Io gritted her teeth as her Arrowhead whistled through the mag-launcher. Her eyes stung from the transition from the darkened hangar into the flaming sunset, where the contrails of 1-H had already straightened into supercruise. A thin blue rift opened for her in the Academy's shield. This was it. Her neck craned towards the throttle lever where she'd find the—

  Missile. Missile. Missile.

  The flight computer blared and she couldn't help but squeak as she floored the engine. Shit shit shit, she didn't even know where it was coming from, why was she already—

  White. The light of an explosion flashed from off to the side, followed by cannon shells whizzing past the nose. She was still alive? A moment of deafening silence replaced the alarm until two black shapes swooped dangerously close to the cupola.

  First the winged Black Adder. Then the black one with the tally marks, one of theirs. Io fought the yoke as their jet wash buffeted her ship.

  "You owe me a favor." A raspy girl's voice filtered through the radio. "Io Zebulon."

  "You okay, hoss?!" A callout from Ema snapped her out of her shock. "What the hell are you waiting for! Punch it!"

  The afterburner crushed her into the seat as she raced past the furball, weaving blindly left and right, sometimes sneaking a look over her shoulder at the image of the Academy on the bulkhead behind her Z-cradle. She saw the Satori fighters of 1-N lock into a brutal dance with the Black Adder's squadron, sometimes banking inches away from the Academy's pulsing shields. She'd never seen anybody turn like that, let alone Feds. Were these people insane?

  Suddenly, a man's voice cut through the public channel, his upper-class drawl barely legible through the hiss of his oxygen blowoff and the over-G warning in his cockpit.

  "Alice Specter of House Tian Lung, how lovely it is to finally meet you in the flesh. I do hope you're ready to pay for your crimes."

  'Alice' replied with a restrained giggle. "I don't even know who you are... but I hope you'll entertain me nonetheless." A rotary cannon droned for a split second before she lifted the push-to-talk.

  Shit, shit, shit. Accelerating into formation behind the chevron of her class, Io felt the blood drain from her face as she realized just how close she'd been to eating it. The Federalists weren't supposed to have pilots or equipment like that—could they be ex-military? Whatever it was those crooks wanted with the Academy, they weren't taking no for an answer.

  "Io Zebulon, hein? To be honest, I had taken you for the stupid type, but in this case there was more honor in running." Remy sounded like she was grinning. "What would a wing be without its leader?"

  Remy's Phoenix was a tremendous swept-back shape with the black pillar of a railgun slung underneath, dwarfing its Arrowhead escort in the sky. If the Arrowhead's tiny cupola was comical, the gunship's proportions were absurd. It was as large as a single-crew craft could realistically be. Io let out a deeply held breath; there was something about the sheer mass of equipment that was reassuring.

  The ten-odd formation slowly tipped the nose back and ascended through the cloud line as they pressed on towards the distant Federalist frigates. Below, the labyrinthine whorls of Tyumen's terrain stretched past the horizon, punctuated in places by a scattering of salt-ringed lakes.

  "Hey, isn't that Vineta's search party?" Ema bleated. "Wanna me to say hi?"

  1-H passed perpendicular to a straight clawmark of contrails close to the ground: a wing of twin-hulled Gemini superiority fighters, favored by House Vesta. A VTOL hovered not far away.

  Io felt a lump in her throat as she noticed the small fires dotting the rocks near the old dig site. There wasn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere for people to breathe, but enough to carbonize any of the girls who'd crashed. Mica... There was a part of her that wanted to confirm it with her own eyes, but she shook the thought from her head and swallowed it.

  "Leave them alone," Io said. "We've got bigger fish to fry."

  They'd been flying for a few minutes now. The parked Academy had shrunk to a grey speck in the distance, its shields flickering occasionally.

  Io jumped as the radio set beeped with a call from the bridge of the Academy. She supposed it was the head honcho herself, Lin Carrageenan. She held her tongue and patched it through. There were many things she wanted to say to Lin, but she figured they could wait.

  "...Heliotrope, do you read me?"

  Lin was hoarse as if she'd been shouting, or crying. A chorus of shrill alarms took up the background.

  "Io, right? Can you confirm the distance to the target on your end?"

  ...how was she supposed to do that again?

  Io pawed at the MFD in the center of the console. It was like looking at the discarded molt of an Arrowhead—all the buttons were where they were supposed to be, but the bulbous plastic furniture had turned to stamped metal and vice versa. Thank the Seven it worked the same.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Lin's plan did not have many moving parts, but none of them were a sure thing. The Academy's three railgun wings projected over the terrain contour—one for each of the approaching Federalist beam frigates, with Io's 1-H taking up the middle target. It was approximately 70 li to their target, and 50 li between the different frigates—no doubt a carefully chosen spacing on the Feds' part.

  At the clip they were going, they were only a few minutes out. Klaus's wing was still preoccupied with Alice as planned. She mentioned as such to Lin.

  It was then she noticed something moving in the corner of her vision. Io glanced over her shoulder to see Ema's fighter slowly weaving in and out of her wake. Fuck, she really didn't have the time for this.

  "Ema, stay in formation. Did you want to go home and cuddle up with Diane?"

  "What the hell are you flying, hoss?" Ema sounded concerned. "It's an Arrowhead, but the... little engines are moving around. Is your ship broken?"

  ...Well, good question. Io scratched her neck. "It's, um—"

  Before she could answer, the sound of someone wrestling the bridge microphone from Lin cut between them.

  "That's an Arrowhead FX, princess." One of the hangar girls—she remembered hi-vis and freckles. "It's got thrust vector control: the engine nozzles rotate to help you turn, like on a Satori. We didn't have time to prepare another Mark I. Just as long as you NEVER turn off the stability control, it should behave exactly like the Arrow you're used to."

  Oh, the one she was used to. The one she only knew through technical manuals and a few sessions several years ago. That one—

  "Gave it to the pilot with the biggest ego," the engineer said matter-of-factly.

  Io winced, but couldn't deny it.

  "...Well, better you than me." Ema huffed. "I read it in a trade journal. That thing's a deathtrap."

  "Go to hell, Cairnbrae. The FX may have been passed over for a contract, but it is the farthest thing from a death—"

  "Leader, look! There it is!" Remy interrupted.

  Io's eyes snapped back to the forward display. The rusted slab of the beam frigate was finally visible over the horizon, the green of antifouling paint harkening back to its true nature as a Frankenstein's monster of seafaring vessels. It felt like there was a universe where such a thing would have been a kind of gravestone.

  Something hot roiled in the nose of the huge craft. It was getting brighter.

  "I've almost got a firing solution. Just a little further—"

  The display went white before a flash of blue ripped across the ground below them. The clouds parted as if slashed by a giant hand—then a sound like thunder.

  "What the hell was that?!" Io found herself countersteering into a sudden gust of turbulence.

  "Probably reaction-pumped lasers," Remy observed, the ailerons in her craft twisting imperceptibly in the gale. "Our Diane would be feral right now."

  "Are... are we too late? Lin, what's the status of the Academy?"

  They could hear alarms whooping behind the President as well as crew stamping in and out of the bridge. "...Confirm enemy beam fire," Lin said. "Two impacts, one miss."

  The engineer cut back in. "Damage to the main disc. Casualty report underway. We're trying to bring the shields back online, won't survive another hit without it."

  "Get to work on that frigate, Io." Lin sighed. "It was an honor, however brief."

  There was a click as she set down the receiver.

  Io felt a lump in her throat as she weighed her options. Was it really within her capabilities to destroy this thing right now, before it fired again?

  No—she had to. However badly the Academy had treated her, there was no universe where she got out of this alive if the Feds destroyed it.

  "Drones coming out of the frigate," Ema observed, her eye-tracking marking a swarm of red hostiles pouring from the frigate's belly. "Your orders, hoss?"

  "Heliotrope 2 through 10, on the drones! Ema with me!" Io barked into the radio. "Remy, light that son of a bitch up!"

  I thought she'd never ask! Immediately, IRST missiles spidered out from the Arrowheads behind her, mating with the approaching drones in black flowers of soot. Io twisted away from the ensuing furball and dove into the clouds, Ema's Arrowhead mkI tailing not far behind.

  Like combat divers, the pair angled for the underside of the ship where the drone racks had exposed themselves for launch. The angle they needed was awkward—Io had less reference for this sort of atmospheric maneuvering than she'd have liked—but she put in a wide enough countersteer before finally curling back and found the frigate's drone bay yawning towards her.

  Just a bit more... She teased the gunsight onto the bay, cognizant of how exposed she was in this starward position, her body heavy as her craft bled potential and kinetic energy. Now!

  The two of them pelted the insides of the frigate with cannon shells before any more drones could scramble, showering flickering debris into the sky around them.

  Heliotrope 3, got one! Eager chatter from the girls as they picked off the Feds' drones up above. Told you I've been practicing!

  Io emerged from the clouds just in time to see a hot stream of railgun slugs pounding the frigate's side. Because of the way they worked electrically, each successive slug accounted for a smaller portion of a railgunner's energy reserves. Hence, an effective railgunner knew to pitch the nose up as the capacitors drained, which Remy did flawlessly. Every round plunged into the same spot on the Fed frigate's hull, even as her firing line distorted into a tall parabola.

  "Capacitors zero." She called out mechanically, dipping the nose back down before the last of her shots had even impacted. "Recharging."

  "No need, Remy." Io carved to the side to get a better look at the incision. "Target is no longer dynamic. It's slowing down."

  One by one, the lights on the frigate flickered and died before it decelerated sharply.

  The classroom erupted in cheers. Woo! It's just like that maid said, someone quipped. That was a walk in the park!

  "Well shit, buddy. You did it." Ema sounded at a loss for words.

  "You... You followed along real good." Io replied. It occurred to her that this was the first compliment she'd given anyone in months. "Ema, just where did you learn to fly?"

  "Shhhhh." Ema must've grinned. "Tell you when we get back, kay?"

  Io felt a smile take over her cheeks despite herself. Maybe that Lin really had weighed all the possible options and come to the least terrible one. And maybe, just maybe, they'd see she wasn't the thing of 'least relevant combat experience' they'd thought she was. Maybe she could even get out of 1-H and into a dorm that didn't threaten her with hypothermia.

  Out of an abundance of caution, she cast her eyes over the fuel gauge to check if the plan didn't somehow end in a crash landing. After all, weren't they about 200 li from the Academy right now? Hmm, the tank was nearly full. Oil pressure okay...

  Suddenly, the radio squawked. One of the other railgun wings was transmitting on the main channel.

  Maybe it was something benign, but by dead reckoning, neither of them were supposed to have reached their target yet.

  Somehow, Io had a bad feeling about this.