Amina lifted her eyes to the sky, tracking a thin slip of clouds that skated high in the blue. Then, returning her gaze to her captain, she said, “Inside the Titan.”

Chapter Fifty-one

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

The roar of the engines was thunderous on the aft deck. Amina crouched over the tow, securing explosives in watertight pouches. Her long braids were twisted together, bound tightly with ribbons, and she was dressed in a slick black wetsuit.

“We’ll give you as long as we can,” Caledonia called, raising her voice to be heard above the din. “But once you’re in the water, you’re on your own!”

Amina nodded.

“Captain,” Sledge called. He jogged to Caledonia’s side, a wetsuit like Amina’s stretched across his broad shoulders. “One minute to the drop.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“Permission to accompany Amina and watch her back,” he called.

Sending any of her people to Aric’s ship was bad enough. Sending two? Caledonia’s fists clenched. But Sledge was right.

She nodded. “Keep her safe.”

“Of course, Captain,” he said with a smile.

“Amina!” she called. “Keep him safe!”

Amina gave a salute from her perch on the back of the tow as Sledge climbed on behind her. They pulled the masks of their blue lungs over their faces, Amina raised her hand in a countdown, and then the tow shot off the stern. Together, they sailed into the churned wake of the Luminous Wake, and then they vanished beneath it.

Caledonia turned her steps toward the bridge. More than half her crew was beneath the water. A distant part of her mind acknowledged that some of them were dead already. She had to assume that Aric’s gun had destroyed at least one of her deepships, if not three. That left her with eight deepships, the four volunteer ships following her now, and if the other three volunteer captains kept their word and returned from their hiding place in the north, she’d still have a fighting chance.

The rest of Aric’s fleet was scrambling. They sailed with no strategy, afraid of what lurked beneath the waves while the volunteer ships moved to flank them. It was exactly what Caledonia had envisioned when she mapped out the plan. All except for what she was about to do.

She arrived in the bridge to find Aric’s ship looming before them. The rail gun fired again, sending another deadly bomb toward her deepships. The rest of Titan’s guns turned on the Luminous Wake.

They fired. The Luminous Wake lurched and stuttered in the water. Caledonia’s crew had no hope of returning fire, and if they took another direct hit like that one, they wouldn’t last long.

She needed to keep Aric’s focus on the port side, and she needed to do it without encouraging him to give chase.

“We can let her grapple us,” Oran suggested.