Per Vindicta Ad Astra

This story about rival lesbian air pirates features INTENSE emotional exchanges and AIR COMBAT and, maybe, some aggressive (consensual) sex. Viewer discretion is advised.

Apologies to anyone who knows Latin. Especially the Roman ghosts who read these stories, them especially.

The alternative title was "And so...they were both tops!"

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"It's just business," Fiona lied into the mic, squeezing the trigger on her control stick. A line of tracer rounds cut through the air, stitching their way toward the gleaming silver monoplane below her. It rolled with dangerous speed, pulling G-forces that not even a trained pilot could endure for long. The others in formation performed similar manoeuvres, seabirds scattering in the presence of a raptor.

"Damn, Shrike. Almost got me that time," the other pilot said, her voice dissolving into laughter that felt like Fiona stuck her hand in something caustic.

"Fuck!" she screamed. She had her! She had the Nightingale in her sights and she's choked. Blood rushed to her head as she dived in pursuit. The whole world compressed, blackening on the borders of her vision.

"Shrike, break pursuit!" came the order over the little speaker in her earmuffs. "The bandits aren't the mission, the client is. If they lead you away, they'll pull you apart."

That didn't matter. None of the other pilots in the company mattered. This was just some temporary gig, taken with haste when she'd got the word that the Nightingale was in the area. They didn't know how long she'd been waiting for that shot, that one moment of perfect clarity as her sights settled onto that immaculately polished fuselage.

And it had just slipped through her fingers. Nightingale drifted in and out of her crosshairs as Fiona weaved and banked to match the impossible grace of her quarry. The damnable brown bird in roundel icon on its wings floating in and out of her sights, taunting her. She pulled on the trigger hard -- like an amateur -- with her next chance at a kill. Bullets sailed harmlessly past in staccato bursts until her internal arithmetic told her she was down to half her load.

Monomaniacally focused as she was, the radio traffic in her ear from her erstwhile comrades was only barely registering. The convoy of ponderous airships she was hired to guard was under attack, with the Nightingale's wing of air pirates lashing the sides and scoring hits on engine pods. As she pulled a high risk Immelmann turn to regain altitude and reposition for another shot, she watched black smoke mingle with white clouds as one of the zeps lost a critical number of propellers and drifted earthward, turning on its side before folding up like a cheap carpet.

"We really gotta stop meeting like this," Nightingale taunted, her maneuvers slowed only long enough to draw a perfect bead on one of Fiona's fellow pilots: an arrogant young woman named Gertrude who flew in an obnoxiously painted pusher-engine biplane. Completing the maneuver left Fiona drained of speed, and before she could intercede, her nemesis had clipped Gertude's eyesore, causing her to bail out before the flames of a burning fuel line reached her cockpit. Her parachute's canvas caught the wind just as the biplane erupted in flames, further blackening an already melancholy sky.

Fiona deftly dodged the parachute with a barrel roll, cockpit close enough to see the scowl on Gertrude's face as her body was tossed around in the wash of her engine. The close call had put her in just the right point to make the kill. Slowed, helpless. This could be it. Crosshairs aligned, she forced her hands to stop shaking as the initial adrenaline rush crashed. So long, you-

Two sounds, one after the other, broke her concentration. The sound of pattering raindrops, followed immediately by the cacophonous wrench of metal. The agility left her plane like a ghost leaving a corpse, and suddenly she was flying a brick. She craned around to look behind her to the tail, and felt her heart fall. A shredded mass of metal sat where her rear stabilizer had once been. Another burst of machine gun fire lanced overhead. If she didn't break away, Fiona knew she wasn't making it out of this.

Swearing a blue streak across the sky, she cranked the control stick and pumped the pedals for all they were worth. Slowly, painfully, it turned from her quarry. Every second felt like an hour, and it took all her remaining mental energy to not lock her eyes on the retreating shape of the silver plane. She switched channels back to that of her squadron and informed them that she was making for Meridian. Then she flipped the radio off...and seethed.

***

The squadron had shown her the door. It was an understandable reaction; she'd gone off mission, putting the mission in danger. The commander, a stiff upper lip veteran sort with a bristle moustache, had gone on and on about the unreliability of skyblades. Fiona had held her tongue until he'd finished, then collected her final pay. 500 drakes. Enough for fuel and a few weeks of hanger fees, but not much else.

Leaving the aerodrome was always a bracing experience in Meridian. It really was another world out there, with people from all over the Nine Nations living, working, and fucking up in the ways you can only get away with in a Free City. Unionists rubbed shoulders with Ironmongers, Danielians traded with Gellerites. Streets choked with buildings of a dozen different aesthetics, from the resplendent to the ramshackle, though much more the latter this close to the drome. This time of day, just past noon she judged from the sun's height, people were hustling around for midday meal as often as lurking the merchant stalls for a quick bite. Innumerable varieties of foodstuffs spaced in defiance of any order or permitting system like you might find in one of the capitals, fragrant spices mixing with the scents of cooking meats and grilled fish. It was chaos, but it was Free. And Fiona liked it that way.

She fought her way through the press of people, somewhat aided by her height and her willingness to throw elbows should the task require it. The journey wasn't far, and she only had to shove a single pickpocket to the concrete before she spotted the entryway to her destination. An arrow made of lightbulbs, unlit this time of day, pointing to a door pulled from some cargo hauler's cockpit. The paint on the handle worn down to bare steel from years of weary hands yanking it open as Fiona's did, stepping in from the harsh daylight to dim lights and smoky air.

Zero Out was the closest thing the town had to a guild house for pilots. Somewhere between a hostel, bar, and job board, it's where Skyblades like her went for just about anything they needed. Yeah, even that. Though you didn't win any favours for fucking loudly in the bunks.

A familiar face tended bar, at least. Joshua had a rag-covered hand in a mug when his eyes caught hers. He swore, but didn't stop cleaning.

"You're fucking nuts, Fiona. You know that?" he said at slightly above conversational volume. Only a dull hum of conversation in the bar at the moment making a yell unnecessary. Later at night, the place would usually be a dull roar of bullshit war stories and fake bravado. Right now it was only the worse-off who hung around a watering hole at noon. That or long haulers with their internal clocks so fucked that them having a drink this early wasn't even a cry for help.

Fiona shrugged, approaching the bartender. "Can't argue that. Word spread that fast?"

"That you blew the contract to chase down your perennial rival? Yeah, of course it did. You're on your way to being blackballed from most of the legit outfits. Hope you have something lined up, because your tab isn't going to pay itself."

She pulled one of the clean mugs from the counter and sat it upright. He looked at her with a bewildered expression, her wide eyes asking the unspoken question: did you just ask for another extension? When she tapped the glass, he sighed and poured her a pint of his cheapest.

"I had her, Josh. I had her. Dead to rights," she began, her hands miming her plane's controls. "I lined up the shot, I pulled the trigger."

"And?" he asked, knowing the answer.

"It went far to the right. Alignment issue with the landing gear, sudden increase of windspeed, something fouled my shot. I'm gonna need to take apart the entire assembly at some point. My sighting hasn't been right since I took that hit two months back. Something with the timing belt, I know it, I just can't..." She drained the mug in three long, desperate gulps. A refill was already on its way by the time the glass touched the bar top. "I can just picture her smug fucking smile as I failed, again."

"You ever seen the Nightingale before?" he asked. "Out of her plane, I mean."

Fiona shook her head. "That's the worst bit about her, I think. She took first in the Nero 400, brought home the Steel Chalice in Iverine. During the war, she was always one or two confirmed kills ahead of me. After, any company she flew for beat mine out for contracts. She's my opposite and better than me and I've never seen her fucking face in my life. All I know about her is her plane, and her laugh. Her damnable laugh." The second beer was well on its way to joining the first. The look of mild annoyance on Joshua's face morphed into something like concern.

"This hatred's gonna burn you up, girl. She's not worth it. You're a damn good pilot, everyone knows it. Why can't you just...I don't know...fly convoy for a few months, build your rep back up, then make more money than you can ever dream of keeping some rich politico safe from rogues on some sleazy goodwill tour of the provinces."

The bile Fiona wanted to spew in response took some time to swallow back down. What did he know? What did anyone know about being second best? Being the best loser in the whole field. It was enough to trigger that never-ending sense of impotent fury that wound her around the bend. But Josh was a good sort. A fool maybe, but not worth burning the last of her bridges in town.

"I can't," she replied simply, as if noting that the sky was miraculously still a shade of blue today. "Not until she's dead, or until I'm better than her." He didn't get it. It wasn't his fault. He wasn't a blade. At least, she thought he wasn't. You never knew in Meridian.

She took her third beer over to one of the tables, mumbling something about needing some time to think. Her options in Meridian were narrow, and her wallet was even thinner. Skipping town would also mean running out on a couple debts that might bring her trouble in the future. MacPherson, the local loan shark, in particular. He knew better than to fuck with a Skyblade for any of those penny ante knee-breaking theatrics, but she couldn't keep both eyes on the door forever. She went over options to get quick cash, none of them particularly safe or tasteful, and drove her deeper into her mug.

"This seat taken?"

Fiona looked up from the glass to the face of a woman she didn't know. Great wide expressive eyes and a round, pleasant face made Fiona think of a kindly merchant's wife or a neighbourhood librarian. The jacket she wore put to rest that idea, and answered just what the hell she was doing in a pilot's bar in the first place. Sewn on the shoulder of the maroon leather was a faded but lovingly maintained patch for the 94th Western Air Squadron: the numbers 9 and 4 book-ending an image of a venomous snake lashing out from a clouded sky. She might not look like much, but you didn't become a 'Sky Cobra' by selling fish or sorting picture books.

"Have at 'er," Fiona said with a casual flip of her wrist, "But there are plenty of empty tables around."

"Really?" the other woman asked, looking around at the nearly empty bar. "I hadn't noticed. Still, I happen to like company, and darlin' you look like you could use some." Her accent, a silky smooth drawl lingering on the vowels like a lover reluctant to leave. From some place in the mountains, no doubt. Hearing it made Fiona homesick for a place she'd never been.

Fiona snorted. "Oh great. They train you to be shrinks in the Cobras?" she asked, gesturing to the patch.

"Well after they taught us to be the best pilots in the world there was a lot of downtime, so we picked up hobbies." She settled into a seat opposite Fiona, looking as comfortable as you please. "You from around these parts?"

"No."

"What brings you to Meridian?"

"Money."

"Fair, though I'd wager there are better ways of getting it than being three beers deep into a weekday afternoon."

"The fuck's it to you, Cobra?" Fiona leaned back, arms knotted. "I just got off a job. I'm blowing off steam."

"Oooh, you're Shrike, yeah?"

Fiona grumbled. Callsigns weren't secret, though knowledge of them can let professional disagreements bleed into the ground world.

"I restate: what the fuck is it to you?"

"Nothing, not really. Just a fan of her work. You flew with the Dambusters during the War, right?"

That was a surprise. "Our work wasn't exactly flashy. Didn't know we had fans."

"Are you kidding?" she asked rhetorically, leaning in over her elbows. "You gals were nuts. Flying so close to the ground your propellers could cut the hedgerows, carrying more bombs than sense, then tossing 'em right into a dam or a fort or god only knows what else, then fighting your way back to home turf? Sure it didn't make the newspapers but it was nerves of steel work. You can't exactly bail out of a plane at sea level."

"Don't I know it." Fiona momentarily let go of the tension she'd been holding onto after meeting this interloper into her navel gazing. "What's your name?"

"J. Vorhees, 94th W.A.S. But you can call me Jenna." She extended a hand, and Fiona took it. Maybe the night wouldn't be a wash after all.

***

The evening soared by, and even as the bar filled up, Fiona barely noticed. Skyblades who flew in the war were a dime a dozen, obviously, but the Cobras and the Dambusters were two sides of a twisted coin. Risking life and limb, performing death defying stunts, they were a cut of their own above the average stick jockeys. They traded heart-stopping anecdotes, moments of tempted fate and solemn recollection as their topic inevitably evoked the names of the dead like some ancient warrior ritual. To keep them alive in their hearts and minds kept them from dying out altogether; a sentiment shared by many of the pilots in the Aeroforces regardless of flag they fought under.

And in those moments, Fiona caught something. Something she hadn't noticed she'd been missing this whole time, but she'd been shirking all the same: connection. For a moment, the clouds of her ceaseless vendetta parted and she could see to the blue sky above. She noticed, truly noticed, that the other woman was...well, a woman. The curve of her body, the way she smiled -- a subtle thing but truly magical when it happened. Her voice, too, was comforting and warm. Fiona was so used to people chatting in her own nation's speech that when someone from the Magnate States came by, a neighbour to her own province, it sounded like the speech of some magical land. And for all Jenna's natural Skyblade braggadocio there was something else there too, mysterious, just under the surface maybe. That only made her more intriguing, which worked to make other parts of her mind start up on the question of 'what other things did this stranger have to show her?'

"D'you wanna get outta here?" Jenna asked, "My wing has a floor of the Colditz Arms to ourselves."

The alternative, a starchy bed in the common room a flight of stairs above, felt like a million miles away.

They left, Jenna covering the tab for the night with a wink that was gone in a flash.

"You don't gotta do that," Fiona said, rubbing the back of her neck.

Jenna shrugged it off. "Job went well. I can afford to be a touch magnanimous." They pulled away from the bar, Fiona having to purposefully ignore the dumb smirk on Josh's face as he watched them go. Let him watch. It wasn't like this was a common thing, she wasn't easy or anything. In fact, it was the first time she'd gone with anyone since she'd touched down in Meridian.

'Holy shit,' she thought, 'had it been that long?'

They made their way through the old city's cobbled streets, sliding past groups moving to and fro from restaurants and bars and tiny corner shops as the day wound down. The road ran more or less north to south, and they were already out of the brief few hours where the sun could shine directly overhead. The walls and windows lost in a diffused, melancholy until the streetlights crackled to life later in the day. Muffled music from a distant gramophone joined the dull hum of improperly installed power cables and the soft buzz of conversation.

"So what kinds of missions do you fly now?" Fiona asked.

"Eh, we take who offers the most. And if they don't pay enough, we take what we want from them."

Fiona's eyebrows raised. "You're pirates?"

"Only from those who can afford to lose it. We're not raiding refugee convoys if that's what you're thinking."

She wasn't, but now she was. "They let you land in Meridian?"

"Special dispensation. So long as we pay the fees like everyone else and agree to a certain list of no-go targets, we can land here. They can blacklist you, course, but they're none too picky about the provenance of your goods if you're going after a Union arms shipment or G-Ration packs for the Gellarite Crusade. Generalized hostility for the big powers is how Meridian stays a Free City, and they encourage that kinda rough play on the down low."

This was all news to Fiona. Plenty of wings and flying companies set up shop here, but she'd never seen anyone she'd flown against land here. That got her mind working. How many times had she sat beside someone at the Zero Out that she'd tried to kill hours before?

"So?" Jenna asked, obviously seeing the look of consternation on Fiona's face, "You still think we can get along. You with a sinister, merciless pirate like me?"

"I don't have anything against attacking the big boys. They can stand to bleed for what they did during the war. I just didn't think-"

"That a Cobra would ever stoop so low?" Jenna guessed, a little defensively.

"No," Fiona said, then grinned, "That a filthy pirate could be so hot."

She groaned at that. "Alright, alright, you got me Miss Dambuster. So I'm a disgusting, depraved privateer, looking to take what I want. What are you going to do about it?"

***

Their room wasn't even unlocked before Fiona fell upon Jenna, the other woman prying her key from the lock after much finagling between the grip of arms pulling her closer and toward the luxurious bed. With a snap of her boot, she finished closing the door before joining Fiona in the frantic act of disrobing. Shirts and pants tossed off into an unceremonious heap on the floor.

"Nice Bluehawk," Jenna said absently, nodding to the pistol with the elegant pearl-handled grip on Fiona's hip holster.

"Pulled it from a crashed zep during the war. So don't worry, I brought protection."

It was an old joke, and a bad one at that. But something about it made the other woman crack up. She laughed, a musical full-throated sound...but one that Fiona recognised immediately. Time slowed down, and her world fell out from under her.

That voice. That laugh. It's the one she heard crackling over the radio. The one she heard in her dreams at night, taunting her as the cockpit melted and black smoke filled her lungs as she dived into the pits of hell.

It was her

IT WAS HER.

In one fluid motion, Fiona rolled backward, pulled her sidearm from the holster on her hip, and levelled the broom-handled pistol in a two fisted grip. Jenna looked nonplussed but otherwise unsurprised by this turn of events.