Chương 63: Chapter Sixty Three

Yelena clambered out of the rubble, waving off the waiting arms of her guardswomen who'd gone before her. She emerged, coughing against the dust and acrid scent of smoke that clung to the air. It spoke a lot about the situation on the surface that the air down in what had once been her palace's basement had been fresher. Behind her, other guardswomen and staff clambered out of the freshly formed tunnel, exhausted.

The former exhausted by the fight they'd been in barely a few minutes ago and the latter exhausted by forming the tunnel they'd just used to escape. Well, that and saving our asses, she thought. Had those researchers not also magically reinforced the blast doors of the firing range at just the right moment, she was reasonably certain they wouldn't have held.

Turning her thoughts away from her recent brush with death, the elven woman saw that their tunneling had spat them out into the shattered remains of what had once been the grand reception hall of her palace. Marble pillars lay in jagged heaps, shattered chandeliers dripped molten glass, and the great dome that once crowned the central hall had collapsed inward, spilling twisted iron and brass supports like the ribs of some ancient beast.

Turning, she was pleased to see her party's orb operator standing dutifully behind her, the palace guardswoman shaking grime from her sleeve even as her other hand protectively cradled the crystal communication device. A device that, despite the crack that had formed in its surface, remained essentially operational.

"Updates?" Yelena asked, even as another distant boom rattled what little remained of the palace walls. The woman wiped a smudge of soot from her cheek, speaking quickly.

"Enemy forces have successfully retreated from the city's immediate airspace on different headings - save for one rear-guard vessel that is still bombarding the city. The Jellyfish's captain believes it is doing so in an attempt to force us to focus our assets on it, rather than pursuing the other ships." So that was what that noise was, she thought with a grimace. Part of her had hoped it was ships firing at each other rather than at her city.

She didn't know whether it was a blessing or a curse that from her position she couldn't see the ship in question – it apparently occupying the space covered by what few bits of wall and ceiling remained in her palace's possession.

"Any chance the Royal Navy might intercept them?" she asked. The orb operator spoke quickly into her communicator, before shaking her head.

"Jellyfish confirms the fleeing ships are headed up and down the coast rather than straight out to sea. They believe those ships intend to submerge again, but require time to reconfigure themselves for underwater travel. Time they will attain by moving away from the Royal Navy while moving up the coast. Once submerged, we will have no practical way of intercepting."

Yelena almost brought up the Kraken Slayer as a means of doing so, before recalling that the 'firing mechanism' for those devices required the beasts to literally wrap their tentacles around the devices, lured in by mermaid chum bait. Something she doubted these underships would emulate. And without a means of bringing the underships to the Kraken Slayer devices, they also had no means of locating said ships once they dove deep enough.

Though that once more begs the question of how these ships are traveling without running afoul of other Kraken? Surely our efforts to clear out the nests haven't left the oceans that bereft of the beasts? Pain flared in Yelena's ribs as she shifted, but she ignored it.

"Inform Lord Redwater that priority remains those ships that were above the palace. Those above the academy are entirely secondary to those that were above the palace or the remaining one here. Those ships cannot be allowed to escape." It pained her to say it, much more than the sensation in her chest, but the fact remained that keeping those ships from escaping was more important right now than sparing the city further harm. The orb operator nodded, murmuring into the device as she relayed the orders.

A moment later, she hesitated, then turned back to Yelena with a frown.

"The captain of the Jellyfish reports that Lord Redwater has already deployed with his Shards in pursuit of the retreating fleet." Yelena scoffed. Of course he had. For all that he was a man, none could ever accuse the recently elevated boy of being soft. Especially not after tonight.

"With that said," the guardswoman continued, "he left behind orders to one of his assets that wouldn't be able to catch the fleeing ships anyway, and as such will be focusing on eliminating the rear-guard." That was a peculiar bit of phrasing, and not one that would have come from her orb operator – whose entire role was to relay information as succinctly as possible. No, her tone and frown suggested she was relaying those words verbatim.

"Oh?" Yelena arched a brow.

"Which asset is-" A thunderous crash split the sky, cutting her off. Instinctively, she and the others turned their gaze upward. From the thick smoke above, a massive shape emerged - a silhouette of steel and copper. No, not one shape. Two. Entangled. The Jellyfish, the hybrid cruiser turned true-borne carrier, had rammed itself into the side of the much smaller enemy frigate, its reinforced prow embedded deep in the hull like the jaws of a massive predator.

The warship was pushing the enemy vessel out toward the sea, propellers whirring and rear thrusters belching aether as it forced its prey out from over the city and toward open waters. Yelena had once seen a shark take a seal while touring the nearby bay. The sight above her now was eerily similar in a way - right down to the way the enemy frigate's ruptured starboard aether tanks were venting shimmering blue-green mist in a trailing behind it, almost like ghostly blood.

Ramming wasn't an unheard-of maneuver in aerial combat, but it was typically reserved for ships equipped with hardened prows designed for the task. Not something one expected from a carrier. Indeed, the Jellyfish had only managed to pull it off thanks to the thick, obscuring smoke of the burning city, allowing it to close the distance unseen. As they watched, the massive warship began to disengage from its reluctant dance partner.

Its great engines reversed thrust with a deep, groaning crump of metal, prying itself loose from its ruined prey. The enemy ship, now mortally wounded, began to list dangerously, its starboard aether ballasts failing to counteract the damage. It floundered in the air for only a moment before gravity took over, sending it into a slow, spiraling descent toward the bay below.

Then, from above, the Jellyfish's great horn sounded - a deep, resonant bellow that reverberated through the sky like the victorious roar of some ancient leviathan. Yelena exhaled, a slow smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, though it lasted for just a moment before she returned to business.

"Get a crew out there," she said at last, turning to the orb operator.

"I want prisoners." She already had her suspicions about who had been behind this attack, but before the night was out she intended to have confirmation.

"Yes, ma'am." The woman immediately adjusted her orb, switching to a different frequency to summon the salvage crews from the nearby garrisons. Yelena breathed deeply, crossing her arms as she watched through what had once been one of her palace walls, as the distant enemy ship slammed into the bay, sending up a great plume of seawater and aether. She could only pray that William's other 'assets' handled their targets just as effectively.

Finding the enemy in the dark wasn't as hard as it should have been. Not with William's people guiding her in. Shards weren't much of a threat to airships once they were down to just their bolt-cannons. But they could track them, keep them in sight, and relay their movements to shards with access to more than just cannons. Somehow. And that's the mystery, isn't it? Marcille thought. The Shards were communicating, not just with each other but with the Jellyfish itself. Without orbs. That much was certain.

The issue was, no one could afford that many communication orbs - not for forty Shards. Void, some poorer houses often had to choose between having an orb at their estate or aboard their airship, given they could only afford the one. Stolen novel; please report. So for all these shards to be in communication? Well, just one more miracle William had pulled off, apparently. For that matter, she still didn't know how he'd gotten so many shard-cores.

Nor why the damn things screeched like tortured banshees and stank like a burning alchemist's shop. Seriously, she'd been fighting back the urge to gag when she clambered out of the Basilisk after being lowered into the hangar via the Jellyfish's service elevator. The air down there had been thick with the acrid stink of hot metal, bear-blood and other fumes.

Unfortunately, her attempt to sneak a look under the hood of one of the Corsair-C's - as one of the alchemists servicing the thing had offhandedly named them - had been cut short by William himself storming onto the scene and practically shoving her back into the Basilisk. She huffed at the memory. Not because she'd been annoyed at that, but because it had been… enjoyable in a way.

Marcille wasn't exactly the romantic sort, but when your future fiancé started begging you to launch in your "super-Shard" and hunt down an enemy airship, well… you did exactly that. Not that she wasn't going to demand answers later. Like how those alchemists were involved in all this? She had her theories, of course. But right now, she had bigger things to worry about. A glint of moonlight caught her eye.

The Shard she'd been following signaled their arrival, a flag popping up as it pulled away, but she didn't need the confirmation. She could see it, the enemy undership, cutting a silver streak through the night sky as moonlight gleamed off its hull. Her guide peeled up, rising into the clouds to join two other shards she now noticed were lurking above and back from the airship, out of weapons range but close enough to watch.

Well, she thought as she pulled on the control stick, it seems only right that the Basilisk has witnesses to its first kill. History was about to be made after all – and while the Basilisk's debut would likely end up being a footnote to other events of the evening, she intended to make sure it was still worthy of record. To that end, she focused her attention on the foe as she banked around to ready her attack run. The undership made no move to change course, nor had she expected them to.

They were too focused on running as fast as they could. And though Marcille had no idea how they'd achieved the feat, knowing that these ships were capable of traveling under the waves meant their strategy was clear - stick to the coastline, avoid the navy moving in from the east, and when the time was right, dive into the waters for cover. The only reason this one hadn't done so yet was that the transformation from airship to undership clearly needed time. Marcille had no intention of giving them that time.

"Coming up on the target," she announced into the speaking tube. Marcille glanced back at her rear gunner as she spoke. The academy guard she'd left the academy with had been replaced as the woman was taken away for healing. Her new crew member was a dark elf. Sharp-eyed, composed, from what little she'd seen of the other young woman. Marline, she thought her name was. One of William's teammates.

"Understood," the girl in question replied coolly. … Marcille would have preferred her sister on the guns. Not least because she would never hear the end of it if the Basilisk got its first kill without her. Unfortunately, needs must as the Fae drive, she thought as the enemy ship loomed larger in the cockpit glass, a hulking shape of riveted steel and copper tubing, its blue-green exhaust almost luminescent under the moonlight. Marcille's hands tightened on the controls. No enemy Shards in sight.

No escorts either. The enemy weren't even trying to dodge. This was perfect. With that said, she still needed to contend with the deck gunners that opened fire as she approached, spitting wild shots in her direction. She ignored them. A one-in-a-million hit was the only real danger, and she wasn't about to be scared off by that. The Basilisk's bomb bay yawned open, even as she pulled another lever that had the shard almost sag in the air as power was diverted from the machine's propellers to the payload in the bay.

She had one shot. She wouldn't miss. She yanked back on the launch-lever. The aircraft lurched ever so slightly as the thousand-pound javelin was lowered in its cradle until it was outside the craft, the sudden shift in aerodynamics almost imperceptible before the power of its twin aether cores.

For just a moment, there was no sound, before a shriek rang through the night as the javelin's aether-thrusters kicked in, the compressed gas so recently supplied by the Basilisk's dual cores bursting free as the rear-cap fell away. The weapon surged forward on a stream of aether, accelerating hard as its stabilizers flared open, guiding it with unerring precision toward its mark. Marcille was already pulling up when the javelin struck with an almight clang.

The sheer weight and momentum of the weapon carried it deep into the enemy ship's hull, a spear of steel and sorcery punching through the riveted plates like parchment. Then… Nothing. Marcille's breath hitched. Did it fail? Had the charge- A thunderclap split the night. A detonation unlike any she had ever heard before. The Basilisk bucked like a wild beast, its controls shuddering in her grip as a concussive shockwave nearly sent it off course.

Marcille gritted her teeth, muscles straining as she fought the stick, forcing her machine back into line. After she did, and she was sure there'd be no other surprises, she wheeled around - and her pulse froze. There was a hole in the enemy ship. A gaping, unnatural void had been blown into the enemy airship's flank, edges still glowing with residual heat. Smoke and aether poured from the wound, curling like ghostly tendrils against the moonlit sky.

The airship was listing, its once-majestic frame twisting and shuddering in slow-motion catastrophe. One of its propeller wings was gone. Gone. Marcille's grip on the controls tightened. William, what the fuck did you put into my javelin? It shouldn't have done that. Javelins were incendiary devices containing a mixture of bear-blood or demon-piss. The steel-spear-like cap intended to pierce through the hull of a ship before unleashing its liquid fire payload within.

And a thousand pound javelin could hold a lot of liquid. Or something else, apparently, she thought. Because the javelin she'd just launched had gone off like someone had layered a hundred lightning bolts on it. Yet they hadn't. That she could tell. There'd been no enchantments that she could sense. Nothing beyond the faint alchemical residue of a bear-blood infusion. There'd been nothing that should have caused this. The enemy airship shuddered, tilting past the point of recovery as it started to drop.

The ship was done. Marcille exhaled, a slow, steady breath as the adrenaline settled. Because for all that she now had even more questions for her fiancé, the job was done. And as she glanced up towards her trio of watchers, she knew they were already reporting that success. Somehow.

"Fifth target is down. That's all of them," the Jellyfish's orb operator relayed, voice clear and unwavering. For a moment, the bridge was silent. Then cheers erupted as a wave of victorious sentiment rippled through the command deck, officers and crew alike exchanging grins, claps on the back, and murmured exclamations of relief and triumph. William didn't join in, though he made sure to smile and nod appropriately at the correct moments. It wouldn't do to sour the mood.

Still, as he leaned against the brass railing at the center of the bridge, arms crossed, his gaze drifted to the command board at the center of the room – taking in the many little ship and shard shaped figures that had placed atop the map of the capital. The whole thing was a complex miniatures and lines, marking the positions of various fleet elements and their relative states of supply and armor. He watched as the little red ship depicting an enemy was plucked from the board and placed to the side.

And all he could think was… how anti-climactic it all was. He had expected something to go wrong. Had braced for it. Had prepared himself to step in at the last moment - to pull out some last-ditch innovation, some desperate maneuver that would snatch victory from the jaws of disaster. But… no. His people had hunted down the fleeing ships with almost casual ease. The Basilisk had been the final one to report in, but the other two wings - ten Corsairs armed with rockets - had already downed their own targets.

It had been clinical. The precision. The efficiency. The absolute inevitability of it all. Like clockwork. If anything, the greatest excitement had come not from the shards but from his own ship the Jellyfish ramming the enemy's rearguard vessel like some iron leviathan dragging its prey into the abyss. William's fingers tapped idly against the brass railing. He was happy. He supposed. And the more he thought about it, the more he considered that in many ways, the real final 'twist' had actually happened hours ago.

The initial attack on the capital - that had been the moment. An unexpected strike. One that might well have undone everything before he was ready. Forcing him to launch the Jellyfish before it was ready. Forcing him to send pilots into battle in equipment they barely understood - radios, weapons, the planes themselves. It was a miracle they had managed to pull this off at all. He glanced at the casualty report, written in chalk on a board at the back of the room. Thirteen craft down. Eight chutes recorded.

Last known positions written down for recovery later. Though that last detail was somewhat superfluous given they'd bailed out over a friendly city. At the very least, his training cadre was down five pilots. And that assumed every pilot who pulled a chute survived. There was a decent chance some of them hadn't survived, succumbing either to chaos on the ground or as a result of wounds they might have suffered when their plane was shot out from under them. He wouldn't have a full tally until morning.

As a result, William knew he should feel something about that. Guilt, maybe? Some sense of responsibility? It was his decision to withhold vital information on these shards that had likely caused some of those deaths. Yet… He felt nothing. His grip tightened on the railing. He needed the secrecy. Still did, in many ways. But that was over now. The ship had sailed. The secrets were out. Combustion engines. Gunpowder. Radios. All of it was in the open now. He had opened Pandora's box - and there was no going back.

He was firmly on the stage. And as a result, people would come for him. For his innovations. For the knowledge he had dragged into this world, reshaping the balance of power like a hammer to glass. And as a harrowed person – because there was no hiding that now either - he had precious few legal protections. In the eyes of the law, he was less a person and more… unexploded ordnance. Going forward, his only protections would come from his reputation. And the force in his arm. Would it be enough? He wasn't sure.

But there was no going back now.

"Don't grin like that, it's creepy," Olzenya's voice opined from behind him.

"Ack, don't be like that," Bonnlyn grunted, having just recently clambered out of a cockpit and made her way to the bridge.

"Let the boy celebrate his success. We just saved the capital!" The elf scoffed.

"And he can celebrate that. Like a normal person. Not, smiling like a gargoyle." Had he been smiling? He hadn't noticed. Still, with some thought, he managed to force his expression into something less… whatever it was Olzenya had been complaining about as he turned to his team.

"Celebrations can wait for a little bit, I think. Last I checked, the capital was still on fire and there are likely some enemy combatants skulking about down there still." The fight was over, but the fighting wasn't quite done yet. It would be soon though. And when it was, a lot of people would have a lot of questions for him. For his part, he had but one. Where the fuck is Griffith?