Page 15 of Fly to Fury (War of the Alliance #3)

Chapter

Eight

A s Fieran waited in his aeroplane for his turn to take to the early morning sky, he drummed his fingers along the control column. Today, the Half-Breed Squadron would fly the longer patrols to the east and south. A chance to prove themselves, even if it likely wouldn’t be that dangerous.

Tiny and Murray in their aeroplanes rolled down the airfield and took to the skies, followed by a pair of elven pilots from Flight A.

The radio crackled, and Pip’s voice came through the airwaves. “Testing, one, two, three, testing.”

Fieran grinned and pressed the talk button on the control column. “I can hear you loud and clear, Pip.”

“Good. Not sure why they didn’t have a radio set up in the main part of the hangar yet. Doesn’t make sense.” Pip’s tone sounded huffy, even over the crackling, tinny radio.

“They were probably too busy trying to install the radios in two squadrons of aeroplanes and as many airships as possible.” Fieran drummed his fingers again as Pretty Face and Stickyfingers took off. “I’m surprised you found a spare radio.”

“It was buried in a pile of other spare parts and probably overlooked.” Pip sounded like she was making the disgruntled face that puckered her mouth in a way Fieran found increasingly distracting.

“The lack of organization is rather sad. The main hangars are fine. But the spare parts haven’t been stored properly at all. ”

“I’m sure you’ll have it set to rights soon enough.” Fieran almost wished he wasn’t going up on patrol so that he could have the excuse to help her. Too bad today promised to be just as hot as yesterday. Pip might not be moving much of anything until the weather cooled off.

Not that she would need help, now that her brother Mak was assigned to her unit.

Mak was going to be a problem. Oh, Fieran liked him well enough. But as a big brother himself, Fieran recognized that protective look Mak wore. Fieran would have to curtail the flirting now that Pip’s big brother was breathing down his neck.

Which was fine. It had to be fine. He really should stop flirting as it was, given that he’d told Pip they couldn’t make anything official until after the war. Whenever that was.

“Fieran.” Merrik’s voice this time. “Our turn.”

Right. Time to stop flirting—not flirting, just talking—and get his butt in the air.

As he waved to the ground crew to release the wheels, the radio crackled again, but this voice was shouting so loudly Fieran winced, even as he struggled to process the words.

“Enemy incoming! Flying over the Wall!”

“Lots of enemy aeroplanes!”

All along the hangar, sirens began wailing, signaling the alert for an air raid and making it even more difficult for Fieran to hear the radio. Someone at the lookout posts in the mountains overlooking Fort Defense must have also spotted the incoming aeroplanes.

“Lt. Rothilion, report.” Fieran tugged his goggles into place. As the ground crew grabbed the wheel chocks and raced away, Fieran’s aeroplane rolled forward.

“There appears to be a full squadron of sixty enemy aeroplanes incoming, trying to use the sun to hide their numbers.” Lt. Rothilion’s voice rang as cold and supercilious as always.

And that was why Fieran had asked the elf lieutenant for the report. Lt. Rothilion was unflappable no matter what. Including when he’d been dying in the skies over Dar Goranth.

“Hold them near the Wall as best you can. Merrik and I will come down onto them.” Fieran pushed his aeroplane to full speed as he jounced over the ground.

This time, there was no exhilaration. No enjoyment of the moment his aeroplane took to the air. There was just the tense focus, the need to get into the sky to aid his men.

Fieran’s heart hammered as his aeroplane crawled upward. Agonizingly slowly, or so it felt.

Down below, a layer of crackling blue magic spread over Fort Defense, covering everything from the foothills of the Whitehurst Mountains down to the Hydalla River. Even from the growing distance between him and the ground, Fieran tasted the distinct sense of his dacha’s magic filling the air.

A smaller, blue-gray shield stretched over the aeroplane hangar. Pip’s magic. A few tendrils of his dacha’s magic reached for her shield, as if drawn by it, playing over the iron magic shield in little flickering tongues of lightning .

To the east, a swarm of black shapes bore down on Fort Defense. With the rising sun at their backs, Fieran had to squint to see them.

The Half-Breed Squadron had assembled into a swarm of its own while they had been waiting for the whole squadron to take to the skies. Lt. Rothilion’s aeroplane had the center position leading the charge.

As little as Fieran liked it, he turned to put his tail to the air battle as he continued to rise higher in the sky. He needed to create some distance between himself and the enemy before he circled around, otherwise they’d see his attack coming.

Fieran counted to ten as he headed west before he curved southward.

He climbed his aeroplane even higher into the sky, the wind chilling against the silk scarf flapping around his neck.

The foothills of the Whitehurst Mountains rose beneath him, the openings the trolls had put into the mountains looking like gaping mouths.

As he swept back north again, Merrik matching his movements, the dogfight came into view once more. Aeroplanes buzzed around the sky, a chaotic whirl of flashing propellers and biting bullets. The radio burst with shouting as the Half-Breed Squadron took on the Mongavarians.

“Lije, watch your six!”

“Tack, swerve right!”

“Your right or my right?”

“Your right! Now!”

“Got him!”

Even the elves had their voices raised, though they spoke in elvish to each other, making it easier for the human pilots to tune them out.

“The plan?” Merrik’s voice was taut, as focused and tense as Fieran felt, even as he had to shout into the cacophony.

“Let’s put ourselves between the enemy and the Wall to trap them.” Fieran flexed his fingers on the control column, drawing on his magic until it spilled over his hands. “I’m going to use my magic. I don’t think there’s any reason to risk lives by holding back.”

“Yes.” Merrik eased his aeroplane directly behind Fieran’s so that Fieran could shield him with magic as well.

This would be Fieran’s one surprise, but he had to unleash his magic eventually. He might as well do it now and let the Mongavarians know exactly whom they would be facing in the sky from now on.

With the Wall far below them, Fieran put his aeroplane into a dive at the battling aeroplanes. He unleashed his magic, letting it crawl over his aeroplane. It found the metal wires Pip had installed and eagerly played over them, her magic helping to direct his into a shield over his biplane.

With those wires helping him hold the shield over his own aeroplane more easily, Fieran gathered even more magic in his chest, ready and waiting. “Half-Breed Squadron, heads up. Magic incoming.”

The Alliance aeroplanes beneath where he was aiming abruptly peeled away, leaving the Mongavarian aeroplanes alone and vulnerable.

Fieran reached up and pressed the trigger of his machine gun, even as he released his magic. His magic danced along the stream of bullets, following it to slice through one the aeroplanes.

He poured more magic into the stream of his magic and released his tight control. The magic exploded outward, shredding through four Mongavarian aeroplanes and damaging a fifth .

Even as the blackened wreckage spiraled downward, Fieran swerved his aeroplane, directing his machine gun fire at two Mongavarians who were trying to gang up on an elven pilot. With his magic twining over the stream of bullets, Fieran sliced through the enemy flyers.

Bullets sparked against Fieran’s magic near his aeroplane’s fuselage as a Mongavarian swept down from above and to the side.

Fieran let go of the control stick with one hand and blasted his magic along that stream of bullets, incinerating them as he went until his magic reached the enemy aeroplane. It exploded, fiery debris falling from the sky.

Pointing the nose of his aeroplane upward, Fieran pressed his flyer for every bit of power he could, the engine gauge rising through yellow and getting dangerously close to red.

Murray swept past below, tossing magical globes out the side of his aeroplane. These burst into showers of water, which Tiny, speeding right behind Murray, turned into shards of ice that he blasted at Mongavarian aeroplanes, shredding wings and canvas as effectively as a cloud of bullets.

A Mongavarian aeroplane tried to turn upward to chase Merrik, but the heavier, less powerful craft just couldn’t keep up, weighed down as it was by its gasoline engine and fuel tanks.

“Three. Two. One.” Fieran counted out over the radio. “Now.”

He pressed on the rudder bar with his feet as he tugged on the control column. His aeroplane turned, tilting partially upside down, before the nose pointed downward once again.

Merrik had performed the same maneuver, his aeroplane coming out of the turn into the dive just in front of Fieran’s flyer, putting him in the lead and Fieran in the wingman position.

As they sped downward at the enemy again, Merrik aimed for the center of the fray.

Fieran reached out with his magic and found Merrik’s aeroplane.

Fieran’s magic sparked over Merrik’s magic, which he had woven through the wooden frame and plant fiber canvas of the craft.

Fieran gritted his teeth as he kept his magic from eating through Merrik’s magic and igniting the flammable canvas.

Fieran drew on his magic, piling it in his chest, in his veins, until he was shaking with it, his vision growing hazy and blue.

“Half-Breed Squadron, on my mark, head upward at full power.” Fieran’s voice felt rough with all the magic filling him. “Merrik, call out the range.”

Merrik, in the lead aeroplane, began calling out the distance.

Fieran tried to breathe past his magic, running the mental calculations.

If he called the order too early, the Mongavarians would have time to match the maneuver.

Too late, and his pilots wouldn’t have enough time to react and put distance between themselves and the destruction he was about to unleash.

Almost…just a little more…

“Now!” Fieran shouted over the radio.

Aeroplanes flashed past him, heading upward, nothing but dark shapes against the brightness clouding Fieran’s vision. How would Fieran even know once his men were safely out of range?

Lt. Rothilion’s voice was a splash of cool calm against the rage of magic filling Fieran. “The squadron will be clear in three…two…one… ”

“Now, Fieran!” Merrik’s shout rang in Fieran’s ears.

Fieran unleashed the magic in his chest, and it burst out of him in an explosion of magic, sweeping across the sky in a torrent of crackling obliteration in all directions except up.

He yelled at the fury of it, clinging to the control he held over the magic wrapped around his aeroplane and Merrik’s by a slim thread.

His magic tore through men and machines, eradicating anything within its explosive tide. The edge of the magic stretched so far out and even downward that Fieran tasted the scorching sizzle as his magic lashed against the far greater power of the shield Dacha held over Fort Defense below.

Fieran peeled his eyes open. The earth rushed ever closer, his dive carrying him downward as if he was determined to drive himself into his dacha’s magic.

He yanked back on the control stick, the force pressing him into his seat, a weight on his chest so that he had to clench his muscles to breathe through it.

The wings of his aeroplane strained as he brought the craft to its structural limits.

He leveled out several hundred feet above where his dacha’s magic surged over Fort Defense. All around Fieran, burning and blackened bits of aeroplanes dropped in a macabre rain, incinerating as they hit his dacha’s magic.

A handful of Mongavarian aeroplanes limped across the boundary of the Wall. One of them was burning so badly that it immediately headed downward once it was over the border.

“Should we pursue?” Lt. Rothilion’s tone remained so unruffled he might as well have been asking about teatime.

“No.” Fieran released a long breath, trying to steady the shaking in his hands after wielding so much power. “Let them tell their commanders to fear the Half-Breed Squadron.”

A few cheers met his words. Some whistles.

Another voice broke into the clamor. “Capt. Laesornysh, the Fighting Second is here to assist. Though I see we missed the party.”

Capt. Fleetwood flew his aeroplane with a second flyer behind him. Down below, more of the other squadron were getting ready to take off.

“Thanks for coming, but no assistance was needed.” Fieran lifted a hand to give the other captain a lazy salute that was more an acknowledgment than a formal gesture.

“Then we’ll take over the station here and leave you to your patrol.” Capt. Fleetwood gave a similar salute in return as his aeroplane passed Fieran’s.

Right. Their patrol. As much as Fieran wanted to land and walk off the adrenaline fading through his veins, he still had a long day of patrolling the border ahead of him.

“Flight A, report. Any injuries?” Lt. Rothilion spoke in elvish at nearly the same time as Merrik called out, “Flight B, report in. Anyone injured?”

One elf had taken a bullet to the shoulder while a few other pilots in both flights reported minor injuries.

Merrik and Lt. Rothilion sent the injured back to base and reconfigured the pairs to make sure everyone still had a wingman. Or wingwoman, as the case might be, since Flight A had some female elf pilots.

Then Fieran led the way south with Flight B falling in behind him, heading out for a patrol, as Flight A headed east along that border.