
I glimpse the glass again. Riss and Cosmer are going after the next ship, smooth and coordinated, like they were put on this planet to fly together. Riss, ahead of it, feints, and Cosmer, behind the ship, gets another perfect shot as it falls for her feint, going the wrong way.
And I understand, then, as I watch them, the gravity of this situation. The crushing pressure on me – the heaviest pressure imaginable.
They’re protecting us.
They don’t need to, but they are.
And I need to protect them.
If my magic keeps failing, and I’m not able to do what Dezeeves and Drake want me to do, I’m going to get the two people left on this planet I care about obliterated.
I’ve lost too many people today to lose any more.
Cosmer.
Riss.
Cosmer.
Riss.
“Now,” I say to Drake.
I face the window again.
Cease your fire!
I let the silent words reverberate around me like the shocks I’d felt when the bombs hit my village. Let them fill me up, the way the fear and horror and grief of Old Mother, my friends, my neighbours, had.
My pain becomes my power.
There’s a subtle shift in our magic, the energy between us. I fight the urge to channel him, or even to let him channel me.
Instead, it’s like I’m an observer in my body.
I watch indifferently as the light and darkness within Drake converges within the light and darkness within me, unseen by anyone else but us.
After wrapping around the strands that are his, I sense my magic fluttering up and out the window like the silky, rapidly beating wings of insects.
The sound it makes is a lot like humming.
It’s just like oxygen, I think to myself. Oxygen is just there.
Magic is just there.
There’s no need to feel fear for who I am, or who I might become.
All that matters is now.
The emotion that letting go gives me…
Is pure joy.
I close my eyes. Exhale.
I open them.
Riss, almost directly in front of me, is frozen in the air.
So’s an enemy ship behind her.
So are the other ships around us. Even Cosmer’s.
The only thing moving in the sky at all is a cannonball.
Which is heading straight for Riss.
She must have feinted again. But maybe she’s done it too many times now, and the ship chasing her, with the Assembly’s gleaming, bright red crest clearly visible, predicted it.
I can’t drop my power, freeing her, without freeing all other ships.
I can’t radio to her with the bands disconnected.
There’s nothing in the world I can do but scream, waves of magic and pain ripping out of my back and skull, as the cannonball ploughs through her stationary ship at an impossible, unsurvivable speed.
Her ship ignites.
For a moment, the ball of fire is orange as the dawn is now. A second sun on the horizon.
Then it falls away in ribbons of smoke.
Debris clears.
Her patch of sky, and my ribs, are empty.