Is she … ?
I thought I heard Scootaloo there for a moment. I don't know where she's gone.
Sweetie Belle should have told her the secret earlier.
Chapter 19
Wing Signals
“You're not going to anything stupid again, are you?” said Saffron's voice in her ears.
Sweetie Belle laughed quietly. “I'm long past that. I hope.” She lowered herself a little more.
The familiar mildew-scented darkness enveloped her. A glowing patch of desert visible through the skull's eye floated in the darkness, cut away from its context. Beside it lay the pale green glow of her dial, also floating in nothingness. The faint, intermittent squeaks of the rail above were returned in delayed echoes.
Dignity and the Dulcet had left for Skulltown together, with Gregor the privateers transferred to a cell in the latter where he would be easier to handle, and Sweetie Belle riding with Tom and the aelewyrm hatchlings in the hovercraft.
“How close are we?” she asked.
“A couple more inches,” said Saffron. “Right, that's it. Stop here.”
Sweetie Belle stopped her descent and locked the loop in place.
“Do you want a visual?” Saffron said.
“Yeah.”
Indistinct patches of colour appeared in the darkness. “This is everything that happened since we were last here,” said Saffron. “Give it a few seconds to resolve.” The blobs of colours slowly contracted into to something more structured.
Saffron snorted. “See that?” The largest and most vivid volume, a sharp sphere of red, flashed. “That's from our fight at the sintering facility. There's the signal you sent out to summon the aelewyrms, just like you wanted. And that … I don't know what that is. Someone just used a very strong spell a few hours ago – it looks like a containment spell.”
“Is it important?”
“Well, unless there's someone new we don't know about, Blueberry's up to something.”
“What about Scootaloo?”
“Okay … Yes, I see her.” Everything on the map vanished except for the battle and a thin, cherry-red line emerging from it, first on a shallow curve, then changing direction sharply, turning towards Ilmarinen, then being forced away again.
“The signal from her wings?” said Sweetie Belle. “And that's where she is now?”
“Yes, within a few minutes.”
Nothing else was visible on the map. “How close is it?”
“Close. No more than three hours journey by airship, if we set out now. She's flying – either with her wings or in an airship, I don't know. But she's heading east, passing by us. And I think she's slowing down.”
“They're going to catch her.”
“It seems likely.”
“And this is happening right now? We need to go after her! Is there anything else you can see? Anything we can use?”
“I've got it all. Position, trajectory, deceleration, plus estimates. We can go.”
Without saying another word, Sweetie Belle unlocked the loop and began hauling herself upwards as fast as she could.
Lucille was waiting outside the vision quest cabin and talking politics with Millie. The early afternoon sun glanced off the bleached bone ground beneath her and sent ghostly islands of iridescence skimming across her brown feathers as she turned to Sweetie Belle. “Good news?”
“They're going to get her! The pirates!” Sweetie Belle told them as soon as she got out. “I know where she is, but we need to hurry! Come on.”
Back aboard the Dulcet, Cerise unfurled a map showing the location of Skulltown and the surrounding desert, and lay it across a large table. She scattered a few arrowhead shapes cut from metal and painted in various designs on the corner.
When Sweetie Belle had objected to this delay, Lucille had told her, “We can spare ten or twenty minutes to make sure we do this right.” Part of Sweetie Belle had wanted to insist: This was her friend, her plan, her. But in the end she relented. Don't do anything stupid.
Cerise dropped out the counters on the map. Scootaloo's current location and the privateers who were presumably close behind, as Sweetie Belle had told her. The Dulcet and Dignity back and Skulltown.
“We should be able to catch them,” she said, “if we aim about here.” She noted a location with her pointer. “As your qilin friend said, it's about three hours away. If it were a straight chase, the cruiser has a higher top speed than either of us, but we're coming in at close to a right angle. That's assuming they don't turn.”
“If they do?” said Lucille.
“I'd guess that depends on Scootaloo. And if she turns too sharply, it gives the ships a chance to gain on her. So assuming only shallow turns, if we go here and here …” She moved the friendly counters either side of pirates's trajectory. “ … we'll keep most areas in sight.”
“We have to split up? Is that ever a good idea?” said Tom.
Cerise glanced at him briefly and clicked her beak. “In this case, yes. We have a direct ansible connection, so as soon as either sees the target, both can converge on it.”
“Now as for the attack itself. Sweetie Belle, you said you can damage an engine with these elementals?”
“Unless they're killed first, yes. I might be able to damage guns, too. Overpressure, you know.”
“But we only have a limited number at our disposal?”
“Yeah …”
“The scout has four engines and two gun turrets. The cruiser has six engines and eight turrets. Is that too many?”
“Oh, yeah. In my last battle, fifteen nearly killed me … and I don't think I'm that strong any more.”
“Okay, so prioritise. You only need to damage the engines on one side. We get the scout out of the battle first. Millie, you said you had harpoons. With cables attached?”
“Woven diamond,” said Millie with a wide smile. “A couple kilometre of it.”
“Then if the elementals aren't enough for both, you can slow the other ship by grabbing it and hanging on.”
Millie gave her a mock salute. “Yes ma'am. I've done that a couple of times before, no problem.”
Cerise nodded, then turned to Lucille, who said, “I'm willing to help save Scootaloo, but I don't want a full battle here. I've got my own people to look after, so if at any point it looks like we might sustain major casualties, I'm going to pull out.”
“But while we are there,” said Cerise, “We'll engage with the ships to keep them occupied. That way, they'll have to divide their fire between the two of us.”
“Or three,” Sweetie Belle suggested. “I can ride the aelewyrms. Divide their fire more, and I'll get a better vantage point.”
Three hours in Dignity. The continuous roar of the hovercraft's engines and the rapid but shallow undulations of floor beneath the skirt were familiar now.
Tension built like an an overwound spring in Sweetie Belle's chest. It was overwhelming at first, then exhausting. She paced back and forth. She practiced riding on Bounce's back while it padded about in the confined space and Saffron gave her new commands. The aelewyrms alternated between flying on their own alongside the hovercraft, then coming back into the hold.
Sometimes Tom happily played with them, stroking their mandibles and patting their sides with increasing confidence. Then it seemed his own tension would overcome him, and he would go and sit by the side, scratch at his ears, pace, and meet Sweetie Belle's gaze with a grim look. It felt like there was nothing to say. Then he might go to the bridge and talk to Millie – or drive the hovercraft for a while.
Millie, on these occasions, came into the hold to check if the aelewyrms had damaged anything, and chatted idly about how she could never get a moment's peace.
“It'll be borin' once you lot go home,” she confessed at one point, then paused “Still, nowt can be done about that, I suppose.”
“Maybe Scootaloo will want to stay here,” Sweetie Belle offered, idly stroking Chardonnay behind the eyes.
Millie looked at her blankly for a moment, then smiled broadly. “You're not as gormless as I thought,” she said, then shrugged. “Nah. Scoots and me became friends 'cause we was both pretendin' to be lone wolf types. If we started travellin' together, we wouldn't have that anymore.”
“You could stop pretending?”
“There's only a few creatures in this world strong enough to stop pretendin' and start bein', and I ain't one of them.” Millie stared out the window. “Oh, sod. I'm startin' to sounds like a two-bit philosopher here. Better get back to t' controls.” She waved and trotted up the stairs to the bridge.
Sweetie Belle stared after her, until Chardonnay nearly pushed her off her hooves trying to nuzzle her. She turned to it and wrestled gently with its mandibles held in her aura until Tom came back into the cabin.
A few minutes later, Dignity lurched to starboard and accelerated heavily. The aelewyrms stumbled and Chardonnay complained.
“We've got a sighting!” called Millie.
First it was a flickering thread of light on the pale grey horizon. Then, at last, still smudged by the atmospheric haze, she could make it out as an object: A grey, elongated shape. The pirates' cruiser.
Sweetie Belle took her eye from the telescope and nodded.
“Now look at this.” Millie re-aimed the telescope.
Sweetie Belle looked again. The view looked almost the same, a rock-strewn plain with mountaintops in the far distance, except here there was, for a moment, a flash of iridescence.
“Scootaloo!”
“I think so, yeah. They on the same course you – Saffron – predicted. We're in the right place. Lucille's coming in from the other side.”
“Can we catch them?”
Millie looked out at the plain rushing past below the skirt. “I don't know, lass. It's too close to call. Dignity ain't quite as fast as their airship. But even if we can't we'll be on their tail. We can pressure them.”
They closed the distance quickly. Soon the cruiser, scout and Scootaloo's trail knitted themselves out of the distance smudges until there were clearly visible. The Dulcet emerged from behind the horizon.
The privateers must have seen both ships following them by now, but they didn't do anything. They had no gunships, and they were still out of weapons range.
Millie showed Tom how to aim and fire the harpoons. “I'll pilot, you shoot,” she told him. Sweetie Belle watched them while she made sylphs. Only six – more than that and she'd risk tiring herself during the battle.
Outside, the airships swelled. No more than five or six kilometres away. Less. Millie checked her telescope. “They're aiming their guns at last. You'd best get going.”
“Right,” said Sweetie Belle. She cantered down the steps as fast as she could to where Bounce was waiting, and climbed on its back. The giant rear door opened slowly while she summoned her sylphs about her. The other aelewyrms gathered.
“Oh, Celestia,” she murmured to herself, string out into the open sky and the ground hurtling by only a couple of metres away.
Ears pinned, Tom came up to her, handed her some goggles, and grasped her forehoof. “Good luck,” he said.
Sweetie Belle put them on and gave him a weak smile. “Thanks.” And when he had stepped away, she commanded Bounce forward.
Its limbs banged a rhythm agains the floor, then opened them in one sinuous motion – and they were outside, facing backwards. Bounce swooped round immediately; Sweetie Belle felt like she was being crushed by the acceleration. She shrieked – then it was over, and the was facing forward, winds hammering at her body and trying to tear her away from Bounce, Dignity ten metres below her and falling away rapidly. The sylphs, sharpened into needle shapes, flew alongside her, and the other aelewyrms followed behind.
And ahead, their targets, with guns sticking out from the gondolas and propellers slung from the underside of the envelopes.
The aelewyrms were flying flat out to keep up with Dignity at this speed. Sweetie Belle carefully pulled upwards and to the right to put some distance between her and the hovercraft and make them less of a target. With that done, she fixed her gaze on the two propellers on the right of the scoutship. Destroy those, she told the first two sylphs. They crawled ahead – faster than the airships, but not by much.
The cruiser's guns flashed and roared. Part of the Dulcet's envelope erupted and peeled away. A second later, the scout also fired, this time aiming down. Dignity skated to the side, unharmed as far as she could tell.
When Sweetie Belle looked up, she saw the cruiser's guns were rolling towards her. She nearly froze – then pulled Bounce down a second before the guns fired. A familiar ache lanced through her chest: one of the sylphs, too slow in following her, had been destroyed. That left three to work with. She sent another one after the Scout's guns, and final two after the cruiser's engines.
So if – if all succeeded, that would cripple the scout but leave it able to fire, and slow the cruiser. She'd have to leave the rest to her companions.
Come on. Hurry up!
The Dulcet, firing back in short bursts every few seconds, pulled to the side so the scout was between it and the cruiser. One of the scout's guns exploded, leaving a scar in the gondola.
Sweetie Belle saw another turret aiming at her, and dropped out of its reach before it could finish. Below, Dignity danced back and forth across the rocks. A harpoon trailing a strand of diamond weave shot at the cruiser's gondola; missed; fell back to the desert. A second hit true, but came out a second later. The third didn't fire, because the hovercraft had to slide away from another burst of fire.
A dull, distant pop – and the scout's rear starboard propeller was gone, trailing smoke in its wake. It lurched to the side, slowed, and a few moments later its other engine went up. Sweetie Belle felt the sylphs die; her head spun, and for a few seconds it took all her remaining energy to stay on Bounce's back. A third lance of pain; another explosion. The guns?
When she managed to look up again, the scoutship was floundering – wrenched into a starboard turn by its remaining engines and rapidly decelerating.
Dignity fired a third harpoon. This time, it succeeded – the harpoon stayed, and the thread snapped taut. For a second, the hovercraft seemed to lift – then it thumped down again, cruiser slowed and descended a fraction.
The scoutship, crippled and trailing smoke from half a dozen spots, passed overhead, and fell behind them.
That just left the cruiser, leashed and being dragged back. It seemed to rage, guns firing everywhere, smacking against the rock below, tearing into the Dulcet's hull, trailing Sweetie Belle.
Then her final sylph hit. One of the gun turrets exploded. Shrapnel rained out of the smoke. Sweetie Belle held onto Bounce as tightly as she could, but felt herself slipping anyway. Over, over – the ground loomed beneath her. More shots were being fired, but she couldn't tell who was attacking. The world seemed to tip over –
And with one last effort, she grabbed at the aelewyrm's thick hide with her hooves and aura together, and managed to pull herself back up.
There, she caught sight of one of the remaining turrets aimed straight at her. She yelped and reflexively told Bounce to drop.
The world tilted again; the desert plain became a giant wall ahead of her. Gunfire roared into the empty air above her.
She was falling forward. She scrabbled, but this time her hooves couldn't get purchase. Her aura wasn't strong enough. She slid down over Bounce's head, out into the open air.
Something grabbed her tail. Bounce! With his mandibles he flicked her back upwards. The planes of sky and desert tumbled senselessly about her; she screamed and grabbed at something, anything, to steady herself, but her hooves and aura met only empty air.
She landed sideways on Bounce's back, gasped for breath, felt herself slipping forward almost immediately, then pulled back and steadied herself. She didn't feel certain enough to try and get on properly.
A streak of iridescence caught her eye. Scootaloo must have seen the battle and turned around.
She swooped down low, a tiny speck against the bulk of the cruiser, and headed for the aelewyrms. Sweetie Belle gestured at her to go down, towards Dignity, then took Bounce down on a descent too. Gunfire rattled about them; the cruiser was damaged, torn and scarred in a dozen places, but still going. She put together a couple more sylphs as Dignity approached, then sent them up to another two of the cruiser's guns.
Where was the Dulcet? It had already pulled back, anticipating a retreat.
From below, the plains and Dignity flew up towards her. The rear doors to the hold were open, approaching.
The aelewyrms landed together in a clatter of limbs. Sweetie Belle rolled off of Bounce and fell the the floor. The sylphs she'd left behind died, and what little energy she had left went out of her and left her curled up and gasping.
Something twanged and clattered above the roar of the engine. The hold seemed to tilt as Dignity turned. A few more bursts of gunfire came from somewhere, but they were weak and intermittent.
With a shivering foreleg, Sweetie Belle pushed the goggles aside. Glowing columns of of dust and smoke fell from bulletholes in the roof. She managed to roll over onto her belly and just about stand.
Hoofsteps came clattering down the steps from the bridge.
Scootaloo.
She stared down and Sweetie Belle. The moment seemed frozen, as if everything was encased in glass. Scootaloo looked almost as exhausted as Sweetie Belle felt. Her folded wings glimmered and hummed faintly behind her. Then she rushed forward, grabbed sweetie Belle as she was about to stumble, and pulled her into a hug.
Her rough, tangled mane pressed into the side of Sweetie Belle's face. She smelt lightly of oil and sweat. They sank slowly to the ground, both too tired to stay standing.
“Thank you,” whispered Scootaloo.