***Tirnanog, Aerie Flagship***

***Vanya***

“I don't think we should risk sending Magnus out there again,” Skye Rumen commented while we listened to the latest report. His concern for the man seemed genuine, if only for altruistic or self-serving reasons.

The capital ship and the support vessels which managed to breach our formation hadn't been destroyed, but Magnus's interference caused them to begin shooting each other, destroying most of their engines. The capital ship was reported to have only one propeller engine remaining, meaning all they could do was fly circles, which took them out of the fight.

Afterwards, incoming reports on the overall situation had gotten extremely chaotic. This was to be expected when two fleets with several hundred ships on each side more or less got into a frontal assault with each other. And while we had the unlocked UI which provided a compelling intelligence advantage, it was a far cry from a real-time digital map of the situation.

When Skye suggested sending out Magnus, I was apprehensive at first, unsure of what a single juggernaut could do against five fully crewed airships. But as it turned out, my faulty judgement had once again been caused by a lack of information. Magnus didn't have to fight the entire group of airships because his abilities made it easy to infiltrate and take over their weapons.

Talking about weapons, the deck shook as another rocket impacted the flagship's side, chipping away at the outer hull.

“Magnus has proven highly effective when it comes to messing with the enemy's airships,” I pointed out, annoyed with the continuous damage we were receiving. “Most normal speedsters can't move around as if they could fly, so the enemy was unprepared.”

If I had been in charge, I would have kept our flagship with the wormgate well away from the fight, but both Skye and Juliana argued that having the slow flagship alone and without support would make it too vulnerable if the enemy decided to charge ahead with a group of fast ships. They had a point, but I still wasn’t completely convinced.

When Skye planned the confrontation, he saw to it that the flagship would be as protected as possible at the centre of our formation.

Allowing the enemy's capital ship to come so close that they had a realistic chance at ramming us should have never happened. It proved once again that I was the only one in existence who was truly infallible, so for the next time I was tempted to do the course calculations myself.

I closed my eyes, reminding myself of the trap in this line of thinking. If only I had a way to get reliable intelligence on which to base my calculations! The smartest person in existence could only work with what she had. No, no. Tianna said I couldn't think like that or I would turn out the same way Martha had – and she was probably right.

“Yes, more effective than I expected. He single-handedly took five airships out of the fight. We should keep his capability in reserve, especially since we sacrificed a lot of ships with this move,” Skye continued. “I am afraid of overusing his ability. If the Thich realize what is happening they can come up with a counter.”

The deck shook again.“Just how many of those damned rockets do they have?”

I looked over to the other table, where Magnus was playing with a sighting device he had ripped off from some Thich cannon. He came back right away after sowing chaos among the enemy. The device's purely analogue construction seemed to fascinate him, as it achieved the same function as a digital targeting computer with a camera.

According to the sensor's reports, Magnus had nearly gotten himself blown up twice because of overstaying his welcome while he hijacked the gun turrets on our opponent's ships.

On the other hand...

“What are the Thich going to do if we send him out again?” I asked. “Put a juggernaut behind every cannon?”

That would bind a lot of their good fighters in positions where they could do comparatively little harm. And even if they tried such a thing, it wasn't guaranteed they could take care of a speedster like Magnus.

Magnus just had to pick another cannon and go there if he encountered resistance.

Could I gamble on Thich's leadership being morons?

Probably not. If I were in charge, I would quickly have my people rig all important installations with deadman switches to ensure our equipment couldn't be used against us.

“You can do the same thing only so often before you run into a trap,” Skye argued.

It was a very basic way of thinking, but it worked out for most people without mental enhancements.

I sighed and returned my attention to the table. “You are right, of course. Let's not tempt him into bringing along the rest of the cannon to assemble one here. Using him to keep the airspace around the flagship secure should be enough.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The others looked over to Magnus, only now paying attention to his new toy.

The two fleets were in the process of disengaging by now anyway and we had paid a gruesome price if the reports were to be believed. Two-thirds of our airships were either out of commission or had to be evacuated by the drake riders.

“Are you no longer worried about psylings making an appearance?” Juliana asked.

I shrugged. “If the Thich had any under their control, they would have made use of them by now. Do we have an idea of how many casualties we suffered?”

Juliana looked up from the report she had gotten earlier. “We have only a rough estimation, but we have lost anywhere between two and three thousand people in that single engagement. All clans added up. It's a steep price to pay. And the flagship got damaged. One of the rockets hit a rear impeller, so we have only nine left.”

“It's a lot better than it could have been if he hadn't reduced the crews to their bare minimum,” Skye said.

“It nonetheless looks like we achieved our goal,” Juliana continued. “From the first counts, we have a lot more airship total losses than the Thich because we chose to evacuate any airship that lost its engines right away. Consequently, we allowed our enemies to complete the destruction of each incapacitated vessel. The drake riders had it the worst because they needed to get into firing range to haul our people out. On the positive side, there should be barely a Thich ship without engine damage while most of what remains of our fleet are between seventy and a hundred per cent of their manoeuvrability.”

I nodded. “I highly doubt the Thich can do field repairs. Without engines, those airships are barely more than weather balloons. They may still be in the air, but as long as we don't allow them to do repairs, those ships may as well be lost. Once we have an idea of how our forces match up, we can begin to finish off ships which can’t keep up with the rest of their fleet.”

There was still the possibility of cannibalizing the components of one ship to repair another. The hard part of our plan would be to prevent this from happening till Aerie's relief forces arrived. Which meant we would have to keep the Thich on their toes.

A slightly pale adjutant approached our table and handed Skye a piece of paper.

Skye frowned upon reading the paper, then grimaced and cursed, “By Gaia's wobbly bottom!”

He handed the paper to Juliana who glared at him before quickly running her eyes over the report. “Well, at least we know now what the trap is. Shit.”

“We do?” Tianna asked. She had watched our conversation silently from the sideline so far, but she got too curious to stay mum when there was something that could agitate two of Aerie's elders so much it had them start swearing.

“The hill down in Raider’s valley is a nest,” Juliana said. “And from the looks of it, a big one.”

It took me a whole second to compute the words. “A nest, as in a night-terror nest?”

Tianna leaned over and took the report from Juliana’s limp fingers to read it herself before she clicked her tongue. “Fuck.”

Yet another adjutant ran over and began rearranging the pieces on our map which represented various fleet elements. “A large contingent of enemy ships are disengaging from the rest of their fleet. We aren’t a hundred per cent certain, but going by the markings it looks like they are all Thich ships which still have propulsion capabilities. They have dropped ballast and are rising fast.”

“They are running for the hills!” Skye hit the table, causing it to shake and have some of the pieces tumble over – which prompted the adjutant to quickly return them to their proper place.

I bit the inside of my cheek while I considered the situation.

Night-terrors were considered one of the most dangerous predators on Tirnanog. So much so that the clans had made a concerted effort to wipe out any nest within the colonized territory.

Under normal circumstances, the creatures would roam the land as solitary hunters while avoiding the light of the sun. That alone was bad enough, as each night-terror was a threat on par with a juggernaut-classed human. And they were very intelligent!

Sadly, having individual night-terrors roam the land couldn’t be stopped as more and more of the creatures slowly transmigrated into clan lands from the outer territories.

We didn’t know much about their behaviour, but the general opinion was that if they met up they would form hunting parties. Given enough time, their numbers would grow large enough to prey on small human settlements.

At a certain point, those hunting parties would inevitably need a lair. If discovered, each of the great clans was obligated through the treaty to wipe out those lairs with all their might. Not only because it was a matter of survival, but also because leaving night-terrors alone could cause trouble for everyone.

This worked well enough as long as everybody did their job. The formation of lairs took months and for them to conglomerate into a full nest was a matter of years if not decades. The last time the clans had to deal with a nest was well before the great clan war.

If left alone, and the number of lairs reached a certain threshold, they would at some point join forces and form a nest, which was generally an underground network of tunnels with breeding night-terrors all over the place.

So many apex hunters in one region needed a lot of food. And once they reached a critical mass they didn’t shy away from attacking entire clans to support their needs.

“They are expecting us to take care of the night-terrors and suffer the losses for it,” I judged, ending the silence. “And they timed it perfectly because the night is coming, and depending on how old the nest is, there may be flying specimens among them.”

“But they are leaving their people behind!” Tianna pointed out.

I shrugged. “I can’t claim to understand all of their moves, but if the fleeing ships are indeed all Thich, it looks like they ended their alliance. I wouldn’t be surprised if once we go over all the reports, we find out that mostly Vier vessels happened to be in the front to take the brunt of the damage.”

“We can’t fight the night-terrors in the dark,” Skye said. “I suggest we collect the fleet and ascend as high as possible. We gather all vessels as tightly together as possible so that we can support each other – should one vessel be breached. Tomorrow we return and take care of the nest.”

Juliana baulked. “And suffer the losses for it? Why don’t we retreat and let Thich and Vier pay for their lenience?”

Skye turned to his wife. “Because the night-terrors will move on to the most fertile hunting grounds once they scoured this area clean. Which should be soon given the rocky terrain down there. They won’t go for Thich’s scraggy desert. Nor will they turn on Vier’s plains, where there are comparatively few animals. They will go to Jeng’s forest. That’s why the Thich allowed a fucking nest to grow in this area! This is why they were so sure the Jeng wouldn’t survive the next winter.”

He shook his head. “We can’t walk away because those creatures will inevitably come for us! Nor can we continue onwards and leave such a threat at our backs!”