I sneak a glance outside, just in time to catch the twisted wreckage of the craft disappearing beneath the waves. One down.
But the other three are shifting their attention to the Minnow’s engines, and I’m about to be in some serious shit. The chances of a stray bullet finding me just got a whole lot better. My heart thunders in my chest, and the engines shudder below me. I raise one hand to my ear and press down. “Swift? Still alive up there?”
“Miraculously. Hold on a second.” Another thud rattles through the ship, but there’s no explosion in its wake; the shell must have missed its mark.
“If I give up my position to them, their paradigm will shift. Their infra will recognize that I’m unguarded. They’ll stop shooting at the engines and start trying to bring me in.”
“Cas—” Swift starts.
There are children on this boat. There are people on the Minnow whose only crime was being born on the fringes. The people on the copters aren’t trying to spare them, and even if they do bring me in, they won’t waste the opportunity to take out a pirate ship. There’s only one way to save everyone on the Minnow.
“I think I can get all of them right up against the water at the back of the ship,” I tell Swift. “And then I’ll light the Otachi.”
There’s a long pause. Then Swift laughs, as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “I’ll tell the captain. Give me a second.”
“I don’t have a second,” I hiss. The guns are swiveling around, the barrels pointing straight at the engines beneath my feet. “Make sure she doesn’t shoot me for this.”
Swift yells, “Cas, wait—”
But I’m already pushing off the wall, sprinting for the edge of the deck, my fingers fumbling with the straps of my right-hand Otachi. I strip it off, toss it over my shoulder, swing my arms up, and dive headfirst into the sea.
The water thrums with the beat of the rotors overhead, and I turn end over end, my fingertips scrabbling for the dials on my wrist. I twist them, the device comes to life, and a beam of light blasts down into the depths as the sound of Bao’s homing call rattles out after it. With the saltwater burning my eyes, I can’t keep them open long enough to see if he responds.
I can only pray now.
With two quick pumps of my legs, I break the surface again and immediately fling up my bare arm, waving it wildly back and forth. “Here!” I scream over the roar of the quadcopters. “Help! I’m here! Please!”
Their infra must detect me; the gun barrels go slack as the quadcopters pull up. The Minnow speeds away. Over the wave tops, I spot the narrow hulls of the Splinters peeling off and heading back my way as if they’re coming to collect me. I really hope they aren’t.
“Please!” I yell again. With the left-hand Otachi weighing me down, it’s getting harder and harder to tread water. I glance beneath my feet and find a familiar shadow rising fast. Up above, the copters start to sink. They’re coming for me.
No going back now.
I yank my left arm out of the sea, throwing the Otachi’s beams against the lowering hull of the quadcopter above me and twisting the dial to the aggression setting. I thrash my legs, trying to propel myself out of the way. The water beneath me swells.
I slide clear with inches to spare, caught in a tumult of water as Bao breaches clean out of the NeoPacific, his massive limbs slashing at the quadcopter above. With a crash like a freight train derailing, he bats the copter into one of its fellows, but I plunge back underwater before I can see anything else. I throw my arms up over my head, trying to protect it, trying to make myself as small as possible. In this clash of giants, I’m just a skinny blip, washed to the side by the force of the wave Bao produces when he splashes back down.
I choke on saltwater as I try to surface again. All around me is noise and sea, and somewhere out there, a beast is tearing into metal the way a tsunami hits a coast. My whole body feels bruised, pummeled by the waves that keep crashing over me. I kick and gasp, trying to push myself away from the chaos that’s been unleashed.
By the time I’m clear, one of the copters is inside out. Thick smoke clots the air, and tiny fires dot the waves. The second copter is limping back into the air, but Bao’s not letting it go that easily. As it spins, trying to compensate for the damage he dealt to one of its rotors, the Reckoner lunges up, his beak snapping shut on the mount of the machine gun chugging bullets into his hide. With one twist of his neck, Bao turns the quadcopter end over end, slamming down into the wreckage of its fellow as he falls on top of it, his claws ripping at its steel-plated hull.
The third copter’s a fast-retreating speck on the horizon.
I float on my back, watching it get smaller and smaller, a sinking feeling overtaking my stomach. That bird carries people who saw me alive. Saw me throw myself from the Minnow. Saw me turn the Otachi on the copters.
Saw me summon a beast from the depths to crush the people trying to bring me home.
I flash the Otachi at Bao, and the Reckoner’s head snaps toward me. His vast, reptilian eyes narrow to slits, his blowholes flaring as he lets a slice of the copter’s hull slip from his mouth. I can see the gears in his brain working. He’s flushed with rage, filled with the need to savage, but the lights that blaze from my wrist are calling him in a way he can’t ignore. I silently plead with him not to reconcile the two impulses on me. If I can attract him, if I can just pull him away from the wreckage, there might be survivors.
I might be able to spare a few of the people I just tried to slaughter.
I never meant for it to go this far. My stomach twists and surges, and before I can swallow it back, I’m emptying my guts in the ocean. I struggle to keep the Otachi level as I retch, but Bao’s losing interest in the beams. He lowers his beak back into the water, prowling closer to the quadcopter’s ragged hull.
“Get over here, you little shit,” I choke, and slash the lights over his eyes.
Bao roars, rearing up again. With two quick strokes of his back legs, he drifts toward me, and as he draws close, I can smell the acrid smoke and gasoline fumes that roll off him. His beak snaps shut impatiently, and I shut off the Otachi.
For a moment we regard each other, one monster to another. The one who took down the quadcopters and the one who made him do it.
Then I twist a knob on my wrist, and the dive signal flashes out into the depths, the noise of it ringing in my ears. Bao hauls in a deep breath through his blowholes, then slips silently under the surface, sinking fast, but not fast enough to avoid brushing me with his singed keratin plates as his shoulders rush beneath my feet. I flinch when my toes skim over a scorching-hot bullet hole.
It doesn’t seem worth it to go back to the Minnow. For a moment, I fantasize about crawling into the wreckage of the quadcopters, about trying to pull out whoever’s left alive in there, as if I can undo some of the damage that Bao’s—that I’ve—done.
But that doesn’t seem worth it either. If there are people living and breathing in those twisted remains bobbing on the waves, my face is probably the last thing they want to see.
My best option at this point is probably just to follow Bao. Let myself sink. Let the ocean take me, let the water fill my lungs like it’s been trying to do. It would be painful, but then it wouldn’t, and I would never hurt anyone again.
No, that’s not true. That can’t ever be true. If I let myself sink, it would kill Swift, and I can’t abide that. I wrecked these quadcopters without hesitation, and it saved her life, but now even that doesn’t seem like it’s enough. Was her life worth the lives I just took? Is she worth that to me?
I’m still stuck on those questions when Varma’s Splinter comes to collect me. Chuck leans out of the copilot’s seat and scoops me out of the NeoPacific. There’s no fight left in me; I let her drop me on the floor like a rag doll. They could easily kill me now, but I don’t think they’re in the mood for favors.