Beyond the Sky: Chapter 3
The War Room
“We turn now to a troubling matter as of late.” Warmaster Nellan looked to the others gathered around the War Room’s circular table. Princess Takji, bored from listening to some minor official prattle on about border exercises, sat up. She was never at ease here, since her briefing on the Uranium Problem, and suspected she never would be—too much power, she thought, glancing around at the amber-screen control consoles and projection boards on the angled wall. “For some time now we have heard reports of encounters with strange aircraft. I am pleased to report one of my intelligence operatives in Jepsei recently managed to acquire this photograph.”
Beside the conference room table, an officer put a picture under a camera which displayed it on a television screen—black and white, with treetops visible and a black triangle above.
“That...blurry thing?” said Skyboss Teleheï, a Yune with wings folded along her sides.
Nellan looked to the attendant, who placed the next picture down. “This one was also taken in Jepsei, last month from the gun camera of a Skyspear fighter.” It showed a similar craft from the back, a trio of engines glowing red-hot.
“Excuse me, last month?” King Delvar asked. “Why are we just now seeing this?”
“The contacts my operative spoke to were disinclined to share it.”
“Probably holding back after the last round of arms sales failed to pass,” Takji said. That got her a few glances from others at the table, she rarely spoke at her father’s military meetings.
“After everything we’ve done for them?” Delvar fumed. “Anything else they’ve been hiding?”
Nellan raised his ears. “Indeed, Your Majesty, though it is difficult to tell what should be believed.”
“Then let us hear it all.”
He continued, “My operative learned this craft, or multiple like it, has been sighted several times in Jepsei throughout the past few months, fitting with similar reports from up north and near the capital, and in Mespreth itself. The Jepsei army interviewed witnesses, several of whom said they observed pilots exiting the craft. They were not, it seems, Yune.”
Now that was strange, Takji thought. Few nations entrusted their aircraft to anyone but the Flyers. She asked, “Then what were they?”
“Perhaps Cepic, but the interview subjects claimed otherwise without fail. It should also be said some of these same subjects allege the craft hovered in place without noise, so the reliability of their accounts is dubious at best.”
“Maybe they were just too far away to hear the engines?” Teleheï suggested. “We have prototype lifting jets.”
“Yes, but prototypes,” replied Nellan. “The Amalgamation appears to have put our experiments into production.”
Takji asked, “Hold on, how do we even know it’s Malgie to begin with?”
“Who else could it be, My Princess?” General Teerseev, an old Cepic, replied.
“So then this is some kind of new Malgie spy plane?”
“With hover-jets and rocket boosters,” Teleheï added.
Nellan said, “It appears so. So far they’ve refrained from attacking any targets in Jepsei or our territory, but every time we go to intercept, they outfly us! Jepsei pilots reported they can barely track the cursed things on radar!”
“Then this only confirms our suspicions,” another officer added. “This capability is only theoretical for us; we’ve got nothing like it!”
“Based on this evidence, Your Majesty,” Nellan continued. “I recommend an immediate increase in our defense status and a drafting of new orders to our skyfleet, to engage and destroy these craft at first encounter.”
Delvar pondered a moment. “Agreed on both counts.” He looked to the attendant, who picked up a phone. With an angry buzz, a bar of lights mounted above the television screen changed from purple to yellow. “Whatever we know about these things today, I want to know twice as much by tomorrow!”
Velli reached the compound as the sun rose. From the outside it resembled a derelict factory among blue-tufted desert trees, one of many bombed or left abandoned when the Long War came to Jepsei a generation ago. She followed the prescribed route—past a post, a rock, and an old truck, and waited beside a barrel.
Two JNF fighters stepped out from behind a ruined brick wall. One was Teliv, the other a recent recruit she didn’t know much.
“They’ve started thinking you’re dead!” Teliv’s face brightened. “What happened?”
“I would find this hard to believe,” Commander Udan lowered his cigarette and let out a puff of smoke, “But you have never once, to my knowledge, told a lie.”
“People have been seeing things, in the sky. It’s on the news.” Velli looked up at the ramshackle wooden roof over Udan’s office, once a little room off the main factory floor.
“Indeed. Perhaps I should’ve put more stock in it.” He turned to his desk, shuffled through a folder, and held up a photograph of a blurry black triangle. “They say this is some kind of new spy plane, come down to smite us on behalf of the Regime.”
“It wasn’t Mespreth,” Velli replied, without hesitation.
“How can you be sure?”
“The...pilots.” Anxiety gripped Velli’s throat again, Udan saw her reaction. “They were...monsters. Like nothing I’d ever seen. Freakish long legs, and hands with only one thumb.”
Even Udan seemed repulsed. “I’ve heard of a lot of odd people in remote corners of the world, but never that! How close did you get?”
“We fought. One got me from behind, another shot something at me and I passed out. Like I’d been cold-cocked, only my head wasn’t sore. Then they left.”
“In their floating levitator plane.”
“It sounds crazy, I know. But it’s true.”
The factory floor now lay open to the sky, roof long ago caved in and concrete overgrown. Blue camouflage netting and leaves concealed crates, sleeping bags, and vehicles from prying Flyers. Udan led her over to a group of people. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Now in a JNF uniform, and being issued her first equipment kit, was the girl from the slave truck. She saw Velli, and raised her ears.
“I never got your name,” asked Velli.
“Naaca.” She took a rifle, examined it. “There’s a woman who’d been hiding me in the village before...” her voice trailed off. Velli realized why: the fur of her forehead bore the slave-mark of Elacmagolintec, the Strider in Trez Yafan city. A runaway had few options: arrest meant re-enslavement, or perhaps execution to make an example. That left only the long journey to Ghanat-Tahj, or taking to the hills among robbers and Shadowstalkers. Or, the National Front.
“She’s becoming Effaced,” Teliv said. “Practically begged me when we were sending off the other villagers.”
“There’s more.” Udan went to a desk, picked up a spiked chain on a leather handle, which she realized belonged to the Slavemaster. “That man from the truck. He was Grej High Ranger—the Butcher of Pars Revek.”
“You mean—” Velli took a breath.
“You struck a great blow for freedom. Both of you.” He motioned to Velli, taking her aside, out of earshot from the others. “I know it’s only been a quarter-year since Ralan, but—”
“I’ll train her.” Velli raised her ears.
“Then there is one more thing I must ask.”
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