Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"That paper I brought the admiral. It--" He blinked at the suddenly changing sky. "I think he gave it."

Far down the bullet-pocked hull of the Surgeon , the great engine nacelles swiveled on their arms and roared into full power. A ripple of stress raced up the skin of the ship and Hayden yelled "Hang on!" as the whole vessel wrenched itself onto a new heading.

With a metallic shriek the generator and his device fell into the shrapnel-ridden sky.

Keir dove after it.

* * *

"SOMETHING'S GONE WRONG."Inshiri had poked her head out the hatch, and as she came back in she had a puzzled expression on her face. "Where's the goddamn First Line?"

She slammed the hatch and turned her best glower on the semaphore team. "Aren't you getting anything?"

The semaphore captain shook his head. "There's too much clutter, sir. It's not just the smoke and wreckage--there's signaling flags floating everywhere. They're pretty much the first thing to get shot off a ship in a firefight."

"What about flares?"

The officer shrugged. "Same problem. The enemy's look just like ours."

Antaea was listening from the aft chamber. Now she felt Jacoby cough weakly and try to sit forward. He was pale, but he was awake, and she and Venera had at least stopped the bleeding. "What's happening?" he asked.

Through the porthole behind her, Antaea could see tracer fire stitching the air from behind. "Another one's on our tail," she pointed out. "Where's the rear guns?"

They all listened for the clatter of the machine gun, but there was only silence. Inshiri also noticed, and came back to point at Antaea. "You, you're a good shot, aren't you? Get back there and take over."

"I don't take orders from you," Antaea replied coolly.

Something ping ed through the cabin, making the guardsmen jump in surprise. Jacoby pushed at her weakly. "Probably a good idea," he muttered.

"Oh, hell." Rear gunners always died first. But if somebody didn't go back there, they would get their engines shot off. Then they'd be picked off by whoever happened by.

She clambered back through the hold, cursing the ineptitude of their escort ships. They'd lost more than half already, and the rest were distracted by some heavy Last Line cruisers that had noticed them and fallen into pursuit. It was probably one fanatic on a bike chasing the Thistle now--but if he had a machine gun in his hands, one would be enough.

"Need a hand?" Venera said from right behind her. Antaea jerked and bit off a sharp retort. She shook her head and opened the tail blister.

"Eh, maybe I do after all." Venera looked over her shoulder and whistled softly. It was going to take them a few minutes to get that man out of there.

He'd been good-looking, and he'd had a nice laugh. Antaea felt heartsick as she and Venera hauled his body into the hold. She took the last of their bandages and began wiping down the grips on the machine gun, then the supposedly bulletproof glass of the blister. It stank of sweat and iron in here, but hot air from outside was whistling through the three holes that starred her view.

She swiveled the blister about and squeezed the gun's trigger experimentally. One bullet discharged, then the mechanism froze. "What the--"

"You've got a jam in the feeder," said Venera. "I'll get it." The former princess of Hale kicked the lid off the ammo mechanism under Antaea's feet and began rummaging around in it with bloody fingers. All the while, the Thistle was weaving back and forth in a sickening way, dodging the intermittent stutter of tracers that chased them.

While she waited, Antaea stared at the fading purple backdrop to all the local carnage. "Where's the First Line? And what the hell is that ?" A black silhouette, impossibly big, was cutting off the light from one of the principalities' suns. And those sparkles and speckles around it: Could they be ships ?

Venera glanced up. "Sometimes, when night falls, Candesce goes walking," she said.

"Shut up."

"It's true. It curls its way through the blackness until it finds some sleeping town or farm. And then it feeds..."

"I'd believe anything at this point," Antaea conceded.

"Try now."

She aimed the guns at the source of the tracer rounds and opened fire. The blast of the weapon was a physical shock, numbing her hands as it leaped about, and deafening her.

She gave Venera the thumbs-up signal and turned her attention to killing their pursuer.

* * *

ADMIRAL FANNING'S SIGNALhad gone out, and for a few minutes, chaos had reigned among the alliance fleet. The ships had been settling into uneasy patterns, barely avoiding one another while dodging missiles from the circling First Line. In the bedlam caused by the capital bug's arrival the bombardment had eased up a bit, and in clean, daylit air, this might have given the alliance a chance to regroup. But it was dark, the air was full of smoke; nobody could see more than half a mile in any direction.

Yet suddenly the ships surrounding Keir and his machine were accelerating, turning--blindly, at first, then in increasingly coordinated patterns. He couldn't see the full fleet, but he could hear the change. Somehow, even with the failure of the semaphore, hundreds of ships' headlamps were beginning to turn as one thing.

"Hey!" He turned and saw two figures, black on black in this light, kicking slowly toward him. "You forgot your fins!" shouted Leal.

He laughed crazily. Keir had never been stranded like this, weightless, yet in hot air and surrounded by infinite possibility in all directions. It was terrifying and intoxicating, yet as they slowly flapped their way up to his machine, Leal Maspeth and Hayden Griffin looked quite at home.

Stretching out, he touched Leal's fingertips, then drew her to him. They kissed, and then she reached to hold one of the loose straps attached to the machine. "Look at them go!" she said in awe. "It reminds me of the fleet leaving Abyss."

"I guess this is just like home for you?" he asked.

"Yes, except for the smoke and heat and the burning ships and all those suns out there like monsters' eyes. Just like home." The fleet's lamps suddenly turned as one, as though from some silent signal. Then they surged into life, pouring intense fire into one flank of the encircling First Line. Cruisers, battleships, bikes, and catamarans surged past the three people clinging to their little island, and for a while they couldn't speak for the thud of explosions and whine of passing jets.

Then, astonishingly, the fleet was accelerating out of the trap the First Line had held them in. A giant hole full of drifting hulks was all that was left of the enemy's inner divisions.

It wasn't exactly silent. The capital bug still screamed its discordant song, but many miles away; and the sound of explosions no longer came with a body-blow of shocked air as emphasis. Compared to what they'd endured for hours now, this air seemed peaceful to Leal.

"Do you think they'll stop them from getting in?" Hayden asked after a while. Keir shrugged.

"If they don't, it's going to be up to us."

Leal watched the retreating flashes and silhouetted gray of the fleet's headlamps. "How did they do that?" she mused.

"The oaks' gift," said Keir. "A set of flocking rules for the fleet. All you have to do is watch what your neighbors are doing, and follow this or that rule depending on the situation. It's an emergent system--creates ordered behavior on the macro scale."

"They're acting like they're all controlled by one mind."

"In a way, they are. But there's nothing magical about it--nothing technological, either, which is the point. Those rules will work here, where all the machineries of the virtuals won't."