Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3) (27 page)

Qamar maneuvered between Najat and myself, taking Ryo’s head for her own greeting. “Fight.” She shook his head with her grasp and pulled away. “You are ours now. And we don’t let our own fade away while they still breathe.”

The rest of the commanders took their turns swapping greetings with each other. It felt as if we reclaimed each other in that moment, as if we’d been wandering aimlessly without family or tribe. Without purpose.

“Come on.” I gave my commanders and friends a feral smile. “Let’s show the Vash how the El’Asim fight.”

I
ENTERED THE
L
AYAL
FROM
the rear. Captain Rose’s planes filled the docks, her pilots running through their flight checks. Rose was nowhere in sight. That didn’t mean she wasn’t there. She likely was. The docks were vast. A lot of birds. A lot of people. Not chaos, though. She didn’t allow that.

Everyone had something to do, and I didn’t want to interrupt them, but I did need to find Rose, advise her of the situation and discuss it with her.

Wings clipped the air near my ear.

I jumped, startled, and looked up, glaring at Du’a with a smile.

She sent me a line of chiding and rebuke, but continued her flight.

I headed for the nearest, arching bay bridge.

After several moments, Du’a swooped upwards and landed lightly on the railing beside me.

I glanced at her.

She remained silent, her head twisting one way, then another, her bright eyes watching everything.

Captain Rose approached from the direction Du’a had come from, a rag in her hand. She finished wiping them and stopped next to me, stuffing the rag in the pocket of her coveralls.

I took in her non-flight ready appearance. “Should I be concerned?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be ready when you are, sir.”

“Fine. I don’t know exactly what we’re heading into yet. We’re a bit blind at this point.”

“We’re underwater.”

“Yes. We are. We’re also under earth. Our sonar and radar aren’t picking much up. There’s a hurricane out there. We might not even be able to utilize your people.”

Rose ducked her head and lifted a shoulder. “I prefer to keep my people alive, sir, but if you need us, you can count on us.”

“I know it.” I gripped her shoulder. Something was off with her today. “Are you all right?”

I didn’t know enough about Rose. I had the feeling I could trust her. I believed she had a good gut that would keep her on a good path. But aside from that? I knew practically nothing.

She brushed me off. “Fine, sir. Just let me know when you need us out there. The Sky Gypsies will be ready.”

I took a step back and really assessed her.

She didn’t tell me anything, vocally, non-verbally. Her normally active face was blank. That was telling.

Fine. If she wanted to keep to herself, she could. “I need your mind in the game out there. You’ll be my first line of sense. If I send you out there and the winds are too much, you pull your people back.”

Her eyes focused inward as she dropped her gaze. She nodded. “Anything else, sir?”

“No.” Frowning, I watched her leave, wondering what I’d missed, what I hadn’t seen. What had Neira said? I looked over my people. Today, that stopped. My people, all of them, needed to belong, needed to feel a sense of tribal togetherness. It was time to bring Rose into my tribe.

Rose made it back to her plane, the
Wise Girl
, tossed her rag and sagged against the table beside it. Her shoulders drooped as she scrubbed her face with the palm of her hand.

First line of sense? She was out of her depth.

Who’d made her captain in the first place? She didn’t know the first thing about leading these pilots. Kids. Most of them were sky humping kids.

She’d known most of them for only a year or less. They’d been given to her by Queen Nix when the Hands had found out about her Mark. Queen Nix had thought she could get something special out of Rose, but what?

She didn’t know the answer to that. Shortly after assigning Rose her personnel, she’d become obsessed with Synn, leaving Rose alone to work on her planes and get to know her crew.

Jake was the crew’s funny man. She had a hard time taking him seriously, but he would surprise her occasionally with random sparks of interest.

Ethel was a huge help. Rose thought the only reason Ethel had stepped up and helped lead the squad the way she did was because someone had finally believed in her, had given her a chance. If that’s all it took, then Rose wouldn’t balk.

But the others? Eugene? Sigmund, Walter, Bettie, Percy, Doris, Agnes, the two Richards?

Erik?

Her hands shook as she reached for the screw driver. She’d trained them to fly, knowing that most of them wouldn’t come back. They’d accepted that they’d die in battle.

Erik had died because of her design, and she didn’t know how to fix it. Her motor.

She’d killed one of those kids. He’d been barely sixteen. He shouldn’t have been in that plane to begin with, but he’d begged her. Pleaded.

He hadn’t been shot down. He’d just taken too much altitude and couldn’t get his engine to start back up again.

She clenched her hands, her shoulders tense. That stupid, dirt-eating engine. And now they were heading into a battle, into a hurricane. She’d never flown in a hurricane, hadn’t flown through much of a storm before. She didn’t know the first thing about what went on in there. She’d had no reason to.

Her engine had died. Why? Were the same conditions that had killed her engine in that storm?

A wave of lightheadedness washed over her. She touched her lips with her quaking fingertips.

Who’d been dumb enough to make her captain?

I made it back to the command dome. We’d been underground for nearly a full day. Dark boding twisted my gut. I had no sense of time, no light, no shifting environment.

“We’re clear, Admiral,” the new communications officer said, her voice pleasant but firm.

I nodded and glanced at the sonar.

Nothing. We were still blind.

“Take us under the veil.”

Lash and Ghaz flipped switches and dials, controlling the yoke. The
Layal
shifted under our feet. Relief released a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.

I turned to the communications officer. “Name?”

She glanced at me, but maintained most of her concentration on her headset and the lines of paper in front of her. “Wa-sna-win.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Storm Woman. Let us hope you bring us good luck.”

“I do not bring luck, Admiral,” she said, her tone firm as she wrote a message on one of the papers in front of her. “I bring ability.”

I smiled and turned back to watching our progress. “Even better. You’re assigned to me by Neira?”

Wa-sna-win shook her head at me, and spoke into the mic. “Negative,
Basilah
. Await orders.”

“What did Ryo want?”

“To join us.”

I gripped the back of her chair. “He is to stay until we’ve assessed the situation. I don’t want to endanger my ships more than we have to.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Atmospherics,” I said to the young man standing beside me. “What do you have?”

He flung his hand at the screen. “A bunch of nothin’, sir. The readings are all over the place.”

“I need to know what that means.”

His pale grey eyes met mine, his red hair shining bright even in the dreary light pouring in from the window. “Okay. What it means is this. The winds are too damned strong to fly in. They’re tossing the ocean like a damn ball. We’ll be lucky to break the ocean’s surface without breaking the damn ship in half. There ain’t nobody in that air, sir.”

“Okay. Then how do we get up there?”

“I’m atmospherics, sir,” the man grumbled, returning his attention to his screen, “not a damned magician.”

My eyes widened as I turned away, trying hard not to smile. How long had it been since anyone had the courage to be so genuine around me? “Jamilah.”

She shrugged, watching the
letharan
veil as we drifted beneath it. “Kaarle knows what he’s talking about. If he says we shouldn’t go up, then we shouldn’t.”

“And how do you propose we get the Umira Nuru on the ground?”

Jamilah shrugged. “I can’t come up with all the ideas, sir.”

“Kaarle, what are the wind speeds?”

He flicked the corner of his eye. “Wind gusts up to a hundred and nineteen kilometres per hour.”

“Sustained?”

He shrugged. “Not really sustained. More just gusts, but over a hundred kilometres per hour.”

“You weren’t with us when we rode the heart of the storm.”

His shoulders sagged as he leaned against his screen. “No, I wasn’t, and I’m glad I wasn’t.”

I watched the waves rolling over us, the depressions of their passing digging deep. “How big is the storm?”

“Covers the whole damn screen, sir.” Kaarle licked his lips and tipped his head to the side. “However, it is moving north, along the eastern coast of Kiwidinok and it has hit land. It should be dampening soon.”

“And how quickly until we’re clear of it?”

He rolled his eyes, flopping his hand. “A few hours.”

“Wa-sna-win,” I said quietly. “What reports from Peacock Rock.”

“A lot of chatter, sir.” She shook her head. “The Han has land movers and tunneling devices. They’ve breached Rose Cavern.”

I frowned, not knowing the significance.

She glanced at me, made another note, shoved it toward Jamilah, and looked back up at me. “That’s where the children and elders were.”

I straightened, my grip on her chair tightening. “Are they alright?”

“For now. He had them moved to the west side of the island.”

To the cliff wall? What was he thinking? There weren’t enough breathing masks for them to escape via the ocean, and in these waters, that would have been extremely dangerous. As dangerous as being captured by the Han? I didn’t know, but there was one thing I knew for certain. Those people were trapped.

“Is there any way to get Garrett on the line?”

Wa-sna-win shook her head. “I barely have his communication tech. The Han has breached two other tunnels. Garrett’s caved them in, but their tunneling devices are strong and fast.”