Even with the utility spell engine putting out a high volume sound-suppression spell, the guns firing were deafening. Iliya Torres, hands tight on the controls, only glanced up at the opening volley as it burst in the sky above them. From what she could tell, the maneuver had worked enough to catch a few of the Akanans—she heard their distant guns and saw flashes through the billowing clouds, but the light array by her controls indicated no hits to their shields. What she did see was an Akanan skiff above them erupt into flames as the lower part of its hull was blown to pieces.
Iliya banked left, and her formation followed her. Above, looming like castles in the sky, she could just make out the forms of the dreadnoughts through the haze.
“Aim for those open gun ports!” she heard Trinea shouting from her place near the bow. The burning skiff plummeted past their starboard side, and Iliya banked right, bringing them closer to the dreadnoughts. Most firing ports were open, but the gunners didn’t have firing solutions yet.
“They’ve got sorcerers cleaning smoke. More veil shots!” Trinea said into the communication engine.
There were more people talking behind her as gunners reloaded guns and sorcerers cast from the decks, but Iliya tuned it out. All her attention was on watching the skies and steering. All around them, the cloud of smoke was growing. It flashed with lightning, with fire, and with residual light from magnetic and force spells as the excess arcane energy transmuted. It looked like they were flying in a burning thunderhead, only instead of rain, there’d be steel shrapnel.
Two Akanan skiffs suddenly loomed large before them, descending down below the veil. Those ships seemed as surprised as they were. As their own formation broke apart to avoid a collision, Iliya hit the acceleration lever and twisted the steering device, bringing them around the rear of the craft where the enemy guns would have the most trouble aiming. The first Akanan craft tried to spin in place to angle the guns at them—a fine maneuver if they weren’t moving and there was no wind. But they were moving fast, and the high winds up here were unrestrained by any of the dunes or plateaus. Iliya watched as the wind pushed the stabilizer wings and broadside of the enemy craft up, tilting the deck at a precipitous angle and pushing it into a spin. The other pilot wasn’t so inexperienced and banked more carefully, but the enhancements Iliya had made to the steering controls and stabilizing force spells were already paying dividends. She kept behind the craft. As she followed them, she could see the enemy sorcerers readying spells. She accelerated slightly again, bringing them closer to the rear of the craft.
To her left, she saw Song Jei casting with her orb, and to her right, Trinea with her wand. Trinea’s dual magnetic and force spell exploded across the shield. Song had a different tactic, and this close to the enemy, she was in range for it.
Two conduit crystals, both inside the levitation engines, exploded. A few of their sorcerers got spells off that erupted across their own shield, but then they were screaming as the Akanan ship dropped out of the air.
Iliya didn’t have to see what had happened to know what Song had done. Shield engines had a barrier for preventing the arcane force from entering, but it wasn’t as robust as the other shields. The primary threats to the airship were guns and projectile spells. Enemy casters usually couldn’t get close enough to actually cast spells that would manifest inside the shields, so a minor barrier was all that was needed.
Unless that caster happened to be a specialist in four-dimensional arcane energy movements. Song had her spell go around the arcane shield, targeting the conduits directly with a Zhighuan crystal spell that standard wards wouldn’t be designed to counter.
There was no time to celebrate, though. The second enemy craft had stabilized, though one of the crew was dangling off the railing by his tether, shouting something into the wind. Iliya brought them around in an arc so their ship was between the enemy and the lead dreadnought—but the risk of friendly fire wasn’t enough. Two Akanan guns fired up at them. The first missed, but the second was a direct hit on their shield.
It shattered.
“Shield!” she called.
“Shield down, requesting emergency projection!” the communications officer shouted. A moment later, misting light indicating a layer of shields shimmered around their craft as their wing caught up with them and used their shield engine to project an emergency spell around them while they fixed the damage.
Behind Iliya, she could hear Jei already tearing apart the shield engine to see where it had failed. There was acrid smoke in the air, though if it was from their skiff or the veil shots burning across the sky, she didn’t know. But she trusted her friend and colleague; the only people who could fix a cracked conduit crystal faster were all time travelers.
Trinea had stopped trying to coordinate the whole battle and was now just coordinating their squadron; it was impossible to see everything in the growing haze.
“Incoming,” someone said, but Iliya had already spotted them: four Akanan skiffs, two coming from above, two from below.
“Song, how much time?” Iliya said.
“One more minute,” she said.
Iliya accelerated, pushing the kinetic engine to its maximum. The skiff shot forward towards the gap between two of the dreadnoughts. There were explosions, and she felt casting behind her. As she glanced up, though, her blood chilled: Akanan sorcerers were levitating off the deck in tight formations.
“Sorcerer Elite!” she called. “Get that fix in!”
“Kinetic bursting shells towards that position!” Trinea shouted. The airship lurched sideways as Iliya swerved hard, just in time to miss a barrage of spells that exploded where she’d just been headed. She brought their craft parallel alongside the second dreadnought, only a few meters away. Two dials on the glyph panel spun up; even approaching the orichalcum-plated hull was causing the engines to draw hard on the fossilized myrvite fuel—but it also meant that the skiffs and sorcerers pursuing them were impeded. Iliya glanced back. Most of the squad was still following, but one of the skiffs had been picked off. She saw it falling out of the air, the hull practically torn in half. An artillery shell burst behind their formation, but at reduced strength as the nearby orichalcum drained the arcane force before it was transmuted. Another barrage of spells from the Akanan sorcerers streamed towards them, but died well before they could hit.
“Too close,” Song said.
Iliya broke away, pulling hard to port pushing them down.
“Steady!” called the gunnery team, and she kept the course straight. From behind, she heard their guns blast out, smashing into the Akanan hull.
Seeing the damage, all hope of taking on the Might of Liberty died; they’d landed a lucky magnetic burst near a gun port, causing the protruding barrel to deform, but the rest of the shots had done little damage.
“Done,” Song proclaimed, and the shield around their craft intensified. The supporting craft withdrew their shield and fell back in the formation.
Iliya dropped them down again, bringing their formation about in a circle, thinking, this is nothing like the drills we did back at Fort Aegrimere. It was chaos in the skies, and the haze of billowing smoke flickered orange and red as explosions roared out. Ahead, another squadron shot by, the hazy shapes too indistinct to tell if they were friend or foe.
All her focus narrowed into the moment. There was just the air in front of her and the controls. The shouting voices only penetrated her conscious mind if they were directed to her. Someone shouted about another group of sorcerers levitating above them, and she pulled hard to starboard, cannons booming behind her as they sped away. Then suddenly, there was a lone man hovering in front of the craft, and Iliya had no time to decelerate. The shields of the ship and the shield of the man collided. First, his shield broke, then, theirs did as it smashed into him—and she saw the glint of adamantium around his neck.
“Archmage!” she called. She felt her arcane sense tingling again and again as the sizzle of spells went off behind her. The archmage dropped out of the sky for a moment, then steadied himself, sending a flurry of spells their way. Metal screeched as the deck warped, but it was mostly fire spells. The main shield engine was down again, but Song was already on the repairs while Trinea coordinated the response of the sorcerers. The deck tilted slightly as they gathered on one side of the ship, layered heat shields absorbing the fireballs as they exploded, but leaving the flashes of blinding light. There was a roar as heat washed over her back.
“Squad can cover; get us away!” Trinea shouted. She was clutching a burn on her arm.
Iliya didn’t need to be told twice. Force engines were good at moving sideways, but levitation engines were good at moving up. She diverted all power to levitation, then nearly blacked out as the ship’s acceleration made it feel like she was being pushed through the deck. Her vision narrowed into dark circles, and there was an unbearable pressure. Her teeth clenched like vices as she struggled to reach out and pull back the throttle. For a moment, the steel lever was just out of reach, and then her fingers found it and she yanked back. The ship slowed its ascent.
Then, a moment of respite.
They were above the fray. Below, the cloud was full of rumbling fire. Through it, the three dreadnoughts swam in predatory circles like mighty leviathans. From the burning cloud, she saw shapes drifting down to the desert below. At first, she thought they were like the leaves of an autumn in Torrviol, beautiful colors gently swaying back and forth, painting the ground in brilliant oranges and reds. Then her mind caught up, and she realized they were airships plummeting to their doom. There was no carpet of leaves below, but a trail of smoldering crash sites as the battle moved eastward, ever closer to the regulator.
Below, she saw one of their squads had positioned itself just above a dreadnought, going against orders. For a moment, it looked like the maneuver might be a success. Three spellbombs fell directly on the bow of the colossal airship, sending up fountains of lightning and flame. The local shield engine protecting that part of the deck failed, and a fourth bomb impacted directly.
Then the deck guns erupted, and the sorcerers on deck followed with their spells a moment later. Iliya watched in horror as two of their airships were torn out of the air and a third had a stabilizing wing torn off. Another group of sorcerers was launching from the deck of the third dreadnought, and it looked like they might be heading in their direction.
Iliya tried to look through the cloud, but even an infrared vision spell did nothing to penetrate the fog. Everywhere, dark shapes sent swirls through the smoke, magic explosions pulsing in a discordant pattern that was impossible to interpret. All she could do was aim for a spot where she’d caught a glimpse of another allied squadron and reinforce them. Their shield flickered back on and they plummeted back down into the fray.
Time blurred after that. There was more shouting, more firing, more spells. The starboard stabilizer cut out briefly, tilting them dangerously, but Iliya’s harness kept her upright, and it came back on a moment later. Twice more they were hit, with the shields preventing the worst of the damage.
Trinea’s voice grew hoarse as she continued shouting her orders through the communication spells.
Then, the central dial pulsed with red light. “Fuel half!” Iliya called.
“Ammo down to the dregs,” said someone from the gunnery team.
“Auras?” Trinea asked.
Whatever the response was, it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
Another airship streamed by through the cloud, a trail of violet and orange light behind it indicating it was leaking burning foss. The wind was clearing away the haze of smoke. From what Iliya could see, they’d done some damage to the dreadnought firing ports, and the airships circling through the air weren’t so frenetic—though it was hard to say who’d taken worse losses.
She glanced back at Trinea. The Praetorian looked grim. “Pass along the order, then. All squadrons, withdraw. We’ve done what we can—full withdrawal!”
From the aft of the ship, the gunners sent out bright blue flares, and Iliya dropped them down just above the dunes, reestablishing the camouflage spell above them, flying east. Looking back, three of the squad had made it. The rest were lost—either downed, destroyed, or separated from the group; it was impossible to know.
More blue flares shot out of the cloud as the general withdrawal spread through either sight or remote voice spells. A limping skiff drifted down and slammed into a sand dune. There’d probably be survivors, but going back to help was a death sentence. As the Ominian’s Army retreated, it sent up a screen of starburst shells. Several Akanan craft pursued, and Iliya watched as two were shot down. The rest peeled away, back to the coverage of the dreadnoughts and sorcerers. The dreadnoughts lobbed long arced parting shots their way. Iliya watched with no small amount of fear as one arced in their direction, but as it came down, she let out a breath of relief. It was easily two hundred meters off. They’d pulled far enough away that the camouflage screens were more than adequate to hide them.
Then Iliya watched as some two dozen Akana skiffs formed back up, keeping high above. By then, there were a few miles separating them.
“Pursuit,” she said to Trinea.
The Praetorian was sitting on the deck, slumped over. At some point she’d taken on more burns, and she was wearing a red-stained bandage around her arm. “Gunnery, arm bursting shells. Pilot, keep us steady.”
They flew on, the Ominian’s Army airships keeping low to the ground with camouflage illusions up. The Akanans kept high, occasionally, firing outward.
“Testing range,” Iliya muttered.
“Using altitude to increase it. Perhaps they think they can get shots off on the regulator while we’re forced to refuel,” Song said, eyes fixed on the sky behind them.
Trinea grunted and got to her feet. “They might not have an accurate count of our numbers. Divination is ineffective at these ranges. We have local superiority in numbers, if not in spell power. We’ll be pulling out of the maximum range of the dreadnoughts soon. We’ll turn and fight. We could wait to engage them when our own artillery can support, but then they’d be bringing those positions back to their army. Best to do it now and keep our emplacements hidden.”
For a half hour, Trinea was back on the communications engine. Then, on her last signal, three of the Ominian’s Army skiffs with the most damage turned off their illusions. The crews were ordered to wave their hands and look like they were shouting at each other while artificers gathered around the utility engine. They continued flying forward—encouraging any Akanans watching with lens spells to believe the utility engines had failed and the Ominian’s Army airships were maintaining course.
The rest of the fleet split off in two directions, keeping their camouflage spells active.
For a whole minute, the Akanans seemed to be fooled, firing several more lobbing shots down at the fleeing craft—then they must have noticed the change, because their formation broke apart, just as the Ominian’s Army fleet began a rapid ascent and started firing.
The skirmish was brief, but decisive. Three Akanan skiffs took fatal hits and plummeted from the sky. Two arcanists with their own levitation wands tried to escape the falling craft, but were brought down in a barrage of bursting shells. Only one Ominian’s Army airship fell to the exchange. Shield engines protected the rest, and the Akanans broke away, heading back to the dreadnoughts.
“We have the distance to rescue that crews. Squadron three, pick them up. Everyone else can cut camouflage,” Trinea said, then went back to slumping against the railing.
With the illusions off, Iliya could better see the results. They’d lost over a third of the skiffs, but as Trinea received preliminary reports from the squad captains, they’d at least partially achieved their objectives. The dreadnought main firing ports had sustained damage, they’d been forced to expend a substantial portion of their limited ammunition and foss, and they’d picked off enough enemy skiffs and sorcerers to limit the enemy’s capabilities. A victory, if a bitter one.
Trinea, peering back at the Akanans through a lens spell, finally said, “Akanan fleet withdrawing. The dreadnoughts are heading back to link up with their ground forces.” A cheer went up on the deck, though it was half-hearted.
The Akanans were still coming. They just had that much longer to prepare.
Iliya handed off the controls to Song, then sat down, hands shaking, needing a moment to just sit there and process what had happened. They’d lived—for now. But the battle was far from over.