Page 65 of Stalk the Sky

The chattering of a machine gun tore Fieran out of his thoughts and back into the moment. Right. Middle of battle. Not the time to be dwelling on the Mongavarian strategy. Right now, he needed to focus on his surroundings.

Fieran absently let his magic consume the bullets. All around, the fog and smoke of gunpowder choked the air so thickly he couldn’t see more than a few yards at a time. Alliance and Mongavarian airships locked in battle, pounding away at each other. Aeroplanes whipped about. Even as Fieran watched, a Mongavarian aeroplane burst into flames and spiraled toward the sea.

Tiny and Murray circled a Mongavarian airship. Murray tossed his prepared magic, and Tiny blasted out his magic, turning the water into a shard of ice that he used to tear through the airship. In between blasting out magic, the two of them fended off several enemy aeroplanes.

“Merrik, on your six!” Lije’s voice came over the radio as he and Pretty Face roared by.

“Merrik, go low!” Fieran yanked his control stick and shoved the rudder with his feet, turning his aeroplane up and to the left. The motion slowed his aeroplane, putting it right in the path of the oncoming aeroplane.

The Mongavarian pilot tried to dive in Merrik’s wake, but Fieran blasted out a bolt of his magic, slicing through the aeroplane’s propeller, carving into the engine, and melting the two machine guns mounted on the nose. The aeroplane plunged from the sky, headed for a watery grave in the sea.

Fieran turned his aeroplane back to the right and down, falling into place behind and above Merrik. “Sweep under this airship.”

Merrik soared into a curve under the airship’s gondola, taking them out of the line of fire of an oncoming Alliance airship. The gun emplacement on the bottom of the gondola swung to follow Merrik’s flyer.

Fieran aimed at the gun with his own guns, letting off a short burst of machine gun fire to distract the gunners from Merrik.

They swung the gun toward Fieran. Big mistake. Even as they opened fire, Fieran blasted upward and outward with his magic, consuming the bullets, the machine gun, and licking up the underside of the gondola. With a surge of power, he poured his magic over the airship, devouring the metal, the wood, the canvas.

He didn’t let himself think about the bodies, the blood and the bones his magic also touched and tore. This was war. Some would survive by parachuting into the ocean. But plenty wouldn’t.

Two Mongavarian aeroplanes swooped toward them, machine guns already blasting.

“Focus on the airship.” Merrik swerved his aeroplane to face the enemy head-on. His aeroplane shuddered as he let loose with a burst of machine gun fire.

Fieran resisted the urge to tear his magic away from the airship to protect Merrik. He had to trust Merrik had this.

As he and Merrik swept out from under the airship, the airship gave a groan as it began sinking toward the ocean, the balloons and dirigible in tatters.

A terrific boom shattered the air as a column of fire and black smoke blasted into the air from the sea below. Something that almost felt solid blasted into Fieran’s aeroplane, shoving him upward and outward with a battering force.

Fieran struggled to breathe as he fought the stick to regain control of his aeroplane.

Merrik’s flyer, too, was shoved to the side. One of the Mongavarian aeroplanes tipped on the side before stalling, loosing all lift to the wings. It tumbled into a spin, disappearing into the smoke and fog so Fieran couldn’t see if the pilot had regained control.

“What was that?” Lije sounded shaken. At least he was still alive somewhere in this chaos.

“An explosion.” Stickyfingers wasn’t cackling in glee anymore.

“A ship blew up.”

“One of ours?”

“Can’t tell.”

Fieran leaned over the side of his aeroplane, but he couldn’t see any details in the smoke and fire and fog. A few other gray shapes moved about, tongues of orange fire and black smoke blasting from the muzzles of the great guns on the turrets.

Nothing he could do to help the surface navy until he took out the airships first.

“Listen up, here’s the plan.” Fieran waited a beat for the radio to fall silent—or mostly silent. Flight A continued talking in elvish, but their chatter was quieter and involved less shouting and cursing than Flight B had been exchanging. “I need to focus on taking down these airships. Merrik, Lije, and Pretty Face, converge on me and keep the enemy aeroplanes off my back. The rest of you, forget the airships. Focus on taking down the enemy aeroplanes.”

As his men chorused their acknowledgment, Fieran pointed his aeroplane toward the next Mongavarian airship.

Chapter

Nineteen

Pip and the other mechanics—Escarlish, elven, and troll—huddled around the radio at the back of the hangar, listening to Fieran and his squadron as they fought in the skies over the islands.

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