Captain Christian Davard of the Manifest Destiny enjoyed the lift ride to his command bridge. Davard had been granted captaincy fifteen years ago, long before the ship’s naming. He’d been selected when the ship was nothing more than a 3D computer rendering.
Davard had waited through requistions and the long years of construction. He had waited through the period of chaos and then construction again. But now the ship was named, and it could not be more perfect.
All destinies were manifest that day. The true potential of the IHSA was finally alive, revived by the ascendant Liberty Corps. The destiny of the ship had arrived with it, a fortress flying in defense order and stability.
Davard’s own destiny was also real, finally true, finally manifest. For a decade and a half he’d lived for the dream of captaincy. It was his now, earned by toil as well as fate. In the IHSA, this would have been one of many powerful vessels. Now, it was the Liberty Corps flagship, the template for the future Navy, a force that would need an admiral.
Captain Davard found Baron Helmont already on the Destiny’s command bridge. He and one of his knights stood at the center of the room’s panoramic window. They looked down on the forest and the occupied Crystal Dune Laboratory. Two formations of Saw-wing fighter craft prepared to launch from the flight deck.
Davard walked through his bridge, between the dozen workstations for pilots and techs. He approached the panoramic window and stood at attention, facing the man who had made so much possible for him.
“My Lord,” he said.
“At ease, Captain.” The Baron nodded. “It is good fortune that we have this craft today. My circle of knights has failed to capture the Aesir.”
“I’ve scrambled three of our Saw-wing squadrons and a Dactyl perimeter,” Davard said. “If the Aesir attempts to escape, we’ll have them.”
“See Rowan,” Helmont said. “Professionalism. We do not allow our personal interests to stand in the way of our cause.”
“No, sir,” the knight said.
“Have our fighters maintain their distance,” Helmont said. “I want to focus on capturing their vessel. There is too much of value aboard that ship to risk damaging it. Have you synchronized your forces, Captain?”
“I have sounded the klaxon three times, yes.” Davard watched the remaining fighter squadrons take off from the flight deck, watched the hangar doors close. The massive metal barriers were hundreds of meters long, but still so distant from the bridge and the ship’s command island that the reverberation could not be felt. “We have synchronized all forces.”
“It may be time to expand your crew.” Helmont turned back to the rest of the bridge and the crewmembers scattered across the mostly empty space. “There is no need to maintain the old charades. Already, the Liberty Corps has several times the personnel of the old Hierarchia.”
“Then there would be no need for the klaxon,” Davard said. “That may be a good thing. Thunderworks gave the sound an unpleasant connotation.”
“It certainly did.” Helmont reached to his belt and retrieved his tightbeam communicator. “Speak.”
A breathless voice spoke, projected out into the bridge. “Gregory has boarded his ship.”
“Thank you, Mr. Divenoll,” the Baron answered. “Authorize the demolitions team. Once the lab is destroyed we’ll be ready to recall you.” He returned the comm to his belt. “Captain, you may deactivate all camouflage. Then have your tractor beam generators on standby.”
“Yes, sir.” Davard spun on his heel and walked toward the stations for the projectiles techs.
“One more thing,” Helmont said. “You may prepare a boarding party with stunners. I will personally lead our forces onto the Aesir. They have proven quite slippery, but once I have them, there will be no escape.”
* * *
Repetition strengthened Enoa’s control of Shaping. She found her mind stronger after each feat, after almost every exercise of her new abilities. Every time it was easier, every time less of her mental space was used by the exertion.
But this left room for fear. Once she had enshrouded the river and hidden them from sight, maintaining the visual disturbance wasn’t enough to stop her from dwelling on the sudden shadow cast over her fog. The darkness was even deeper as the massive ship blocked out the sun.
“Uh,” Jaleel said. “So I’m guessing we’re going to use the really difficult rough escape plan you were talking about?”
“Yeah.” Orson had switched the view on the windshield to an assortment of sensors. He was flying the Aesir almost even with the shore. Twice he crashed through branches, frying their leaves with the shields. “I can’t really think of any other way to get out of here.”
The ship above them was mostly silent, but Enoa could feel it. She spread out her shroud, covering the bottom of the massive craft. She could feel the strange tingling in the air beneath the ship where the repulsors held it aloft. She felt its power, its weight.
“Alright.” Orson enlarged one of the feeds on the windshield. “Ruby, do a scan of the Persistente and compare that to all of our maps and navigation records. I want a computer mapping that can help plot a course.”
“I don’t quite understand, do you want me to scan the riverbed?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah,” Orson sighed. “Scan the riverbed. See if our scan matches the map records.”
“I will make a scan,” Ruby said.
“Once you have a comparison set up, keep doing that as we go and feed that information into the main computer.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Ruby said again. “Can you repeat that last part?”
Orson groaned and kept them on their course by the riverside. “Maybe this was a bad idea. Ruby, just take that scan. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
“Why are you scanning the riverbed?” Dr. Stanislakova asked. She’d said little to Enoa after she brought the scientist aboard and less since they took off, but now her voice sounded steady. “I might be able to help you.”
“I’m gonna do a big diversion and then fly us down under the water.” Orson changed the windshield’s main display to a simple feed like the copilot’s. The massive red shape of the Manifest Destiny looked only more ominous when positioned across the ship’s windshield. “My friends Franklin and Wayne did a similar move. They hid from one of those ships by going underwater, but I think they had a couple of robots and a super genius with them to manage it. I hoped maybe Ruby could figure it out. I want us to move underwater, but I can’t react that fast against the current. Doing this will beat us up, but it should hide us and put some good distance between us and them.”
“We’re using the emergency submarine plan?” Jaleel asked. “There’s an emergency submarine plan? Nevermind. I don’t want to know.”
“I did a project on river erosion in undergrad,” Dr. Stan said. “It’s far from my main expertise, but if you can get me to a terminal of some kind, I might be able to offer some assistance. That will depend, of course, on how unusual your interface is.”
“This boat’s computer is the only one I’ve really used in years, so I can’t tell you how unique it is,” Orson said. “But you’d need to switch seats with Enoa and get in that terminal, but she’s busy doing her Shaper thing.”
“I can switch.” Enoa could. She was strong enough. She could hide the ship, conceal the forest, maintain the fog around the bottom of the Manifest Destiny. Aunt Sucora’s Midnight Sight technique had become as reflexive as walking and it faded into the back of her mind.
“Okay,” Orson said. “If you’re sure, Enoa. Let’s do it. I’ll dial up the inertials for a minute, but we need to make this quick. We don’t want to be totally drained and stranded while we’re still underwater. Jaleel, you mentioned missiles before. I’m going to send you control of those. Look for the toggles by the tri-cannon’s stick.”
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“I didn’t think they’d be useful against that.” Jaleel didn’t look up from his monitor.
“They won’t be,” Orson said. “But we need to do something big to distract them. Did I say we need a distraction? I’m really only half paying attention. I can’t fly like this and talk at the same time.”
“Are you ready, young lady?” Dr. Stan asked.
“I am.” Enoa said. “Can we switch, Orson?” She felt the Manifest Destiny moving above. It kept a level space behind them, behind the wide mass of fog.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll dial up the intertials. Go now!”
Enoa unbuckled herself and took her staff. She stepped around her seat. She’d never walked with the inertial dampeners working so furiously. She felt nothing. She felt no motion, like they were standing totally still. It was steady enough for Dr. Stan to slide over into the seat that Enoa had just vacated.
“I’m ready,” Dr. Stan said. “Where do I need to look?”
Enoa stepped around the side of her new seat at the moment the Manifest Destiny activated its tractor beam. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt a hot sensation from the underside of the carrier, like the air was cooking, her fog was evaporating.
“Orson!” Enoa threw herself into her new seat. She clutched her staff in one hand and felt for her restraints with the other. “They’re doing something! The Liberty Corps is doing something! I can feel it.”
“Can you keep the fog with me if I go faster?” Orson asked. “Are you buckled?”
She caught the restraints and pulled them across herself. “Yes.”
Orson didn’t hesitate. He kept the Aesir coasting along the shore, but he sped up. Enoa could feel the forces on the ship then, more and more, like they were cresting the top of a roller coaster.
Enoa tried to spread out the fog. She had room to spare. She could do more, spread the fog. Even in the mostly dry air, she could provide more coverage, hide them better.
Enoa breathed and concentrated on the arid air. It wasn’t cooperative, but not as bad as it had been in Littlefield, and the trees held moisture, enough for her to get to work.
She stopped spreading the shroud when she felt something new.
The Manifest Destiny reached from the sky and tried to catch them, seize them, to tear them up into the sky. In her mind, through the shroud, it felt like an actual hand reached from the ship.
“Orson!” She yelled. “Faster!” She didn’t know how close the ship’s hand would be. She didn’t know how accurate her new sense was.
But Orson listened to her. He slammed the throttle and threw them into the distance. Enoa fought to keep the shroud with them and to track the hand from the sky.
The hand missed. The tractor beam seized trees behind them and to their left. Enoa felt the trees’ struggle through the fog. She felt their straining, felt their roots fighting to stay beneath the earth.
And she felt the trees lose, felt the earth torn open, felt the trees ripped into the sky, mounds of dirt and rocks trailing from them, also falling upward.
Someone in the big ship soon realized their mistake. The trees and dirt and rocks were dropped back into the river, sending a wave roiling out, washing into the forest.
“They were so close,” Jaleel said. “How? Concentrated droplets like this fog should help us hide in thermal imaging.”
“Your guess is way better than mine, buddy,” Orson said.
“Where is this screen I should be looking at?” Dr. Stan asked. Orson didn’t answer her, but Enoa heard a small electric hum to her right. “Thank you.”
“Enoa, are they still…” Orson started. “Are they still on us?”
“I don’t feel anything, but that tractor beam happened fast.” Enoa had stopped fighting to spread the shroud. She refocused herself on watching the Manifest Destiny, as it followed the general shape of her disturbance.
Enoa felt the Aesir slowing, just slightly, but maybe enough to make it easier for Orson to speak.
“Okay, Doc,” Orson said. “Sorry about that. You’re going to be looking at the radar model we take of the riverbed. Then combine that with the maps and other navigation records we already have.”
“I believe I can do that,” Dr. Stan began. “I’ll let you know.”
“Great,” Orson said. “Now, Jaleel, toggle through the missiles. If I’m remembering right, it’s pretty easy to pick one and arm it. Look for a disruptor. There are two or three. They’re big and loud and bright. It’ll be great.”
“I don’t get to use Captain Somebody’s Trick and Trap or whatever?” Jaleel asked.
“The Crockett missile?” Orson asked. “Wow, I forgot all about that. Man, you would…”
“Orson!” Enoa felt the cooking feeling, the sudden evaporation, the tractor beam starting. “Again! Again!”
Orson knew what she meant and sent the ship on another dash, flying further up the river. Dr. Stan wasn’t ready that time. She yelled. Enoa felt her first real exertion, keeping the shroud with them. She shifted the existing mass of water and formed new droplets as they passed, hiding them, a work of subtlety and grace.
The tractor beam’s invisible hand reached down from the ship and took a fistful of river, pulling the water from the flow and hauling it, fish and all, into the sky. It was released as the trees had been and splashed back down into the river and across the forest.
Enoa felt a dull ache at her right temple. “I’m not sure how many times I can keep up with that.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Orson said. “We don’t have a lot of forest left. I’m not thrilled about our chances once we’re back in the open desert.”
“I have the disruptor picked,” Jaleel said. “What now?”
“See if you can pick the Crockett’s rocket too.” Orson eased the ship back to the far shore, again skirting against the trees. “If we can get that baby set up, we can send it in a different direction.”
“I don’t see any way to pick a second one,” Jaleel said. An angry beep came from his side of the dashboard. “Yeah, it doesn’t want me to do that.”
“That one’s different,” Orson said. “It’ll project a sensor signature that can fool the tractor beam system. It’ll need to know what we want it to mimic and you need to see if the mites are ready to go.”
“It wants to know if we’re using the default Jalvien specs,” Jaleel said. “What does any of this mean?”
“We don’t want that,” Orson said. “You’re gonna want to scroll until you find the one called ‘Dusty Pawn Shop’. If the tracking mites are ready, you should see, I think, a big checkmark.”
“I see both of those things. I think I have them.”
“Cool,” Orson said. “Doc, how are we doing? Ruby hasn’t said anything so I figure it’s either really good or really bad.”
“I think the computer can compare the scan and the map and use that to plot a course,” Dr. Stan said. “Your ship works like the old IHSA Archimedes systems so I can use that.”
Enoa’s headache intensified. Her left temple joined the pain. It wasn’t the exhaustion she’d known before. It wasn’t the mental numbness that had left her catatonic after her earlier Shaping, but it was a clear sign. Her body could not do this much longer. Her mind could not hold this burden forever. Her mind would eventually surrender the load.
She was running out of time.
“One problem,” Dr. Stan said. “We can’t go underwater.”
“Why not?” Orson yelled. “How else are we going to get away from that thing?”
“The river is too rocky to navigate,” she said. “And the scan is so different from the maps I’m having a difficult time following what I’m seeing.”
“Then we’ll just stay down there,” Orson said. “We’re already pressurized, so we’ll fly into the river and hide where we are.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “Without taking our time to examine a specific location, it’s just too dangerous to throw something as large as your ship into this river. Instead, I’m finding you a route into the forest.”
“The forest?” Orson said. “I can fly us into the woods. You gotta find us something better than ‘hide in the woods’.”
“There’s a useful ridge about seven hundred meters to the northwest,” Dr. Stan said. “I think it could conceal us. I just need to find us a way to get there.”
The ship’s shield sizzled against something, a sustained sound this time. The Aesir passed through an expanse of long-hanging vines, reaching down to drink from the river.
Orson pulled the Aesir clear of the vines. “Why didn’t you open with that?”
“I was still looking for a way to reach it quickly,” she said. “And I needed to determine how well your computer can navigate, whether your computer could quickly model the distance between trees relative to the dimensions of this vehicle, how well this vehicle could withstand a collision with a tree…”
“Alright, alright,” Orson said. “We’ll trust you on the river thing. We’ll go over there when you find a route, but we might have to fire more disruptors. We’ll need a really big diversion if we’re not going in the river. Jaleel, see if you can add a second disruptor to the launch system. And you’ll need to send the Trick and Track continuing on in this direction. God dammit, this is just…”
Enoa felt the cooking sensation behind them again and she was ready when she did. “Orson! Again!” She yelled. “But fly over the river. Not the shore. I want them to catch water. I’ll send it back up at them. I’ll shroud their ship.”
“Are you strong enough?” Orson asked. “Won’t you be too tired?”
“I’m already tired,” she said. “Just do it!”
“Okay.” Orson said. “Dr. Stan, how’s that map coming?”
“No time!” Enoa yelled. “They’re grabbing now!” She felt the shroud slipping away from her, her hold weakening, evaporation snapping at the straggling droplets, forcing the proper natural transmutation to begin again.
The tractor beam struck at them. It caught only water.
Enoa had to release some of the edges of her shroud to take control of the water held by the invisible hand. She felt a strange tingling along her spine, when she slipped her own will between the unseen power and the water, forcing her own strength inside the technological grip.
When the Manifest Destiny released the water, she threw it back in its face. She sent her shroud skyward, spreading it, a mental inertia. It was like lifting heavy objects with momentum instead of strength. It could not last. Enoa was trained enough to view her weakening resolve and know it and prepare for it.
“I did it!” She yelled.
“Are we ready?” Orson asked. “Where are we going?”
“We’re mapping,” Dr. Stan said. “I found a route I can send to you through the computer.”
“Go.” Orson said. “Jaleel?”
“Uh,” Jaleel said. “Now I’m ready. I had to set the Trick and Track to wait until we were out of range to…”
“Please hurry!” Enoa yelled.
“Fire now, Jaleel.” Orson said.
The ship made an audible whoosh when the rockets flew from their hidden emplacements in the front of the ship. Enoa had already closed her eyes to everything, but she could feel the rockets through the fog. The Trick and Track shot into the distance, just above the river, but the disruptors blasted skyward and exploded against the carrier’s shield.
Orson didn’t hesitate. When the rockets burst, he twisted the Aesir around, but the dampeners couldn’t absorb everything. G-forces reasserted themselves.
Enoa lost her grip on the shroud.
Suddenly, the impossible weight of what she’d been doing was on her. She remembered herself and her inexperience and their danger. She could do nothing, nothing but feel them hurtle through the fading fog, weaving between trees, plunging into the forest. She kept her eyes shut, feeling herself pressed back into her seat.
Dr. Stan yelled. Jaleel joined her. Wesley released a shrill cry from his pen, far behind. Alarms sounded.
“This might get bumpy,” Orson called.
The Aesir dove from the sky, branches snapping around them. They came to a stop when they struck the ground.