Page 2 of Aviatrix

I know it well enough to walk it without thinking.

My boots slow as I reach the narrow observation window at the end of the corridor, heart pounding hard enough to drown out my anger. Below, the flight line, fuel bays, and launch pads stretch across the base like a blueprint I’ve memorized since childhood.

Officially, Langdon Air Station doesn’t exist. It’s tucked along a remote stretch of coastline just south of Cape May, disguised as a decommissioned radar hub no one really talks about. But behind the wire, it’s something else entirely. Classified runways. A reinforced bunker. Prototype aircraft without names. It’s one of the most advanced defense facilities on the eastern seaboard. Hidden. Hardened. Buried under layers of secrets and salt air.

So buried, in fact, that years ago there were whispers about an off-the-books jet. One that could think with its pilot. The rumor was buried before the details could surface. Quietly. Completely.

I grew up just outside the perimeter fence. My dad was stationed here before he vanished. Decorated pilot. Loyal officer. The last person to ever fly a sortie labeled so classified, it doesn’t officially exist either. His call sign was Valkyrie. Fitting for a man who flew like death had nothing on him.

He was working on something secret before he dropped off the face of the Earth. Something above clearance. I asked once. He didn’t answer. He just said, “Some things are safer if they die in silence, Jetlet.”

Jetlet. That’s what he always used to call me.

Langdon isn’t just familiar, it’s personal. Every hangar, every hallway still remembers him. His rusted nameplate is still on the office door. They never bothered to take it down. And sometimes, I swear I can still hear his boots in the halls. I still get a whiff of his sandalwood cologne.

It’s the only reason I came back. To find answers about his disappearance. To find out why he left without warning.

The sky tears wide open, pulling my attention to seven—maybe eight—massive shadows streaking across the horizon, black shapes slicing through the clouds like blades through steel. They’re descending. Fast. Too fast. And they aren’t ours.

One breaks formation, banking at an angle no Earth-made craft could ever manage. Its underbelly glistens, slick and pulsing, almost organic, as if the thing is breathing. A shallow whir builds in the air. It's too high-pitched to be mechanical, too precise to be natural.

It’s not thunder. Not weapons fire. It’s otherworldly, mystifying.

The lead ship dives toward the airfield, its hull shifting as it moves. Not through retractable panels, but fluidly, unnaturally. Like alloy obeying muscle instead of wiring.

They’re moving like liquid metal. But how?

Impact.

Concrete erupts. Towers buckle. Shockwaves ripple outward like rings across a shattered pond. If that pond were asphalt and bodies.

A fueling truck lifts off the ground and slams into the hangar with bone-rattling force. Flames roar to life, crawling up the roof. Behind me, someone screams for a medic. Another for their mother.

Dragon’s down. One of the old guards. One of my dad’s.

I can’t move. Not yet. Not even to breathe.

Whoever these ships belong to, they didn’t come to negotiate.

They came to conquer.

And for the first time all day, I stop thinking about Colonel Lark Jones.

I run. Fast. Down the hall, past officers yelling into radios that aren’t responding, past wide-eyed cadets frozen in place like deer in headlights. The base is in freefall.

I make a sharp turn toward the hangar, boots pounding against the floor. The walls shudder again as another impact rocks the airfield. Closer this time. A flash of heat scorches the windows.

I need to find Gary. He might be an oddball, but he’s one of the top flyers we’ve got and probably our best shot at getting out of here alive.

“Atlas!” I shout his call sign toward the computer room as I pick up speed. “We’re under attack!”

Scooter, Gary’s son—an excellent pilot with a nonstop reel of wildly inappropriate jokes—pops his head out of the machine room, then immediately sprints after me. “He's not here. What's going on, Nova?”

Another blast, another rumble.

Scooter’s eyes widen at the truth.

“We need to find Glitch!” he says, breathless. Thea, the youngest certified pilot in recent history, barely registers on the radar. Just a glitch.