Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3) (41 page)

Ryo hadn’t aimed for the
lethara,
however. He’d aimed directly for the cannon that had shot at his ship. It and a large chunk of the floor around it disintegrated into nothing.

He smirked. Plasma.

But he did have to be careful. A
lethara
could survive from shell damage or lightning damage. The lava cannon? He didn’t know. Ryo knew for certain the
lethara
would have a difficult time surviving if his tendrils were gone.

Compassion. He snarled. Weakness.

He aimed for another cannon and shot. The plasma flew from the mouth of his weapon and hit the intended target.

But the cannon had been very close to a major
letharan
column, a massive tentacle or trunk. The plasma hit that, evaporating a massive chunk of the tentacle.

The
lethara
screamed.

Ryo didn’t even know they could. But the noise of it vibrated the glass around him and rumbled and screeched in his ears at the same time. His heart twisted. Twisted like a dying fish in air.

Even the rage boiling inside him couldn’t erase the love and respect that had been instilled in him for the
lethara
.

“Aim for the weapons!” Ryo shouted. “Not the
lethara!”

The platforms attached to the bottom portion of the trunk Ryo had hit plummeted. The dried sea-flax homes tumbled into the floors below before dumping into the crashing ocean waters.

How many people?

Ryo swallowed, pushing that question away. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. These people had sided with his mother and she had destroyed hundreds of innocent people without a single thought.

“If we aim for the
lethara
,” someone shouted up at him, a voice he didn’t recognize, “we’ll destroy their ability to fire at us.”

He wasn’t his mother, and he wasn’t his mother’s son. No. He was his own man. “And destroy an ancient creature who doesn’t deserve this!” Also, the innocent people.

Another cannon launched a missile.

“Shields!”

“We’re destroying them, sir!” Suzu shouted.

They were. He stared at the ground at his feet as the shimmer of the shield unfolded over them again.

The
Basilah
shook with a grinding crunch.

“We’re hit, sir!”

“Are we still flying?”

“Yes, sir,” Suzu answered through gritted teeth. “Something in the rear.”

“We’re unable to stabilize,” her co-pilot shouted in a deep, thick voice. “The storm’s tugging at us.”

“Get someone to fix it. Cannons!”

He might not know a lot about flying, but he did know a thing or two about fighting. All he had to do was make it too inconvenient, too painful for the Shankara to remain in the battle.

As he watched the portion of the city around the partially severed tentacle fall, as he waited for the shield to retreat so he could fire again, as the innocent people of Shankara scrambled to save who they could, Ryo knew what he had to do.

His heart screaming at him to stop, he aimed his plasma cannon at another tentacle, closer to the middle of the city.

As soon as the shield fell away, he fired.

Skah flew through the air, landing roughly on the ground at the base of a small tree. How it had remained standing when so many other had been pushed over that had been stronger, taller, wider, older, she couldn’t comprehend. Now wasn’t the time to debate that.

Neira was gone. Presumably, she’d gone to meet her old lover and betrayer.

Skah bared her teeth, picking herself back to her feet.

A new shadow swept over her, blanketing the world immediately around her in darker shadow and taking the brunt of the brutal rains away. The leaves of the nearby drandi bush picked itself up, raising its feathered edges as though praising the reprieve.

Reprieve.

The shelling paused.

Looking up, Skah realized why.

The
Basilah.
She hoped that with this new target, the Shankara would cease their bombardment of the battlefield. It was hard enough to fight the Han without cannon balls and other forms of weaponry she couldn’t even name being thrown at them. She’d never seen a cannonball create so much damage. What were they using to attack Kiwidinok? What had they created that could gouge the earth so?

More questions she couldn’t answer yet.

Three of the Han’s soldiers crept out of the thicket just to her right.

Her bow in hand, she put three arrows in the fold of her bow hand, stringing a forth. Sighting, she released them in quick succession.

The soldiers fell, arrows in the throat of one, through the eye of the second, and in the chest of the third.

She crept into the blast-made meadow, stepping over the carcasses of trees and animals who had been unable to escape.

A rabbit mewled, his leg twisted.

Skah pulled out her dagger, scanning the damaged tree line for other enemy soldiers, her ears listening for the telltale sign another missile headed her way. She knelt and quickly slit the rabbit’s throat. “Go in peace,” she whispered.

Standing, she cleaned her blade on the rabbit’s fur and re-sheathed it. She collected her arrows from the bodies of the Han’s men before continuing forward.

Neira could take care of herself. Without new orders, Skah’s mission was simple. Destroy any of the enemy soldiers she could and keep Kiwidinok safe from intrusion.

With the
Basilah
taking the brunt of the missile attacks, she could get back to work.

The
Layal
was on the ground, slumped to one side as if she’d been capsized. We’d taken everything from her we could, including her
lethara
and all her air jellies—which was the reason she was on the ground. She could be flown with a small crew and that crew had stayed behind just in case the enemy found her and decided to try to gain entrance.

I had a sack of blue glow worms slung over my back. Several feathered red worms fluttered along the torch in my other hand.

My
lethara
floated above us, two tentacles dipped in the cup of water a messenger girl held. His other tentacles reached out, grasping at the wetness all around us.

I stopped at the rocky, black entrance of Pleron City. We’d seen tracks and broken branches along the way. Haji had been the one to point them out to me because, honestly, dirt—even mud—looked all the same to me, and one branch didn’t make itself known from another in my mind.

The mountainous countryside opened wide from the top of the black-tipped mountain. The
Layal
looked like a discarded toy a drunken giant had flung among the trees. Several of the trees appeared as though they might break against her massive weight. The people of my ship lined the path that circled the mountain. I couldn’t see them all as the mountain hid most of them.

Haji’s skitter scuttled forward. “You let me lead,” he said into my left ear through the communication unit.

I nodded. Though his unit made me feel incredibly small next to it, it also made him wildly more versatile. I recalled the city from when I’d visited it as a child. It had seemed so vast, so big.

I stepped in among the people filing in and touched the tip of my torch with the barest hiss of my Mark. It flared with light. Someone behind me touched his torch to mine and so we past the light from one torch to the next.

A narrow cavern of stairs greeted us. The mouth of the mountain opened to the sky high overhead. Shadow hid the bottom metres below us. Every wall of the volcano’s maw was littered with staircases and archway bridges.

Where would they be, the Han’s men?

“Downward.”

Haji turned to a staircase leading down, four of his metal legs scaling the wall, the other four walking down the narrow stair case.

We made it to the next level, which opened in a wide shelf.

“Where are they?” Jamilah whispered to me. “If they
are
here, where are they?”

As if waiting for her question, a large silver unit stepped out of the shadows of the walls. Its large mechanical arm rose, and swung.

Three people were swept off the shelf, their cries echoing through toward the sky.

My Mark rose from my shoulders in great lava whips. I encircled the thing’s wrist and tightened my hold on it, keeping it from attacking anyone else with it.

Haji scuttled up toward it, two of his metal arms glowing a soft blue.

Three men and a woman rushed the thing’s monstrous legs, glowing red balls in their hands.

“Back away,” Jamilah shouted, running down the stairs to her right.

People ran all around me, but the only thing I could pay attention to was the mechanical beast before me. It was strong. Stronger than my lava, which surprised me. What in this world wouldn’t melt with the heat of lava?

It swung its other arm.

I caught it with a lava whip, adding more to brace them both, fighting with the sheer power of my Mark alone. Every muscle in my body tensed.

I couldn’t melt it. How was that even possible?

My lips worked as I struggled under the increasing weight. I fell to one knee and raised my face to the torch I carried. “Go,” I whispered to the feather worms.

One by one, they released their hold of the torch and fluttered toward the mechanical monster. They attached themselves, feeling along the armor.

Haji stopped at the thing’s huge feet and touched its legs with his glowing arms.

The glow wriggled off, coating the armor of the bigger rig.

Within moments, the glow disappeared.

My legs shook under the pressure of the mechanical beast’s might. The lava whips along my back rose and reached for the thing’s face. I knew there was no way a human being resided behind those eyes. The compartment of the head was too small, but there were sensors. Probably. And cameras. Most likely.

My head lowered, I gave my Mark free reign.

Sparks showered over me, tingling along my bared shoulders.

The mechanical beast pulled violently away, yanking me to my feet.

Haji scrambled down the stairs.

One of his other skitter units had scaled the wall near the monster’s head, something red and glowing in its hand.

Someone screamed within the rigger.

Another voice joined the first, then others.

The skitter at the rigger’s head paused, its head twisting this way and that as the sensors picked up sounds and visuals.

I raised my face. Molten metal poured from one eye socket of the beast, more dripping from other places. The arm plates might be impervious to my lava, but the face plates were not. Raising my lava whips again, I lashed out against its head to make it blind, deaf and mute.

A child screamed inside it.

Growling, I realigned my attack to the neck.

The large arms raised, lifting me off the ground.

I concentrated on tightening my grip around the thing’s neck. The child inside the head was going to get very, very hot if I kept it up too long. A child, even an enemy child, didn’t deserve to be melted alive.

“Haji!” I shouted into the mic at my chin.

I didn’t know if he understood what I wanted him to do or not. I released the creature’s neck from my lava hold.

The skitter along the wall reached for the head, opening a door or something along the back of it.

The giant arms slammed down on the ground. One fist landed on the wide platform. The other landed at an odd angle on the stair.

My lava whips were still attached, however. With the rigger no longer holding me up in the air, I plummeted.

Pain cascaded up from my feet as I landed badly. I tightened my hold on my bag of worms and torch. Pulling myself up to a kneeling position, I studied the rigger.

Silence.

A small pebble fell down a set of stairs. Somewhere.

The rigger stopped moving, slumping to the ground as if the very life had been drained from it.

I straightened painfully, recalling my lava whips to my body. My legs and back quivered from the extreme exertion.

The skitter along the wall held the prone body of a small child in its mechanical arms.

“Haji, take the boy to Keeley.”

Haji’s skitter unit at the rigger’s feet bowed its equine head.

The skitter along the wall retreated back the way we’d come.