brought with him. It was, he'd explained, a gift from the oaks.
'If every ship follows them to the letter, without exception,' said Keir. He spoke with complete self-assurance: adult self-assurance. The man whose arm Leal held now bore no resemblance to the boy she'd met in Brink. The change was uncanny.
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
She finally spared a glance outward, and nearly froze. The sky was jammed with ships, explosions, and spinning bits of metal. The
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.
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.
* * *
IT EMERGED FROM a 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
