“Surrender?” True surprise brightened his response. “Oh, I don’t think now is the time for something as final as that.”

“I have your gun towers, Lir. Your fleet has lost confidence in you. In another minute I will have the harbor and the town. The Holster will be mine and you will be dead. Unless you surrender now.”

“Will you destroy my entire fleet?” he asked. “Will you gun down every last Bullet you see here? Kill us all?”

Caledonia hesitated. No unnecessary deaths. That was how they’d started this. But was it possible to finish that way? She’d already used the star blossoms. What ground could she stand on after that?

“I don’t think you have it in you,” Lir continued in his self-satisfied way. “And until you do, I will always win.”

Before she could respond, the Bullet ships still in the harbor turned their guns on their own town and opened fire on the Holster.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Explosions bloomed over the city.

“He’s firing on the Holster! Wait. Why is he firing on the Holster?” Harwell asked.

Caledonia had no answer for him.

Flames rose from inside the city. Alarms sounded, and even from this distance the chaos within those streets was palpable. Caledonia recalled what Oran had said about the inhabitants; there were children and elderly inside that city. And now they were dying.

The only thing she could do for them was drive Lir’s forces from the harbor.

“Send word through the fleet. I want as many of my ships charging the breakers as possible.”

“Yes, Captain,” Harwell chirped, taking the receiver from her hand.

“Captain!” Oran stepped onto the bridge. Fresh blood smeared his right hand. “There’s something you need to see.”

Caledonia followed him to the port side, Pisces at her heels. They skirted the gaping hole in the center of the bow, careful to avoid touching the jagged leaves of still-steaming metal. They crouched behind a team of gunners, letting their shields protect them from enemy fire.

“Lir’s ships are forming up.” Oran pointed beyond the breakers to the north side of the harbor. “Looks like a barricade.”

Even as he spoke, more of Lir’s fleet turned from the fight.They created a solid line of ships that stretched from one side of the concrete breakers to the other.

“For what?” Pisces asked. “There’s nothing on the north side except land.”

“He’s staging an exit, moving ships out.” Caledonia traced the hint of movement just behind the barricade.

“Are those barges?” Pisces narrowed her eyes.

There, in the space between ships, Caledonia saw them, too. Barges gliding across the water toward the open ocean, each one covered in barely budding baleflowers.

“He won’t be far behind them. We can’t let him get away!”