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CHAPTER 26

HUBRIS


Nine Cielcin scaharimn followed me out of Phanamhara, shielded, swords in hand. I eyed them each in terror and suspicion, but not a one raised its hand to me.

“I don’t like this,” Cassandra said. “You think we can trust them?”

“What choice do we have?” I said, spurring Cassandra on ahead of me, watching as Ramanthanu’s subordinates loped past, their long legs bent, bodies half-crouched.

My daughter glanced back at me, hissed, “The comms.”

“You’re welcome to try,” I said. I had tried myself, a dozen times since we left the ruins. Tried to reach Neema, or Gaston, or Annaz and his men.

Now and again the night—which must by then have been nearing its end, though the horizon was still all dark—was broken by the flash of gunfire. Clearly all our men were not yet dead. Yet where was Gaston? Had he fallen? Or only been driven from the field?

“Sim saryr!” said Ramanthanu. Not far.

One of the others raised a clawed hand, and the captain and the rest all froze. Beside me, Ramanthanu sniffed.

“Sim unassa,” it said. Not alone.

About us, the ruins of the camp smoldered. The ruined prefabricated pod-buildings were metal and polycarbon, and had not burned save where the blast of alien artillery had staved them in. The hulk of one Cielcin lander rose above all, its tower crooked where it had smashed the refectory pod and fallen half-over. Bodies—human and inhuman—lay strewn on the blood-damp sand.

A pale face swam into view. The Cielcin wiped its mouth with the back of one hand, its black tongue trailing, cleaning the gore from its flesh. With the other hand, it clutched something long and bloody.

A woman’s leg.

“Ramanthanu!” it said in its own language, raising one hand. “There is a feast here! We caught the yukajjimn in the white box. Dozens of them! Many the softer kind. The ietumna, I think. They are good eating.” Only then did it catch sight of Cassandra and myself. “What’s this, then? Fresh meat? Or are you with child?”

The captain bared its teeth. “Muzugara is dead, Shishakuri,” it said. “Get to your ship. Return to our home.”

The Cielcin called Shishakuri cocked its head. “Wemathar ne?” it asked. “Dead, say you? And what of the god?” It lifted the torn limb that was its feast and slung it dripping over one shoulder, so that the crook of the knee rested against its pauldron. “I saw it! I saw the lightning! The eyes! The giant! It has favored us!”

“It was the god that killed Muzugara!” said Captain Ramanthanu. “He killed the sorcerers. He has not favored us.”

Shishakuri let its dripping thigh fall from its shoulder. “Not . . . favored?”

“We are dead if we remain,” Ramanthanu said.

“Then we die at the god’s hand!” said Shishakuri, padding nearer the captain.

It had come too close. Ramanthanu raised its sword and brought it down into the junction of shoulder and neck. Shishakuri’s head did not fall from its neck, but the blade stuck in its spine. Blood black as ink ran down, and the xenobite’s eyes narrowed in surprise. Ramanthanu had to put a foot on its clansman’s chest to wrench the blade free.

“Kill any you find!” the captain called, pressing forward.

As if on cue, half a dozen of the Pale emerged from the ruins of the camp. They must have heard Shishakuri’s loud voice and come to see. Many had red blood upon their chins and hands. Seeing the captain standing with black blood upon its crooked sword, they drew swords of their own, and rushed toward us. Ramanthanu whirled and thrust its point toward one of the newcomers. The creature parried, and the captain leaped upon its clansman with a ferocity that astonished. Seizing its quarry by one horn, Ramanthanu jerked the other Cielcin’s head back and tore out its throat with its own teeth.

The rest of Ramanthanu’s subordinates—my subordinates, I realized with a start—circled about Cassandra and myself. Clutching my unkindled sword, I felt as one in a dream. It could not be real.

My dream.

My oldest dream.

A kind of peace between human and Cielcin, us fighting side by side. But it was not my dream, not the fight I had envisioned, and not the peace. With every odd step, I felt Ramanthanu’s head beneath my heel.

“Ba-Aeta-doh!” the captain said when the fighting was done. “We must hurry. Others will come, drawn by the fighting.” It touched a metal fixture over the left hole that served it for an ear. “Word of Muzugara’s death is out. There will be fighting. A new prince must be found.”

“It’s not far to the landing field!” I said to the xenobite, eying Cassandra the while.

One of Ramanthanu’s subordinates had fallen in the skirmish, bringing their number down to eight. The earth shook again, and looking up I saw the worldship like a bleary eye. There would be chaos aboard, when word of the general’s death came. Their delicate hierarchy would crumble. Lieutenants and captains all vying for the highest place.

There would be blood on that alien moon before long, if there was not blood already. Against such disorder, Governor-General Hulle’s defense fleet might just stand a chance.

Something dark and huge fell out of the night. Before I knew what was happening, it settled on one of Ramanthanu’s men and vanished up into the night in a flapping of wings, taking the Cielcin with it.

“Eijana!” Ramanthanu shouted. “Above! Above!”

An instant later, the caught Cielcin fell, landing on its neck.

Those remaining of Ramanthanu’s company formed a tight knot, and the captain rounded on me. “Tell the eijana to stop! Command them!”

Annaz’s men had found us.

In a rush of wings, one alighted on the sand not ten paces from us. Another followed. A third. Then one landed directly before me, larger than the others, black feathered. He raised his sword to strike at Ramanthanu. The Cielcin raised its scimitar to parry the bird man’s cutlass.

“Ashtaanae!” I cried, and caught the black-feathered one by the wrist. “Ashtaanae, Annaz! Hold!” I thrust my other hand—the one that held my unkindled sword—out to stay Ramanthanu. “Ijanammaa!” I said, giving the Pale the same order. To Annaz I said, “They’re with me!”

“With you?” the inhuman chiliarch croaked. “My lord, they are Cielcin.”

“They surrendered to me!”

“Surrendered?” The Irchtani commander jostled, jockeying for a position from which to strike. “And you believe it?”

“It has killed its own kind in my name!” I said. “The creature we came to kill is loose. We must get to the Rhea as quickly as we may and activate Oberlin’s weapon. Can you fly us?”

“Fly you?” Annaz cocked his head, red beak clacking. “Yes. But these? No.”

“We need every sword we can get!” I said, clamping my hand on the bird man’s shoulder. “Were Udax here, he would not hesitate.” It was not a lie, though it was perhaps unjust of me to say it.

Annaz did hesitate. “This is Marlowe’s command?”

“It is,” I said. “Tell me: What of my ship? Albé? My servant?”

“What shall we do, Annaz?” shouted one of the others, angling his zitraa at the nearest of Ramanthanu’s Pale.

“Stand down, Shaara!” the chiliarch said. “These belong to bashanda. They have turned traitor for him.” Annaz leaned to speak into my ear. “Of your ship I cannot say. Comms very bad. There is madness here. I saw lightning freeze in sky.”

“I saw it, too,” I said, and fearing I would see it again, looked up. “We haven’t much time. Are there enough of your people to carry us?”

“How many are you?” Annaz peered round with one black eye.

“Ten.”

Annaz threw back his head and called, a high, ululating cry. A moment later, half a dozen more of his men alighted, kicking up clouds of sand with their mighty arms. I recognized the one called Inamax among them, and listened as Annaz gave his orders in his own language. The others squawked, doubtless protesting.

“They will . . . carry us?” Ramanthanu asked. “Through the air?”

“It will be faster,” I said. “Tell your people.”

Ramanthanu threw an arm across me as I brushed past to speak with Cassandra. I froze, thrust the emitter head of my sword against the captain’s ribs. If my action alarmed the ichakta, it gave no sign. Rather than speak, Ramanthanu drew an object from its belt and held it out to me. I looked at it, momentarily confused. It was a black box about the size of a man’s fist, if narrower, with a silver catch on the face and a belt clip on the back.

It was a shield projector.

I did not at once take it.

“You are unshielded, Ba-Aeta-doh,” the captain said. “Take mine.”

I held the Cielcin’s gaze then a moment. It was like locking eyes with a snake. Or a skull. I accepted the token, and clipped the shield to my belt.

There was no way to thank the monster. Not in its own language.

When Ramanthanu turned aside, I found Cassandra staring at me. “You’re sure about this?”

I touched the wound on her face. It was not deep. “I am sure of nothing,” I said. “Except that I must reach the ship.”

“You must reach it?” Her face—so like her mother’s—darkened with suspicion. “Without me, you mean?” She was already shaking her head.

“I need you to go to Neema,” I said. “Tell him what happened. Albé should be with him. Tell him to power up the ship.”

“You want me to leave you?” Her voice was incredulous. “Leave you? Now?”

“I want you to live!” I said.

“I won’t go!” she said. “You need me!”

“I need you to survive,” I said, and heedless of the blood on both of us, I pulled her to myself. “Anaryan, you are all I have. I am your father. Let me do this thing.” I kissed her brow and wiped a tear away for what I felt certain then would be the final time. “Go!” Then, “Kithuun Annaz! I want three of your men to escort my daughter to my ship.”

“I’m coming with you!” Cassandra said, stepping after me.

“Take her!” I said. “Take her by force if you have to! If the ship is gone . . . if it’s lost . . . I want them to take her as far from here as they can. To Markov Station, if you can.”

Two of Annaz’s men caught Cassandra as she tried to follow me, and her shouts chased after me like ghosts.

I should never have brought her.

“Take her now!” I said, “The rest of us will make for the Rhea at once!”

* * *

In the end, Annaz himself carried me into the air. I felt his talons bite my shoulders. I tried not to think of Cassandra, of the way her cries of protest filled the air. It was better that she was leaving me. Ushara would be drawn to me, as she had twice been already. The farther my daughter was from my side, the safer she would be. She may not live to forgive me, but she would live.

The wind rushed by us, almost deafening me, and I clutched the chiliarch’s ankles.

“Do not let me fall!” I shouted into the wind.

The Irchtani commander croaked a laugh. “You are not so heavy as that, bashanda!”

Looking back, I saw the others spread out below and behind us, the Cielcin—my Cielcin—hanging from the vast-winged bird men like snakes in the talons of so many hawks. Below us, the camp was burning, columns of smoke rising half-seen through the night. The crooked towers of Cielcin landers pierced the desert flats everywhere like spears, and the hulks of our shuttles poured orange fire into the sky.

The Rhea lay beneath us, a vast scarab, mirror black in the gloom.

I could not see the Ascalon in that sea of smoking ships.

Craning my neck in the snapping wind, I looked back to Phanamhara, to the Mount of Whales in the east. Beyond it, the horizon stretched, an arcing line, the curve of Sabratha barely visible from our moderate height. There, at the edge of the world, a faint light gleamed. It was not yet sunrise, but the dark of that dreadful night was passing away.

“Down!” I shouted to Annaz, and slapped at his ankle with one hand.

The Irchtani snapped his wings wide, and we circled lower, spiraling to ground. The Rhea drew ever closer, and after a moment we sailed beneath the level of its antennae and dorsal guns. When a mere two feet separated mine from the surface, the chiliarch released me, and I dropped, knees bending to take the impact. Ramanthanu alighted to my left, carried by Inamax. The bird men touched down moments after, hefting their plasma burners as they turned to face the open ramp.

“We need to reach the bridge,” I said, speaking Galstani. “The hardlines might still be operational, and if they’re not, well . . . ” I held up my wrist. “My terminal’s dead.” I had to try and reach Neema, to warn him of Cassandra’s coming, and to better relay my orders.

“Ramanthanu-kih,” I said, addressing the captain—my slave—in its own tongue. “Are any of your people aboard, do you know?”

“There will be mnunatari,” said Ramanthanu.

I blinked at the lop-horned captain. Mnunatari was the Cielcin word for merchant.

Ramanthanu said, “They collect the bodies. Take what they can find.”

Scavengers.

“Biqunna o-tajarin’ta wo!” Ramanthanu said. We will kill them.

The captain barked an order to its men and mounted the ramp, clawed feet clicking on the metal. I made to follow, but Annaz caught me by the wrist with one scaled and taloned hand. “I mislike this, bashanda.”

“They could have killed me before you came,” I said. “Why did they not do it?”

Annaz clacked his beak, looked up at me sidelong. I was struck then by just how short the winged creatures were. “I cannot say,” he said. “But these are Cielcin. Be careful.”

“We need every sword,” I said. “But we’ll kill them . . . if we have to.”

“No trust,” said Annaz.

“No trust.”

Thus we followed our Cielcin vanguard up the ramp, and reaching the top, I was glad I sent Cassandra away. I had forgotten the hold, somehow forgotten the screams and cries of terror and pain we’d heard on the bridge after Kybalion had opened the outer hatch, forgotten, too, the bodies and the abattoir stink of the hold where Vedi’s men had been butchered.

It seemed that Ramanthanu had found one of its mnunatari. The captain stood over a fresh Cielcin corpse, blade stained black. I had to pick my way carefully between the bodies—human and Cielcin alike—and more than once I had no recourse but to tread upon them.

Fear is a poison.

I reached the inner door a few steps behind Ramanthanu. Annaz stayed close beside me, eyes locked on the backs of the Cielcin ahead of us.

“The bridge is straight ahead,” I said in Cielcin, pointing.

The signs of looting and of desecration were everywhere. Doors cut into, windows smashed, panels broken. Rude drawings and crude writing marred the walls, and a brass light fixture hung down, torn from its socket.

The bridge was just as bad. The body of Commander Vedi had been dragged away—but those of Chatterjee, Dominina, and the rest remained, their abdomens torn open, innards removed or else left to spill upon the floor. The stench choked me. One of the Cielcin, a squat, broad-faced creature with short, snub-like horns, picked at the corpse of one of the shipmen, nostrils flaring speculatively.

“Raka unjasan,” it said. “Good meat.”

“Veih!” I commanded. “Leave them!”

The Cielcin lifted its face to look at me. “They are mine!” I said, pointing at my own chest. “My dead!”

Faced with the reality of its situation, the Cielcin’s nostrils flared. “Yukajji!” it said, and thrust its hand into the dead man’s open stomach. A knife pierced the creature’s eye, and it fell upon the body without another word.

Turning, I saw Ramanthanu standing by the station that had been Dominina’s. “Jiganna would have challenged you,” it said. “It is better this way.” The captain looked round at its companions, they were seven then, in all. “Does any other mean to defy our aeta? To defy me?”

None came forward.

“What are they saying?” Annaz asked. “What happened?”

“The dead one disobeyed me,” I said, moving to the main console. I tapped the black glass. The panel stirred to life, sharp images floating under the glass. I found the comms, and keyed the Ascalon’s address.

“Neema!” I almost shouted. “Neema, it’s Marlowe. Can you hear me?”

As I spoke, I watched Ramanthanu turn on the spot, wet sword still in hand, surveying the bloody bridge. Annaz stood just inside the door with three of his men, plasma burners apparently casual, but ready in scaled hands. I could feel the tension between the two peoples like so many catgut strings. Almost I felt one might pluck a note striking the air between them.

No response came.

“Neema,” I tried again. “I’m sending Cassandra to you. Neema!”

Nothing.

An error message flashed on the dark panel.


Failure. Code 122: Fault Detected In Hardline.


I hammered the console with my fist. “Line’s cut.”

“You could try radio,” Annaz said, hopping toward me.

I did, was met with hissing silence.

Neema was dead. Must be dead, and young Albé with him. Cassandra would find no ship to carry her from that awful place. I pictured her flying in Irchtani talons, starving in the desert as they struggled to make the three-thousand-mile journey to Markov.

They stood no chance, nor did we.

We had come to the Rhea to die.

I gripped the rim of the main console with both my hands, squeezed so hard my right hand ached. The left—with its false bones—felt numb and hollow. A terrible weight was on me, a weight I’d come to know too well. My life, the lives of all around me.

The world.

“What now?” asked Ramanthanu in its own rough tongue.

The words shook me from my reverie, and I toggled the comm to broadband.

A flood of fragmentary voices filled the bridge, each overburdened by stress and static.

“—pinned down above . . . ridge!”

“ . . . Manticore Five here . . . ”

“Taking heavy fire!”

“Chaana ishaa! Ishaa! Ishaa!”

Annaz peered at me with one dark eye. “We are still fighting.”

“This is Hadrian Marlowe!” I almost shouted into the comm. “Is Commandant Gaston still alive?”

Silence on the line. Surprise?

“Lord Marlowe!” came a familiar, deep voice. “We thought . . . ” Static filled the connection. “ . . . dead!”

It was Vimal Gaston. I felt my heart buoy at the sound. “Gaston!” I shouted into the comm. “Where are you? Where’s Special Agent Albé?”

“Albé?” Gaston’s sounded audibly confused. “Haven’t seen him! What ab— . . . —giant wo—n?”

What about the giant woman?

“That’s why we’re here, Commandant!” I said. “Where are you?”

The reply was seconds in coming. “North ridge! Above the camp! Dug in! Overlooking—” Again he cut out. “—ruins!”

I knew the spot, there was a high dune that rose over the dug-out streets of Phanamhara. Not truly a ridge—being made all of sand—but it was higher than the surrounding ground. Gaston and a knot of survivors must have withdrawn there.

Chaos, I thought. All chaos.

“I want you to make a full retreat!” I said. “Take your people as far from here as you can! Full retreat, do you copy?”

“Sir?”

It would do no good. The NEM weapon had an effective radius of more than a dozen miles, and there was no way Gaston and his men could escape in time. “Belay that!” I shouted. “Can you get to the ruins? Underground?” They stood a better chance in Phanamhara than on the open dunes.

“Aye, lord.” Gaston’s voice crackled and hissed. “What are you going to do?”

“We have a bomb,” I said, snapping my fingers for Annaz to join me. “An atomic meant to kill that giant.”

“What is it, lord?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said. “Go, Commandant! Save your people if you can.” I killed the line. “Why can’t I raise my ship?”

Annaz had reached my side. “Dead?” I shook my head. “Comms dead?”

“Maybe,” I said, moving to the next console. “I need you at the tac console. There’ll be a prompt to engage the NEM. We have to both grant permission to fire at the same time.” Oberlin’s people had instructed me on the use of the weapon on more than one occasion.

As I spoke, I punched the command to open the launch silo on the Rhea’s dorsal hull.

There came sounds of inhuman shouting from the hall outside, the cough of my Irchtanis’ plasma weapons.

“Mnunatarimn,” said Ramanthanu.

An alarm blared, lights flashing on my console. “Something’s wrong.”

“I have to get up there.” Turning from the panel, I looked round the room. “Annaz, Ramanthanu, with me.” I repeated the last in Cielcin and hurried for the door.

The sounds of fighting in the corridor outside had stopped, and I flinched as the door opened to find two Cielcin without. They bared their throats and drew back, showing the four fresh dead on the floor.

“Otomno, Juga, you stay,” said Ramanthanu to these two. “We go.”

The two did not question their lop-horned captain, and I pushed past to where a quartet of Irchtani held the nearest doors. Annaz ordered them to remain and to watch the Cielcin, and to kill any others.

The launch bay lay up against the dorsal hull and as far to aft as may be, above the hold and the engineering deck that ran just above it. The lifts were dead when we reached them, forcing us to take the stairs. Ramanthanu insisted on going first, and sent two of its remaining scaharimn on ahead. I plunged after them, moving as one in a dream. Before long, we reached the top level, and turning right at the top of the stairs, we hurried along the corridor to aft. Drawn by the sound of our feet, perhaps, a pair of Cielcin looters emerged from a portal to our left. They made a query—saw myself and Annaz’s people too late. Ramanthanu’s men ran them through and fell atop them, clawed hands tearing as they dragged swords across throats.

Another Cielcin mnunatari leaped from the open door, fell upon one of Ramanthanu’s own. Drawing a thin knife from its wrist-sheath, the scavenger plunged the blade into the soft, unarmored place beneath the fighter’s arm. The two xenobites fell, the scavenger stabbing the warrior again and again. Too late to help, I rushed forward, conjuring my blade in a flat arc that struck off the scavenger’s head.

Beneath the newly headless body, the warrior was dying. I reflected that such internecine fighting was part and parcel of the Cielcin experience.

“Leave him,” said Ramanthanu, looming like Death herself over my shoulder. “He is dead.”

“Ndaktu!” the dying warrior choked. “Ndaktu, Ichakta-doh!”

Wordless, Ramanthanu went to one knee, gripping its scimitar by the midblade to better direct its point. I saw the tip of that scimitar take aim beneath the dying creature’s chin, and turned my head as Ramanthanu drove it home into the brain.

Of the eight Cielcin who had joined Ramanthanu when it begged for my mercy, only five remained. Five . . . and the captain itself.

* * *

“The armory is just ahead,” I said in Cielcin, gesturing for the Irchtani to take point.

Annaz hopped, fluttered over the bodies in the hall, kept one taloned hand on the long knife strapped to his belt, ready for some other surprise assault. None came, and we reached the heavy doors to the armory. They rolled partway open and jammed, forcing us to open them manually until they were wide enough that we might slither through.

The armory was not large, was perhaps forty feet from door to rear bulkhead. Men slumped dead at consoles to left and right, and bloody smears ran along the floor where others had been. These had manned the turrets that studded the Rhea’s exterior, guarded the ramp and the approaches to port and starboard. Small as the Rhea was and designed to land, she had no ventral cannons, only the main battery on her dorsal hull—directly above us—and a single missile launch bay.

The missiles themselves were stored vertically, locked in a revolving carousel like bullets chambered in some antique firearm. Each had been perhaps a foot in diameter, and little taller than a man.

Had been.

Of the eight torpedoes that had been stored in the carousel, seven were gone—doubtless taken by the mnunatarimn and carried to some Cielcin landing craft.

The eighth lay on the floor of the chamber, its warhead carefully removed and set to one side as if by the hand of some cautious surgeon. Its chassis likewise had been laid open, its microfusion cell excised like a tumor and placed to one side.

It was the NEM.

I fell to my knees, utterly bereft.

“Oyade detu raka yelnumbana ne?” asked Ramanthanu. I thought I could sense its confusion, even behind the alienness of its tone, its doubt in its new master, its new god.

“It is destroyed,” said Annaz.

“What do we do?” asked another of the Irchtani. “What now?”

I raised my hands to my face. My wounded palm had dried, stopped bleeding.

I didn’t have an answer.

We had lost.

Kybalion. I thought. Kybalion had known about the NEM weapon. Lascaris had known. He must have left orders with the Cielcin—with some MINOS technician, more likely—that the thing should be dismantled, just to be sure.

I punched myself in the leg, regretted the action at once, and ground my teeth instead.

“Bashanda?” the Irchtani commander peered down at me.

“We cannot stay here,” I said. “The battle is lost.”

We had come all this way, lost so many lives . . . for nothing.

Operation Gnomon had failed.

Ushara was awake, and just as the Watcher on Nairi had found new strength by tormenting the men of Aradhya’s expedition, she had found new life in the men and Cielcin she had consumed. Sharply then I recalled the vision she had shared with me, of her spirit flickering like a dying ember in Sabratha’s desert, too weak to escape the planet’s magnetic field.

“We should never have come here,” I said.

But it was too late.

There had been more NEM weapons aboard the Troglita, but the Troglita was lost.

There was nothing, nothing we could do. Not against the Watcher, not even against the Cielcin stragglers warring on the surface. The weapons were lost, and even I could not restore them. For all my faculties, I cannot turn time back.

I knew then that spirit of Despair that must have settled on Leonid Bartosz on Berenike so long before. I felt a desire then more keenly than any I had known, a desire for death sharper than hunger, than thirst, a desire that ached in me more deeply than the desire for sleep, than animal lust.

I wanted to die.

It cannot be in that moment that the message came. I think Ramanthanu and Annaz must have pulled me to my feet and had me halfway to the bridge to see if we could make the Rhea fly . . . but though I stretch my memory as far as it will go, I cannot remember it any other way, though you—dear Reader—think it low drama.

It must have been in that moment.

Annaz straightened, raised one claw to the place where I guessed his comms patch lay hid beneath the black feathers. Listening, he pivoted to face me.

“What is it?” I asked, fearing the answer. Ramanthanu shifted, drawing closer.

In response, the Irchtani chiliarch tapped his wrist-terminal, and a voice emerged, a voice I thought never to hear again.

“Lord Marlowe?”

“Albé?” I straightened, bad knee groaning as I put my weight upon it. I almost fell. “Albé? Is Cassandra with you?”

Edouard’s response crackled, “She’s here.”

“Where are you?” I lurched to my feet, cast my gaze about the armory as if I might find the man standing in some shadowy corner.

“On the Ascalon,” came the reply. “We had a little company, but the birdos and I saw them off.” The wave went quiet a moment, and when it ran clear, Albé was midway through the next sentence. “ . . . air soon. Can you reach us?”

“They destroyed the weapon, Albé,” I said. “The Watcher is loose.”

“—doesn’t matter,” Albé said. “Need to get clear.”

“Doesn’t matter?” I almost shouted the words. “Are you hearing me? We’ve failed!”

“Have to—” The connection skipped, words repeating themselves. “—still have to-to warn the Empire. Can-can you reach us?”

I looked to Annaz, to Ramanthanu, to the wreck of the NEM.

Full retreat.

It was the only option left to us. Abandon Sabratha, leave whatever survivors remained to their fate. If the governor-general’s people won the day, they would send ships to the Mount of Whales, to the Ocean of Silence. To Phanamhara. They might live. Gaston and the others. Ushara might spare them, might turn her attention on me. Was she powerful enough to slip the bonds of her prison? To escape Sabratha entire?

“We’re on our way.”


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