One
Victoria knew this would work. She just had to get her squad to agree.
Properly dressed in their brown leather trousers, dark boots climbing to their knees, and battle corsets cinching their waists, the four girls watched her with eyebrows raised.
Victoria pointed to the crude diagram drawn on the blackboard in the barren instruction room. Sunlight shone through the large windows, making Victoria itch to get out and try this new maneuver. She’d drawn an X for each of their planes, and a squiggly line along the bottom to represent the ocean. An arrow emerging from the ocean line represented the giant monster they faced when it sporadically attacked their town.
Dahlia cocked her head to one side as though she might better understand what Victoria was getting at from that angle. Her obedient blonde curls were piled into perfect confections on her head.
“I call it the Burst. The five of us will come at the Kreak from this direction. We time our blasts so that they alternate, rather than hitting all at once like we usually do.” She pointed at the Xs in turn. “The order will be me, then Dahlia, then Bronwyn, Maizey, and Emma has last. That’ll give us time to recharge in between. We’ll hit the beast with a constant barrage of flame so it won’t have time to react. Then—” Victoria looked up and grinned, “We scatter. While it’s disoriented, trying to go after us all at once, I will dart in and examine the beast to find a weakness.”
The girls seemed unmoved. Victoria’s heart faltered a little. She’d hoped for a more favorable response.
She drew a deep breath and continued, forcing her voice to remain buoyant.
“Worst case scenario, we throw it off course, confusing it and sending it back into the sea. Best case scenario, we get a closer examination or even a sample extraction! We could actually get closer to defeating this thing.”
“But that’s against protocol,” argued Maizey. Her brown hair—nearly the same color as her battle leathers—was bobbed short, curling over one cheek. “We’re meant to stay at least fifteen feet away from the Kreak.”
Victoria’s chest tightened. She knew at least one of them would object. “That’s just the problem,” she said. “Commander Digby is too cautious.”
“You mean your uncle,” Dahlia said with a smirk.
Victoria ignored that. The fact that he was her uncle was irrelevant. “Every time we beat the Kreak back, and every time it returns. Don’t you tire of letting that thing have its way?”
She bit back the more scathing things she’d like to say. Commander Digby’s strategies galled her. “The commander has to know our current methods are not effective. Once he sees what we can do, he will realize we can handle more. Don’t you see? He’ll realize we can stop it for good!”
Maizey pursed her lips.
“Besides,” Victoria added quickly. “He won’t be around today—his duties with the Council are keeping him busy. We’ll have plenty of time to practice and perfect this before he ever knows.”
Bronwyn’s brows lifted, and Victoria could practically read the stocky girl’s skeptical thoughts. Her mouth turned downward, her wiry brown curls escaping their knot. She glanced to Emma as if to say, do you believe this?
“It’s worth trying,” said Emma, the final member of the Dauntless squad. She shrugged and folded her arms, giving Victoria a timid but encouraging smile.
Bronwyn’s frown transformed into a smile that was anything but pleasant.
“What are we waiting for then?” she said. “Let’s move out.”
Victoria inhaled as much as her corset would allow. It was no secret Bronwyn wanted her position and was just waiting for her to make a wrong move. She tried to force confidence into her voice.
“Agreed? Then let’s head out.” Victoria led the way through the side door and out onto the paved stretch of asphalt. A collection of six steel hangars housing two doors each lined the edge of a wide, concrete runway behind the vast Aviatory. Several landing pads neighbored the runway as well. Victoria fiddled with her headgear, inserting and adjusting the mic to the right level at her cheek. Uncertainty battled with exhilaration in her chest. She did her best to brush it aside, to repeat the mantra that’d been her lullaby since entering the program.
The sky has no margin. The only failure is failing to try.
Victoria was the first to lead the newly formed Protection Program. The Kreak’s attacks were increasing, and her uncle had started the program for that very reason. After hours of training and extensive tests, Victoria had earned the position of Head Officer Naut. It was an honor she had made it this far.
She was determined to make everyone see that. Her squad members, her uncle, her mother. Victoria had fought for her position. She had won nearly every competition—she’d earned her place.
“We rally at the simulated shore,” she instructed.
“Here we go,” Maizey said, sliding wide goggles over her face and securing her earpiece with a grin before she and the others stepped off toward their own hangars. Maizey’s headgear clicked with a bleep.
Victoria’s hangar door was a thick, tanned metal, spanning about as wide as a barn door. She reached for the low handle. The door groaned and dug its feet into the ground as she hefted it open, until it finally juddered and gave way, gliding up to reveal the magnificent aircraft bunked within its wide shelter.
“Afternoon, Elsie,” Victoria said to her plane with reverence. She brushed a hand along its copper design as one would do to a beloved horse, patting its neck and whispering encouragement to the creature. Her fingers trailed the sutures dividing the pieces of wrought metal and scraped away some dirt splotching the golden bolts. Victoria inhaled her favorite smell of rust and exhaust and stepped back for a full view of the machine’s squat wings and bubble of a hatch.
“You know planes don’t talk, don’t you?” Bronwyn chimed in through her headset.
“I thought you were supposed to lead us.” That sounded like Dahlia. “Or do I have to start giving the orders?”
Victoria shook herself and jogged to the far wall. “Check in.”
The other girls answered in succession, one by one voicing their names as their headgear bleeped.
A machine stood in the corner, ready to take her punch for their training that day. She inserted her hand and the pad pressed slowly, imprinting her fingertips onto the screen below. She snatched the goggles from their hook, tucked her brown chignon inside her cap, and mounted the ladder. Her boots clanked their way up to the open hatch.
She lowered herself onto the seat. The familiar scent of leather greeted her, quashing all thoughts of failure. This was her place. This was where she belonged.
The machine read her entrance, and the seat moved forward, conforming to her body and leaving space for another passenger behind should she ever need to train a new Naut.
Victoria checked the gauges, ensuring the one on the left had just the right balance between air pressure and fuel. She flicked several knobs, and the aircraft gave a few putters before chugging to life.
With a smile, Victoria took the joystick in her right hand. It thrummed beneath her touch, echoing the resonance in her chest. She released the brake and the craft responded to her knowing hands, creeping out into the warm afternoon light.
“Nauts out!” she announced. Several of the girls squealed their excitement.
“And so we commence,” said Bronwyn.
Victoria cranked her craft forward with such speed that she laughed aloud as the impact thrust her back into her seat. She moved with the machine, feeding it with her own adrenaline. Before she knew it, she was in the sky.
“And this, ladies, is why I fly!” called Dahlia through the headset. Victoria laughed again with the others.
The swirled sunlight and gathering clouds welcomed her. She guided the joystick in a quick motion. The plane responded, zipping through the air and providing a pleasant lurch in her stomach.
“Showoff!” called Maizey.
“Just doing my job!” Victoria answered with a grin. Liberty erupted within her, almost as if that striking grayish-orange nothing-but-sky filtered through her the higher she went, filling her with its clarity. She could do anything up here, be anything, and she swelled at the thought. Pure freedom. Pure, untainted, fully reachable freedom.
From this vantage point, Victoria grasped a view of the Aviatory’s multiple buildings and expansive rooflines, of the nearby ocean’s wide belly, of the gray clouds clustering at the horizon. She also saw the training grounds with their fabricated oceans mechanized and run by men of the Aviatory. Dauntless squad’s five planes passed on the south end of the sky, circling around from their various hangars on the Aviatory’s opposite side.
“Think back to the diagram!” Victoria called as the squad’s planes flew together, hovering over the bleak stretch of dirt before the makeshift ocean. The training simulation was a poor substitute for the actual ocean, with its small size and choppy waves caused by some kind of machinery. But it gave them a safe place to practice, so it would have to do.
“The Kreak is attacking from the south end of the beach. The Burst, ladies! We move forward and then scatter, confusing the brute.”
If only she could convince her uncle to arm the planes with explosives, or to send a foot squadron out. They could use their planes to trap the monster and have men on hand to dismantle it. But Jarvis would hear none of that. He underestimated them. Well, she would show him what they were capable of.
Victoria maintained air, the plane rumbling beneath her seat. “Let’s show my uncle we are the best squad he has. Dauntless!”
“Dauntless!” Dahlia echoed.
Maizey, and Emma added their cheers and followed Victoria’s lead, circling to the far end of the training ground. Exhaust lined the air behind them, swirling in a gray vortex through the bright sky.
The robot began to rise from the fake ocean at the far end of the training ground. Not only was the replica infinitely smaller than the actual beast, but its pieces were too smooth and pieced to accurately match the real beast’s disjointed appearance. They needed something to practice against, however, and this was it. A large, open space was all that remained directly behind the fake ocean, to avoid catching anything on fire when the girls shot their flames.
She ached to see the real sea monster up close, to take a sample of its metalwork, perhaps, to learn its inner workings and weaknesses. Currently, their methods were effective at pushing the monster back into the sea, but it always returned. She intended to change that.
“On my lead,” she said into her headset. The fake monster flapped its makeshift arms in the pool and Victoria steered in its direction. “V-gull formation!” she called out.
From her periphery, she could see the four other planes flying out behind her as practiced. They kept a steady pace toward the pool at the other end of the dirt. The simulated beast rose, cranked by the men within.
The five planes roared in, closer. Closer.
Closer.
“Victoria,” Maizey said uncertainly.
“Steady on,” Victoria encouraged. This would make them uncomfortable, surely. But it needed to be done. She saw no reason to keep pushing the brute back into the sea, not when they could do more, could study it, defeat it. Instinct from the last several years of training warned her she was too close. Pulling back from this proximity would be difficult, but she had to keep going.
“Now! Burst!” Victoria cried. The four planes, two on either side of her, fanned in their opposite directions. Her fingers began to tingle. She stretched them out, but the tingling only moved along her arms, up her neck, to the back of her skull. Victoria blinked, shaking her head.
Her vision blurred over. Instead of blue sky dusted with clouds a different landscape flickered past her windows, bustling with large buildings crammed closely together beside stretches of pavement. She wasn’t flying, she was running. She was shouting something—she was reaching. . . reaching. . .
“Victoria? Victoria!” Dahlia’s voice barely registered. The fake Kreak reared. The men working it must have seen Victoria’s proximity and attempted to pull it back. She gasped, fighting away the images. She jerked her joystick too quickly, the plane flipping in a series of sideways circles.
Victoria fought the controls, attempting to clear her mind and curb her panic. Her stomach sickened. She gritted her teeth, urging the joystick and adjusting her angle until she finally managed to straighten it and make a rutted landing in the dirt.
The other four girls landed their planes at the far end of the runway, the ground rumbling, their wheels crushing against the earth. Their small forms grew larger as they dashed toward her.
Smoke emitted from her dashboard, and the maintenance gauge released a low, repetitive ping. Victoria braced a hand on either side of the cockpit. Panic overtook her chest. What was that? What happened? She’d had this sensation before, the feather of a forgotten memory tickling her mind. But it had never fully taken over like that, whisking her away to somewhere else entirely.
“Victoria!”
Dahlia climbed her way up onto Elsie’s wing and opened the hatch, releasing the smoke within. Victoria coughed a few times, inhaling the fresher air and attempting to push herself up with shaky arms.
Dahlia reached out a hand. “We didn’t select the name Dauntless to give you license to be a fool. Are you all right?”
Victoria allowed Dahlia to help her amble out of the cockpit and slip to the ground. The dirt was unsteady beneath her feet, and she stood shakily. “I am all right.”
“What happened?” Maizey asked, her brown eyes wide in concern. “You’ve never lost control like that.”
Victoria scanned each face. Dahlia’s pointed nose and downturned mouth, Bronwyn’s disapproving grimace, Maizey’s worried gaze, Emma’s teeth chewing her lip. Victoria opened her mouth, but she couldn’t very well tell the group what had really happened. They’d think she was mad.
She could tell Dahlia, perhaps. Dahlia Covington had been Victoria’s closest friend since their training had started two years before. Dahlia’s vigor had kept her neck-and-neck with Victoria through their simulations, through written testing, and even through disagreements that occasionally burbled up among the five of them.
But now wasn’t the time, especially not with another figure making his way across the dirt.
Uncle Jarvis stormed toward her. His expression was calloused. The tails of his stately gray jacket flapped in his wake.
“Just my luck,” Victoria muttered with a sinking feeling.
“Steady on, old girl,” said Dahlia with a look of sympathy.
Victoria pursed her lips and lifted her chin, making her way toward her uncle. His upper lip curled and he glared at the girls behind Victoria for a moment before meeting her gaze. His left eye twitched.
“Uncle, I can explain—”
He pulled her aside, his hand pinching her elbow. “I come to monitor your training session in time to see you pull a stunt like that? That was reckless! What were you thinking?”
“If I can get closer, I may be able to collect a sample. Study the monster, find its weakness! You have to know our methods aren’t working.”
“Our methods work well enough. It’s not worth killing yourself over, Victoria. You were not made squadron leader as an opportunity to show off.”
“I wasn’t showing off. It will work, I’m certain of it! I just—”
“You lost control, Victoria!”
“I wouldn’t have if . . .”
“Well?”
If she couldn’t tell her squad, she certainly couldn’t tell her uncle what had happened. She wasn’t even sure what it was that had taken over her mind like that.
“Last week you received a demerit for unlicensed tinkering with your plane. Two weeks before you went into the Exodus training squad and spouted your nonsense about stopping the creature. We cannot give those young girls false hope. They’re going to replace you one day, and it’s your job to set the best example you can.”
“I am doing my best!”
Uncle Jarvis stepped back, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he spoke again, his voice was deadly soft. “This is your final warning, Victoria. We serve to protect. And we do that without endangering lives unnecessarily. My methods are the only methods we’ll be using.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he spoke over her. “I don’t care how excellent a pilot you are. If you can’t obey protocol, you’re useless. This is your final warning. One more deliberate act of disobedience and you’re off the squad.”