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Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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Talia "You lied to the Admiral's face without so much as a spike in your pulse," Juniper says, her voice a low drawl from the corner of my private quarters. I ignore her, leaning over the heavy oak drafting table. The glow of the bioluminescent desk lamp casts sharp shadows over the hydro-acoustic charts I have unrolled across the wood. It took me two hours to forge the official patrol reports from our disastrous Polar Crown exam, burying the acoustic anomalies beneath layers of fabricated…-
24.0 K • Completed
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Juniper The metallic click echoing from the darkness of the vault is the sound of a secondary deadbolt engaging. It is an automated failsafe, a preservation lock triggered by the change in hydraulic pressure. "Juniper!" Talia gasps, her knees finally giving out. She slumps against the reinforced steel door, her right hand still brutally pinned in the rusted hinge. The dragon bond floods my nervous system with a terrifying, white-hot spike of her pain. It hits me so hard my vision actually…
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24.0 K • Completed
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Juniper The tempest-skiff’s repulsor engine screams as I push the throttle past the redline. I am flying blind through a Category 5 squall, seventy miles off the coast of the Aurora Sound Naval College. The wind shears against the fuselage with the force of a physical hammer, threatening to rip the control yoke straight out of my hands. I do not have a flight suit. I do not have a sanctioned transponder. I stole a decommissioned coastal glider from the civilian docks, and its heating grid failed ten…
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24.0 K • Completed
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Talia The heavy mahogany office feels like a vacuum. All the air has been sucked out of the room, leaving only the cold, mechanical hum of the academy’s localized signal jammer vibrating in my molars. I look down at the dead-man’s switch on my tactical belt. The green transmission light is gone, replaced by a flat, dead amber. Vance didn't just route the dragon hatchlings to the dreadnought flagship; he isolated my broadcast frequencies the moment I stepped into his command center. He let me play my…
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24.0 K • Completed
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ARIA Sector Four was a graveyard of broken ambitions. Located at the lowest ventral point of the Blackglass fortress, it was essentially a massive, open-air vertical launch chute that dropped straight into the freezing void above the inland seas. The wind howling up through the grated floor was strong enough to rip a civilian off their feet. Vesper hung suspended in the heavy iron launch clamps, her massive mirrored scales reflecting the harsh, strobing amber warning lights of the bay. The dragon let out…-
22.5 K • Completed
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ARIA The Vanguard Gauntlet was a brutal Blackglass tradition, a sanctioned rivalry weekend where the upper-sector cadets were encouraged to cull the weak from the lower decks. Officially, it was an exercise in localized tactical defense. Unofficially, it was a blood sport played on the iced-over outer catwalks of the aerial fortress. And right now, Cassian and I were the primary targets. A heavy chunk of industrial ice slammed into the kinetic barrier I projected over our flanks, shattering into…
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22.5 K • Completed
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CASSIAN The thermal hangar was heavy with the deep, rhythmic respiration of the dragon sleeping in the lower bay. Every exhalation from Vesper sent a wave of ambient heat rolling across the iron grating, smelling of sulfur and hot metal. I sat on the edge of the makeshift bed we had assembled from heavy-duty flight blankets, staring into the dim, amber-lit gloom of the cavernous room. My shadows were entirely dormant, anchored by the profound, agonizingly peaceful hum of the bond I shared with the woman…
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22.5 K • Completed
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ARIA The sky above Lake Superior was a graveyard of howling wind and simulated artillery fire. The Iron Eclipse was Blackglass’s most brutal war game, an all-cadet fleet maneuver designed to test aerial survival under absolute bombardment. The upper atmosphere was choked with green kinetic flak, tracing lethal arcs through the blizzard. And I was flying it alone. I sat strapped into the primary saddle on Vesper’s spine, my right arm locked in a rigid, makeshift splint constructed of hardened…
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22.5 K • Completed
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ARIA The storm was breaking, but the sky offered no salvation. I stood near the edge of the iced-over maintenance outcropping, the freezing wind whipping the loose strands of hair across my face. Below me, the churning, slate-grey expanse of the inland sea stretched out toward the horizon, visible now that the localized blizzard of the Iron Eclipse war game was dissipating. Vesper lay exhausted on the heavy iron grating a few yards away, her massive mirrored chest rising and falling in a deep,…
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22.5 K • Completed
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ARIA The sixty-minute countdown felt like a physical weight pressing against my ribs. I kicked the heavy iron release lever of the maintenance airlock, my boots hitting the steel grating of Sector Four’s lower corridor. The general quarters Klaxon was deafening down here, a rhythmic, pulsing scream of red light and blaring sirens that bathed the cold iron bulkheads in the color of blood. The analgesic in my system was already beginning to fray. The dull, muted throb in my right arm was sharpening back…
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22.5 K • Completed
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