N / A

This is not some short half-assed scene. This is 1500 words long, and I think it works well from start to finish. I hope it does. Sometimes I think I can tell how well I’m doing by how acutely I feel what my characters feel. By the time I finished writing this, I was nauseous. Hopefully that’s a good sign.

Bridge of Kodiak – 1425 hours – Kyoto Atoll – 12000 feet

In line battle, each ship shall engage its opposite number and press the engagement to its conclusion, whatever the outcome.

Aria Cantion, Imperial heir and an admiral of the fleet, scowled as a junior officer relayed Admiral Lord Westland’s final instructions for the coming battle: “Hold the line.” He gave her a weak smile and hurried through a salute before disappearing, abandoning the bridge for the armored citadel beneath to escape her inevitable wrath. The Cantion line had a famous temper.

“It’s his last battle, Aria,” said the tall, thin figure beside her on the bridge—Master Sergeant David Cross, her mentor and guardian. “Tomorrow he’ll be just another flag officer who retired too old to see his grandchildren grow up. Today, because of you, he has one last chance at glory.”

“And I have one less,” she muttered. She sighed, gazing wistfully at Parapet, steaming at the head of the battle line under Lord Westland’s command. She shook her head, looking away toward the horizon—toward the enemy force. Yes, the old man deserves one last chance to hear the cannon thunder his name. And yet…

“What they’re doing is madness,” she said. As she spoke, ten cruisers and a handful of outmoded battleships laid down sometime in the last century climbed—struggled to climb—to meet her vastly superior force. Comprised of five modern battleships and four of the best heavy cruisers in the Imperial Fleet, her squadron outgunned and outclassed the enemy in every conceivable way. Such odds made Lord Westland’s admittedly uncreative tactics easily justifiable. “Has there been no word from our advance screens? It must be a trap.”

“I think it’s time you learned the parable of the dragon then, young mistress,” said another of the higher ranking officers on the bridge. Her flag captain, Lucien Chambray, laid a too-fatherly hand on her shoulder, squeezing in a way that might have been intended as comforting. She shivered, her lip curling in disgust.

Aria turned to face him, pulling her shoulder out of his grasp and crossing her arms over the platinum-engraved cuirass she wore on top of her battle uniform. “And what parable might that be?”

“You really don’t know it?” he asked. “Well, then…” Chambray warmed to his story, letting its words bubble in his mouth like champagne—the man was intoxicated by the sound of his own voice. “There was once a dragon who—”

Cross cut him off, finishing the story hurriedly. “The dragon does not fear an army and so destroys it in a single burst of flame—but, afterward, when a shepherd boy approaches his cave, he fears some sorcery and does not come out to fight. In the end, the villagers seal the dragon in his cave with a stone and it turns out the boy was nothing special. One of those insipid fables, like the boy who cried wolf and all the rest…”

Aria turned back toward the enemy, shaking her head. “I am no dragon,” she muttered, catching just a glimpse of her own reflection in the thick, armored glass as she watched, just off the starboard beam. She looked past the tarnished bronze tresses and narrowed eyes to glare at the ragged enemy battle line, still struggling to make the agreed 12,000 foot battle altitude. Her target, number two in the enemy line, soared lazily above an island mountain thousands of feet below. She felt breathless, forced to wait too long for the inevitable. “What is the range to our target, Mr. Sampson?” she demanded, distracting herself with details.

“Looks like… 260 clicks?” The gunnery officer corrected himself immediately: “264, Admiral.”

The number was only approximate. Hypothetically, each click of the rangefinder’s dial represented ten yards. Realistically, Kodiak’s battle-worn fire control would need several salvos of bracketing fire before they found the target’s true range, but an estimate of 26,000 yards was close enough for now—particularly since Kodiak’s main battery had a maximum range of only 18,000 yards.

Behind her the ship’s captain and her master gunner, an officer named James, pointed at something. “They’ve opened fire.”

Chambray was taken aback. “What? Why?” His tone was not one of fear, but of disbelief.

Aria snatched a pair of binoculars from a hook beside her. Black smoke billowed from the enemy flagship’s main battery: they had opened fire. She looked for the telltale arc of shellfire, scanning the distance between the two battle lines, but saw nothing. A dummy charge, perhaps?

Then there was a sickening, wrenching feeling in the pit of her stomach as she caught sight of a distinctive white flash out of the corner of her eye. It had looked disturbingly like the explosion of a Type III cordite charge of the sort used in the main weapons of battleships.

Get down.

“Get down!” she tried to scream, but she heard nothing at all as she tumbled to the deck, throwing herself down onto the hard steel plates. There was a crushing wave of force and the armored glass protecting the bridge seemed to vaporize, instantly broken into a shower of shards and sand. When she realized she could hear once more, there was only the sound of cold wind roaring overhead, and a numbing cold swept over her. Blood dripped from her chin to the deck as she rose unsteadily to her feet.

Captain James and two others—pieces of two others—lay on the deck in a spreading pool of crimson. She clutched an air mask to her mouth, forced a deep breath into her lungs, and ordered, “Get down. We’re in range. Get down!”

She pushed Chambray toward the hatch that led from the bridge down into the citadel. He went, taking others with him. She stood there, lost, tearing her eyes from the blood to the horizon once more. More flashes—gunfire—burst along the enemy line. Ahead, Parapet’s bow swung wildly to port as her shattered stern burned. Two of her turrets were gone and burning wreckage from Westland’s ship was now scattered across Kodiak’s bow.

It isn’t possible.

She felt she would throw up.

“Admiral, you have to get to safety!”

Was the damn mask not working? She couldn’t breathe.

At last a strong hand took her, forcing her toward the hatch. She descended, her body leaden, and someone slammed the hatch shut above her. She slumped against a bulkhead as the battle room dancing around her like a torture chamber in hell, lights and smoke and dark faces everywhere. Thick, gray smoke and the sound of screeching metal poured from one of the three fire control computers while a midshipman screamed “Turn it off!” repeatedly, finally kicking the machine until it fell silent.

A voice cut through the chaos and she heard, “Return fire immediately!” It was Chambray.

“We can’t—we’re still at 25,000 yards, sir!” protested a midshipman manning one of the working fire control stations. His voice sounded ready to break. “It’s impossible. To have struck Parapet at that range, they’d…”

“Damn it, do it now!”

The young officer, stricken, stared at her. At his admiral.

Aria felt a cold sweat running down her spine. Admiral Lord Westland, the vice admiral, the captain… Each was counted among the dead—Parapet was destroyed—and battle had not even been joined yet! Even with the air mask, she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes, fearful, sought the hard countenance of the Master Sergeant. He only nodded to her, holding his tongue. She drew a long, shaking breath. A voice spoke, higher, smoother than the others around her.

“Signal battle turn to starboard, 60 degrees, immediately. 15 degrees up-angle. Do not return fire.”

There was silence for a moment, until Chambray spoke up. She was too exhausted to feel angry, even when as he said with contempt, “Milady, I hardly—”

With a roar, the master sergeant struck out, leaving the man’s nose a bloody wreck and sending him straight to the deck. The venerable commander lay there bleeding in a heap and moaned in pain, unable to rise. All eyes were on David Cross.

“I am a man of mercy,” muttered the sergeant. “The proper punishment for insurrection in the face of the enemy is death. Your commander’s orders were clear! Do your duty.”

Aria moved stiffly to the map table, clasping the knurled wooden edge so that the others couldn’t see her hands shaking. “We open fire at 18,000 yards and not before,” she said. “Have my captains hold this course until instructed otherwise, unless I am killed.” She nodded to the young officer who had dared hesitate when Chambray had given the order to fire. “You—you’re my new flag captain. Signal my orders.”

At last she glanced at the floor at her feet. “And someone clear this refuse from my bridge.”