Chapter One
There was nothing more exciting than the feel of the wind whipping past her at eighty miles an hour. The sense of weightlessness as the world pinwheeled around her, end over end, was exhilarating. The rush that came along with knowing that she only had so long to pull out of the tumbling dive before it was too late.
It felt like freedom. It felt like everything else didn’t matter. War, death, none of it was there. Just her, the plane, the sky, and gravity. It was just the here and the now. All the rest dropped away as she plummeted.
There was nothing better in the world than this. Nothing.
Rose could’ve done without all the bullets, though.
The dials on the dash were going nuts. The hands whirled, maxing out to one side and then the other. Her plane wasn’t terribly happy about the tailslide roll she was in the middle of performing. She braced the stick hard with her left arm. The steel frame groaned, but it obeyed. The pressure pushed back against her, and she braced her shoulder against the frame of the cockpit and locked her elbow.
A few more bullets whizzed past her. The tracers burned white-hot even in the summer mid-day sky. A few of them were a little too close for comfort.
“C’mon, now. Don’t be such a whiny baby!”
She yanked the stick backward and pedaled to the right against the natural direction the plane wanted to turn in the middle of the freefall. The stick fought her every ounce of the way. All it wanted to do was pull forward and force her back into a nose-down dive. A normal person couldn’t have done it—either they’d break their arm, or the plane would just do what it wanted to do and overpower their attempt to muscle the controls.
Rose wasn’t exactly normal.
Well, at least one part of her wasn’t, anyway. She clenched the stick harder in her left hand. The shining steel of her hand reflected the sunlight in flashing patterns as they pinwheeled. There wasn’t any way she was gonna let her plane win the argument.
“Stop making such a fuss,” she shouted through the noise of the wind. She knew the plane couldn’t answer. But it didn’t hurt to try and convince it to behave. Talking to inanimate objects might not do any good, but it didn’t do any harm either. “We’ve done this plenty of times!”
Okay, sure, but maybe not with an East Wind Assassin II right behind her. They were faster than the model I’s. She could barely outrun them now. She hated the model II’s. They were ugly—absolutely hideous in her opinion. Their black paint with the angry yellow markings was supposed to make them look intimidating. Really, it made them easier to hit. Like overblown, ugly hornets.
She leveled out, hoping that pulling out of the dive would have shaken him off. But the black, angry inkblot was still back there. Stupid-looking or not, he was intent on shooting her out of the sky.
Too bad for him. Wasn’t really on her docket for today. But man, he was persistent! Time for a change of tactics. Rose pushed the stick hard forward, tilting the nose of the plane violently toward the ground. The forces on the plane jerked her around in the cockpit, throwing her against the harness. A maneuver like that would usually snap the wings off a plane like this. The wood bracing wouldn’t hold up. But her plane was just about as normal as she was.
The four wings of a typical biplane were made of fabric over a wood frame. But hers? They were framed and sheathed in steel.
The Steel Rose.
That was the name of her plane. Emblazoned proudly on the side of it in paint, alongside a bright red rose on either side. It was a double reference for many, many reasons.
Or maybe it was a pun.
Either way, she was proud of it.
A plane made of metal would usually be too heavy to fly, if it didn’t also come with her pride and joy—the monstrous engine that roared away underneath the steel plates of the fuselage.
Now she was pointing straight down at the ground that was rushing up toward her at an alarming speed.
Rose laughed.
This was fun.
Oh, she could have done without all the shooting, and the death, and the like. She didn’t enjoy killing people. But it was a sad, simple fact of war. And she was unfortunately pretty good at it. Their small band of “rebels” were the last stand against the encroaching forces of the Dominion—specifically, the East Wind. While they couldn’t confirm they were the last, since their long-range radio capabilities had been knocked out a few months prior, they could only suspect the worst.
War tended to make you do that. Suspect the worst.
Rose hated it. She hated the paranoia. The fear. The constant dread. It was all she had sadly ever known. But when she was up here, bullets or not, flying in the wind—she felt free. She felt alive. She felt like there was something else to the world other than the oppressive fighting.
She pressed the pedals hard, dragging the stick back, and pulled out of the dive. Not right-side up…but upside-down. One quick barrel roll and pull back on the stick, and now she was behind the Assassin II that couldn’t follow her maneuver.
“Eat it!” She squeezed the trigger. The machine gun mounted on the front of her ship flared to life with a deafening stream of bullets. The Assassin II swerved, tried to dodge, tried to pull up, but she stayed on his tail. The model IIs might move quick—but she was quicker.
The tail of his plane burst. She had punched a series of holes straight through it. The rear rudder ripped off in the wind, sending the model II into a death spiral toward the ground. She watched over the side of her plane as the enemy pilot dove out of the side, pulling his parachute as soon as he was free of the wreckage.
He’d live. And they were over enemy territory, so he’d get picked up in whatever field he landed in. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved.
She adjusted the goggles over her eyes and turned back to the task at hand. There were still four more to keep an eye on. They were far on the horizon, circling, and weren’t coming any closer. She was tempted to chase them, but she was on a flanking operation. Not a hunt and kill.
There were four of them—and ten of her squadron who were all flying nearby.
Four versus ten. It was more evenly matched than she’d care to admit.
If it were just about shooting them out of the sky before she ran out of fuel or one of them got in a lucky shot and took her down, that’d be one thing. But they were on a bombing run. They had to escort the one bigger, slower plane in the center of their pack over the enemy lines and into position before it let loose its cargo.
Enemy lines.
They hadn’t been enemy lines two months ago. The ground forces of the East Wind Dominion had taken one of their last outposts. Now, they were going to blow it to smithereens in hopes it might rob the East Wind’s army of what they had stolen.
Or at least taken a few of the bastards out in the process.
She turned her attention back to the black dots on the horizon. Rose hoped that the East Wind Airforce’s sluggish and lackluster response meant she and the rest had caught the East Wind’s forces off guard.
She’d take whatever small favors she was granted by the gods at this point.
The other option was that this was a trap. If the Easties knew what they were planning, they’d be hopelessly outmatched. Like they usually were.
They only had another mile or two to go before they were ready for the bomber to drop its payload. Then, they’d turn around and hightail it back to the mountain base they were using as their last refuge against the encroaching East Wind army.
Last refuge. She sighed and felt her shoulders slump. It really was their last outpost against the Dominion. If they lost it, it was all over.
She knew the bombing run was a stall tactic. It was all a stall tactic. This was a losing battle they were fighting. But fights like theirs…it wasn’t about winning. It was about standing up for what was right.
Movement to her left caught her attention, and she looked over as a plane dropped down from above to fall in formation with her. It wasn’t black and yellow like the East Wind planes, instead decorated with blue and white paint. The plane was bigger and slower than hers. She had to ease off the throttle a bit as to not blow ahead of him. There was a reason that plane was slower. It had four massive guns strapped to it instead of the typical one.
Jamie and The Freedom.
More like Jamie and The Overkill. She smiled. She teased him mercilessly about it, but she was the one who outfitted his plane with that rig, after all. She tried not to make fun of him too much. Most of the time, anyway.
The guns served a purpose, though. Jamie’s plane could punch enough holes through a airplane hangar to take it to the ground. Those guns were serious business. He had even taken a few of the East Wind’s zeppelins out of the sky. Those giant, armored behemoths were notoriously hard to take out.
She smiled and lifted her gloved hand to wave at him. He waved back, his white scarf whipping in the wind behind him. She didn’t wear a scarf like the other pilots. She had her own, built-in solution for that. Her long, fire-red braid that flew in the wind behind her. Whenever Jamie would throw his scarf over his shoulder before takeoff, she’d do the same with her braid. Mostly to annoy him.
Short of shooting East Wind planes out of the sky, that was her second favorite hobby in the world—teasing the ace pilot that was the captain of their squadron. Jamie was everything a leader should be: brave, kind, funny, and not too serious.
And cute.
Oh, man, he was cute.
Distractingly cute. It made it fun to knock him down a peg when she could. He took it in stride. And sometimes, just sometimes, she wondered if he didn’t like the attention. He’d come watch her work on the planes, help her by handing her tools as she tinkered on and repaired their fleet. Sometimes Jamie would often just sit there on a crate and chat with her—to keep her company because nobody else would, he said. He’d call her a charity case and hand her a beer. She knew he enjoyed teasing her just as much as she did him.
A bit of turbulence rocked her plane and brought her attention back to the matter at hand—where it should be. Not daydreaming off in la-la land like it usually was. Her mind was like a rogue sheep sometimes, just heading off into the fields eating grass, without any semblance of a care for where it was or where it should be. Typical her.
And boy, did it pick bad times to wander.
Two black Assassin IIs dove just short of her nose, causing her to pull back on the stick and pedal hard to one side. A blur of blue to her left, and she knew Jamie had broken formation as well.
Where the hell had they come from? She had been watching the four enemy planes off on the horizon! Where in the name of—
Something blotted out the sun.
There weren’t any clouds today.
As she pulled her plane around and looked up at the sky, she felt fear for the first time that day. Not adrenaline, not excitement—real fear.
Now she knew where the two Assassins had come from.
A zeppelin.
Not a normal one, either.
This was a big one.
The enormous, slow-moving flying fortress hovered over them like the specter of death. And it might as well have been. She’d never seen one like that before. It was easily five times the size of the biggest East Wind zeppelin she’d ever faced.
Dropping from the structure beneath the large silvery balloon were Assassin planes. A dozen of them or more. The machinery that ejected them caught the light, whirring wheels that fed the planes into the air. Plane after plane was dispensed into the fray.
Massive machineguns were pushing out from ports on the walls of the structure. Taking aim.
The fight had been almost even before. But now?
Now they were done for.
That’s all that ran through her mind as she yanked up hard on the stick, pulling the nose of her plane up perpendicular to the ground. They had to retreat. They had to abandon their mission. One sight of the flying fortress and they all knew what to do.
Halfway through a hammerhead turn, using the stalling forward momentum to turn back around in the middle of a dive, a white tracer whizzed past her head. Too close! Too—
A hole. Neat, tidy, and small, punched through the top left wing of her plane. Then another. Then another, in a perfect line. She veered, rolling her plane over and out of the way.
“Damn it!”
The whistle of air over the holes was loud enough she could hear it. The high-pitched sound a foreboding thing over the roar of her engine. Luckily, her steel wings could take more hits than fabric ones. But it could only take so much. She pushed the throttle to full, diving and weaving, heading for the tree line.
Glancing over her shoulder, and she saw she wasn’t alone. Two more of the black planes were following her in perfect formation.
She had one shot. There was a river up ahead. Tracers whipped past her as she swerved. She was faster than them, but not faster than their bullets.
As soon as she reached the river, she pulled up sharp into a loop. She knew they’d follow. Halfway through the loop she rolled over and aimed the nose of her plane straight down. Straight into another perfect, terrifying dive. Right for the river.
Normally this wasn’t the time to lay on the throttle.
But that’s exactly what she did.
And if they wanted to keep up with her, they’d have to follow suit.
She didn’t dare glance back behind her shoulder to see if the two hornet-looking bastards were still behind her. The tracers in the air gave her the answer. They were coming for her—and coming for her hard.
She knew why. They hated her. All the East Wind Airforce fighters were after her as a trophy kill. They had good reason to want her dead. For the past five years, she’d been—no pun intended—a proverbial thorn in their collective sides. Taking her out of the sky would be a mark of pride. Maybe they’d throw a holiday for whoever finally managed to take her down. They’d get promoted, certainly. They’d be on the cover of the newspaper or be featured on the radio.
If they even did things like that for the stupid cogs who served in the East Wind, or any of the Dominions for that matter. She honestly didn’t know.
The people who lived in the Eastern Dominion were just part of their greater machine. Just nameless, pointless faces in the crowd. All their planes looked the same. None of them had any markings or uniqueness. They were just a force of nature. She assumed that the men behind the joysticks were the same.
Her mind really did pick stupid times to wander.
The river was growing bigger in her field of view. Closer. Looking at the world like this—straight on—wasn’t the natural way of things. But she found it fun all the same. The river was getting dangerously close now.
But she had to wait a little longer.
Just a little longer.
Wait for it…
Now!
Rose yanked back on the stick, pulling out of the dive. She screamed—half in terror, half in exhilaration—as the force of the sudden change slammed her into her seat. Her plane groaned and creaked, not wanting to pull as sharp as she was demanding. The stick threatened to jump out of her hand. Grabbing it with her metal left hand and squeezing tight, it had no choice but to obey.
Maybe the wings would snap off.
Maybe she’d crash.
Maybe the stick would snap off in her hand. That’d happened to her once or twice before. That was a bad way to end a day.
“C’mon…c’mon.” She was half begging her plane. “If I die, you die!”
Her wheels broke the surface of the water. She felt the drag. But she was level. She pulled up, yanking her wheels back out of the river. She was only a few feet from the surface—but she’d made it out of her dive.
A thunderous splash behind her told her the two Assassin planes hadn’t faired similarly. She looked over her shoulder to see the crumpled planes sinking quickly into the water, the force of the impact on the surface having turned their wood and metal frames into tangled heaps.
All she could think of to do was throw her arms in the air and whoop in joy.
Turning back to the front, she screamed.
Oh shit! Trees!
***
“What the hell happened to you?”
Rose yanked on the evergreen branch that was stuck in the spokes of her wings. Two more tugs and it came free. The paint on the sides of her plane was ruined, the roses both nearly scratched off. She could still taste pinesap. She knew it was also in her hair. Her gloves kept sticking to her pants and her coat and anything else she touched. “Stop laughing, Jamie.”
“I ain’t laughing,” he replied from where he was standing, leaning up against the bay door near her. He might not be laughing, but he was wearing a stupid, incredibly wide, and face-splitting smile.
“Yeah you are.”
“Do you hear me laughing?”
“No, but I know you. You might as well be laughing.” She took hold of another branch and yanked. This one was stuck good. She yanked harder, put her weight into it, and then it snapped. The sudden and unexpected release sent her sprawling backward. She landed on her ass with a hard unf! To add insult to injury, the tree branch was on top of her.
Great. More pinesap.
Jamie cackled. “Now I’m laughing!”
“Shut up.”
“Spoilsport.” He walked up to help pull the tree limb away and offered her a hand up. She took it, and he hefted her easily onto her feet. She was short—just about five foot two. He was six foot on the nose, and he picked her up like she didn’t weigh a thing. “You okay there, short-stack?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She brushed some pine needles off her arm and sighed in dismay as a few of them stuck. She looked over at her plane. It was scratched up, and she’d need to redo the paint, but it was okay. She walked over to the wing and stuck her finger into one of the bullet holes in her wing. “I should get a start on fixing this.”
“It can wait, can’t it?” Jamie nudged her shoulder. “It’s dinner. C’mon.”
“But…” She hated leaving her plane in anything but pristine condition. Her stomach rumbled, answering for her. “Oh, fine. But I’m going to shower first. I need to get this sap out of my hair. I probably look like a wreck.”
“You look fine!” Jamie nudged her again. He was like an over-eager puppy when he was hungry. “I promise, you look fine.” He was almost dancing from one foot to the other.
She shot him a glance over her shoulder, one that made it very clear she didn’t believe him.
“But it’s mashed potato night. I wanna get to it before it’s cold.” He grabbed her by both shoulders now and shook her. “Mashed potatoes, Rose!”
She laughed and whirled around, batting his hands away from her. “Okay, okay. Let’s go. I could use a beer.” He really was adorable, and she had a hard time telling him no. It didn’t help that her heart seemed to pick up the pace a notch every time he smiled at her. Rumors had always circulated that the two of them were a thing. Often, she found herself wishing they weren’t rumors.
The huge metal door that covered the hangar door slammed shut. The boom reverberated loudly. She jumped a bit at the noise. It always startled her, no matter how many times she heard it. The hangar was huge and built into the side of a mountain. When the door was shut, it disappeared to the prying eyes of planes or anybody overhead who didn’t know where they were.
Looking around the main hangar where her plane was stowed off to the wall, she took a quick count. “I’m glad you made it back in once piece. How many did we lose?”
Jamie’s face fell. The humor was gone. “Two that I saw. Jim and Bill. Still waiting on Charlie, Susan, and Maureen.” He shoved his hands into his leather coat pockets. “Still waiting to see if they make it back.”
The closed hangar door said otherwise. There wasn’t any more waiting. Not when there was a risk of being found. Two dead. Three missing. She cringed and shut her eyes. Five more lost from their already small and waning ranks. She wished she could mourn them. She really did. But losses like these were common. Far too common.
If nobody died in a week it was a miracle. That was the cost of war. Especially a war like theirs. A hopeless, one-sided “war.” One that was probably more of an annoyance to the East Wind than an actual threat.
Back in the day, they were a force of thousands. Tens of thousands. The whole countryside banding together to stand against the expanding Four Dominions. But that was back when the war began, fifteen years ago.
That was before there was a new leader of the East Wind. The old one hadn’t been nearly so cutthroat. So…effective. Five years ago, the new leader had stepped up to replace the old Cardinal. It was impossible to win a war against an army of soldiers who felt no mercy and no pity.
But they had to try.
Before the four Dominions swept over the rest of the globe and claimed it for their own like it didn’t matter. Like there wasn’t another way to live that wasn’t inside a world that treated people like parts in a machine.
And Rose liked machines.
Hell, she loved them. She spent more time with machinery than she did other people.
But there was a time and place for everything. She took pride in the fact that her comrades had fallen for a cause they believed in. Sometimes that was all a person could ask for.
“Mashed potatoes, Rose! Mashed potatoes!” Jamie laughed and pulled her into a hug. He smelled like gas fumes, grease, and leather. She liked it way more than she probably should. He had a strong frame. Nice arms. Nice…everything, honestly. The gesture was supposed to be friendly. It shouldn’t make her cheeks go warm. But here she was. Blushing, and contemplating grabbing his ass.
“I know.”
“Hey,” he said down to her as he held her in the hug. She wound her arms around him and returned the gesture. Even if he was a little too broad-chested for her to get her arms all the way around him. She had to design his plane bigger than the rest to fit him. Most pilots weren’t built like he was. But she wouldn’t complain. This felt nice. Just a little too nice.
Wait, was he still talking? Focus, Rose!
Yup, he was still talking. “It’s how it goes. They knew the risks.”
“I know.” At least she didn’t have to worry about their families. Nobody in their squadron had families. They were sent on the hard missions—the suicide runs. They banned anybody from flying with them who had anything but themselves to lose.
But it still sucked to lose each other.
She squeezed him tighter.
“Hey! Don’t crush me with that thing.” Jamie laughed.
“I wasn’t going to crush you.” She let go of the hug to poke him in the chest. “I have perfect control over it.”
“Yeah, sure. Sure.” He grinned cheekily. “I’m still curious about, and a little afraid of, what you could do to a guy with that.” He glanced down at her hand that was still hovering close to his chest. She’d taken her gloves off. The overhead lights glinted off her fingers, glinting a shade of amber on their steel surface.
The Steel Rose.
Both the plane, and her.
It was a bad pun, she knew.
Turning her hand over, she moved her fingers, watching the seams in the joints slide along each other. There weren’t any gaps bigger than a thirty-second of an inch or less. She had worked a long, long time on the design. It was the only thing she was prouder of than her plane.
“Still wonder what that thing’d feel like. Y’know. For science,” Jamie teased.
Take a bad thing and make it better. That was how she tried to look at the world. She looked up at Jamie and winked at him playfully. “Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll find out. For science.”
He laughed at her flirtatious reply to his equally flirtatious joke and went to go say something clever to respond. He never got the chance before a far-too-familiar sound interrupted him.
The air raid siren.
Chapter Two
They were safe. Well, they were safe for now.
Maybe.
They were underground, after all. Their whole base was built into the side of the mountain. The East Wind would be crazy to try and reach them here.
Right?
There were roads that ran up to the base through the woods and the hillside, but they were heavily patrolled and the closer you got, the more risk you ran of stepping on a mine. The forces of the East Wind Dominion knew the hills belonged to the “rebels,” and they hadn’t advanced nearly this far into the countryside. They were meticulous in how they moved their borders, and this kind of move would be too much of a gamble for them.
The East Wind wasn’t known for taking risks, let alone against “rebels.”
It was a horrible thing to call them. This wasn’t a rebellion. The East Wind Dominion’s forces were invading. It was a completely different thing. But that’s what the radio said, every time she turned it on and caught some of the stations that could reach that far from the Dominion’s border.
“The noble forces of our great Cardinal Wind have battled the rebels further back from the northern line. On Tuesday, the 47th Battalion retook the Rohne River,” they would say, or something of the like. The details were always different, but the tone and the meaning were always the same.
They were winning. Rose’s side was losing. They were thriving. Rose’s side was dying. Their world was expanding—and hers was shrinking.
Boom.
The rumble of bombs brought her out of her daydreaming. She looked up to the ceiling at the low bass vibration that shook the rock and the steel that made up the base. The Easties didn’t know where they were attacking—they were just laying down a blanket of explosions in hopes that one of them might get lucky. Hoping they might get a lead on their base’s location.
The moment the East Wind learned where they were? That was the end of it all. But for now, they were safe.
It didn’t stop everybody from hunkering down where they felt the most secure. There were a few hundred people living in the bunker. Some were refugees who stayed to help the war efforts. Most were soldiers. Pilots, like her and her squadron—or ground fighters. Most people went to the barracks or offices to take shelter.
With every low rumble, people grew tense. Waited to see if the next bomb was the one that would bring the ceiling down on them. But nobody made a sound, as if they worried that their very fear would help shake the foundations of their home.
Her?
She followed Jamie to the war room.
After a pitstop to the mess hall for mashed potatoes, anyway.
Jamie wasn’t concerned. Not only was he the senior-ranking pilot, but he’d been through more of these air raids than anyone else. Not to mention, nobody was surprised when he showed up and wanted food in the middle of the overhead explosions.
They walked into the war room together. She was his second-in-command, and honestly, they were rarely seen apart. The rumors had always flown that there was something else going on between the two of them.
Maybe there would be, if there wasn’t a war going on.
The soldiers that guarded the door smiled at them and stood aside as they walked past. The room was crowded, with people sitting around eagerly to listen to the radio and watch the radar sweeps as the East Wind’s bombers flew overhead.
As they walked in, a guy sitting at a table by the door passed them each a beer in a dark brown glass bottle. “Hey, Willie. Thanks.” A beer sounded great. She sipped it. It wasn’t great—they made it themselves—but it’d do. Alcohol was alcohol.
“No problem, Rose.” Will sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Sorry about today.”
“It happens.”
“More often than not, huh?”
“Seems it.”
“What the hell happened to you?” Willie looked up at her curiously. “Get into a fight with a shrub? You look like shit.”
Rose shot a glare to Jamie, who only grinned sheepishly into his own beer.
“Yeah. I pretty much did just that, Willie.” She patted the man on the shoulder and walked away from him. The room was quiet and serious. It wasn’t the time to chat. Jamie took a seat on a bench by one wall and patted the spot next to him. She sat down and leaned back on the rough-hewn wall, picking the knots and bits of pinesap out of the end of her braid. The tightly-wound strands kept her hair from becoming a horrid mess in flight, but the end of it wasn’t saved from the torment. It always took her some time to get it back to normal.
“Eight O’Niner. Four-seven. Heading.”
“Copy, Twelve. Four-seven.”
The grainy-sounding voices came over the shortwave radio by the wall. It was tuned into a frequency that they knew some of the East Wind forces used. Their pilots had on-board radios, unlike theirs. She was jealous of them, being able to communicate with each other while airborne like that. They had to rely on being close enough to see hand signals.
But not the Dominion. They had a kind of technology that nobody had ever seen before. On-board radios. Electric-start planes. Their flying zeppelin fortresses. That was only the beginning of the rumors she’d heard about what they had in their capitol city, Euros.
The conversations they were having were normal. Mundane. Setting headings. Reading off to each other how many payloads they had left on board. This was a run to the corner store to them. They did this every time the “rebel” forces made themselves known.
A deep rumbling boom.
The lights flickered.
For a moment, she held her breath, wondering if that was it. But the lights went low, then flickered back up to normal again. She let out her breath.
An arm circled her shoulder. Looking up at Jamie, she smiled. “What?” She kept her voice low. The room was still too tense, too nervous to do otherwise.
“Nervous?” he whispered.
“No. Are you?”
“Maybe.” He grinned down at her. His eyes were as blue as the sky. She always found them fascinating. But if she stared too long, he’d get the wrong idea. “Hold me until I’m not scared anymore, Rose.”
Or was it the wrong idea? Here he was, sitting with his arm around her, after all. “People’re going to start to talk, y’know.” She kept her voice as quiet as she could and still have him hear her. It was a fib. They already talked.
“About what?” He pulled her into his side, and she let him. He’d showered since they got back. Now he smelled like grease, burnt fuel, leather, and soap. She still wouldn’t complain. She had been too worried about her plane to take a shower, and now she regretted it.
She sipped her beer, smiling, her face just warm enough to let her know she was blushing. But she let them fall into silence. Jamie and she had been doing this dance for a long time—almost for as long as they’d known each other. Flirting. Teasing. Getting close to something happening, then backing away. It wasn’t the appropriate time. This was a war they were fighting, after all.
Any day, either of them—or both—might not come back.
It wasn’t fair to the one left alive. So, they kept up the game. She trusted Jamie with her life. They were good friends. He was the only one she let tease her about her arm. Everybody else just stared at it funny. She usually kept it covered with her coat and wore gloves to hide her hand. It wasn’t normal. She wasn’t normal.
She put her hand over her metal wrist and just held onto it. It was hard. Steel was, after all. It didn’t feel like a normal arm. Not to the touch, and not when touching things, either. Everything she felt with it was just kind of muted. Like she was a little numb. She got used to it over time. It wasn’t apparent unless she focused on it.
But people didn’t have prosthetics like hers. What she wore—what she had made for herself—was impossible. Like most of what she built. The worst part was, she didn’t know how it worked. She doodled something down, then put the welder to steel and the hammer to iron and it just happened.
A couple of times people had whispered about her being a witch or a demon. But her planes had never been shot down. Her guns never jammed. Her arm…just worked. It’s hard to hate something when it’s on your side.
She adjusted the strap of her glove on her left hand, fidgeting with it absent-mindedly. Making sure none of the metal showed between it and the cuff of her brown leather coat. People stared whenever her arm was out in the open.
But not Jamie.
It didn’t bother him. He teased her about it, sure. But she teased him about plenty. But never once did he seem uncomfortable about it. He poked at it a few times, asked to see inside the plating, but never more than that. He treated her like her. Not a commodity. Not like an asset.
Just Rose.
Once again, she had stopped paying attention.
“Eight-zero, do you see that?”
“Copy Seven-six. I see it.”
“Target.”
The boom was louder. Closer. Everything rattled. She shrunk closer to Jamie. He held her tighter. Everyone looked up at the ceiling…and waited. Waited to see if it would all come down. Waited to see if this was the end.
Bits of rock rained down, bouncing off the tables covered with maps and other paperwork. One of the commanders brushed his hand across them, clearing away the debris.
Then came the words that sent cold pouring down her spine like someone had dumped ice down the back of her shirt.
“Location confirmed.”
The voice said it so flatly, so unemotional, it felt like an insult to injury. They didn’t care. This was inevitable to them. This was just another day.
The room gasped collectively. A few of the officers stood up and went to their radios or their telegraph machines.
Jamie swore and stood up. “All right. Scatter the planes. Let’s drive them off.”
“Roger.” Rose stood up with him, downed the rest of her beer in one go, and put the empty bottle on the bench. “I’ll get the others.”
The voice on the radio froze them all in their tracks.
“Ground forces. Advance. Take the base.”
“You’re kidding…” Who said it, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. They were only saying what everybody was thinking.
The ground around their base was littered with mines. It would be certain death to anybody who dare approach the base on foot. But the armies that the East Wind fought with…didn’t care about death.
Not because they were that dedicated.
But because they weren’t human.
The legends and rumors had flown far and wide about the machines that fought in the front lines of the invading forces of the Dominion of the east. The rumor was they weren’t even men in armor. They weren’t men at all.
Robots.
Fully autonomous machines.
Monstrosities of steel and bolts and wiring that only had one purpose—to kill whoever they were told to kill.
Rose knew they weren’t just rumors. She knew perfectly well how real they were. She had seen them first-hand, five years ago. Her hand went to her left shoulder, squeezing the metal tight. It didn’t matter how many of them got blown up. It didn’t matter how many fell. The East Wind’s robots would get through.
The ground forces were here. Her people were all going to die. Every single one of them.
One of the lieutenants spun around in his chair, his radio headphone pressed to one ear. “The order is to evacuate. Everyone out. Now. Out the mountain hatch.”
Everyone was suddenly in motion. The commanders were on their radios, scrambling troops. They knew this might happen. It was always a very real possibility. They had drilled for this. But now that it was real, it carried the sharp edge of panic alongside it that made everyone move just a little too fast. A little too nervously.
“C’mon, Rose. We need to go.” Jamie had her wrist in his hand, squeezing it tight as they headed for the door like everyone else.
“My plane can’t fly. I haven’t fixed it yet and—”
“We’re not taking the planes, Rosey. You know that.” Jamie’s voice was thin and tight. So much so that for a second, she didn’t realize what he’d called her. He’d never called her that before. If she weren’t so afraid, she’d be touched. Maybe even giddy about having a nickname.
But they were in a crowd of people now. It wasn’t the time to think about it. Dozens of people around them pushed and shoved, all heading toward the narrow passageways that would lead to the mountains in different areas. Splitting up was the best bet. They might catch some of them, but they might not get all of them.
An explosion rumbled through the stone. Too big, too close…too loud. The doors. They were coming in.
But Rose and the others were almost to the passageways. They were almost to safety. Once they were through, she could figure it out then. Everyone was moving like a wave, unstoppable, not even sentient now. They were just a mass of panic and the desire to break free.
They didn’t even have time to get belongings or survival gear. Out in the wilderness, they might not survive. But in here? With the East Wind’s forces? They wouldn’t survive. A gamble was better than a certainty. It was a risk they were all willing to take.
Just a few more corners.
Just a few more doors.
Then they’d be in the clear.
The sound of metal on stone. Hollow. A clang. Something up ahead was blocking the way. There was a whirring noise. She didn’t know what it was. It started low, then spun up louder and higher-pitched, like an engine spinning up. But it didn’t sound like any engine she knew.
And then, came a voice. It was empty, metallic, and hollow. Just like the sound of its steps on the ground.
“HALT.”
***
They had been crowded like animals, scrambling for freedom as they tried to make their way to the tunnels. Now, they were being herded like animals into a pen. It didn’t take long for a group of people to be reduced to livestock. Just a few seconds. Just one shift of power, and they might as well have been sheep to the slaughter. And with such relatively little fussing, too.
It had only taken a few shots from kind of gun that she’d never seen before—something that seemingly shot light itself—to get them to obey.
The few who tried to fight back? The ones who tried to strike back against the figure of brass that vaguely resembled a man in form alone? There wasn’t anything left of them. One blast from the “gun” that seemed to be a part of the thing’s arm, and they were reduced to ash.
People stopped fighting after that. They fell in line. Cattle. Herd mentality created by the need for self-preservation. Rose had seen it before, thanks to this damned war. She saw it when she lost her home to the Dominion fifteen years ago. And now, she was going to lose this one too.
Every step their herd took meant it was one more step that they would be alive. One more obedient movement was one they wouldn’t have otherwise. Life was measured now in seconds. And every second came with the hope of just one more. Just one more.
But they were all dead.
She knew it. They all knew it.
It was just a matter of which second was going to be their last.
But why gather them all together?
They were pushed into the large hangar bay that was their runway. The large doors that led out of the mountainside were blown wide open. Something big had hit them—the giant steel doors were curled in like the peel of an orange. Like they weren’t a foot thick.
That was the first thing that struck her. The second…was how many of them there were. Men and robots alike. Standing in formations around the room in rows. Vehicles were parked around the hangar—makes and designs she didn’t recognize, but the shining black paint and the yellow circular insignia like a compass gave away who they belonged to.
Rows of men in black military garb with yellow highlights stood at attention, most holding guns. There were a few others who weren’t armed or standing at attention—commanders, she realized.
But they were all overshadowed, literally and figuratively, by the creatures of metal that were peppered around the room or standing in formation. They were beautiful in their articulation and detail. Decorative fins and grooves were carefully stamped into the metal. They were neat. Tidy. Immaculate. If they weren’t so terrifying, she’d find them fascinating. But they were death machines, made to kill.
She stood close to Jamie, trying to find comfort in whatever she could. He reached down and took her right hand, squeezing it through her glove.
She squeezed back.
They were pushed into rows. The men in the black uniforms were barking orders at them until their group of fifty or so all stood single-file, shoulder to shoulder. It was an execution line. She could see others around the hangar arranged the same way. How many had escaped? Anyone at all? It was so hard to tell.
I’m going to die here. I’m going to die.
She was fighting in a war. She was a pilot on the front lines. She knew this was how it was going to end. But she wanted to go down in a blaze of glory. Not like this. Not like—
Someone in the line tried to run.
Bam.
He fell to the ground, unmoving. Crimson began to pool on the pavement around him. A single bullet—efficiently put straight through his head. She swallowed down the bile in her throat and tried to breathe. She squeezed Jamie’s hand harder.
A car pulled up in front of them, doors parallel to them, and stopped. The black paint, perfectly polished, shone in the overhead light. The back door opened, and a man climbed out. Judging by his uniform—and how the men around him saluted—he was high-ranking. His hair was short, dark, and his eyes were quick to scan the line, passing along each of them as if measuring them instantly and finding them all lacking. His features were handsome, clean-shaven, and brisk.
He stepped up to the line and folded his hands neatly at his back. “I will first begin by commending you. This little hive has been troublesome to eliminate. You have done well to be such an annoyance for so long. But today, it ends. Today, you may choose who lives or dies.”
What is he going on about?
“We have captured The Freedom and The Steel Rose. We have the planes, at least. Now, we want the pilots. We will make examples of them. But that doesn’t mean the rest of you must die for them.”
Shit.
None of the pilots wore identification for this very reason. None of them wore patches or badges or marks of pride in their professions. They all tried to blend in as best they could. Rose fixed her gaze on the floor between her feet, feeling adrenaline turn her face warm. She tried her best to stay calm and to keep her breathing even. Hopefully, she just looked terrified like the rest of them. And not like she’d just been called on in class and she hadn’t done her homework. And if her teacher were threatening to shoot her if she answered wrong.
“Tell us who they are and most of you will live. Most of you will be given fruitful, bountiful lives as part of the Dominion.”
“As your slaves!” Someone piped up from the line.
Bam.
They collapsed to the ground. Unmoving. Bleeding. A single neat hole in their heads.
She was shaking now, her human hand sweating in her glove. She didn’t want to die. She really didn’t want to die.
“I do hope that wasn’t one of the two we’re looking for,” the commander sighed. “Now. Point out to me the pilots of the two planes we’ve named, and the rest of you live. Stay silent, and we’ll kill you all, one by one. Today, their lives are forfeit, regardless of what you choose. Save your own lives and do the smart thing.”
Silence.
Bam.
Another person in the line fell.
Bam.
And then another.
The commander was pacing back and forth in front of them idly. “We don’t care if you all die. It is by the graciousness of the Cardinal himself that he allows you to join his country. His ranks. Your silence is only hurting yourselves.”
Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
“Enough!” Jamie.
No!
Jamie pushed forward out of the line, and she tried to yank him back. But it was too late. He pushed her hand away. “I’m the pilot of The Freedom. Stop this senseless death!”
“It’s only senseless to those who can’t see the greater good. You are insects, harming the crops that feed the whole. Yet you cry when we exterminate the hive.” The commander walked up to Jamie and smiled at him. It was the first show of emotion the man had displayed since he had climbed out of the car. “Now. Where is the other one?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie lied through a snarl. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Oh, really?”
Bam.
Another person in line fell and joined the rest. Someone sobbed from Rose’s right.
“Stop it!” Jamie shouted. “I’m here. That’s enough! Stop this.”
“I asked for both of you. I see only the one.” The commander shrugged.
Bam.
“I’m so sorry,” somebody murmured next to her. A hand on her back suddenly pushed her forward. “That’s her. That’s the pilot.”
She turned back to look at who had betrayed her. He looked like just a kid. Maybe eighteen—maybe not. He was terrified, shaking and crying.
“I’m sorry,” the kid murmured again. “I don’t…I don’t wanna die.”
“Yeah. Neither do I.” She felt her heart crack in half. But she couldn’t blame the boy for what he’d done. She should have stepped forward on her own. But she, like him, was afraid.
“Oh? And what’s this?” Came the commander’s voice. Close to her. She whirled, not having realized he had walked over. He was taller than her—not hard, she was short—and he was eying her curiously.
His gaze swept down over her, over her leather coat, white shirt, jeans, and then back up to her face. He arched an eyebrow…and laughed.
“What?” she had to ask.
“You? You’re the pilot of the metal scourge?”
“I’m no scourge, you rancid piece of cow turd,” she glared up at him, finding her bravery in her indignancy. “You’re the—”
A hand across her face nearly sent her to the ground. It shut her up real fast. “Take her and the other one to the center of the room. I want them all to see.”
Hands grabbed her by the back of the coat and dragged her, uncaring for whether or not she could keep up. “I can walk! I can walk.” She shoved them away. Jamie was next to her, being nudged along by another man with a very large gun. She reached for his hand, and he took hers quickly.
“How sweet.” The commander said from behind them.
“Screw off,” she shot over her shoulder at him.
“Watch your words.”
“What’re you going to do? Kill me harder?”
The commander laughed. It was a chilling, mirthless sound. “I can make it hurt.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie said down to her and hugged her close as they walked. “It’s okay. It’ll be over soon.”
“That’s far enough.” Fifty paces away from the line of prisoners and the black vehicle the commander had arrived in was enough to put them in the center of everything. Looking around now, she could see how utterly hopeless it was. Not just their situation—but the whole dang war. They looked like a bunch of farmers compared to this fighting force. And really, honestly, they kind of were.
They were going to die.
More than that—they were going to lose.
The thud of heavy metal feet heralded how right Jamie was. It really was going to be over soon. One of those giant metal robots—towering well over eight feet tall, stomped up to stand beside the commander.
“Can I say goodbye to my friend?” Jamie asked, sounding shockingly calm. “Please.”
The commander sighed. “Very well.”
Jamie turned to her, and taking her by the shoulders, pulled her into his arms. He squeezed her tight and placed a kiss on the top of her head. “It’s been an honor, a pleasure, and a joy to fly with you, Rose.”
Tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t swallow the rock in her throat, it just wouldn’t go away. Looking up to him, her vision blurred as she clutched at the leather of his coat. No, please. No, not like this… “Jamie, I—”
He silenced her with a kiss. Her heart leapt up to replace the rock as he cradled her head in his hands. It wasn’t a friendly kiss. It wasn’t chaste, either. It was desperate, passionate, and she wanted to explode from it. It was the kiss of a man who knew he wouldn’t get a second one.
She kissed him back. Kissed him back with everything she had. With the crush and all the feelings she regretted never acting on. The love she never let herself feel for him because of what it might cost them. But now they were going to lose it all anyway. It didn’t matter anymore.
“How charmingly tragic.”
The whirr of machinery caught her attention. They broke off the kiss and she turned to look at the commander and the robot at his side. The whirr was the gun on its arm booting up. It was glowing bright yellow now—like lightning in a storm. It was hard to look at.
“Ladies first. Start with the woman. It would be cruel to have her watch him die.”
“YES, SIR.”
It raised its arm and pointed the gun straight at her. She stepped away from Jamie, not wanting him to get caught in the blast. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I—I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon, Rosey.”
The whir reached the high point.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight. And waited.
And waited.
The gun spun down.
“What are you doing?” The commander asked the robot.
“ERROR. ORDER IN VIOLATION OF PROTOCOL FOUR.”
She opened her eyes and looked up and saw the robot had disengaged its gun and lowered its arm. The commander was looking up at it, confused and bewildered. He sighed. “Malfunctioning pile of scrap metal.” Pulling his coat aside, he pulled a handgun out of its holster. “I’ll do it myself, then.”
Her stay of execution lasted precisely sixty seconds.
Clicking the safety back, the commander pointed the barrel at her.
Another voice broke into the moment. Cold, quiet, and something about it terrified her to the core.
“Stay your weapon, commander.”
