Temeraire flung himself as quickly as he could down the river: the guns were flickering again, and as he drew nearer he could hear their faint singing whine, and more dreadfully the acrid, terrible smell of burning plastics. He had never before pressed his bracework to its limits, much less beyond.
“Reliant,” the Navy officer was saying upon his back, “this is Captain Laurence; answer, if you please.” There was a low anxious note of worry deep in his voice. “Reliant, please respond,” and then he shook his head and dropped his arm, a grim expression on his face. “I do not think they could have managed to corrupt or block my connection to the ship. Not without having taken her. What grade is your planetary shield?”
“The very highest, of course,” Temeraire said. “It is up to primary-world standards; you cannot suppose our families would have consented to anything less.”
“And you are self-sufficient?” Laurence asked. “They cannot starve you out?”
“I suppose not,” Temeraire said dismally, although he by no means relished the idea of going back to a diet entirely from the vats. “But they will surely try and destroy those at once,” he added anxiously, “and our power supplies, and bring down the shield itself: everything is in the capital.” He pressed on for more speed, but Laurence reached forward and lay a hand upon his neck, restraining.
“Governor—I beg you listen to me: they will certainly have at least one gunship for aerial support. You cannot come in underneath their fire, or they will bring you down as soon as you are within range. Does your bracework have any stealth capabilities?”
“Whyever should it?” Temeraire said, beating on. “It is not as though I had ever needed to hide from anyone; oh! How dare they come here.” He was deeply infuriated, and he did not care in the least that the Bonapartists would try and shoot at him: he would not merely stand by and see their colony wrecked, and torn apart. Perhaps he might dodge their attacks—
“Then you must have more elevation,” Laurence said, “and as far as possible, keep to the cover of the trees until you can get a clear run at the gunship: if you can get us aboard, they cannot shoot us, not once we are among them.”
Despite his distorting wrath, Temeraire could not deny that this sounded like highly reasonable advice; he angled himself aloft and beat up and up, the air thinning to unpleasant degrees and making for cold and difficult flying: but he persevered, darting among the silvery thicket of branches, thin enough at this height that they yielded to him, bending if he caught against one, until he caught sight of the capital.
It did not really deserve the name of capital or even of city: they had only a tiny clustered handful of real buildings, all of them quite small—Temeraire could only just fit through the doors of the main warehouse, and not at all into the defense center; that was Perscitia’s domain. These buildings were ringed by the more skeletal frames of the sleeping-pavilions they had managed to erect—nearly all of which were presently wreathed in flames: their marvelous silken hangings, brought all the way from Earth, were smoking into ruin. Temeraire hissed in fury, trembling; it was not to be borne.
But Laurence had been quite right, there was indeed a gunship, a simple boatlike oval hovering, with half a dozen men and two smallish dragons aboard it. A boiling storm of black smoke below them illuminated in flashes as they continued to fire the guns.
“Seven o’clock from their center,” Laurence said. “They are only twenty meters from the tree cover: wait until the rear guns have fired next, and then make the attempt.”
Temeraire saw at once what he meant, and dropped himself spiraling through the thicker branches until they were on a level with the boat; another glittering cascade of fire went off, and this close Temeraire could see the cartridges themselves: long thin silver casings with their green running lights blinking like cold, cruel eyes as they plumed with yellow-gold smoke and darted down, looking for something to destroy. As soon as they had gone, he flung himself across, his bracework straining, and the entire boat shrieked like a living thing as he came down upon it.