He was stubborn the entire time, argued and denied as long as he could, and even came to sloppy blows over it at one point. In the end, pure exhaustion got the better of Nosedive.

Mallory had a couple years of military training before the invasion, and was used to long shifts with little sleep between. She could not sustain it forever, that would have been dangerous, but the search for Wildwing was no worse than a thirty-six hour watch in low lunar gravity. She did not ask what Duke’s experience was, but it was clear enough that he was used to prolonged, boring hours. She did not know much about professional thievery, but imagined it involved a lot of watching and waiting.

The Aerowing was not a place of comfort. The interior was designed for combat, with little thought given to the accommodations beyond keeping a crew alive. It was built of hard edges and bolts. There had been the notion that perhaps they could have refit it to resemble a personal aircraft, better for basic travel, but the absolute need to keep it in fighting condition made that dream impossible.

Nosedive, for all his protesting and determination, still managed to fall asleep, sprawled over controls that absolutely were not safe to sleep on.

They left him home, under Tanya’s scalding command to crawl into his bunk and not be seen for eight hours, and continued on without him. It mattered little if Nosedive was there or not, because for all the effort and fuel, the search yielded nothing.

Wherever Wildwing’s communicator was, it was either unable to transmit and respond to a ping, or was destroyed entirely. That was expected, would have been Mallory’s own first move had she orchestrated the abduction.

But she had never known the Saurians to simply go quiet. Quiet was not part of their repertoire, not in the nearly two years she had dealt with them. Dragaunus in particular enjoyed the loud, the overblown, the absolute bombastic. He was a showboat, careless in his execution.

In the hours after Wildwing was taken, she had anticipated a number of things. An army of robots. A magical flying machine. A deluge of impassible rain and hail. The entire state of California ripped in half and sunk into the sea. Something just a little absurd.

None of that happened. Not in the first hour, or the seventh.

That the warlord had suddenly discovered silence was troubling. It made it far more likely that he had decided to slowly remove them, one by one, rather than his usual reckless choice to take them all head on. It made it more possible Wildwing was just dead.

She was going to be very angry, after all this effort to find him, if Wildwing was just dead. She was going to be angry if they found him alive, too, but it wasn’t going to be blind rage.

The night gave way to day, the sun peeked over the mountains to the east, and the Aerowing’s systems relayed updates from Tanya. Shadows on the ground grew short, and then long again, and then the sun went down over the water, the world turning a pink as it did so, and the brilliant, endless lights of the city below drowned out any hint of the stars above.

They followed coastline first, swung out over forest, then mountain, then desert, and then more mountain, and then more desert. They even tried over the ocean, just for a bit, giving scrutiny to platforms and floating garbage, but ultimately only managed to slightly baffle the shipping lane traffic.

Sometime in the second night she and Duke gave in and slept, with the other three taking over. Tanya took her crew a little farther, to places she thought had useful resources the Saurians might use, or areas that Drake One identified as spots of interest. It was more strategic, perhaps a better use of time than the circular flying, but in the end, gave the same results. Tanya, Grin, and Nosedive came back demoralized, exhausted, and hungry, so Duke and Mallory went out into the afternoon with a bit of anxious rest in them.

Mallory could not speak to the mood of the other three, suspected that Nosedive had spent the day burning Tanya’s patience from both ends. Between herself and Duke, there was an endless, companionable silence in the Aerowing. Nothing but the noise of the wind and thrusters, and the occasional proposal and agreement of course corrections. She had nothing to say that wasn’t immediately apparent, and he seemed perfectly fine in keeping to himself. There was a point, during the trade-off and refuel, that she had spied Duke talking to the frazzled Tanya, taking in her hand in a gesture that Tanya herself probably thought was comforting. She said nothing about it for now, but would pull Tanya aside later, if things got better—when things got better—for some old-fashioned teasing.

Their second shift took them far north, along a mountain ridge, past a forest of deep green, that eventually gave way to higher mountains crested with snow.

It could have almost been pleasant, if it had just been a day spent exploring.

That moment of daydream dissolved, and she adjusted herself in the Aerowing’s rigid seat, turning her gaze from the view beneath to the observation of electromagnetic activity.

The mountains were quiet.

Wildwing was still missing.