Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

Jacoby knew now that he'd been right to build multiple layers into his trap. The only rational escape route for her yacht was perpendicular to the disk of the city, and his ships that had pinned down her escort had that way covered. No matter what she did now, he had her.

'Venera, you can't escape!' he yelled. 'What you're doing is suicide.'

'It's only suicide if it kills ya,' said the soldier from Liris with a grin.

They were weightless now, flying upward at the tangled underside of the docking cylinder. Jacoby found himself zipping past the yin-yang staircase, looked into the astonished eyes of a businessman sauntering down it. All around him Venera's soldiers were letting go of their ropes, strapping big foot-fins to their feet, and readying grappling lines and hooks.

Freed of any significant centrifugal gravity, momentum carried them forward now--not up, because there was no 'up' anymore. The soldier from Liris let go of the slackening rope and began vigorously kicking his feet. Foot-fins weren't a strong mode of propulsion, but in cases like this they could at least change your heading, and he was angling himself and Jacoby out of the maze of cables and into the open air next to the city. The other soldiers were doing the same--and ahead of them was the lip of the docking cylinder.

'Ready grapnels!'

Something whizzed past Jacoby's ear: gunfire from the docks. He shouted and pointed, but Venera's lads were already laying down return fire. Figures ducked and dove into the cable forest inside the cylinder as her men tossed grapples to catch its lip. Somebody threw Jacoby's man a line and they hauled themselves in, and then there they were, standing tiptoed on the burnished edge of the city's axle.

Venera made a great leap, forty feet across the curve of the cylinder, to her yacht. Her men followed in ones and twos while their friends laid down covering fire. When it was his turn, Jacoby tried to twist free, but all he got was a blow to the ear and then he, too, was landing next to the yacht's hatch.

Inside, the thin vessel was stuffed with trigger-happy, adrenaline-charged men. 'Bring him forward,' Venera commanded, and Jacoby was hauled up to the cockpit. Bullets pinged off the hull and one starred a porthole as he passed it.

'Your survival depends on finding us a safe way off this city,' Fanning said to her prisoner.

'There is none,' Jacoby told her. 'Surrender now.'

'Very funny, Jacoby.'

'I'm serious,' he said. 'You'll be exposed to fire from the city all the way. Most of the gun emplacements that used to encircle Spyre were moved here and hung in the city.'

'These guns,' mused Fanning. 'They point out? Not down?'

'You mean, down past the rim? No. But to go that way, you'd have to fly right by them...'

She nodded. 'But how many of them point into the city?'

Jacoby blinked at her. She had no rational choices left; but this was Venera. 'You can't mean to--'

Fanning turned to the pilot. 'We're going to do a matching maneuver to the city's rotation, then lower through it. Can you manage it?'

The pilot, a sandy-haired, windburned veteran, simply raised his eyebrows. 'Not without consequence,' he said.

'But it can be done?'

'Y-yes...'

Jacoby considered letting her go right then. He had no intention of killing Venera Fanning; in the great game, she was a vital token (and besides, he liked her). What she was proposing to do was far more likely to get her killed than he was.

If he let her go, though, he would have suffered two serious blows to his plans. He'd never be able to forgive himself for being so weak; so he bit his lip and just cursed past the blood on his tongue.

Outside the broad windscreen, Jacoby could see the docking ring rising past, and the forest of cables and chains swinging into view. Bullet trails sketched a cage around the ship, but none impacted; his men knew he was aboard.

'I'm prepared to be reasonable,' Venera said suddenly. She'd braced herself, legs splayed straight at the floor and wall, both hands on the ceiling. Outside the windscreen at her back, cables whipped past, disturbingly close. The gunfire had ceased.

'Hmm-what?' He couldn't look away as narrow miss after narrow miss nearly cut the yacht in two. They were arcing down now, angling through the cables toward the city's rooftops.

She made a moue, eying him. 'I'd be happy to drop you off with a pair of foot-fins and a bottle of water. Maybe in a handy cloud, once we've left the city behind. What do you say?'

There was no way they were going to survive the next five minutes, but the offer was touchingly generous. Jacoby said so.

'Threading the needle,' said the pilot. 'This could get bumpy.' The yacht's engines roared and with a stomach-churning slewing motion, they dropped into the narrow gap between a mansion and a school. Jacoby caught a glimpse of astonished faces, pointing fingers.

'So tell me, what was the plan?' When he didn't answer, Venera reached out and grabbed his chin, turning his face to hers. 'Focus.'

A crash came from somewhere behind them and the ship shook. In his peripheral vision Jacoby saw another tier of houses slide up past the windscreen.

He wasn't about to tell her his plan, but Inshiri's was another matter. 'The hostages were bound for somewhere outside Virga,' he said. 'Derance called it the 'arena.' I'm unclear on the aeriography--'