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He’s buying time, she realised, turning about and shielding her eyes to scan the eastern horizon. The refugee fleet were dim shapes in the haze now, growing dimmer as they piled on the steam to complete their escape. Time for them but none for us.

“Come with me,” she said, moving to grasp Sofiya by the arm, pulling her upright and tugging her along. Lizanne found Makario propping Tinkerer up against the bulkhead. “I think he’s coming round,” he said, catching sight of Lizanne.

“Let’s see.” She delivered a hard slap to Tinkerer’s jaw, provoking a groan and a vague blink of his eyes. Several more slaps were sufficient to return him to consciousness.

“Please stop that,” he said as Lizanne drew her hand back for another blow.

“We can’t carry you any farther,” she said. “Follow and stay close.”

Fortunately, Sofiya seemed to have subsided into a state of dumb compliance which made it easy to lead her to the ladder and down to the life-boat derricks. “Oh bother!” Lizanne exclaimed, viewing the shattered and blackened remnants of the boats she had hoped to find.

“There!” Makario said, pointing to the end of the row where a single boat, smaller than the others, lay apparently unscathed if somewhat charred. They rushed to it and climbed in, Lizanne checking to ensure it was equipped with oars before turning her attention to the lowering mechanism.

“Won’t someone have to get out and wind it?” Makario asked, his tone indicating a marked reluctance to volunteer.

From above came the grinding whistle of an approaching shell followed by a deafening explosion. “I doubt we have the leisure for that,” Lizanne said, pulling Sofiya into a protective huddle as debris rained down about them. When the cascade stopped she focused her gaze on the ropes from which the life-boat was suspended. “Hold on!” she said and used the last vestiges of her Red to burn the ropes away. The life-boat plummeted ten feet to the water, impacting with sufficient force to tip Tinkerer over the side, though Makario was quick to catch hold of his flailing arms.

“Do you have any Green?” Lizanne asked Sofiya after she and Makario had hauled the sputtering artificer back on board. Mrs. Griffan offered a blank stare in response before shrugging her slim shoulders. “Never mind.” Lizanne turned to Makario and Tinkerer. “Take the oars. I’ll steer.”

Their two male companions proved to be inexpert but enthusiastic rowers, their efforts spurred on by a series of explosions that wracked the Profitable from end to end as they drew away. Lizanne set the tiller to an easterly course then turned to watch the Profitable as it closed on the two enemy frigates.

The huge cruiser’s forward guns kept up a steady barrage as she charged on, Lizanne estimating her speed at close to forty knots. Shell after shell tore into her upper works, transforming much of the superstructure into a mangled mass of twisted smoking metal. Judging from the bodies littering the sea the ship’s Growlers and Thumpers had taken a fearful toll on the attacking Reds, and only half a dozen remained to torment her, swooping down to cast their flames at the sailors who fought back with rifle fire to little effect. Still the Profitable came on, her return fire becoming more accurate as the range diminished. One of the frigates took a full salvo amidships, birthing an instantaneous explosion that tore the warship in two. The stern section sank almost immediately whilst the bows rolled over and lingered on the surface for a short time, Lizanne seeing the ant-like figures of men clinging to the hull.

Not men, she reminded herself, watching the wreck sink beneath the waves amidst a roiling froth of foam and hoping every single member of her inhuman crew drowned along with her.

The Profitable changed course, angling her stern towards the sole remaining enemy ship, sirens blaring a salute to what Lizanne knew would be her final act.

CHAPTER 8

Sirus

He could feel them drowning. Over two hundred Spoiled were on the Losing Proposition and most of them survived the explosion that ignited her magazine and tore her in two. So Sirus was given a fulsome education in the experience of convulsive gasping as salt water invaded throat and lungs. Even amongst the Spoiled panic would take over at the end, subjugated human instincts reborn at the instant of death. The resultant blossom of terror and desperation should have been repugnant, something to slam his mental shields against. Instead he drank it all in. Fear, he had come to understand, was a precious commodity. He could use this. Constant exposure to a life of horrors was creating an ever-thicker callus around his soul, eroding his capacity to feel anything. When his own reserves of fear were depleted now he could summon the memories of the dead to guard his mind. This he did now as he sent a silent pulse of thanks into the fading minds of the Spoiled as they slipped into the depths.

The Losing Proposition had been the fastest and least damaged ship in their small fleet, her original name of the Negotiator scraped from her hull and replaced by something more to Catheline’s liking. It transpired that the Blood-blessed woman had a flair for the ironic. Sirus’s command ship, a heavy frigate once dubbed the IPV Position of Strength, was now the Imminent Demise, a name that seemed increasingly appropriate as the huge Protectorate battleship loomed ever larger in the bridge window.

“Hard to starboard!” he commanded aloud to the Spoiled at the helm, simultaneously sending a thought-command to the engine room: Reverse starboard paddle.

The Imminent Demise veered away as the battleship came on, paddles turning the sea to foam on either side of her hull. Despite the damage that had wrecked much of her upper works, the fire of the battleship’s forward batteries continued unabated. Sirus had ordered the guns seized by the Spoiled the Reds had deposited on the ship but resistance from the Protectorate crew had been ferocious. Consequently, all but a handful from an assault force of over fifty had been killed. They had succeeded in dispatching over twice their number in the savage fighting that raged throughout the ship, but a vessel this size had plenty of crewmen in reserve. Sirus felt sure that one of his squads, all veterans of the Barrier Isles campaign, would have succeeded in silencing the guns if they hadn’t encountered the Lethridge woman.

Sirus’s mind had been fully occupied with marshalling his fleet against the battleship and her fearsomely accurate guns, but the rush of recognition experienced by the Spoiled boarding party had cut through the competing morass of image and sensation. Lizanne Lethridge’s face had been plucked from the memory of one of the few Exceptional Initiatives agents captured at Feros and seared into the mind of every Spoiled by Catheline herself. The image had been accompanied by an implacable instruction: Kill this woman on sight.

They had certainly tried, Sirus taking charge of the squad and orchestrating an assault that should have left Miss Lethridge a bullet-riddled corpse. The notion of summoning a burst of fear to mask his mind and allow her to escape fluttered through his head, but he resisted it. Recognition of this woman had spread throughout the fleet and across the many miles to Feros; Catheline would know.

In the event, no subterfuge was necessary. Sirus had faced many formidable people in battle before, wickedly skilled Island warriors, the Shaman King and grizzled Protectorate veterans during his warship-seizing operations. But watching this woman as she leapt and shot, utilising her powers with an economy and ferocity that was truly frightening, he knew he was looking upon the most dangerous individual he was ever likely to meet.