Chapter 56: The Battle Begins

"What's the status of the lines?"

"Almost entirely cast off, sir," replied the girl that had just been running by Hunter's cabin when he had called her in, "we'll be ready to set sail within the hour."

"Excellent. As you were."

She bounded away with a quick aye-aye, sir, and Hunter sat back in his chair, trying to calm his racing heart before the crucial moment. In less than an hour, hundreds would lose their lives fighting for their freedom, their right to exist.

All the ships had been supplied and readied for battle – the ones that were still functional, anyways. There were one or two of them that had been damaged beyond repair by Armada cannon fire and those were emptied – they would be abandoned. Even if the Armada were to find those ships, it would be for naught. Food, water, all the essentials – if needed, each ship's meager crew could survive for a month on its own.

Their charge would be executed without hesitation, whatever the outcome, and miraculously, his shaky line of communication with Benjamin Spinnaker had held. He sent a different scout each time, carrying messages back and forth in a little longboat that was nigh invisible against the rocks and debris.

Benjamin knew of the attack, according to their most recent correspondence, and they had agreed on a plan of action, through hastily invented encryption.

They would trap the Armada patrols between them both – and although the firepower of the Armada was much greater than theirs it would give them a better fighting chance, and that was all that they could afford to grab for. Hunter's forces would charge straight for the island – there was no point in altering course when Prima knew where they had been hiding. Benjamin's ships, his engineers, they would come around the other side of the pod of clockwork ships, when it did form.

He was essentially using himself as bait, and frankly, Hunter was all right with that.

Reaching out in front of him, Hunter cupped his hand along the curved sides of the onyx urn. All that was left of Dangler, his Dangler who he had failed once and would never fail again. If anything, he would do this to honor her name.

"Lord be with me," he said, and then sat in complete silence, contemplating, praying, weeping, convincing.

It was the longest hour of his life.

In fact, it seemed so drawn out that when that same scout had returned, knocking on his door, Hunter had sighed in relief and told her, a little too eagerly, to enter. She was bearing the expected news – that the ships had been readied, that they were ready.

Hunter snatched up his tricorne hat and bounded up on deck – now, he needed to be a leader, or at least he needed to pretend at being one.

Once he was above, it was clear to see that what the scout said was indeed true. The sails on the numerous ships had been raised, all of them had been turned about as to face the mouth of the cove in a tapered formation, Hunter's ship at the very forefront of it.

This would be the flagship, then. He did not even know the name of the ship, for it had been just a part of the flotsam, but the important thing was that this ship in particular carried both Madame Vadima and Hunter Chamberlain.

Vadima herself was below – she took her refuge in the gun decks, where she would be free to perform her magic, to practice her art, while remaining out of the range of fire, at least for the most part.

The Captains of each individual ship stood on their quarterdecks, in various states of disarray, some of them still sick, some of them wounded. Yet, they all stood tall, hands clasped behind their backs as best as they could, for he could feel it – they were willing to die for humanity.

For their freedom. For their survival.

That was what the Resistance was – a fight for the survival of any and all mortal creatures that Kane had so detested, that he had deemed imperfect, that had no place in his spiral.

"Anchors away!" Came the cry, tearing itself from his throat before he even had a chance to comprehend what he was saying, what he was about to do. "Tonight, we take the island BACK!"

And the ships moved towards the mouth of the cove, prepared to face their enemy at last.


It was like stepping into a black abyss of the unknown, when Hunter's ship had first emerged from the channel and into the open skyway – it was nothing like he remembered. Remains of shattered ships all about, more debris than open sky. All the remnants of a horrific battle, just enough to remind him exactly how many had died, how many he had failed.

If he had just been strong enough. Strong enough to kill the Commodore Prima while she was in shackles and at his mercy, but she had understood him on a level that no mortal had before and he had ended up on his knees in front of her instead.

Beside him, the girl from earlier stood with a spyglass in hand. A privateer in training, she had the looks and the walk of one, trying so hard to mimic her own leaders, to stand tall. She held her head high, her proud defined chin pointing forwards.

In that moment, Hunter genuinely wished that he had some of her courage.

"Somaya," he said, as that was her name, "any sign of the guild?"

She raised her spyglass to her eye, black, tightly curled hair bouncing as she turned, looking round and round, scanning every degree.

"Aye, sir!" She suddenly cried, pointing towards what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. "They're at the very edge – I see Marylebonian ships, and…oh - !"

"And what?" Hunter snapped – he did not mean to sound cruel or mean, he was merely scared, and she did not take any offense from it, being of a like mindset.

"And Armada ships, sir! Behind them, sailing in their formation!"

Hunter's heart nearly stopped. If the Valencians had taken Benjamin, they were absolutely done for.

"Are they safe?!"

Somaya did not speak for a very, very long time.

"I would presume so, sir," she said, cautiously. "Spinnaker's flagship is still at the head of the formation. His men are not being held at gunpoint, from what I can see – they're following his lead."

"Did they capture the Armada ships, then?" That was a much more reasonable guess, and a much more comforting one as well.

"Aye sir, it appears so." Hunter relaxed, audibly sighing in relief. Thank god, they had not been doomed and condemned before the attack had even begun, and now they had the advantage – with Benjamin at the far side of the skyway, nearly hidden, and his own ships in a wide formation, it would be difficult for the Armada to encompass them, and rather, the clockworks would become the ones being encompassed.

Up ahead, he could see them – the black, turbine-like sails of Prima's patrol, and suddenly he realized that they were indeed much closer than he had thought, they were in range! And yet he had not done anything – not a moment must be wasted.

"Somaya, pass along the signal – ready to fire."

Aye sir, and away she ran, fetching the signal flags. They were rarely ever used, as witchdoctors could easily send their own signals through any medium, but Hunter did not want to exhaust any of them. Not a chance. All of them would be needed.

The formation unfolded, turning sideways and preparing to deliver a full broadside into the steadily approaching squadron. There was no need to signal to fire – once Hunter's own ship fired their guns then the others, just like they had done in the cove, would follow suit.

Already, he could see the gun-ports of the Armada ship opening, he could see the mouths of the cannons as they were run out. They likely had an automatic firing system, although he would not know – he had never been inside of an Armada ship and did not ever plan to.

"Fire!" Hunter cried, and the flagship delivered a solid broadside into the frontmost of the Armada ships. There were about a dozen of them in the patrol ring altogether, and so far Hunter's forces alone (without even Benjamin's in addition) outnumbered them.

He knew they would send more. Every hit counted.

They had appeared so suddenly, Hunter realized, they were not there when he had first left the channel – which meant that Prima had seen them, and therefore sent a ring to take care of them. Prima, who had seen and acknowledged them as disposable.

For some reason, this angered him – did she not deem him worthy of her full forces? If they were to be eliminated, they would die facing her, not her foot-soldiers, while the Supreme Commander turned her back and carried on.

He stood, steadfast, on his quarterdeck with renewed fury. He so desperately wished to go below and fire the charges himself, igniting it with only his anger, his rage at the destruction of their haven, their land, their lives, and the Armada canons fired back but it was so, so obvious that they were overpowered.

A patrol ring of twelve. Did Prima seriously think that they were this destitute?

One by one, the Valencian ships were smashed to bits, some of them keeling over onto their sides, others sinking entirely, although they took care not to hit the powder magazines. With ships on both sides so closely clustered together, an explosion could mean their deaths as well.

Relentlessly, Hunter's ships surrounded the Armada ring, offering no way out without being destroyed en route, and just like the ship that had wandered into the cove the day before, they were, in time, demolished.

The last ship went down, turbine sails collapsing inwards on itself, and a great shout of victory went up from among the fleet, muffled by the wood of the ships' hulls. However, Hunter did not find himself to be in any sort of celebratory mood.

Twelve patrol ships, and they had narrowly avoided destroying themselves in the process – a maximum effort made by the Resistance, to destroy a force that was maybe a sixth of their size.

This was not the full extent of Prima's forces. Hunter remembered the sheer amount of ships that he had seen through the spyglass, he remembered how heavy the dread had felt, settling in and making itself at home in his twisted gut. These ships, this battle, it was only a fraction of what they would have to face. This would only get worse from here on out.


On the Island, flanked by two dragoon soldiers, Prima watched the battle commence from the opened front door of the central fortress, a spyglass held to her face as well. Clockworks had vision that was far more precise than that of any mortal being. However, she was nearing seventy years of function, and mechanisms failed, newer ones were made and improved. Relative to the soldiers under her command, her sight was poor indeed, and even Valencian optical technology had its limitations.

Thus, with the spyglass, she could see the individual hairs on Hunter's head – there he was, on his proud flagship that she could not see the name of – it had been either painted over or faded or otherwise destroyed, the side of the ship was bare and plain, one monotonous slab.

She watched, without moving or reacting or commenting, as her twelve patrol ships were abysmally sunk. The survivors had many more ships than she had thought – and when the explosion had gone up, she knew where they had been hiding.

That had done nothing to prepare them, however, for how these survivors planned to go about in their attempt to take back the island.

"Have the message sent down to the Captains," Prima said, addressing one of the several marine sentries.

"Supreme Commander."

"Tell them to ready the ships. We sail as soon as possible. The rebellion must be crushed, now that they have shown their faces."

"At once, Commander," he said, and was gone.

Once again, they would plunge – imperfect beings and clockwork soldiers – into a war, a fight to the death, never stopping until one side was completely obliterated. There would be no survivors, no prisoners, only victims, only casualties.

Only progress. The word "victim" had no true meaning that was much different, to beings who thought purely with mathematics. And, with mathematical certainty, Prima was dead certain that this small uprising would be quelled within days, if not just one. Her own ships outnumbered them by the dozen – and there was no way, there was no way that anything could match Valencian firepower.

Save for maybe the strange power of Underhill's pull – and she remembered the shining teeth and the stretched jaw.

They would go to battle, and Prima, although her position was here, on land, overseeing the process, felt instinctively from the very base of her programming, that she should rightfully be at the head of this attack.

She was not made to be Supreme Commander, she was made as a Commodore, one who would actively fight upon the front lines. Her attack, regardless of how impenetrable it already was, would not be able to reach its maximum effectiveness without her at the front, while she remained behind walls and windows, heavily guarded and watching.

If they were to optimize this final blow to the Resistance, than it would have to be her that would meet Hunter Chamberlain and his furious comrades, face to face in the skies.


I hope you enjoyed, and do be sure to leave a review!

- Severina