Hayden pulled out his knife and cut the strap tying the boatswain to his seat The man was watching Martor and didn't notice. Then Hayden took a net and threw it over the boatswain's head.
"Hey! You bastard, watch what you're—"
Hayden lit the rocket tied to the net just as Martor was lighting his own. Sparks showered everywhere and they both ducked down covering their eyes. When Hayden looked up again, both the mine and the boatswain were gone.
Martor stared at the empty seat. "Where'd he go?"
"I don't know." Hayden spread his hands, looking surprised. "One second he was here, then he was gone. Must have caught a stray bullet."
Far out there, if you knew where to look, the fading ember of a rocket poked into a cloudbank and disappeared. Hayden watched it go then turned to Martor. "Listen," he said, "this isn't going to save the Rook. I've got a better idea."
He took them over to the next mine and Martor netted it. "Don't light the rocket," Hayden told him. "Just string it out behind us." They did the same with the next mine, and the next. Soon they had five of them dangling in their way.
"Now we get out of here," said Hayden.
"But the admiral told us to—" Martor hastily grabbed the sides of his car as Hayden put on the power. They shot up and away from the mined air—and the battle—heading straight for the mists that hid the bergs.
"Light more flares. We'll need to see where we're going." He slid them into the clouds at an incautious speed, trusting to his own skill to avoid hitting anything. The flares made a sphere of leaf-green light around them, and only the occasional wisp of moisture fluttering past showed that they were moving at all.
It was freezing in here, and Hayden took inspiration from that: follow the chill. He slowed the bike and let it drift in the air currents until he felt it enter a river of cold. Then he cautiously nudged them forward.
Out of the darkness, a vast turquoise shape emerged—a long sleek fish-shaped mountain of ice covered with knobby protuberances. Hayden could make out its tip off to the right, a dangerous white spike intermittently lit by distant explosions. To the left, the shape wove off into blackness.
He wrestled the bike in that direction. Martor was silent now, puzzled but obviously intrigued. As Hayden circled the berg he saw what he was looking for: there was a spot where the giant icicle narrowed to a thickness of only a few yards. In the minuscule gravity created by Virga's collective air and water, this neck was enough to hold up the rest of the bulk.
"Martor, I want you to fire a mine at that crimp there." He pointed. Now the boy's eyes widened with understanding and he hurried to obey.
Hayden ducked away from a cascade of sparks, then looked up to see that Martor's aim was good. The mine sailed silently at the ice, contacted it and—
A flash of orange lit the night and moments later the thunderous bang of the explosion made Hayden flinch. As the smoke cleared he saw that the neck of ice had been severed. A white splinter shot past his head, barely a foot away, but he hardly noticed. He was watching the gap that now existed between the ice attached to Virga's skin, and the long berg that had hung down from it.
"It's widening," he said after a few seconds. "Martor, do you see it? It's starting to fall."
The boy grinned. "Let's do another one."
THE SHIP WAS a madhouse full of screaming, gunshots, and the clash of swords. Chaison Fanning had his sword out, but his staffers were in the way. One of them interposed himself between Chaison and the silhouetted form of a pirate whom he was about to attack.
Chaison had a savage moment in which he considered stabbing the man to get at the pirate. What he needed above all else was to take the heads off a few of those swine who were threatening his ship, his men, and his mission.
Chaison slipped past the well-meaning fool and his sword fight, and dove for the hangar. A knot of men was struggling unsuccessfully to prevent the pirates from gaining access to the ship proper. Chaison flew over to join them, being careful to look past the heads and struggling arms in his way and assess the enemy. The hangar was mostly full of low-lifes and bullies who were unused to an even fight, but they seemed to be led by a tight vanguard of ex-Aerie naval officers who had thrown themselves across the space between the ships with no regard for bullets or blades.
"Shoot the leaders!" He grabbed a rifle and aimed past a pair of men who were fighting a freefall sword fight, blade in one hand, long curving belaying hook in the other.
"But sir!" The damned fly who'd buzzed around him earlier was back, panting but unscathed. "What about the fleet? Your orders?"
He whirled, murderous rage causing him to level the rifle at the man.To his credit, the officer paled but stood his ground. "They need an order," he said.
Chaison cursed and grabbed him by the throat. "Don't ever," he hissed, "make the mistake of thinking I can't fight and plan at the same time." Then Chaison dove past him, making for the bridge.
The way was blocked. He blinked in surprise at the staved-in beams and boards that filled the narrow passage beneath the centrifuge. That didn't look like rocket damage. A prow? Had they been rammed while he was looking the other way?
It hardly mattered. He pried some planks out of the way and stared out at the dark.The battle was going much as he'd expected; the pirates had the advantage of available cover and were using it shamelessly. But the five ships on the other side of the mined zone were making mincemeat out of them anyway. They don't need my help, he decided. Taking a moment to run down his list of priorities, he turned to the staffers and said, "Where's my wife?"
"Uh, the bridge, sir."
"All right. We're going to have to get there, that's where the scuttling triggers are located. Time to do a little outside climbing, boys."
He kicked at the broken planking and soon had made an opening big enough to worm through. The staffer who'd confronted him earlier put a hand on his arm as he made to go through it. "Let me go first, sir. We don't know what's out there."
Chaison looked at him in surprise. "What's your name?"
"Travis, sir." He looked more like an actor playing some idealized naval officer than a real man. Why, they were in the middle of a battle and his uniform wasn't even scuffed! But he looked calm and composed, unlike the rest of his team.
Chaison grinned at him. "You've got a fine sense of propriety, Travis, but you're a bit impertinent." Travis looked crestfallen and Chaison laughed. "Get going! We'll talk later."
Travis made it outside and apparently didn't the; his hand reached back through the gap to help Chaison and the other staffers clamber out. They found themselves at the bottom of a huge dent in the Rook's hull. Nothing that the carpenters couldn't take care of. Chaison looked out and saw that both the Rook and the pirate had stopped spinning. They were lashed together now by dozens of ropes. The nearest hatches on the pirate were twenty feet away, and while men were popping out of those every few seconds, none looked forward and spotted Chaison's small group. It was tempting to start picking them off, but that would be a fool's game; they wouldn't last a minute before somebody sniped them from behind a porthole.
"There's a fine irony," commented Chaison as he groped for purchase on the streamlined hull. All around was nothing but air, the endless abyss of Virga; a misgrab here would send you on a slow trip around the world, with the birds, bugs, and fish making a moving feast of you along the way.
"What's that, sir?" Travis appeared next to him. Both of them clung by their fingernails to the gaps between hull planks, moving themselves forward with slow swings so as not to lose that purchase.