Page 6 of Fly to Fury (War of the Alliance #3)
Chapter
Three
S till in a daze, Pip strode toward the massive hangar on the bluff, the other mechanics trailing behind her.
She’d just met Prince Farrendel Laesornysh .
She couldn’t help the internal scream, her chest filling with something between elation and utter embarrassment.
She’d met her childhood hero and hadn’t even managed to say a single word.
Instead she’d just stood there gaping like a dwarf who had spotted the world’s biggest iron deposit.
Worse, seeing Prince Farrendel had reminded her all over again that the elf prince was Fieran’s dacha . Fieran wasn’t just a captain in the Flying Corps. Back in Aldon and in Estyra, he was a prince. Way out of her league.
When she’d first met him at Fort Linder, they’d just been friends, despite the attraction growing between them.
She could joke about his famous family members because she hadn’t even been thinking about a relationship beyond friendship.
They had, after all, assumed they would go their separate ways once basic training was over.
Then they’d been sent to Dar Goranth together, and things had deepened between them. Especially when they’d confessed that they liked each other.
Perhaps it was just as well that Fieran had put the brakes on forming a romantic relationship right now. Back there in the wilds of the far-flung island, courting Fieran had seemed possible.
Now? Here in Escarland, she remembered all the reasons that would be a bad idea and likely to get her heart broken. He was a prince who had grown up in wealth and privilege in two kingdoms.
While She hadn’t grown up poor by any means, she was far from elven or dwarven nobility.
Her parents ran the western rail terminal, and her dacha’s previous career as a diplomat to the dwarves meant that the elf king at least knew him by name.
Still, she wasn’t the kind of girl someone like Fieran brought home to his princess mother.
As she approached the hangar, Pip gave herself a firm, internal shake. The whole point of not having a romantic relationship right now was to prevent distraction. And here she was, utterly distracted by thoughts of Fieran and what probably couldn’t be.
With great effort, she shoved all thoughts of Fieran aside and marched through the nearest door in the side of the enormous metal building.
Her magic hummed through her veins at being surrounded by so much lovely metal, and she actually had to work to keep it contained rather than reaching for the nearest steel beam. The smells of grease and sun-baked metal filled the space, punctuated by the stench of sweat and body odor.
The hangar was an absolute maze of aeroplanes, aeroplane parts, and assorted tool carts and workbenches.
The hangar itself seemed to be a series of smaller hangars, as if the building had been expanded in a haphazard fashion many times over the years.
Human men, a few troll men and women, and the occasional elf bustled about in this space, causing a cacophony of footsteps and squeaking cart wheels.
How was she supposed to find where she and her mechanics were to set up?
With a deep breath, Pip forced herself to step forward. If she could survive meeting Prince Farrendel, surely she could survive asking for directions.
“Excuse me.” She stopped a human man in coveralls who was pushing a cart laden with grease-covered parts. “Can you tell us where we are to set up?”
“Are you the mechanics for the new squadron?” The man’s gaze went from her to the others at her back.
Right. She probably should have said that. “Yes, we are.”
“You have Bays 4 and 5. Part of 3 if you need it. The airships are only using it as a dumping ground for spare parts.” The man gestured back the way he’d come.
“Thanks.” Pip set out in the direction he’d indicated.
She finally spotted the large numbers painted on the wall near each of the doors, both the ones leading to the outside and the ones between the various cobbled-together nested hangars.
It seemed she’d led them into Bay 9. Several more bays stretched to her right, likely Bays 10 and above.
As she stepped through the broad door to the left, she checked the wall. Bay 8. Good. She was going in the right direction.
She and the other mechanics had to dodge around parked aeroplanes, crates of supplies, and the bustling mechanics for the other squadrons. A few of the mechanics glanced up as she passed, but none of them took the time to speak with her and her mechanics.
As they walked through the building, they headed farther away from the airfield on the north side of the building.
It seemed that they, as the newest squadron here at Fort Defense, had been given the least desirable section of the building.
This far from the airfield, it would be difficult for Fieran and his men to scramble their aeroplanes as quickly as the other squadrons, whose sections of the hangar were closer to the airstrip.
The bays were larger the farther she went along.
Likely, the end sections had been added hastily—and thus were a lot smaller—while these earlier bays were older, larger, and better constructed.
They might be farther away from the airfield, but Pip would rather take a more solid roof over her head and a larger workspace than convenience.
Finally, she stepped into Bay 5. Stacks of crates, likely spare parts, were stacked along one wall while the other wall held workbenches and tools. A few aeroplanes had already been wheeled inside to somewhat fill the space.
“Well, this appears adequate.” Pip turned to her mechanics, both the human ones she’d commanded at Dar Goranth and the elven ones who seemed to be looking to her to also lead them, now that they were on a human base.
“Flight A’s aeroplanes and mechanics can be housed here.
If Bay 4 is the same size, we’ll put Flight B in there. ”
It would mean putting Flight B at even more of a disadvantage, but she didn’t want to appear like she was favoring the human half of the squadron over the elven one. Fieran and the flyboys would be able to handle being in the farthest bay from the airfield.
“If we have any additional aeroplanes, extra tools, or spare parts allocated to us, we can see about storing those in part of Bay 3.” If whoever was in charge of the Naval Air Corps didn’t mind the Flying Corps intruding on their space.
The different corps tended to be territorial, and the NAC couldn’t be too happy that it only had two and a half bays in the hangar while the Flying Corps had all the others.
Never mind that Bays 1 and 2 were the largest.
With nods and murmurs of agreement, her mechanics scattered.
The ground crew was wheeling in the squadron’s aeroplanes, and they were haphazardly mixing up the two Flights.
One elf mechanic and one human mechanic jumped to direct the ground crews to the right bays while others began pushing the aeroplanes to their correct places in the hangar.
With all of that well in hand, Pip strode along the various workbenches. At least the provided tools were satisfactory, though lacking in a few of the more specialty items. Hopefully she’d be able to locate or request what they needed.
Wheels squeaked behind her before a voice rang out. “I have a load of parts for the new squadron.”
Pip froze at the sound of the familiar voice. Surely she was mistaken. She would have heard if he was here. And yet…
She whirled, facing the cart piled with crates that were small enough to be loaded and unloaded by hand. The stack was so tall that it completely hid the person pushing the cart. “Mak?”
With a scuff of boots on the cement, her brother Mak stuck his head around the corner of the crates. His brown hair was tousled, his beard thick but well-trimmed. He wore olive-green coveralls identical to hers, just much larger. “Pip! What are you doing here?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.” Pip pointed at the nearest aeroplane. “I’m the head mechanic for the Half-Breed Squadron.”
“I didn’t realize your squadron was the new incoming unit.” Mak stepped farther around the crates, then swept Pip into a hug.
Her feet lifted off the floor with his embrace, and she had the usual momentary hesitation as she tried to decide how best to wrap her arms around her brother, given the awkward height difference.
She finally settled for around his waist instead of around his neck, which she couldn’t really reach anyway. “It’s so good to see you.”
At Dar Goranth, she’d only gotten one letter because mail out to the island was so slow.
With only a couple of telephone cables running beneath the strait to the Kostarian mainland, telephone calls were limited to emergencies for personal calls.
She’d been cut off from communication with her family basically the entire time at Dar Goranth.
“And good to see you.” Mak set her back on her feet. “Last we heard, you were being shipped off to some undisclosed location.”
That had made the lack of communication at Dar Goranth even worse. She hadn’t even been able to tell her family exactly where she was. Military security, and all that. As she was in Fieran’s unit, secrecy was especially crucial.
“Last I heard, you were still at home at the western rail terminal.” Pip took a step back to put more space between herself and Mak so that she could look up at his face without craning her neck quite so much.
Thankfully, Mak was used to being around short people, and he didn’t take a step forward to close the distance once again.
“I was called up about a month ago.” Mak shrugged and waved at his coveralls. “I wrote, but I guess you didn’t get the letter.”
Pip shook her head. “No. I only got one letter the whole time I was at Dar Goranth.”
There was no reason to keep that a secret now .