Soon the pinnace had closed to within about a hundred yards of the Profitable. The helmsman steered hard to port to bring the craft alongside as a group of sailors gathered at the lower-deck rail, ready to cast off their securing lines. It was then that Lizanne felt a small hand clutch at her arm and turned to see Tekela, face pale and eyes wide as she pointed at something in the sky.
The drake was high enough to be out of range of the Profitable’s guns, but the angle of the sun drew a faint red glitter from its scales as it banked and turned for the east. Lizanne went to the junior lieutenant commanding the pinnace and demanded his spy-glass before training it on the eastern horizon. An “enemy in sight” signal was already blasting from the Profitable’s sirens by the time she picked out the tell-tale silhouettes resolving through the morning mist. Warships. There were five of them, all either frigate or sloop class. She saw what at first appeared to be a thick pall of smoke rising from each of the ships then realised it to be a swarm of drakes.
“Change of orders,” Lizanne said, returning the spy-glass to the lieutenant. “Make for the Viable Opportunity. Tell Captain Trumane to head east at best possible speed and signal the rest of the fleet to follow. He is not to linger for any reason.”
She stared at his blanched, near-panicked features until he gave a nod of assent. “What are you doing?” her father asked as she moved to the prow of the pinnace.
“I left something behind.”
Lizanne climbed onto the prow and took out her wallet, extracting a vial of Green and exchanging it for the exhausted one in the Spider before injecting all of it along with a quarter vial of Red. She would need it to ward off the chill. She glanced back, seeing Tekela struggling in Jermayah’s grip as she sought to follow. “Take care of her,” Lizanne said before diving into the sea.
The Profitable’s main batteries were firing as she scaled the stern anchor mounting and vaulted onto the lower deck. The cruiser’s guns fired according to a pre-set sequence so as not to buckle the ship’s structure with the release of so much energy at once. The resultant roar was therefore continuous and deafening, drowning out the cacophony of shouted orders as the crew scrambled to their battle stations. The Profitable’s blood-burners came on-line when she made her way onto the mid-deck, the ship lurching into accelerated motion as Mr. and Mrs. Griffan lit the product in her dual engines. Apart from their brief and distressing sojourn through the revolution-torn streets of Corvus, neither of the Griffans had been in battle before and Lizanne had to suppress a pang of sympathy for what they were about to experience. They are not your mission.
She was obliged to struggle past a throng of rushing sailors to get to the officers’ quarters, opening the door of Tinkerer’s cabin to find him lying on the deck just as she had instructed. He stared up at her with bright eyes, though his face was typically lacking in animation. She noticed he also had a small bottle clutched in his hand. “I stole it from the ship’s medical bay,” he explained, following her gaze. “Potassium chloride. You said to seek out the most efficient means.”
“Best hold on to it for now,” she said. “Get up. We’re leaving.”
She led him to Makario’s cabin where she found the musician playing a surprisingly jaunty tune on his flute. “Thought I’d prefer my death to be accompanied by something cheerful,” he said.
“It’ll have to wait. Follow me, and don’t dawdle.”
She led them both to the corridor leading to the middle of the ship where they could scale a ladder all the way to the lower deck. They were halfway down the ladder when the ship gave a sudden, violent shudder. A loud high-pitched groan of protesting metal echoed all around.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Makario observed, holding on to the ladder with a white-knuckled grip.
“She’s been hit,” Lizanne said, continuing to climb down. “And it won’t be for the last time. Keep going.”
On descending to the lower deck she started for the stern, dodging around sailors laden with equipment and ammunition. The ship heaved several times as they made their way aft, Lizanne deducing that Captain Verricks had thrown the Profitable into a series of evasive manoeuvres. Even through the thick iron bulkheads and continuing roar of the main batteries she could hear a familiar rapid percussive thump and growl. Secondary armament, she realised. The drakes must be close.
The pale rectangle of an open hatch appeared ahead and she started forward at a run, then came to a sudden halt as the ceiling buckled, the metal tearing open to flood the corridor with smoke and flame. Thanks to the Green in her veins Lizanne recovered quickly, the ringing in her ears and blurred vision subsiding after only seconds. Makario and Tinkerer were not so lucky. The musician required several hard slaps before he regained enough sensibility to stand whilst Tinkerer remained unconscious, though mercifully free of injury.
“Did you have to bring him?” Makario enquired as Lizanne hauled the artificer’s slight form onto her shoulders.
“Just be grateful I brought you.”
She was obliged to step over the mangled remains of several sailors before reaching the hatch, stepping out into the open air to find the stern of the Profitable Venture in shambles. It appeared the cruiser had been hit by at least four shells from a salvo of five. One of the rear batteries was a complete wreck, the armoured housing shattered and the gun-crew transformed into charred lumps of flesh. Two large holes had been punched into the deck from which smoke issued forth in copious amounts. The surrounding ironwork glowed a deep red as the inferno beneath raged unchecked. It was clear that her original plan to make for the aft life-boats was now out of the question.
“By the souls of all the emperors,” Makario breathed as a large winged form soared through the smoke. The Red gave a brief squawk before opening its talons, allowing something to tumble free of its grip, a man-sized, man-shaped something.
The Spoiled landed directly in front of Lizanne, no more than three feet away. Time seemed to slow then, thanks to the Green, which had a tendency to increase perception in times of great stress. Therefore, Lizanne was able to discern a great deal about the Spoiled in the space of the next few heart-beats. She saw that it was male, stood an inch or two over six feet in height and appeared to be wearing a greatly modified version of a uniform normally worn by Protectorate infantry. Various trinkets had been sewn into the uniform’s tunic, cap badges from Protectorate and Corvantine regiments along with what were unmistakably human teeth and other more fleshy tokens. It also carried a .35 Dessinger long-barrel service revolver in one clawed hand and a tribal war-club of some kind in the other. She even had time to look into its eyes and be left with absolutely no doubt that it was about to do its best to kill her.
“Catch,” Lizanne told the Spoiled and threw Tinkerer’s unconscious body at it. Doing the utterly unexpected was a tactic that had worked for her in the past and so it proved now. The Spoiled nimbly caught Tinkerer in its arms then wasted a few precious seconds staring at Lizanne, its spined brow creasing in bafflement. She drew her revolver from her skirt pocket and shot it in the eye.
At least they die like a human, she thought, bending to retrieve Tinkerer’s body. “Take that,” she told Makario, nodding at the Spoiled’s fallen revolver.
“I . . .” Makario was blinking rapidly, face white with shock. It seemed even the depredations of Scorazin hadn’t prepared him for this. “I don’t like guns.”