Excerpt:

This is when everything changes: Eleanor is in her cabin checking the purser’s log when Kitty’s voice on the speaking tube screams, “Navy ship coming up from the starboard cloudbank! All hands to action stations!”, and above the bell starts ringing frantically. The Nightingale suddenly shakes with pounding feet, with Layla’s hoarse voice shouting to run out the guns, you whores, run them out damn you, and as Eleanor seizes her hat and sword belt, a magnified voice saying, “This is Captain Thompson of the HMS Unshakable to pirate vessel. Strike your colors and surrender, or prepare to be boarded.”
Eleanor doesn’t wait to get up to the deck to start issuing orders. “How many guns is she, Kitty?” she shouts into the speaking tube, buckling on her pistols.
“Twenty-six.”
Eleanor claps the speaker flap shut, swears, and opens another. “Annelise!”
“Aye, captain.” Annelise’s voice is confused by the hiss and clank of the engine room.
“Pull out all the ferrion. Drop us into cloud cover, then pile on speed.”
“It’ll be risky –”
“Get us under the cloudbank. They can’t drop as fast as we can.”
She shuts off the engineer’s complaint, pulls her leather cap on, and switches to the shipwide tube. “All hands, prepare for drop.”
As she says this, she feels it in the pit of her stomach. Eleanor grips the rail as she races into the hall and up to the deck, the wind howling and the navy guns thundering over them.