Destiny's Blood by Marie Bilodeau (best authors to read .TXT) 📗

that if they had not been white and translucent, Avienne would have believed them flesh and blood. All of them, in the vision of their eyes, held a plea echoed by their mouths and reaching to the farthest tips of their diluted fingers and toes.

There were thousands of them, so many that the blue sky was gone and the surface still unseen.

No need to aim, then, Avienne thought. She quickly familiarized herself with the layout of the console. The symbols were familiar, all but one. It was a sun, similar to the one in the symbol of Mirial. Those must be the ether weapons!

She pulled back on the levers. The hull creaked as the weapons were released, and she idly wondered if the wraiths circling them would find access into the ship through the weapons bays. She quickly pushed the thought from her mind — the weapons were isolated. They had to be, to be safely used in space.

Avienne powered up all five of the guns she could identify: two starboard, two on the port side, and one on the stern of the ship. She suspected there was at least one located on the stem, but could find no sign of it.

“Come on, faster!” she muttered, watching the readings. The power meter displays slowly crept upward, until they became full and red. Avienne did not hesitate.

“Firing!” If Kipso was surprised to see her at the station, he did not show it.

The blast of the ether weapons wasn’t as impressive as laser fire would have been, but still Avienne heard the satisfying clunk and jerk on the ship, impressed that all five had fired within seconds of each other. She looked at the view screen, where an orange wave passed through the wraiths, sweeping their features away.

The hull was silent. No more knocking, no more pleading.

Avienne hit the “warm” key on each of the weapons to recharge them, never taking her eyes off the mist that scintillated before them. Kipso stood awkwardly over the pilot’s chair, muttering to Victory and urging her to respond faster. Avienne chanced a glance at her panel. The ether weapons were recharging, but not nearly fast enough for her liking.

Loran was quiet now, her two hands covering her mouth as though stifling a scream. Avienne hoped her hands would stay there.

Then a slow shriek began, at first mixing with the sounds of the Victory’s straining engines, but then rising in pitch steadily. A spasm travelled through the whole mist like a single heart beating wildly, and the faces reappeared, angrier, louder, and stronger.

They clutched the Victory’s hull, banging on the metal.

“Seventeen more seconds and I can fire again,” Avienne said.

Kipso grunted agreement. Good enough! She glanced down at her console and ticked down the last few seconds until she could fire.

Gant rose to his feet, looking from the view port to Avienne’s fingers, hovering over the keys. “You’ll just make them angrier!” he screamed. He charged her to unseat her from the station as she had unseated him, but her leg came up automatically. She would have kicked him had Zortan not intercepted him. One quick hit to the neck and the young man crumpled at Avienne’s feet, no longer moving.

Avienne looked down and kicked him sideways.

“He’ll live,” Zortan said.

“I don’t care about that,” Avienne replied, kicking the unconscious Gant again. “If the ship lurches bad I’m going to trip on him!”

She turned back to the controls to find the ether weapons red and full. She heard a thunk behind her and winced — she guessed it was Gant’s head coming in contact with something hard as Zortan moved him.

“Firing!”

The ship made the same clunking sound, except this time it was followed by a bang. No orange wave travelled out through the wraiths.

“Malavant!” Kipso half-shouted, half-grunted from the front. “Fire those weapons!”

Avienne ignored him, looking down at her displays. Three of the weapon bars uncharged.

“Blood and bones,” she whispered as she realized what was happening. The wraiths had hit the weapons hard, as though they knew where to hit. One by one, the ether weapons that would have saved them were destroyed.

“Blood and bones.”

i

Dunkat broke from the Mirial fleet’s pathetic formation, doubting he would be missed in the chaos. The shuttle he had appropriated had impressive manoeuvring capabilities, but in the chaos of the wraiths before them, those capabilities proved useless.

His arms were strained from holding his shuttle upright, and he was getting increasingly annoyed. These wraiths, no doubt a remnant of the true nature of Mirial, were blocking his view of the planet. He had been looking forward to seeing it from the sky, seeing the devastation the Fates had wrought.

His small ship groaned, and he felt a twinge of worry. Just a twinge, but enough to bring a small sweat to his brow. He pulled up on the controls, the ship’s engine complaining as his lift clashed with the wraiths’ intentions. The ship straightened but quickly buckled and its nose dove again, at a greater angle. He felt another twinge of concern and resisted the urge to shift in his seat.

He lowered his eyes to the instruments for an instant. His one-man fighter ship was not faring too badly considering the assault it was receiving. Then again, this was Mirial technology, and despite his hatred of some of their practices, even he had to admit that Solari technology was far behind Mirial’s decades-old defences.

He frowned. The readings on his navigational instruments were erratic. He tapped on the console once with two fingers, setting the altitude dial spinning. A greater twinge struck him, and he felt cold sweat imbue his cotton undershirt. He cleared his dry throat and looked up, his hands feeling numb as he fought to control the ship.

He could not see. No break existed in the wraiths before him. He could very well be within impact range of the ground, and had no way to know it. He tried to recall how far he might have come, but it was all lost in a sea of