Magdalena appeared on the pilot’s side of the cockpit. “It’s ready,” she said, reaching in for Revna’s hand. “Don’t let the bombs wobble.”
Revna squeezed her. “Thanks.”
“Come back safe.” Magdalena shot Linné a parting glare, then stepped down.
Revna’s whole body warmed as Linné began to feed power into the Strekoza. She expected fear, and she pushed back. But Linné’s anger bit at her, sharp as teeth. Her heart hardened. Linné would never turn the plane on her, not with all the rage in the world. She took a deep breath and jerked them up, just a little. The plane filled with a smug satisfaction as Linné squeaked.
Focus, she thought. She didn’t want to end up a blackened smear on the snow because she was careless with her incendiaries.
Ahead of them, Katya and Asya lumbered off the ground. Their Strekoza took flight like a startled duck. “Why are they taking point?” Linné muttered.
“Try being more concerned with your job and less concerned with theirs,” Revna said.
“Unless you’d like to literally kiss the asses of the girls in front of us, I’m doing everything I’m supposed to right now.”
Revna rolled her eyes. She’d have thought that the Zolonovs had a mansion filled with posters of Grusha the Good Union Girl. CLEAN MOUTH, CLEAN MIND had papered Tammin as much as anything else.
They took off facing the mountains, churning up the snow in little flurries that brushed over the windscreen and misted their faces. Magdalena waved in Revna’s side-view mirror as Linné increased power. Revna took a deep breath. Keep the plane steady. The engine stuttered, quick and shallow, in time to Linné’s breath. Revna grabbed at strands to compensate. Her muscles ached without the spark to help the plane glide. “All right. Where are we going?”
“The Karavels,” Linné said.
“I was hoping for something more specific.”
“Why? You don’t need it yet. Besides, all we have to do is follow Katya.”
The entire Strekoza sagged as Revna huffed. It dipped in the air and she hauled on the Weave a touch enthusiastically, making Linné hiss. They bucked upward and the firebombs swung. Even though she tried not to smile, the Strekoza exuded a bitter satisfaction. That might never get old.
“Look, I’m not trying to endanger the unit. This is how I’m supposed to do my job. Can we—do this? Please?”
“Please, even,” muttered Revna as she stabilized them. Not because Linné had asked, but because she needed their mission to succeed. Tcerlin would revoke his approval if he knew they used expensive military equipment to fight with each other.
The Weave surrounded them like a net, calming Revna despite the constant nagging of Linné’s doubts. She floated on the wind, listening to the sounds of owls and rustling trees. The cold tickled her.
She brought them around in a smooth line toward the mountains. Mama used to say the Karavels were giants, enchanted by the gods to sleep until Rydda needed them. Now that Rydda was part of a godless Union, Revna wasn’t sure what that meant. She saw no traces of limbs or features on their sharp faces. The range barely cleared the tree line, a poor obstacle for the Elda.
Katya led them east in a low line along the foothills, gliding with small spark boosts that made the Weave pulse like a heartbeat. Revna spotted a few small tangles, places the Weave had been stretched or warped by the planes ahead of them. Before they flew back this way, the tangles would even themselves out.
The Night Raiders cut through the mountains where the hills turned to peaks. Rock shot up between their wings, closing them in and cutting through her sense of comfort. Below them the valley lay like a wrinkled cloth, cragged and covered in shadow. Ahead of them, the tail of the next plane disappeared around a mountain. Linné’s breath came in short pants, and with each one her spark stuttered from her. The Strekoza slipped off course, edgy. Revna’s hands cramped around the Weave as she tried to hold them steady. Couldn’t Linné do anything about it? “Increase power,” she said, and a moment later they evened out a little.
They drifted through the peaks, ghost birds in a land too steep to hold trees or snow. The bare angles of the mountains flashed gold in the light of Linné’s spark as it redistributed along Weave lines. Revna could almost imagine that she saw the blurred reflections of the Strekozy in their dark faces. High ridges strung false summits together. The valley floor wound below, crowded with pine trees that bowed and whispered in the wind. Revna tasted the crisp scent of snow. If they crashed now, the chances were high that no one would ever find them. The thought made the plane nose upward, and her muscles tightened as she kept it on course.
They clung to the Weave. Revna plucked lightly, adjusting in increments, feeling the sticky mass where tangles gathered and ripened the air with magic. She separated the strands with sweat-slicked fingers. Her breath hitched every time she slipped. The Strekoza was hot and prickly from her concentration, from Linné’s nerves.
When they emerged from the pass, all three of them let out a sigh. “Tcerlin should have seen that in our test flight,” Linné said, increasing power to catch up with the rest of the regiment. “He’d never have doubted us then.”
“Us?”
Linné’s voice was stiff. “Yes. Us.”
“We’re an ‘us’ now?”
“We’ve always been an us.”
Revna made a derisive sound. Despite your best efforts. “If we’re such an us, why do you want another pilot so badly?” Her voice sounded pathetically close to a whine. “I mean, I don’t have any great love for you, either, but I’m not trying to distract you in the middle of a mission.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your piloting skills.” Revna felt a stab of embarrassment from her, a flash of something deeper. A memory, maybe? Linné continued before Revna had a chance to work it out. “But in an emergency situation, you’re a dangerous liability.”
The Strekoza veered left so sharply that they nearly flew back into the pass. Linné yelped at the change of course and the way the throttle constricted around her wrist. The cockpit filled with indignation, but Revna didn’t feel Linné’s pain, and didn’t care. “Don’t ever call me that,” she shouted.
Nausea flared back from Linné’s seat. Nausea, self-righteous anger, and shame. Not nearly enough shame.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’m a person, not a liability. And in case you forgot, I’m the only reason you’re up here. No one else wanted to fly with you.” Satisfaction flooded Revna and she didn’t try to hide it. Let Linné hear her own words fired back at her.
The cockpit was silent for a moment. Then Linné whispered, “I know.”
Her admission didn’t make Revna feel as good as she thought it would. Now that the rush of anger was over, her gut twisted and her wings trembled. Maybe if she apologized…
For what? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Linné was the one who assumed Revna was incompetent because she was disabled. Linné, the mouthpiece of the Union that had always rejected her. She was as bad as Hesovec. Going on about “emergency situations” when they didn’t even have parachutes—
Focus. Mama and Lyfa needed her to succeed. They were much more important than Linné.
They followed the slim Ava River on its southward course, trying to ignore the way the air in the cockpit curdled. Soon they spotted the Elda army nestled in a dip on the plains, overflowing a hamlet of farmhouses. The buildings were crowded with soldiers looking to stay out of the cold, and fires burned out in the open, without much consideration for blackout conditions. Palanquins, war beetles, and little messengers had disrupted the new snowfall by the dozens, churning the ground without any attempt to mask themselves. They must have presumed that the mountains and the Union’s famous lack of aircraft would provide them with all the cover they needed. Good, Revna thought in a sudden rush of heat. They don’t deserve to see us coming.
“Palanquin pen,” Linné said. A fence of wooden stakes and chicken wire cut off a large square of ground
where the living metal constructs sat dormant.
Katya’s plane swooped down. As slow as it was, it moved elegantly, like a bird of prey through the flashing Weave. Not like Revna’s Strekoza, cringing every time Linné gasped.
The first bomb landed on empty ground, bouncing instead of breaking. But Katya’s second bomb shattered against the closed shell of a palanquin and spattered liquid fire onto a group of little messengers huddling for warmth. They flew apart in a blaze of metal limbs.
The living machines around them barely had time to leap up before the next plane dove. Elena and Nadya scored two solid hits, sending a palanquin rolling end over end.
Their turn. “Ready to dive?” Revna said.
“No,” muttered Linné.
They dove anyway.
The air was driven from Revna’s lungs. She pushed against the terror—It’s not mine, it’s not me—but she felt a genuine panic as the engine coughed. Linné had restarted it too soon. Revna lunged for the nearest strand of the Weave and brought them about. They shot over the heads of the palanquins and narrowly missed a barn. And on top of all that—
“You didn’t fire!”
“Of course not.” Linné managed to sound derisive.
“That was the whole point!” She jabbed her finger at the palanquin pen. The wing of the Strekoza followed her hand, lunging down. She barely kept them from doing a barrel roll.
Linné made a strangled noise. “You didn’t get me a clear shot,” she said.
“I would have if you’d waited to reengage the engine.”
“You were too close to the ground.”
They’d gone through training. They’d gone through testing. They’d logged hundreds of practice hours. But Linné would always think of her as the liability before she ever thought of her as a pilot. “I’m the judge of when you spark. You’re the judge of when you fire.”
Revna brought them around in a loop and came up on Pavi’s tail. They were last in line now. The Strekoza constricted around her as they prepared to dive. “Gently,” she murmured, trying to push away her anger and send something soothing instead.
The plane faltered. And they were swooping down. Fear pulled, tighter and tighter, until they were so close to the ground that Revna could reach out and touch the antenna of a rearing war beetle. “Okay—”
The engine kicked to life and they shot up again. The whole plane was shaking—but Linné released the bombs with the click of a trigger. They sped away, and as Revna sagged she heard her first sounds of battle.
It was a lot of screaming. The palanquins screamed as they burned. The wind screamed over the front screen, tearing at Revna’s helmet and goggles. And Linné screamed incessantly. Her voice streamed out behind them in a bright stripe of sound. And then she ran out of breath, and it was the wind and the cold as they pushed higher and higher.
The Strekoza began to pound in time with Revna’s heart.
“Linné.” Revna’s breath puffed in front of her. The Strekoza shivered. Clouds loomed ahead of them like a thick wall. The world was turning gray. I can’t move. Was that the Strekoza’s feeling, or Linné’s, or hers?
Think of the problems, her father’s voice whispered in her mind.
Problem: The Strekoza couldn’t fly too high without freezing.
Problem: She controlled the direction, but Linné controlled the speed.
“Linné.” Revna wrestled for a strand, trying to reach Linné through the Strekoza’s connection. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“I have a hold of myself,” Linné shouted over the hammering fear between them.
“Then slow down,” Revna cried.
Panic surged through her. The Strekoza sped up instead.
With a clunk, the Strekoza had its final word. Their nose pushed into the clouds, soaking them both, and Linné’s spark dissipated in a flash like the center of a lightning storm.
The long metal fingers around Revna jerked loose. Cold slammed into her, searing her lungs as she tried to breathe in. Suddenly she wasn’t part of some great entity that could fly among the stars. She was a girl in a small cockpit, going nowhere but down.
“Revna, what’s happening?”
Clunk, clunk. Problem: The engine was trying to restart, but something held it back. Revna reached for a Weave strand and missed. Their tail-first fall began to turn into a somersault.
“Revna!” Linné screamed.
The answer snapped into her head. “Hot spark! All of it!”
Linné didn’t ask questions. Her spark surged through the plane, blasting through the ice around the propeller and roaring into the Weave. The cage clamped back over her chest, and Revna pulled with everything she had.
She let the blast push them away from the mountains, farther into Elda-occupied territory. She shook. The whole Strekoza shook.
It’s all right now, she told herself and the plane.
When she thought the aircraft was steady enough, she eased it around. “There, there,” she murmured, patting the Strekoza’s pulsing fingers. The smell of singed canvas tickled the inside of her nose.
“Are you talking to it?” Linné said.
“It’s upset.” She didn’t know whether the defensiveness in her voice was all her own or half the plane’s. “It probably panicked, seeing the palanquins explode like that.”
“Oh, yes, comfort the monster flying machine. I pushed half my life out of my arm, but don’t mind me,” Linné grumbled.
“It’s also less of a whiner than you are,” Revna said before she could stop herself. Her heart still pounded. She wasn’t thinking properly. But she’d show empathy for Linné when Linné showed empathy for her.
“Oh, screw you—”
Behind them, something cracked like thunder. Every hair on Revna’s body stood on end. A searing pain burned through her, and she felt the plane release a raw scream as it reared up. She grabbed for the Weave, fighting to think past the pulsing agony.
They sped back over the palanquin pen, which burned in a mess of machines that fought the fires, the shrapnel, and one another in indiscriminate panic. A few figures had rushed to the pen to help, but the craft were insensible. One palanquin raised a steel leg and flicked a man ten meters through the air.
By the time Revna could think straight, they were close to the Karavels again. They slipped through the mountain pass, the last of the Strekozy flying back to base.
“What happened?” Her left arm ached as though someone had taken a hammer to it.
“We got shot,” Linné said.
“What?”
“We got shot. We flew so low and we flew so slow that someone shot at us. And they hit. Look at the wing.”
Revna angled them away from the nearest peak. “I’m a little busy.” But the port wing shivered, as if agreeing with Linné’s words.
Despite the shot, she couldn’t help noticing that the flight seemed calmer than before. Some underlying piece of fear had broken off and burned with the Elda camp. Things were different now, somehow.
“I can’t believe it. We fly too high, we freeze. We fly too low, we get shot.” Linné’s voice took on a more thoughtful tone. “We got shot at,” she said again. And then Revna realized what was so different. They didn’t buck and bob with every breath. Linné’s anxiety no longer leaked into their lifeline. “We got shot at. I can’t believe—” She stopped. But the Strekoza amplified her feeling, filling in the rest.
She’d missed it.
Magdalena was the first to greet them as they landed back at the base. She ran toward the plane and hopped up on the wing to squeeze Revna’s shoulder, laughing with a joy that soothed Revna and the Strekoza both. Her grin split her face. “Full-on panic. The Elda are scrambling. Tamara wants you to hit the supply next. Any food stores or ammunition.”
Linné cut the power. “We’ll strand them.”
Magdalena’s smile dimmed as she remembered that Linné was there. “Yeah,” she said. “Strand them. I’m loading explosives. Answer Olya’s questi
ons.” She turned and nearly skipped off.
An army was scrambling because of them. Panicking because of eleven tiny planes on their very first mission.
We really can do anything, Revna thought. The secret bloomed in her. Let Hesovec rant at them now.
Olya popped up next to the cockpit, not nearly as happy as Magdalena. Her short hair stuck out of a knitted hat and grease smudged her forehead. She wore her irritated smile, a little one with a strained upturn to the mouth, and tapped her wrench against her palm. “What did you do to the engine?”
“It froze,” Revna explained.
Olya flared her nostrils, as if Revna had frozen the engine on purpose. “That was stupid, wasn’t it? The propeller’s warped but maybe I can do something. Don’t spark while I’m up there,” she called to Linné.
“It felt off,” Linné said. Revna twisted around to look at her. She was shockingly pale, and deep bags had already formed under her eyes. She massaged her bare forearm. A red welt had begun to rise at the edge of her rolled-up sleeve.
“Are you all right?” Revna said.
Linné turned on her signature glower. “I’m fine.”
“It’s just—you used a lot of extra spark, and—”
“I’m fine. I’m ready to go.” Linné grabbed the throttle. “Point us in the right direction.”
“What’s this?” came Olya’s outraged voice from the port wing.
“We got shot,” Revna called back.
“Remember, if I get grounded, you get grounded,” Linné said.
“I only—” Revna gave up. Linné would never understand her concern, and that wasn’t Revna’s problem. Her problem was the Elda, and she would utterly obliterate them. Because she could do anything.
Magdalena hooked more bombs underneath the Strekoza while Olya took a hammer to the propeller and got a patch kit for the wing. They didn’t dawdle, but Revna and Linné were alone on the field by the time they’d finished.
“Come back safe,” Magdalena finally said.
We Rule the Night Page 17