“Copy that, Charm,” Cyar replies.
“Avilov—you still there?”
It takes a long minute. “Uh, yeah, Captain. Where else would I be?”
“Could you answer a little quicker?”
“Just enjoying this cup of tea back here. I’ve got an idea, let’s—shit, Captain, one o’clock high!”
That’s all the time I get for Trigg’s warning. Tracers pummel us from above, red hissing past our wings. Two shadows drop like hawks. No time to plan. No time to think. I throw my plane down and away, Cyar scrambles out to the right, and Trigg disappears behind me.
Alone.
Just like that.
As I hang on to my shaking stick, my plane shudders between my fists, gloriously ready, and for the first time a flicker of thrill returns. It feels wrong, but it’s there. Adrenaline. Here. Now. My chest aching with the brilliant dive into nothing. One of the attacking Resyan planes hangs on to me, visible in my mirror as I level out. Tracers hurtle past. He’s overshooting, since I’m shifting around too much, but damn, he’s good.
Every move I make, he matches.
I’m so busy looking behind me that when grey fog suddenly overwhelms my cockpit, I nearly jump out of my skin. It eats my plane right up. Visibility at zero. But then I realize it’s cloud cover. Just cloud cover. This could be to my advantage. Let him lose me in here, the lonely grey. For a moment, the tracers stop and I feel a smug surge of victory.
Then red shoots past me again, too close, and I forfeit that celebration. I throw myself into another dive instead, getting the hell out of the clouds, the sky opening up below again.
I’m plunging right towards the bombers.
Shit!
It’s Trigg’s voice I hear in my head, but I can’t stop. Every Safire bomber is covered in deadly corners—side gunners, tail gunner, all trying to keep the enemy at bay. All ready to shoot at any fighter hurtling towards them, friendly or not. The only ones who should be pressing into this onslaught are the Resyans who made it their mission.
Not me.
But I push my stick down and go anyway, passing under a bomber close enough to see the white-skinned surprise on the left gunner’s face. A thunderous roar pounds behind me—heavy machine-gun fire. He’s after the Resyan on my tail. Thank God for that unexpected ally. He tries to make work of my pursuer, but does little damage, and the enemy pilot is still after me. I spin between the bombers carelessly, the worst place to be.
They’re firing.
We’re firing.
I’m really terrible at choosing my direction. Ear-piercing flak reverberates off my wings, jolting me, far too close, and another Resyan fighter hurtles straight at me from ahead. I have no choice. Trapped, one enemy behind me and one right in front of me, I offer a wordless apology to the bomber I’m flying parallel to and haul myself right over it, skimming straight across the front of its glass cockpit. I’ve probably just given both pilots a near stroke. They think we’re show-offs, and I’m solidifying that reputation today as I hurtle my small fighter before them and out into Lightstorm territory.
I’ve cut clear across the convoy and emerged on the other side. The Resyan’s still on me, and I squint into the noon sun, praying all my counting of stars has helped. I make out a Lightstorm fighter not far off, the flanking details singing to me, close enough to reach, to get some help.
“Moonstrike approaching from east, bandit at my six,” I say into the chaos of the radio, trying to be calm, to catch his attention.
“See you, kid,” the welcoming voice says. Older, wiser. “Break right in five seconds and climb your ass up as fast as you can.”
“Understood.”
Time to charge ahead and hope for the best. Jamming my throttle wide open, I gain speed and prepare for a steep climbing turn. This Resyan pilot may be good, but he still isn’t flying a Safire plane, and soon I’ll be hurtling upwards faster than he can hope to keep chase with. And before he realizes it, he’ll have a Lightstorm pilot on his tail. A veteran pilot with years of deadly practice.
With eagle eyes above.
I feel that tendril of thrill licking again.
Here.
Now.
I blow past the Lightstorm fighter and the Resyan struggles to follow me, lagging behind slightly.
The Lightstorm pilot pounces.
He explodes.
A flash of fire and smoke as another Resyan … Another Resyan fighter shoots between us and downwards in a reckless arc. I stare in my rear mirror, the Lightstorm plane falling in pure flame, years of glory gone in an instant. I don’t know who he was. Only a voice. A faceless voice who tried to help me—and failed.
I abort my climb and opt for desperate airspeed from a dive. Panic nudges my heart rate higher as I flip over, and I’m beginning to feel a helpless kinship with this Resyan pilot behind me, who’s still keeping up, still blasting at me whenever he can.
I hate him, but he’s all I have.
Frustration builds like a steep pressure beneath my sweaty skin and I throw myself into another barrel roll, then weave rapidly through the seething convoy and merciless flak. Before me, a bomber falls end over end, a giant beast collapsing with broken wings. The crew bails out the sides. One of them gets his parachute tangled on the left propeller, dragged down with the plane. Another’s chute doesn’t open. Right when it can’t get any worse, a burning Resyan fighter collides into the dead bomber’s tail, breaking the fuselage in half. The entire thing explodes, bodies plummeting alongside the fiery metal carcass.
You see how cheap we are, Ali? You believe I’m special, something precious, but I’ll go down just like that, like nothing, and no one watching will even care.
Rapid cannon fire explodes behind me and I instinctively brace for a dive. But Cyar’s victorious voice fills my earphone. “Got him, Charm!”
My eyes dart to the mirror and I watch as my Resyan enemy falls away trailing slick black oil. I can see him scrambling to open his canopy, racing to eject, but the flames catch, his cockpit disappearing into smoke. My strange friend is as cheap as anyone else once in the crosshairs of Cyar’s gun.
“Thanks, Fox.”
Giant clouds have begun to billow below us, popping brightly, one after another, like fireworks the wrong way around.
“Bombs away, return for home,” someone orders.
Lilay?
Garrick?
Doesn’t matter, and our three fighter squadrons—what’s left of them—follow the bombers as they swing in a wide arc back for the coast. The spotless formations from earlier are shattered. Wounded aircraft struggle all across the sky, some sinking into their final death plunge, pulled lower and lower by an invisible hand. Wings on fire. Bombers shot-up to the point that I’m convinced only the pilots must be alive. Everyone in the fuselage? No chance.
And as we hobble back like that, something fierce and furious growls inside me.
Something angry.
My gaze darts down, scoping out the earth. “Don’t let them lure you low,” Garrick said, but damn that. He also said “Don’t think so much,” and he’s right. I won’t let them lure me low.
I’m going down on my own.
“Stay with me, Fox,” I order. “Bandits at 5,000 feet.”
I can see the black stars hurrying along below us, certainly on their way to intercept the Safire squadrons fighting above the beachhead.
“But they said we’re—”
“Follow me,” I say, my foot going to the rudder.
“Wait, Athan, we—”
I ignore him. Stick forward, my plane moves into a savage, delightful dive, altimeter whirring at me in horror.
10,000 feet.
9,000 feet.
6,000 feet.
The bombers are abandoned behind and distantly I hear Cyar over the radio—“I’ve lost my wingman, Captain!”—and Garrick hollering at me to get back in formation. They’re too far. I’m only aware of the sky dropping away, the straps digging into my chest, my gloved
hands on the stick, the black stars growing in size and shape, becoming planes.
Enemy planes.
They don’t see me, blinded by sun, and I cut the throttle, lower my flaps, slowing and thrusting right into the middle of their little convoy. My machine guns open up and the one in front of me smokes in seconds, a cloud of glycol bursting, the pilot probably wondering what the hell just happened. My cockpit stinks with the familiar odor of burnt gunpowder. The scent of victory, of not running away.
Don’t think.
I swing out of the way and the enemy pilot behind me—no doubt stunned—fires too late, overshooting. He hurtles above me as I drop away. No time to correct himself. I throw my throttle open again, my plane snarling with urgency, regaining the lost altitude. Forget hanging back. They always tell us to wait until we can make our shots and protect our own skin. But there’s only one way to be sure you’re going to make a kill—and that’s to get in too close to miss.
“Sorry, girl,” I tell my plane, pushing her into the frothy wake of the Resyan. Caught in the slipstream, her wings shudder murderously, but I don’t stop until we’re right behind him. Behind is a pilot’s worst nightmare. A terrifying blind spot.
I give him two bursts of cannon fire and think of the disappeared Fury, the mutilated bombers, my own cheap bones—angry as hell—as the entire enemy plane explodes right in front of me, debris pelting my fighter, cracking glass and pounding metal. Oil splatters. Everything shudders again, heaving me right along with it, and my head smacks the metal frame of my cockpit hard.
Pure darkness.
Pain.
Coppery blood on my tongue.
Then we’re beyond the smoke, into the blue, and fractured veins spider across my windshield. Something wet drips from my forehead. I shake away the thick blur in my vision and focus on a third enemy plane now fleeing right, aiming ahead of him, finding the place he will be, moments from now. My guns fire. In a breath, before he can even understand what’s hit him, he’s falling for the earth too.
“Goddamn it, Athan—stop!”
The furious, panicked voice catches me.
Cyar.
Has he been talking this whole time? How many has he taken down? I’ve lost track of the scattered enemy formation.
“Three’s enough!” Cyar hurls at me, his plane spinning too close above mine, like he’s going to try and cut me off next. But that would be suicide.
“Not yet,” I hurl back, tracking an enemy plane now diving even lower.
To the invasion.
It’s far too near the deck to be remotely safe, but I flick over into a steep dive and follow.
800 feet.
400 feet.
Raging like a meteor accelerating with every foot of air, I glance down, seeing the ravine of the lines growing in size—soldiers crouched, tanks thundering forward. It’s all a mess of smoke and sparks of light. I have no idea what’s what, but I hope seeing a Safire plane chase a terrified Resyan is a welcome sight for the advance divisions of Army Group North battling their way inland.
The enemy fighter can’t outrun me after my dive and I hurtle towards him, my cannons firing. He implodes. There’s no time for thought or parachute. In seconds, he’s smoking on the earth.
“Get the hell back up here, Dakar!”
Garrick’s voice is ragged in my ear. Angry enough to use my real name as flak explodes off my starboard side, too close. I fling my plane up, having a sudden terrifying vision of death. Of my ashes left forever on an alien hillside. Forgotten. Alone.
“Copy,” I say, but it sounds more like a gasp.
My head throbs.
Blood drips.
“You idiot,” Garrick snaps.
“I know.”
* * *
My fighter limps back onto the Intrepid with broken legs.
The prop sputters to a weary stop, something hissing and clicking deep inside her, in her mechanical core. A defeated sigh. I climb out, and Filton’s horrified eyes rake over us.
“What did you do, sir?”
“Shot four planes down,” I reply.
“And your own!”
I jump off the wing and turn to see for myself. Good God. He’s right. She’s battered like an old tin can, torn to pieces in the wings, canopy covered in deep scars from the rain of debris. An entire chunk is missing from the nose.
Goodbye to her, I guess.
Garrick marches over. I expect him to be furious, but his expression is as startled as mine, slightly mad looking. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” I say, his face a bit blurry. I squint, trying to see clearer. “You told me not to.”
“No.” He raises his hand to hit my head, then sees the blood. He stops. “I said don’t think so much. I didn’t say stop thinking altogether.”
I glance around him, at the others. Cyar’s face is set with an awful glare. Trigg’s is slightly in awe. The rest of Moonstrike gapes, along with a few sailors, while my plane sits stranded like a corpse, a thing I shouldn’t have jumped out of alive. I walk closer and stare at her. No longer gleaming, no longer fierce.
Ruined.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I’m not sure if it’s more to her or to Filton.
15
AURELIA
Madelan
As it turns out, the Havis estate—my new prison—is far lovelier than I ever imagined.
Settled just outside Madelan’s limits, it’s nestled like a tiny gem of grandeur in the sloping hills, filled with pastures of beautiful horses and shimmering blue-water pools of colourful tile. Lady Havis drives the truck, expertly adjusting the stick, rumbling us along at a steady marching pace. The hot wind snatches my hair, and I’m jealous.
If I knew how to drive, perhaps I could escape.
We pull up to a grand house of long verandas and tall pillars, the swaying palms deceptively peaceful, and I refuse to speak more than a few words to either of the Havis pair as we enter their home. They’re clearly planning to hold me hostage in this luxurious realm of claw-footed tubs and rose-scented rooms, the warm, humid morning slithering in between billowing curtains, a copper kettle whistling somewhere. As soon as they deposit me in my guest room, I change quickly into one of the simple dresses Violet packed for me, annoyed I didn’t bring any pants, or even a pair of riding boots.
When my stomach begins protesting too bitterly to ignore, I break my self-imposed isolation and head downstairs, investigating every corner along the way—searching for a secret way out. Lady Havis attempts to be a kind warden, offering me a spread of dates and fruit and bread, and I play obedient as we eat on the sunny terrace. She refuses to turn on the radio. Instead, she tours me through the extensive gardens, where peacocks peck at pathways lined with ferns, blossoming orchids, jasmine, and colourful bulbs I can’t place.
“I’d like to meet with King Rahian,” I inform her formally as we walk, determined to assert my royal bearing. “There might be a way to stop this war and—”
“I’m sorry, Sarriyan,” Lady Havis interrupts. “I think that chance has passed.”
“You can’t be sure, though. A negotiation might still halt this.”
She raises an elegant brow. “But what if war isn’t the exception? What if peace is the exception, the temporary reprieve from a struggle that began long before you or I came on the stage—and one that will continue long after we’re gone, too?”
“That’s a dismal theory,” I reply flatly. “You’ll just stand back and let it carry on, then?”
“Yes. Very far back, in fact, Sarriyan.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
I’m annoyed by her unhelpful cynicism, and I’m beginning to think it’s a Havis trait—retreating from danger and watching the world go up in smoke.
“You know the word for star?” she presses.
“Sari.”
“And north?”
“Iyah.”
“Very good. Now you can certainly put the two together?”
Aware I’m being quizzed, I venture with, “Star … of the north?”
“Exactly. The one you call Northern Star. Sari was once the address for our princesses. Our little stars in the sky of history.” She makes a face, halting for a large peacock crossing our path. “I find that rather deprecating, don’t you? I prefer something stronger. So for you, Sarriyan.”
I refuse to take any pleasure in that favourable nickname.
When we round the garden path, however, I find something truly perfect. A stable yard of cerulean tile opens before us, a groom leading a gleaming chestnut towards a row of stalls beneath an arching roof. No dusty alley or hot tack room. Everything sunlit and welcoming, iron shoes ringing, and I can’t resist the large bay head which emerges from the stall on my left, greeting me with ears perked. The soft muzzle pushes at my hand, the handsome face so much like Liberty’s back home. Gently, I blow into his curious nostrils, saying hello in the way Father once showed me.
Lady Havis chuckles. “Ah, I recognize that heart. My granddaughter was just like you. This was her favourite horse.”
“Oh.” I step away, as though I’ve touched something that isn’t mine.
“No, no, enjoy him,” Lady Havis assures, reaching out to scratch the large neck with affection. As she glances at me, a question hovers in her gaze. Something secret, indistinct. “This was my late husband’s stallion. He’s an ancient fellow and quite happily retired now. But I’m certain he’s glad to see you. He misses my granddaughter.”
“She’s no longer here?”
Lady Havis doesn’t appear offended by my bold question. I’m beginning to think she might prefer things this way, the Resyan style. “Not any longer. But she was my heart. We used to drive to the aerodrome and watch the planes take off together—only biplanes back then. She wanted to be a pilot, and truthfully, I thought it was possible. I’d have given her that.”
“What happened to her?”
“The Nahir.”
The grief in the older woman’s voice is unmistakable, and I glance away. I’m not in the mood to feel sorry for someone who bears the name Havis, but I have to ask. “Are there many here?”
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