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If Habberport wasn't planning on attacking us directly before, they sure would be now.

It's difficult to imagine being part of a medieval society and having a giant metal pillar come falling out of the sky. The booster had plummeted at terminal velocity like a spear from the heavens. I'd been over every inch of those boosters, and the zealots had scrawled goblin iconography all over them. The sparkers had added nose art, as well.

What I'm trying to say is that they couldn't have come from anyone but us. This was a diplomatic disaster on what had been an uneasy mounting tension, and it was coming at the least opportune time. Just when we'd gotten some breathing room to push the rocket program higher and further, we'd gone and antagonized the human faction.

We got two more days of solid work on the next set of rockets before the first dragon riders appeared in the sky north of Red Rock Rise. The warning came as I was working with Prometheus on our first manned command capsule.

One of the sparkers ran into the hangar, mouth agape with the frantic radio calls from one of the northern bluffs.

"Big winged lizards just flew over us! They're spittin' fire! We need airy-knotic support."

I dropped my tools. "Scramble fighters!" I shouted. The workshop burst into a panic as goblins began to run every which way. Armstrong, of course, just looked excited for the impending scrap. I turned to my ignis chief. "Promo, we need to get up there."

"I got things here, hoss. The work don't stop. Get after 'em," he said, hefting his hammer.

I ran from the workshop and caught a lift on a passing buggy to the edge of the bluff, where several of Eileen's air crews were already pulling out personal gliders to soar down to the hangars. I took a spare and joined them, taking a running leap from the west edge of the bluff and unfurling the glider. Down below, crews of goblins hauled open the hangar doors and utility buggies began pulling the jets to the ramp. A dozen or more Ifrit hovered nearby, eager to jump into the jets for a chance to ride in the turbine engines. I'd made sure to keep the jets in a state of near readiness once the boosters fell on Habberport. I'd expected an attack. I just hoped it wouldn't come until much later. I also hoped to figure out some way to deescalate this conflict before it turned into an all-out war. But it's hard to broker peace with someone you just dropped a 20 kilochoom rocket on.

I met Chuck coming in from the livestock pens on his dirt bike along with a dozen other wranglers. They hit the runway and opened up their throttles, screaming down the length of it until they reached the ramp. My wrangler chief ditched the bike and sprinted over to me.

"Got here quick as could be, boss. What's our play?"

"We need to make sure those dragon riders don't get to Bluff Apollo or Canaveral. 6 fighters to interdict, and 3 to each bluff in case they sent flankers. Any idea where Sourtooth is?"

"I'm here, little brother," said the old orc boss, limping out of the hangar behind one of the jets with his bag of smiths tools. Despite never wanting to fly one, he'd taken to wrenching on the aircraft in his spare time, adding his own orcish modifications to my designs. "What yammer is this of dragons a'wing? Has Habbe finally bared tooth and talon?"

"Certainly seems that way," I said. "Red Rock Rise spotted a group of those dragon riders. What should I expect?"

"Fire and lightning," said Sourtooth, rubbing his stubbled chin. He scowled. "Mage riders, as dangerous they as the beasts they mount."

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"Great. Just what we need near jets full of fuel and radio equipment."

"Good, then, that my smiths you've got. Knowing, they, how to fight humans."

"I can't thank you enough for all your help, Sourtooth. I just wish I could get someone with your skills airborne."

"Curse your tongue for the words it twists, little brother," said Sourtooth. He spat on the ground. "Haven't you somewhere to be?"

I whistled to the assembling air crew. "Mount up!"

The cheer and rush of goblins scrambling to get to their aircraft was always something to see. I had my own personal heavy fighter that I headed to, an orc fighter modified for a goblin pilot. I spotted Taquoho's vessel hovering nearby, along with my regular flight crew.

One of the wranglers leaned out of their cockpits and whistled. "They just left Red Rock, headed this way," he shouted.

No time to waste then, I jumped in my cockpit and got it started up as a buggy topped off the fuel. Armstrong dropped down to the turret with another goblin to act as his loader, and I let off the brakes and got us lined up for takeoff.

It stuck me as odd, then, how routine it all felt. After a couple months on Rava, I was pre-flighting my fighter jet to go fight dragon riders, and the thing that worried me most was keeping them away from our rockets so that the next launch went up as scheduled—all so we could eventually wake up an ancient, psychic celestial creature before it accidentally destroyed the moon because giant magic space ticks had made it oversleep.

I guess once you've been plucked out of your body and sent to another world as a fictitious creature, the rest just sort of falls in line as plausible. I ought to be glad Rava had no concept of April Fools, because I probably would have fallen for anything, at this point. Things that would have beggared belief back home were as mundane as Monday morning hangovers, here.

I tuned the radio for the air patrol band. The fighters we already had in the air were keeping their distance from the encroaching dragon riders while they waited for backup. I got us lined up with the runway and hit the throttle, launching us into the air so that we could join them.

Three fighters headed west to Canaveral, and three more started to circle the floating rings of Apollo City. The rest of the fighters followed me as I pointed our nose north toward Red Rock Rise, where towering storm clouds had started to gather.

Fire and lightning, Sourtooth had said. When we'd flown over Habberport, a wizard had conjured lightning to strike at us from the top of a tall tower which, if the reports were accurate, was now flattened. True battle magic of epic scale was not something I looked forward to seeing in action. But the best defense was a show of force to make these riders turn home.

Underneath the column of cumulonimbus storm clouds, I soon spotted several specks weaving through the air where our air patrol danced with the dragon mages.

"Tally bandits," I called over the radio. "Watch your ceiling, don't fly into clouds or you're likely to hit a mountain."

"Aye king," said Chuck. "I've got yer back. I'll follow you in."

Ahead, a bar of white-hot flame split the distance between one of the dragons and a goblin jet, and the latter burst into a ball of flaming debris.

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I hissed under my breath. 12 goblins up in smoke. The other pilot, who had been holding fire, opened up with his guns and spat a hail of glowing rockettes through the air. But the dragons were maneuverable, and the pilot was outnumbered 5:1 now that his wingmate had gone down.

The riders finally seemed to notice the backup coming from the southern bluffs, because the dragons wheeled and climbed to the base of the clouds. I put on throttle to build altitude as well, already feeling the static from the storm start to raise my fur as our tail carved the underside of the cloud deck.

Two of the dragons split, pumping their wings and heading southwest toward Canaveral.

"Boss, should we persue 'em?" asked one of the wranglers.

"Negative, they're trying to split us up. Let the rest of the patrol catch them and reinforce with the reserve air wing."

I kept my nose head on, bringing the closest dragon into my crosshairs. It, likewise, headed right for me. It opened its mouth, and I yanked the stick to the side just as another bar of flame split the distance. It was so close I could feel the heat of it through the fuselage, and its glare left a magenta after-image in my eyes. I don't know what kind of fire that was, but its temperature must have been close to the inside of one of our kilns. We shot past, with Armstrong taking a shot with the recoilless rifles that the dragon evaded with a single forceful beat of its wings. I dropped throttle and banked in order to bring us around. My tail gunner likewise added his self-cycling gun to the mix as we passed. I heard the roar of the dragon as rounds hit home, and looked over my shoulder to find the creature had wheeled about in the air to pursue us.

The fight was fully joined, now.

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