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“What if they leave off attacking us and strafe our ground troops instead?”

Merrik glanced over the side of his aeroplane at Adry’s magic, unleashed and crackling with power as it stretched nearly as far as the eye could see even from the sky. “They can try, but I do not believe that will be an issue.”

Trying to strafe the ground would be as suicidal as ramming the Alliance aeroplanes. He didn’t think any aeroplane would survive that unleashed magic.

Before the grimness became too much, Merrik continued his orders. “When you make your run, two of you stay above as a shield to guard from enemy aeroplanes while the other two strafe and bomb the airships. Switch places when your bombs are used up.”

“Yes, sir.” The words echoed from the many voices of the squadron.

Merrik finished his sweeping turn, placing himself, Lije, and Stickyfingers at the fore of Flight B. Nellie Blair settled in behind Stickyfingers to complete their formation of four aeroplanes.

Mongavarian aeroplanes peeled away from their stations around the airships, racing toward him to intercept.

He counted the seconds, waiting, waiting, until he saw the flashes of their machine guns. Only then did he switch on the protective shield around his aeroplane.

He kept his aeroplane heading straight on, staring down the oncoming enemy.

The enemy kept coming, machine guns fruitlessly hammering away. At that rate, the enemy pilots would run out of ammunition before the dogfight had even been fully engaged. A sure sign these were inexperienced pilots.

At the last moment, the Mongavarians peeled away, and Merrik flashed past, followed by his Flight. More enemy aeroplanes dove at them, but the Flight either stayed the course or flipped almost casually to get out of the way, leaving the enemy biplanes to buzz around them as uselessly as flies.

The closest airship to them began turning, as if it planned to try to head them off. It had barely begun its turn when Merrik reached it. He swept in low, so low the men manning the machine guns mounted on either side struggled to lower the muzzles to target him, and triggered his machine gun.

The bullets stitched a line in the outer skin of the airship, tearing a hole in the outer shell that flapped in the breeze of the airship’s passing. The airship kept plowing onward through the sky, unbothered by a few pinpricks through the outer shell.

Just before Merrik flashed over the hole he’d torn, he gripped one of the levers beside him, releasing a bomb from below his wings. His aeroplane leapt upward with the sudden loss of weight, and he worked to keep it from ramming into the underside of Sticky’s aeroplane. “Bomb away.”

Stickyfingers peeled upward, and Merrik matched his movement, followed by Lije and Nellie. The four of them soared upward, flashing past two Mongavarian biplanes that had been swooping toward them.

Those Mongavarian aeroplanes made desperate swerving dives as the airship exploded, fire blazing through the outer skin and bursting through the windows of the gondola.

Only seconds later, the next airship in line burst into flame from a bomb dropped by another Half-Breed pilot. On the other side of the line of airships, the far airship there burned.

With a ponderous sort of chaos, the airships on either side began turning away from the threat. The whole line collapsed inward, some of the airships trying to go up, others down, to avoid colliding into each other.

The second line of airships had been following too close. They had no room to maneuver past the destruction and instead plowed into it.

In this chaos, the Half-Breed Squadron dove and danced, strafing and dropping their bombs before soaring away. The Mongavarian aeroplanes buzzed around them, attempting to find openings but failing to break the tight formations.

Several more airships exploded in fiery blasts, likely the bombs in their holds touched off by the bombs dropped by his squadron.

Merrik sent his aeroplane hurtling along the front of the line of airships, strafing them to add to the panic.

The Mongavarian aeroplanes swooped closer, also strafing with their machine guns. But the shields of magic around the Alliance aeroplanes protected them, leaving the enemy impotent to actually do anything against them.

“Henry, watch out!” The shout was followed by a string of cursing in several voices.

Merrik pointed his aeroplane toward the tops of the airships once again. “Report.”

An explosion tore through one of the middle airships to Merrik’s left.

“A Mongavarian actually tried to ram me.” Henry’s voice sounded shaky, even through the radio’s static. “He missed but struck one of the airships instead.”

“Stay sharp, everyone.” Merrik had thought he wouldn’t be surprised if the Mongavarians resorted to such tactics. And yet, as the airship blazed, something still shook inside of him.

This was the terrible level this war had sunk to. War had a unique way of stripping away dignity of men and women until only the raw, terrible depths remained.

Adry crested the largest of the hills, blasting apart the two large artillery guns that had been placed on the high ground.