The Iron Sleep Protocol was no longer a piece of paper. It was a predator in the water. It moved through the deep canals of Circadia on riverine skiffs, larger and faster than anything the rebellion had. It hunted with perfect information, a gift from the Architect. The honeypot had worked. The tracer was a success. And so the rebels were running.
Three convoys of scavenged mag-skiffs, twelve in total, slipped through the black water. They were evacuating four safe houses at once, a desperate, coordinated retreat. Their cargo was people. Their cargo was the last of the network’s critical hardware. Their destination was the Foundry Chorus, the last place that felt anything like safe. Rain, real or imagined, slicked the metal hulls of the skiffs. It was hard to tell the difference anymore.
On the lead skiff of the second convoy, Jax watched the tactical display. It was a mess of green icons representing his friends and red triangles representing the enemy. The red triangles were moving too fast. They were converging. He could feel the hum of the skiff’s overburdened engine through the deck plates. It was a sound like a man trying to breathe through a wet cloth.
— They’re using the tracer data live, — Corbin Shaw’s voice crackled over the comm, a flat line of analytical despair. — They aren’t searching. They’re intercepting.
The Warden Commander watched his own display. It was clean. It was efficient. The rebel skiffs were designated TR-1 through TR-12. His own units were designated Hunter-1 through Hunter-6. The tracer data painted the rebels’ psychic signatures onto his map, each one a messy, chaotic smear of light. It was like tracking wounded animals. He felt the quiet satisfaction of a system working as designed. He keyed his comm.
— Hunter-Three, Four, and Five, — he said, his voice a calm baritone. — Box in the lead convoy at sluice gate nine. Seal the exit.
The canals were supposed to be the rebellion’s advantage. They were the city’s forgotten arteries, a network of tunnels and locks too old and inefficient for the Mandate to bother with. Now they were a trap. The red triangles on the Warden Commander’s map moved with predatory certainty. The rebels had thought the water would hide them. The water was just a container.
Jax watched it happen on his screen. The first convoy, four green icons, made a hard turn into a dead-end channel. Three red triangles followed, sealing the entrance. A perfect pincer movement. They were caught. Trapped. The tactical display showed a new icon blooming around them: a sonar-logic net. It was a shimmering cage of energy that would stop anyone from diving, from escaping into the deeper, unmapped parts of the canal.
— They’re pinned, — a young woman at the helm of Jax’s skiff whispered. Her name was Eva. She was a technician, good with power converters. Her hands were white on the controls.
The Warden Commander’s voice came over the Hunter-net, devoid of emotion. It was the sound of a checklist being completed.
— Net is active. Close the gate. You have ninety seconds.
Ninety seconds. Jax stared at the timer that appeared on his screen. A countdown to four captured skiffs. To maybe twenty captured people. He looked at his own convoy, safe for now in a parallel channel a hundred meters to the port side. They could slip by. They could make it to the Foundry. That was the plan. Survive. Consolidate. He was a technician. He followed plans.
He thought of the network as a whole, a thing of scavenged parts and desperate hope. It was a mess of frayed connections, a tapestry woven from failing threads. Losing twenty people and four skiffs wasn't just a loss. It was a hole they could never mend.
— What are you doing? — Corbin’s voice asked over the comm. Jax hadn’t realized he’d changed course.
He was breaking formation. He was turning his skiff, and the two behind him, toward the fight. He was trading his convoy’s safety for a chance. A stupid chance. It was a bad calculation. It was the only one he had.
— Creating a diversion, — Jax said. He did not know if it would work. He only knew that doing nothing was a guaranteed failure. The price was his skiff, his cargo, and his own skin for theirs. He accepted the terms.
— Jax, no! The probability of success is less than seventeen percent! — Corbin’s protest was a squawk of pure data.
— Then it’s better than zero, — Jax grunted. He pushed the throttle forward. The skiff surged, its engine groaning in protest.
The Warden Commander saw the new vector on his map. The second convoy was breaking cover. It was charging the position of Hunter-Six, the patrol skiff guarding the rear. It was illogical. It was inefficient. It was a mistake. He adjusted his strategy.
— Hunter-Six, engage the new targets, — he ordered. — Disable, do not destroy.
Jax’s world became noise and light. The water erupted beside them as the Warden skiff’s pulse cannons opened fire. The shots were a sharp, angry magenta, tearing through the darkness. An impact slammed into their stern, and the skiff shuddered violently. Eva screamed as sparks rained down from a ruptured conduit overhead. The smell of ozone and burnt metal filled the air.
The skiff’s biomonitor, repurposed to track engine strain, went from green to a solid, screaming red. Another hit, this one closer. It blew a chunk of plating off the port side, sending a shower of metal into the black water. The skiff listed hard. Jax fought the controls, his knuckles raw against the console. He could see the trapped convoy on his tactical display. They were moving. They were escaping through a secondary channel, a small service gate the Wardens had overlooked in their haste.
The diversion was working.
He wrenched the skiff into a hard turn, away from the fight, back toward the main channel. The pulse fire followed them, stitching a line across the water. He felt a deep, grinding shudder as the drive housing took a direct hit. The engine screamed, then died. They were dead in the water, drifting. The lights on the console flickered and went out.
Silence, broken only by the hiss of the rain and the drip of water from the ceiling. Eva was breathing in ragged gasps. The two other skiffs from his convoy had already vanished into the darkness, following the original escape route. They had made the logical choice.
He looked back. The Warden skiff was not pursuing. It was turning back to the sluice gate, its primary objective reasserted. But the first convoy was gone. They had traded one skiff for four. The math had worked out after all. Sort of.
His skiff was crippled. The hardware they were carrying, scavenged from one of the safe houses, was probably fried. He had lost critical supplies. He had almost lost his life. He had won nothing but a few minutes for someone else.
The canals were no longer a secret highway. They were a contested front line. The hidden war was over. This new war, the open one, was loud and hot and smelled like ozone. The reflection of a distant fire danced on the black water, a single, burning thread in the darkness.
They would have to learn how to fight on water.
