The thieves and scholars laughed together.
The forgers in Dara were, as one might expect, skilled at gilding base materials. They could turn a crude wooden carving into a simulacrum of the most precious artifacts made by ancient goldsmiths of Rima, and now they were charged with helping the marshal devise a way to coat the garinafin intestines with gold without destroying the thin membranes.
The scholars and the thieves together came up with the following solution. First, quicksilver was used to wash the inside and outside of the intestines to coat the surfaces with a thin layer of mercury. Next, an amalgam of gold and mercury was made by heating mercury and stirring in flakes of gold to saturation. The resulting amalgam, like molasses, was squeezed through the interior of the intestines and used to soak the outside until a layer coated the surfaces evenly, and then the intestines were brought to a gentle heat to boil away the mercury, leaving a thin, smooth surface of gold to coat the inside and outside walls.
The intestines were then cut into six long segments and coiled up: long Ogé jars with the capacity of arrays of innumerable regular Ogé jars connected in parallel, but small enough to be stored inside ceramic spheres dangling from the airships as ballast.
After they were charged in thunderstorms with the power of lightning, the coiled-up intestines were then coated in a layer of wax to further help isolate and preserve the dammed-up silkmotic force. Wires could be poked through to connect the inner and outer surfaces and draw out the Rapa or Kana variety of the force without a disastrous discharge until the moment it was needed.
The scene that had played out before Silkmotic Arrow repeated itself in front of the other airships. Garinafin after garinafin fell from the sky, struck to death by the bottled-up power of lightning.
“Separate from Plum Formation and give general chase,” ordered Gin Mazoti.
The airships separated from their defensive posture and leveled off into cruising configuration. The oars were extended, and the prey now became the predator. They went after the remaining terrified garinafins, who could not understand how their opponent had suddenly gained this fearsome new power.
Another long, mournful bone-trumpet blast sounded from the deck of Pride of Ukyu.
Tanvanaki angrily clenched her jaws. With only six garinafins left under her command, the two sides appeared to be evenly matched. The garinafins, however, had lost their fire breath to the bamboo caltrops and were near exhaustion, and their riders were losing faith in the wisdom of this war. On the other hand, the crews of the Imperial airships were cheering wildly at the successes of their new weapons. It was obvious who had the advantage.
But it was her duty to carry out the orders of the pékyu, to fight for the future of her people. She had to find a way to squeeze out an advantage.
Tanvanaki placed her speaking tube against the back of Korva’s neck and issued a rapid series of orders that the garinafin transmitted to the others with a series of loud moans and bellows.
Five garinafins seemed to lose their will and retreated from the battle, escaping in different directions, and the Imperial airships gave chase, one after each. The garinafins appeared tired, their movements sluggish. The crews of the Imperial airships cheered and redoubled their rowing, and as they closed in on their prey, let loose silkmotic bolts at the lumbering beasts.
But the garinafins somehow always managed to dodge out of the way, and numerous silkmotic bolts were wasted.
Aboard Silkmotic Arrow, Gin Mazoti pondered the tactical situation. The naval fleets were almost close enough to engage each other, and some of the Dara ships were already lobbing stones from catapults at the city-ships. The Lyucu fleet, unfamiliar with such machinery, relied on their bulk to press ahead. The city-ships dwarfed the Dara ships much as elephants dwarfed packs of wolves, or crubens dwarfed schools of sharks, and even direct strikes by the catapults caused little damage.
The Dara navy needed air support. But the Imperial airships were having trouble chasing down the garinafins, and now the five airships were far from each other.
“This is a trap!” Gin Mazoti slammed her hands to the handle of Na-aroénna. “Pull back!”
Tanvanaki’s mount, Korva, bellowed some more. Tanvanaki had kept her back from the air battle to survey the tactical situation from far above. She smiled. Her plan was working out perfectly.
All of a sudden, the five escaping garinafins sped up and swerved away from the pursuing airships. They looped up and around, and all five converged upon Heart of Tututika.
Tanvanaki had realized that the Imperial airships, when clustered together, could support each other with their silkmotic lances. By pretending to retreat, she managed to pull them apart from each other, and now she could concentrate her forces on a single Imperial airship and regain the advantage of numbers.
Soldiers aboard Heart of Tututika hesitated as five garinafins attacked at once, uncertain where to point their silkmotic lances. The frame of the airship twisted and crumbled under the simultaneous assault. Many of the crew tumbled from the airship and fell into the merciless ocean below, their piteous screams lingering in the air.
The garinafins had ripped open enough gasbags that Heart of Tututika began losing altitude. Tanvanaki called for them to pull back and focus on a different airship. As the panicked crew on the sinking Heart of Tututika scrambled to save their doomed ship, the silkmotic lances were brought close to each other and a long spark arced across their tips.
There was a massive explosion as the leaking gasbags caught fire. The fiery wreckage of the airship slowly drifted down to the sea, all hands lost.
“Charge the frame!” shouted Gin Mazoti as the surviving four airships once again clustered together. Her heart ached with rage and regret. No matter how often soldiers prepared in drills, the chaotic conditions of the battlefield and their lack of experience with the weapons meant that they didn’t always respond appropriately to threats.
Since many of the structural elements of the frame were made from bamboo reinforced with steel, it was actually possible to charge the entire frame of the airships. As soon as a garinafin seized one of the airships’ support hoops, the crew touched the silkmotic lances to the ship’s frame. The garinafin grabbing on to the hoop received a massive lightning jolt that killed it on the spot.
Tanvanaki issued yet more orders, and the garinafins now dove below the airships. With the gondola floors gone and the crew standing on platforms housing the giant crossbows, Tanvanaki gambled that the platforms would be free of the deadly force that was killing her garinafins and become the vulnerable underbellies of the airships.
But the airships tossed out long chains of iron that dangled far beneath them. Like the tentacles of some aerial jellyfish, whenever pairs of charged chains touched some hovering garinafin or rider, long, massive sparks flew between them, accompanied by a boom as loud as thunder. Just like the deadly drifting jellyfish caught and disabled their fishy prey, the airships now caught and killed the straggling garinafins with their deadly chains and crackling lances.
Two surviving garinafins finally lost their will to fight, and, ignoring the orders of their pilots, fled from the battle and tried to land on the city-ships. As the pékyu cursed and shouted in anger, Lyucu warriors scrambled out of the way on the open decks as the massive, winged beasts crashed down, killing many and damaging the ships in the process.