“The army requires orderliness and sameness,” Linné snapped.
“Which is why I’m going to bring it all in,” Katya added. She held up a measuring tape and handed her writing kit to Elena, a quiet girl with a strong face. “Arms up,” Katya said, and a bemused Pavi obeyed. The tape circled her waist. “Sixty-five,” Katya said. Elena scribbled it down.
“You can tailor them on your own time. We have work to do,” Linné said as Katya moved up to Pavi’s bust.
“Like what?” Olya said.
Like reporting to Colonel Hesovec. Like doing whatever he told them. Like proving that they could act like soldiers, even though they couldn’t.
“No one can be expected to go out in this.” Katya held a pair of trousers up next to Olya. “Are we going to trip over the enemy?”
“You can take care of it tonight. Right now we have to report to Hesovec.” Linné turned to go. She would do her job, no matter what. Maybe if the others proved themselves especially incompetent, the project would be abandoned and they’d all be sent home. Except me. She still had to get to the front.
“Should we report in or out of the uniforms?” Katya asked.
“Why don’t you ask him? He’ll be glad to give you another marching lesson, no doubt.”
Katya snorted. “I’d rather march my boot up your—” Someone knocked at the door. Katya’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do, tell on us before you even got here?”
“I didn’t—” Linné started.
The door opened and a boy ducked inside, red-faced and tugging on his cap. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. But Commander Zima’s here. And she brought a plane.”
5
OUR SOLDIERS MARCH ON YOUR FAITH
For once, Linné wasn’t the first out to the field. She marched while the rest of them ran—tripping over uniform legs and with one arm of their jackets flapping out behind them. She wanted to slink out of sight. But that wasn’t what you did when your commanding officer arrived. She lifted her head and pretended she didn’t see the boys sneering as she passed.
She got to the edge of the field and lined up next to Katya, who tucked a lock of pale hair behind her ear. Olya brought her hands in front of her, then behind. Others fidgeted in their own ways. Magdalena looked the most at ease in her uniform, like she belonged.
Tamara Zima’s famous plane, Winter Witch, sat on the green. Winter Witch had been the first plane to fly from the western edge of the Union to the eastern one, the first plane mobilized in the war, the first plane to do practically anything. Not that they had many planes to go around. Zima stood in front of it, grinning.
Linné’s father had spoken of Tamara Zima as though she were a giant, too large for the law. But she had a small frame, a round, smiling face, and more energy than the sun.
“It’s wonderful to see you all,” she said. She practically glowed, radiating the sort of happiness that Linné had rarely seen on the front lines. “You are the great success of a long war waged already, and you will be the success of this one.”
All around her the girls straightened, like birds fluffing their feathers. Linné felt a swell of her own hope. But then she remembered being a new recruit under Koslen, trembling with nerves and an arrogant need to prove herself, listening to the veterans cover their disbelieving snorts with coughs as he ranted about the superiority of their soldiers. All commanders said this sort of thing.
“The Elda have a tactical advantage. They’ve had years to hone their Dragons, while we’ve had to work with what we can steal from the battlefield. But with special permission from Commander Vannin himself, production has started on our own line, which you will use to combat the Elda in the air.”
The girls leaned forward, eager to drink up every word. When Zima drew breath to speak again, Linné recognized the telltale signs—the sagging mouth, the forced cheer, the deep, steeling inhale—that pointed to a commanding officer putting a positive spin on something. “The Elda have designed their Dragons as machines of force and power. They are intimidating, but they are slow to gain speed and slow to maneuver. Skyhorses are faster, but often less precise. These are the ways in which we seek to bring them down. I have been asked to form a corps of night bombers, and you are my choice. We will work counterpart to the men here: They will fly during the day, and we during the night. Our targets will be the camps, the front lines, anything that will hold the Elda back for one more day, anything that will break even one cog in their war machine. Soldiers, I have the highest faith in you. We will work hard, we will train hard, and we’ll be at the front before the Elda even hear we can fly.”
The girls cheered. Linné clapped but she didn’t join in. Zima made it sound so easy, a matter of waltzing up to the Elda’s aircraft and blasting them to oblivion. But Linné had seen Dragon fire turn the land black, burn palanquins and the men inside them until no one could tell what was metal and what was flesh. She’d seen the Dragons spew choking smoke and gas along the front line; she knew the terror of fumbling for her gas mask as she heard the final sounds of the men who hadn’t found theirs. Sometimes she’d listened to them scream through the night. Sometimes she thought she could still hear them.
Something in her warmed horribly at the thought of repaying the Elda for her memories.
“There will be three of you for each plane. Pilots to steer the plane. Navigators to power and fire and plot the course. Engineers will be responsible for keeping her going, even when the night is cold or we’ve suffered enemy fire. If you’re a pilot, report to Colonel Hesovec. Navigators to the map room. Engineers to the laboratory. A permanent schedule will be in the mess tomorrow morning. If you have any questions, please come speak with me at any time. I’ll be assembling my office this evening.” She beamed at them. “Welcome to the One Hundred Forty-Sixth Night Raiders Regiment.”
The girls cheered again. The way Tamara Zima spoke filled Linné’s mind with fire and victory, explosives dropped on a nameless foe, a triumphant return to a grateful Union. She could almost feel the fingers of Commander Vannin as he plucked the edge of her coat, the pressure as he pinned a shining Hero of the Union badge to her chest.
She wanted it to be real. Could it be real?
The noise abated. Linné watched as the others turned toward one another, toward the warehouses, toward their assignments—and away from her. Everything seemed suddenly wrong. Everyone else knew what to do, and she was in the dark.
Commander Zima stood with a paper in one hand, worrying the end of a pencil between her teeth with the other. She looked up as Linné approached. “What do you need?”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but I don’t know where I should go now.” Linné frowned even as she said it. She would never have begged a senior officer’s pardon when she was a boy.
“Are you a pilot, a navigator, or an engineer?” Zima asked around the pencil.
“I don’t know,” Linné said.
“Ah. What’s your name?”
“Zolonov, sir.” The name still had to be pulled out of her. She missed being Alexei Nabiev, with no notable family, with nothing to her but boldness and rawness.