“Increase speed, hold steady.”
“Increasing,” Afira called.
Jaya grasped the panel edge as their ship bounded forth. But the killdoms did not split and take Akaros’s bait. Instead, theRelentless Destinykept its path behind theLord of Sea, the two bearing toward them, much too fast.
“They’re going to pincer us. Daz, please,” she said. “At least send a signal to the ships. Something Maya knows. Then we’ll know which one she’s on.”
“Shoot them down,” Samson said, his voice edged with something that sounded like pain, felt more like spite. “We’ll have them in range.”
“Lordbearing two-ten, contact in ten minutes.Relentlessin fifteen,” Rhumia said.
“Port ninety,” Daz said. “Afira, arm the pulsers.”
The killdoms were armed with sparkbombs, old and heavy, but the bounders were too light, too fast, to hold any. And they did not mean todestroy the killdoms. They were to capture and sail them into Tsuana as victors. Jaya gripped the panel, her stomach twisting as Afira pressed the model for charges, and the holo flashed red, indicating that the pulsers were armed.
Suddenly, there came shouts from outside the bridge, up at the pilot’s nest. Jaya rushed out just as she heard a hiss, then a loud sizzle. Visha held up a flare, and in the night, it seemed to throb, a panicking heart.
“Port stern!” she cried. “Turn! Turn!”
“Right full rudder!” Jaya shouted back to the bridge.
Rhumia seized the model, jerking them to the right. Jaya was flung onto the railings, and she gasped as the metal collided with her spine and sent shock waves down her back. She moaned, trying to rise to her feet.
And then she heard it.
How could she ever forget that sound?
Staccato noises, like fire spitting, logs cracking. The sound her mother’s and father’s pyres made as she lit the bases and offered their souls to whatever cruel gods lay beyond.
And then it flared on their screens: a bright white dot hurtling toward them. Yet it was Visha’s cry, loud and terrified in the night, that made it all too real.
“Sparker! Sparker! It’s coming right at us!”
CHAPTER 50
ELENA
The goddesses are similar, but their followers ignorant. Little do they know there is a being just like her, just as hungry, just as monstrous.
—fromA Critique of the Ancient Gods(note: debunked by historians)
Elena sensed the sudden flare of a foreign fire racing through the sea. She whirled around, searching the screens. There! The white sparker, racing from theRelentlesstoward the Yumi ship.
“Fuck. Fuck!”
“Jaya and Akaros could be on that ship,” Maya said.
And Samson, she thought, surprised by the depth of her concern, her sudden desperate ache toknow.
She pushed it back. In moments, the sparker would pass parallel to them in its warpath to the bounder. Daz, the Yumi, everyone would be lost. Perhaps that was why the idea came to her. Not out of her regard for Samson and his well-being, but for the Yumi. After all, if she lost Daz now, who would represent Moksh at the council? How would sheintimidate the kings and queens if not with the Yumi? It was the logic she could accept, the reasoning she sold to herself, even if it tasted gently of a lie.
“Increase speed,” she said to Maya. “We’re going to intercept it.”
Maya balked. “We have rebels on board. Free Sesharians—”
“Mother’s Gold, increase speed!” she snapped. She reached for the projection, but Maya pushed her back.
“You don’t know how to operate it,” she hissed.
