Ravi took a huge breath. "What the fuck—" he started again, and Lio tried to push him aside to get to the door.

"I'll explain, Ravi, I promise, but we have to get to the ship—"

"We are not fucking going anywhere."

"Lights on the mountain," Orvaska barked, pointing out the window behind Ravi. "They're coming."

"Com," Yorune said, leveling her gaze at him. "We know how to power the ship. But we need to show them." She jerked her chin at the tiny pinpoints of light spilling down the ridge, following the trail of wreckage they'd made.

Ravi shook his head. "This isn't the way! You can't just take it!"

"We already did," Aziri muttered.

Lio's hands were on his shoulders, trying to shift him. "It's stand here and get brigged, or get on the lightship, prove that we're right—"

"And then get brigged!" Ravi yelled.

"They're not going to brig us if we can power it. Please, Ravi. Let us try." Lio's voice was frantic.

"Please, Com." The whisper came from Onfenka. Her jaw was held tight, lips thin, and her Vashyan-pale skin had turned whiter than a blank screen.

Ravi let out a stuttering breath. And somehow, he was giving ground. Letting Lio open the door. Mutely, he followed the crew as they tumbled out of the cab and raced around to the front.

The lightship had landed nose-first in the shallows. This close, it took up all of Ravi's view. Shuddering water lapped at the threshold of a low door, which was jammed open. Tarik didn't want the Enlightenment crews getting locked out again. Couldn't have known he was leaving it open for thieves dumb enough to snatch the whole fucking ship.

Lio splashed toward it, everyone pellmelling after him. Ravi closed his eyes. He could hear distant shouts now. The Enlightenment crews were catching up fast, which meant they weren't on foot.

Shin-deep in water, he hesitated at the door while the rest of the crew scampered inside. The air around him buzzed with the promise of a storm, and a second later, a raindrop zinged down on his forehead. Another hit his leg, then his arm, and by the time he turned to the ship, rain peppered his head. Goddess, the last time he'd been here in this weather, the lake looked like it was on fire. They needed to get out of the way before the lightning started.

He leapt up to get inside, skidding over a slippery, sloping floor. Shouts echoed all over the room, and then somebody pushed the door closed and shut out the last bits of meager light. It sounded as if half the crew were colliding with walls and the nav console and each other. Ravi swiped his holowatch for a light.

"Everybody stop moving!" He shone the light around as the scuffling ended, the crew staring back at him. "If you have a holowatch, turn the light on."

Lights popped up around the room. Aziri was using a slate, the grey light of the miniature screen illuminating his frightened expression.

"What now?" Ravi snapped, hunting around until he found the face he was looking for. Lio was clinging to the center nav console, Duhar on the ground at his feet. It looked like there was more than one console in the room. Five similar tables shone dimly, illuminated by the holowatches. "Lio," he hissed. "What now?"

"We have to wait."

He gritted his teeth. "For what?"

"For the—" A massive clap of thunder cut him off, and Lio pointed one shaking finger up toward the ceiling of the room. "For that."

"The storm? Are we safe in here?" Ravi demanded.

"Yes." Lio nodded furiously.

"Probably," Yorune added. He wanted to clobber them both.

Another sound reached him, barely distinguishable from the ferocious racket of the storm. An Enforcer vocal magnifier, blasting at top volume. The words were unintelligible, but Ravi didn't need to hear them to have a pretty decent idea of what they were screaming.

"Whatever you're going to do to power it up, you need to do it right now," Ravi said. "They're probably bringing something to drag the ship out of the water."

The crew looked from him to Lio, who shook his head. "We just have to wait. It'll happen. Any second."

"What will happen?" Jossen asked, sliding down to squat against one of the walls.

"The lightning," Teres blurted. "Lightning needs to hit the ship so we can fly it—"

"Fly it?" Ravi choked. His gaze snapped back to Lio. "You said you wanted to show them you could power it up, not—"

And then there was a faint sizzling sound from the wall behind Jossen. The subal scrambled away from it, cowering behind the nearest nav console. Then a huge, ear-splitting crack, like Wrath's own hand descending on the ship. And then another.

Lio was the only person in the room who didn't flinch. "Duhar, try it now!"

Duhar set his hand to the screen on the main nav console and did something to it.

Ravi forgot to breathe. Everything, the walls, the consoles, the floor, the ceiling, the very air, was glowing.

"First Goddess," Jossen whimpered.

White light grew steadily, and then something hit the ship again, vibrating through the metal. The nav consoles all lit up, a rainbow of keys and screens, and things were beeping around them, lines of brilliant blue code scrolling across the brightening silver walls. Mastali code.

When a third bolt struck, the wall opposite turned translucent, and he saw the lake. Ravi's knees went rubbery and buckled. He skidded down the wall at his back, legs twisted beneath him. The ship's giant windshield, if he could call it that, was half underwater, but they could still see plenty of the lake. And the sky above it.

It was shattered with lightning, jagged columns of heat and fury slamming down a few feet from them. Black spots whirled in his vision. An explosion hit the clear wall. But instead of flaying them with lightning proximity and puncturing their ear drums and every organ the way it should have, the shielding wall sucked in the sound and the heat and the death-white light. It crackled, tiny blue webs stretching across it.

"Yes!" Yorune shouted. "Okay, now I'm pretty sure we're safe in here! Let's go, Duhar!"

"Okay. Okay. I think if I—" Duhar touched his fingertips to the center screen, keys winking all around him, and moved the points of light glimmering on the screen. The floor reared up underneath him as the lightship leveled out. If Ravi hadn't already been on his ass, the sudden movement would've put him there. Water and lake muck skidded off the front window, as if something were pushing it off.

"Fuck, shit, altitude grid," Duhar yelped, and a new panel lit up on the nav console. "Shit, okay, let's try—"

Half the crew howled as the ship rose out of the water, hovering over the lake, jerking when another finger of lighting scrawled across the outer shell. Ravi could barely breathe. He expected to wake up. Any minute now, he'd wake up sweating in bed. But he didn't. He just kept sweating on the floor of a lightship.

"Turn us around, Duhar," Lio cried.

And turn they did, spinning like a top. Rosareen flew halfway across the room with the motion, and Orvaska caught her before she smashed into the opposite wall. Through the window, Ravi saw the thrashing water of the lake below, the muddy bank, the roof of the old boathouse, and huddled well back from it all, the Enlightenment and Enforcer crews that had come after them.

Tarik Sarrel stood just in front of the crowd, his jaw hanging toward his knees. And right then, even though it was stupid and irresponsible, Ravi felt a flash of giddy, hysterical pride. They probably looked like Wrath's messengers, suspended in the air with a storm at their back and swathed in electric aftershocks of lightning. In Opalina, which held steady around them, sturdy as the mountain rock that had hidden it.

"Duhar," Lio gasped, "is it charged enough to fly?"

"I have no shitting idea!" Duhar's gaze skittered over the nav board, one hand still positioned on the center screen. "I can't read anything on here, it's all Mastali! What if the keys aren't the same as the sim?"

Aziri crawled toward a second nav console and tried to stand over it, bracing himself as the ship rocked beneath another lightning strike. "How'd you pull up this?" He pointed at the altitude grid flashing beside Duhar's hand.

"I don't know, I was just yelling and—"

"Voice activation," Onfenka shouted from where she was pinioned against Rosareen.

"Okay so..." Duhar lifted one of his hand from the central screen and the ship lurched off balance. He and Aziri were both flung across the nav console. "Shit! I need a chair!"

Ravi tried to choke out a warning when he saw a dip in the floor directly behind Duhar. The silver floor bubbled, a geyser of liquid metal rising and reforming. Into a fucking high-backed chair.

Duhar gulped, staring at it.

"Chairs! Chairs for everybody!" Aziri yelped at the ship. Nothing happened. He jabbed Duhar's arm. "What do you select in the sim when there's more than one player?"

"Outfit for team navigation," Duhar said, and nine identical chairs sprouted from the floor, positioned behind the nav consoles.

Ravi levered himself up from the floor. "Everybody get to a seat." His legs felt rubbery, but he staggered over far enough to catch himself on the back of one of the chairs. It swiveled toward him, and he dropped into it just as lightning splayed across the window-wall again. He looked around at the crew, watching everyone scrabble into seats. No injuries so far, thank all the goddesses.

"Oh, shit, that's cool." Duhar stared at a holographic version of Opalina glittering in front of his nose. A pulse went out from the holograph model, and a terramap sprang up around the ship image, etching out the mountains and the lake and tiny buzzing dots in the air where the storm raged over the water.

"Your hand..." Ravi said, before he could think twice about the wisdom of freaking Duhar out while he was controlling the lightship. But he had to say something, because Duhar's hand had sunk into the center console as if the screen had turned liquid. It oozed over his fingers.

Duhar lifted a few fingers free and examined his unmarked skin. "Weird. But I think it's supposed to help me—" He tapped his thumb back into the screen, and the holograph ship and the real ship rolled to the right, the floor angling down. Ravi clutched his chair to keep from falling out of it."

"Oh, right. Feels like I'm pushing a balance board around in there. Okay." Duhar nodded and looked over at him. "I think I kinda got it, Com. We doing this?"

"Yes!" shouted Yorune. Affirmative answers from the rest of the crew shrilled after her, and Ravi realized he and Jossen were the only ones who hadn't answered. Even though he shouldn't, his gaze was dragged to Lio, leaning toward him from a seat beside Teres.

He was locked in place by Lio's expression. Bright eyes, determined mouth, unshakeable belief that this could work blazing in every line of his features. And so far, he hadn't been wrong. Ravi let out a slow breath and glanced around at the rest of the waiting crew. And then down at Tarik Sarrel and the stunned crews behind him. The right thing to do was get Duhar to land the ship and stop this before it went any further. Do the right thing and wait to be recognized for it. Wait for it turn out the way it was supposed to.

His crew, the crew that had believed in, found, and powered a lightship would be repaid by being completely dismissed. Their accomplishments erased. Unless they did something so impossible to ignore that the whole territory would see it.

This was dangerous on another level and stupid to a degree he couldn't calculate. They were all looking at him like they would trust his decision, and he wasn't sure he trusted himself.

"Okay," he said, barely clearing a whisper. He lifted his chin and nodded at Duhar. "Let's try it."

Duhar grinned and looked to the nav console. "Display accelametron." Beside the elevation grid, a pair of parallel white lines marked with unreadable measurements popped up. Duhar muttered to himself, free hand hovering over the lines. "Interesting. Display booster faders." Four more lines blinked on. Ravi eyed the marker set at the base of the lines.

Duhar blew air out the corner of his mouth. Ravi could see sweat collecting at his temples. Their would-be pilot looked around at them. "People, I think this thing goes fast. I'm gonna line it up to a high-altitude course, give it a little acceleration boost and see where that gets us. Everybody hold on."

With his forefinger, he pushed the marker on the second vertical line up to the third dash. He set his thumb and pinkie into the malleable central screen, the glassy silver closing over his fingertips. Ravi gripped his chair as Duhar rolled his hand back, and the nose of the ship rose, aiming them over the mountain ridge.

"Nice and steady," Duhar said. He let out a breath, and dropped the rest of his fingers into the center screen. The ship whined around them. "And now we just—"

They were launched forward as if from a catapult, an unholy thunder roaring somewhere behind them as the ship streaked into the night. Ravi was yelling, the crew was shouting, Duhar was shrieking, and somewhere over it all Jossen screamed, "Seatbelts!"

Silvery bands shot across Ravi's chest, strapping him into the chair. Huseda could send all the copters she wanted; they were never going to catch this thing. Wild-eyed, he spotted the terramap. The ship was slicing through distance like it was nothing, jetting away from the lake and over the mountains. Flat desert riddled with canyons formed a twinkling expanse on the map.

"Alright!" Lio cheered shakily, plucking at the crisscross of his seatbelt. "Great Mastali Course, here we come!"

Ravi closed his eyes. Of course thatwas where the worst plan of all time was taking them. Fuck.