(INQUIRY)

Jean sat hunched over on the chair, a rough woolen blanket draped over her shoulders. The last moments of the Greyhound played through her mind like one of those mover-scopes they used to show in the airship’s lounge. Above her, a stern older gentleman in a starched suit hovered like some sort of very unpleasant and displeased fury. Behind him loomed the young man that had found her at the crash site.

She remembered his face looming over her like a very large moon in the sky. His expression a mix of horror, curiosity, and a little bit of excitement. She didn’t think much of it at first—having fallen for several minutes through empty air to safety reshuffles your priorities a bit—but after he loaded her onto the back his steam-coupe and drove her to what looked like an old bunker, she started having doubts that this was entirely a rescue operation.

They were asking her lots of questions. At first it was simple things like: what’s your name? What airship were you assigned to? What did you do there? She answered those honestly, seeing no reason to lie. It was after the questions started slipping into more technical matters that she found it more necessary to lie.

“Can you tell us the course bearing of the Greyhound when it went down?”

“Couldn’t say, that’s above my pay grade.” She lied. In fact, she did know and had measured it meticulously on the hour, because that’s what a flugcraft aviator did. But she was no longer Jean Ambrose the famed and ill-fated aviator of Flugcraft Nine, she was Jean Darcy, apprentice midshipman to a zeppliner that she was pretty sure had just been shot out of the sky.

“Any idea what munitions were used to bring it down?”

Sabot rounds. She thought, but instead, said, “I don’t know munitions.”

The older suited gentleman leaned back and chewed his lip. He glanced at the younger man uncertainly. It was at that moment that Jean’s senses returned to her and she realized who these men were. The War Department. She’d been right not to disclose her true identity to them. This wasn’t a rescue; it was an interrogation. But if the War Department was interrogating her, what was it they wanted?

“How did it happen: the attack?” The older man asked.

“I already told you what I remember.”

“Tell me again. For propriety’s sake.”

She shuddered, partly as an act and partly because the bunker was very cold. And then she began to recount it again from the start. How they had been caught in a storm with low visibility, and how the enemy airship had appeared from nowhere and tore apart their fuselage. How the captain had given her his own para-pack and chucked her out to safety.

“An unusually sacrificial gesture, wouldn’t you say?”

Jean bristled at the implication. “For members of the War Department perhaps,” she snapped, and then realized her mistake.

The man did not react except to curl his lip up slightly into a smile, enough to show that he’d heard her slip-up. “What did the airship look like?”

“Standard zeppliner, sharpened bow, and, and…” She tried to think. The man leaned forward, revealing a bald spot at the center of his head. “I swore it shone like metal. Like it’s hull was made all of metal.”

The man glanced over as the younger agent, as if to say, I told you so.

“It’s not possible,” the younger man said. “Sure, you can make a flugcraft out of metal, a small one, and give it lift, but an entire airship…”

“It fits the intelligence we’ve received. You can’t deny the truth, Ames.”

“I’m sorry,” Jean said, curiosity taking over her. “What is this about? Airships made of metal?”

Ames shut down real quick, getting quiet. “She’s a civvie, captain. We shouldn’t be talking about these things around civvies.”

“Hardly,” the old man said. “You read her profile. This is no civilian, Ames. It’s Jean Ambrose.” A glint of recognition caught the young man’s eye.

Anger and irritation welled up within Jean. She had left her life as an aeronaut to get away from the war, and now the war seemed to have found her anyways. “I demand to know what’s going on!”

The young man called Ames hesitated, but the older man gave him a look. “She deserves to know, after all she’s been through for this country.”

Ames took a breath. “The Lorrauneans have been designing a new sort of airship with greater lift capacity. One that can strike deep into the heart of the island on its own without support. It’s strong too. No vulnerable gasbags, just all made of metal, kind of like a…”

“A landship,” Jean said. “Except in the sky. That’s impossible. All that metal, it would never float.” Yet as she said the words, she knew it was untrue. She’d seen it herself. She swallowed. “What do you want from me?”

“We…” Ames hesitated, and Jean knew the ask before it came. “We’d like you to help us find it again. We’d like you to help us kill it.”

###

(EVENT)

Ames had expected their new friend would try and run, even though her hopes of escape were practically nonexistent. He’d seen the fear in her eyes, the shell-shock of battles lost and friends taken. It was probably what he would have done in her position. So he’d prepared for this eventuality, by setting down a foldout chair outside the nearest exit to the bunker and taking tea from his self-brewing mug.

In due time, the hatch screeched open—the metal was corroded with wear—and Jean Ambrose stuck her head out. The war had not been kind to her. She had a wild look to her face, the feral look of a hunted animal. A heavy rucksack of probably pilfered goods was slung over her shoulder.

“Where did you get that?”

Jean leapt back in shock, hitting her head on the top of the hatch and cursing to herself. Ames wrinkled his nose. “Nipped it from the commissary, I suspect. You know, with wartime rationing in effect, stealing is an offense punishable by firing squad.”

The girl ignored her. She was busy rummaging through her pack. She pulled out was a heavy black Maher pistol and pointed it right at Ames’ face. “Get out of the way.”

“You won’t get far. This bunker is fenced off and there’s nothing but open countryside for several leagues. They’ll shoot you down in some farmer’s field, and then what good will you have contributed to the cause?”

“I’d rather take my chances with running than with facing down that luftnought.”

“Even if it’s the one that killed your friends?”

Something in the girl’s face changed. A new emotion that warred with the existing fear. A sense of loyalty to her fallen comrades? Or guilt, perhaps. “Don’t talk me about their sacrifice,” she said, stabbing the Maher in the air the way one who has little training with firearms does, her finger awfully close to the trigger. “What you’re proposing, killing that luftnought, it’s complete insanity.”

“I quite agree with you. In fact, I tried arguing with Bronson the very same thing. But he kept insisting that it could be done, especially with the famed Jean Ambrose on our side.” Bronson had said no such thing, but a bit of flattery could go a long way, even if it were fabricated.

He set down his tea-cup. “Look here, missy—”

“Don’t call me missy. You can’t be more than a year or two older than me.”

“Right, then, ma’am. What you need to understand is that this is bigger than both of us and our petty lives and concerns. The fate of the nation is at stake.”

“Easy for someone in the war department to talk about the fate of our nation, especially when it’s not you being sent to your death for the cause. Because you’re the one doing the sending.”

“I’ll have you know that I have two brothers serving in the Zepp Division at this very moment…” he lied, pausing for dramatic effect. “One of them was lost at Dresdak.”

The mention of Dresdak gave Jean a moment of pause. The pistol wavered in her hand. “He was with the evacuation fleet?”

“Last flight out. Everyone knew it was suicide, but he did it anyways. I relayed the orders to him myself.” He leaned forward. “We’ve all lost someone in the war, Jean. For me, it was my brother. For you, it was your entire flug. And if we don’t address the big looming elephant in the room, then more will die.”

“Not even a whole fleet of flugcraft could put a dent in that thing. You should be talking with a zeppliner captain, not an aeronaut.”

“Until recently, I would have said the same thing. Only now, we have a secret weapon.”

“I’m just one aeronaut.”

“I’m not talking about you.” He snapped, and the woman recoiled with shock. “The Laurreneans aren’t the only ones developing experimental weaponry. The War Department recently unveiled a new cannon: powerful enough to tear away a luftnought’s hull, but small enough to be mounted on fast-flying flugcraft.” He withdrew the blueprints and tossed it at Jean, who dropped the rucksack and caught it in her hands. She examined it for a few moments, then looked back up.

“This…”

“Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“I was going to say, this is the stupidest bloody thing I’ve ever seen. It looks like someone put a condom on a motor-gun and set it on fire.”

“It works.” Ames said, with more conviction than he felt. “A few well-placed hits and it will punch right through to the armory. And then…” He mimed the sound of an explosion.

She was hesitating, Ames could tell. Her grip of the Maher pistol wavered. All it would take was a little push to get her to commit. Ames stood up suddenly and stepped out of her way. He turned around and pointed off a little path. “Right there, that’s your way out. There’s a blindspot in the fence where the sentries can’t see, and if you go now, the next rotation won’t be for another half hour. It should give you a fighting chance of losing any tails. All you have to do is give up your chance to make things right.”

Jean narrowed her eyes. She was breathing faster now, her chest heaving up and down in noticeable movement. Ames could imagine the internal conflict that the aviator was going through at the moment. She pressed her palms to her head, the Maher pistol still in hand, then threw her hands back down in frustration, her fingers clenching and unclenching.

“This weapon of yours. It can kill the luftnought.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I’m certain of it.”

“Is there more than one?”

“Yes, but each flugcraft can only be mounted with one. Why?”

“Because one flugcraft can’t take on a full luftnought alone,” she said, setting the pistol’s safety and placing it back in her rucksack. “And I’m going to need a new flight.”

###

Jean’s flightsuit was too large, clearly requisitioned for someone several sizes larger than herself. The baggy jodhpurs flared out more than usual, the fur-trimmed collar of the jacket insulated her neck as she zipped it up. Donning a pair of flopping gloves, she stepped out from behind the changing station into the hangar where her flugcraft was kept.

It was a new model, several generations beyond her own banshee, which had been an aging relic even when she flew it. This one was called the akula, according to Ames. It had a sleek frame of shining metal, as if someone had taken a flechette round and added to it a pair of wings.

She trotted up to the flight-steps and made her way to the cockpit. As she started the final step, there was a tug, followed by the sound of ripping fabric. Jean turned back. The too-large pair of jodhpurs had caught against an exposed edge of the railing and tore away, exposing her insulated-underclothes beneath and caught a flow of cool air to seep through. She pulled at the snag, exerting only a little bit of force, and it came free. But even that little bit of effort left her heart beating quite fast.

It wasn’t the physical exertion. It was the fact that ever since she accepted Ames offer, a bit of low-level anxiety had dwelled beneath her surface, and the closer she got to her first flight-test with the akula, the closer that anxiety crept toward full-blown panic. The tear wasn’t even the first time. she had nearly collapsed from panic when she spilled her morning coffee.

It had been so long she last flew, that she was practically a different person; her body reacted as if she were doing this for the first time. Jean had assumed it would come back as muscle memory, that as soon as she climbed into the cockpit, it would be as if she had never left. Yet she was now faced with the very unfair realization that the only memories her body retained of her time as an aeronaut were the bad ones, and those didn’t help much.

You could still walk away. Ames had promised her the option. Let a young, more in-shape aeronaut take over and pilot the flugcraft with its advanced weaponry to destroy the luftnought. They might even do better. The war has advanced so much over these last few years. They would know a thing or too about these new bloody flugcraft with their new bloody advancements. You’re old news, Jean. They don’t need you. Her hand wavered on the handle of the cockpit visor. This isn’t your fight.

It hadn’t been anyone’s fight. Not really. When the Laurreneans attacked, most of her pilots had been fresh out of Secondary School. Amelie, Laurents, Sami. None of them had wanted to fight, but the war had come to them and they had said yes. The choice had cost them their lives.

The thought of her long-dead flight flowed through her psyche like a slow-moving glacier, burying all the fears and anxieties in the inexorable flow of grief and duty. They were gone now, their spirits migrated to the Far-Off Isle. But their memory still lingered with her, and Jean had the distinct conviction that if she stepped away now, they would know and be disappointed in her. She couldn’t take that. After all, a flight captain was no better than her crew.

She took a breath, then wrenched the cockpit visor open with a grating screech. She dropped into the cockpit with a swift leap. The compartment crowded in on her in a claustrophobic sense. Just like a coffin, Sami had said once. We’ve all come prepackaged for burial. They had all laughed at it then. She laughed at it now, driving away the last specters of fear. She donned her flight-cap and goggles, her hands flicked over controls that looked different but were in essence the same as her old ones. She gripped the steering yoke and settled back into the warm embrace of the aviator’s seat, letting the old memories flow back in. It was like she had never left.