Chapter 1 #2
Rory snorted. “We might need a little more detail than that, airman.”
“Everything from here to Vegas is fucked,” she said bluntly. “The forests are still burning, and some of the towns. I counted at least a hundred lizards from there and back, and dropped a few aid packages over LA in case we’ve still got civilians holed up there.”
“None of the lizards tried to engage you?”
“I didn’t see any of them,” Aria said grimly, omitting the shadows and shades she’d seen in the storm cloud. “I saw what they’ve been doing though. I’d give anything to put a missile right through the middle of one of those things.”
“You’ll have your chance to do that soon enough. Go get cleaned up,” Rory said, slapping her on the back. “And get some rest. You’ve earned it.”
Aria didn’t know if she’d earned it, but she sure needed it.
She was bone tired from the run. The adrenaline from heading to the portal had woken her up some, but that was fading fast now that she was on solid ground.
Breathing a smoky sigh of relief at the prospect of some kind of rest, she made her way to the barracks and slumped down in the common room.
There she pulled the net holding her long, thick, dirty blonde hair in place. The long missions made her think about cutting it short, but it was the last thing she had that reminded her of the time before she joined the military. Things had been more simple then. She’d been more simple.
Flying had always been Aria’s passion. She had begun lessons with her father when she was just five years old.
Her father had passed when she was fifteen, and she had never known her mother.
For several years following his passing, Aria had been denied the opportunity to fly.
She’d been sent to live with her aunt, a woman who had decided that Aria had been raised all wrong and spend the next miserable three years trying to change everything about her and despairing at Aria’s inevitable rebellion.
At seventeen, Aria had stolen a plane out of sheer desperation to see the sky.
Fortunately for her, it was from a small Kansas airfield and the owner had been surprisingly understanding.
Instead of pressing charges, or reporting her to the aviation authority, he’d encouraged her to go into military training.
The rest was history—a checkered history that involved more notes, comments, and marks on her record than seemed possible.
She’d seen her file once; it looked like a copy of War and Peace.
There was absolutely no doubt in Aria’s mind that she wouldn’t have gotten to fly for the air force if it wasn’t for the invasion.
That call sign ‘Trouble’ said it all. Whether she was getting into trouble, or if it was simply happening in the vicinity, mischief tended to follow Aria wherever she went.
She flicked the television onto the news channel and watched the only thing that was on TV these days: the war.
They were doing another one of their retrospectives, showing footage of crowds cheering and clapping in the Mojave, clustered around that now wrecked building in their bright colored buses and tribal clothing with their bands and acts.
Like Burning Man, but for a power plant.
Power Man, they’d called it. The reason for the excitement was obvious and had touched everyone.
The hyper-fusion plant promised a source of never-ending entirely clean power.
There would be no more need for oil, or gas, or windmills.
Even nuclear was unnecessary. They’d found a way to turn the space between atoms into pure energy, so they explained on every news channel in the world.
Some people had protested, but some people always protested and nobody paid any attention to them. The news footage showed a few of their dark signs with coffins and verses from various books inscribed upon them, but they had not stopped the party, which raged for three days before the activation.
The entire world had held its breath as the switch was thrown on the new reactor. And then it had let that breath out in a scream.
The station had powered up as intended, but instead of sending energy coursing through the thick cable connected to the California grid, it burst forth to the sky above and tore a hole in the very fabric of space and time.
Scientists would later explain that it was a rift to a sister dimension, but it didn’t matter by then, because the dragons had arrived.
Pouring through the tear on great leathery wings, bringing fire and destruction to the revelers below.
The festival erupted in flame and fear as news cameras caught sight of creatures that looked like they belonged in a movie.
They were the demons of humanity’s super-consciousness and they were every bit as fearsome as the legends had made them out to be—more so for being real.
Aria had been in jet pilot training at the time.
She was a skilled—some even said natural—pilot, but her tendency to get on the wrong side of superiors was holding her back.
If the dragons hadn’t come, she would probably have been discharged as surplus to requirements.
Instead they had slapped a pair of wings on her uniform, made ‘Trouble’ her call sign, and put her in the air.
The only effective way to combat the dragons was in the air, and every pilot was essential.
Even civilian pilots had been taken into the service as commercial flights were grounded.
It was far too dangerous to be in the skies unless your plane was loaded with missiles.
“This is a shit show,” she muttered to herself, flipping between stations to watch talking heads in bunkers argue over the situation.
Some were saying diplomacy hadn’t been given a chance to work and that the government should be making greater efforts to contact them in search of peace.
Others were saying that the only way to stop the dragons was to build a giant plug.
Others were insisting that the dragons would never have been able to come through at all if it weren’t for people using their microwaves so much.
People were panicking and the world was on the verge of economic collapse thanks to the domino effect of the stock markets.
Even if they got the dragons under control tomorrow, this mess was going to take years, if not decades to clean up. And if they didn’t get the dragons under control… well, none of it was going to matter.
Pounding footsteps outside the door heralded the arrival of her very flustered-looking commanding officer.
“Aria, I need you back in the air! We’ve got a rogue lizard crossing the Los Angeles threshold and the main defense wing scrambled to the south an hour ago. Get out there and get that lizard away from the city!”
Suddenly, Aria wasn’t tired anymore. The very concept of fatigue was forgotten as Aria ran to her plane and jumped in.
It had been refueled, flight checked and was ready to go.
She was in the air before she even gave a clear thought to what she was going to do about the dragon.
The air-to-air missiles were on board. They’d proven to be effective on some of the lizards in the past, though Aria had never used them herself.
She headed for Los Angeles on the necessary vector, hoping to intersect the dragon.
During the initial invasion, the dragons had swarmed the sky so thick that they cast their shade for miles, but some had returned to the portal, and it was said that others were setting up bases or burrows in remote areas.
There was no real intelligence as to where they were or what they were doing.
Drones sent after them usually ended up melted and crispy.
The only spark of hope was in the dragons’ flight range.
It seemed to max out around a thousand miles, which meant that they hadn’t made it to the main continent of Europe thanks to the oceans.
The Alaskan route was out, due to their apparent inability to withstand the freezing temperatures of that region.
Right now they were contained by the winter weather to Central America, which was good news for the rest of the world, but very bad news for the United States in particular, where most of the activity was centered.
Checking over her weapons system, Aria made sure everything was in order and ready to go. Maybe she should have been afraid, but she was almost excited to do battle with a dragon up close and personal.
“Imma run you right out of town,” she promised under her breath, her eyes scanning the sky for signs of trouble.
If her commander hadn’t sent her out, she would have volunteered for this mission anyway.
Aria was itching to engage one of the dragons in an air battle.
It was dangerous, but nothing could resist an air-to-air missile.
Of course, that was only half of the equation.
The dragons had fearsome offensive capabilities, flaming hot discharges that would melt the electronics and make the plane spiral out of the sky in a plume of smoke.
The military scientists were working on heat-shielding technology, but that wasn’t going to do a thing for Aria.
She was going to have to throw her plane around hard to avoid the discharges while still getting close enough to get a decent lock on the dragon.
It was dogfighting on steroids, and she was ready for it.
A confirmed kill would earn her a dragon slayer patch—there weren’t many of those, and they meant something.
Aria was desperate to prove herself as more than trouble.
She was desperate to do something that would show everyone that in spite of the fact she wasn’t always easy to command, she was worth her wings.