From the other, more distant hangar bays, he could hear the shouting, pounding of feet, and squeaky rolling of aeroplane wheels as the other squadrons hurried to finish disgorging their aeroplanes into the air.
“Fieran! What happened?” Pip dashed toward him, nearly falling into him when she didn’t stop quickly enough. Mak ran up after her, halting several feet away.
“There were these machines, they captured Dacha’s magic, and when everything exploded, it knocked him out. He’s still unconscious.” Fieran gripped her shoulders, pausing as he worked up the courage to speak the next words, words that would send her into battle. “Uncle Julien is sending a team to retrieve a machine for study. But they need a mechanic with both magic and training to go along.”
For a long moment, Pip just stared at him, as if the words didn’t compute.
Behind her, Mak crossed his arms, a scowl deepening the shadows formed by his beard. “Not Pip. I’ll go.”
Beneath Fieran’s hands, Pip’s shoulders straightened, and her chin came up. She held Fieran’s gaze rather than glance over her shoulder at Mak. “No, it has to be me. My magic will be better suited to recognizing what I’m looking at, and I’ll be able to shield myself and the team.”
She was also the one with the magical engineering degree, although she didn’t say that. Fieran wouldn’t say that out loud either. He respected Mak greatly, as a friend and a mechanic, but he didn’t have the experience on the experimental side of things that Pip did. He wouldn’t recognize what he was looking at. Pip would.
Mak’s glower drew down even deeper as he glared at Fieran, as if blaming him. “No.”
Fieran ignored the stabbing glare. He didn’t like the situation either. It went against every protective urge in his heart to send Pip into the maelstrom descending on the lower reaches of Fort Defense.
But she was the best person—only person, really—for the job. He couldn’t stand in her way or in the way of the war effort because he was protective. That was exactly what they’d pledged to each other that they wouldn’t do when they began courting.
Pip’s deep brown eyes locked with his. “I’ll deal with Mak. You need to go.”
“Uncle Julien is waiting for you at headquarters. Stay safe.” Fieran swept her up in his arms and kissed her. He couldn’t linger. Couldn’t do more than pour out his heart into a brief moment before he released her and stepped back. As he was turning to dash for his aeroplane, he barely heard her mumbled “You too,” behind him.
His aeroplane wasn’t in its usual spot in the hangar, so he grabbed a few items of his flight gear and dashed out the far door, quickly locating his Defender by the bright flames of the art painted on the sides of the nose. The ground crew must have pushed it outside to prepare it for takeoff, and it sat off to one side at the end of the airfield beyond the queue of aeroplanes lining up for their own turns down the airfield.
Fieran hopped into the aeroplane, switching on the power even before he buckled on the lap belt. He yanked on his flyingcap and plugged in the end of the radio wire. Voices flooded into his ears, a garble of shouting and orders nearly as chaotic as the melee taking place in the sky.
“Half-Breed Squadron.” Fieran yanked down his goggles. He hadn’t taken the time to dress in the rest of his flight gear, and it would be a cold flight. But there wasn’t time, nor did he want to drag on those items over his uniform, which was spattered with mud, blood, and other things that he was trying really hard to ignore. “I’m taking to the skies. I just need my aeroplane to finish spinning up.”
Cheers broke through over the other voices.
Lt. Rothilion’s voice was faint from distance, barely discernible through all the other chatter and static. “It will be good to have you in the sky, Laesornysh.”
To the other squadrons, it might have sounded disrespectful, the way Lt. Rothilion dropped Fieran’s rank. But even over that distance, Fieran could hear the elven emphasis in those words. Lt. Rothilion wasn’t merely calling Fieran by his last name; he was stating Fieran’s elven title. Laesornysh. Death on the Wind.
Then Merrik’s voice cut through the din. “I will swing back to fetch you.”
“Thanks.” Fieran monitored the gauges as the rotary engine gained speed, glancing between his dashboard and the line of aeroplanes taking off two at a time.
Several members of the ground crew directed the aeroplanes from the end of the airfield, keeping the scramble from turning into a confusion.
Fieran was directed into a place in line, then his aeroplane’s wheels were chocked. The aeroplane shuddered around him, seeming as eager as he was to take to the skies to defend the rest of the squadron. He watched another pair of aeroplanes take off before he toggled the radio. “There’s one more pair of aeroplanes, then I’m next.”
“Almost there.” Merrik’s voice rang slightly louder, easily masking the shouts and voices from the aeroplanes fighting farther away.
Fieran flexed his fingers on the control column as the ground crew members waved the next pair of aeroplanes to begin their run, even as the previous pair was just rising into the sky on the other end. He pressed the talk button again as he counted down for Merrik.
Then two members of the ground crew snatched the wheel chocks free, and he was waved to begin his run. “Beginning my takeoff.”
“Coming down for you.”
Even as Fieran flashed past the ground crew members directing traffic, he caught a glimpse of them shading their eyes, then pointing toward the sky.
His aeroplane gained speed, the air strengthening beneath the wings until the flyer grew light around him. A warbird on the cusp of flight.
With a roar, a black shadow swooped down over him, leveling out disconcertingly close overhead. Merrik glanced over the side of his aeroplane and gave a small wave before he pointed his aeroplane upward once again.
Fieran laughed even as he pulled back on the stick. His aeroplane rose into the sky, falling into place as Merrik led the way back into the air. “I think you gave the ground crew a collective heart attack.”
