“That is what I mean, Stormdancer.”
“This is madness…” Hana said.
“To wield the long and the short swords and then to die, girl.”
“Gods, not again!” Yukiko cried. “Honor and glory? What the hells is wrong with you people? Why are you all so eager to kill yourselves?”
“If you have another suggestion, Stormdancer, I am willing to hear it.”
Yukiko grit her teeth, looked to her thunder tiger. Isamu watched her scowl deepen, but she stayed silent as graves.
“I thought not,” he said.
“There must be another way…”
“Not all sacrifice is in vain. Not all who give their lives do it for glory, or honor. Some do it for love. Of clan, or future, or family. Something greater than ourselves.”
“… My father said something like that to me. A lifetime ago.”
“A wise man.” Isamu looked at his empty hands and sighed. “Wiser than most fathers.”
The city of Yama blurred beneath them, the flaming trail of destruction in the Earthcrusher’s wake visible through the veil of smoke and fumes. Shreddermen suits stomped through the rubble, thick knots of fighting raging in the sky-harbor, the market district, the refinery ruins. The behemoth’s footsteps had cracked the ground like broken glass.
The Lucky Fox was soon joined in its charge by four Kitsune corvettes, all converging on the Earthcrusher’s position. The helmsman adjusted altitude, bringing the Fox level with the Earthcrusher’s head, pouring every drop of chi into the shrieking engines.
The cloudwalkers, bushimen and Iron Samurai gathered on the pilot’s deck, every eye locked on the goliath. Isamu turned to them, a smile on his ash-streaked face.
“You men have fought bravely this day, but the battle is not yet done. Take the escape pod and continue the struggle against the Tora below.”
A bushiman not even old enough to shave stepped forward, covered his fist. “We stand with you, Daimyo! We stay to the end!”
“Your duty is to your families. This battle is far from won. Go now. See to our city.”
Isamu was met with defiant stares, mute disobedience, shuffling feet. His lips peeled back from his teeth, five decades of command turning his words to steel.
“This is a direct order!” he barked. “Go! Now!”
The Kitsune soldiers reluctantly covered their fists, bowed slow and deep, sorrow in their eyes. As the men began filing into the escape pod, the clanlord turned to Yukiko, placed a gentle hand on her belly. The girl tensed at his touch, but didn’t move away.
“Do good by them,” he said. “Never let them go.”
Yukiko swallowed hard, said nothing. Hana threw a hasty embrace around the old man’s shoulders, kissed him on his cheek.
“Maker bless you, most Handsome Worshipfulness.”
The pair trudged down the stairs toward Kaiah and Buruu. The male thunder tiger watched him with glittering eyes, tail lashing like a slow whip. Isamu held up a hand, signaling farewell. And with a rush of wind, the pulse of the storm, the beasts took to the skies.
Isamu turned back to the Earthcrusher, took position at the wheel, tossed his helmet to the deck. White hair streamed out behind him in the burning wind, flailing at his eyes; the pepper gray his lady had so loved to tease him about. He thought of Morcheba, the horrors he’d witnessed and helped inflict. He thought of his sons, his lady. But mostly he thought of the time he’d lost to war. The things he’d missed out on, fighting other men missing out on the same. Love. Family. And for what? Glory or greed? A soldier or a tool? A warrior or a weapon?
Too late to wonder now.
The Earthcrusher loomed out of the blinding smoke, its turrets whining, spitting a storm of iron-thrower shot. He could see two corvettes diving through the hail of fire, shredding and bursting aflame, colliding with the Earthcrusher’s belly and glancing off its shoulder. A great scything chainblade arm tore another corvette from the skies, painting the clouds inferno-red. The Lucky Fox bore down, Isamu wrenching the wheel to avoid one lumbering swing of the goliath’s arm, just as a corvette collided with the Earthcrusher’s back.
The ship burst into flames, a blinding flash of blue-white, curling into sunburned orange and up into coal-black smoke. Isamu roared, the Fox’s engines screaming with him, the Earthcrusher’s arm tearing the keel away in a shower of splinters just as the other arm came down atop the inflatable, cleaving it in two.
The war cry catching in his throat.
The sensation of flying, weightless.
A fireball above, bright as the sun.
Impact.
*
The explosion was deafening, deck shifting beneath Kin’s feet as the Kitsune ironclad collided with the Earthcrusher’s head. Vents exploded, sparks and flame, Guildsmen flung like toys to the floor. Rasping cries, tortured metal shrieks, hissing pipes, crackling flames.