The second ironclad, the Obsidian Fang, had barely begun to reverse its paddle-wheels when the burning debris of its sister ship rained across its flat deck.
Burning beams of tarred pine and jagged slabs of boiler-iron shattered the forward gun-turret, crushing the traverse-gears and trapping the crew inside. Black grease poured from ruptured hydraulic lines, catching fire in a running ribbon of orange flame that crept toward the forward magazine.
On the battery above, the Vanguard veterans moved like demons possessed by an executioner's cadence.
"Pivot battery three!" Malakor’s roar cut through the deafening ringing in their ears.
He didn't wait for the engineer to clear the spent casing; he kicked the smoking iron wedge free with his armored boot, seized the heavy iron ramrod with both hands, and shoved a fresh forty-pound canister of canister-shot down the smoking throat of the adjacent mortar. "Swivel to the left! Take out the steerage on the third one! Don't let them clear the reef!"
Fourteen mountain marines threw their weight against the iron chains of the third mortar, muscle and sinew straining as the massive bronze tube swung forty degrees to port.
Below in the cove, the third ironclad—the Night Sovereign—had managed to sever its anchor cables with heavy axes.
Its twin armored funnels belched thick, black plumes of coal-smoke as its steam engines groaned at maximum pressure, its iron ram angling desperately toward the narrow channel that led out to the open sea. If it reached deep water, its heavy long-range pivot-guns would be able to shell the fortress from beyond the mortars' depression angle.
"Elevation forty cubits!" Aurelia commanded, her voice cutting through the gunfire with absolute imperial authority.
She did not rely on mechanical levers alone. Stepping to the flank of the third mortar, she laid her gloved palm against the scorching bronze barrel.
Drawing upon the Fourth Shard—the tidal currents of the Astral Tear—she wove a channel of pressurized gravity through the bore of the weapon, calibrating the atmospheric trajectory with divine precision.
"Fire!"
The lanyard was pulled.
The mortar detonated with a bone-shattering boom, but the projectile did not tumble erratically through the air. Encased in a faint, shimmering sheath of silver-violet gravity, the forty-pound iron shot screamed across the cove with twice the velocity of ordinary powder, tracing a laser-straight line directly toward the stern of the escaping vessel.
The impact was surgical and devastating.
The heavy shell slammed directly between the twin rudder-posts of the Night Sovereign, penetrating the steering compartment and shearing through the massive bronze propeller-shafts.
The ship shuddered violently, its forward momentum dying in an instant as the shattered rudders locked hard to starboard. Driven by the runaway inertia of its paddle-wheels, the ironclad swung out of control, its heavy iron prow slamming at full ramming speed into the jagged volcanic rocks of the western reef.
The bottom was torn out of the hull with a shriek of ripping metal that echoed off the cliffs. The cold, dark brine rushed into the engine rooms, quenching the fireboxes in blinding explosions of white steam that blew the ship's armored funnels clean off the deck.
The cove fell into an eerie, smoking silence, broken only by the crackle of burning timbers and the desperate shouts of swimming survivors.
Three ironclads—the pride of the Eclipse Dynasty's border-fleet—were gone.
One blown to atoms, one blazing from stem to stern, and the third impaled upon the jagged black teeth of the outer reef like a stranded whale.
Aurelia stepped back from the smoking parapet, drawing a clean breath of ocean air into her lungs. Beneath her armor, the Ring of the Primordial Vessel hummed in quiet, triumphant resonance, having channeled the kinetic shock of the battery into a steady, warming pulse through her blood.
A heavy, leather-clad arm snaked around her waist, pulling her against a familiar, unyielding chest.
Malakor stood beside her, his face smeared with soot, gun-grease, and the dark blood of the battery commander. His great sword was resting point-down on the flagstones between his boots, his breath coming in hot, ragged bursts against her temple.
"Three ships down," he murmured, his amber eyes scanning the smoking wreckage below with savage satisfaction. "And we didn't even have to scratch the paint on the Black Leviathan."
"The harbor is ours," Aurelia agreed softly, leaning her head against his shoulder for a brief, grounding heartbeat.
"The harbor is," Malakor rasped, his hand tightening on her waist, his thumb stroking through her tunic to the soft curve of her hip. "Now we have a whole fortress of scared little iron-rats to dig out of their holes. Shall we go down to the courtyard and introduce ourselves?"
Aurelia looked toward the heavy iron trapdoor leading down into the fortress citadel, her silver-violet eyes flaring with dangerous majesty.
"Let's," she said.