War Storm (Red Queen) - Victoria Aveyard Page 0,124

racing up in tangled formation.

Most of our assault made it.

Metal screams along stone, outpacing the waves below, even as they reach higher and higher, casting spray like rain. I spit seawater and blink, glad for my goggles as we push up and over.

Nymphs line the ramparts, marked by blue stripes on clouded gray or black uniforms. Trained Silver soldiers and guards. The garrison of Fort Patriot, bolstered by Lakelander uniforms.

We spill from our boats with little grace, sliding onto the walkway crowning the wall. I use my own armor to stop me from toppling over the edge, while Ptolemus shreds the boat with abandon, sending razor edges spiraling in all directions. The gravitrons fling enemy soldiers into the sea. Fog crawls over the walls and into the fort, obscuring our soldiers. Somewhere, a few of our storms break off. Their job is to call up thunder. Cultivate lightning. Shock and awe the garrison, send them running. Make them think Barrow is here.

Blooms of fire and smoke dot the walls. Oblivions weave, leaving burning corpses in their wake. One shrieks as he’s caught off guard and hurled over the wall into the angry waters.

Fort Patriot crawls with enemy strongarms. Blood of House Rhambos, or their Greco and Carros cousins. One of them, a woman muscled like a mountain, tears a Montfort storm apart before my eyes, ripping flesh and bone like paper.

I keep my head. I’ve seen worse. I think.

Gunfire peppers the air. Bullets and abilities are a deadly combination.

I raise an arm, fist clenched, shielding myself from the assault. Bullets bounce off my ability, flattened or sheered. I catch a few and send them hurtling back into the fog, hunting after the flashes of turret fire.

We have to open the gates. Win the fort.

Our objective, our job, is straightforward but not simple. Fort Patriot bisects the famed harbor of the city, dividing the waters into the civilian Aquarian Port and the War Port. Right now, I only care about one.

The low thunder of heavy guns, the kind found on battleships, beats like a drum. I try to trace the missiles, reaching across the distance to decipher their trajectory. It’s too far, but I can guess. I’m Silver. I know how we think.

“Form a shield!” I shout to the Samos magnetrons, pulling upon the metal from our boats and weapons.

Ptolemus follows my lead, knitting together a steel wall as quickly as he can. The whistle of artillery grows closer and I look up, squinting through the haze. With a snap, I rip the goggles off my face to see an arc of smoke looping overhead.

The first missile explodes fifty yards ahead, pulverizing a section of the seawall, turning friend and foe to gray or pink mist in equal measure. Only the oblivions survive, some naked, their armor and uniforms charred right off their bodies. We cower behind our steel, weathering the blast as it pulses forward.

The smoke stings, acrid and poisoned with bone dust.

We won’t survive a direct hit like that. Not with what we have here. We can deflect the missiles as best we can, but it’s only a matter of time before one of them catches us. “Get off the wall,” I force out, tasting blood. “Into the fort.”

All to plan.

Get the battleships to open up, pummel their own walls. Keep the heavy fire on the fort, not the city or the Air Fleet.

That’s what Cal said they would do, and somehow the idiots are doing it.

Another round hits, cracking stone, as we grapple down the seawall, our ranks bleeding into Patriot. I look back, counting as quickly as I can. Maybe sixty of us made it in, down from our original strike group of seventy-five souls. Seventy-five deadly Silvers and battle-hardened Reds, their guns lethal and precise.

But their fire is reserved for Silvers. I notice they don’t bother with the soldiers in rusty red uniforms, the many conscripted assigned to the Patriot garrison. Some of those Reds follow their officers, running out to fight our ranks as we push on. Fewer than expected, though. As General Farley assured us, the word went out through her channels. The Reds of the city have been warned. When the assault comes, turn. Run. Or fight with us if you can.

Many do, joining our train of death.

Thunderheads pulse above, turning the sky black. Their lightning is unpredictable, less powerful than Mare’s. But a symbol all the same.

Enemy soldiers look up as we approach, the Silvers eyeing what can only be the work