I've been on the Vigilant Sable for a month now, and I think I'm settling in pretty well.

On top of being a junior gunnery officer, I've been assigned a secondary responsibility in hangar operations. Essentially I have to make sure the skiffs are always in working condition, and the launch catapults and retrieval mechanisms are always working.

My third job is a deckhand.

My bunkmate, Leks, is pretty chill. Leks is a funny guy -- he's also a junior gunner, and we spend a lot of shifts together. Like me, this is Leks's second naval ship. Apparently he used to work on a cruiser. Leks seems fast-tracked for something high up -- he's a naval academy graduate.

There's also Finn, who's a gunner cadet. He's young, not very talkative. It's his first ship. I wonder how he got assigned to something like this. But he's promising, probably a bit better than me at shooting when I started.

Callen, the Chief Gunnery Officer reminds me a bit of Mr. Wheatley back at Valeros, except he seems to be very, very good with guns. Too good. When I first met him, I couldn't believe he was the Chief Gunnery Officer -- he was a scrawny, middle-aged man and he honestly seemed like he took no interest in weapons at all.

But the guy is legit. We had to calibrate our cannons last week, we were floating at about 8000 feet and he hit a target on a mountainside from four clicks out, didn't even look up.

I asked Leks after hours, "Could you believe that?"

Leks was laying on his bunk, drawing, as usual. "Honestly, no," he said. "I knew Callen had to be pretty good, but that was obviously world class."

In Hangar Operations, I'm working under Flight Engineer Ena Darling.

Ena is unbelievably stoic. She's constantly working on the skiffs, carrying a clipboard around, and she's made a point to keep everything in top condition. We're serving the 11th Fighter Squadron. I learned pretty quickly that this wasn't a regular fighter squadron. Apparently it's cream of the crop. She bosses me around.

I have the worst crush on her.

I told Leks. He said that she's out of my league, and he's right. She's at least ten years older than me, a real woman, and not an enlist like me -- but a boy can dream, right?

The social dynamics on this ship are different than on the Red Wisp. The ranking officers -- Captain Windholm, Helmsman Jessa, Navigator Corlin, Signals Officer Ariana, Squadron Leader Kael, Chief Callen, Ena, and so on -- they don't really hang out with the rest of the crew, which is to be expected for a real warship.

They have their own officer's quarters and offices next to the bridge, the rest of us are usually on the deck below in the mess hall and rec room after work is done. It really feels like "the grown ups" and the "rest of us".

We call ourselves the "scumbags".

I've been getting to know some of the pilots of the 11th too. Trinne, a flight sergeant, was kind of my "in". She's by far the most social of the bunch -- I saw that she was always playing cards in the rec room after hours with a bunch of the other crew, pilots and non-pilots, and she invited me one day while I was reading alone.

The pilots are a cliquey bunch, they're all pretty rowdy. They play cards together almost every night, with the exception of Lieutenant Kael, and this one guy, Idrin.

I noticed Idrin pretty much as soon as I boarded the ship. He stuck out like a sore thumb -- quiet, never smiling, always on his own.

"What's his deal?" I asked.

One of the pilots, Tariq, filled me in the details. He told me that Idrin's probably one of, if not, the best pilot in the Empire. A real ace.

"He's just intense like that," he said.

"So he takes his job seriously?" I asked.

"No. He's just intense."

Trinne flashed a scornful frown at Tariq.

I've noticed that Trinne seems to be the only person Idrin talks to, like really talks to. Sometimes I catch them in the mess hall, or in the hallways, and another time up in the observation dome. It never seems serious -- just, "Hey, how are you doing?"

I do like Trinne. I wonder what the squadron would be like without her -- some people are just, naturally, the social glue that holds people together.

That's how I felt about Dylan back on the Red Wisp. After he died, we all seemed to fall apart. Then I had this awful thought about Trinne dying, which seemed all too possible, and I pushed it out of my mind as far as I could.

It's been a crazy month here -- fourteen days ago we were commencing high altitude operations, which was an absolutely mindblowing affair. We had to prep the ship -- pressurize everything -- and everyone had to go through a protocol review.

But it was incredibly exciting. That night, I could barely sleep. When we woke up in the morning and we started our ascent, it was by far the most surreal thing ever. We finally reached 45,000 feet, and it felt like... you could see the curvature of Kyrias.

And it was unbelievably quiet. So quiet. Halvek, the chief engineer, mentioned something about how the ship's engines run differently at this altitudes with the thinner air.

That entire week, there was this incredible, delicate, beautiful focus on everyone's minds.

We were flying from Salinas to Vandimoor to test a "transceiver".

Apparently, the Vigilant Sable is first-of-its-kind. It's a border-class recon carrier ship, but the Empire installed some new transceiving mechanism that allows it to modulate arcane energy into communications data.

It's not a combat operation, but it felt special, dangerous, exhilarating. The nervous energy and pride on the decks was palpable.

There's one guy on the ship, Delquesse, who's responsible for the whole technology. He's civilian -- not military -- but he has his own room and a workshop of sorts up in signals that houses the transceiver.

I also caught Delquesse and Ena one night, having some kind of hushed, intimate conversation in the observation dome.

There goes my chances with Ena.

I'm not heartbroken, it wasn't something that could even be real -- just a boyish daydream.

But I think it did trigger something in me -- almost this longing for normalcy. Ena and Delquesse are proper 'grown ups', the kinds of people who can settle down and have families. Ena probably makes great pay as a flight engineer, Delquesse (probably) literally knows the Archmage personally.

Me?

I'm a debt slave. I have nothing going on.

I've been playing cards frequently with the group -- turns out, actually, that the whole thing is a gambling ring. Run by Trinne. She keeps a whole ledger in this book with what everyone owes. It's complete insanity. I asked Leks if he knew about it, he says he does, but he doesn't play.

"You don't look gambling?" I asked.

"No, man. I just like to draw," he said.

He flipped his book over and showed me. It was a cartoon of Callen yelling at us to fix the guns. I burst into tears laughing.

We have five days of shore leave in Vandimoor. I don't remember the last time I've had a leave that long. I spent most of it wandering the city with Leks, and Finn tagged along for a bit of it too, but he found wandering in cities tiring, and unbelievably, went back to the ship after the second day.

That same night, we ran into the pilots at a tavern. They were drunk out of their minds. We got drunk with them too.

I was surprised to see Idrin there. He was mostly in the corner, on his own, but he cracked a smile a few times when Trinne was talking to him. I'm thinking -- they must like each other, right? Trinne managed to persuade him to play a drinking game with us.

It was nice to see. I'm beginning to sense that everyone on this ship -- at least the scum -- see each other a bit like a family. Like on the Red Wisp, at least when Dylan was around.

Walking back to the inn, I mentioned this "family feeling" to Leks.

"The word you're looking for is camraderie," he said.

Right. Of course.

"It's because we all have to suffer together, that's why we're comrades," he continued.

I didn't know Leks was so philosophical. Leks, the 23 year-old artist-gunner-academy grad.

We bought some pipeweed and smuggled it back onto the ship.

So there's this new enlist -- Mira Halek -- and she's been absolutely nothing but trouble for the crew. We picked her up at Vandimoor, and she apparently just got her wings. She's only an Airman First Class, so technically, according to Trinne, she's still on probation.

The first week with her here has been just nuts. The Sable has been assigned to routine patrol for the next fifteen days, and every time she's had a sortie (12 now!) she's come back and never resets any of the controls on her skiff.

It's a huge headache, and it's not my responsibility to fix it. I brought it up with Ena, who finally lectured her. Now the skiffs come back with only half the switches set back to idle. I have to keep jumping into the cockpit every time to reset everything for her.

Although, funnily enough, the more I've done it, the more I like it.

Mira's other duty is up in signals, and I can't imagine who thought that was a good idea. Sometimes I'd be down on the lower decks, calibrating a gun, or in the hangar fixing a skiff, and I'd get a message wired in from upstairs. Completely unreadable.

This didn't happen before Mira, so it's obviously her.

Mira's almost the same age as Leks, but their maturity couldn't be any different. She's this huge ball of energy, constantly. Over at the cards table, she's always asking about Idrin, as if he's some kind of royalty. Thankfully, no one tries to entertain her.

Mira shares a room with Trinne, and honestly, I feel a bit bad for Trinne. I saw her this morning and she looked like she hadn't slept at all.

"How's Mira?" I asked her.

She yawned, and smiled. "She's nice. Settling in."

I thought that was generous of her, but maybe she just sees the best in people.

I haven't been able to write in this journal all summer. A lot has happened.

We were thrown into major combat operations all throughout the end of June until now. Six weeks straight on the front. I can't even describe the violence I saw.

They kept calling it the "Summer Offensive", some kind of operation devised by planners in Imperial High Command to break the stalemate. I have no idea how long they have been planning it, but it's over now, I think. "Key objectives reached," or something.

I'm still flipping through fragments of what I saw, what I felt. I don't really know where to start.

Okay.

We lost Tariq and Finn.

It was the first day of the offensive -- we were doing a daytime bombardment on a coastal fortress, gods know where, and skiffs were scrambled.

I don't know how it happened -- I wasn't there to see it, I was just making sure our guns kept firing, blowing up this fortress, but by the time we disengaged and Leks and I closed off the cannons and made our way down to the main deck, all the pilots were there and there was this utterly solemn, horrible mood.

Squadron leader Kael raised a glass.

"To Tariq."

I wanted to talk about it with everybody, but there just wasn't any time. Everyone was on high alert during the entire offensive.

Two weeks ago... We were engaged close quarters with a whole battalion.

Explosions everywhere in the sky, we spiraled from 12000 to 7500 feet. I took the broadside gatling guns and I just remember shooting constantly, constantly, at everything.

I remember distinctly shooting down one ornithopter, headed straight at me, I could see the crew so clearly, I swear I could see the pilot's eyes, and I remember just shooting, shooting, shooting, and it burst into flames and it crumpled into oblivion, like when you burn paper, just ashes, ashes.

Fifteen minutes later -- at least I think it was fifteen, but it was probably two minutes -- we had the call for a boarding party, and that obviously included me.

Our ship had moved right up to an enemy zeppelin, starboard, I ran over, ducking behind Boatswain Hamlin, clad in his armor, and we ran across our board and leapt onto the top of the zeppelin with grappling hooks.

I wasn't scared of falling. Just the guns and crossbows and swords in front of us, the mass of people, the smoke, the sound of gunfire and bullets.

I just remember shooting, shooting, shooting with my left hand, and flailing my rapier on the right. That's all I could do. I knew Leks and Fin were behind me. We cut our way through a bunch of the sailors, I don't know how, and then we leapt down the hatch and made our way across the deck, fighting in these hallways, the ship shaking and rattling the whole time, careening on its side. I don't know how Hamlin did it, he just kept charging through, and I just had to keep up. The further away I was from him, the more likely I was going to die.

By the time we fought our way to the bridge, we heard the captain shouting, stand down, stand down, stand down, and it was over. The ship was captured, just like that. I was miraculously unscathed. We tied up everyone, and an allied ship came to take the prisoners.

Walking back to the Sable, I looked behind my shoulder to see Leks, he was covered in sweat and I asked where Finn was and we both realized the worst had happened. We held out hope, there was another party that went back to the zeppelin to recover the dead and wounded. I waited with Leks in the quartermaster's office as Hamlin went through the combat report and mentioned "Gunner Finn, KIA". That's when we knew.

We didn't even get to see his body.

Leks and I didn't talk at all that night, there wasn't anything to say.

We've been in Eastcliffe, shore leave for the next three days while the ship is repaired.

I had booked myself a small room of my own in a nearby inn, I can see the Sable from my window, repairs being done on it.

I just needed some space after the Offensive. I don't know where anyone else went on shore leave, or who stayed behind.

This morning I took a walk down the main street of the town, and it occurred to me that no one here knows anything of what we just experienced. There was an old man reading news by the dock, mothers with their children by the fountain, people selling goods in the market. There's a war going on, it's real, but it's just the papers to them.

I kept walking -- it's all I feel like I'm good for right now, walking.

I went back to my room and just sat and thought about nothing, nothing at all.

I heard at a knock at the door. It was Trinne.

She came to check up on me. Not me in particular, just on everybody. She told me that some of the crew were going to be hanging out at the fountain tonight, just drinks and dinner and that I should come if I wanted to.

"Are you okay?" she asked me before she left. I nodded.

I spent the next three hours laying in bed.

I ended up going to the fountain. It was nice, genuinely, seeing everybody. But there was definitely a bit of a somber mood. Trinne talked about it bluntly -- you lose people in this line of work. I wonder how long she's served here, we're the same age.

Then the unexpected happened -- Callen showed up. Yes, Chief Gunnery Officer Callen -- the commissioned officer hanging out with the rest of us scum.

"You guys partying?" he asked.

He took a seat and we poured him a beer.

"Is this going on Trinne's ledger?" he asked.

We all froze up.

"How did you know?" Trinne asked.

"Come on, kid. I wasn't born yesterday. Just don't get caught," he said. He laughed. Then the rest of us laughed.

Callen became a bit of a celebrity that night. We had a bit of an extended interview with him. It was Leks who eventually asked him, hey, didn't you fight in the Gryps Crisis?

Callen shared this unbelievable story.

He said, twenty years ago, during the Battle of Tordvan Isle, their ship was completely surrounded. He took the one operational cannon left and blasted everything he saw out of the sky. The final combat report: he destroyed twenty-three enemy machines, and one airship, singlehandedly, with a single shot to its rudder.

He was the only survivor.

Everyone else on the ship was killed or mortally wounded.

The story stuck with me not just because of how incredible it was. But it was that Callen, wiry, middle aged Callen, never struck me as some deeply traumatized war veteran.

He carries himself with this kind of easiness. I wonder how he does it.

Mira asked him if there was anyone 'special' in his life. He said he used to write to this woman in Salinas, but that was years ago. Does he have a home? Family? Nah, he said. Just the ship. Everyone shared some more stories, I mentioned my mom used to be an Imperial cartographer, but I didn't get into the details about everything else, but it was still nice just to talk about it, even just a bit.

I didn't go back to the room I rented that night. I followed the group back to the Sable, back to my bunk. I've realized that this is the only place I belong.

So the most bizarre thing happened today.

So yesterday, we were on patrol, and ran into some sky pirates, ten clicks out. I wondered if we were going to engage, but Callen said to hold fire, and then we got the word from signals that they were just going to dispatch some skiffs to check it out.

A flight went out, Idrin, Trinne, Kael -- the vets.

I watched through the spyglass as they strafed the pirates, then the pirates threw up a white flag, and the skiffs came back, we boarded the ship and rounded up the prisoners, reported their bounty over to the quartermaster, the usual...

I went back upstairs to see that Trinne's skiff was all shot up.

Oh shit, I thought.

I ran up to the med bay, and Trinne was there, sitting up on one of the beds, her shoulder bandaged and bloodied. I was relieved that it wasn't worse. Idrin was next to her, and he was holding her hand. Trinne was beaming. But I had never seen Idrin look so concerned in my life.

"It's just a scratch," she said.

"Please be careful, please," Idrin kept saying. Trinne kept nodding, smiling.

Idrin's this ace pilot -- forty kills now, no stranger to danger and death, and he was pale as a ghost.

But this wasn't the bizarre part.

As I walked out of the med bay to get back to work, Mira walked in, and then immediately ran out...

The next day, I was playing cards in the rec room, and Mira struts up to Leks, who's sitting on his own in the corner sketching.

She asked if he'd ever drawn a portrait of anybody, Leks shrugged.

Then she sat on his table, legs crossed.

Everyone looked up to see the shitshow unfold: Mira grabs Leks by the shoulders and tells him to follow her.... Crazy enough, he actually does. The rest of just looked at each other, some of us snickering, but Trinne's eyeballs were bulging out of their sockets.

The two of us couldn't concentrate at all on playing cards. Trinne took me by the hand and we scrambled down looking for Leks and Mira. We found them in the cargo hold making out. We ran back to Trinne's room, closed the door, and Trinne started pacing madly.

"It's Idrin," she said.

"What?"

"She's in love with Idrin," she explained. "She told me she's had a crush on him since she got on the ship. It's all she talks about at night, and..."

"I saw her run out of the med bay yesterday," I said.

Trinne sighed. "Yeah, yeah. See, I told Mira that Idrin and I are just friends, and hardly that, but..."

"Right," I said. "The difference is, you're probably Idrin's only friend. He probably likes you."

"No," she snapped. She sat on her bed, exasperated.

I told her to relax, that they could figure this out. She told me it wasn't herself she was worried about, but that she was just worried about Mira -- too young to be thrown onto a ship like this, too immature, too eager to fly, too ditzy.

"Does Idrin know?" I asked.

"Of course not," Trinne said.

The last thing I want to be involved with is a love triangle. I went back to my room, waiting for Leks to come back. When he did, I asked him how it went with Mira.

"She's pretty," he said. "But she's not beautiful."

I laughed. I told him about the whole Idrin thing. I had to tell him -- this was a cry for attention of sorts, a bad rebound, that kind of thing -- and that he should know. In typical Leks fashion, he shrugged.

Now I'm wondering what the conversation in Trinne and Mira's room is like.

And now I'm thinking of Idrin, alone in his room, Tariq's empty bed next to him.

Something very strange happned today.

Down in the hangar, I was sitting in the cockpit of one of the skiffs to fix one of the panels, and I suddenly had this visceral image of me piloting one of these things. The thought terrified me, I haven't flown anything since the Glider Incident when I was a teenager, but I put my hands on the stick and just closed my eyes for a second.

Ena caught me.

"Wake up, kid," she said.

"I don't need your help around here today, actually," she said.

She placed a single screw in my hand.

"I need you up at signals to help Delquesse. Do whatever he asks."

I nodded. I figured that I was running errands for her unofficial boyfriend.

Up at signals, Delquesse was plugging away at the transceiver. I had never seen it up close -- it was this golden ball with all sorts of gears and crystals on it, gently humming. He didn't look up when I gave him the screw.

"Can I help with anything?" I asked.

"Honestly, no," he said, still not looking up. "But you still need to be in this room."

I was confused. "Aye, aye," I said, and he said something about he's not military and that I could just say yes.

I sat on the ground, waiting. I think I sat there for like an hour. I just watched the man work on this thing I didn't understand, bored out of my mind.

Finally, he turned around. He asked me to close my eyes. Then he asked me to try and imagine something, anything. I continued my daydream of flying a skiff.

"Uh, done," I said.

"What did you imagine?" he asked.

I told him.

"And you could see it? Or was it just conceptual?"

No, I told him, I could totally see it, it's like a regular daydream, that sort of thing.

"Vivid?" he asked.

I told him I didn't know -- as vivid as I've ever known, I guess.

"Good," he declared. "That's all."

I left the room -- off my final shift of the day three hours early. I have no idea what any of that was about. I spent the rest of the evening pacing through the subdecks, reviewing some boarding operations manual, and even got on the top of the ship and practiced firing my pistol, waiting for the mess hall to open.

I told Leks over dinner about what happened and he mentioned that he thought it was odd. He stopped drawing and thought for a long time.

"He wanted to see if you could still daydream," he said. "Do you think it has anything to do with the transceiver?"

I told him I didn't understand.

"You know, with the Affliction and all that."

I got goosebumps when he mentioned the Affliction. It's almost taboo to talk about.

I have no idea, but I don't want to think about it more.

We just left station. We picked up some new arcane cannons and mounted them to the bow of the ship and Leks and I spent all day trying to calibrate them. Callen kept mumbling to himself as we struggled. We took some practice shots and we missed all of them for an hour straight until we finally got the sights right.

"Sorry boss," I said. I was genuinely sorry that it had taken this long.

He rubbed his temples, exhausted.

"Happy new year, guys," he said.

Idrin's loosened up a lot.

Today, he came up to our card table and asked to join. We were all surprised but we immediately moved over to give him a seat. He smiled. I don't think I've ever seen him smile to himself before. Trinne looked proud, really proud.

At first, it was a bit intense. But Idrin lost a hand, immediately said, "Damn it!" with such sincerity that we all just laughed. It was like watching a wall of ice shatter.

Mira's coming over a lot these days. Leks has been handling it with a bit of disaffection, like he doesn't really care about the whole thing forming between the two of them, but I can tell he likes her. And it seems like she really likes him too. Yesterday we stayed up pretty late chatting, the two of them cuddled up in a corner. We hotboxed the room.

It's taken a while, but I'm beginning to grow a liking for Mira. She confessed that she's been having a hard time adjusting to this ship, especially being in an "elite squadron". She really wants to prove herself, being the youngest. I didn't know this, but she used to be a stunt pilot. But Kael hasn't really given her a lot of opportunities to fly, she's still left out of a lot of meetings, and she spends more time being a deckhand than working with the rest of the pilots.

She's been genuinely upset. Apparently Kael has not liked her flying -- she struggles staying in formation, and the other week, when we raided an enemy merchant ship, she came back with her wings all shot up.

"I want to be good at this," she said.

Leks smiled.

"Nah. Just be bad, like us."

We all laughed.

Leks and Trinne got me a silver necklace for my birthday.

I'm really happy that they even knew.

We enter enemy lines tomorrow -- we're doing a stealth recon operation deep into enemy territory, and I'm nervous.

I can't sleep. I got out of bed and I walked around the ship and I went to the hangar and sat down in one of the skiffs. I don't know why. I just wanted to think.

Surprisingly, someone came in. I heard their footsteps, turned around.

It was Idrin.

"You up as well?" he asked.

"Yeah, I, uh --"

"It's cool," he said. "I do the same thing every thing night."

He climbed into the cockpit of his skiff. He sat down and put his hands on the stick. We didn't say anything for a long time. It was obvious to me that this was a ritual of his. He stared directly in front of him, as if I wasn't even there.

I broke the silence.

"How'd you get into flying?"

"Ten years now. Started off in hangar operations, like you. Then I got the job after enough people died."

A long silence.

"Oh."

A long silence.

"They say you're the best," I said.

"Yeah."

I thought for a moment.

"You think they'll ever promote you to a commissioned officer?"

"Ha."

It was awkward talking to Idrin, alone. But it was just the two of us, at three in the morning, in the darkness of the hangar. I pushed through.

"You're the highest scoring pilot in the Empire," I said. "It's only a matter of time."

"I'm a debt slave," he replied, immediately.

I couldn't believe it.

Idrin -- the ace pilot, a debt slave? But suddenly it made sense. This is probably all he knows. Like me. That's probably why he's so good. When you have nothing else to live for, all your energy goes into whatever's in front of you. For him, it's the guns mounted on his skiff.

"Debt slave? Me too."

Idrin turned over, staring at me with disbelief, slinging his arms over the side of the cockpit.

"No way," he said.

The two of us smiled.

I told him about what happened after mom disappeared. The Imperial agents showing up at my door, saying that I was now responsible for 250 thousand gold pieces to the Imperial Bureau.

"I was 17," I said, laughing.

Idrin laughed. I've never heard him really laugh before. It had a hint of mania, restrained, like a stifled howl.

He told me he was born into it. That his parents were notorious sky pirates, and somehow they passed the damages onto him. He never even met his parents. He grew up on a merchant vessel. The navy was his only option in life, so he couldn't even think about doing anything else. Ever.

I told him that people thought my dad was a pirate too, but no one could be sure. Mom never told me.

He raised an eyebrow. I wanted to make a joke that maybe we had the same dad, but I bit my tongue. Just too weird, too soon, and obviously untrue.

"You should try flying sometime," he said.

The thought coming from someone else's mouth short circuited every neuron in my brain.

"Yeah, yeah. I've thought about it," I said.

I told him that I've done it only once -- I flew a glider to deliver mail through the cliffs of Valeros when the usual courier couldn't do it, and they would pay me double. Then I wrecked the glider on my way back. Idrin laughed and said he wrecked his first few planes too, and if I could do a mail route on a glider on a whim, I could probably fly anything.

No way, I said. No way, no way, no way... this machinery is way more complicated, and...

"Nah," he replied. "It's just stick and rudder. It's the same all the way down."

He climbed out of his skiff and walked up the stairs.

"Plus," he continued, "you're very good at shooting. You have that part figured out already."

I gave him a salute as he left. He smiled. Then I was alone, still seated in the cockpit, in the silent darkness of the hangar.

The last week was utterly uneventful until yesterday. We spent most of the week cruising through enemy territory, completely undetected. I spent every shift in front of the guns, anticipating us to be spotted and the horrors of combat to unfold, but nothing ever happened.

Until, of course, on our last day here, we were jumped by two Fenris-class corvettes and a zeppelin.

Leks spotted the corvettes first, on our starboard, twelve clicks out.

When they started closing in, we knew we'd been spotted, so we were given the go ahead to start shooting.

We exchanged volleys from these ridiculous distances, nothing hitting. I wondered if this was a good use of ammunition, but Callen kept telling us to shoot.

Finally, at five clicks out, we heard a cannonball whizz right over us, missing.

My body was dumped with adrenaline.

I lined up a shot and I managed to hit one of the corvettes, a plume of smoke rising. They were easy to deal with at this range. One click out, Leks ran over to the gatlings and he zapped them, shredding their hull into pieces.

The zeppelin and a whole flight of skiffs came next. An entire flight was scrambled to intercept them while Helmsman Jessa turned the ship around so we could face them head on to use the arcane cannons.

I heard them spin up... then a huge arc of lightning split the sky. The ship groaned and rattled with each shot. I could imagine Callen's face in the bow of the ship, scrunched, focused.

A strafe from an enemy skiff snapped me back to the present moment.

The bullets whizzed past my head and I could hear them collect into the armor plating of the ship's hull.

I switched to the gatlings and started firing back, then one of our own skiffs zoomed past in full chase.

The enemy blew up in flames, debris bouncing off the side of our ship.

Jessa hit the brakes. I was thrown backwards. I looked over and saw that the enemy zeppelin in front of us was now in flames. The arcane cannons had incinerated it within seconds.

It was a burning fireball in the sky, melting away into a shell that fell to the earth.

I ran down to the hangar to assist with skiff recovery. I roped them in, one at a time. Idrin first, followed by Mira, then Havelock, and finally Trinne, who was straggling far behind. Trinne climbed out of her skiff right away, and threw her helmet off.

"Kael's gone," she said.

Everyone in the squadron looked at her with disbelief.

"What?" Ena said.

"Yeah. He crashed somewhere behind enemy lines. Not sure if he's alive. If he is, he's definitely captured."

"Can we check?" Idrin said.

We scanned the room -- who's in charge when the squadron leader is missing?

Captain Windholm was already standing at the top of the stairs.

"Negative," he replied. "We've risked enough on this operation. We'll send a report to High Command. If Kael's alive, he'll be treated well. He's the son of a baron. Probably a ransom."

Windholm pointed at Idrin.

"You're in charge now," he said. Then he walked up the stairs.

The ship has sustained a lot more damage than we thought -- a side-effect of the arcane guns siphoning energy from our shields -- so we've been stuck on the ground for the last three weeks while it undergoes serious repairs.

We're in Cyreal right now. I hate this place. It just stinks of bourgeosie. We're all holed up in this old library where they converted the top floors for dwellings, and the hallways are just lined with portraits of lords and dukes and barons and jarls and kings and queens and emperors.

I'm trying to make the most of my time -- I told Trinne about what happened with my mom, with the Southern Expedition that went missing, and how she was a cartographer, and she said this library happens to be a good place to do some research. We've been going through a bunch of old atlases, but honestly, other than that, we don't know where to start.

I asked her where Idrin's been.

She sighed. She told me that Idrin's being shuffled around all week through the city meeting with High Command. Wining and dining.

"Promotion," I said. "They're going to give him a commission."

"Yes," she said. "But..."

She paused for a moment. Then explained, "He told me that it's all very complicated. He comes back every night and seems really stressed out."

"Isn't that just politics as usual?"

"No. It's different," she said. She creased and uncreased a page of an atlas.

"There's this woman that keeps following him around, prepping his schedule, asking him all these questions," she said, frowning. "Her name's Lady Elara Voss. Imperial High Command. I met her a couple times."

"Elara Voss?"

She closed the atlas and shook her head.

I saw Idrin later that day. He came back late, stepping out of a carriage. He was with a woman who absolutely had to be 'Lady Elara Voss'. She was dressed in a sharp, gray and black uniform, her features clinical, perfect, scary. She saluted him as he left.

"I'll be back tomorrow, lieutenant," she said, and rode off.

Idrin turned around. His expression was unreadable.

"Lieutenant," I said to him. Our eyes met. He bit his lip.

"Yeah, I got that commission," he said, nodding. He sounded unhappy about it.

He held a scroll in his hand: the commission, signed by the Emperor himself, declaring Idrin Savre as a lieutenant, an aristocrat, a slave, thrown into a political world he never asked for.

I sat in the library, by the fireplace, with Idrin and Trinne. I could tell there were a lot of things on his mind, and Trinne's too. She looked concerned the whole time. But she kept trying to gently encourage him, saying that he should be proud. That'll he get a bigger room on the ship. That he could run the squadron the way he wants. That everyone already respects him.

"It's natural," she said, softly.

"No," he whispered. "Just no."

He stared at the fire, the flames flickering.

"I just have a bad feeling about something," he said. "Like I'm getting into something that I don't understand, that I can't even explain."

A long moment, a heaviness. It's one thing to intuit, another to say it out loud.

"Try explaining," Trinne said. She was pleading.

"I can't. I just can't."

"It's Voss, isn't it?"

Idrin didn't say anything.

"What does she want from you?"

"Nothing," Idrin whined. He looked over at the fire again. "She asks me about my dreams a lot, pretty much every day. And that's it."

Trinne crossed her legs.

"What do you mean?"

"So every day, before any of these meetings, she sees me, and she asks what my dreams are. And sometimes she makes me talk about them for half an hour. I don't know why it's so important to her."

I thought about Delquesse and the transceiver and what Leks said.

Trinne leaned back. "That's unusual," she said. "But is that all?"

Idrin's eyes danced through the flames, then he looked up.

"Yeah. Honestly. That's it."

I glanced at Idrin, then at Trinne, and then I realized that there was more for them to talk about, just between the two of them. I said I was going to go to bed, and we said goodnight, and I left them in the library.

I'm back in my room now. My head's spinning. A promotion like this should be exciting, but there's something heavy about the whole thing. I can't seem to figure it out. I'm worried for Idrin, Trinne, and for some reason, myself.

I've been doing my utmost not to think too much about Idrin's promotion and the Voss thing and the dream thing -- it's really none of my business. I've honestly been trying to avoid running into Idrin or Trinne, and I've spent the last week tagging along with Leks and Mira, and when I feel like I'm third wheeling, I just sit alone on this hill overlooking the Paper District.

I'm thinking a lot about what I'm trying to do with my life, really.

I don't have a choice but to keep working on ships until I die, or I could just be homeless and jobless, since no one wants to be associated with a debtor branded by the Empire itself.

I wonder how many of us there are, stuck with these things that we can't pay, forced into military servitude. It's not something people talk about.

The thought occured to me, what if it's like, 30% of sailors? That's already an insanely high number, but totally believable. Even if it's just 10%. 10% of people that are just there for manpower, to help with killing people, with no other purpose in this world.

Or maybe it's rare. Just me, Idrin, Dylan. We are fuck ups.

I can't even believe it sometimes. The older I get, the more I've seen, the more people I've spoken to, 250000 gold pieces because of something my mom did? They never even explained how she got that debt. Or was it my father, whoever he was? It doesn't seem real.

The people back in Valeros used to say that my dad worked for Galen Niles, the most infamous pirate back in the day. I remember asking my mom about it, and she would tell me not to even consider that.

"I named you Leto," she said, "Because you're royalty."

And while we weren't, I knew my mom wasn't like most people in Valeros, she wasn't a miner, nor was she a farmer nor an artisan. She was an Imperial cartographer, right?

But it never made sense. I remember when she told me she was going to be gone for a few months, because she was going to be on the Expedition. I was seventeen, I could have hardly cared less, and I had the whole summer ahead of me, and I was going to be gone for weeks at a time anyway working with Mr. Wheatley.

I didn't expect to come home to see Imperial agents at my door, after wrecking the glider, telling me that my mom wasn't coming back.

I didn't expect to be told that my only choice was to work for the navy, or to be exiled from Valeros.

What if I said, I want to be exiled? I didn't even know what that word meant at the time.

Wasn't the navy a form of exile? I haven't had a real home in years. All I know are just bunk beds and shore leaves, guns, guns, guns.

Sometimes I wonder -- what if it was the glider? What if the glider was worth 250000 gold pieces? But that doesn't make sense at all. People literally throw those things out for free. Maybe it's a sign I shouldn't ever fly those things again.

I remember trying to ask them, what is this, and where's my mom, was she even alive, and they wouldn't tell me anything.

All I wanted to do was run and find Mr. Wheatley, but it was too late. The next day I was working as a deckhand, four hundred miles from home.

I didn't know who to talk to, or what to do, or what kind of person I was supposed to be. Some days I felt like I was like Mira, out of control, just wanting to be a kid on a warship. The next day I would be like Kael, pretending that I knew better than everyone else, and then I would be like Leks, drawing in my notebook after hours, or like Idrin, just quiet, bitter, dazed.

And now what? It's been a decade of this. Is another decade going to pass by?

I think about how Leks is probably going to get promoted, get his commission, get out of the navy, and probably work as an artist, maybe even do cartoons for the papers. He's going to have a normal life, like everyone else. The navy is just a high-risk game for them. I don't resent him. He deserves it.

But for the other enlisted -- we don't have anywhere else to go.

And then I start thinking -- what happens when this war finally ends? Are we just thrown back onto the streets?

There's a guy next to me right now, on the hill, looking through a spyglass. He seems friendly.

He's beckoning to me to come closer.

I can't write about what happened in Cyreal.

The trial was a joke.

Idrin couldn't even look at me.