From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 208
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
Elise spent a moment longer tuned to her Manifest senses before turning the more mundane ones on Katya. "Yes and no. She is more efficient with the power she has, but her channels are more robust, as well." Elise nodded to the diamonds sparkling in the overhead lights. "She is a conduit for incredible energies, they are leaving a mark."
Katya's head snapped up in sudden attention. "Mark?"
"I am sorry, perhaps it is the wrong word. A permanent impression. We have long known that magic is like a muscle, and can be built up. It is so with Victoria on this trip," Elise said.
"She often spoke of fearing this kind of power. That she didn't want it for fear of what it might do to her." Versailles melded with the Flying Circus in Katya's mind, Vita's sightless eyes weeping rivers of blood. "I trust her, and believe in her. I told her as much." Katya shook her head and hugged herself. "It's probably just that she's doing it here."
"What Victoria did in the Red Zone helped me see France differently. Perhaps she can do the same for you?" Elise ventured.
"Maybe. I would count more on Alex for that. I just want Vita back so we can go home," Katya said.
Elise pressed two fingers to Vita's wrist to get whatever update she needed before addressing Katya again. "What of Geneva?"
"You know, I almost forgot about it, to be honest. I know it's the real purpose of this trip, but after this," Katya nodded to Vita in her trance, "it feels strangely small. Even if we fail there, nothing can ever be as bad as the nightmares she's seen."
"A small comfort," Elise said.
"I know. But it's more than she has now."
Another wave of power pulsed away from Vita in every direction as some imperceptible amount of diamond was converted directly into energy, and the temperature in the cargo hold jumped. Katya went to the nearest bulkhead and propped open one of the dozen vents Vita had carved in the aluminium. "She's started. How is she?"
"Stable," Elise said.
Katya sat down on a crate and tried not to wring her hands inside-out. "Elise, can I ask you something personal?"
"You may ask me anything, you must know that," Elise said with clear surprise.
"I do, I just I couldn't think of a better way to begin," Katya said.
Dabbing her pen-tip on her tongue, Elise made a note in Vita's medical log. "You are very anxious right now, it is understandable. Please ask. You should think of other things."
A few grains of un-sanded wood drew Katya's fingers and she started plucking them from the crate. "When you learned about the Bond… how did you know you could live with it?"
As though she had been expecting such a question eventually, Elise smiled while considering how to answer. "May I explain in French? It is easier."
Katya nodded. Both languages were frozen in anticipation, neither could make their way to her mouth.
"It wasn't hard to decide," Elise said in her mother tongue. "Millie asked me to marry her hypothetically, if it were legally possible, some day. When Ivy introduced the idea of Bonding, I was overjoyed. Part of me wanted that kind of connection to Millie after her being gone so much. Always in danger, with only the occasional telegram or letter to let me know she was all right. That time was torture, Katya. Being buried in school work, exams, my residency, all the while not knowing if the other half of my heart was still beating. Through the Bond, I would know. I wouldn't have to live in doubt and fear for the rest of my life. She chose to stay home for good soon after, but my Millie's instinct is always to run towards danger, especially to help the defenceless. I couldn't know when that would happen again, only that it would. And it did, in Germany."
The wooden hairs flattened as they were scorched, a thin line of black fading to brown following the track of Katya's finger. "Vita spoke about the same fear. Every time she saw on your face that something awful had happened, she assumed it was me."
"Victoria can't hear us in her state, and please don't tell her I said what I am about to." Elise gave Katya a deliberate look, and she readily agreed. "When I was trapped in Millie's witchscale, Victoria tended to me nearly every hour until the ordeal was over. She slept beside me, and in her sleep she cried your name, apologising for not being there for you. Many times. She knew then that she loved you, and feared she would never have the chance to say it. Her power reached for you, but was always restrained. I didn't hear her say anything like it while she was conscious, but when she saw you again, she was ready to whether she knew it or not. Perhaps that's true of the Bond, too?"
"Maybe," Katya deflected. "Didn't Carice's story terrify you?"
"At first. But it was also beautiful. When her wife passed away, they were together in body and spirit."
"But to feel it? I can't imagine what that was like."
"In the end, is it actually worse?" Elise asked to a spreading look of horror on Katya's features. "We are all intimately familiar with death. That pain… you know it as well as I do. But don't think about us, the survivors. What of the dying? During the war, and in my work, I've been around many who died alone and frightened. It is crushingly sad."
Elise cleared her throat, twisting her wedding ring. "What if you could know, in your heart and mind, that when the worst happens to the one you love most, that she will not be alone? That you could guarantee her peace? To have those extra seconds with her, in her heart and mind, so that her last feeling is your overwhelming love? For such a wonderful gift, I am grateful, not frightened."
Elise fished out her heart stone and held it out so Katya could see it glowing faintly, sheathed in ethereal witchscale. Her wife's unspoken agreement. "The Bond has freed us from fear, Katya. We share our gifts, our emotions. She is always here," Elise tapped the back of her head just above where it joined her neck, "and I would never give that back for anything."
With a broad, contented smile, she kissed the still-glowing heart stone and hid it away again.
The heat Vita was creating was nothing to that churning behind Katya's cheeks. In all of her considerations of a Bonding, whether in relation to herself or not, she had never once imagined it in those terms. It was the most heart-rending type of beautiful, and Katya couldn't help but feel a selfish boor for not having seen that side herself. "Thank you, Elise. You've given me a great deal to think ab-"
With a piercing shriek, the PA system suddenly awoke to let Millie shout out of it. "Get Vickie back right now! We've been spotted!"
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit," Millie muttered as she threw the PA receiver back onto its cradle. "What are they?"
"Biplanes… Sikorskys, going by the landing gear and engine cowl," Captain Barrett said. "War-vintage crap, but plenty capable of punching holes in a whale while she's stranded on the beach. Get back there and call up the moment the doctor's awake."
"I trust them to do it. I'm bulletproof, remember, what will they shoot at first?"
Barrett tsked as one of the approaching biplanes turned out to be two, making three total. "Whatever they can hit. The helium and petrol tanks are self-sealing, but the Blau gas is under positive pressure. If they hit those, they'll burst. They vent outside and there's little risk of fire, but it would mean not being able to move afterward. Engines might be too small, but since we're stationary… goddammit." Barrett grabbed the PA receiver and began barking orders to the crew to stand by for hard manoeuvres, and that all passenger-facing staff were to stop work and join their designated damage control teams. She then punched a series of switches that cut all non-essential electricity and flipped the grey water storage valves from ballast to fire suppression. "It'll smell a fright, but it's better than burning to death. And if it's all the same to you, Miss Brown, the most precious parts of this ship have hearts beating in their chests, so if you'd like to put your armour to good use, start there. I can't order you to, but…"
"Aye, ma'am," Millie said. "It'll be my first time in three dimensions, though."
"Make it work." Barrett's eyes narrowed behind her binoculars. "Oh, for God's sake, they don't even have radios on those heaps." Snatching up the intra-ship telephone, she rang up the communications room. "May, flash them in Morse. Tell them we're having engine trouble." She turned to Millie. "I won't sit here with my arse hanging out for very long, Miss Brown. That'll buy some time, but the jig's up, and fair play to them. Now we scarper."
Millie nodded. "I'll tell Kat." She jutted her chin in the direction of the oncoming planes. "But we're moving on to plan B if they're here to do more than look."
"You have a plan B for this?" Barrett asked.
"I will, give me a minute."
In the deep and the dark, the Raven flew. She was the mistress of shadows, and gloried amidst parts of the earth that hadn't seen the sun in millions, perhaps billions, of years. The uranium veins may as well have been glowing for all they stood out to her and the speed with which she neutered them. On wings of will and magic she tore asunder that which had been forged in the death throes of some unnamed star long before the creation of the sun and Earth. Filaments of stardust three times more massive than iron were nothing before her purpose, and even less afterward.
Righteous and pure, her talons were of the void, sharpened to an edge that cleaved atomic nuclei, driven with all the power unleashed by energy even more fundamental. The power latent in the very fabric of the universe was hers.
Her quarry had been cleverly hidden, but not from the Raven. Through magic and maths, she had found the potential for humankind's greatest mistake, and through it she would deny it. Her mistake.
In her breast was not a heart of stone but of hot blood, finally allowed to feel down to her very firmament. Ice and fire, the gusts that propelled her were secret whispers and flagrant declarations. From laboratory to hearth to bedroom stretched the webs that were the true source of a witch's power and from them the Raven sprang, selfless and right.
How many before her had sacrificed to correct mistakes not of their own making? The named, the nameless, stories told and forgotten. The Raven was not an isolated point, but one on a line that stretched before and beyond.
Not the first, and not the last.
The moment, however, was forever.
The Raven chose.
Alarms blared from everywhere as the catwalks rang with running boots, but Katya's attention was only for Vita.
She refused to wake.
Her magic was intensifying, but to what purpose Katya couldn't guess. It was unlike Canada or even Australia, feeling not unlike the very techniques she herself had been taught about focussing her power, only on a much larger scale. Much the way Katya had narrowed her plasma into a beam, so Vita was doing to… everything.
Elise had her fingers welded to Vita's wrist, and she gave Katya a look of reassurance. "Her pulse is steady and her blood pressure is normal. She is not in any medical danger. This is not Versailles or the Circus again." A smile spread across her face despite the chaos erupting around them. "She has learned."
The PA erupted with Millie again. "Is she awake yet? We can't stay here!"
Leaving Elise to tend to Vita, Katya grabbed the intra-ship telephone and was patched to the bridge. "She won't wake up, Millie. No, I don't know why and neither does Elise. What's happening out there?"
"The Russians—or whoever—are just circling us for now; the markings have been scratched out, they could be pirates for all we know. The captain says they're fighters though, not camera planes, so they don't have the fuel to loiter. Whatever they came to do, they have to do it soon or piss off."
Katya wound the receiver's wiring around her fingers in agitation. She knew what option was most likely. "And you can't raise them on the radio?"
"They don't have any. No aerials, nothing."
Which only reinforced Katya's supposition. Without radios, the pilots must have come with orders, ones that couldn't be countermanded. "I will call you when she's awake. But if she doesn't want to, or can't…"
"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. For now, stay low. Between the crates, the mail and the bulkhead you should have enough protection if those pilots want to die today."
"Where will you be?" Katya asked.
"Where the captain needs me." There was some kind of commotion in the background, and the captain giving orders over the top of it. "They want us to land!? Dammit. Kat… my life is back there."
"I won't let any harm come to it. Do what you need to."
"Right, thank you. Good luck."
"You, too. Is there anything I should tell Elise?"
"She already knows."
"Keep signalling them!" Captain Barrett growled into the telephone before throwing it down. "Engine trouble my arse, puts a blemish on the ship's record."
Millie watched as one of the planes trundled past the bridge windows close enough they could make out that the pilot hadn't shaved that morning. Just like the last time, he pointed emphatically downward.
"Won't happen, mate," Barrett replied under her breath. "Don't think they've ever seen a ship this big before; wondering if they've bit off more than they can chew. Especially with LAC livery, might be magic about." Barrett snapped her binoculars down and eyeballed the pilot out the side window. "You can see patches on the canvas! Where's your pride? Bloody communists."
Though the captain's ease under pressure was admirable, Millie felt it banging her back into a shape she didn't much care for. She may not have been in the field since Niamh died, but ten years of hunting and being hunted didn't just go away. She knew acutely what both felt like, and this was neither; screaming at Kat had just been a precaution. "Something about this doesn't feel right. How long do we have before they try to force us down?"
"No way to tell without knowing where they took off from. That model was designed as an escort, so maybe longer than we would think," Barrett said.
Millie watched another plane wallow past, this one with a pilot who didn't look old enough to shave at all. He waggled his wings, but that could just have been because he was scared shitless. Or a terrible pilot. Then he pointed directly at Millie, and back to himself before disappearing from view. "What kind of weaponry do they have?" she asked on the assumption she had just been challenged to a duel of some kind.
"Seven mil guns, plus whatever small arms they might have brought. Maybe incendiary grenades, but they're in for a disappointment if they try those."
One of the biggest lessons of the Circus disaster was that even the paint on Long aircraft was a safety feature, fire-resistant to the point it was easier to set water alight.
"Underpowered, but lightweight and manoeuvrable… not the best tool for the job. We would be able to use the wind against them if there was any," Barrett said. "Juno would barely notice weather that would put those kites in the dirt. We can probably climb faster, too, maybe even outrun them."
"So our best hope is that the weather worsens and they run out of petrol?" Millie asked incredulously.
"Without anyone dying," Barrett replied. "Or starting a war. Miss Brown, I told the Longs I would follow the whims of witches right up until it threatened the lives of either yourselves or my crew. This is both. In five minutes my mechanics are going to rectify our 'engine trouble' and we will head back to India whether the doctor is awake or not."
Millie ground her teeth hard enough to throw off sparks. She understood exactly where the captain was coming from and would have likely said much the same thing were their positions reversed. But Millie's loyalty often trumped good sense, and in a case like this, her instincts were her good sense. "Captain, if we move while Doctor Ravenwood is working, it will endanger her life."
"I was listening when you lot explained this diversion, Miss Brown," the captain said with a look of un-hammered iron, "and no science experiment is worth my crew, you or this ship. I won't abide such selfishness. Wake her up or she can deal with the consequences."
The captain wasn't wrong, she had her own priorities and responsibilities, but hearing such a blunt assessment from the other side stung. Millie needed more information. If moving risked Vickie's life, then they needed a damn good reason to do it, and thus far she hadn't heard or seen one. "They want us to land. Why would they do that and not just shoot us down?"
"The ship's not worth shit in a million pieces if they want a ransom for it. Neither are we if we're dead. Even if they tried to bring us down, I bet they're rightfully afraid of magical retaliation when they fail," Barrett said in irritation.
"And that fear goes away on the ground?" Millie asked, meeting the older woman's eye evenly and equally.
"I can only speak from experience and conjecture, Miss Brown. I've never been run to ground by Soviet fighter pilots before, I have no idea what their combat doctrine dictates." Barrett eyeballed the third pilot, who looked away first. "If they even have one."
"What does that mean?"
Barrett let the strap tied to her binoculars have them. "The Imperial Russian air service was, to put it bluntly, shit. Everything I've heard about the Red air service says it barely existed. Now? Who knows. What I do know is that the markings on those planes were scratched off, so they may have no loyalty but to themselves and the ransom they think they could get for us."
It wouldn't be the first group of over-armed amateurs Millie had dealt with, and one constant with those types was that they were over-armed for a reason: they were scared. And scared people were unpredictable. With the element of surprise flushed down the loo, they were even more so. "What if they're sore losers and fire on us when we go?"
