CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The ship was a black point near the horizon on a course to intercept the Luminous Wake.

“Ready missiles, Captain?” Pine stood with one foot hoisted on the rail, a hand braced against his knee. He’d been on deck since the escape and though the rasp in his voice was evidence of the long night, his eyes were as sharp as ever.

The repairs to the Luminous Wake had been hurried. They’d sealed two weakened points in the forward hull and patched a long gouge on the starboard side, but every repair left them vulnerable.

Caledonia nodded and Pine shoved off to ready their weapons, leaving her with Pisces and Oran.

“Think it’s a trap?” Pisces asked, eyes narrowing on the approaching vessel.

Caledonia studied the ship. When Bullets sailed alone, it was almost always a trap. A single ship was a lure, meant to draw you close before its friends circled in for the kill. It was how Pisces had been captured in Caledonia’s absence. And how they’d lost the Mors Navis.

“Could be.” The location was not ideal for such a maneuver, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still the case.

“Could be a scout,” Oran suggested.

The ship was moving in fast, quickly closing the distance between them. Though slower than an Assault Ship, the vessel was ringed in those gruesome spikes, each studded with dead bodies. Caledonia’s instincts said it wasn’t a trap and the sooner she gave the order to engage the better, but how could she be sure? Maybe this was a moment to run, not fight.

She didn’t know what to trust.

“Cala?” Pisces faced her sister with a knowing expression. “What do you see?”

Caledonia looked from Pisces to the approaching vessel. The problem was she didn’t see anything. Just like she hadn’t seen anything before the attack on Cloudbreak. There was no clear path, no obvious right answer. Fear clutched at Caledonia’s throat. Her next decision could get more people killed, and she didn’t trust herself to know which was the right one.

Pisces moved in closer, her hand twisting in the fabric of Caledonia’s shirt. Such a small yet familiar gesture, one that calmed Caledonia just enough. If she couldn’t trust herself, she could at least trust that her crew was up to one more fight.

Spinning on her uninjured heel, Caledonia called, “Maintain course and speed!”

The bridge crew answered with a confident chorus of “Yes, Captain!” and she turned her attention to Pine and his gunners, now ready on deck with an impressive array of missile launchers.

“The second they’re in range, I want you firing. Understood?”

“Yes, Captain!”

Caledonia returned to her position on the nose of the ship, doing her best not to limp. Behind her, the rest of the crew was coiled and ready, eyes trained on the approaching vessel, fingers resting firmly on triggers.

The wind ripped strands of red hair from Caledonia’s braid, lashing them against her cheeks and eyes, the very tips still bleached a brassy blonde from her short disguise as a Bullet. As it grew out, it looked less like her mother’s vibrant curls and more like hungry flames burning in her peripheral vision.

The ship was closer now. Barreling forward at high speeds. Either they planned to swing around and flank her immediately or they had no intention of stopping. A direct hit of any sort could be devastating for the Luminous Wake, but as this ship grew nearer, she knew without a doubt that a hit from its broad nose would be catastrophic.

She would have to strike first.

“Ready!” Caledonia called, pacing the ship’s approach. “Fire!”

Three missiles flew overhead, screaming against the sky. In response, the Bullet ship attempted to adjust its course while gunners on deck sniped at the incoming artillery. In seconds, they’d destroyed one of the missiles. Two remained.

Caledonia shouted for her gunners to ready themselves as the Bullet ship veered hard to starboard, narrowly avoiding a second missile. The third found its home on their aft deck, exploding with a pop of orange flame.

The ship soared closer still, hemorrhaging smoke into the blue sky. Pine roared for his gunners to raise their shields and open fire.

Now that they were near, Caledonia could see the Bullet crew scrambling to put out the fire. What they weren’t doing, she realized, was taking aim against the Luminous Wake. Not a single gun was pointed at her crew.

“What are they doing?” Pisces asked, dread making her confusion sharp. “Why aren’t they firing?”

That’s when Caledonia saw her.

Standing tall on the forward deck of the Bullet ship was a woman with round hips and dark hair pulled into a severe braid. In her hand, she held a gun, arm resting at her side. Over the narrowing slice of water between them, she found Caledonia’s eyes. Then she raised her gun and fired a single shot into the ocean.

Recognition washed over Caledonia. This was no Bullet, but her friend and ally Gloriana.

After Slipmark, where Gloriana had helped Caledonia to free the captured crew of the Mors Navis, the woman had vanished into the night, only to turn up after the Battle of Cloudbreak with a different ship and a small crew of defected Bullets. They’d become a crucial part of Caledonia’s information network, constantly sailing out and back with news of the Bullet Fleet. Caledoina had dispatched them to verify the Fivesons’ deaths a week ago.

On a different ship.

Before she’d completed the thought, her gunners fired. Gloriana’s crew hit the deck, while she stood tall and unflinching, the gun hanging nonthreateningly in her hand.

“Cease fire!” Caledonia shouted. “They’re friendly! Cease fire!”

The guns stopped, the air cleared, and each crew eyed the other warily. Soon, the two ships were port to port with a bridge laid between them.

“Captain,” Gloriana said, crossing the bridge to the deck of the Luminous Wake with a wide smile. “We thought this looked like the Luminous. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Sorry for the less-than-warm welcome,” Caledonia said with a glance toward the still-smoking patch on Gloriana’s aft deck.

“Warm enough,” Gloriana answered with a shrug. “No one was hurt, and we found the crew we were searching for. Seems like a good day. Or, good enough. We saw what happened to Cloudbreak.”

“I’m glad to see you safe.” Reluctantly, Caledonia started a new fleet tally in her mind. She’d had fifty-four, but as of right now, she had two. “Did you find any others?”

Gloriana gave a regretful shake of her head. “Just us, I’m afraid. We were on our way back in to report when we came upon twenty of Lir’s fleet holding position south of Cloudbreak. We had to sail east to avoid them, and by the time we were making our approach, well, we could see the smoke from miles away.”

Twenty ships.

“They were waiting to pick off the survivors.” The bombs had only been part of the plan.

“How’d you find us?” Pine loomed close, stance rigid. “How’d you get past Lir’s fleet if you were out east?”

Gloriana shifted her eyes to Pine. “That’s the interesting part—we didn’t have to avoid them. Almost as soon as we’d spotted them, they sailed south, straight out of our path. All we had to do was wait them out. Probably helped that we looked like one of them.”

That was enough to rekindle a small flame of hope in Caledonia. If the larger Bullet fleet had moved off so soon, maybe more of her people had made it out of Cloudbreak; maybe they’d survived. And if they’d survived, they would find their way to the rendezvous.

“What happened to the Arrow Sweet?” Caledonia asked.

“We ran into trouble in the southern seas,” Gloriana said with a shrug. “Had to make do with what we could hunt.”

“But why pull his ships away?” Pisces asked, still chewing on Gloriana’s report. “He had us. Why sail before finishing the job?”

“To respond to a bigger threat?” Caledonia said, though she couldn’t fathom what that might be.

“It’s what we were returning to report when we encountered the fleet.” Gloriana gave a tight smile, then tipped her head forward. “Fivesons Venn and Decker are dead as rumored, but turns out Tassos is alive and well, and he still controls the Net.”