“It’s headed for the city,” Jean announced to her disbelieving crew. The mess hall was silent. Besides a few galley cooks hosing down dirty trays, they were the only ones in the room.

“I thought War Department said it was headed north,” Parmen said. A look of concern spread across his face.

“The signal is spoofed.” Jean said. “I’m sure of it.” She began to explain her hunch, ending with her sighting of the Dreadfall in the cloudbank.

“Wait a minute, you saw the Dreadfall?” Leonhardt said. “With your own eyes? You and Hughston both?” She glance between Jean and the other aviator.

“Yes,” Jean said. “Well, I saw it, at least.”

Leonhardt scoffed. She crossed her arms and leaned back into her seat. “Sounds like someone’s trying to get us to jump ship again. We’re already in trouble enough the first time you made us do that.” She crossed her legs, lolling one foot in the air.

“It’s true,” Hughston said. “I believe her.”

Leonhardt shook her head. “There was a time I would’ve believed you, lieutenant. Except I can see now that Miss Ambrose here has gotten into your head. Don’t be ashamed. It’s happened to better aviators.”

Jean had a sudden urge to reach out and smack her across the face. It was stupid of them to be spending this time arguing, when they really needed to be taking action. “You haven’t got any evidence,” Leonhardt was saying.

That was the cue. Jean nodded to Hughston, who produced a manila folder with some papers within. He placed the folder on the table and opened it. Leonhardt took the papers and spread them out. “What’s this?”

“I’ve been bribing the telegraph operators to pass along updates.”

“Seriously, Hughston?”

“Just keep reading.”

Leonhardt did so. She picked up the first message from the Northern pursuit fleet, muttering darkly to herself as she did. Jean watched her expression go from annoyance to confusion to mild alarm. Leonhardt looked back up. “They lost track of the signal.”

“That signal’s a decoy. The real Dreadfall is down south with us.”

“They might have just lost the signal.”

“Look at the evidence, Leonhardt,” Hughston said, patting the table with his hands. “Jean says she say it, and now they’ve lost the signal. What else could be happening?”

“That circumstantial evidence,” she replied, but Jean could see her certainty wavering. Leonhardt’s foot was lolling about even more than before. The possibility that Dreadfall was approaching the city for a bombing run was enough to override her skepticism. Didn’t she have family in Aislemora?

“We need to alert the home guard,” Danvers said. “They need to be placed on high alert.”

“The Home Guard are a bunch of well-meaning citizens with no combat training. Best they can do is shine a bunch of spotlights into the air and signal to the Dreadfall where the juiciest targets are. Worst case scenario: they’ll mistake us for the enemy and try to shoot us out of the sky.”

“Then let’s talk to the captain of the Palunis Have him send out a distress signal to the Northern Fleet.”

“Won’t do any good,” Jean said. “The captain will be just as skeptical as you, probably moreso. And even if the Northern fleet receives the message—assuming they believe it—they’re several hundred leagues in the opposite direction.”

Leonhardt pounded the table. “We have to do something. We can’t just sit around and let the city burn.”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Jean said. “Thankfully there’s still one element of fleet that is poised to intercept the luftnought before it arrives at the city.”

“Who’s that?” Leonhardt asked. Jean stared at her. “You mean… us?”

Jean nodded. “This is our new mission. We’re the only ones who can stop it.”

###

Corporal Jackie Withers shivered slightly as she stood guard in the hangar. She always hated her guard duty shifts. Four hours a week in the Palunis’ cold, drafty hangar. She didn’t understand the point. Who was going to try and steal a flugcraft aboard a carrier-zepp midflight? None of the crew were that stupid, and if a Laurrenean spy wanted to really do some damage, he would probably go for the engines instead. No, this was busy work, and she had chosen the short straw.

The sound clattering footsteps made her jump. She peered in the direction of the sound. The hangar lights were off, but the noise seemed to be coming from within the darkness, among where the flugcraft where stored. More clattering noises, followed by footsteps and a geez, Parmen, watch it! Jackie drew her service pistol and crept toward the noise, keeping to the shadows around the nimble aerofighters for cover. She peered around the fuselage for a better glimpse of the interlopers.

There were four of them, all gathered around the flugcraft at the edge of the ramp. They wore aviator’s flightsuits. Spies! She thought, damn it, she’d been wrong. They were trying to steal the flugcraft.

Jackie willed herself to move toward the door and sound the alarm. Just as she rose, something hard hit her over the back of the head. She dropped to the floor and the pistol went skittering out of her reach. In the corner of her vision, someone picked it up. “Terribly sorry,” said a family voice that sounded genuinely remorseful.

“The hell was that, Hughston?”

“Guard. I knocked her out.” I’m still conscious. Jackie thought. Maybe best he doesn’t know that.

“Well hurry the hell up, we’re about to launch.”

“Right, sorry.”

Someone slapped the control panel. The mechanical ramp whirred as air whined through the opening. The aviators rushed to their stolen flugcraft. The spy who had knocked her down hovered around her for a bit. “Again, terribly sorry.” She saw him scribble into a piece of paper, then let it go, falling down to her side. Then he too was gone.

Jackie heard, but didn’t see, the flugcraft buzzing to life, then individually dropping out into the sky. Five of them. The entire flight crew that had been aboard. Captain Ambrose was going to be pissed that her aerofighters were gone.

When things were finally quiet, she dared to get up. Jackie rubbed the soreness on her head and looked around the empty hangar bay. The scrap of paper still lay on the ground. She picked it up to read what was written.

A one-of-a-kind autograph.

###

The admirals could have their great-hulled zeppliners, Jean thought. She and her aviators did their best in their flugcrafft, and it was flugcraft that flew off their trajectory to intercept the Dreadfall.

They came in with the sun behind their tails, the fabric of their fuselages not giving off any glint that would give them away. to a spotter on the Dreadfall, they would appear like burning gnats, and spotting them would be rendered all the harder because of the rippling mirage that the sun’s setting caused. Each flugcraft had a magnetic torpedo strapped to its belly, a deadly cargo awaiting release. They flew in formation just like before, with Jean and Hughston in the lead. this would be their final run. Either they would destroy the Laurrenean luftnought, or else it would lay waste to their homes.

As soon as they were in range, the flak batteries opened up. The five flugcraft scattered, breaking and causing the arc of flak to separate apart into several strands or pursuit. Glimmers of flak lanced out past Jean’s starboard wing, several punched right through the fabric, not stopping but also not damaging any structural supporst on their way either. In a few seconds, they had closed the distance.

As a single entity, Jean’s flight formed up in a line, angling about 45 degress overhead of Dreadfall’s bulk.

“One away,” Parmen announced.

The torpedo detached from his flugcraft’s belly and sailed away toward the airship. In an instant, the air sizzled as the Dreadfall activated its countermeasures. The rocketing engine of Parmen’s shot fizzled out as the electromagnetic field rendered it useless. Yet instead of dropping, the torpedo continued forward, soaring onward to its destination, buyoued by the wings they had hastily attached to either side. the torpedo glided gently toward the forward gun, nuzzling it with tender affection before promptly exploding.

Parmen yelped with relief. “Direct hit!” He announced. Jean cheered inwardly alongside him. the modifications had been Parmen’s idea all along. They had not way of disabling the Dreadfall’s magnetic field, so instead they had modified the torpedoes into glide bombs, dropped from a trajectory that was precisely calculated to glide to its target.

“Now, release!” She called to the others.

As one, Danvers, Leonhardt, and Hughston all fired their shots. She watched the flak batteries fire desperately at the dropping bombs, which were far too slow for the ship’s mechanized targeting control to account for. Two simultaneously explosions hit the hull, causing considerable smoke, while Hughston’s torpedo just barely overshot.

But the airship was still operational. Its bomb bay still worked and could unleash its load upon Aislemora. The engines remained undamaged, and it could beat a quick escape back to the airbase at Dresdak, achieving a morale victory for the Laurreneans.

No, she needed to end it here. As the other flugcraft broke from formation, Jean veered sharply to port and rounded to line up with Dreadfall’s stern.

“Captain,” Hughston asked over the comms. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure this ends here.”

“You sure about this.”

“Positive.”

Silence, then, “Godspeed, Jean.” His comm cut out, and Jean was left aloen with the cockpit and the sky. she gripped the control yoke and honed in on the Dreadfall’s engine, setting up for a forty-five degree shot. Flak from the reare battery zipped past, slicing through the sky. her visor cracked, and when she looked past, she saw that a flechette round had gone clean through the glass, the seat behind her, and the fuselage as well. a near miss. Any closer and it might have been her head, or else, the engine block.

She turned back to the fight, but the shattered windshield distorted her view, splitting it into fractals. There was no other way. She donned her goggles then pulled the release latch beside her leftside. The cockpit visot flew off and away and now it was just open sky. wind whipped her exposed cheeks. A cutting, violent wind that stund with its coldness. Strands of hair untamed by her cap whipped wildly about her face.

More flak opened up, then stopped. She was within their minimum distance now. If she released, it would be a good chance of a hit.

But she didn’t need a good chance. She needed to be certain. There was too much riding on success. So instead of releasing, she flew closer and closer, bringing the flugcraft itself on collision course with the engines.

She thought of her time as an aviator. Her old crew: Sami, Laurens, all the others. She thought of the disaster at Dresdak, and of the cloud that had hung over her even since that fateful day.

But then she thought too of her new crew: Hughston, Leonhardt, Parmen, Sheff, Ames. As difficult as they were, it had been good to fight alongside them. for a moment, she had felt like her old crew was back. But nothing lasted forever.

She steered the flugcraft closer and closer. The hoke shook in her head from the velocity at which she moved. The distance rangefinder ticked down. Impact in twenty seconds. Fifteen. Ten.

At five seconds, she unhooked her seat strap and stood up, then leaned over the side of the open cockpit and dropped herself over the side. she didn’t dare activate her parapack until she was well clear of the impact zone and the wind was loud enough that she could not hear but only flee the crash. Yet when she looked up, the stem of the Dreadfall was billowing smoke. The thrust of the airship had died and it was trying to turn around, only succeeding in moving in a circle. The Dreadfall was dead in the sky, still alive, but a living carcass, ready to be picked apart by vultures. Jean gave it one final glance, drinking in the sight, then she turned away and focused on the long drift down to the ground.

###

In light of the circumstances, it was decided that an example must be made. There were some objections, but these were overruled by the Chancellor, who agreed with the general assessment. Dreadfall had invaded Aislemora’s sovereign land, destroyed its proudest flagship, and tried to initiate a terror bombing of a civilian city.

Yes, an example was distasteful. But necessary.

I n the morning light, the day after Jean’s flight disabled Dreadfall, four zepps from the Northern fleet closed in on the stricken airship from the four cardinal driections. It was decided that the attack would take place at dawn light, so that the Laurrenean aviators would see their doom coming the entire way.

As soon as they were within range, all four airships opened up, hammering the Dreadfall with a hate-fueled beverage of intense battery fire. The airship was silent, as if accepting of the slaughter. For an entire hour, the Aislemorean ships systematically dismantled their enemy, heading away great chunks of its hull. Vultures picking apart a carcass.

There were survivors of course. Laurreeneans in para-packs huddled in levitating air-rafts, fighting against the cold. Rules of war dictated that survivors must be rescued and treated with humanity. The Chancellor had indicated this to be an extraordinary circumstances. Examples must be made.

Some were picked up however. Captain Sheff of the Malachius recovered forty badly frostbitten aviators and treated them to warm meals and vintage wines. He was nearly court-martialed for his act of kindness. The rest of the Dreadfall’s thousand-man crew was left to freeze, their corpses drifting along with the wreck of Dreadfall itself.

Jean was furious when she heard. This was not what she had signed up for when Ames convinced her to rejoin the aerocorp. Killing an armed enemy was one thing, leaving helpless victims stranded was another thing entirely.

She had packed her bags to leave, despite Hughston’s warnings that she would certainly be charged with dereliction of duty and face the firing squad. She didn’t care. she’d had enough.

Jean was storing her pack when the first air-raid siren started up. she ran to the window in time to see hundreds of black dots on the horizon. Flugcraft and zepps of Laurrenean make, moving across the horizon. She thought of Dresdak, of the city burning and her crew dying, and so, she put her helmet back on and climbed into the cockpit and flew to meet the enemy once again in battle.

Dreadfall had been nothing but a distraction, a sideshow, to draw attention away from the main push.

The battle of Aislemore had just begun.