their huge square-rigged sails to catch the inconstant wind.
A strange outline caught her eye and she nudged the hidalgo awake. Pointing at the shape in the water, she said, “There it is.”
He peered out the window. “That’s the warship?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s enormous.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s putting out a ferocious wake. The engines must be huge. And it’s plowing straight through the shipping lanes.” Lorenzo pressed closer to the glass. “It’s hard to tell from the wake trails, but it looks like they just barely missed the nose of that steamer behind them. And there’s a barge coming up ahead of them. I can’t be sure, but it almost looks like…oh no, they hit the barge!”
Taziri banked the plane over so she could see what was going on for herself. Below them, she saw the mighty warship plowing through the midships of a small barge that was now sinking beneath the waves. More than half of the crippled vessel had already disappeared under the warship’s hull. “Are they insane? They’re killing innocent sailors and passengers. What the hell could they be thinking?”
But she already knew what they were thinking. They were racing to the Mazigh coast to launch their attack, to fire the opening salvo before a defense could be deployed. They were going to use their secret weapon while it was still a secret.
And it’s all my fault. It’s all because I flew over the ship. It’s not even Kenan’s fault for going off-course. It’s my fault because I had to make a second pass over the ship. That was my call. My order.
“They’re heading to Tingis,” she said softly.
“But we can get there first, right?”
She shook her head. “It won’t matter. We’re down to minutes. By the time we land and I tell someone what’s happening, that ship will be within firing range of the city.”
“God help us.” Lorenzo leaned back into his seat to stare at the ceiling. “How long, do you think?”
“Maybe thirty minutes. Maybe less.” Half an hour until those sons of bitches start shooting at my baby girl. Her eyes burned with tears. Maybe I can get there in time. Maybe if I run straight off the landing field and grab a trolley I’ll get home in time to get them out. Yes. I can get them out. I may not be able to save everyone else, but I’m damn well going to save my baby girl. She leaned on the throttle and felt the harsh vibrations shaking the Halcyon ’s frame as the engine roared up to full power. Two needles edged past their red lines.
“Taziri!” Lorenzo shouted over the noise of the engine. “When does steel melt? How hot?”
“What?” She wiped the stillborn tears from her eyes. “I don’t know. Two thousand degrees, I think.”
“What about the skyfire stone? Could it melt through steel?” He grabbed her shoulder and looked back at the bag on the seat behind him. “Could it melt through steel quickly?”
She almost didn’t bother thinking about the question. She was so consumed with planning her route from the airfield to her house, and where to check if Yuba and Menna weren’t at home, and where she might be able to hide them during the shelling that she barely heard Lorenzo. But then his words sank in and she realized what he was proposing.
“Drop the stone on the ship?”
He nodded emphatically. “It burns on contact with anything except that clay. If we drop the stone on the ship, can it burn through the hull and engines and things?”
I have no idea, but if it can save my little girl… “Yes! It’ll work! Get the stone!”
Lorenzo scrambled back to the bag, crouching low to keep his balance as the plane banked back around.
Taziri shoved the sticks forward and let the nose of the plane drop. The Halcyon shot down out of the clear winter sky and streaked low over the choppy waters of the Strait, curling back around toward the enormous warship. On its deck, the massive cannon turrets were slowly turning toward the Mazigh coast.
“Open the door!” She yelled over her shoulder. “I’ll take us across the length of the ship, bow to stern. Drop the stone in the middle of the stern. Even if you miss the engine completely, you’ll still tear apart the prop shafts, or their supports. It should be all we need to stop them.”
Lorenzo waved his acknowledgement as he knelt at the cabin door. With one arm wrapped around the hand rail, he unlocked the hatch and let it swing open. Taziri felt the sudden change in cabin pressure, and the drop in temperature, and the clawing wind whipping her hair into her eyes.
Up ahead she saw the first few muzzle flashes of mechanized guns and the bright lines of tracer fire streaked by the Halcyon ’s wing. It’s just like before. They’re going to shoot us out of the air. “Get ready!”
In her overhead mirror she saw Lorenzo take the clay-studded harness out of the canvas bag and open the clasps on the clay-studded straps. He grabbed the steel handles with his free hand and reset his grip on the hand rail. “Ready!”
A second salvo of rapid gunfire screamed through the air just behind the wing. They’re getting closer.
“Almost there!” she yelled.
A third chatter of gunfire clattered up from the deck of the warship and erupted into a high-pitched cacophony of shredding aluminum as the bullets tore through the Halcyon ’s fuselage. Lorenzo screamed and Taziri looked back to see him fall back from the open door clutching his chest. Half his face was painted red.
No, not him too! And where’s the stone?
A frozen spike of adrenaline stabbed at her spine as she caught sight of the stone rolling out of the harness and back into the small baggage compartment in the tail of the plane.
Nononono!
The Halcyon roared over the bow guns of the warship.
Out of time! Nothing I can do! I can’t help him and fly the plane at the same time!
The Halcyon was juddering and rattling as though the engine might tear free of the plane and leave the metal bird to plummet into the seat.
“UP!” Lorenzo hollered. “UP! Go up! Straight up! Now-now-now!”
He’s alive! She glanced back once to see the entire inner tail of the plane glowing bright orange. Brilliant gold cinders were flaking from the walls and tiny white tongues of flame were dancing in the back of the baggage compartment. The first wave of heat flooded up into the cockpit as she felt her rudder controls growing looser and less responsive.
Lorenzo still clung to the rail beside the open hatch, the entire side of his body drenched in blood. “Dear God please. UP! ”
She had never heard a man scream like that before. Not out of pain or fear, but pure selfless pleading with the Almighty, for the hand of God to intervene, not for himself but for the world, for life itself. Lorenzo’s voice was a conduit from his naked soul to his immortal Creator, and the sound of it snapped her around in her seat. She yanked back on the yoke and the crippled plane leaned back to climb into the pale cloudless sky.
The engine sputtered. Almost out of fuel. Going to stall. Need to level out.
“Keep going!” Lorenzo screamed. “Don’t stop! You can do it!”
She dug her fingers into the shaking flight stick and kept her eyes on the pale patch of blue in her window. Her feet floated off the floor as her whole body’s weight came to press back on her seat and she clung to the controls to keep from sliding out of her seat belts. The needles and dials faded away, the vertigo of having the whole world shrinking away behind her vanished, and all she could feel were the violent spasms of the plane as it disintegrated around her.
The view in her mirror changed sharply and she looked up to see that the entire tail of the plane had torn free leaving only a ragged ring of melted metal around the cabin just behind the hatch. Lorenzo hung limp, his arm still caught on the rail, his face turned down toward the clear view of the sea below, and the deck of the warship beneath them.
Taziri slammed the yoke down and the Halcyon gently, ever so gently, nosed over and leveled out, gliding on wings clinging to their last bolts and rivets. The engine sputtered and coughed, the pistons misfiring and stuttering as they gasped for fuel. Her feet rested on loose and useless pedals no longer connected to the tail of the plane, which was falling back to earth in a blazing comet of molten steel.
She eased the plane down a bit and felt the wings bite into the wind and the Halcyon began to glide. The engine banged once and fell silent.
The distant chatter and thunder of the warship’s guns reverberated distantly through the air. Taziri held the
