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16 - Return Fire

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Theo

The murderous traitor Senesio tackled Suni out of the way just before the javelin-charge detonated. Part of me hoped it would engulf him, blow him to pieces like he deserved, but there wasn’t time to watch and find out.

“Theo, get down!” the sergeant shouted, and I did, dropping to my knees, planting my shield in front of me. And then the world went silent in a blast of light.

The entirety of the Stormcrow shook, deep tremors reverberating through its hull. A blast of fire washed across the face of my shield, followed by a rain of splinters. Something heavy slammed into the shield and kept going. It caught me in the head and a blinding light burst from behind my eyes. The world was spinning as I collapsed to the deck.

Ears ringing, head pounding, it was all I could do to roll onto my side and force my shaking vision to settle.

Chaos. All across the deck of the skyship. Several small fires burned where the javelin-charge had detonated, crates and coils of rope caught in its blast. The deck itself was rent open, boards scorched and twisted, splintered or ripped away entirely by the force of the explosion.

Senesio, the blustering fool, was already on his feet, patting out a small flame on his shoulder. Aside from that, he was entirely untouched. Meanwhile, Suni sat a few paces away, her hair smoking and face stained with soot. She was wide-eyed. Looked to be in shock.

Leda shouted something, but I couldn’t hear for the ringing in my ears. I groaned and rolled to my knees, preparing to stand on legs that felt more made of water than flesh and bone.

Several paces to my left the sergeant was on his back, shield still strapped to his arm and shot through with what looked to be an entire deck’s worth of splinters. Elpida was beyond him, pulling herself to her feet. Her clothes were burned in several places, and blood was running from a flurry of thin shrapnel cuts across her face.

The ringing in my ears faded in time for me to hear Elpida shouting commands to the crew.

“Return fire, damnit!” she yelled through smoke-hazed eyes, and the crew rushed into action.

Return fire. Fire. Ballistae. Right! My thoughts came slow, but they did come. We were under attack! Another skyship, dropping out of the sun to ambush us.

I limped my way to the nearest ballista, mounted on the ship’s rail. Others were doing the same, two people per ballista.

“I need someone else!” I shouted, waving anyone over that I could as I prepared the ballista. I cranked the wrench first, shaking as I worked the spring cord back into place. The arms of the machine groaned, but arched back, under an extreme amount of tension.

I grabbed a javelin-charge next and slotted it into the slide and then my second arrived.

Suni. The apprentice naturalist. Great.

She rushed over but her expression was bewildered.

“How can I... what do I—”

Three more javelins fell out of the sky, embedding themselves in the side of the Stormcrow’s hull with deep thuds. Moments later, they exploded, shaking the ship to its core. I held tight to the ballista but Suni was thrown to the side, slamming into the rail.

“They’re aiming for the engines!” I shouted as I realized what was happening. I pulled Suni off the rail, then shoved her toward the barrel of javelin-charges nailed to the deck. “Get me a light!”

Each javelin within was affixed with an explosive bag of powder around its neck, along with a long, oil-treated fuse. Light, aim, fire, boom. A deadly combination, and about the best way anyone had found so far for one skyship to fight another.

Several pieces of flint and steel hung on strings from the side of the javelin barrel, and Suni lunged for them. The Stormcrow shook beneath us, turning hard under Maritza’s guidance and the flint and steels danced away, twisting on their lengths of string. Suni fumbled at them, wasting precious moments. A second later she caught one, then pulled hard and ripped it from the barrel. She stumbled over on unsteady feet, then looked at me, as if asking what to do next.

“Strike the flint with the steel! Light the fuse!” I said, focusing downrange and taking aim at the hull of the enemy skyship. The knaves looked to be falling straight out of the sun, nothing more than a blurry silhouette surrounded by painful bright light.

There weren’t many places to hide when it came to flying — and even fewer on a clear day — but the sun, well, not many people spent a lot of time staring up at that great burning ball of light. It was every skyship captain’s dream to drop on an opposing vessel from out of the sun. And it was every captain’s nightmare to be attacked from the same.

I couldn’t see much of the enemy skyship, so I aimed where its engines would likely be, and made ready to fire. But the fuse on the javelin-charge was still unlit. Suni was striking the flint all wrong, hardly making any sparks at all.

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“Strike it like you mean it!” I shouted. She was too gentle with it, inexperienced and wasting time we didn’t have.

She struck the flint again, and this time a shower of sparks fell on the fuse. Its oil-soaked length caught. A single spark that, moments later, bloomed to life in a hissing flame.

“Finally,” I growled, then pulled the trigger. The ballista fired with a whoosh of air and a great thrumming of the string. Hit? Miss? It was impossible to tell. The javelin-charge soared towards the target but I lost it as the sun forced me to avert my eyes, already teary and burning.

“Load again,” I shouted, spurring Suni into motion. She should have already been preparing, but she wasn’t a soldier, hadn’t been trained for this. One more reason she didn’t belong out here. “Load!” I shouted, working the wrench as Suni scrambled to grab the next javelin-charge.

I snatched it from her and slotted it into the slide, then waved my hand at the fuse.

“Come on, come on!”

“Oh, right!” She pulled the flint and steel from her pocket and began striking it skillessly once more.

An enemy javelin-charge thunked into the side of our hull. Then three more right after it.

“Light the fuse!” I shouted. We didn’t have more than a moment. Suni struck the flint again, but aimed poorly, and knocked it from her own hand.

“Gah! Sorry!” she shouted, and bent to grab it.

“You’re useless,” I said, then cursed. “Why are you even here?”

The javelin-charges in the side of our ship exploded with deafening booms, one after another, a shockwave slamming into my chest after each. The last explosion found its mark as the Stormcrow pitched forward, leaning heavily towards port as one of the bow engines gave out.

I stumbled forward several steps, caught off balance, but held fast to the ballista and managed to stay upright. All around, other crew were doing the same, or sliding down the suddenly steep slope of the deck.

At the helm, Maritza pulled and fought with the wheel, trying to force the ship to level out. Despite her efforts, the Stormcrow was lagging, slow to respond to anything she did. It was said a skyship could fly on only three engines, as long as one kept a loose definition of the word “fly”.

The usual calm whirring of the engines was drowned out now as their damaged counterpart slipped into a piercing whine. Rhythmic, but uneven. Lopsided, almost, and tinged with a clattering like a bucket of nails being shaken about.

“Demetrias!” Elpida shouted.

“On it, on it!” the engineer replied, sliding across the tilted deck and towards the plume of smoke rising from the damaged engine. Even as he arrived, though, the engine seemed to kick back to life. The rhythmic whine was faster, still clattering and shaking, but the deck rose and the ship leveled off.

“Now we’re in business,” I said, turning my eyes up to the attacking skyship. Suni was gone, had stumbled farther down the deck when the ship had tilted, but it’d be faster to man the ballista without her. I scooped up the flint and steel she’d dropped and struck it over the fuse. The sparks caught and the fuse burned to life.

I pulled the trigger and the ballista shook with the force of its arms snapping forward and launching the javelin-charge at the enemy skyship.

“We need to land!” Demetrias yelled from where he’d been leaning over the rail to look at the damage.

“Land?” Elpida abandoned the aft deck, jogging past me and over to the engineer.

“This engine’s too damaged—it’s going to tear itself apart.”

“How long until the engine goes?”

“At worst, moments. At best, maybe an hour. I think the cores are separating—”

The engine exploded with a boom that set my ears to ringing again. There was no flame, but a shockwave tore through the ship nonetheless. It sent Demetrias flying, rolling across the deck, as planks and nails and other debris rained from the sky. One core of the engine visibly rocketed off into the distance, streaking away in a faintly silver-colored blur. The other tore through the ship below deck, then burst out of the starboard stern, splintered wood raining down behind it.

The Stormcrow pitched forward again, far more sharply than last time, and bucked the crew back to the deck.

My feet went out from beneath me before I had a chance to react. My hands slipped from the ballista and I slammed down ass-first, then was thrown onto my stomach to slide several paces along the length of the sloping deck. My fingers tore at the planks, fighting for any nook or cranny to get a grip. To no avail. I began to slide faster.

Something warm and wet rubbed against my chest. Blood, I realized, as Demetrias’ battered body drew into view. The engineer was unconscious, or dead—impossible to tell—and before I had time to figure out which, I’d slid past the man.

Another nailed-down barrel of javelins was coming up on my side. I pushed off the deck, rolling over towards it, then slammed into it chest-first and wrapped my arms around the thing. The Stormcrow pitched more sharply forward with a shaking groan, but I stayed in place, firmly wedged between the barrel and the deck.

“Ancestors above, but that’s a long way down,” a voice growled, and I looked up to find Gabar clinging to the base of a ballista a few paces away.

“I hadn’t noticed,” I shouted back, tightening my grip on my barrel and praying the next javelin-charge didn’t blow our ship to splinters.

Wrapped around the barrel, face pressed to one side, I had a decent view of the rest of the crew. Sergeant Kyriakos and Aristos were still at their ballista, clinging to it, feet slipping along the too-slanted deck.

Senesio was directly across, one hand clenched white around a rope and the other holding Leda by her belt. Her legs were kicking at the empty air, face white and drained of blood as she stared down at the gaping hole that, moments before, had been the bow of the Stormcrow. Now there was only splintered wood and open air. And, of course, a long fall to the prairie below.

A groan wracked the ship and I grasped my barrel ever tighter, could feel my fingers slipping for purchase on the slick wood. Could feel my weight shifting as the Stormcrow nosed farther and farther down. Any moment now I’d lose my grip, would slip away to fall from the deck and into that vast, terrifying expanse of air. Could already feel myself tilting and spinning, flipping end over end over end until I finally, mercifully, came to a stop. Probably with a wet crunch, if I were being honest.

“Keep us airborne!” Elpida shouted, a rope wrapped tight around one arm, holding her in place.

She should’ve saved her breath, however, as even while she shouted up to the helmswoman, the other skyship dropped down to join us. It flew no colors, and the crewmen on its deck—so close now I could almost make out their individual features—wore no distinguishable uniforms. Not that I had much a chance to look. Another barrage of javelins thunked into the hull of the Stormcrow and, moments later, knocked out a second engine as they exploded.

A skyship could fly on three engines, if only just. On two, however, it was about as airworthy as a brick. Maritza was still at the helm, fighting to control our fall, but it was all I could do to grit my teeth and swallow the feeling of my stomach rising through my throat as we plummeted downward.