POV: nomad
Summary
Rebeke realises the ambush is no coincidence — the Cinder King's ships came south while Beacon was out looking for the door, and they ran straight into each other in the dark. The enemy formation breaks up in surprise. Both sides veer off into chaos; the radio collapses into a barking knot of orders and questions. Contemplation cuts through with a single instruction: gather east, drive into the dark, follow the Beacon. Rebeke turns that way, jets burning a strip of black ash through the moss beneath them.
Up close, Nomad realises why so little weapon fire is going off overhead. The Cinder King's ships do not carry mounted guns; they fight as pre-firearm navies fought, ramming and bracketing Beaconite vessels and pouring boarders across. It is a clumsy style that nevertheless suits him — captured hulls go straight into his fleet, captured crews into his sunheart mill, and his Charred fight best in close quarters with batons, which is why they carry no swords. Aux directs Nomad's eye fifty degrees left and high. The Greater Good's flying-house has been bracketed by a much larger enemy boat and is being towed bodily out of formation, two Charred already leaping aboard. Beacon does not, apparently, know to separate its command staff across vessels.
He has Rebeke get him close. A Beaconite ship cuts across their line; she banks hard right around it and then left back onto line; he uses the swing to launch himself off the back, hits a hijacker boat coming through, rolls across its deck under a pilot's gaping stare, and throws himself at the command ship as it pulls past him in the other direction. He barely catches the rail. The other deck is ten feet across. The hijacker pilot is a white-coated officer who scrambles for her rifle; Nomad tries to tackle her and his Torment trips him on the boards. He gets Aux up as a shield in time to take the rifle fire. Auxiliary crowbars the blast-cover off the command-ship windscreen and then smashes through it as a barbell when Nomad bounces off the glass himself.
He comes up rolling in the cabin to find the three Greater Good — Contemplation, Confidence and Compassion — pulled back behind an overturned table while the two Charred terrorise the room. The Charred immediately turn on him. They come in with batons, two against one, and his Torment refuses to let him press; he can only block, never counter, never punish an overextension. He takes a baton on the arm, on the ribs, and a cracking blow to the head that pins him swimming into the corner. Aux's voice drops its quips; he is, he says quietly, barely keeping the body moving. The cabin door slams open and the hijacker pilot comes through with her rifle. Perfect.
He shoves out of the corner and engineers the next Charred's rush so it bowls the pilot off her feet; the Torment lets him kick her rifle away because there is no need for it; he keeps the Charred on himself, swaying and tempting them, letting them pound through his shield until they have his face. One of their heads explodes. Contemplation stands in front of the overturned table and unloads the rifle into the second man's chest until he too is a heap of smouldering embers. Nomad drops to his knees. She asks why he kicked the rifle to her instead of grabbing it; he says he hates to hog the glory. He asks politely that someone go cut the towline.
He retreats into himself in the corner while his body knits up, aware only at the edges that the ship has resumed moving the right way and that Rebeke has joined him at some point. Aux warns, quietly, that they are now under nine percent Skip capacity. Confidence is on the radio directing the larger escape; Beacon as a whole is mostly intact, but harried hard by the Cinder King's ships, and the harrying has driven them off the line they wanted. They are forced south, into a different corridor entirely. Nomad lets his eyes stay shut. They are alive; they are in a new corridor; how bad could that be.