Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

23

EVERYBODY KNEW, IN an abstract sort of way, that if the legendary Virga Home Guard did exist, they must have ships. Yet even Antaea, who knew the Guard intimately, found herself silent in the face of the truth.

Inshiri Ferance's alliance had its own armada, and it might have been the biggest of its kind ever assembled. Antaea had braced herself in a gunnery port and, with wind whipping past her and sky above, below and to both sides, watched the muster of a thousand battleships. They filled the sky like swarming insects, each surrounded by a buzzing retinue of smaller craft. Contrails confused the view. Yet behind them, something impossible was looming.

The First Line fleet was in cube formation. From here, many miles away, it appeared as a solid thing, a blued-out silhouette moving behind a veil of pale sky. Clouds and cities drifted in front of it. There was no way to distinguish individual ships in that mass, but she knew some were the size of Rush's town wheels.

This was not the flagship of Inshiri's fleet. Ferance would never have been so stupid as to ride in that big a target. Instead, she had commandeered the Thistle, the fastest courier-class sloop she could find, a powder-blue needle bristling with engines. Around the Thistle flew a swarm of armored bikes, an escort armed with ship-busting missiles and heavy machine guns. Antaea badly wanted to be riding one of those, but Inshiri had forbidden it. She had to keep reminding herself that, vile as Ferance was, her cause was the right one. If it hadn't been, Antaea would cheerfully have killed the woman by now.

Trailing well behind the sloop was a fuel tanker disguised as a hospital ship. A little breaking of the rules of war ... Inshiri had shrugged: Well, these things happen.

The armada and the First Line fleet were only here to open the door a tiny crack; then Inshiri's ship would slip in. The Last Line was in sphere formation around Candesce, their own forces supplemented by those principalities that had sided with them at the last minute. Somewhere far away, Chaison's relief force would be approaching.

The thought of him made Antaea sad. His own glorious armada was an afterthought. It could do nothing. It was a joke. Everything would be over by the time it got here.

Antaea had come out here to watch sunoff. Candesce's great beacons had been dimming for some minutes, and now they were flicking off one by one. From a distance, the sun of suns looked like a single incandescent point of light, but she knew it was really an entire region of air populated by dozens of suns. Suns--and other ancient mechanisms whose purpose and potential no one understood.

While Candesce was alight, the Last Line fleet had an advantage. They had fire and blinding radiance at their backs. But as soon as that light faded ...

A faint sound reached her over the tearing noise of the engines. Sirens--bells. Abruptly, the cruisers of the armada began to turn and flock, and the carriers coughed bikes and armored catamarans into the air. She took a deep breath, leaned out, and saw orange and white flashes dotting the sky where the last of Candesce's light was fading.

It was time.

* * *

TWO WALLS OF ships met in the hot air just inside Candesce's exclusion zone. Fire erupted along the line of that meeting as cruisers and battleships unleashed broadside after broadside at one another. In seconds the battle scene became opaque with smoke. The smaller escorts began peeling off from the core of the battle because visibility was nil, the air was full of shrapnel and debris, and worst of all, all the oxygen was getting used up. Any jet that flew into the expanding spherical aftermath of a fire would choke and die from anoxia, and if its pilot didn't get out he would quickly follow. From outside, the grinding and convulsion of vast whale-like ships, the bikes and catamarans and trimarans, poured withering machine-gun fire at the larger craft, and each other.

Venera Fanning, watching through a tiny porthole in Inshiri Ferance's ship, saw the traces of bullets flung in random directions--bullets that might travel a thousand miles before finding a destination--and fingered the scar on her chin.

* * *

SHEER MOMENTUM CARRIED the invaders through ten miles of Last Line defenses. The plan was to punch a hole in the shell and pour the rest of the fleet in behind it. The Last Line knew this, so as the blunt needle of battleships pushed forward, they gave way--then, at a signal, re-formed in torus formation, and squeezed.

The principalities were sleepless--and the citizens of many nations muttered in wonder at what appeared to be Candesce waking only hours after it had gone to sleep. An ominous red smudge appeared in the purple air inward of the six-hundred-mile-diameter shell of city lights and new suns that surrounded Candesce; and gradually it grew. It became a roiling sphere of fire, dozens of miles across, flickering with internal explosions and clots of smoke. In the cities, among the farms, errant missiles suddenly appeared out of nowhere, shattering ancient buildings and scattering crops. A whisper filled the air--not some echo of the battle, but the sound of millions of wings as countless birds and schools of disoriented fish fled the battle.

Leal had found an out-of-the-way corner in the bridge of Chaison Fanning's flagship, the Surgeon. This spot boasted a tiny quartz window, inches thick, and in an unwitting mirror image to Venera, she had watched the battle through this for hours. The alliance fleet was moving to join the action as quickly as it could, but the air here was thick with hazards: trees, houses, town wheels, and a million untethered and lost objects. Chaison's ships had to nose their way through this dense cloud, while at any moment the battle ahead of them might end.

The bridge was full of muted sounds, the hum of machinery, tactical discussions, the crackle of chart paper. Despite her best efforts, Leal nodded off, one hand against the window. She was still there when, hours later, light began to well up between her fingers. Candesce was lighting again.

Startled voices roused her. Blinking, she saw the bridge crew surrounding a circle of light on the back wall of the cone-shaped chamber. There were no large windows in this room, which was set well behind the armored prow. Outside light was piped from telescopes in the nose and projected on the white rear wall. With the flip of a lever, close-in or distant images could be put there, an effect that had seemed magical to Leal when she first saw it; but the images were dim, and they wavered. What she saw now was clear enough.

A long scar of smoke and wreckage led from the edge of the exclusion zone almost all the way to Candesce. Ferance's battleships had pushed the Last Line fleet back, and pouring in behind them came a gray cloud that must be the First Line armada.

Leal pushed off from her corner. "We're too late?"

Chaison was chatting with two officers and, perversely, smiling. He saw Leal and waved her over. "They took too long," he said. "Look at what's happening ahead of them."

She could hardly miss it: Candesce's suns were coming on line, one by one. "They're caught!"

Chaison nodded. The Last Line fleet had retreated, maybe deliberately, drawing Ferance's battleships and cruisers ever closer to the sun of suns. That was their destination--but they had to get there in time to deploy the key and enter Candesce's control rooms. The Last Line had given them hope, falling back quickly enough to draw them in, then putting up a fierce resistance right outside the machineries of the giant sun. The goal was tantalizingly close--too close to give up. When the attackers realized that the rest of the Last Line fleet had circled around behind to cut them off, it was too late.

"But..." She shook her head in horror. "They'll all be incinerated!"

"Not the Last Line," said Chaison. "Their ships are mirrored and insulated. They can't stay for long, but they'll survive this."

Leal couldn't speak; and soon, the triumphant chatter in the bridge dwindled, and in somber silence they watched as the attackers turned in desperation, unleashing an inferno of missiles into the contrail of smoke and destruction behind them. The sky lit with the scintillation of thousands of explosions, and the Last Line blockade dissolved.

Too late. Whatever happened next was made invisible by light as the great tungsten flowers of Candesce unfurled and opened their eyelike lamps.

* * *

"THOSE IDIOTS!" INSHIRI Ferance threw something heavy and half the bridge crew ducked. "How could they be so stupid, the animals!" Ferance was screaming, her face red, and Antaea had to fight to hide her disgust. If not for the steadying influence of Jacoby Sarto, she might have fled the Thistle already. It would be so easy, after all: just take a bike, fly to some distant corner of the world and leave the fate of Virga in others' hands.

As Jacoby moved to calm Ferance down, Antaea took a deep, ragged breath. This all had to be seen through, even if she had no more stomach for it. She turned and left the little bridge.

The side hatches of the sloop were open and staffers whose uniforms rippled in the headwind leaned out to exchange dispatches with men on bikes. Semaphore men crouched outside on the hull, moving their flag-draped arms in complicated patterns as clerks with writing pads watched. Bikes approaching and peeling off again made a constant howling chorus.

She hand-walked past the organized chaos to the ship's next bulkhead, and pushed through the hatch there into a quieter space. Ferance's more elite passengers slept or talked in small groups here: members of her cabal, outsiders with perfect features and sculpted bodies; and top officials of the Home Guard in whose presence she would once have felt reverent awe. She still trusted them, though the awe had dwindled. If anyone within the walls of Virga knew the truth of what lay outside, it should be these men and women.

Moving quietly past them, she opened the next hatch. The ship's hold was full of weapons, medical supplies, and crates of rations. It was hot back here, and sweat gleamed on the face of the prisoner who perched astride one of the portholes. Venera Fanning looked up at Antaea and grinned ferally.

"Sun's nice this morning, isn't it?" she said.

"I can't believe even you would make light of so many deaths," said Antaea.

Venera snorted. "It wasn't my plan to kill them. Not my plan to be here at all."

"You know why we're here. The current situation is unsustainable. The enemy will keep trying until they finally pierce Candesce's defenses and turn them off, unless we dial down the suppression field to allow us to deploy better countermeasures. That's all this is about."

Venera arched one eyebrow, then raised her bound-together hands to bring something into the light. With a shock Antaea recognized a well-thumbed copy of the book she'd dictated. "I know your plan well," said Venera. "I got a copy when it first came out, you know, though this one belongs to one of the crewmen. I was hoping someday to get your autograph on mine. --You know, something like 'To Venera, whose husband I slept with.'" She twirled the book, letting it go to become a white pinwheel in the air between them. "You describe the plan you and your sister developed with Gonlin. And of course, it's a grand plan. But it's your plan."

"It's the Guard's plan now," Antaea countered. "And what's yours?"

"Leave Candesce alone. You said 'the enemy' would keep trying," Venera went on. "But you are the enemy, and this is your latest try. You're trying exactly what Aubrey Mahallan tried. You're trying to get in. It should be obvious--"

"I didn't come here to argue," said Antaea.

"Then why did you come here?"

She hesitated. It wasn't entirely clear even to her. Or maybe, she was just having trouble admitting it even to herself. "I want you to know I'll protect you," she said. "I won't let Ferance harm you."

Venera sneered. "How touching. You and Jacoby are on the same page, I see. Did you talk about this together? How you'd present a common front, lull me as a team? He made the same promise, and it means as little coming from him as it does from you."

"You don't understand." Antaea moved to within an arm's length of Venera. She looked her in the eye. Deliberately and carefully, she said, "Venera, I will give my life to save yours if I have to. We are on opposite sides of this thing, but we are not enemies. Jacoby and I are your friends, and you will come to no harm from these people as long as I still draw breath."

Venera stared at her for a long moment. Then her lashes dropped to hood her eyes, and she turned away. "Satisfy your conscience however you want," she said. "You're saying this for Chaison's sake, not mine."

Antaea wanted to slap her. Instead, she drew back, reaching behind her for the hatch. "Believe what you want about my reasons," she said. "But the commitment remains."

She left the hold and dogged the door tightly behind her. Then she took a deep breath, and braced herself to go up to the bridge and find out what Inshiri Ferance intended to do next.

* * *

THE LAST LINE had held, at least for now. Smoking battleships from a dozen proud nations fled before Candesce's morning light, turning to regroup only when they'd passed enough veils of smoke that the savage radiance could be countered by venting water. Trailing new clouds, Ferance's armada sought to align its position with the approaching First Line fleet.

Chaison Fanning stood on the nose of the Surgeon and turned a brass spyglass this way and that, judging the situation. His own armada--the triumph of negotiation and diplomacy that had come from the grand colloquy--was equal to Ferance's Virgan allies. All told, though, it was less than half the size of the First Line fleet, which consisted of the largest, most sophisticated, and powerful craft in the world.

A small circle of officers hung in the air near Chaison like uniformed crows. Though she had no function, Leal was out here, too, blinking against the light. A staffer had brought her a helix glass coiled with hot tea, and she'd nearly burst into tears at the small act of kindness.

"What do you see?" the admiral of an allied navy asked Chaison.

"The Last Line're holding their position," he replied in a distracted voice. "They're safe inside the exclusion zone. Looks like Candesce is incinerating or blowing away all the debris around 'em. This will give them plenty of maneuvering room and an excellent look at the invaders."

"And they?"

"Getting a face-full of smoke and char right now. Having trouble regaining formation. But they have all day, don't they?"

"It's a problem."

"What does he mean by that?" Leal asked the staffer who'd brought her the tea. "That they've got all day?"

"They know we're not a threat," said the man with a shrug. "They can regroup, then hit the Last Line again at dusk. And they can keep that up until they've battered a way through."

Chaison bent to look over the short horizon of the Surgeon's hull. "We've got no choice, then. We have to hit the First Line before they can regroup with Ferance's armada." Leal heard several sharp intakes of breath from the others.

One of the admirals sputtered, "But we're no match at all for ... that!"

"Well, it's true we can't fight them in the open, so we won't."

The admiral looked around at the available cover. "But sir, with all due respect, you can't mean to use a city as your shield!"

"No," he said. "I mean to use that." Chaison smiled and pointed with the spyglass.

The other admiral, who was from the principalities himself, said, "Oh..." in a tone of such dismay that Leal was sure whatever Chaison was proposing must involve catastrophic civilian casualties. She looked where they were all gazing now, but once again all she saw was clouds.

Except ... "Is it just me," she said, "or are those clouds green?"

* * *

IT WOULD LATER be called the Battle of the Gardens.

The Sylvan Gardens was the proudest jewel in the crown of the ancient nation of Ofirium. It was a vast volume of air containing countless cultivated groves and clouds of greenery and flowers. Strung along rope and bamboo tensegrity structures miles long, the foliage was arranged into many fantastical shapes; and those shapes changed.

One day the Garden might loom across half the sky in the form of a tableau of vast human shapes. They might be fighting or dancing as the whim of the gardeners dictated. The next morning, a coordinated nighttime rearrangement of forests and lakes might have transformed the sky into a heavenly palace, or a flat painting so gigantic that its far corners were lost in haze. Several times, the Garden had taken on the form of the lost Spyre, and refugees from the ancient wheel had wept to see it.

Chaison Fanning put the Sylvan Gardens between his fleet and the First Line, then once again within the safety of the Surgeon's bridge, gave the order to hurl his battleships forward. "I learned the value of a tree in Stonecloud," he announced just before the Surgeon crashed into a 200-year-old ball of elms. Ancient branches ground and scraped along the hull of the flagship. "Full power," ordered the admiral.

The rest of the fleet followed his lead, roaring past the incredulous gardeners, demolishing centuries of artistry as they snapped up this or that living bauble as a figurehead.

"Sir," said the helmsman nervously, "we've no visibility."

"Proceed," he said. The Surgeon passed sixty miles per hour, then eighty. Such speeds were reckless for any vessel in the crowded air of the principalities; doubly so in this forested region.

"Sir, we're burning through our fuel at--"

"Proceed."

They passed 120 miles per hour. "Sir? Sir!" The helmsman was practically jumping out of his seat. Chaison glared at him.

"One hundred sixty," somebody else said.

"Engines idle and deploy braking sails," Chaison ordered. Horns echoed from the open hatches behind Leal, and then the moderate gravity of their acceleration suddenly reversed: down had been aft, and then suddenly it was to forward. Leal gripped the arms of her chair and listened as protesting branches clutched at and scoured the armored hull again--this time, as the speeding grove left the Surgeon like a ball from a racket.

In this way, Chaison's relief force threw an entire forest at the First Line fleet.

"Fire incendiaries into our little package," Chaison said. "Let's see if we can get their hair smoking."

The First Line had spent their careers among the icebergs and mists of outer Virga. They had trained in total darkness to defend the walls of the world along thousands of miles of empty air. It would be fair to say that none of them were comfortable with the density of the skies here. None had expected to suddenly be facing a wall of flaming forest coming at them at over a hundred miles per hour.

"All ships: knife formation," said Chaison. "Let's see if we can cut them in two." The semaphore men went into their dance, and outside the portholes Leal glimpsed ships peeling off to either side of the Surgeon. Chaison, whose back was to the prow so he could watch the projection on the aft wall, leaned forward, cursed softly, then shouted, "Fire forward batteries!"

A gigantic sound came, and pulling and overturning and bright light, and Leal curled into a ball and put her hands over her head.

* * *

HOURS LATER, A small twin-engined courier ship nosed its way into the smoking remains of the garden. From zenith to abyss, the sky was crowded with soaring vessels, tumbling debris, and welling balls of flame. Spheres and teardrop-shapes of dissipating smoke hung like the ghosts of destroyed battleships. Missile, bike, and ship contrails threaded through the space like the web of some vast, drunken spider.

The little ship slewed past hanging bodies and the writhing shapes of injured men. Here and there airmen wearing angel's wings were leaping to ally and enemy alike, bringing bandages and water. Hospital ships sporting the crests of a hundred nations soared in and out, catching the wounded in nets without slowing down.

It was late afternoon, but Chaison Fanning's relief force had kept the First Line from regrouping with the remnants of Ferance's fleet. Beyond the local chaos, Ferance was trying on her own to push the Last Line back to Candesce.

All four fleets had local knots of density where smaller ships and bikes dove in and out like fish darting at some piece of food. Their flagships nestled deep in these well-defended kernels, and the little ship headed for one of these. It was largely ignored by the dogfighting bikes and maneuvering cruisers, though if any had looked closely they would have seen that it was towing something strange--a black iron ball a dozen feet across, a furnace, maybe, or chemical tank.

The vessel ran up its flags and made to enter the zone around the Surgeon. It was instantly surrounded by bikes and catamarans, and boarded in short order.

Minutes later, an escort formed around it and hove to next to the flagship.

* * *

"SIR, THE FIRST Line have regained their position between us and Candesce."

Chaison Fanning swore.

The bridge stank of sweat and stale air, yet Leal was afraid to leave her seat. They'd exchanged broadsides with an enemy battleship two hours ago, and she didn't want to face whatever carnage she might find if she went aft. Yet the increasing desperation of the men around her, those men who should be most in control, was agonizing. For a long time now she'd been unable to look away from Chaison Fanning, and she felt she'd learned every nuance of expression he was capable of.

"We need to reinforce the Last Line," said one of the admirals. "Any ship that can manage it should break off and--" Chaison shook his head.

"If they break formation they'll be picked off. There's a sphere of gunships around us now. We break out as a unit or not at all."

"But if we coalesce they'll surround us. And it's almost dusk! If Ferance gets to the sun--"

"She won't." Chaison turned to his loyal officer Travis, who hung in the air, ramrod-straight, near the command chair. "It's time," he said. Travis nodded and left the bridge without a word.

"Issue the order to regroup," said the admiral. "Sphere formation, centered on this ship."

The alliance's admirals began shouting, and even though she knew little about military matters, Leal, too, stared at Chaison in disbelief. It was obvious that if Chaison brought the ships into a tight formation now, the First Line fleet could simply surround it and pick off the defenders at its leisure. Worse yet, it would be free to pin them down with a small contingent while sending the bulk of its forces on to reinforce Ferance's drive for the sun.

Yet Chaison held up a hand against the protests. "A tactic works until it stops working," he said. "This one's stopped working. Something new is called for."

The admirals exchanged looks of outrage. "But what--?"

"Sir!" The aft hatch, through which Travis had exited, was open, and a junior officer was waving tentatively at Chaison. The bridge staff glared at him and he began to back away, but the admiral waved him in.

"What is it, son?"

"News from Brink, sir."

"Can it wait?"

"No, it can't."

Leal shouted and whirled in her seat. Framed in the doorway, looking tired and disheveled, but smiling, was Keir Chen.