Page 142 of Carousel

And then, part of me – most of me – is horrified.

These are my people, out there. Maybe even people I knew. Being shot out of the sky like pigeons for sport.

I shouldn’t want to fight Rhavna. Even if it means protecting myself.

Protecting Cosmer, who must still be in the brig. What happens if the fire spreads, or another is started? He would have no chance in hell of escaping.

A mad thought comes into my mind.

That maybe this ambush, in itself, is somehow part of Integration.

But that seems impossible. The ambush unfolding in front of my eyes is undeniably real.

But what might be possible, is that Dezeeves – ever the opportunist – has found a way to make it be part of it.

The Card of The Choice.

The Queen shouldn’t have been so stupid as to try to come after The Emperor.

But this isn’t as simple as a choice between Rhavna or Hevalla.

Because right now, I’m only thinking about Cosmer, and everything he’s done for me. The debt I owe him. The loyalty I have to him, now we’re together.

I slip the radio band over my head.

I start translating.

Twenty minutes later, the fighting still hasn’t stopped, and I’m squeezed between Meg and Dezeeves, clutching paper and a pen. I’ve seen Rike a few more times – I can recognise his hawker now. I’ve seen the sleek ship known as a termite, which I recognise as belonging to Riss, too. She flies well. I get the feeling – from how she always seems to be able to tell which direction a shot is coming from – that her hearing gives her an advantage.

I even witness her perform the same side to side then up-and-down feinting manoeuvre I’d seen her make for fun, now on the battlefield. Doing that gets the ship following her into the firing line of one of The Emperor’s own cannons on the deck below us. I watch with a mix of horror and awe as the large cannonball ploughs through the ship, forcing it out of the air while setting it ablaze.

I just hope the pilot’s death was quick.

Every so often another ship goes up in flames or is simply shot down from the impact of cannonballs. I see one Hevallan pilot who looks only my age fall right out of her ship simply because her window got shattered by falling debris from another crash, and she got sucked out of it.

Sentences spoken in Rhavnan keep littering my frequency. Some of the messages are clearly codes that I have no chance of deciphering, although I write them down anyway. Some are clearer.

Like the one I’m getting right now. I translate it instantly.

“They’re going to target Termite Twenty,” I tell Dezeeves.

“And Five,” Meg adds, who’s on the same frequency.

Dezeeves nods, then issues an instruction of his own into his own frequency, to his pilots. I’m getting to know which number correlates to which ship, and it helps that their wings are numbered. I spot them – and my chest tightens. Because Termite Twenty had sounded familiar, and now I know why. It’s Riss’ ship.

Just ahead of her, a group of three ships have breached the defence by flying in tandem while shooting in a fast, scattered way that sends three or four ships jerking to avoid the cannonballs. Riss and the other pilot try to shoot at them, but both miss and end up having to do the same.

“Tell all pilots to stop flying up,” Meg cries out. She’s leaning right over the table. “We’re exposed on the lower decks.”

That makes me think.

I straighten.

“These frequencies,” I say to Meg. “The Rhavnans know they’re open, don’t they? That we can hear them?”

“They would. They’re in range of us. They can probably hear some, or all, of ours.”

I say, louder, “Meg is right. We should protect the lower decks. I think they fed us that information deliberately.”