Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,77

a distance, estimated Lir’s fleet to be at least three times that number.

That wouldn’t matter as long as their teams got control of those gun towers. But they wouldn’t know if those teams had been successful until the battle begun.

Getting into position took the better part of the day, and they settled over anxious waves to wait out the night. It had been three days since the infiltration team departed. They had until tomorrow morning to be ready. At the first blush of dawn on the fourth day, Caledonia’s fleet hovered like a cloud a half mile from shore, where the Holster was a dark spot nestled against hills edged in faintest bronze.

In all the stories she’d heard of this place, the town was like a cage. Caledonia had expected it to be like Slipmark, with intimidating gates outside the harbor and a knifelike boundary to its buildings. But as sunrise drew the Holster against gentle hills, Caledonia realized she couldn’t have been further from the truth. There were no gates outside the harbor, and the edges of the city were smudged and indecipherable. This place was sprawling, like a spill of blood in water, spidery fingers stretching in seemingly random directions, all stemming from a dense center.

Caledonia stood on the bow of her ship as the wind drove into her eyes, determined not to move until she had placed every landmark she’d studied on the map. Five towers of black stone stood at intervals around the city, each bearing heavy guns capable of firing over miles. Between them and the harbor, the city crouched low, buildings capped in reflective solar plating that would blind anyone in the harbor as soon as the sun sliced west. The breakers Heron had marked on the map crouched low in the water, marking the edge of the harbor. Just outside of those breakers, a hundred ships sat ready to receive her.

Somewhere inside that city, Lir was watching as dawn slowly withdrew the cover of night to reveal her fleet. The thought left her flushed with satisfaction.

“Hime,” she called. “Launch the flare!”

“Gunners ready.” Pisces shouted to be heard across the deck.

Above, the sky burst with a single red flare. Bloody against the purpling sky. A battle cry.

For a single moment they sailed as if suspended in time.

The Holster was a quietly glimmering jewel in a rough cut of stone, and they were the rumbling storm rushing forward. Then an alarm rose over the town. In response, the harbor, and all those hundred ships outside the breakers, came to life.

Pisces and Hime gathered at Caledonia’s sides. Behind them, the rest of the crew stood with hands twisted together and mouths bent into stern lines, their hearts steely, their eyes pinned to the towers on the hill.

“Think they made it?” Pisces asked.

They made it, Hime answered.

Caledonia only nodded as she pictured Pine and Gloriana, Folly and Tin, Ares, and the rest of her brave crew who’d accepted the mission without protest. Nothing would stop them from completing their task. She knew that the way she knew to trust the ocean beneath her hull.

They saw the orange flash of a muzzle before they heard the crack of the gun. It was followed by four others as one by one each of the gun towers fired.

On them.

Wherever the infiltration team was, they didn’t have control of those towers.

“Incoming!” The shout echoed across the deck as the crew scrambled, half to take aim at the incoming artillery, half to train their guns on the ships now roaring toward them.

Lir’s fleet was on the move. The towers were still in his control.

Caledonia had a choice to make: stay and fight knowing she was at a steep disadvantage, or run.

“Your orders, Captain?” Pisces asked. Her eyes were bright with alarm and furious determination.

Turning to Hime, Caledonia saw that same determination flashing in her dark eyes. Your crew is brave, Captain, she signed.

That was all Caledonia needed. She spun on her heel and hurried back to the bridge, calling, “Engines to full! Take us in, Nettle, and keep us in range of those guns.”

“Yes, Captain!”

The Luminous Wake surged forward, driving toward the incoming ships as up on the hill the gun towers fired again.

“We knew this was a possibility,” she said to her bridge crew. “Our job now is to trust our team. We need to give them time to seize the towers. In the meantime, I want us on Lir’s ships. Make it as difficult as possible for those gun towers