Hughston was soaring through the air, the nose of his flugcraft pointed straight up. At this angle, the sun shone through the polarized lenses of his aviator’s goggles, making his eyes water. The vast expanse of open sky surrounded him. Just as his flugcraft reached the apex of its climb and risked stalling out, he pushed forward on the rudder, and the flugcraft dipped down, plummeting towards the ground thousands of meters below. The air rushing past his cockpit was the only sign that the ground was getting any closer. The exhilaration of the descent made him want to yelp with joy. As he watched, a big fat zeppliner emerged from its hiding place in a nearby cloudbank. Hughston armed his bombs and lined up the zeppliner’s bulk in his aiming sights, and prepared to release.

Someone wrenched him hard on the elbow. “Wake up, you bastard!” Hughston startled to consciousness, his head shooting up from the surface of a table that smelled of liquor and vomit. The sound of whining air was replaced in an instant by tinny music playing from an old victrola. He looked around. The bar was mostly empty at this hour. Across the table from him sat a small man with a smartly manicured moustache.

“What the hell?” Hughston growled, and then he saw the man’s uniform. “War Department, eh? You’ve got no business coming into an aeronaut’s bar, you spook. Disturbing the peace. I ought to…”

“Shut up and get dressed,” the War Department man said.

“Or else what?”

Two large men appeared to either side of Hughston. They wore olive-drab jumpsuits; each had the armband of the Military Police wrapped around their left bicep, which bulged. Normally Hughston would have relished a fight, but he was feeling queasy from the drink, and the MPs would just as soon break his kneecaps with their truncheons as they would accede to fair fisticuffs. Sometimes it was better not to start something in the first place.

They let him collect his things from the room he rented in the flophouse above the bar. The War Department spook—Ames was his name—watched Hughston silently as he rummaged around his room gathering his meager belongings. He had one leg folded genteelly over the other in a way that Hughston found laughably effeminate.

“I don’t work with others,” Hughston said, after Ames explained to him the plan. “And I certainly don’t answer to any officer.”

“You will if you want to fly again. What was it this time? Ah, right. Drunkenness and disorderly conduct unbecoming of an officer.”

Anger flared inside of him. He had half a mind to reach out and throttle the little man, but he knew he couldn’t. Not with the MPs still flanking them. And besides, he might have his rank stripped for starting a fight, but manslaughter was something they’d put you before a firing squad for.

“This wunder-pilot,” he said, still stewing over the charges. He picked up his jacket and started buttoning it up. “What makes you think they’re any good?”

“Because she’s Jean Ambrose.”

Hughston stopped buttoning. Jean Ambrose. The famed leader of Flugcraft Nine. She was the reason he’d joined the aeronautical division in the first place. Not that he’d ever admit it to anyone. “I thought she got shot down for Dresdak?”

“We thought so too,” Ames replied. “Turns out she survived. And fled.”

Hughston chuckled bitterly. Guess all heroes disappoint in the end. “She turned coward? Shame on our profession.”

“Says the man who’s passed out drunk at an aeronaut’s bar because he just got stripped of his wings.” Ames snapped, seeming irritated for the first time. Then he added, more calmly, “she lost her whole flight, Hughston, you of all people should know how that feels.”

“Didn’t make me turn tail and run.”

“No, it just made you drink yourself into a stupor.”

Hughston slammed his fist on the table. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Then I suppose you must have been a drunk all along. If so, then the shrinks at Aeronautical really messed up on your psych eval.” Ames leaned in, his forced growing more hushed now. “Look, Hughston. Ambrose is the only aeronaut who ever flew better than you. She’s the only one who racked up more kills, and now you’ve got a chance to serve with her.” Now you’ve got a chance to outdo her.

Hughston took another drink, swirling the strong liquor around in his mouth. Outside the window of the bar, the air swayed and bobbed as the bar and flophouse floated in place, tethered to the earth by a long anchor-chain. Right, this is an aeronaut’s bar. Of course we’re in the sky. How much did I drink to forget that?

He had be discharged for striking a superior officer. But in truth, he’d done it because he no longer wanted to be a tool, just another marker on the big board in the War Department that the analysts pushed around on the map with pool cues and sent to their deaths. But oh, the skies. He thought had to his dream. He longed for the skies, and this was his chance.

He drained the remainder of the liquor in one last gulp, the liquid burning all the way down his throat, then slammed the empty glass on the table. “I’m in.”

Ames smiled.

###

As soon as the flugcraft was safely taxied, Jean pulled open the cockpit shield and stomped down the ladder as hard as possible. Ames was waiting for her on the tarmac, but she marched right past him, walking with the angry determination of someone who needed badly to hit something.

“Hopeless!” She shouted, ripping the flightcap off her head and tossing it to the ground. “Completely hopeless!”

Behind her, Ames stopped to pick up the cap, then hurried on after her. “Surely it can’t have been that bad,” he said.

“You weren’t up there in the sky with me. We can’t coordinate to save our lives. This isn’t a Flight. It’s a natural disaster.”

She pushed open the door of the residential hut and ducked behind the changing screen, where she began to remove her jumpsuit. The door clicked open as Ames’ footsteps came after her. “These aviators are the cream of the crop,” he said desperately. “Parmen got a perfect score on his aerial exams.”

“Parmen understands how to fly in theory. But he’s rigid and inflexible. Good test-takers don’t exactly make good fliers.”

“And Leonhardt? She comes from a long line of aviators.”

“Probably got in because of nepotism, judging by the way she navigates those hairpin turns.”

“And Hughston…” Ames’ voice trailed off.

“Hughston, hah!” He was a decent flier, she had to admit. Probably a better one than her even. But he was cocky and independent and worst of all, he smelled like the bottom of a beer keg. Out of all of them, he was the most talented, which also made him the worst.

Ames’ silhouette appeared on the other side of the changing screen. He sounded flustered. “War Department assembled the most qualified aviators according to your specifications, Jean. These are the best aviators that Aislemore has to offer.”

“That’s precisely the problem!” Jean said, unzipping her flightsuit and peeling it off like the skin of a banana. “Each of them thinks he can do it alone, but when we try to work as a team, it’s a disaster.” Individually, the pilots were passable, solid even. Together, they couldn’t work their way out of a simple flight problem. It wasn’t like her old flightcrew. They had understood what it took to work together. Jean felt a pang of loss as she remembered her old crew.

“How do we destroy a luftnought if we can’t even execute a simple flight maneuver together?”

“Well, you might find out soon enough.”

Jean stopped changing and stood on her tiptoes, peering over the screen at Ames, who jumped back. “What the hell to you mean by that?”

The War Department spook coughed, then withdrew the file he carried tucked under his shoulder and handed it around the side of the changing screen. “Flight orders,” he said. “Just came down the line from command.”

Jean snatched the file from his hand. She scanned the orders. Then set down the file. “You’re certain of this?”

“The War Department vetted the information. An airship matching Dreadfall’s description has been spotted past Scarpar Peak headed westward.”

“If it gets out into open air, it will wreak havoc on our supply lines.” The Aerial Curtain screened the entire eastern end of Aislemore to prevent Laurrenean incursions. She wasn’t sure how Dreadfall had broken through the line, but beyond the Aerial Curtain, there were no defenses for several hundred leagues, and plenty of vulnerable cargo-zepps that would be easy prey.

“Admiral Tovey has assembled the fleet to intercept. All available resources have been redirected to the mission. Flight Nine will be a part of the scouting operation. We need your aviators, captain.”

Jean stepped out from behind the screen, completely changed now into her leisure wear. “How am I supposed to rein them in when they can’t even function together?”

Ames reached up and pulled out a strand of hair that had gotten loose from her head. “You’re Jean Ambrose. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

###

Scarpar Peak is a cold and unwelcoming chunk of rock that hangs in midair as if by magic. Situated in the frigid northern tip of Aislemore, the area around it is barely inhabited, but it’s a good strategic location for holding off Laurrenean incursions from occupied Norwalash, so some significant posts are maintained there. It’s also a fucking awful assignment, Ardthur Parmen thinks.

Parmen grips the controls of his flugcraft with frozen hands, shaking hard from the frost as his co-aviator behind him peers into the viewing camera, searching for their target. This high up and with little insulation, the cockpit is an icebox, and he’s the frozen meat that’s been left inside too long and is starting to develop freezer burn. His skin shivers within the chill flightsuit. Comfort is not exactly high on the list of the research department’s priorities.

Parmen doesn’t want to be here. He misses the Southern Station where he had his training. Aislemore is not a island of idyllic weather, but at least there, it was just rainy, not freezing. At least there, he could see an end to his service in sight.

He graduated from Academy with the understanding that this was going to be the end, not the beginning, of his flight career. As the scion of a high-class Aislemorean family, it’s expected for him to serve in the armed forces—especially during a time of war—and there was no branch more exalted than the Aviators, the gallant knight-lancers of today. He had finished Flight Academy with perfect marks—easy when you pay your peers to do all the written tests for you in exchange for family favors—and expected a handful of flight missions before returning to a life of comfort in the family estate far away from the front lines. Let the poor masses fight this wretched war. There were plenty of them to go around.

It had come as an unpleasant surprise when the spook from War Department showed up with his transfer papers. Twenty-four hours later, he was on a zeppliner headed for Scarpar Peak, with this new captain over him. Some former bigshot he’s never heard of. Word was that she disgraced herself in battle.

And the task! Scouting! There could not be a more monotonous and ignominious mission! All he does day after day is fly his flugcraft across the sky, peering down at the cloudscapes and among the thousands of floating rocks and aerial ice that make up the Scarpar Archipelago, searching for something that seems out of the ordinary. They don’t tell him what exactly, just that it’s important.

He grits his teeth. As much from discontent as from the cold. At least dogfighting would be exciting. This task is more like babysi—

“Parmen!” his co-pilot Danvers’ voice crackles through the intercom. “I think I see something. Mind having a look?”

Parmen grumbles and raises his own viewing glass, pointing it out toward the vast expanse of suspending ice and rock. “What am I looking for?”

“That bit of rock beside Outcropping No. 42, don’t it look a bit queer to you?”

Let’s see. 39. 40. 41. He counts the rocks, which he has come to know by their idiosyncratic shapes as well as he knows the faces of some friends (it’s truly a dull job and you have to find some way to amuse yourself out here). 42. The one with the long jutting nose like Fred Hampdon from Secondary. He examines the curve of it closely. “Fred looks just the same as before,” he says.

“Yeah but that outcropping on the curve. Looks like old Fred’s been growing a pustule.”

He examines it more closely this time. Sure enough, there’s a curved bump that’s broken up the smooth surface of No. 42. It’s easy to miss, but Parmen’s eyes are exceptionally good. “Can’t be natural erosion,” he muses. “Old Fred hasn’t changed this whole time we’ve spotted him.”

“Let’s have a closer look-see, shall we?”

Parmen sighs. Not like there’s anything else to do out in the barren wasteland. He turns the flight-yoke, bringing the flugcraft around toward No. 42.

As they get closer, the bump on Fred’s nose becomes bigger. It resolves into something big and jutting. The bow of a zeppliner perhaps? Maybe one taking shelter in one of the natural caverns that dot No. 42’s massive façade?

But no, the point is sharper than the bow of a typical zepp-liner. In fact, it’s sharp as a knife, and gleams in the sun. Metal. What could that be…

Something chills his skin. It’s not the cold.

“Danvers,” he says, breath fogging in the air. “I think we’ve found Dreadfall.”