Committing suicide, Pied thought. Trying to ram the bigger ship in the mistaken belief that by doing so he could still save his fleet. But he wasn’t even going to get close. Already, the Dechtera was firing at the Ellenroh, a series of short, sharp bursts that set the Elven flagship on fire in several places and brought down the foremast. Still, Kellen came on, his railguns raking the enemy’s decks. But the weapon that was destroying his fleet was protected behind heavy metal shields that the railguns could barely scratch. Another burst set the Ellenroh’s mainsail afire, and now the airship was lurching badly, her sails gone and one or more of her parse tubes damaged or blown away.

“No, Kellen,” Pied whispered. “Land her! Get her down now before she—”

A fresh burst from the Federation weapon rocked the big Elven flagship from bow to stern, striking with such force that it knocked her backwards. The Ellenroh shuddered and bucked, then exploded in a blinding ball of fire that consumed everything and everyone aboard.

In seconds she was gone.

Pied stared in stunned silence, unable to accept what he had witnessed. The King, gone. Kiris and Wencling, gone. The biggest warship in the Elven fleet together with every last one of the men and women who crewed her, vanished.

“Captain Sanderling,” Markenstall hissed in his ear, and he jerked around in response. “What do we do?”

The Dechtera had turned her attention to what was left of the Elven fleet—a handful of airships only, three of which were already settling onto the flats. The plains were swarming with Federation soldiers marching toward the Elven lines, a dark stain that spread like ink on old parchment. Thousands, Pied judged. He watched the damaged airships fall into the mass of charging men. He watched the men swarm up the sides of the ships and onto the decks. Then he quit looking.

His eyes flicked back to the fleet, under attack once more from the Federation killing machine. The Dechtera was moving after them, overtaking them one at a time, burning them out of the sky the way an archer might shoot down a flock of trapped geese. She shouldn’t have been able to do that, as big and cumbersome looking as she was. She must be powered by an abnormally high number of crystals, her stored energy capacity twice that of any other ship of the line. Some of the Elven ships were dropping toward the plains now, trying to use the enemy soldiers as cover so that they could not be fired upon from above. But the tactic wasn’t working. The weapon aboard the big ship was too accurate to be deterred by the threat of what a miss would mean. It simply took its time, burning away the Elven ships whether they fled or tried to hide.

He looked at Markenstall. “We have to do something, Captain.”