CHAPTER ELEVEN

By the time Caledonia and Oran arrived in the observatory, the rest of the command crew and Hesperus were already gathered.

It was late. The curtains were pulled against the chilly night air and a fire had been set in the low-lying fire pit. Kae pressed a cup of hot teaco into Caledonia’s hand as she entered. Around the room her crew bore signs of having been roused from sleep. All except for Amina and Hime, who were bundled as though they’d just returned from town. And Nettle, who bounced on her toes and looked like she was physically restraining herself from speaking.

“Captain’s on deck,” Pine announced, fixing Oran with a dead-eyed stare.

The room snapped to attention, heads swiveling toward the sight of their leader. Caledonia took one of the seats near the fire, directly across from Amina and Hime.

“Captain,” Amina said with a sharp nod. “We have a problem.”

Behind Amina, Hesperus glowered at everyone. His jaw was clenched and he bristled with energy, suggesting that the problem was something more of an imminent threat.

“I’m listening,” Caledonia said, setting her teaco aside.

“A rogue ship came in after sundown,” Amina began. “They went through all the usual channels: the ship was searched before moving into port, the crew questioned, everything seemed in order. Hime and I were doing rounds on the dock when they were assigned a berth and began to unload their cargo.” Here she leaned forward, elbows pressed to knees, expression stony. “Their cargo included everything they needed to build a pulse bomb.”

Pulse bombs weren’t explosive in the way of mag bombs, missiles, or even star blossoms. They weren’t incendiary, they were acoustic, made for shaking apart the foundations of buildings or shearing off the side of a cliff.

“Why wasn’t it caught immediately?” Pisces demanded. “Everyone assigned to intake is supposed to know what they’re looking for.”

“They do,” Tin said, rushing to defend the teams she worked so hard to organize. “They all do.”

“But pulse bombs haven’t been used in ages,” Oran supplied. “Their pieces look practically harmless in isolation and Aric stopped their production because they’re useless at sea.”

“Not so useless if your target is basically a mountain,” Pine shot back.

“Cloudbreak,” Hesperus growled. “My city is their target.”

“Yes,” Amina confirmed without turning to look at the man towering behind her. “But there’s more. A single pulse bomb is bad in isolation, but not enough to do more than a little damage. With two or more, they work in conjunction. They amplify each other.”

“What happens then?” Pisces asked.

Hime raised her eyes and signed, They blow a hole in the foundation of Cloudbreak. The entire city could crumble in an instant.

“How many were they planning on building?” Caledonia asked. “How many would it take to destroy the city?”

“They only had enough to build a single bomb.” Amina’s answer lacked the reassurance Caledonia was hoping for. “I’m not sure how many it would take. Five? Six? And depending on where they’re placed, it may take less. These things have a way of setting off chain reactions within structures . . . or mountains.”

“That’s it?” Pisces’s expression went slack.

“That’s good though, right?” Nettle was huddled close to the fire, knees drawn to her chin, all her earlier eagerness sapped by the news. “There was only one and we got it.”

No one could return Nettle’s hope, because they were all thinking the same thing: if they almost missed this one, how many others had they already missed?

“Where’s the crew?” Caledonia stood, straightening her shirt and twisting her hair back into a braid.

“Just outside.” Hesperus clenched his fists at his sides. “It was a small boat, so there are only two of them.”

“Bring them in.”

The room wasn’t set up for interrogation, but Caledonia stepped away from the chairs ringed around the fire to stand with her back to the observatory windows. Pine and Sledge returned with the two men and pushed them to their knees on the hard stone, taking positions behind them.

The men were wide-eyed and strained to keep their balance with hands bound behind their backs. One of them was sandy-skinned with a short beard that wrapped his face in ruddy bristles. The other had skin the pale brown of seashells with hair shaved clean on one side.

“Are you both Bullets?” Caledonia asked. “Or only one of you?”

Neither spoke, but the sandy-skinned man seemed to relax ever so slightly. As though now that he’d been caught, he didn’t have to hide anymore.

Caledonia nodded and Pine stepped forward, quickly divesting the man of his jacket to reveal the skin of his bare arms. There, along his left, were four orange scars.

“And you?” Caledonia asked the other man, whose mouth had gone slack with true horror.

“I didn’t know,” he muttered, shaking his head once. “I—I didn’t know what he was doing.”

Sledge had him on his feet in an instant, hauling him away and leaving the Bullet behind.

“How many pulse bombs are already in my city?” Caledonia asked, crouching to study the man’s face. Wrinkles creased the skin around dark ringed eyes, and gray scattered through his russet brown hair. This close, Caledonia could see just how hard he worked to keep his gaze level and alert, obscuring the effects of the Silt that doubtless coursed through his blood.

“I only brought the one,” he said with an awkward shrug of his bound arms.

“What were you planning to do with that one?” Caledonia tilted her face closer to his, letting him feel the threat of her presence.

“I—” He paused, as if unable to find the lie he needed.

“Who were you supposed to meet with?” she pressed. “And when?”

This time he didn’t even try to find a lie. He smiled, shrugged, and tilted his head to one side. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Before Caledonia could respond, Oran cast an urgent look in her direction.

“Take him away,” she said to Pine, and then to Oran, “What is it?”

“Captain, if he’s already missed his check-in, or if there are others in town, it won’t be long before they know he’s been caught. And if that happens—”

“Oh, hell.” Was it already too late? Caledonia dismissed the question. If she wanted to save Cloudbreak, there was only one way to do it. “We need a full sweep of the town. Pi, Hime, wake the crew. Only people we know we can trust. Amina, I need you to make sure they know what they’re looking for; Tin, organize the teams; Hesperus, create a city-wide search pattern.”

They were gone as soon as the orders were given. In their wake, Caledonia’s mind reeled with the possibilities. How many bombs had they missed? She had to assume there were others. Should she order an evacuation just in case? They’d always predicted Lir would attempt to infiltrate the city. Every layer of security they’d added was in preparation for that inevitability.

But no plan was ever perfect.

“Oran, I need to get on the ground, I need to—”

Before she could finish her thought, a thunderous bomb shook the ground beneath her feet.