“Commander, it’s time to head back. We’re not going to find anybody.”

Jean ignored Captain Sheff’s plea, and focused instead on navigating the rescue barge through the ruins of the Unrelenting. The explosion had broken the luftnought in half, with the stern-side portion sinking down onto the countryside. The bow-side portion still remained miraculously aloft, but bits and pieces of it were breaking of and disintegrating as the airship lost thrust.

I don’t have long. Jean thought. The command bridge was on the bow-side, so it’s still intact, for now, but I have to hurry. She steered the barge further into the debris field, keeping her eyes open for any sign of an ingress. Around her, the air burned. The sound of fire was punctuated by occasional popping noises as volatile liftgas escaped from the gas-bags, igniting and dying in little after-throes.

“The captain’s right,” Hughston said. “We’re not going to find him. Real war isn’t an audiodrama. There are no main characters who get miraculously saved when everyone else dies. We should turn around before you get hypothermia and pass out.”

“Don’t lecture me about the realities of war,” Jean snapped. “This isn’t about finding him. It’s about recovering his files. Ames carried the files for the aerial torpedoes in his briefcase. We need that information if we want to have any chance of defeating the luftnought.” And if we happen to find him alongside that briefcase, then all the better.

As they navigated deeper into the debris field, the full reality of the carnage became clear. Among the smoking debris, there were bodies. And parts of bodies. They floated in the air, buoyed aloft by their parapacks, which blinked uselessly to attract the attention of rescuers. The corpses of the Unrelenting’s crew hung limply in the air like creepy marionettes. Some had been torn apart, others were burned beyond recognition, still others were intact, but had died from hypothermia, their bodies coated with a thin layer of white frost.

Ames might be one of them. She thought. We might be flying right past his corpse and it would be impossible to tell. A frigid breeze blew past and she pulled her flight jacket tightly around her. despite the burning wreckage, it was unbearably cold, and the barge was an open-air design, little more than a flat platform buoyed up by liftbags. That ways the rescuers could stand on the deck and pull in survivors with hooks.

They came up alongside an exposed bulkhead. Despite the significant damage, she could still make out the name Unrelenting painted on the side in curling letters. They were near the bow, which meant the command bridge was close-by as well. Sure enough, a few meters down, they came to a piece of the hull that remained surprisingly intact. It even had a hatch welded into its side. Jean brought the barge alongside and put one foot on the railing.

Hughston’s arm shot out, pulling her back. She wheeled on him in a fury. “Jean, there’s no way I’m letting you go in.”

“It’s the whole reason I’m here,” she snapped. “Now either help me get this hatch open, or else, wait here with the barge.”

Hughston hesitated. He sighed and said, “hatch is welded shut by the fire. We’ll need a cutter to get through. Hang on, I saw one in the supply bay.” He retrieved the cutter then stood beside Jean as they both activated their para-packs and jetted across the void to the lip of the hatch, which was just wide enough to seat both of them. Jean worked on the hatch with the cutter, while Hughston operated the machine’s power-pack. A few minutes later, they prised the door open, and stepped into the narrow hallway.

It was dark inside. The only illumination came from emergency lights that were remarkably still lit. The floor tilted to one side as the piece of airship slowly lost lift and dropped to the ground.

“Command bridge is down this way,” Jean said, signaling down a corridor. “Hurry, we don’t have much time before the liftgas gives out.”

They went deeper and deeper into the depths of the ruined airship. The emergency lights died, so they had to turn on their parapacks’ rescue lights instead. Here, the interior became as hot as a furnace. They were getting close to the epicenter of the explosion. And Ames. With each step, Jean found her hope warring with her natural pessimism. She kept telling herself that all she needed to do was get to the command bridge and Ames would be there, as would the files. All she had to do was fulfill her part of the task.

They were close now. The furnace had died down, replaced by the whistling of wind and a cool breeze, which was curious. The angle of the floor became more sheer, and Hughston outpaced her as she struggled to manage the incline. Her lungs burned and her legs ached as she scaled the mountain slope. We’re almost there! The command bridge was just around the corner.

Hughston got there first. He rounded the corner but stopped, not entering. “Why are you just standing there?”

The other aviator grimaced. When he turned around, the expression on his face was grim. “I don’t think we’re getting to the command bridge.”

“What do you mean?” She came up next to him and saw for herself. Beyond the corner, where the entrance to the command bridge should have been, the entire floor had been ripped away. now she understood why the breeze had been so strong. She stood there, staring at the open air. Nothing remained.

###

The order came in the morning, quickly disseminating itself throughout the entire chain of command.

Telegrams traded back and forth as the communications operators worked overtime routing calls between War, Aviation, and Fleet asking—no, demanding—confirmation that the message wasn’t some elaborate hoax.

By midafternoon, its authenticity was confirmed, and each branch of the military shifted from disbelieving denial to grim acceptance. Unrelenting was lost. The flagship and glory of the Aislemorean fleet, destroyed by a rogue Laurrenean luftnought. The entire Aislemorean military complex girded itself for the implications.

Late in the afternoon, the second message came. This one from an entirely different source, though the ripples it made were just as great. Again there came a flurry of calls demanding its authenticity, although the demands were softer now, considering how high from which the message came.

When Captain Sheff showed Jean the message itself, she was shocked by its simplicity. There were only two lines. The first one read:

ORDER OF CHANCELLOR. ALL AVAILABLE AIRSHIPS DIRECTED TO PURSUIT OF LAURRENEAN LUFTNOUGHT.

And below it, a second, more straightforward command:

DESTROY DREADFALL. DESTROY DREADFALL. DESTROY DREADFALL.

###

Jean tromped through the narrow corridors of the Malocco, which were claustrophobic and dimly lit. Outside, metal-clad luftnoughts and helium-filled zepps floated through the air like great lumbering clouds. She had counted a dozen of them, including Feral Wind, the new capital ship now that Unrelenting was no more. Not to mention the two dozen flugcraft that flew picket, zipping up and around the great airships.

The Malocco was the largest carrier-zepp in the fleet, weighing in at over two hundred tonnes. With that much steel levitating in the sky, you’d think they could have afford to have more space in the interior. But the airship was stuffed to the gills with essential items: armories, engines, guns, machinery. Crew comfort was essentially and afterthought.

A flugcraft picket zipped past the porthole, and Jean caught sight of the aviator in the cockpit as it flew past. She felt a distinct sense of forlornness, watching them outside. She ought to be out there with them, not trapped inside the narrow confines of the Malocco. Aviators were by nature free-spirited individuals. Yet for some reason, she had been ordered to come here, into the bowels of what amounted to a metal coffin floating in the sky.

She followed a long catwalk suspended above oilcloth bladders filled with liftgas. Her boots clattered on the metal grating as she crossed. At the other end, sandwiched between machinery, was a tiny meeting room that amount to a cluster of chairs and a chalkboard. The room was packed full of other aviators still in their flightsuits. The aviator standing at the chalkboard had a manicured mustache and the airs of someone who felt themselves better than the rabble. Flight Commander Rickard, First Air Lord and commandant of the Aviation Branch. He glared at Jean as she entered the room.

“No doubt you’ve heard the news by now,” he said in a posh accent. “Dreadfall has been sighted here and here,” he pointed at two places on the chalkboard, where a rough drawing of the Aislemorean landmass had been made. Arrows demarcated the potential trajectories. “Initially, the plan was to split the air fleet and canvas both locations, however, recently intercepted messages from the War Department Intelligence Service indicates that the northern trajectory seems to be the Dreadfall’s likely course.”

That made sense. The reports Jean read stated that Dreadfall had been damaged by Corwyn’s guns during the disastrous attack. Going North would allow it to prey on lightly-armed cargo-zepps in the shipping lanes, rather than risk having to go head-to-head with another armed airship.

“Sky Marshall Bork will be taking the majority of the fleet north to pursue this likely course, while a smaller detachment will pursue the southerly course in case our intelligence is wrong. Adjutant will provide you later today with your assignments.”

Of course that was why they had been called here on such short notice. The flight crews were being reshuffled between the Northern and Southern pursuit fleets. Likely, her and the crew would be reassigned, hopefully to the North.

The rest of the meeting was filled with discussion of coordinates and tactics, as well as a briefing on the latest updates on the Dreadfall’s armaments. The anti-homing field that the luftnought employed was mentioned, but nothing was said about Ames and his secret homing torpedoes. That bothered Jean more than she cared for. She needed their flight to be transferred to the Northern pursuit fleet, but if War Department was still keeping the existence of the torpedoes secret from everyone else, then there was no guarantee that such an assignment would be made. Ames might very well have taken the secret of the magnetic torpedoes to his grave.

The meeting adjourned with no clear indication of where her flightcrew would be assigned. What was obvious was that Jean and her aviators would no longer be traveling with Malachius. That night, the staff held a going-away party to see them off. The officers seemed surprisingly sad to let her leave, and Sheff held her hands as he gave the send-off blessing, after which he offered her a case of vintage wines—sourced apparently from his family’s own vineyard in Tartlesby. Refusing had felt like rejecting a marriage proposal.

A message arrived via Commander Rickard’s adjutant that evening. Jean read the message. “Assigned to Palunis,” she said, grimacing. Based on what she could remember, Palunis was a short-range carrier-zepp of light-class, hardly something you’d use to confront a luftnought. “Southern pursuit, I imagine.”

“Your flight crew has received a… special assignment,” the adjutant said.

“Oh?” She wondered if War Department had finally come through for her. “You don’t have to tell me yet if its top secret.”

The adjutant scoffed in a derisive way. “Don’t be presumptuous, captain. Palunis is assigned to the city guard of Aislemora, you’ll fliers are to be a part of the reserve fleet to defend the city against possible incursion.

“Aislemora?” That was nowhere near either trajectory. “We won’t even be able to help with the pursuit!”

“Your part in defending the city will be sufficient enough. That is your duty.”

“But we’ve got top aviators in my flight! They’d be wasted on such an assignment.” She could feel Ames’ plan slipping away even as she spoke.

“And they would be a blow to morale if they were killed in action,” the adjutant said matter-of-factly. “Stationed in Aislemora, they’ll serve as a boost to civic morale, as citizens will sleep easier knowing that Aislemore’s finest are guarding the skies.”

“We’ll be lucky if we even make it to the skies,” Jean said. They would only be scrambled if there was an incursion, and Laurrenean ships would never make it that far across the kanal.

“Those are your orders.”

The adjutant saluted and turned briskly away. Jean watched him go, still unable to process her shock. Guard duty. The rest of the fleet would be away pursuing the Dreadfall, while her and her aviators were on guard duty.

###

The Palunis was only a day’s journey out from the Great Reshuffle, and Jean was already prepared to mutiny. While the rest of the fleet was being sent north in pursuit of Dreadfall, all that she and her aviators had encountered were clear skies and the monotonous Aislemorean countryside below. It was the worst form of uselessness: Aislemora was heavily defended by flak batteries and its own reserve fleet, and any zepps coming in this direction from the kanal would be spotted hours before by the listening posts along the shore. The Laurreneans would never be foolish enough to launch an attack here.

Which meant that while the other fleet elements were tracking down and destroying the greatest threat to Aislemore’s sovereignty, Jean’s flight crew was stuck in the back as reserves. This was not what she had anticipated when she agreed to Ames deal to join back up.

She had tried convincing the captain to let her read the daily updates via the telegraph, but the captain of the Palunis was an old career aeronaut and not nearly as permissive as Sheff had been, so he had flatly refused the offer. In the end, it had taken Hughston’s charm to make the captain give them what they wanted. He bribed several low-ranking signals officers with promises of autographs and pictures in exchange for passing along the messages to him, and then on to Jean.

Jean had not enjoyed relying on Hughston, but she was desperate for news and accepted the messages anyways. For the duration of the dull trip, she lived vicariously through the radio reports. Some were encrypted, and when Hughston asked for a translation, the operators had profusely apologized and turned down his request. But most were plenty readable.

The intelligence briefing from War Department continued to confirm what they already believed: Dreadfall was headed north to savage their shipping lanes. The fleet was on trajectory to intercept. Even a state-of-the-art luftnought would not be able to contend with the sheer power of the entire Aislemorean fleet. And here they were, stuck on what was essentially guard duty.

Then, a curious message: the scent had been lost. Dreadfall had not been where they expected to intercept. Jean checked for another message, but there was none. It’s nothing, she told herself. They’ve lost her for a bit, but it’s only a matter of time. Only what if it wasn’t? It was one thing if the fleet killed the Dreadfall without her; it was an entirely different matter if it escaped the net altogether.

Jean was mulling over the updates in her cabin with Hughston knocked on her door. “You’ve been trapped in here all day,” he said. “I thought you hated being locked in a metal box.”

“Leave me be, Hughston. I’m fine.”

“You certainly don’t look it. Besides, I was just coming by to see if you wanted to play some racquetball. Did you know they have a court aboard? This zepp never ceases to surprise me.”

Reluctantly, Jean tore herself away from her messages and followed Hughston to a court amidships that was remarkably large. She spent the next half hour pumping her legs across the court, trading shots with Hughston as the racquetball bounced against hanging lift-bladders and the metal bulkheads. It was a remarkably energizing exercise, and she found that her mind was taken away from the Dreadfall for a moment.

“You really should let it go,” Hughston said, as they walked across the open top-deck from the racquetball court. He used a towel to wipe off from his face the sweat that was rapidly drying in the chill air. “I’m telling you Jean, all this rumination isn’t good for you.”

“They lost track of Dreadfall,” Jean said, staring fixedly at the clouds.

“I’m sure they’ll find it again.”

“How do you do it, Hughston?”

“Do what?”

“Not seek revenge? How do you sleep knowing that this big airship is out there and that it probably killed some of your friends?”

“My friends sealed their own fates,” Hughston said. “Besides, there are plenty of Laurreneans who’ve lost friends too. Way I see it, if it weren’t for their mad chancellor, we’d all be friends together.” Jean gave him a dubious look. “Or at least, not enemies.”

Hughston started talking about the scuttlebutt on the Palunis. Something about a deck officer having an affair with a married radio-woman. But Jean was only half paying attention. Her gaze had turned again to the sky. Another airship was breaching through the nearest cloudbank. A cargo-zepp perhaps, or one of the other war-zepps unlucky enough to be assigned to home duty. She kept thinking back to the disappearance of the Dreadfall. The luftnought was state-of-the-art and had been equipped with countermeasures against their magnetic torpedoes, which were a weapon that was supposedly top secret. That meant that the Laurreneans had spies on the side, within War Department. But if they had developed countermeasures against the torpedoes, then it would stand to reason that they might also have developed equipment to fool radar. Then they could spoof their location and lead the whole fleet on a merry chase.

The body of the cargo-zepp broke through the cloud, dark and shining. It was more angular than Jean had expected. And were those guns upon its bow?

Wait. Jean hurried to a viewing station, turning the lens in the direction of the zepp. Her hands shook as she operated the controls. What she saw made her stop breathing.

“What is it?” Hughston asked. Jean pointed to the sky.

“Dreadfall.”

It had spoofed its signal. The admiralty assumed it was heading north to the shipping lanes, but no, it was moving south, south towards… It couldn’t be, but it made sense. Dreadfall was coming down, down in a direction from which an attack would be unexpected, because no one would think to send a luftnought cross-country to strike a target halfway across the isle. Dreadfall was headed toward Aislemora. And the fleet was headed in the wrong direction.