“Don’t do it, Papa! You’ll die!”
He kissed her forehead. Grimly, Idris pulled her away and held her as she sobbed and fought him.
“I won’t,” Avery promised her. “You’ll see.”
With all the strength he had, he turned away and made his way to the dirigible. Along with the others, including a group of soldiers, he boarded the airship, while more soldiers manned the other dirigibles all around. They were all Army men and women, as the Navy personnel could not yet be trusted (although in the back of his mind Avery wondered just how many of the Army people Haggarty had managed to corrupt, too), and they were unused to the craft, leading to a cumbersome and awkward lifting-off of the fleet, yet in fits and starts the ships took to the air.
A man presenting himself as Colonel Versici, the highest-ranking Army officer of the fleet, informed Avery that he would be in charge of the operation, though of course he received orders directly from General Hastur, who still coordinated things on the ground. Versici would share the same craft as Avery and would hear any suggestions he had; Avery was not in any sense in command, but the colonel understood that this was his plan and he might need to make adjustments to it. Layanna, of course, went along with them, as she was key to the whole mission, and Janx and Hildra came, too, at Avery’s and their own insistence.
To his surprise Avery was allowed to man the wheel, but then he realized he had as much experience piloting dirigibles as any of the others in his party and certainly more than any of the soldiers. To make herself useful, Hildra took position at the bow with a sniper rifle, shoving its barrel down with her left forearm, and several other soldiers also took up rifles, while Janx, wearing an evil grin, removed the trooper squatting over the starboard machine gun and took his place. The trooper started to protest, then saw Janx and shut up.
Layanna closed her eyes, and Avery knew she reached out to the ray and the psychic that controlled it. He wanted to speak with her, out of nervousness as much as anything else, but he held his tongue and concentrated on piloting the airship up toward the great black wedge of the ray, air rippling around its wings as it traversed dimensional gulfs Avery could not perceive. The other dirigibles of the fleet moved with him, no two ships in line with any other, but all going forward and up, with Avery’s ship roughly in the middle of the formation, on the second row; the first row, the vanguard, would be his bulwark against attack from the ray, or so Colonel Versici assured him.
The dirigibles and zeppelins that had already been in place in the skies milled about uncertainly. They were still operated by Navy personnel, and Avery had to assume that frantic negotiations were under way even then between their highest officer and General Hastur, or perhaps Idris and Denaris. Had General Hastur found a counterpart in the Navy?
Avery risked a look downward, and felt his bowels loosen.
Now that he was some distance up, he could see the Starfish, a great dark mass, still half in the sea, plowing into the buildings along the seafront in the industrial quarter. The harbor had been too shallow and the Bookends protected it, so the vast being had come up from the south. As Avery watched, it smashed through a myriad of buildings, including two great factories still belching smoke. More smoke arose, and fire, too, as the terror laid waste to all about it. In the twilight, Avery could see few details of the monstrosity, but he could sense its shape; when it fully emerged from the sea it would display seven arms, all crowned in riotous coral and other growths, crackling with lightning and shimmering with exotic energies.
“Gods below,” Janx said, as soldiers cursed and muttered around him.
“Never thought I’d see it here,” Hildra said, squinting through the scope of her rifle.
“It’s the one, isn’t it?” Avery said. “The one we saw in Ethali?”
“Yep,” said Janx. “That’s the bastard, all right. I’d recognize his handsome mug anywhere.”
“They say no two snowflakes are alike,” Hildra said. “Guess that goes double for giant fucking starfish.”
Avery swallowed. Thousands would be dying below, either in collapsing buildings or crushed in panic-induced stampedes. Presumably General Hastur was establishing evacuation corridors and trying to get people out of the affected areas as safely and swiftly as possible; still, many would be dying, in fear and confusion, tens of thousands. Soon hundreds. And that was just the beginning.
With renewed resolve, Avery faced the front, guiding his ship ever closer to the vast ray cutting through the clouds over Hissig. The dirigibles and zeppelins controlled by the Navy, perhaps spurred by the devastation caused by the Starfish, finally realigned themselves and began rising, with greater swiftness and efficiency than the ships controlled by the Army, toward the fleet. For a moment he feared the Navy ships had betrayed them all and would open fire on the Army craft, but, as they neared, the Navy ships fanned out and formed orderly formations to either side of the Army fleet, all their soldiers aiming weapons forward, toward the ray, forming one large combined fleet. Cynically Avery wondered how much the allegiance of the highest-ranking member of the Navy had cost, then told himself it was just as likely done out of patriotism—or fear. Many would have family in the path of the Starfish, after all. Sons, daughters, mothers, sisters. It was their homes down there.
The ray had taken little interest in the fleet up to this point, or perhaps those aboard had simply been readying themselves, but now, with ponderous slowness, yet a certain deceptive grace, it turned about and aimed its ever-gaping, tendril-fringed maw toward them. Sheridan would not go down without a fight. With air blurring ever more violently around it, the ray drove straight at the attacking fleet.
Sheer, blinding pain.
Avery cried out and clamped a hand to his head as whiteness flashed before his eyes, flickering and dimming. All throughout the fleet soldiers screamed, some dropping to their knees or thrashing on the deck. Several airships veered away. One dirigible plowed into the side of a zeppelin. Fire erupted, and the two ships fell flaming from the sky, dozens dying in an instant.
The psychic aboard the ray renewed his assault, and Avery was only dimly aware of clutching the wheel and shoving a gear, making the ship go faster. He couldn’t hold out long.
Then, relief.
Layanna must have countered the psychic somehow, as the pain and terror receded, if not completely. Spots still flashed before Avery’s eyes, but he nodded at her in gratitude.
“I can’t keep this up,” she said, her face rigid with effort.
“We only need a little more.”
The ray drove on, looming larger and larger in Avery’s vision, taking up first a quarter of the sky, then half, then nearly all of it. Stretching a mile from side to side, the great once-aquatic abomination was truly massive. Squads of Navy shock troops did not wait on this one’s back, but Avery knew they must be inside, ready to pour out of its mouth or through the various orifices they had designed into it.
Gunfire flashed from along the ray’s front and sides—machine gun emplacements surgically grafted into the poor creature’s flesh—and more dirigibles and zeppelins fell away. The ships of the fleet fanned out wider, and the soldiers aboard returned fire, snipers like Hildra trying to drill the ray’s gunners through the glass or translucent skin blisters of their emplacements.
Gritting his teeth, Avery plowed his ship toward the great toothless maw, and the ships that were to go with him did the same. The rest were simply to give cover and provide distraction.
The maw reared before him, a black rectangle, and for the first time Avery actually looked into the eyes of a ray, large and dark, far to each side of the mouth; they were eerily intelligent, although perhaps that was really the psychic looking through them. Either way, gooseflesh popped out on his arms.
“Get ready!” he shouted, and the soldiers tensed.
His dirigible shot into the maw, side by side with two dozen other ships, and gunfire erupted all around him, echoing strangely off the organic surfaces. It was a vast hall, all composed of the living flesh of the animal, arched bulwarks great distances apart, the air between misty and shimmering.
Sheridan’s guns spat from every direction.
Layanna’s other-self exploded outward, and without a word she flung herself over the gunwale and set upon the enemy troops with tentacle and pseudopod, hunting for the psychic, who would be somewhere quiet and protected, removed from the action, likely near the brain.
“Down!” Colonel Versici ordered Avery. “Take her down!”
Avery obeyed, he and the other dirigible pilots wrestling their craft to the surface that served as the ground in the ray’s interior. A bullet whizzed by his ear, another tinking off a lever, and it was all he could do not to throw himself to the deck and cover his head in fear. At last the ship touched down.
“Find Sheridan,” Avery suggested to Colonel Versici. “She controls the psychic. But bring her in alive if you can. She’ll know where Haggarty’s gone.”
The colonel nodded and led his troops in a charge.
“Always some excuse to keep her alive,” Hildra snarled. “Fuck that bitch, bones.”
“Haggarty could stage another coup,” Avery reasoned. “His threat must be ended.”
“Her threat must be ended.”
