Written December 2nd, 2020 – January 3rd, 2021.

Published Jan 3rd, 2021.

A/N (from December): Boy, it'll be hilarious if I finish this in 2021.

December 24th, Christmas Eve… boy, it'll be hilarious if I finish this by the end of the month. I am writing different versions of how a particular part of the chapter will go down, but when I get about 2,000 words into all of my scenes I suddenly feel like I'm parading the same emperor dressed in different clothes. This has happened 3 times so far… weird.

Pt35: Allele is not getting out of his bonds if the Skywings don't want him to, don't worry about that. I still think rust can cause serious damage, but perhaps the malfunctions would occur on a longer timescale.

Maam Assawachaichit: Thanks for leaving a review!


Secret

By Fld. Agnt. Starfruit.

Filed 28th July 5015

Date Described: 26th July 5015

Friendly assets - 305th Brigade (60) – cmd. Lt. Starling

Enemy assets – unidentified company strength, compound

FKIA: 6

FWIA: 11

EKIA: ~30

EWIA: ~20

Beginning in the afternoon I made contact with 305th's cmmdr, communicating intel leading to an assault on an enemy base 7 miles east of our position, roughly 90 miles east of Rainburrow and 15 south. Substantial CAP was encountered but enemy beaten back: 305th assaulted the compound and took both surface and subterranean levels. The enemy subsequently fired from outside and broke down a roof section causing numerous casualties including 1 NCO WIA.

I provided covering fire from outside taking multiple hits; friendlies charged the enemy flank and engaged in melee resulting in decisive victory. All surviving enemies withdrew within the hour, action ended for the day with compound captured mostly intact.

- Moons Willing, Starfruit.

P.S: Requesting reinforcements at 305th brigade's position.


July 27th, 5,015: Still in the Middle of Nowhere.

One does not simply equip a military force. A peek at the ranch's stores revealed such, along with two melted corpses and mice in the tunnels; evidence of soldiers living on their stomachs. While Somers ate a hearty breakfast aboveboard, eight or nine of the self-appointed logistics crew emptied boxes full of stored enemy rations.

Yesterday's victory staved off starvation; in a few more days they'd have to pull that off, and again and again as long as they operated out here without support. And there was only so much to plunder.

So while the soldiers bathed in their dearly-bought mud sauna, Starling sat down and asked "Is this worth it?"

In the long run, it wasn't.

305th Brigade needed a plan to live out the next month, much less the five more until the end of the year, but the plan they had was the best they'd got; the enemy's operational tempo demanded reactions to its swift advance – and advance, and still further advance.

The key lay with the messenger. Send her out, ask for help, and hope – that was the idea, anyway. But Starfruit was wounded, and it would be hard for her to travel, and so the decision was up to her, all while the threat of enemy counter-attack loomed over their heads like some executioner's axe.

And there was always the risk of a sudden, poison-induced aneurysm.

So Starling developed another plan. He called it Plan A, the Rainwing being Plan B, and serious prayer bringing up the third option in the rear. Like most good battle plans, this one was simple; he'd camouflage Mudwings in the muck by the backwater swamp some 200 yards east, wait for the enemy to engage the ranch-house, then release the hidden warriors for a sudden attack from the rear.

Divine luck would determine the outcome after that. The enemy would come in steep instead of low; they'd grown wary of flying close to the ground, and rightly.

Which meant the enemy would be easier to spot, so thank goodness for small mercies.

Soon the Rainwing recuperated enough to fly on her own, she said, and the two met for a brief, gruff mission briefing. "Make sure to give word on our situation," said Starling. "Best of luck. Go kill 'em out there."

It was the second highest compliment of them all. The Rainwing rose up, and flew off -

- and returned half an hour later with an exasperated smile and drooping wings, sort of like the emotional grandmother who spends an hour saying goodbye and then forgets her purse on the way out. Although Somers wasn't present, his brother was, and according to him the exchange went something like this:

"She flies in tuckered out, gives a smile, tired. And el-tee says 'what news' and she says 'lots' and stops (for breath, see)."

"Get on with it," said Squirrel over a bite of rations. "I've got all day but I'm not spending it on your yapping."

Somers jostled the younger, ornerier soldier with a butt of his pouch. "I'd like to hear it."

Griff continued.

"So he's chewing on that and sarge comes in and said, north side sees bogies a couple miles off. Which made el-tee jump. He goes 'how many' and sarge says 'not sure' and then Starfruit tells 'about fifty friendlies I met on the flight out.

Well how many of 'em?'

About fifty.'

Which is why el-tee was pale this afternoon. They talked a little more and then she flew off, going to tell her buddies about us I guess."

"Where are those guys now?" asked Squirrel.

Somers forced down another gulp of the enemy's food, lending an ear to the conversation. He was already full, but since el-tee had said they could have extra this morning he was putting away more than usual, just in case.

"Probly close, they're slow movers."

"Well why didn't you say that before?"

"Cause I was telling the story."

Then they fell to bickering. Reinforcements! Somers tail lurched. Even with the departure of their Rainwing ally, fifty-odd plus fifty-odd still made nearly a hundred soldiers… all of whom must be equipped and fed, which dimmed the ray of hope a little. Still, in an era of bad news and speculative rumors, it was always good to have even mixed information.

"Reckon el-tee will send out a greeting party," said Griff.

Somers peered into the wilds beyond the cultivated field, not caring that the contacts were on the north, covered by the house. Tendrils of morning mist curdled in the shade of the trees, while heat waves roiled farther south, in a patch of light where the sun shone past the drifting cumulus clouds and touched the earth. He knew this weather, saw the dark line of thunderheads in the distance and figured there'd be a storm tonight.

He forced down a ration bar, tight and dry and tasting like bugs. The 'food' dropped like a stone down his gullet, found a place in his gut and stayed there.

Griff put a lean, muscular talon on the wall, right underneath his chin. "Man, how can you enjoy this stuff? It's sawdust."

"It's not sawdust," he said. "Nobody else is eating more than one, so…"

"You're disgusting."

He took another one in his talon, broke it in half and watched gritspray from the two uneven halves.

Griff shook his head. " 'It's not sawdust'. Yeah, and I got born yesterday."

"Three days ago when you were starving, you would've said 'gimme your ration bars', now here we are and you're turning up your nose. You're gonna regret not having these, trust me."

"Not as much as your gut will make you regret those."

A new voice entered the conversation. "Cut the chatter and eat, boys."

The sarge came over, his face drawn up tight, the image of detached professionalism. He looked around, counting the soldiers watching at the corners of the cobblestone courtyard or lounging on the wall, then straightened his head, satisfied.

"Huddle," he said, then waited out the mad scuffle that always happened when dragons scrambled to be first and not last.

He nodded to Squirrel. "Good hustle. El-tee hatched a plan for defense, and here it is."

Which probably meant ditching this house for the countryside, regardless of numbers. "Near that banks of that stream is enough swamp to sink a boat in. At least one wing is staying there all day; shift change is at night. When the enemy engages – and you know they will – you wait for my order and then yell 'Able!' at the top of your lungs if you're defending the house; if you're in the mud that's your signal to attack."

Moons knew this strategy could backfire – if one dragon decided he'd heard 'able' when it hadn't been called yet, for instance. But it was better than no plan at all, and a soldier could admire the simplicity of it.

"Robin's wing takes first shift," said sarge. He glanced left – they all did – watching twelve dragons troop out for their ten hours in the muck, with their sergeant still oozing blood from a bad laceration on his side from yesterday. They had a good deal; nothing to do all day and as much ooze as a dragon could wish for. Somers envied them. "Falke's wing going up for BARCAP a mile ahead, which leaves us to fortify the position."

El-tee was banking on the reinforcements, putting all his eggs in one basket. Somers hesitated. His brother did not.

"Yes, sir," said Griff. "Barricades?"

"First thing is drawing water from the well. You're on that," said sarge. "Put a cup of beer into each bucket, it needs to stay fresh."

"Aye sir."

Successful guerrillas don't stay in one place for long, or they are pinned down and killed by the numerically superior enemy, ceasing to be deadly hit-and-fade warriors and becoming more like dead ones.

"That means you too, Somers. Hop."

He nodded, then followed his brother to work.

Effort is effort, no matter how it is spent, and it always puts the weariness into a dragon's bones, from lugging heavy 15-gallon pails of water into the ranch-house, to boarding up the windows with a box of nails and old lumber they found in the basement, to patching the roof with a tarp and smoothing over the top with moist dirt to make the damage less obvious, and more. They ripped up the stone wall and set the rocks against the sides of the compound to stave off break-ins, dragging 300-pound boulders along a rut in the courtyard, then heaving them up to their place on top of the 500 pounders before them.

And still they were not done. By the time el-tee traipsed into their formation again with the wing he'd brought as backup, the brothers were panting with their backs to the northern face of the house, using the roof for shade from the dog sun while they pulled down more stones.

"Good afternoon sir," said sarge. "Any luck?"

"Plenty," said Starling. "Forty Mudwings and ten Seawings under a Seawing have a bit of supply which we desperately need, told us they picked it up from some Skywings about two weeks ago and they've been holding onto it since."

Somers quirked an eyebrow, though he kept his head down and his talons moving. His life and his brigade's lives depended on these fortifications; he wasn't going to quit just because of some gossip.

"Good thing, sir," said sarge. "We've fixed the hole in the roof and barred the windows, but – where are the friendlies?"

"Packing up, they'll be here in ten. Your CAP shift is by then."

"Right, sir," said sarge. "I'll take over here, CAP can come down and help out. Any recommendations?"

"Once the reinforcements come we should put them in the mud like Rob is. This house can't hold more than sixty dragons at a time even if you count the underground, it's just too crowded for defense, and once the enemy get on the roof we're done. Either we prevent that from happening or we abandon the ranch."

Starling nodded, his long horns bobbing above him. "Make sure that doesn't happen."

Griff pulled up another rock, and Somers helped him balance it on the wall.

"They could bring a battalion to bear on us…"

The lieutenant shrugged, about to speak, and then a far-off glint caught his eye and he looked up and away east, then backed away from the house so he could see better.

"Trouble?" asked sarge.

"Maybe," said the lieutenant. "CAP's coming down early, get your boys ready but don't head off just yet, we need a sitrep."

"Yes sir," said the sergeant. He turned and strode into the house, nodding to the brothers just before he went through the door. "You heard him, form up outside."

Somers grunted an assent, and then he and Griff glided out to the courtyard, milling around beside the wreckage of yesterday's combat. The ground here still stank of blood, and a ring-like print of dark red still outlined where the dragoness had been hit.

He studied the ground, then looked away. Dragons died, broke down in neuroses, battle shakes, fatigue, or coped in other, worse ways. War exposed the madmen for who they were, and made good dragons' stomachs turn.

It hadn't always been like that, but this was the way it was now. He just had to deal with it.

"Column up!" shouted sarge; Griff stepped behind Somers, and both watched the incoming friendly CAP wing as it wheeled overhead, bleeding both altitude and speed.

The first one flared and talons clacked as he hit the ground, then a clatter went up like the rattle of marching dragons as the rest touched down. El-tee waited for the noise to settle, then strode forward.

"Sitrep?"

"Sir, one large enemy group coming toward us from the south-east, five miles off, eta is ten minutes," said the wing's sergeant, Falke. "They were too large to engage, so we fell back. Orders?"

The lieutenant tossed his head north, scanning the horizon for friendlies, then looked back to the sergeant. "Get back in the air, keep at standoff range and slow them down. Stay up, don't let them get over the roof."

"Can do sir," said Falke, although such a thing was easier said than done.

"Well, get up!" said Starling. "Same job, don't let the enemy overwhelm you. Now!"

The whole exchange had taken maybe sixty seconds, but that was a minute they no longer had for defense: Somers beat his wings and took to the skies like an over-sized pigeon, then shifted left as soon as he had fifty feet of altitude, spacing about a wing-length from Griff, far enough that the two wouldn't interfere with each other but close enough for the brothers to stick together and provide mutual support.

It had worked for him all these years, and he hoped it would now.

The enemy – there, now he saw, clustered in the blue sky like a whorl of scud on the surface of a pond, blobs of enemy more than a dozen strong and seven or eight clumps.

"Craziest bluff I've ever been on," he muttered.

"You're wondering if you're going stark raving mad," yelled his brother.

"How'd you know?"

Griff shrugged.

The determined enemy cluster broke in pieces ahead of them, each crumb forging ahead – then stopping and milling in a tepid, indecisive mess, on a north-south line roughly a mile short of 305th's position. His heart slowed its unhealthy, stressed staccato, then sped up again to an incessant beat once the euphoria kicked in. They'd done it, they'd really done it! The bluff had worked.

But he had to force those feelings down, because the facts on the ground had not changed, Starling was only bluffing that the tide had turned, that 305th had a weapon up their sleeve in the compound – and they did, but that weapon wasn't enough.

"Bruv, check out west."

Somers looked, and lo: by giving an impression of facts on the ground, Starling had changed them in his favor; el-tee gave them more time and now the friendlies crawled on the face of the earth, looking for all the world like uprooted clods transplanting themselves to the ranch.

The tide had not turned completely, yet it stood on the brink, waiting on fortune's bidding to rise or fall. No longer did it surge against them, and that was a turning unto its own.

Greenhorns gave into their fear, rumors, temptation; the euphoria that convinced them the fight was over, andbade them rush forward and impale their young bodies on the enemy's waiting spears. The brothers checked themselves, winging on the winds of battle whether it blew victory or defeat.

Today it gusted from the east, driving Guy Stinger forward, and Somers back, fatiguing his battle-brothers as they whisked air to keep their positions relative to the ground. He eyed the black-orange line, clumped at intervals with clusters of troops in round strength: formatting like performers and breaking like gulls.

The southernmost bead turned first, vectoring in for the compound, then the one north of it, and so on, their shadows a slack line tracing crosst the mud flats, flying like the Skywing showmen in the north; impressively.

First impressions are hard to change, but this was not his first: no, he knew they died like anyone else, he saw the scare tactics and the showboating, and he shot a glance to Squirrel, whose jaw was clamped tight and legs were knotted underneath him, twitching.

"They bleed prettier than they fly!" shouted Somers. "They can't hold a gig right, not even flags."

Squirrel's gaze darted to him, then nodded towards the enemy. The cynical young soldier never said thanks, but his gesture conveyed everything; the fear of death diminished; the fear of dying a 'fraidy cat revived just a little bit more.

"Call!" shouted the sergeant. "Move, up high!"

Somers beat harder if that was possible, although he was feeling a bit heavy today.

"Wishing you didn't eat all that much?" asked Griff, shouting over the wind.

"No!"

Actually, yes.

Like bobbing flotsam the Mudwings headed upwards around him, the disorganized sibs coalescing into a whole more cohesive than it seemed; and like predatory falcons the enemy swept towards them, their formation rigid despite its fluidity just a few seconds ago.

Only three quarters of a mile separated the two groups, and not much height; the enemy attacked with the altitude advantage, of which they still held a sliver, while the sergeants fought both the earth's pull and the wind as they clawed for more height.

A cautionary alarm rang in his mind, the sort that rang when he was beneath a rolling boulder that looked stoppable, but would smash him if he tried to resist it. Experienced dragons have many tricks, and one of them is sensing imminent calamity. The two forces collided in his imagination, swirled, and left only the enemy formation standing.

"Call! Move, climb, fall back!" shouted the sergeant. Somers put all his power into climbing, letting the wind push him back towards the ranch-house while he gained altitude.

Bluffing had failed; it was time to play for keeps.

With the airborne guys maintaining separation, the enemy had a choice; commit to chasing sarge around, or attack the ranch with twenty-odd dragons flying above their heads. They could do both, but that would be splitting their forces, and while the enemy chased him around the ranch's airspace the attack on the house would fail (he hoped).

While he contested the skies, his battle-brothers held the ground.

Five of the enemy wings fell out of line and descended on the house in a steep dive, and the two remaining came after the sergeants, twenty-odd enemies bearing down on him with the wind behind them.

"Call! Move, forward!" shouted sarge; Falke did a moment later, and Somers beat forward as if pushing off from the bank of a river; against the resisting wind.

And the enemy didn't see it coming. Darts whizzed by his head, but none hit him; the second volley grazed his arm and he hissed, lucky so far, like a trapped shrimp that has narrowly escaped from being put in the lobster pot.

"Shooting at the broadside of a barn, they grazed!" shouted Griff; Somers yelled a 'shut-up' and then a wasp came alongside, nose-horn twitching as it fumbled for another round.

He didn't give it time, breaking its face with a claw-swipe and sending it tumbling to the ground below.

"Next target!" he yelled.

"On the right!"

He looked just in time to see an enemy gunner aiming for him -

CRACK! His ears rang, he couldn't see right: blink; the eye-water bled away in the wind and blood trickled down his nose. He heard a voice in his head. How you doin'?

Ow, whatever it was hit really hard -

"How you doin'!?" asked Griff.

He bit back with a witty, sarcastic grunt.

"Just fine?" said his brother, slapping him on the side.

Another grunt.

"Good -" Griff shot a look to the side, "nuts."

The dragon still didn't have a scratch on him, lucky bastard. Sarge yelled. "Chase them down!"

He looked out of his better eye, saw a blurry orange-black mass spinning in front, fending off two brown shapes, until it couldn't: dragons on his right and left, lumps of batter mixed up in the confusing melee.

He was damaged, vulnerable. Shots started hissing around him, and he picked a direction and flew on it, making himself a harder target. "What was the aw nuts?" he asked.

"They're swarming the house," said Griff. "C'mon bruv, get better and defeat these bastards in detail."

"I knew you leaned on me but not this much," said Somers. "Stars and sun, ow."

"You really need to get well soon."

His ears buzzed louder; a wasp element around him. Griff left his side, to take care of the threat, while he took stock of his injuries. A long, bloody furrow ran up his nose for about four inches, thankfully shallow; one of the blowgun rounds had hit him in the face and ricocheted without shattering.

He didn't think much of it; the possibility that the shot could've gone through his eye socket didn't bother him at all, because he was alive and he wasn't going to waste time worrying about it.

So he looked around, restoring depleted SA, and picked up Griff below and to the left, double-teaming an overwhelmed wasp, who soon became simply whelmed, because it was dead. More targets attracted his attention, too far for him to reach right now, but still threats he had to be wary of.

Then he looked up again and caught sight of an enemy dragon making tracks out of the furball, built with a slight frame, but with something shiny on its shoulder, and a short spear strung on its barebones harness.

An officer.

He pumped his wings and gave chase. It was faster than him, but moving across his vector, which made it easy to pull lead pursuit and slide invisibly onto its left flank. It had a look of concentration, but something about its eyes -

Somers punched a claw into its side and pulled, spilling its guts; it spun around and in that moment he saw a haze over its eyes, as if it was choking on bad air; then the mist cleared and it roared.

He lashed out with a punch to the ribs; bones popped in daisy-chain succession and the enemy spat blood, trying to gasp with a diaphragm that was not there anymore, silently screaming as he pushed it away and spared a glance at it as it fell, dead before it hit the ground.

Remembering another target from his previous scan, he checked west; sure enough, a wasp gunner was trucking along about 300 yards away, shooting wildly at friendlies out of his field of view.

Surely that couldn't be all of them… he put his body on intercept for the nearest group of friendlies, still checking for more dragons.

Sun glinted off the bright scales of a dragon below, maybe a thousand feet down, and then like a snuffed candle it vanished into the shadow of a cloud. He kept track of it, noticing a gaggle of other enemies after it, perhaps five, and he remembered sarge's orders.

The friendlies were close enough now – he shouted to them, "Contact low! Chasing!" as he swept by, and then he folded his wings and dived.

At high speeds, dragons fly more like heavy gliders than sparrows; they go in straight lines and occasionally very very shallow curves, bleeding energy with every turn. Somers dove at a steep angle – only following sarge's pursuit orders, after all – then shallowed his descent before the compression made it impossible to pull out.

In a few seconds he would swoop over the enemy formation and into their field of view, which he didn't want, so he canceled his forward speed by pulling up even more and rolling onto his right wing, then going fully inverted and down again, pulling slight lead with his tail while the sun shone on his back.

He grinned. Almost never in the war had he gotten a bounce like this, so he wanted this one to go right.

And it did.

Entering the cloud's shadow, he flared at the last moment and went for the hindmost soldier in the enemy gaggle, a diminutive little thing looking around confusedly while flying in a straight line.

It was the last mistake that dragon ever made.

His rear talons hit first, crushing its back and taking the brunt of his momentum; then his front claw hit for good measure, and he shoved it sideways – too suddenly, for he tumbled through a full roll before getting it together.

It didn't even have a chance to scream.

Push on or regroup? He wanted to keep going, to slaughter the last four dragons from behind; he'd been hit earlier, but luck had returned to him, he was invul – no, the veteran in him pushed down that thought, and reminded him of the old Skywing maxim:

Observe, attack, kill, lunch break.

The enemy were fleeing and broken, they were heading out of his zone, and he had a house to protect. He tucked in his wings and used the last of his momentum to zoom climb about five hundred feet, then turned right and cruised towards the ranch, where the battle still raged. Rob's wing were out of the muck, and their intervention was helping, but the surprise had worn off, the enemy were regrouping above the house and raining down fire.

Somers couldn't let that happen. He hurried on, checking his six every ten seconds just to avoid a serving of the ultimate irony. A dragon was sliding in on his west flank, but it had two wings, friendly.

And from the soldier's lean build, he knew just who it was.

"Sup," he said, as Griff slid onto his right-talon side. "How ya' doin'?"

"Looking for the eyes in the back of your head," said his brother. "Quit heading off alone, you idiot, the whole wing was looking for you!"

"I told them I was giving chase."

"That was Rob's guys."

"And you're not out here alone?" he asked. "Face it, you're just mad cause you wanted to come with me."

His brother shut up for a few seconds. "Your head injury has you loopy."

"It's fine."

"It's not."

"Aw, you actually care."

Griff huffed through his nose. "C'mon, let's head back to the guys." He cleared his throat, then did an impression of sarge's voice, something the two brothers had gotten good at over the years. They could impersonate almost any commanding officer. "You did good work out there," he said in an overly gruff tone, "but don't go running off like that, you're endangering the entire unit."

"Spot-on," said Somers. "So, how we going to do this?"

His brother searched the battle before them; unlike the unlucky and outfought wasps at altitude, these dragons had successfully disengaged from the melee tail-kicking 305th was giving them, and now hovered about 400 feet above the defenders, in clear air, likely with good situational awareness and good organization. Somers couldn't bash into the coop and slaughter the helpless roost as he just had; he needed to be methodical.

"Regroup, get some altitude, do some hit and run," said Griff. "We're el-tee's ace in the hole. We die, he loses."

"Or, you know, whatever sarge says."

"It'll be the same thing."

The brothers kept climbing, joining up with the twenty-odd dragons flying above them. Somers did a quick count and realized they had a few guys missing. Griff had to have noticed too.

"Sergeant!" shouted Somers when they got in hearing range. "Regrouping, sir."

Sarge looked at the two brothers with a critical eye and started to talk. "You did good work out there -" - "… don't go running off …. the entire unit…"

He didn't hear the entire speech, because he was too busy trying not to laugh. "Sir, understood sir."

"Anything funny, private?"

"Sir, no sir."

"Good. Get some altitude, we're doing hit and run on my orders."

The two eased their way into the middle of the formation, and once they were away from the sergeant Somers whispered to Griff. "Bruv, you're a miracle."

Falke's wing flew in the front right quarter, at Somers' height and climbing almost as quickly. Although the altitude fighting had taken the two wings nearly a mile away from the crux of the battle, they were almost over it now, with the enemy circling the compound beneath. Faint pops echoed from below, and little blurs seemed to slice through the air, although he couldn't be sure.

"They're shooting at us," said Griff. "Waste of ammo."

"I see it now," said Somers. "Do they just not know how to deal with altitude threats or what?"

As if on cue, the shooting stopped, perhaps to save ammunition, perhaps because the enemy commander could see that it wasn't getting results. Sarge yelled from up ahead.

"H and R boys; south pass, circle, go again. This is a no collision operation boys so don't be stupid."

Somers chuckled. "Remember those two Skywings… ?"

"Oh yeah, red mist," said Griff.

The wing trucked over the enemies until they were on the south side of the fighting; diving with the wind instead of against it, or worse, abreast it.

"Two second int! Go!"

The sergeant tucked in his wings and dived; the next guy waited two seconds and went after him, then the next guy, then the next. Ten seconds later it was Somers's turn: he tightened his wings and let the wind take him, although more carefully than Squirrel had; unlike the younger soldier he knew what compression was and the terrible things it could do.

He was not going to end his life as a splat on the countryside.

The wasps spread out as sarge went down, and the NCO missed – the enemy were paying attention – and kept dodging as the Mudwings came down like scattershot, too compressed at high speeds to hit targets that used clever under-talon tactics like changing their course and speed. Somers didn't even bother trying to hit one of them, just pulled up forty feet over their heads and extended northwards, holding on to as much speed as he could, to make the climb easier before his next pass.

Mudwings doing Skywing style hit and run… what was next, the Seawings putting up a town in the Kingdom of Sand?

He looked behind him, passing into the shadow of that cloud as he watched the five or six Mudwings behind him extend along their route of ingress after diving on targets. It was beautiful, and it had done what it was supposed to do, which was distract the enemy and diminish their effectiveness.

For thirty to forty-five seconds they gave relief to the guys on the ground, and then the wasps regrouped and started putting fire down range once more, at least until Falke's wing made a visit and had the enemy do the same song and dance all over again.

Damn, Somers liked it when things were going his way.

He couldn't see what was going on in the courtyard, but he liked to imagine that el-tee had stopped taking casualties, or even managed to take a couple pot-shots with the enemy munitions. That would give the enemy a fright.

Still, the situation remained mostly a stalemate, with the main body of the enemy force pinning Starling and the newcomers down, and reinforcements likely on the way for the enemy by tomorrow, if not within a couple of hours. The longer the battle was drawn out, the more likely it was that 305th would lose; sarge knew this, el-tee knew this, and most importantly the wasp commander knew this.

Somers turned onto the base leg of the return trip, just before the final approach to the dive, pumping his wings to catch up with the dragons ahead of him. He was at least a thousand yards clear of the dive lane, which was as close as he wanted to get even though there were no friendlies using it. He wanted to slow down, but he couldn't – shouldn't.

Moons, the fatigue was catching up to him. It be nice if the enemy commander could call it off for the night and give him time for a nice relaxing three to four hours of uninterrupted sleep… who was he kidding? They were evil enough to invade his land, so they were rude enough to interrupt his holy naptime.

The deciding factor had to be enemy ammunition. They looked like fresh troops, so they'd probably come in with full pouches; from the size of the darts and the size of the pouches, he expected that meant seventy or eighty rounds per gunner, which was huge compared to the twenty-five or thirty quarrels a Sandwing could carry on his person.

But not infinite. That ammo would last only a couple of hours at most; the enemy would likely retire with much of their load left for emergencies, and from the way they'd been blowing through it… well, it was safe to say that they only had an hour or half an hour of hang time left.

So Somers was in a pretty good mood by the time he reached the dive point, waited for the dragon ahead of him to go, then went down himself with about five seconds of spacing. This time the enemy were beleaguered, loose, busy coping with two enemy elements at once while both regrouping and managing their ammo reserves.

Any soldier's SA would be depleted in the midst of that.

Which meant that the Hivewing he picked as a target was too busy reloading to notice that the incoming threat. Somers lined up for the smack, front talons out to cushion the huge impact of two multi-ton creatures smashing into each other at a combined speed of over fifty miles an hour.

And then a gust of wind levered him ten feet up over where he wanted to be, and he overshot, again.

He looked behind him, snout clenched thinly in a wry frown as he watched the wasp stare at him as he zoom climbed upwards, holding still long enough for another Mudwing to whizz in from behind and swat the enemy out of the air.

The first lesson these dragons should learn in combat is, don't be predictable, he thought, then chuckled to himself. As if lining up and coming in on a single dive lane is anything but predictable.

The enemy grouped up as he watched, and their ugly shadows prowled above the garrison. Then they tightened up, turned, and flew away, two wings climbing above the main formation and flying abreast of it on either side. They didn't need the protection. He was tired now, and sloppy. By the time the battalion was rested enough to go on the offensive the wasps would be setting up camp, and it would be evening just before dusk, too late for more than fifteen minutes of action before both sides returned to their staging areas.

A force that big had to have a supply chain around; a hundred dragons would strip the land bare.

That applied to 305th and the newcomers, too. Although the rations in the basement averted starvation for the time being, one more day of combat and no resupply would bring hunger, forcing the two friendly forces to split up and forage.

Wings sagging on the mellow wind, he dropped a beat on one side and swiveled towards the grouping of Mudwings clustered above the ranch; his land someday, if he stayed alive long enough to keep it.

Sarge was waiting for him.

"Orders, sir?" he asked.

"Get down," said sarge.

"Yes sir."

He tucked in his wings by half and let himself glide in a downwards spiral – Mudwings are slow, and can't spend two days in the air like the fast and fragile freaks that call themselves Skywings.

Moons.

The house roof was annihilated; dragons cleared away fallen rubble inside, while corpsmen attended to casualties with rags, water and salves. He was so busy looking at the spectacle he almost didn't notice the ground.

His back talons hit the ground first, cracking an object underfoot, then his front feet came down with more sense and less gusto, and he was back on the good, sensible earth; away from nonsense like high six and inverted flight.

A glance over his shoulder saw a broken tile over hither, brown with no embossing, but his tile, dangit, and one he'd broken.

"Getting clumsy there, eh," said a familiar voice. Griff was leaning on the stone wall with a front talon resting on it, and his other three legs supporting him. With his lean build he looked like a scavenger on ice.

"Yeah, tired."

"I'll bet, running off without me, doing dangerous, stupid things that could get you killed."

Sarge dropped in about that moment; both brothers glanced over to see if their NCO had heard the remark, but it seemed that he hadn't.

"I'm not gonna die just yet," said Somers. He spoke up louder, looking at the sergeant, "Hey sarge, are we getting dinner break?"

"Just break," said sarge. "Supper is in five hours, you can last until then."

Griff sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Ouch."

"Bet you're wishing you ate more at breakfast, like me."

"I'm thankful that I didn't have to lug twenty extra pounds all day, like you."

Talons clicked as the sergeant walked off.

"Wherever Starfruit is going I hope it means food," said Somers.

"Or reinforcements."

"Or both."

The two of them eyed a few of the newcomers; thin Mudwings looking less than well-fed, with rusty old spears and lost stares as dragons huddled into the corner of the building, what was left of it.

"They're tearing down the walls inside, you know," said Somers. "I saw it when I came down."

"Great," said Griff. "I always wanted an open floor plan."

"You're snarky today."

His brother punched him in the side, harder than usual. "What else am I supposed to be when you did something incredibly stupid and risky, and dangerous?"

"Um, concerned?"

"Questions with questions, rude."

He sighed. "The house feels like a base now. Been a while since we've been on an FOB, right?"

"I don't miss it," said Griff. "Normal is knee-deep in the crud with enemies flying over my head on a pitch-black night while corpsie patches a nicked tendon by feel. I don't know. I don't like what war made the ranch into."

Made us into, he thought, and he knew Griff thought it too, though neither of them said it.

Footsteps rang out; NCO's footsteps by the even sound, and also by the pressed frown of the sergeant coming out of the last standing door.

"Quit lounging around," said sarge. "We've got cleanup to do, then we're on guard shift."

"Yes, sir," said Somers, then added: "Back into the mud?"

"Don't think so. We already sprung that trick, they know how this goes."

"Gotcha."

"Talking doesn't do any good," the sergeant said. "Come on… better poach any weapons you want to keep when you have time, I don't think we're staying long in this place."

He was gone before the 'thanks' rolled off Somers's lips.

"Sucks to be us," said Griff. He pushed off the wall and Somers followed, into the yawning doorway and more cleanup, more work.


An hour later the rocks had been cleared off the floor, to prevent noble warriors from tripping dishonorably and ending their careers with ankle twists. Somers got to work alongside the newcomers; gruff dragons who spoke work talk on the job.

And what a job. Somers didn't feel like chatting while they cleared the damaged sections away, tearing up load-bearing walls, yes, but keeping enough support for it to stay upright. On his own, Somers took wood columns from the open area in the north-east corner and worked them under a crossbeam using a couple of shims, lending the battered house enough strength to stand if he came back to it. When he came back to it. Without his jerryrigging the place would hold against one summer storm, then collapse.

Both brothers wanted to keep it.

So it was that when darkness fell and most of the soldiers were excused for fifteen minutes of break before sleep, and eventually late watch – it was then that he noticed a Seawing looking out the south-looking door, isolated.

The weight of the world is a terrible burden; it makes dragons push away friends who might otherwise help them bear it.

"Hey," said Somers. The Seawing jerked his head back, then looked at the interloping Mudwing. "Kinda odd to see a splasher way out here."

A pause.

The Seawing tilted his head. "It is," he murmured. "Wells, by the way. Do you have a handle or is it just no-name?"

He said it quickly, almost like nonam, and grinned for a split second before the smile faded away and a melancholy frown returned.

"Somers."

Wells nodded, stared at the wall. He was a pale dragon, his scales fading to a darker color near his back, half-shadowed by a trick of the dim moonslight that barely elevated parts of the courtyard from thick darkness to mere grey. His scales were taut, but they hung around his arms and legs, for he had lost weight.

Just as Somers thought the conversation had ended, the Seawing spoke.

"What news?"

"Nothing much," he said, as if talking about the weather. "Enemy invaded, we got kicked out of the place I was staying at, three-o-fifth picked us up. Starling had a nasty round with the enemy up in Orwen on the sixth; we got news of the invasion a few days before so he got together and made a militia, just in case."

"How'd you get news?" asked Wells.

"Oh, some way or another. They got out of town, picked us up."

"You and -?"

"My brother."

"Okay," said Wells. He paused, as if wondering whether to say something about family, then went on. "I guess you didn't hear of the palace then."

"Dragons told us the wasps burnt it, that the guard didn't heed a warning," said Somers. "I don't believe it… we haven't heard from the queen yet, but we're waiting for her to get through, captured or not. She'll get through, she always did."

All the air went out of Wells and he returned to staring at the wall.

"Guess you haven't heard from Coral either," said Somers.

"No," he said. "Yes. Sort of."

Metal glinted on Wells's shoulder, a dented, busted-up sergeant's patch. Somers remembered the design.

"How long have you been NCO?" he asked. "What unit?"

"Four weeks, Fort Sealion garrison at Abalone. Brigade – no, battalion. It's been a hell of a month."

"Were you in the country when it happened?"

Wells sucked in a breath. "No."

"Kay. Fight like that, I would've just run," said Somers. "It's not a great time to make a last stand when you don't know what you're fighting."

"Well now I do," said Wells. "You know – I wish -"

Somers leaned against the wall, giving the Seawing time. Wells struggled over the words for a while, then sighed, defeated. "I wish I could've done more. I could have, but -" he made a fwooshing noise and spread his webbed talons, "what you gonna do, you know?"

That wasn't what he was going to say.

"What you gonna do when they come for you now?" said Somers, reciting an old song. "Eidh…I remember when they had actual engravings on that patch, now it's just a bunch of bars."

"You do?"

"Ahuh. Back before Tempest."

Wells blinked.

"Where do they have you in the unit?" Somers asked, not wanting to educate the dragon on history.

"In charge. I fell in with vets, came out on top," said Wells. It was a paltering answer and they both knew it, not telling the full story. "Yeah, you don't think a sarge would be in command of all these guys, but I am."

"Stranger things have happened."

"What am I supposed to do, anoint myself general and make everyone else lieutenants? Just to make the enemy feel unsafe? Ha, take that scum," went Wells, wringing a talon, "eat this rank bar which would be silverware otherwise."

Somers chuckled despite himself.

"But moonsdamnit," Wells went on, "it's a terrible world when you have it so good and the bugs snatch it away from you. Things feel like they're getting better, eh? We're all together now and stuff."

"Yeeess…"

Wells lowered his voice from the high volume it'd been reaching. "Starling and I talked; three-oh-fifth and us will split up after dawn. Rations."

"Too bad," said Somers. "You guys did good down here."

"Could've done better myself," said Wells. "I wish soldiers didn't have to eat, it'd make things so much easier." He got off the wall and turned his body, as if going.

"Then we grunts couldn't enjoy axe's special whatchagot stew," said Somers.

The Seawing chuckled, nodded his head.

"Night," he said.

"Night."

Somers watched the guy trot towards another part of the house, meandering with every step. Wells wore his heart on his sleeve, but that wasn't a bad thing; it was the way things used to be, before…

Forget rose-tinted mist, he was wading through nostalgic fog tonight. Somers crawled in between a soldier and another, snoring soldier, then got warm, for soldiers fall asleep fast when they know they will be needed for night watch, and he was no exception.

The war raged even in his dreams.


July 28th maybe? 5,015: Camp Rainburrow.

The soots kept coming back for days; Allele wished they wouldn't bother. He didn't know what time it was, just as he didn't know half of anything else in this helluva jungle, where the giant bugs sucked out a quart of blood at one draught.

His arm itched, but there was nothing he could do. Stupid fleas, he thought. I'd spill my guts for a scratch.

But the bonds on his talons stayed frustratingly tight. He'd worked on them for days between grillings, then had one of the earth dragons hobble him worse one day after a latrine break. Now the ropes didn't budge.

Nothing changed there; no freedom, no friends to talk to, no hope.

The interrogators did change: from that scary leader of the soots to brown dragons chatting him up for information, to turquoise or silvery aquatic types giving him the stink-eye as they sat down to ask him what he knew. Every day, though, a soot came, and sometimes at night too, opening a dark lantern in his face and rolling him away from the tree, then shouting questions in his ear: what the Hivewings' plans were; friendly operating procedures, convoy routes, anything.

A cloud drifted in front of the sun, and the dark, leafy hellscape plunged into even more shadow. He sat there, sullen, watching a centipede that had settled on the bark of the jungle tree, stuffing its face with leaves and things that wafted by. It was a primitive creature, but it was free.

Freedom. 'I never knew I had it so good', he thought to himself.

Freedom from physical bonds. The liberty to pick the length of his tour of duty. The sheer, unadulterated experience of waking up in the morning, meandering down into the library in the hive, checking in and finding a nice book to read. The freedom to give his ex-supervisor sass once he made private in the military and didn't have to listen to civilians anymore, and the fun he got to poke at screwups who couldn't do their jobs right on the slave cleanup crew. A pure bloodline gave him a leg up on the competition, and if he had his way he'd survive to ensure the safety of his seed for a long time to come.

'I miss the good old days.'

"Morning kiddo, time for brekky," said a voice, a gruff soot voice that got gruffer when smoke curled around its nostrils.

Allele glared at the soot; one of their lower-ranked flunkies who'd gotten assigned to him. He wasn't worth the time of squishing him… after he got out of his bonds. Although the corporal was one of the nicer ones, he was still the enemy, and -

"You in there?"

He hissed.

"We could always move you to a better sleeping area," said the soot, putting the food down: meat scraps on a platter, the bottom of the barrel when it came to good food, but better than rations.

Allele muttered something under his breath.

"You hate me, that's fine," said the soot. "Any military information you can give us is out of date at this point, so you're useless."

He let those words hang in the air for a bit, for Allele to look into the dragon's eyes and search for the truth in them. They didn't flinch.

And when he was no longer useful, they would kill him. Just like they'd killed everyone else, every other Hivewing lying twisted in a pool of their own blood, and he was standing there and when he looked down it was his face on his buddy's body, throat cut, dead, going to some hazy afterlife or just ceasing to exist altogether -

"Panicking isn't going to get you out," said the soot, "unless your thumping heart is going to loosen those bonds somehow, and I doubt it will. There are things the boss wants to know."

Allele shook his head, and the soot waited out the silence by looking down and picking his talon. "You sure?" he asked.

"No military stuff," said Allele. "No.."

He'd lost. He was too weak. He could never admit he had done this, or the Hivewings would put a spear in the back of his neck, toss him in a hole and call it a day.

"No military stuff," repeated the soot. "Your info's out of date, at least you did that much."

The red dragon pulled a canister out of a pouch he was wearing, undid the lid and held it away from him as a warm glow poured from inside, casting the jungle in a more comfortable light. Still smelled like hell, though.

"You recognize these."

Allele nodded at the statement.

"We've been trying to make them work for us, but they've been cooling recently, glowing less. Can we make more?"

More flamesilk meant better forging, better furnaces that made higher quality glass in spyglasses, lighting on demand, instant heat. It was ostensibly a civilian material, but with serious military applications that made it a controlled substance in the hives.

Thank the moons the answer was no.

Allele shook his head.

"We can't?"

"I don't know how they're made."

And that was technically true. There were rumors abound about its origin, but nothing was ever confirmed. If you knew too much, the soldiers came and took you away.

The soot nodded his head, as if jotting down a mental note. "Okay, how common is it for your people to have flamesilk?"

"Decently common," said Allele. His grip of these extra-continentals dialect was better now, and they were understanding him okay too, so that communication difficulties didn't happen as much. But there was always enough ambiguity to hide behind if he misspoke. "We use it in lanterns once it cools down; rich households first, then it trickles to the lower part of the hives. There isn't as much as there used to be."

"And the hives, what are they like?"

Relieved to be talking about something other than military matters, Allele relaxed, began to talk almost freely. Only later did he realize that he was giving them easy intel on the way his society worked, and feeding them pieces of the key to his people's weakness.

"Big, bigger than any place you'll ever have, thousands of feet tall, thousands of feet wide, each. They grow most of their own food, capture their own water. Big stays go down to the ground to balance them, and where they're close together we put up a web of silk that dragons can walk 've stood for… for I don't know how long really. It seems like they've always been there."

"How many people live in one?"

"In a tower, thousands, in a city, tens of thousands. The biggest ones are so tall they hold tens of thousands themselves, and they have deep foundations bored down in the rock and water towers and pumps to feed them."

"Pumps?" asked the soot.

"You pump the handle and the water moves," said Allele. "Don't you have pumps?"

"No."

"And we have huge libraries, huge everything, all up in the sky. We – I trained for urban combat, then I came out here and found you people were a bunch of hicks."

The soot chuckled. "I see. In a space so crowded, you must have had friends."

Allele's brow furrowed. "You don't know your neighbor unless he's assigned your job or a job near your job," he said. "You only befriend people from the same security clearance and the same service, if you talk to people outside your boundary they shuffle personnel and you lose them too quick. The shaft rats know each other but that's about it."

The soot pushed forwards the platter. "Careful now, you'll forget breakfast."

This is the first time I've really talked to someone in a week, damnit. And now he wants to shut me up.

He should've known he was a fool for talking this much, even on so innocuous a subject. Fools, however, generally overestimate themselves, and so Allele figured what he was doing was carefully edited by his mastermind of a brain and thus harmless to his cause. He wolfed down the food.

"Shaft rats?" asked the soot.

"Dragons that run around in the pathways; orphans, people that got in trouble with the authorities and found a neat hidey-hole before they could be arrested."

"And what would you get into trouble for?"

"Hmm," said Allele. "Not showing up for weekly roll call, getting transferred from your job too many times, leaving the city without permission, entering the city without permission, playing too many card games, talking conspiracy theories, talking badly about the queen, damaging the queen's property (including the cell you're staying in), and of course, not paying sales tax."

"That's a lot of things they don't like," said the soot.

"Well it's to keep us safe," said Allele. "There are more rules, too, for each profession. The hives would spiral out of control in an instant if there weren't dragons watching over us."

"Ahuh," said the soot. He didn't sound convinced.

"Army guys get privileges," said Allele. "I'm a private and I have more authority than my supervisor back in 'ponics. Guard duty is a breeze I hear, but I didn't get to pull any of that… enlisted maybe nine months ago and before I know it they flew me to this dump."

"And you can just enlist whenever you want?"

"Free people can. If you're a slave or indebted or have a mark on your record you don't get to choose, they just pull you in whenever they want. And those people don't get my privileges either, serves them right for the bad life they're in."

"Ahuh," said the soot again.

"Some of 'em, they turn their lives around real nice, since they did the queen a favor and started reporting to her government, and the people they leave behind hate them for doing the right thing, for telling on all the secret stuff the queen needs to hear about."

The soot visibly struggled not to say 'ahuh'. Finally he remarked, "Okay. And you weren't one of those low-lives?"

"Mid-belt, born and bred, literally I guess. They keep records of your family and if sicknesses run in your blood they don't let you marry, or they only let you marry so and so." Allele puffed out his chest, as much as he could in these bonds anyway. "My line is clean three generations back."

"I imagine this would explain why some dragons have some kinds of stingers and others don't?"

"Oh yeah. I think they do something for that, but it's real secret, unless you're a spook you don't hear much on that front. It's all in your security clearance."

"Huh," said the soot, which was a step down from 'ahuh' if that was possible. Lazy extra-continentals. "Do you have to have a security clearance to go everywhere?"

"Yep. Can't get in to where you wanna go if you don't have it," said Allele. "The slaves don't have them, we do. I guess that's the price of being free."

The soot huffed through his nose; smoke billowed out and he closed his eyes and took a couple of breaths. It was a remarkably controlled example of frustration; usually the red dragons belched flame and glared as if they wanted to burn everything in sight, with their eyeballs.

"We don't have all that here," he said. "If you want to get into a town, you just walk in."

"Really?"

"Yep. And we don't arrest dragons for talking bad about our queen."

"Well how do you make the masses like her then?"

The soot shrugged. "I don't know. She's likeable?"

"And how do you stop malcontents from spreading evil rumors about her?"

"It's kind of difficult. Sometimes they're true."

"I feel sorry for you," said Allele. "Your lives must be so spotty and unpredictable and unsure."

"In a way, they are," said the soot. He got up to leave. "Good talking with you. I'm thankful that a non-military line of conversation was less stressful than our usual round of questioning."

"Oh yeah."

"So one last thing before I leave," said the soot. "What would you do if there was no one to order you around?"

He left before Allele could find an answer.


"Hey Stonecrop, how'd it go?" asked an orange-scaled Skywing: Falcon, with a tired non-expression on his face. "Is he stonewalling you even with the nicety-nice tactics?"

Stonecrop looked back at the prisoner, then walked further away so that he would be out of sight and hearing. "He told me more than usual, and more than I think even he knows. That dragon is the most jaded fool I've ever met, and I've talked to a lot of Icewings."

"Harsh," said Falcon. "You know how they get."

They trotted as they walked, circling the camp. A Mudwing brushed by with a muffled grunt, and a Rainwing followed after him with a 'good morning' and a friendly wave.

"I don't know where to start," said Stonecrop. "First off, apparently you need a security clearance to get anywhere, and if you're in debt or you come from a family the authorities don't like, or you're a slave, you're less than a person. Not that there's much for people in the law."

"Restricted areas type of anywhere?"

"No, literally anywhere. He told me there are so many people that get in trouble there are 'shaft rats' that hide in their gigantic buildings because they're getting away from the authorities, that you can't get out of town without a clearance. He says they put lots of information about you on clearances; records of your family and stuff."

"Wow," said Falcon, his spyglass swinging at his shoulder. "sounds pretty restrictive."

"And they can't marry certain people if they're not allowed to," went on Stonecrop.

"That's a good idea if it's dragons outside the tribe," said Falcon. "Don't suffer the interspecies couple to live and all that."

A Seawing runner overtook them from behind, leading a troop of winded Rainwings around the base for their fourth or fifth lap. Proper soldiers could handle twenty.

"No sense offending our hosts' delicate sensibilities, but hybrids are a bad idea and they should know it."

"It's not that I don't think. It's dragons in the tribe, which makes no bloody sense. If a dragon and dragoness of the same tribe want to, you know, why not let them? It got to the point where I was just saying 'ahuh' every time he paused for breath because of the absurdity of it all. I told him we didn't arrest people who talked badly about our queen and he asked, 'well how do you make dragons like her then?'"

"…"

"And I said something like 'she's likeable' and he asked how we stopped malcontents from spreading slander. And I told him sometimes the bad rumors were true. And he said 'I feel sorry for you, you must live a spotty, unpredictable life'."

"He's so jaded he could be my mother's emerald," said Falcon.

"I asked him what he would do if no one was ordering him around, he didn't answer before I left."

Falcon let out a hissing breath. "Did you get any actionable intel at least?"

"I think," Stonecrop said slowly, "that the Hivewing people are fragile. You know how we are, where you take out the guy in command, he's got a second command to take care of it, and that dragon has a second command, and so on. You saw that with Lou. But these dragons can't withstand shock to their system, if something falls apart it's not them who's going to go out and fix it, unless someone orders them to. There's this very controlled order that they're brought up in, and I feel that if we can decapitate their leadership somehow they won't be resilient enough to keep going. What would happen if they lost the scrolls keeping track of dragons' security clearances?"

"They'd use the security clearances they already had," said Falcon.

"Okay, okay, maybe I was using the wrong point. What if enough of their administrators go down that no one knows what to do anymore? They all have these specialized jobs, they don't know enough to take care of themselves, they rely on others to do it for them. He told me of these huge structures they built as a unit, but he never told me about great things independent individuals did."

Falcon nodded. "I'd show him how much freedom we have, then let him rove on a long leash for a while. Pretty soon he'll realize we have it better, and he won't go back."

"But what if he's so jaded he thinks our way is worse and he does go back?"

"Then we'll bash his skull in once we catch him."

"If the enemy don't do it for us. Desertion."

Falcon smiled. "Practical."

They kept on walking, Stonecrop because he wanted to go write an interrogation report, Falcon because he was off-duty and wanted to chat. Typically there would've been a scribe present when Stonecrop was doing the interview with Allele, but with Lou on a patrol and only a couple Skywings left behind to hold the fort, there wasn't a lot of dragonpower; moreover, a scribe being present might've frightened the prisoner and caused him to withhold information in this scenario.

Fear was a valuable tool in interrogations – direct fear of bodily harm, or indirect fear of hazy future consequences – but as the old saying goes, 'when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail'.

Stonecrop had elected to use a chisel instead. Now he picked up a scroll and quill and started jotting down the gist of the conversation, along with notes sprinkled here and there between the dialogue.

"Better do some more PT pal, you're getting out of shape stuck here with nothing but interrogations to do all week," said Falcon.

"Me, never," said Stonecrop. "Shame we didn't get to go with Lou, hope it's somebody else that goes on patrol next time."

"Especially since this is the first time they're bringing the Hellfire out," said Falcon. "I'm missing it, me!"

"There's a lot of people that want to see the wasps burn in a bad place," said Stonecrop.

"Are you one of them?"

"All armies commit atrocities along their flight-paths, unless their discipline is exceptional. You can hunt down the dragons who did it, but most of them will fade away before you catch them. These Hivewings should be punished, but it's a bit hypocritical to pretend that their invasion is the crime of the century when we did a lot worse in eighteen years."

Stonecrop shrugged. "Point is, once we kick them off the continent and pummel them on theirs for a month or two for good measure, we should let most of them off the hook. The meek can go on with their lives, the sinners can be hanged, and their propaganda department shanked."

Falcon blinked. "Gotcha. Think these Rainwings are going to be the ones to help us do it?"

As if on cue, muffled groans broke out from outside the tent, the simultaneous exhalations of twenty dragons who have just finished one round of PT and know more are on the way. Stonecrop cocked his ear to hear the drill sergeant saying he wanted fourteen more laps by dark, and chuckled.

"They have a long way to go."


Alright, so, this is the point where the author usually wishes the readers a happy, safe new year. I will offer you a Happy New Year and think of a better 2021, but I'm not asking you to be safe. Life always has risks; you can't eliminate them, only minimize them - and some risks aren't worth minimizing because they are the natural consequences of worthwhile activities. I am tired of the bull that has been going on during 2020, and I want it to end; if that means taking my life into my own hands, so be it.