Raptor Aces

  I brace myself for an attack. Then –

  “Listen to me, you sons of bitches!” Katella shouts.

  The violence that was about to leap out at me slithers temporarily back into its hole. Everyone pivots toward Katella. He has propped himself up on his good arm and is staring at us with tight-lipped anger. Absolute stillness, frozen in time.

  Then we begin walking the several paces to where he is lying. Our movements seem absurd, like a bunch of kids off on a frolic. The sense of unreality makes my head spin.

  “What is it?” Beltran demands.

  “Dytran is our leader,” Katella says, “and he’s right! As soon as I’m recovered, I’ll kick anybody’s ass who says otherwise.”

  We all gape with astonishment at the usually mild-mannered Katella. He doesn’t look so mild now. He thrusts out his chin defiantly.

  “That includes you, Beltran.” His voice is low and ominous now. “One way or another, I’d get you. Believe it.”

  Bel clenches his teeth and fists. I fear that he’s going to attack our wounded comrade, and I prepare to rush to Katella’s defense. But then the lethal moment passes.

  “All right, have it your way, Katella,” Beltran says. “You never were too smart.”

  Relief floods over me. The boys all sag, as if they are puppets with cut strings, or corpses dangling from the gallows. Beltran jabs a finger at Katella.

  “And maybe I’ll take you up on that ‘ass kicking’ sometime – when you’re fit.”

  Katella nods, but says nothing further.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, boys,” Beltran says.

  He stomps off toward the airplanes. Most of the others follow him in an insubordinate group, without waiting for my order. As they pass the dead slobe boy, they utter various epithets.

  “Fool ... bastard ... subhuman scum!”

  But I perceive the real truth about him. We have witnessed the death of someone who is far stronger and braver than us.

  Albers remains, standing awkwardly to the side like an orphan. Bezmir has also stayed to assist Katella.

  “Are you all right to walk?” Bezmir asks.

  Katella manages a grim smile. “Of course, never better.”

  His face twists with pain as we help him to his feet. I speak quietly into his ear.

  “Thanks, wingman.”

  “To hell with all that,” Katella replies. “Just get me a morphine shot!”

  He and Bezmir move slowly away.

  “Put him in my plane!” I call after them.

  Then I turn to Albers.

  “Run on ahead and bring me my flight jacket, will you?” I say.

  Albers looks surprised, but he obeys my order – doubtless the last one I will ever give. He trots off after the others.

  Then I am alone, keeping vigil by the corpse with the sun and wind. The boy is dead while I still walk the earth – but who is really the superior being? Such thoughts have never before entered my mind, but now they swirl around like dark waters.

  When Albers returns, I place my flight jacket over the slobe boy’s face and upper body. The jacket stares back, its squadron leader’s badge mocking me.

  I come to attention and salute my fallen enemy. Then I walk off toward my plane.

  4. Grim Return

  The flight back to home base is very grim. We take off from the grass alongside the runway in no particular order. Once in the air, we do not keep formation. Everyone simply flies as he pleases. We are no longer a squadron, and I am no longer the leader.

  Even from a great distance, I can still observe smoke rising from the airplane wreckage. My whole future burns on that funeral pyre.

  Katella sits in my rear cockpit trying to appear brave and stoic, but I know that he is suffering a great deal. Beltran pilots Katella’s plane with an attack dog occupying the rear. He has no business getting behind the stick with only one good eye, but I did not think to admonish him. He would not have listened in any case.

  The kilometers drone past as familiar landmarks slither beneath my wings. I experience none of my usual exhilaration, no sense that I am a god of the sky. For all the thrill it gives me, I could be flying a garbage lorry. I’ve always felt a bit of contemptuous pity for those who are confined to the earth. Now I want to join them and bury myself away.

  A disturbing thought is taking hold of my mind. The other lads are clearly more of Beltran’s persuasion than of mine. Only Katella is completely on my side, and we are both occupying the same airplane. What if we were to crash and be killed? That would solve many problems for the others, wouldn’t it?

  As squadron leader, I possess the only radio. I use it to contact home base, informing them that we have two injured pilots among us. I consider mentioning the slobe boy, but restrain myself. The news will keep, if I am alive to tell it.

  My plane had stood unattended for some minutes while I’d kept vigil with the dead boy. Plenty of time for somebody to sneak an incendiary device under the cowling or sabotage the controls. I’d not bothered with a pre-flight inspection – any number of things could have been done to my aircraft. Any moment something could go terribly wrong.

  The idea scares me at first, but then I get used to it. Actually, I wouldn’t mind crashing out too much. By the time home base comes into view, I am positively hoping that my plane will go up in a quick, surgical fireball.

  But nothing happens. A perfectly routine flight, even the nasty cross winds have died down. A smooth landing.

  ***

  Medics hustle Katella off to the infirmary, but Beltran refuses to go with them.

  “I must report to the wing commander first,” he says.

  I can’t help but admire Bel’s fortitude. His face looks terrible, and blood is seeping through the bandage. He could have justifiably retired to the hospital, leaving me to confront the music alone. But his sense of honor will not permit that.

  Or maybe he just wants to make sure that I keep my word about taking full responsibility for the disaster. I don’t know. I can’t think very well anymore.

  Everyone has landed now, and we all stand together in an uncertain knot alongside the runway, staring at the ground. Nobody says a word. The wing commander’s adjutant arrives in a staff car and demands our immediate report. Bel and I climb into the back seat for a very quiet ride to Headquarters.

  A troop of Junior Youth League members is marching about the parade ground near HQ – the 10 to14-year-old set – all crisp and neat in their camouflage uniforms, waving flags and banging drums, just as we did a few years ago. When I was new to the League, I’d marched with as much snap and enthusiasm as they were displaying. Now, their efforts just seem tiresome, ridiculous, even.

  Bel gives a sarcastic snort. “Bunch of little twerps!”

  A victory rally will take place here in ten days, one of several around the country, and preparations are under way. There will be marches, displays of weaponry, military drills. The district Party boss will speak along with some government officials from the capital.

  There are rumors that the Great Leader himself might appear, taking his valuable time to visit this easternmost province of our country. The prospect of seeing him in person has kept all of our throats dry for days now, but we are being stupid. The Magleiter couldn’t possibly set aside his command responsibilities at this critical point in the war just to see us.

  The ‘little twerps’ will probably be among the Youth League contingent strutting in the parade. We were to have participated in the flyby – along with the other two squadrons of our training group. Well ... the ceremonies will be doing without the Raptor Aces, I’m certain.

  As we walk past the Junior Youth League members, they snap to attention and salute.

  “They want to be just like us,” Bel mutters.

  We enter the HQ building trailing the adjutant like a couple of whipped dogs and walk by the awards case for past heroes of the Youth League Air Corps. Stilikan’s photo occupies a place of prominence – squa
dron leader, junior group commander, 1st place honors in numerous competitions.

  I lower my eyes and quicken my pace.

  5. Facing the Music

  It couldn’t have taken me long to give my report, but it seems as if hours have dragged past – me standing ramrod straight, sweating under my flight suit, the red squadron leader’s piping weighing it down like iron chains. Beltran standing beside me, motionless as a rock, his good eye staring at the portrait of the Magleiter on the wall behind the wing commander’s desk.

  The wing commander is a man past forty who seems to be going to pot. His gut now bulges undeniably, and his face is turning jowly. A year ago he’d seemed much more trim and fit.

  I keep nothing back from my report, except for the foiled conspiracy to hide the evidence. That unsavory detail is no longer important. When I finish speaking, a profound quiet grips the room. Then a fly buzzes past my ear and lands on the wall, clambering up the Magleiter’s portrait.

  The wing commander’s face is grim. He looks toward Beltan.

  “Do you concur with this report?” he asks.

  “Yes, sir,” Beltran replies, “except for one point.”

  “Oh?” The commander raises an eyebrow. “And what is that?”

  “Squadron Leader Dytran stated that the games were entirely his idea,” Beltran says. “He implied that I was compelled to join in.”

  “And such was not the case?”

  “No, sir,” Beltran says. “I was very anxious to participate. Had Squadron Leader Dytran not suggested the games, I would have done so myself.”

  “Oh ... I see.”

  The commander is looking at his folded hands on the desk, gathering energy for his retort. I brace myself for a blast of anger, threats, curses.

  But he just sits there for an unbearable amount of time in his precise blue uniform. He’s worked hard to gain his rank, and now two young idiots – from his top training squadron no less – are putting it all in jeopardy with their indiscipline. His wrath promises to be monumental.

  He looks up. Instead of the expected rage, his face is loaded with fatigue. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more tired looking man in my life.

  “You lads are a major disappointment,” he says.

  I feel as if struck by a physical blow. Of all the things he could have said, this is the worst. Beltran does not appear to share my humiliation.

  “Permission to speak freely, sir,” he says.

  The wing commander moves back in his chair, his hands slide off the desk top into his lap.

  “Granted.”

  “I admit the error of our actions,” Beltran says. “We all knew that such activities are not permitted. The killing was unintentional, however, and ... ”

  He shoots me a glance, looks back to the commander.

  “It was only a slobe, sir! He nearly killed me and Katella. The Fatherland could have lost two loyal national comrades because of him.”

  Silence returned to the room. Then:

  “Is that all?” the wing commander asks.

  “Yes, sir,” Beltran replies.

  The commander gets up and moves to the window, hands behind his back, looking out at the Junior Youth League members exercising on the parade ground. More unbearable seconds drag by. Then he turns on us, red-faced. It is almost a relief to bear the full brunt of his wrath.

  We are a discredit to the Air Corps, he says, we’ve betrayed the trust placed in us, we’ve disobeyed explicit orders. He is particularly ashamed of me, brother of the most highly honored Air Corps graduate. What the hell was I thinking when I set up the games?

  I expect all this, painful as it is, but then the wing commander says something that opens up a whole new vista of shame. Before the Great Leader took power and banned further racial defilement, he says, slobes and national comrades had mixed for generations. This left a slobe minority here in our eastern province – but the opposite is also true, a community of national comrades is cut off in the slobe empire.

  Now that the war is on, what will happen to them? News of any oppressions here will be conveyed there. Spies are active, everybody knows that. What vengeance will be taken upon our isolated comrades and our prisoners of war?

  I think of Stilikan and of all our other brave soldiers and airmen serving the Fatherland in the war of national survival. I’ve added to their hardships with my stupidity! If someone fired a pistol into the back of my head at this moment, I wouldn’t care too much.

  “I regret that we did not consider this adequately, Commander,” Beltran says, “but the war will soon be over. After we have won, we can take vengeance for any injury done to our national comrades.”

  Beltran’s nerve astonishes me. He’s got permission to speak freely, however, and since our cause is already doomed, he must figure we have nothing to lose.

  When the dressing down is finally over, the adjutant returns with military policemen. They escort me to the barracks and take Bel to the infirmary.

  6. Confinement

  A week of chilly tension follows as Bel and I endure barracks confinement.

  We keep to our separate cots reading or napping, with half the room sprawled between us. Or else one of us ventures outside to do exercises. Trips to the bathroom are timed so that we do not chance to meet each other there. Only when our meals are delivered do we have to come into anything like close contact, but that’s just long enough to pick up our rations and retreat to our separate ends of the barracks.

  So much camaraderie had enlivened this place over the school year. All the Raptor Aces shared the big room, eating together, horsing around together, talking about girls and airplanes. Now everything is silent and dead. Sometimes at night, I try to imagine my squadron mates sleeping around me, but this only makes me feel more lonely. And always the same recurring dream:

  We’re chasing the slobe boy through the orchard where he’d been working. We’ve unsheathed our daggers and are shouting threats, demanding that he stop – everything just as it happened in real life. Only this time we don’t catch him. He makes a sharp turn and disappears, as if into thin air. We all glance around, baffled.

  “Oh well,” I say, “it looks like we can’t hold the games after all!”

  I wake up to intense relief and joy. Then reality sets in with redoubled fury.

  For a while, I suffer from paranoid fears that Beltran will slip over to my bunk at night and smother me with a pillow. Then I think he might fly into a rage some dinner time and attack me with a fork. Finally, I just resign myself to the tense standoff that my life has become.

  But, through it all, I never doubt the rightness of my decision to make a truthful report.

  ***

  Then one morning, without the slightest fanfare, Bel closes the book he’s been reading and looks over at me from his bunk.

  “I’m telling you, Dytran,” he says, “the wing commander is going soft.”

  Aside from a few grunts and monosyllables, this is the first thing he’s said to me during the whole week. I scarcely know how to respond.

  “Why makes you think that?” I manage to say.

  “All his talk about ‘honor’ and ‘obedience,’ it’s misdirected,” Bel says. “It applies only among ourselves, not to the inferior races. How can one act ‘dishonorably’ toward a subhuman?”

  I glance around the barracks for any prying ears, but the room is vacant, as it has been all week.

  “You’d almost think he was half slobe himself,” Bel says. “Have you ever noticed his profile? It’s not exactly what you’d expect from a racial comrade, is it?”

  “I’d be cautious about remarks like that,” I say. “Determinations of racial purity are made by the Party. They must deem him to be acceptable.”

  “Ah, spoken like the blue-eyed golden boy!” Bel says. “How did you get so blond, anyway – too much time in the sun?”

  “I’d remind you that our Great Leader has dark hair, like most of our people,” I say.

  Bel laughs.
Then he rises from his bunk and saunters toward me with that easy, though aggressive style of his. I stand to meet him, uncertain if he is approaching as comrade or foe. He stops before me, hands on hips, looking boldly up into my face. I am half a head taller than him, but this imparts no sense of physical superiority. I try to remain impassive as I await his next move.

  “Friends again?” he says.

  He thrusts out a hand. After a moment’s astonished hesitation, I take it.

  “Y-yes, always,” I say.

  The thick cord of tension that has been choking us abruptly snaps. I resist the urge to flop down onto my cot with relief.

  “You made an honorable decision back there,” Bel says. “I respect it.”

  “I ... thanks ...”

  Bel grins at my astonishment. His face is much improved from its injury, and his eyes are sharp, like a hawk’s.

  “Of course, we must deal with the consequences,” he says. “Our butts are truly in the sling, aren’t they?”

  He turns and walks toward the main window, leaving me alone with my roiling emotions. After I’ve had a few moments to collect my wits, I join him at the window where he stands observing outside events through binoculars.

  The issue poisoning our relationship has been abruptly resolved. The speed of it makes my head turn. I know from experience that Beltran will never mention it again. And I would rather die than do so myself.

  “Looks like they’ve pretty much finished the construction work,” he says. “A film crew, or something, is out there now.”

  He hands over the binoculars. The gesture is casual, routine. More than anything else, it signifies the end of our estrangement. I train the binoculars on the main runway alongside which a wooden review stand has been erected, flanked by tiers of bleachers.

  “They got that up in record time,” I say.

  More bleachers run along the far side of the runway. There must be seating for thousands of people out there. Workmen hustle about. Atop the review stand, a large movie camera is grinding away, recording the preparations for the newsreels. The camp tents of the growing Youth League contingent appear in the distance, like pointy white mushrooms.

  In my mind, I am out there on the review stand under the bright sun, amid the fragrance of aviation fuel and fresh-cut grass. A breeze wafts by carrying the spirit of adventure. It tousles my hair. I lower the binoculars, and the drab barracks comes back into focus.