Page 74 of Lhora
“Open all ports and fire cannons!” Lhora yelled.
Beneath her feet, her weapons fired, and the vessel shuddered from the kickback. She didn’t need her telescope to see the rays’ trajectory as they bypassed the Coltrosstian ships and enveloped the second Tra’Mellian man o’ war.
“Drop! Drop! Drop!” Duren screamed.
The ship went out of from under her as the pilot, with both hands, grabbed the huge lever embedded in the deck and jerked it backwards. The ketch plummeted like a rock as the engines suddenly idled. A micro-second later, the space where they’d been went incandescent as the Coltrosstians fired back, believing they’d been attacked.
Behind her, she heard her navigator ticking off their altitude as they entered the thermosphere and kept falling. When they reached six hundred huares, she ordered the engines brought back online.
“Full sails! Full sails! Bring us around, Summ!”
“Coming aroun—”
The ship pitched nearly ninety degrees, and the bridge was filled with a dark blue light. Lhora reacted instinctively, throwing her arms out for anything to break her fall. Instead, she flew sideways, hit the edge of the communications console with her hip, bounced off, and landed on the wall that was now the floor. She cried out in pain as the hilt of her sword dug into her hip. “Who the plug fired on us?” she managed to holler.
“The Sarpi’s ship!” Jurdis responded. “It’s firing on theBeccan!”
The ketch lurched sideways where it felt like it was suspended in midair. Then, without warning, continued to fall.
“Engines on! Get the engines online!”
“We’ve been hit again!” Jurdis yelled. “Engines are damaged!”
“Deploy all sails! Try to brake us!”
“Sails deployed!”
“Four hundred huares! Three-fifty! Three hundred!”
“Esstiss! We’re heading straight for land!” the navigator almost shrieked.
“Summ, get us over water!”
“Trying to, Esstiss, but the rudder is frozen!”
Even if they managed to get the engines back online, with the rudder frozen the ship couldn’t be steered. She and the crew had only two options left.
“Abandon ship! Abandon ship! All of you!” She glared at her crew on the bridge. “Go! That’s an order! Summ! Take command and get them off!”
“What about you?” Twoff asked as he threw off his harness and shakily got to his feet to follow the rest of them to the ladder. The ketch continued its dive with its hull slowly turning in a death roll.
There was no time to explain. “Go!” The communications officer stumbled out.
Almost crawling, she made her way to the small storage lockers underneath the steps leading up to the forecastle. She threw open the door and extracted an inflatable suit. Outside the protective bubble covering the upper deck, she heard the rising sound of the wind whistling past the ship as it got closer to the ground.
Slipping her legs into the suit, she struggled against time to get the rest of her body within the tight enclosures. Her heart beat furiously but her fear and adrenaline drove her. With her body finally encased, she pulled the hood over her head and opened the valve on the air canister.
The suit puffed outward, surrounding her and cushioning her. She caught a brief glimpse of a shadow of a ship jetting overhead. There was no way of knowing the ship’s origin. If it was friend or foe, but it didn’t matter. There was no saving the ketch. All she could do was await its final landing, and pray the rest of her crew made it to safety.
She never anticipated the ship blasting into millions of pieces of wood and metal around her seconds before slamming into the ground.
34
Ruse
“Nooo!” Duren watched Lhora’s ship take the full brunt of the Coltrosstian’s fire. His initial instinct was to order his pilot to go after the ketch, when he realized it was too late to do anything even if they managed to get to it before it fell to the earth. He could only pray that Lhora and her crew managed to abandon ship before it was too late.
And hope my father’s pronouncement hasn’t made it to the rest of his armada.
