Enemy corvettes swarmed to engage, and an arashitora named Eii was caught in a three-way burst of fire from the incoming ships, shredded in the hail, dropping from the sky. The rest of the pack shook the clouds with their outrage, turned from the larger ships to pursue the smaller craft, the pilots trying to maneuver the thunder tigers onto the heavier ship guns. Razored steel filled the air, cutting the snowflakes to black mist.
Yukiko and Buruu flew east, over the plains outside Yama. Looking down, she saw a horde of gaijin storming toward the Tora assault bridges over the Amatsu, siege-crawlers roaring in the vanguard. Looking back, she could see the Earthcrusher slowly crunching toward Kitsune-jō, the Fox sky-ships tangled with the Guild fleet, boarding parties engaged in brutal hand-to-hand. But Hana’s pain was like a fresh wound in her skull, the girl’s grief amplifying Yukiko’s own—impossible to ignore. She could see Kaiah and Hana moving like a chainblade amongst the gaijin rotor-thopters, smashing them from the air with bursts of Raijin Song. Their formation in utter disarray, Kaiah and Hana pursuing the ships and opening them like love letters, remnants fluttering to the earth in clouds of burning perfume. And still the pilots fought on, spitting lightning, seemingly filled with suicidal rage.
And then they spotted Yukiko and Buruu swooping from the clouds—a second hellsborn girl on the back of a second thunder tiger, the sight turning all valor to water. One by one the remaining ’thopters fled, tearing back east across the smoking skies.
“Hana!” The cry spilled from her lips into the Kenning, echoing in the red warmth between them. “Hana, listen to me!”
The girl turned in her saddle, lightning gleaming on the edges of her armor. Her face was contorted, goggles dragged down around her throat, tears frozen on her cheeks.
“They killed him!” she screamed. “They killed Akihito!”
Yukiko could almost taste the girl’s grief in the air. She could see fragments in Hana’s mind; the pair lying together in the dark, her head on his chest, wrapped in gentle strength. Tears welled in her eyes—for her friend, for Hana who’d lost him almost as soon as she found him. But there was no time for grief now, not unless they wished to mourn the entire country along with him.
“Hana, I know what they did. But thousands more are going to die if we don’t stop this.”
“I don’t give a shit about any of them! At least Akihito won’t be in the Hells alone!”
“What about your brother? What about Yoshi?”
“He’s not here…”
“Hana, if we fail today, the entire country is lost, do you understand that? No one is safe. The Guild will live on and everything that was good or pure in these islands will be gone. Everything. Do you think Akihito would have wanted that?”
“You didn’t know him like I did…”
“I knew him since I was seven. He held my hand at my brother’s funeral. And though I didn’t love him like you did, don’t you dare tell me I didn’t know him. He’d want you to fight now, Hana. Not to avenge him, but to save these islands and the good left in them.”
They stared at each other across the snow-filled sky, the smell of black smoke and fire and blood, the cacophony of sky-ship engines and the Earthcrusher’s march, the stampede of gaijin drawing closer to the Tora river crossings. Hana was still crying, shoulders heaving as she struggled for breath. Kaiah cut the air in sweeping circles, tail stretched like a whip.
- SHE SPEAKS TRUE, HANA. THOUGH PRECIOUS FEW, THERE ARE THINGS HERE WORTH SAVING. HE WOULD HAVE YOU FIGHT. -
The girl hung her head, scraping frozen tears from her lashes. Yukiko could feel her fighting with herself, the grief and rage and spite locked tooth and claw with Kaiah’s words, Yukiko’s, Hana’s own sense of right. Wavering on the brink; the same abyss that had almost swallowed Yukiko when her father died. But in the end, Hana caught her grief and swallowed it, rusted and sharp. And Yukiko could see the reason Akihito had loved her.
“I’m with you,” the girl nodded.
“All right.” Yukiko pointed to the assault bridge over the Amatsu, the gaijin army charging toward it. “We stop the gaijin getting into Yama. Then we deal with the Tora fleet. Then we take out the Earthcrusher.”
“Hai,” Hana sniffed.
Yukiko slipped into Buruu’s thoughts, all warmth and folded steel.
Are you ready, brother?
ALWAYS.
All right. Let’s cut this thing off at the root.
*
His name was Vladimir Grigori. Seaman, second ribbon. Fifteen years old.
His application to enter the service had been a string of half-truths held together by lies, although in fact, the recruiters didn’t question too vigorously once they discovered he was from Krakaan. The slaughter perpetrated by the slavers, the abduction of every woman, child and half-hale man from the city … well, the tale had already become legend before Vladimir and the ragtag bunch of survivors had limped east to Tarnow. For a boy to want revenge after everything he knew had been destroyed? Anyone could understand that, fifteen or no.