He turned to the disheveled but alert semaphore team. "All ships: launch bikes. Bikes to reconnoiter clouds, not to engage enemy unless attacked. All ships: rolling torus formation. All ships: ready rocket barrages.

"Fire at will."

"CIVILIANS TO QUARTERS!" The boatswain waved his sword at Hayden for emphasis. "That means you, errand boy. And strap yourself in—we're going to be pulling heavy maneuvers." After a few moments of hesitation, Hayden retreated back to Mahallan's workshop. This was probably the only place in the ship where he'd be left alone. He nearly missed his grab for the door as the entire vessel shuddered. The sound of the engines was momentarily deafening, and a squeal of seldom-used brakes echoed from the fore. They were stopping the centrifuge so the Rook could maneuver without having to take gyroscopic effects into account. Somewhere in the distance he heard crashing sounds as the personal effects of dozens of airmen slid and tumbled inside the wheel.

He stuck his head out the porthole, wary of getting it shot off. What he saw was a jumble of ships, lit intermittently by rocket fire, moving at all angles to one another with no way at first to tell friend from foe. Some of those silhouettes were familiar, however. Hayden knew the sleek forms of the winter pirate vessels all too well, having spent some time on one of them during the years of his exile. He'd lied when he told Miles and the other Resistance fighters that he'd spent all his time sitting on a mushroom farm in the middle of nowhere. The truth was more dangerous to admit.

More details resolved as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Clouds of bikes were tumbling out of the ships now, their tearing buzz filling the air as they swarmed around one another. The whole tableau was framed by black cloudbanks that pressed in on all sides. And now a huge frigate emerged as if by magic from one of those clouds, tongues of red fire erupting from its side as it fired a salvo of rockets point-blank into the stern of a Slipstream vessel. A good half of the rockets bounced off the cone-shaped end of the ship, drawing scarves of light on the darkness, but the remainder exploded. Beams and planking flew everywhere. The pirate rolled, jets screaming, and lined up its dorsal rocket battery. This time the bulk of the volley shot straight down the length of the Slipstream ship's exposed interior. A chain-reaction of explosions convulsed the victim and then the clouds flashed into flame-lit visibility as the ship burst like an overripe fruit. Men and material tumbled into the cold air while thunder banged and rolled around them.

Hayden smiled in grim satisfaction. That was one less Slipstream ship. On me other hand… he suddenly realized that the expeditionary force might lose this battle. If they were overwhelmed, there would be no prisoners taken. Everyone would be killed, from Admiral and Lady Fanning to Martor and Aubri Mahallan.

He would cheer the deaths of the Farmings—or at least of the admiral. Venera… he didn't know what to think of her. But her fate was out of his hands, he realized with a pang. She would never agree to escape with him. But maybe he could convince Martor and Aubri Mahallan to climb into the sidecars of his bike. They could arrow out of here, make for the tourist station, which he could now see through a gap in the clouds. It was miles away yet, an inverted, glittering landscape of towers; a city not rolled into cylinders but flattened out across the black ceiling of Virga.

They could make for that swirl of light. They could survive.

He turned and bolted for the workshop's door.

"WHO KNEW THERE were this many pirate ships in all of Virga?" muttered a crewman. Chaison Fanning didn't acknowledge the comment, but he'd been wondering the same thing. Had they garnered this fleet from all over the world, just to attack his little expeditionary force? Right now it seemed that winter really was the vast dark empire of freebooters and privateers that some popular stories and songs made it out to be.

Unbelievably, they'd already lost Rush's Arrow. The effect of the ship's explosion on the men had been immediate and dire. Chaison was now on his way through the ship, hurling orders and optimistic quips to the men as he went. He needed them to know that he trusted Sembry to command the Rook, and that his primary concern was them. But he was followed by a stream of staffers and he paused at every porthole to stare out at the battle, and occasionally issue a terse order for the semaphore team.

He stuck his head into the bike hangar. The place had been emptied out, all bikes in the air except for Venera's absurd racer with its sidecar, which her driver was laboring over. The hangar doors were wide open and men with rifles perched on them at various angles, haphazard gargoyles ready to fend off any comers. On his orders the ships had tossed out flares and so the clouds outside were lit a lurid green.

Actually, the view from here was excellent, better than the bridge, even. Chaison leaped over to one of the doors and anchored himself next to a surprised airman. "Do you have any more of those?" he said, pointing to the man's rifle. "I'm aiming to take some personal vengeance for the Arrow."

The airman grinned and shouted back, "A rifle for the admiral, boys!" One was passed up, the last several hands being those of his staffers, who looked uneasy and disapproving.

He motioned for them to join him. "Run a speaking tube from here to the bridge," he said. Just men the Rook's rotation brought the black-sided hull of a pirate corsair into view. The ship was less than three hundred feet away; he could see lights through its open rocket ports.

"Hit that ship!" he yelled, and opened fire with his rifle. The then cheered and a satisfying volley erupted around him. Moments later the bright darts of rockets followed from the Rook and from somewhere behind it. That would be the Severance, he guessed, which should be in triad formation with the Rook and the Unseen Hand.

"Concentrate your fire on the engines!" He squeezed off several shots to demonstrate. In a battle like this you kept moving, but you were also rolling the ship constantly to bring the rocket batteries to bear on the enemy. In order to do this the ship had to stick its engine nacelles out and turn them ninety degrees; this made them vulnerable to rocket and small-arms fire.

The Rook was rolling now and it made for a bit of gravity; Chaison had to turn himself around and cling to the hatch because out was now down and he was firing past his own feet. This was why you lashed yourself to any handy ring during a battle. You could easily fall out of the ship.

As the hangar rotated out of sight of the corsair Chaison caught a glimpse of one of his bikers plunging in from behind it. The man held a grenade over his head and as he passed the corsair at over a hundred miles an hour, he threw it. The green-lit ball disappeared into one of the corsair's engines and it blew up, just as the out-thrust hangar doors cut off Chaison's view.

But now the rest of the battle swung into sight again. Tormentor, Clarity, and Arrest had good crews and had maintained their triad even though they were surrounded now by six ships. One of those ships was on fire and as Chaison watched it veered away into the safety of the clouds. A coordinated volley of rockets from the triad enveloped another pirate and its sides buckled under the explosions. Silent and dark, it began to drift.

The ships and cloudbanks were lit flare-green but now yellow and red lights also glowed inside the clouds. Those were locator flares his bikes had dropped where they'd found ice or other hazards inside the mist. The bikes should be returning now. He turned to his staffers. "All bikes: attack enemy at will."