Standby rotations were easier on Elliot than on many of his colleagues. Most of his drills for that day had gone up in smoke and, with it, all his regular entertainment. Even then, he was not averse to wasting away a good few hours napping in his chair or reading a newspaper. And that was if he had no office work to slave through.

The pilots on standby with him, one or two of whom he had trained himself, almost convinced him that waiting on standby was more hellish than active combat. Every one of them stood kitted in full flight gear, which made everything more cumbersome than it needed to be. While Elliot took his time marking exam papers, his brothers-in-arms spent their time with competitive chess, cards with dangerously high stakes, and even the odd game of tag if they felt extra frisky.

Today, after being checkmated, having lost several thousand Ixa and tiring himself out, a colleague of Elliot’s named Romero had sat down beside him. He peered over Elliot’s shoulder, watching him mark short responses with red ticks and crosses.

“Forgot they give exams to Spec Ops pilots. Sure doesn’t feel like it when you see some of the monkeys that we get around here.”

“Speak for yourself,” Elliot muttered, “some of these exams are pretty rough.”

“I never said the monkeys were dumb,” Romero deflected. “They just eat with their hands and sleep in the same flight suits for a week straight.”

“Again, speak for yourself,” Elliot chuckled, ticking a sentence and giving the response four marks out of four. He heard Romero chuckle as he snatched the exam paper and passed his eye over it.

“You know, you’re the most…Air Force pilot I’ve ever met.”

“That’s almost a compliment coming from a former Navy boy. Now all I have to hear from you is the part where having to land on a carrier at night makes you better.”

“Don’t get me started—”

Sirens blared directly into the break room, piercing Elliot’s precious calm and causing his pen to do the same to the paper.

“Go time,” Romero chimed, standing up and adjusting his flight suit. “Ready?”

“Always,” Elliot sighed, dropping his pen and getting to his feet.

The group of six jogged through the final corridor, the light at the end of the tunnel being the blue expanse itself. Rain the day before had cleared the skies of clouds entirely; the closest thing flying conditions came to being a blank slate. A hard restart of sorts. Elliot followed the others onto the tarmac, their aircraft already raring to go, noses pointed straight down the steel whale’s topmost open-air runway.

Elliot sped past the ground crew as they did their final checks before pulling away, leaving only one to man the step ladder. Elliot climbed on and slid into the familiar cockpit. Rotations had been tough, and several flight suits and their backsides had made impressions in the seat leather. The top brass was on high alert, so much as the twitch of an enemy gun battery warranted a full-scale scramble.

Elliot strapped in and pulled the cockpit down over him, confirming the clunk with haste as he watched the final ground crew member wheel away the step ladder. He looked forward, taking control of the aircraft controls and steering the machine in line with others along the runway. No time for pre-flight checks; he would have to do those in the air. Elliot pulled his helmet on with one hand as his other kept steady on the throttle, letting his feet do the work of turning his heading left and right.

“Tower control to scramble team Falheina, confirm radio transmission.”

“Loud and clear,” Elliot reported as he adjusted his radio accordingly.

“Runway three cleared for free-wing taxi. Maintain bearing one three two, altitude one thousand metres, speed four fifty knots. ETA next zero three six. Confirm, F-4.”

“This is F-4, confirmed,” Elliot replied, lining up behind F-3. He grabbed the wing lever and eased on it, unlocking the joints of his fighter’s wingspan. He continued loosening them until they were almost free-floating, with nothing but a fabric of magic holding the steel feathers together.

Each monstrous crow flapped their overbearing wings, thrusting air downwards as their compressors flared with blue vapour. Their landing gear lifted as their noses cleared the runway, taking off one at a time until it was Elliot’s turn. He began the procedure, feeling the rumble of the engines behind him in tandem with the vertical bobbing. Relatively unremarkable at first, the sensation grew as the aircraft approached the runway's edge, throwing him up and down like a child's plaything.

He took off, gravity yielding its strenuous grasp on his machine and the sky took over. His wings calmed, and he returned his engines to a distinguished purr. Noting no audible issues, he began confirming the ground crew’s pre-flight procedures for any discrepancies. He knew there would be none, but it was standard procedure. He was not exactly a stickler for the rules in all aspects, but he wondered if it was an old habit of his to distrust that saved him from exercising such blind faith.

The minutes ticked by, and with it did the coordinates. Green pastures briefly gave way to cityscape and barrage balloons before the land ceased outright; just thirty klicks to go. Elliot passed his eyes over the loosely strung V-wing formation, not noticing any abnormalities as far as he could see. He redirected his eyes forward, waiting for the iron-cast monstrosities to peer over the horizon.

Eventually, they did.

“Falheina One to command, confirming arrival at the operational area, requesting further orders, over.”

“Copy Falheina One, circle the area from three klicks out. Guns should be pointed at you; that’s what the coast guards told us, over.”

“Copy, over and out.”

Falheina One’s wings dipped to the left, and the formation followed suit, turning their starboard sides to the enemy. Three klicks out. Looking at such a mess of steel and grey, it was anyone’s guess as to which ways the cannons pointed, but certainly not in any standby position.

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The vessels had their broadsides turned to both them and the city, the full brunt of their artillery shown off like feathers in some peacock fight. No aircraft carriers, funnily enough. Perhaps the Navy still had some commitment issues.

Nerve-wracking, it always was. Staring down the length of god knows how many anti-air cannons was the furthest thing from pleasant. One shot though, and they’d be gone with the wind. The Navy was more aptly prepared to deal with that sort of trouble.

He had seen a few Geverdian ships when he had flown over. Even now, he could spot several specks in the distance, no doubt the Navy’s own Rapacian fighters.

It was all too quiet; going over the information in his head made it all seem like nothing more than the cargo ships one had spotted on a day’s fishing. He’d seen war, and the same anxiety loomed where none of the noise and death did.

Perhaps that was where the world had all of a sudden found itself.

Alis found himself idle once more, pacing around his room with not so much more than the daily newspaper and his bedside window to keep him company. The glass was secured to the frame via padlock, something he had only managed to pick with a malformed hairpin. It had come in the same meal the last message was delivered in, and he had stashed it away in his shoe since.

No contact from his emissary to ULEF since the night of the raid. Never mind being bored, he had been left in a silent room in the dark and with his own thoughts. Had he failed? Had he been used?

Had he used Iris?

The girl with the silver hair pranced across his mind any moment he finally felt himself escaping the thoughts, and she would pull him back into the midst of them. They had parted ways soon after the mission was over, nothing more than a quick goodbye between them.

He felt as though he would see her again, but he did not want to leave a sense of lingering. Goodbye, that was it. Not much more. He just hoped things had gone over on her end without a hitch, yet seeing as his situation had not changed much in the past few days, he assumed she had kept silent.

He owed her a lot. Everything, in fact, assuming things went well. A debt he’d likely never repay without jeopardising each other’s safety. He wondered—if there had been a few more years of wisdom in her—if she would have helped him the same way.

He was not all altruistic, but the barrage balloons he had brought over the city skyline played on his conscience like nothing else.

He paused by the windowsill, watching the city like a scene from a play. Every day, he would point out the monuments he remembered from his first talk with her. The towers, the buildings, the parklands, all of it by name. There was still much missing, place names and explanations which he doubted she even knew. He had picked up a few here and there from the newspaper, but it was not enough. Perhaps it wasn’t even the city he cared about.

The door to the room creaked open, and an anonymous pair of gloved hands set down a plate of food on the dresser adjacent to the door. Hotel staff, they were. After many meals, Alis had discerned the usual routine. He assumed a plate was prepared by the kitchen and brought in at the same times every day—morning, noon and night. What he knew for sure was that they were searched on arrival by one of the posted guards. It was almost a miracle the first message got in the way it did.

The door closed and Alis walked over, unable to think of anything better to do with his time. He lifted his plate off the dresser and felt something underneath the plate once again. Another note.

Alis took the plate to his bed, regulating his footsteps and playing with his spread of mashed potato, sausage, and bread. He sat down, eating as obnoxiously as was normal while he unravelled the piece of paper. It was unattached to the plate, nor hidden in any obvious way, likely the work of the hotel staff’s sleight of hand. Even in a country of magic, the fake kind proved just as useful.

The floorboards are thin.

Alis heard a faint knocking from below him, almost immediately below him. Barely audible, practically invisible unless the note had put it to his attention. His fork stopped moving, and his jaw petrified to allow for absolute silence. It was there, he could be sure.

He placed his plate on the bedsheets and cautiously slid off the bed, getting on his knees as the knocking continued. Softly, as if it was aware of the situation. He pressed his ear against the floorboards and whispered.

“Hello?”

The knocking stopped, and Alis’s heart was the only rhythmic sound remaining. He waited compromised, down on his knees in an all too suspicious sense.

“Alis Harbourman, I hope,” the voice said. Alis recognised it. It was his liaison with ULEF. The same voice he had woken to briefly during his kidnapping.

“Yes, it’s me,” he whispered.

“The floorboards are thin here, Alis, so I thought I might take the opportunity.” Alis turned his vision to his own ceiling but could easily discern a thick layer of plaster, not to mention limestone. The floors were anything but thin.

“ULEF has one last job for you. A warehouse on the harbour, front for another one of Vesmos’s claws on the city. Get there and dismantle it as best you can.”

A small piece of paper slipped through the floorboards right by Alis’s face. He grabbed the edge and pulled it through.

“The address is there; keep it safe,” the voice said. “Now, I don’t know how many of Vesmos men are close to you, but that mole you got rid of last week is only the start of it, I suspect.”

Alis memorised the address before stuffing it in his pocket. He began to move away, but the voice stopped him.

“Oh, one other thing. The girl, you’ll need her on this mission once more.”

Alis hesitated. “Why?”

“Headquarters wants a guarantee you’ll deliver the same results. This isn’t just another safehouse, Mr Harbourman, I can assure you that.”

He ground his teeth, reluctant to put a premature end to his internal debate. One had to come sooner or later, but he had been praying for the latter.

“I can’t do that,” he sighed, “I can do the work myself.”

“But what if you can’t?”

“Then I do not meet the requirements to join—”

“But you already do. Yeah? Your eligibility isn’t the issue here. It’d take a platoon to clear out a warehouse like that, but they’re leaving you to clear half of it. They just need to be sure it gets done.”

Alis inhaled, doing everything in his power to stick with his initial judgment. No, he was not all altruistic, and sacrifices had to be made. But if it didn’t sit well with him, it didn’t sit well with him. He wasn’t some soldier with a directive anymore. Blindly following orders from a different logo didn’t mean anything.

“I can’t.”

The voice sighed, quite audibly, enough to hear through the albeit thin floorboards.

“Let me…let you in on something,” the voice murmured. “There is no Vesmos front, only the warehouse. Furthermore, I’m not exactly an emissary for the United Liberation of the Eastern Fronts, nor am I a sworn enemy to Vesmos.”

“Then what are you?” Alis asked, slowly backing away.

“I am someone who simply hates the world and who wishes for nothing more than to watch it burn. So look, I don’t really care much about what happens to you, or your rebellion, or for either country for that matter. It is in my best interest to let them blow each other to bits.”

“Then why don’t you?” Alis hissed.

“Because there are certain factors that call for a correct time and place, that and the fact that I want the girl.”

“Why?”

“Why do you care? It’s not like she’s worth more than this city or the rebellion, is she?”

He could hear whoever it was on the other side smiling through the floorboards. In the palm of his hand, Alis was. Twirling like some rat after a crumb of bread. The barrage balloons and the enemy fleet were far from the worst he had brought upon the city. Whoever this was, talking to him from below, that was his greatest sin.

“Now please don’t misconstrue this as optional, Mr Harbourman. Bring the girl to me, or else the cannons pointed at the city will fire, and ULEF will be dismantled top down in no less than a month.”

The gap in the floorboards widened, warping around a cardboard box. Much like the letter, Alis took it and pulled it through.

“You’ll be needing your weapons, Harbourman. I leave you tonight to contact her. Tomorrow night, same time as last time. I’ll be waiting.