"C'mon, Jodie, it's not that hard!"

  "You go straight to hell, mink!"

  From his place sitting crosslegged on his bunk, Trigger watches his crew's antics with a corner of his mouth quirked up.

  With the Aquila in drydock undergoing repairs, Strider Squadron had to be moved to an unused set of quarters at the Libret shipyard orbiting the planet of Killigan. The reactor replacement and the scheduled radiation clean-up that had to follow was the main deciding factor on the change of quarters.

  The Haul-o-Rex and her crew made it to Killigan's orbital depot, a few thousand kilometers away from the shipyard, successfully; considering how the hauler escaped the dogfight a few days prior without so much as a scorch on its hull, Farworth was more than willing to wait for Strider to be back in fighting shape before moving on to the next stop.

  However, in the aftermath of the recent attack that claimed several Libret frigates less than a lightyear away, the orbital fort-slash-shipyard is filled to the brim with reinforcements from other sectors. Even with Commander Kale's well-earned hospitality, both in repairing the Aquila and their provisional housing in the meantime, they've had to make due with a single set of quarters made to pack eight men in a tight space.

  At least, Trigger thinks, there is no shortage of entertainment in the meantime.

  On the tiled floor in front of the four bunk beds, Stella and Mila are in the middle of some morning stretches. Stella, it seems, is an early bird and woke up long before any alarms to sit and meditate for a bit. Trigger snapped awake as soon as something moved around him, and kept an eye on the skunk.

  The rest of the crew groggily followed, and when Mila awakened, she spied Stella and decided to join in. Once Jodie was awake, Mila bothered the coyote until she joined them.

  Or tried to join, at least.

  Between Mila and Stella, Jodie shakes and struggles, trying to emulate the seated toe-touch both manage quite easily. The coyote's fingers are a few inches short of her goal, as she can't quite seem to manage the last few degrees of bend in her spine.

  Mila and Stella, on the other hand, are both laid across their own legs without so much as a tremor. Mila's flexibility isn't a surprise, but Stella is unexpectedly limber.

  'Maybe it's not that surprising,' Trigger muses. 'Being a criminal forces exercise on you.'

  "Don't push it if it's starting to hurt, hon," Stella offers, sitting back up and brushing her short hair out of her eyes. "Forcing it can tear the muscle fibers instead of lengthening them, and you'll just end up stiff for a week. Stretch until you feel tension, not pain." Her gaze darts to Trigger for a second, like she half-expects him to punish her for speaking.

  Jodie grumbles something under her breath and gives up, instead standing and returning to her bed, where she sits heavily. Her still-frizzy hair and the rumpled, oversized shirt she slept in make her seem all the more grumpy.

  Back on the floor, Mila laughs at the sour look on Jodie. The mink then shows off, spreading her legs slightly, planting her hands on the floor side-by-side, then lifts herself up into a handstand by pivoting her body back. Before her shirt can fall and flash everyone, she flips forward onto her feet. "Ta-da!"

  Mila's self-preening is cut off when a pillow hits her square in the face with a whump!

  Lowering her hand with a smirk, Jodie easily ducks the return throw.

  Trigger returns his attention to the disassembled pistol neatly laid out on his bed.

  The Havoc Mk7 Laserbolter, which he traded his 9mm service pistol for, is certainly hardware made with military use in mind. The blocky gun is all right angles and machining marks half-heartedly hidden with a dark matte finish. The replaceable rubber grip panels, made to be gouged by claws for grip in white-knuckle firefights, is the only concession for comfort.

  Trigger picks up the barrel assembly, turning it over in his hands. The business end houses the pulse laser emitter, a crystalline focusing array that would cost as much as a car back on Strangereal. But here? Standard issue, mass-produced by the millions. You can find replacements for as low as 300 creds in calmer areas of the galaxy.

  The magazine well in the grip accepts a standardized power pack, made using the pragmatic 'Universal Pak - Pistol' or UP-P standard pioneered by Corneria, with the other standards having their own suffixes, like R for rifle. A few companies and governments, the Hajiti Collective in particular, make some proprietary weapons and ammo, but UP is still everywhere.

  Putting the barrel down, Trigger inspects his spare mag, labeled Defender Series Rugged Pak - UP-P - Thrufite Labs.

  It's a deceptively simple little box containing both a battery and a strip of naonite. One trigger pull sends a precise AC charge through a few micrograms of the metallic element, which undergoes some kind of breakdown that releases what Jodie had called 'mass-binding particles.' These novel elementary particles flood the firing chamber just as the pulse laser fires, somehow latching onto the photons and giving them actual mass.

  The result? A bolt of heavy light that hits as hard as any powder propelled slug, with less recoil and a more shot-dense ammo source.

  'Photons don't have mass on their own, do they? Nor should they ever be able to gain it, at least, I think,' he wonders. 'Seems like it breaks physics… Then again, FTL also breaks physics, and the universe still continues on. Starting to realize how little I understand.'

  Trigger rolls the mag in his fingers, feeling its weight. A hundred shots per magazine, or twenty-five on overcharge mode, according to the manual. The naonite strip in each one is thin, only a few microns thick. The rest of the magazine's bulk is the battery used for energizing the exotic element and powering the gun's pulse laser.

  'Naonite, trinium, xanion, ogonite, so many elements we never discovered,' he muses, reassembling the pistol as quickly as he can. Once it's whole in his lap, he waits for the sound of a buzzer only he can hear, then pulls it apart again, fingers moving in a cycle, over and over, until he's certain his weapon can be serviced blindfolded.

  The laserbolter clicks together again with a satisfying sound, then seconds later, is in pieces again.

  Whole.

  Field stripped.

  Whole.

  Field stripped.

  Whole.

  Each one makes the next attempt a fraction of a second faster.

  A grunt from across the room draws his attention. Lars is doing push-ups between the bunks, counting under his breath in what sounds like Sapinish, and Trigger has to wonder how much Lars' first language actually resembles Sapinish, or if he's just hearing things.

  Eddy's eyes are glued to the TV on the wall, and it is a god-honest TV, not a holo projector, if impossibly flat on the wall. On the screen a pair of identical parrot women sing some of the most pop-styled music Trigger has ever heard between jumpshots of beach scenes. From how his head bobs in tune to the rhythm, it's uncertain what has more of Eddy's attention—the music itself, or their malfunction-waiting-to-happen bikinis.

  We gotta get away, get away, get awaaaay from it all! Ditch the tie, don't be shy, the sun and sand is all you need!~?

  The tune is pretty catchy, though.

  Eli, meanwhile, sits at the sole desk, pecking at the terminal on it with one talon while his cybernetic eye occasionally flickers, likely showing him something on his implant's HUD simultaneously.

  The morning continues at its lazy pace for a time. Trigger checks his wristcomm once his field strip drills begin to yield only marginal improvements, and finds himself with a smile as a new message comes in.

  FROM: LT. COMMANDER HARKINS - KILLIGAN ORBITAL DEFENCE LOGISTICS

  SUBJECT: RE: VR Training Request

  Captain Trigger,

  Your request for two squads worth of VR booths has been approved. We've set aside Booths 12-19 in Training Bay C for Strider Squadron's use from 0900-1300 today.

  Given your recent assistance with the Sovereign incursion, it's the least we can do. Please remember to keep the affiliate mercenary access cards provided to you handy, as officers may request to see them.

  Your 'friend' will not be hassled during your stay, but please warn her to try not to stand out.

  - Lt. Cmdr. Harkins

  Trigger types a quick reply thanking the quartermaster, then stands, setting his reassembled pistol on the bed. The movement draws everyone's attention.

  "Listen up," he announces, voice carrying easily through the cramped quarters. "I've secured us some VR training booths for the morning. We're going to use this downtime productively."

  Mila perks up, while Jodie groans from her bunk. Eli simply nods, already logging off the terminal.

  "Everyone get dressed and ready to move," Trigger continues. "Light breakfast, then we train."

  Lars is already pulling a fresh shirt from his duffel. "About time. The last few days have been a bore."

  Everyone starts moving except for two. Eddy, who'd been watching the girls on the small wall-mounted screen, turns with a confused expression. Stella, who finished her stretches and returned to her bunk, remains seated, uncertainty written across her features.

  "That means you two as well," Trigger adds, looking between them.

  Eddy's eyes widen. "Wait, what? But I'm not a pilot! I'm more of a... ground support specialist." He gestures vaguely at himself. "You know, doing all kinds of important… stuff. Stuff that isn't flying!"

  "I understand that," Trigger replies evenly. "But I expect everyone on my crew to be able to handle a fighter in an emergency. Everyone trains."

  "But I don't even know which end of a joystick is up! I'll probably crash into the first asteroid I see, or worse, one of you! That's just asking for-"

  Trigger's eyes narrow slightly.

  Eddy's protests die in his throat. "Right. Training. Got it. I'll just..." He scrambles to his feet, making for the bathroom, only to get there half a second after Jodie, who slips inside and locks the door with a triumphant click.

  "Ha! Too slow, scales!" comes her muffled voice through the door.

  "Dibs after her!" Mila is quick to call, jumping between Eddy and the door with folded clothes and a towel in hand.

  "Oh, come on!" Eddy whines, slumping.

  Stella remains frozen on her bunk, watching the chaos pensively. When Trigger turns his attention to her with one eyebrow raised, she seems to get the message.

  "I'll... get ready," she says quietly, standing and moving to gather her things, careful to stay out of everyone's way.

  The bathroom and its single shower is once again the bottleneck of their morning, but once everyone is washed and dressed, they can finally leave.

  Opening the air-tight door of their bunk and stepping out, Trigger looks up and is once again hit with a thrill.

  High above them, hanging like a great vaulted ceiling, is the planet of Killigan, so close it feels like one could jump and fall upward into the emerald planet's gravity. The planet and the wreath of stars around it take up the entire open sky of the orbital station, which is without any solid top layer.

  Even after having an Ensign explain that the open-air bottom of the station is protected by an unearthly atmo-shield, stepping out into a futuristic, yet achingly familiar airfield with seemingly nothing between them and cold vacuum is still a touch alarming.

  Trigger tears his gaze away from the impossible sky and takes in their surroundings. The bottom level of the orbital station is laid out remarkably like an air base back on Strangereal - rows of hangars with their massive doors, squat administrative buildings, and blocks of barracks housing the garrison. The familiar geometry brings a pang of something he can't quite name.

  The main difference is the lack of runways. Since nearly every starfighter here can take off using VTOL systems, what would have been kilometers of tarmac back home is instead filled with more structures - maintenance bays, supply depots, and defensive hardpoints. The efficiency of it appeals to him, even as part of his brain insists something is missing without those long strips of concrete.

  Trigger glances down at the reinforced deck plating beneath his boots. Somewhere below, through layers of armor and structural supports, the actual drydock clings to the station's underside (overside?). He can picture it in his mind - the Aquila and several wounded Libret frigates wrapped in anti-grav scaffolding like insects in metallic cocoons, repair crews swarming over hull breaches and burned-out systems, slowly erasing the scars of battle.

  "You coming, Trigger?" Mila's voice breaks through his thoughts.

  He turns to find his crew waiting a few paces behind, all watching him with varying degrees of patience. Eli taps his talons against his thigh, while Lars seems content to enjoy the artificial morning air.

  "Let's move," Trigger says, leading them across the open space toward a low building simply marked 'commissary'.

  The commissary doors slide open as they approach, their ID cards chirping softly as the scanner reads them. Inside, the smell of processed protein and synthetic coffee fills the air. They grab boxed meals from rugged, soldier-proof automated dispensers, with Trigger splurging for his team and buying the more expensive variant that is actually dispensed fresh and hot for each of them.

  With their food in hand, they eat crowded into a single booth in the corner, where Libret navymen at other tables regard them with whispers. More than one finger points towards Trigger, and a few lonely eyes from the mostly male tables steal longing glances at Mila, Stella, and Jodie.

  After breakfast, they make their way to the main administrative complex, an imposing structure of poured concrete and steel that rises several stories from a square of astroturf. Their boots echo in the lobby as they cross to the bank of elevators. Yet again, they're subject to looks from the various navymen inside.

  The descent takes longer than expected, the digital display counting down through sub-levels. Training Bay C is deep in the station's superstructure, protected by layers of armor and redundant life support systems. When the doors finally open, they emerge into a dark, chilled corridor lined with numbered doors.

  "Booths 12 through 19," Trigger reads from the placard on the wall, pointing down the hall. "This way."

  The booths are arranged in short hallways, with four doors on each side. Each one a sealed pod with a heavy door marked with its number. Everyone claims their spot and settles in, the doors hissing shut with pressurized seals.

  Inside Booth 12, Trigger drops into the padded seat that materializes under him and pulls up the control interface. The holographic menu springs to life around him, offering dozens of pre-loaded scenarios - everything from basic target practice to full fleet engagements, but at the bottom of the list, he finds what he's looking for: Custom Scenario.

  He lifts his wristcomm. "Nidhogg?"

  "Standing by," comes the flat reply.

  "Is that side project I asked for complete?"

  "Affirmative. Scenario compilation is ready for upload. Initiating transfer now."

  The menu flickers as new options populate the list, each one tagged with ominous designations that would mean nothing to anyone but him.

  In Booth 15, Mila fidgets with her controls, adjusting every setting until the hardlight cockpit perfectly matches her Caracal's layout. The familiar placement of switches and displays brings some comfort, but as she settles back to wait, her mind drifts to the skirmish three days ago.

  The Sovereign Navy pilots had been different. Not just skilled, but disciplined. Where pirates broke formation at the first sign of real resistance, the Vipers had maintained their attack patterns even while their friends died in fireballs around them. She'd spent most of the fight just trying to stay alive, managing only occasional shots when someone else had drawn their attention.

  Eli went toe-to-toe with them, taking on two or even three at once and keeping pace. Lars could brute force his way through with his gunship's superior armor and firepower. Even Trigger had... well, Trigger had been Trigger. Any enemy pilot who even thought about engaging him went up in smoke.

  And her? She'd barely contributed with her three kills across a few dozen Vipers. The thought sits heavy in her stomach.

  'Stop it,' she tells herself firmly, shaking her head. 'That's why we're here. To get better. To learn. Trigger has got all kinds of stuff to teach, and I'll learn it all!'

  Her thoughts are interrupted by Trigger's voice crackling through the comm system.

  "Everyone linked up?"

  "Ready," Eli responds, sounding almost eager.

  "No, not ready! Very not ready!" Eddy's voice climbs toward panic. "Can't I just watch? C'mon, captain, you know I'm just gonna drag things down. Don't you flyboys want a fun time? I'm really good at observation and all, I swear!"

  "I've prepared some non-standard training for today," Trigger continues, ignoring the gecko's protests.

  "Define non-standard," Eli says, interest clearly piqued.

  "Please don't define it," Eddy whimpers. "I already don't like the sound of this."

  "I had Nidhogg compile custom scenarios using combat data from Strangereal. Not just from my missions, but from recorded deployments of other ace squadrons as well."

  The comm falls silent for a beat.

  "Other aces?" Lars asks carefully. "Like... how ace are we talking?"

  "The best," Trigger replies simply.

  Mila swallows hard. She's heard Trigger's stories - pilots who could take on entire squadrons alone, weapons that defied physics, battles that sounded more like mythology than military history. Stella's continued silence on the comm reminds her that the skunk has no context for any of this, probably wondering what fresh hell she's stumbled into.

  "Stand by while the scenarios load," Trigger continues. "We'll split into two flights for the first exercise. I'll take Eddy, Jodie, and Stella. We'll run through basic dogfighting drills. Need to get our newcomers up to speed and evaluate capabilities."

  A pause, then: "Eli, you'll lead the second flight. Take Lars, Mila, and..."

  There's a hesitation that makes Mila lean forward.

  "...and Nidhogg will occupy the fourth slot."

  "Wait, what?" Mila blurts out. "The AI's flying with us?"

  "Affirmative," Nidhogg's voice joins the channel. "Loading combat protocols now."

  "Your flight gets the advanced scenario," Trigger finishes. "Eli has tactical command. Don't hold back, these sims are meant to push you."

  Before Mila can get another word in, the starry idle screen of her cockpit canopy dissolves into static, then goes black. After a few tense seconds, text types itself out on the virtual canopy.

  OPERATION: DRAGON BREATH

  LOCATION: HATTIES DESERT, USEA, STRANGEREAL

  STANDBY FOR BRIEFING.?

  'The Hatties desert? Wait, isn't that where Trigger said Stonehenge is?' Mila feels her tail fluff up from a brief thrill of a surprise most unpleasant. "Uh oh…"

  The viewscreen swirls into static again, and when it resolves once more, it resolves into a blue wireframe map, centered on a damaged, circular compound, with large artillery guns spread about inside.

  "Our counteroffensive has changed the course of the war," begins a male voice, speaking briskly and clearly. "However, the western part of the continent and the area around the space elevator still remain under Erusean control."

  The map zooms out, showing Mila landmasses labeled with names she's only heard from Trigger's mouth, but never seen spelled. Usea, Osea, Erusea, and so many others.

  What's more striking, however, is how half the map is painted an alarming red, with a huge circle representing a giant no-go zone centered around a point labeled "Space Elevator."

  'Is that the Arsenal Bird's patrol route?' The mink pilot wonders, having her thoughts answered a second later.

  "As you all know, this is because they have those damn Arsenal Birds controlling the skies around the lighthouse." The simulated officer giving the briefing continues. "So, we're going to use Stonehenge for a long-range attack against the Arsenal Bird."

  The map zooms in, this time on one of the artillery guns within the circular compound, and Mila leans in. 'Trigger said these things were massive, but it looks so tiny here.'

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "Once preparations are complete, it will be able to fire again. However, the officer in charge has yet to confirm whether it can be fired more than once. In other words, it is looking like we may have only one chance to be able to bring down one of those invulnerable Arsenal Birds."

  The map shifts once more, showing tons and tons of red blips moving towards Stonehenge. Like wow that's a lot of enemies…

  "Erusean forces have detected our movements and are marching on Stonehenge. The Arsenal Bird is closing in, but if our operation goes as planned, we should be able to shoot it down before it reaches the operation area. We've set up strongpoints we call "Menhirs" around Stonehenge."

  The simulated officer pauses, as if stumbling over a mistake in his script. "Due to time constraints, the only air forces we can field for this critical mission is the mercenary squadron "Strider". Strider will provide our ground units with air support and keep air superiority. Protect Stonehenge at all costs."

  With the briefing over, the cockpit screen goes dark, and Mila finds herself pressed back into her seat from sudden, simulated G load as the mission starts with a mid-air deployment. Outside the cockpit, the sky above is a brilliant blue, and the desert below shifts and shimmers with the wind. Mila rolls her Caracal a little to better see the ground, and when she does, she gapes at the facility below.

  Even from high up and dozens of kilometers out, the Stonehenge railguns are utterly gigantic! Just from eyeballing it, each gun has to be longer than the Aquila, and before the mission can properly start, Mila looks down at her sensor console and zooms in on the barrel of the only gun raised to the sky, trying to get a measurement of the bore.

  Beep-beep!

  "Wha?" She blinks at the number that pops up. "A hundred and twenty millimeters? That's not that b-!" Mila stops short, realizing she read the readout wrong.

  It's not a hundred and twenty millimeters, but centimeters. 1.2 meters of bore.

  'Oh my god, that would gut… I dunno, anything that isn't a full-on flagship! They built this before interstellar travel?'

  The radio beeps, pulling Mila from her astonishment.

  "Twenty kilometers to operation zone," Eli calls, his words less biting than usual. He had to have had the same thoughts as her. "I'll be taking Strider 1 for this mission. Lars is 2, Mila, 3. Nidhogg, 4. Sound off."

  "Strider 2, ready," Lars responds glumly. "Did the boss have to give us an in-atmo mission? My brain is rattling out of my ears."

  Glancing out the side of her cockpit to Eli's other flank, Mila can indeed see turbulence battering against the Aggressor's brick-like aeros, shaking the whole damn thing.

  "We don't get to choose where we engage," Eli is quick to reply, wholly unbothered in his wedge-like fighter. "Continue sound off."

  "Strider 3, ready," Mila says, taking a deep breath to steady the coming jitters.

  "Strider 4, ready," Nidhogg brings up the rear. Mila can't see him, but her radar shows him behind them, with his craft label marked F-15 S/MTD. After a moment, it transforms into Strider 4.

  'Must be some Strangereal fighter.'

  Below, Stonehenge grows larger and larger, and the monolithic guns only seem more unreal the closer they come. As soon as they cross an unseen loading line into the area, the radio sounds off with a new voice.

  "Attention, all defense and air support teams. In order to get up and running, what I need most from you is time," comes the clipped, tense voice of a woman broadcasting from the raised railgun below. "As long as you can provide me with that, my program can bring down the Arsenal Bird."

  "That was Major Deanna McOnie. I'm Warrant Officer Lehmann, a specialist," a second person introduces himself, not bothering to ask who they are. "We're now commencing the operation to destroy the Arsenal Bird."

  On Mila's radar, nearly two dozen ground and air targets appear, and her HUD is flooded with targeting boxes. Her hands tighten around her flight yoke.

  "Lars with me, Nidhogg, with Mila. We'll circle clockwise around the perimeter and clean up ground forces. Mila and Nidhogg, counterclockwise, focus on air targets," Eli orders, diving with Lars on his wing.

  'It's just a sim,' Mila breathes, turning with Nidhogg on her tail. 'Trigger wouldn't throw us in the deep end right away.'

  'He threw us in the deep end…'

  Mila's arms burn with fatigue, her flight suit soaked through with sweat as she wrestles the Caracal through another high-G turn. The fighter's temperature warning has been blaring for the last five minutes, but she can't ease off - not with another wave of Erusean fighters screaming down from altitude.

  "Splash two," she gasps into the comm, watching her latest kills tumble toward the desert below. How many is that now? Twenty? Thirty? She's lost count.

  The reinforcements just keep coming. Tanks rumble across the dunes toward Stonehenge's perimeter. SPAA units light up the sky with tracers. Artillery pounds the defensive positions while infiltration choppers try to slip through the chaos. And the fighters. God, the fighters never stop.

  Her shields are completely offline, that power routed to her overtaxed engines so she can zoom from crisis to crisis as fast as possible. The inertial dampeners are running at maybe thirty percent, leaving her body to absorb punishment that would've mostly been cushioned away. Every hard turn feels like a concrete pillar is dropped on her chest.

  "Ammo drums at fifteen-percent," Lars grunts over the comm, his voice strained. "My backup laserbolters are peashooters, so I'm not shooting down shit soon."

  "Cloak's fried," Eli adds tersely. "Heatsinks couldn't keep up. Flying naked now."

  Mila glances at her own status display, panting. Her engine temp in the red, her weapon capacitors are struggling to recharge, and worst of all, her cooling systems are dying. The AC, both for the cockpit and critical internals, is failing, overtaxed by the scorching heat and power draw from constant afterburner use, leaving her to slowly bake alive. Through the torn surface of her left wing, something she's sure is important is glowing red hot.

  Then there's Nidhogg.

  The AI's F-15 zips through the combat zone like, well, a machine, rarely missing, never complaining, but also never excelling.

  Mila's caught glimpses though, moments where Nidhogg pulls impossibly tight turns that would have put a pilot into g-loc, or threads between SAM launches with daring that only Trigger could emulate. Once, she saw it dive so low its belly nearly kissed the sand before pulling up at the perfect angle to nail a bomber's underside.

  It's holding back. Has to be. Trigger must've ordered it to match their skill level rather than show them up.

  'Duh,' a part of her wants to say. 'What's the point of training if the computer just does everything for you? Niddy can probably fly circles around everyone here.'

  Another temperature alarm incessantly chants Warning! Overheat! at her. Mila silently hopes there is no cam in the booth, then yanks her flight suit's zipper down past her navel, trying to air-out her sweat-drenched fur.

  A moment later, a fighter slots into her six, and she has to burn and turn as her missile alarm screams, as she ran out of chaff ages ago.

  Warning! Overheat! Warning! Overheat! Her fighter blares urgently as the VR pod heats up further, simulating the consequence of flaring her engines and making the black at the edge of her vision that much more awful.

  Climbing skyward, the mink narrowly dodges the missile, then praying hard, kicks her RCS thrusters, yanks her yoke, and spins around in a nauseating post-stall flip just like she's seen Trigger do, her ship's bolters firing the entire time.

  Through luck, or divine intervention, her wild fire nails the fighter on her tail right in the cockpit, blasting it to bits.

  Heart hammering, mouth dry, and vision tunneled, Mila levels her fighter out, sucking in deep gulps of too-hot air.

  "Oh fuck it. If there is a cam, let 'em see," she grunts, shedding the entire top half of her flight suit, heaving her bare from the waist up sans her favorite choker. It does little to help, but it's still just the slightest bit better.

  Finally, finally, the last enemy fighter spirals down trailing smoke, and no more tanks emerge from the desert mirages. The radar clears for just a moment, giving them precious seconds to rest.

  Then the radio crackles to life, and she and Lars groan in unison.

  "All units, be advised! Massive radar signature detected bearing two-seven-zero!" The AWACS controller's voice cracks with disbelief. "It's the Arsenal Bird! The Arsenal Bird is here!"

  Mila turns toward the bearing just as the clouds part.

  The thing that emerges defies every sense of scale she's developed as a pilot. The Arsenal Bird doesn't just block out the sun, it becomes the sky. Its triangular bulk spreads across her entire field of view, those kilometer-wide wings come together to make a craft so large it would half bankrupt a planet to build. Even the massive Stonehenge guns look like toys before it.

  "Oh my fucking god…." The rest of her words die in her throat. She'd heard Trigger's descriptions, seen some of his mission footage, but nothing could've prepared her for this. It's not an aircraft, it's a flying fortress the size of a battleship.

  "It's here! Beginning final checks and starting the firing sequence!" The urgent call from the simulated Major snaps Mila back to reality, but her hands are frozen on the controls.

  As the humongous flying wing lazily floats closer, countless specks fall from its underside… Then twist around and unfold their wings. In a blink, there are forty new contacts blotting out her HUD in targeting boxes.

  "A swarm of UAVs has launched from the Arsenal Bird! Keep them away from Stonehenge!" AWACS orders, the undertone of panic in his fake voice sounding distressingly real.

  "Strider, disperse! Don't let them get any closer!" Eli barks, flying head on towards the swarm—as there really is no better way to describe the drones blobbing up their radars.

  The drones descend on them like a plague of locusts.

  Mila's missile alarm becomes a constant, drilling whine as she throws her Caracal into a desperate series of evasive maneuvers. Four drones latch onto her six and refuse to let go, taking turns launching missiles to keep her defensive. Every time she thinks she has a second to breathe, another lock-on tone screams in her ears.

  She catches glimpses of the battlefield between frantic dodges. Lars's Aggressor trailing smoke, Eli's fighter surrounded by a web of tracer fire, Nidhogg pulling impossible angles to shake pursuit, but mostly she just sees the inside of her eyelids as G-forces try to squeeze her unconscious.

  The drones are unlike anything she's faced. They pull turns that would liquify an organic pilot, accelerate like missiles, and coordinate with hivemind precision. When she manages to line up a shot on one, it jets sideways at the last second. When she tries to lead another, it simply loops mid-air and watches her overshoot.

  Pure luck gives her two kills, a drone that zagged when it should have zigged, crossing her stream of fire for half a second. Another that clipped its wingmate avoiding Lars's guns and stumbled into her targeting reticle. But the rest learn instantly, never repeating the same mistake twice.

  "We're taking heavy fire!" Major McOnie's voice crackles through the chaos. "Multiple impacts on the loading mechanism! We need cover NOW!"

  Mila's vision grays at the edges as she hauls back on her yoke, pulling nine Gs to reverse toward Stonehenge. The world compresses to a narrow tunnel, but she forces herself to stay conscious, spraying bolter fire into the cloud of drones swarming the massive railgun. Three, four, five explode in quick succession before missile locks force her to break away.

  It's not enough.

  "Breaches in sections four through seven!" Warrant Officer Lehmann shouts. "Targeting computer is-!"

  The rest is lost in static.

  Mila rolls inverted just in time to see it happen. One drone, trailing thick black smoke and missing half a wing, breaks from the swarm. It doesn't try to pull up or away. Instead, it accelerates straight toward the command module bolted to the side of the railgun.

  Time stretches like taffy. She sees Eli notice it too, sees him dump everything into his engines to intercept. Sees Lars desperately spraying the last of his tungsten rounds that fall just short. Sees Nidhogg conveniently far enough away to do nothing.

  The drone impacts dead center.

  The explosion tears the command module apart from the inside out, a ball of fire and shrapnel erupting from where Major McOnie and her team had been working. Debris rains down on the desert below as the massive railgun, now nothing more than dead metal, slowly begins to droop in its turret.

  As one, the drone swarm breaks off, climbing toward their massive carrier, which is turning away like nothing of interest happened below.

  "Major McOnie! Warrant Officer Lehmann! Please respond!" AWACS calls out, desperation bleeding through the professional tone. "Stonehenge control, do you copy?"

  Static.

  "...Mission parameters have changed," AWACS continues grimly. "Strider Squadron, you are to engage and destroy the Arsenal Bird directly."

  "What?" Lars's shock mirrors Mila's own.

  "That's insane," Eli cuts in, his voice sharp. "Four damaged fighters against that thing? We're at twenty percent combat effectiveness at best."

  "Those are your orders, Strider Lead. Engage the Arsenal Bird."

  "With what?" Eli snaps. "We're damaged, out of countermeasures, and running on fumes. This is a suicide run."

  "Retreat is not authorized. You will-"

  "Fuck off!" Eli yells. "Strider Squadron, form up. We're leaving."

  "Strider Lead, you are ordered to-!"

  The comm channel clicks off.

  They fly in silence toward the mission boundary, the Arsenal Bird looming behind them. Mila doesn't look back. None of them do.

  The moment they cross the invisible line, the simulation freezes. The desert, the smoke, the distant drone swarm all dissolve into pixels, replaced by stark white text on black:

  MISSION FAILED.

  AWAITING CAPTAIN RESPONSE.?

  From a floating side screen from the corner of his eye in his own VR pod, Trigger watches as the first three members of Strider Squadron finish their sim, then thumbs the radio button in his hardlight cockpit. "Eddy, Stella, Jodie. We'll take a break here. The other team is done with their mission."

  "Thank you, God!" Eddy sings his praises to the dark, starry heavens, nearly tilting his Sparrowhawk out of formation on Trigger's left. With a curse, the gecko shakily pulls himself back into formation, almost overcorrecting and forcing Trigger to evade. "This flying shit is for the birds!"

  "Really? I didn't know, hon," Stella comments dryly from the six-o-clock position, flying a three-winged, triangular fighter Trigger learned is a Yorcha-P, produced somewhere in LOSA by the simply named Yorcha LLC. It seemed ungainly to him, until he learned the wings on the bottom vertices can fold up for landing.

  "You know what I mean!" Eddy shoots back.

  On Trigger's right, Jodie flies a Sparrowhawk much like Eddy, her flightpath much more stable in their orbit above the virtual planet below. The coyote chuckles a little at the joke. "Alrighty then. Do we wanna land so mister two left hands can get one more try in?"

  "I don't know…" Stella hums, along with the background noise of her fingers drumming on something. "The last scream peaked the microphone. Wouldn't want to get charged for blowing it out, now would we?"

  'She certainly seems more confident with a wall between her and I,' Trigger muses, an eyebrow quirked.

  "Ugh…" Eddy whines. "Why do dames always abuse poor Eddy? What did I do?"

  "We'll skip it for now," Trigger throws the gecko a bone. "Good work today. We'll work on it more another time. Break for now, then ground sims."

  With that, the simulation comes to an end, with the cockpit, the space outside of it, and the ships of his crewmates vanishing in faint flashes of blue, leaving him in a room of square, luminous wireframes. Once the man stands, his seat likewise dematerializes. When he finally steps out, he's greeted by a bemused Eddy, worried Jodie, and nervous Stella, all staring at the other team.

  They look like hell, to put it simply. Eli's feathers are a ruffled mess, and his scowl is even deeper than usual, almost bordering something hostile.

  Mila and Lars, by contrast, seem exhausted. Both are slumped a bit, their clothes stained with sweat. Mila looks to have gotten the worst of it, as her hair is frizzed, and tremors run up and down her limp arms.

  Trigger nods, more to himself than anyone else. "I was watching," he begins. "You did well. Very well, I think."

  "Was that supposed to be a forced loss?" Eli asks simply, crossing his arms over his chest rig and regarding Trigger with the edges of his beak pulled into thin lines. "Because it doesn't feel like we did shit. The whole thing ended in a blowout when the Arsenal Bird showed up."

  "No, not a forced loss," Trigger shakes his head slowly. "It was, however, a stress test. That was a one-to-one recreation of my mission, but I sent you in with low numbers. The real mission had two squadrons present."

  Operation Dragon's Breath is still vivid in his memory, even a year and some change after. No one can ever forget coming face-to-face with an Arsenal Bird, nor can they forget seeing it crumble and die, eviscerated by Stonehenge, but the rest of the mission has its own staying power in the memories of those who were there.

  Erusea did not want them to have Stonehenge. They knew it was a ploy to bring the Arsenal Birds low, and they threw everything they had at them, even walking right into the trap knowingly, determined to stop them then and there.

  While the death of Arsenal Bird Liberty was a huge success for Osea, it was still a minor victory for Erusea, too, even if a pyrrhic one. Even though the bird fell, enough damage was done to the final standing railgun that repairing it for a second shot was deemed too costly. Despite Trigger, the original Strider Squadron, and Cyclops Squadron flying that mission, a few of the drones still landed critical shots on Stonehenge.

  "I expected failure earlier, to be honest," Trigger tells the three bluntly, leaning his head back and looking at the dim lighting above as the memory comes and goes. "You kept the Menhirs alive if damaged, downed every fighter and bomber, and lasted well into the drone swarm. During the original mission, not even two squads of us could keep everything under control." He smiles. "I'm proud of your performance, and prouder of keeping my one critical parameter in mind, Eli."

  Lars smiles and looks to the side bashfully.

  Eli's fight is gone in an instant, and he quits hiding the tired sag of his shoulders.

  "Oof-!"

  Trigger is nearly bowled over when Mila practically leaps into his arms with a hug, smile wide and lighting up the dim space. "I did, I mean, we really did good, even though it was a failure in the end?"

  Slowly, Trigger returns the hug for a moment, ignoring the clammy mink sweat being rubbed into his flight suit. "You did. I saw your post-stall maneuver and the kill it scored you. Well done for your first time. I'll teach you how best to leverage maneuvers like that."

  The man swears he sees her red eyes literally sparkle.

  From the corner of his eye, he spies Stella turn away and lift her hands to rub her temples, a little flush bleeding through the white fur of her cheeks.

  Odd.

  "Now," Trigger begins, letting Mila go, though she lingers for a second more before giving him space. "A short break, then ground op training. Any objections?"

  There are none, but Eli's visage takes on a positively evil mask, and the captain remembers the promise the eagle made right after the Reese Point raid.

  "We're finding VR booths in Griath," Eli declares, pulling Trigger from his introspection. "If you get to torture us in pilot sims, then I'm doing the same to you for ground ops. I will not follow anyone shittier than me."

  Ah. Well, an educational morning lies ahead, then.

  Never is it boring with Strider Squadron.