The Twilight Frontier.

Laggan Year 248.

Maizia

Some people say flying brings you closer to God. If that’s true, his hand just swatted my jet like a toy.

The turbulence slammed me against the seat, blurring my vision but reawakening my scan for danger outside. These dreary air patrols in the dark had a way of beckoning my mind to wander. And my heart.

I’d been thinking of Ezzy again.

Layered atop tonight’s biting cold, the memory of my half-sister pierced my soul like a razor-sharp icicle. Our father had seen to that.

Even now, as my eyes probed the canyon’s shadows that were as black as Father’s heart, my grip tightened on the control stick. If my clammy flight glove had been around that evil man’s neck, I could have snapped him in two.

Let go…

The nibble of conscience was as unwelcome as it was impossible to obey.

But I wouldn’t pilot my hover-jet well if my hands cramped up. So I forced out a long breath and wiggled damp fingers. The feel of the controls… It evoked a tarnished candlestick I’d once wielded as a majestic scepter, when my flights above Father’s poisoned landscape were powered by imagination, not jet fuel. I, a mutant girl with no surname—and no desire to share his—had fancied myself Queen Maizia, sovereign over Lagga.

The cockpit shook again. The dark-vision display in my visor glitched a moment before its synthetic view of the terrain returned in shades of gray-green. I scanned left and right. Nothing but sheer cliffs with the occasional rockfall and stubborn shrub.

Queen Maizia… I’d be a good queen, of course. Kind and wise. With a steely spine and a generous hand. I’d inspire women and be respected by men.

Not manhandled for wanton pleasure. Or sucked into that consuming whirlpool called power.

Girlish dreams.

I jiggled my head as if to erase the stray memories. Focus! Here, jostling in my rebel fighter in the agitated air, idle fantasies could get me killed. Father’s enraged minions would see to that. Or Lagga’s unforgiving rocks.

With a glance at my attitude indicator, I tweaked the control stick to level our wings. Disorientation was deadly when patrolling the Twilight Frontier. My wingman and I straddled the muddled atmosphere between the bluish light of Solis and never-ending darkness. It was as if my very being floated in the gray soup, the blurred horizon making up and down dangerously uncertain.

My gaze lifted heavenward. The starry skies often settled me, reset my perspective. Now, squinting at ragged holes in a shredded overcast, I searched for three very particular stars—

“Maizia, break right!”

My wingman’s radio call sparked a reflex of heart and hands that squelched my musings and unleashed my jet into a punishing defensive turn. Flattened by the onset of g­-forces, I grunted into my oxygen mask, fighting the black throat of tunnel vision. Such gloomy surroundings made it hard to tell if I was fending off the forces that ripped blood from my brain—or if, instead, I was drifting into deadly sightlessness.

Despite my helmet’s crushing weight, I had to find the mysterious threat. Clenching teeth, I twisted my head right.

The corkscrew trail of a shoulder-fired missile rose toward my wing.

I checked both throttles at max and chopped a pinky switch on the left one. That unleashed a rapid-fire drumbeat of flares from my stinger tail. Their receding starbursts created ghostly shadows of my aircraft that evaporated into the misty air.

The smoke trail bent toward my decoys.

I snapped the control stick to neutral, hauled a breath, regained speed.

“Eat that, you miserable Luds.” The missile sailed safely behind me and smacked into the canyon wall with a yellow flash.

You shouldn’t have kidnapped your father.

The accusation flared like the explosion. But I deflected it with the heat of my anger.

No, you shouldn’t have messed with his daughter!

My gunner, Lefty, spoke from the back seat. “You see ‘em?”

I ignored his question while I moved beyond range of another missile ambush. “About to.” Then I carved our jet back toward the source of the smoke. Engaging infrared priority in my helmet-visor display, I immediately picked out a hot spot. It looked like a white dash against a cluster of boulders.

The warm, discarded missile tube.

But it didn’t take long to spot the fainter movements of a standard Lud three-man team. They’d been pushing these probing teams deeper into the Twilight Frontier as of late.

This one wouldn’t live to report their failure.

“Hovering and centering ‘em up,” I said over intercom. “Switching to rockets.”

“General Dahl wants captives,” Lefty said. “For intel.”

I clenched teeth while stabilizing the jet in a hover. “Dahl’s not here. And soon these Luds won’t be, either.” Biting back a twinge in my calf, I stomped on left rudder to pivot the nose and aim ahead of the scrambling, ghostlike figures.

My thumb hovered over the firing button. It would release a volley of death that couldn’t be recalled. Even as I drew a deep breath, memories of Ezzy’s unjust end stirred anew.

I hammered down. The jet shuddered, the fiery rage of the rockets blinding me for a spell. Their ripple of explosions—bursts that briefly put the serrated terrain in sharp relief—sent our enemies to their eternal fate.

Then the disorienting darkness smothered me again, the rockets’ afterglow the only stars.

The flight home was quiet as a tomb.

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