Vera’s Revenge lurched, and Klara Koskova braced herself against the narrow brass bench, the thin crosshatching hard and uncomfortable despite her thick, black leather coat and trousers. Around her, the remains of her squad also sat, leaning against the airship’s hull, waiting. Each had either a sword or knife strapped to their side, along with a gas-powered grappling pistol. The heavy-browed Yeger Blinov, however, carried a gas rifle, a powerful weapon capable of puncturing even strength extract boosted muscles.

  Mikhail Koskov sat on a bench across the crate cluttered hold from Klara, hunched beside Yeger; a diminutive figure beside the fighter’s hulking frame. Klara caught her half-brother’s eye, and he offered her a weak smile. He’d finally shaved his beard, but kept thick brown sideburns, though hints of his natural white were showing at the roots. A gift from his mother.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Mikhail said, his voice faint against the roar of the airship’s engines.

  “We should be getting your mother,” Klara said, “not wasting time on this suicide run for Pozharsky.”

  Mikhail stared at his gloved hands, fingers twisting. “You heard the report, Mother is fine. Depths, she can apparently even fly! Dominik is the one who needs rescuing.”

  Klara pursed her lips. The kid had been frantic to find Elana—until that cursed report. Now he seemed desperate to avoid her, even if it meant assaulting an Alchemist prison ship on its way to the uzhas mine on the back of a rumour.

  “Look,” Mikhail said, looking her in the eye, “if there’s a chance Dominik is alive, we need to get him. If the Alchemist Guild thought he was worth kidnapping than he’s worth rescuing. Besides, he’s one of the foremost weapon engineers in the Guild.”

  “A good enough reason for rescue,” Yeger said, the big man’s voice rumbling along with the engine as he inserted himself in the private conversation.

  Klara cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know he’ll even be willing to work with us? It’s our fault he got taken. If Mikhail hadn’t spoken to him, then Zin—” Klara’s voice caught and her stomach twisted at the name. She took a deep breath and continued. “That cursed yutzi mucker would have left Pozharsky alone.”

  Mikhail watched her, the sympathy in his gaze just another knife. “She fooled us all, Klara. No one could have picked Zin as an Alchemist spy.”

  A whistle sounded from by the stairwell at the back of the hold and the lithe Nika Anoshkina, the squads’ engineer, stood and darted over to a brass pipe in the wall. She pulled the whistle from the pipe and dropped her ear to it. A moment later she straightened and turned. “Trubnikov says the Alchemist ship is ten minutes off,” she yelled, her words short and clipped.

  Klara nodded and took a deep breath, glancing at her gloved hands. Only the slightest shake.

  Running along a Nishkuk’s back while on top of battlements had done a lot to help her cope with heights, but this was a whole new level of insane. She had survived the fall off of the battlement—barely—but tonight they were thousands of feet up. No amount of strength extract would stop her from becoming paste on the tundra if she fell.

  Klara stood and pulled her half-mask from its clip on her coat sleeve and fastened it over her nose. “All right, remember the plan: Yeger, Maria, Nika, and Matvei, Uncle Yuri’s crew will make a lot of noise as you swing over. Don’t go deep into the airship, just distract them. Mikhail and I will hit the hold where they keep the prisoners and retrieve Pozharsky. With any luck, we’ll be in and out in under five minutes. Stay alive.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  24th Squad, once a team of nine who’d trained together in Borovsk, now a team of six—two murdered by Alchemists, one an Alchemist traitor—rose from the benches. Tension marred their every movement as they donned half-masks and pulled up the hoods of their black, unmarked coats.

  Smuggler coats.

  Twin hearts hammering against her ribcage, Klara checked that her gas-powered grappling pistol and father’s knife were secure. Then she took up position by a hatch set into the wall right of hold’s rear main door.

  Mikhail joined her while the rest of the squad waited by a similar hatch forty feet away at the front of the hold.

  On the deck above them, Klara knew Vera’s Revenge’s crew manned old Mark III harpoon cannons normally hidden behind false walls.

  “Take extracts!” Klara said, pulling the three glistening black uzhasgart phials of Trinity from her belt. Speed, strength, and reflex. Uncapping each phial, she downed the bitter liquids. Thirty seconds later, a shiver clawed up her spine as the extracts reconstructed her body. She groaned as muscles twitched and strained against her skin. Raw, unadulterated power surged through her arms and legs.

  Klara looked at Mikhail, a pulse of fear flashing through her mind. Pain reflected in his eyes as he fought to control the extracts surging through his veins. Strength extract unlocked an unholy rage in some men.

  Mikhail had succumbed to that rage once before, and she’d been on the receiving end.

  A victim, like him, of their father’s incessant pressure that they be the best.

  After a moment, Mikhail relaxed, and the pain vanished from his eyes. His shoulders slumped as he blew out a long breath, which misted as it escaped his half-mask. He glanced at her and gave her a nod and donned his goggles. Klara followed suit, satisfied he was in control.

  Minutes crawled by as they waited for the signal. Beneath her skin, Klara’s muscles spasmed and twitched, begging to be used. She ground her teeth, fingers drumming an uneven rhythm on her thigh. Surely it’d been ten minutes? They should have caught up with the bloated Alchemist airship by now.

  Boom!

  Even over the engine, the harpoon cannon was loud. Well, go time.

  Without missing a beat, Mikhail yanked the hatch open and a blast of icy air slammed into them, instantly numbing exposed flesh. The bellow of the engines and the thunder of cannons filled the hold.

  Klara glanced left. Yeger, his massive shoulders and thick neck straining against his coat, had already yanked his hatch open and pulled himself out, climbing up to the heavy rope anchored between the cannon and a harpoon buried in Alchemist airship. After a second, Nika darted after him, then Maria, and finally the rat-faced Matvei, his narrow features covered by a grey, predatory half-mask he’d streaked with red. The goggles he wore only enhanced his ratlike appearance.

  Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight… Klara counted the seconds until she and Mikhail would begin the real mission: rescuing Pozharsky.

  Thunk!

  Vera’s Revenge jolted, throwing Klara off balance. The world slowed around Klara as reflex extract took control of her body, allowing her to make micro-adjustments to remain upright. With a move boosted by speed extract, Klara lashed out and grabbed the hatchway and held steady. Balance restored, the world snapped back to normal speed.

  “What was that?” Mikhail yelled, his voice muffled through his half-mask.

  “I think they flew into us.” She hesitated. It wasn’t thirty seconds, but they might not have that long to perform the rescue. “Come on!”

  Klara reached through the hatchway, her grasping fingers quickly finding the ladder built into the side of Vera’s Revenge.

  With a deep breath, she swung into the night.