Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

Chaison chewed his lip as he stared at the paper for the tenth time. Finally he gave a deep sigh, committing himself. "Send this out, coded, with a repeat order. I want every ship in the fleet to have received and be rebroadcasting it in ten minutes. They're to wait for our confirmation to proceed."

Keir grinned and slapped the back of the chair. "You won't regret this, Admiral." Chaison grunted wearily, and Keir turned to Leal. "I have to see if we lost it," he said. She shook her head at him, not in denial, but simply half-drunk with terror and the pounding they were taking.

"Griffin, I'll need you," Keir went on. "If that impact damaged the device--"

Hayden Griffin shook his head distractedly. "Why me? It's your baby."

"No, it's not," Keir insisted. "It's half yours. Admiral?" He looked to Chaison, who waved a hand.

"See to it," he said, and the two made to leave the room. Fanning returned to watching the semaphore men puzzle over the sheet he'd given them. Leal undid her straps and jumped after Keir.

"Where are you going?" she shouted over a sudden shriek of unexpected wind from the opening door. Keir and Hayden both stopped, gaping in unison at the vista that faced them.

A giant bite had been taken out of the ship just aft of the bridge. Where before the hatch had led to a tangle of corridors and boxlike metal rooms, now there was gnarled sparking wreckage to the left, and open sky to the right. Hot air stinking of jet fuel and metal battered at them.

"Close the damned door!" bellowed the admiral, and the two men swung through it. Leal followed them and they slammed and sealed it.

The presence of an open and apparently infinite drop at one hand didn't intimidate Leal, since this was freefall; it was what was in that air that was frightening. Prudence dictated that she collect three pairs of foot-fins from the locker next to the bridge door; then she followed her men along the treacherous wreckage, not looking outward.

"Don't say we lost it, we couldn't have lost it," Keir mumbled as they climbed from one razor-sharp blade of scrap to the next. They passed half a water closet, where an airman with his pants around his knees still sat strapped onto the toilet. Hayden saluted him on the way past, and he returned the salute without turning his eyes from the vista of sky that had unexpectedly interrupted his meditations.

"There!" Hayden pointed ahead, to a curled-in bulkhead surrounding a clutch of catamarans and bombers. It took Leal a minute to recognize the hangar for what it was, and not just because of the turning light and overlapping shadow from hundreds of passing ships. It seemed impossible that the Surgeon could still maneuver, but way down past the peeled-back skin she could see the engines turning on their masts; and airmen were starting to cast lines and netting to one another, making temporary bridges and ladders between fore and aft. She saw a semaphore man take up position by the split hangar, as another one climbed, jacket flapping, toward the bridge.

She finally spared a glance outward, and nearly froze. The sky was jammed with ships, explosions, and spinning bits of metal. The Surgeon 's helmsman was sending commands to the engine nacelles by semaphore; somehow, they had miraculously avoided another collision so far, but that luck couldn't last. The First Line was crushing them.

Up ahead, Keir and Hayden had reached something that she at first took to be just another piece of wreckage. Teetering on the edge of open air was a great iron ball, about ten feet across, that had been married by thick cables and two awkward metal girders to an equal-sized blue box that looked like it had been half-melted by a drunken designer. Her boys began clambering over the contraption, shouting questions and answers to one another over the noise of the headwind.

Engineers , she thought, and crawled over to them.

Hayden turned to her, grinning. "Recognize it?" She could barely make out the words over a shattering drone that must have been coming from the engines.

"What, this?" He nodded, expectant. Puzzled, Leal turned to look at the combined devices again. The box looked a lot like things she'd seen in Brink, but it was generic. The ball, on the other hand, was riveted together, dented in places, and streaked with iridescent discolorations, as though it had been put through a fire.

Then she got it. "Your weapon!" The last time she'd seen this sphere, Hayden had been towing it behind a small airship. It had smoked and buzzed, and apparently produced a wall of fierce radio waves that had interfered with the thoughts of the emissary.

The drone was so loud now that she could only catch every second word as he nodded and slapped its side: "Rejigged ... generator ... hundred megawatt..."

He froze suddenly, a look of astonishment on his face. "--Sound!" Keir and Leal looked at him; she had to put her hands over her ears, but leaned close as he yelled, "Heard! Before!"

She and Keir exchanged a glance. Hayden tried one more time.

"Capital! Bug!"

* * *

IT EMERGED FROMa cloud bank bit by bit, something too big to take in without a turn of the head, too distant as yet for its details to be resolved. Candesce was dimming rapidly, and in the smoke and chaos the First Line simply hadn't seen it coming. No capital bug had ever penetrated this close to the sun, after all--but this was no random encounter. Chaison's ships had stolen it from Abyss weeks before; in the run-up to war, nobody had noticed its absence.

It was miles long. An entire ecosystem sheltered behind its vast curving flanks, safe from sharks or any kind of bird--or even Man. The towering horns that festooned its carapace guaranteed that, because the sound they poured out could kill a man from a mile away.

The bug's skin was pockmarked with holes. Ropes trailed from its trumpets, and one or two were still stuffed with foliage and moss. Spiraling around it were the six vessels that had jammed the horns and used rockets and machine guns to herd the beast through the dense skies of the principalities.

It wasn't fast, but it was unstoppable. The bug plowed into the First Line ships surrounding the alliance fleet, scattering them like startled fish. A few battleships tried to shoot out the horns, but they were too far away to be accurate; one that held fast also fell ominously quiet once it got close enough to take its shot. It drifted, touched the skin of the bug, and tore through it like a pen through paper.

The First Line concentrated their fire on the bug, but its Slipstream herders had put enough volleys into its back that it was maddened now. It would not turn away.

Keir caught glimpses of this carnage as the Surgeon maneuvered. The bug was running tangent to the alliance fleet, so the noise stabilized after a few minutes, then began to fall. He was able to listen as Hayden described his one encounter with a bug, years before, on the first occasion when he'd traveled with Chaison Fanning. "But it was finding out that the key to Candesce had been hidden in a bug that reminded us of this one," he explained. "The boy who found it was with a group of treasure hunters who'd figured out how to enter a bug. They shot off half its horns, and it repaired them but not fast enough to keep them from getting in and out. But it could repair them. So why not bring this one back and let it heal in the warm air? Fanning sent Travis to try. I guess it worked."

A heavy cruiser thundered past, less than a hundred feet away. Keir coughed in its choking wake and shouted, "Now if he would only give the flocking order..."

Leal was wide-eyed, and her hair coiled and writhed around her in medusoid tangles. She clung to Griffin's generator, but was clearly paying attention. "What order?"