He put it over her shoulders, then pulled her close.
“Thanks,” she said, pressing against his side. She rested her head on his chest.
“You’re right,” he said, gazing at the view. “It is almost romantic.”
There was a boom like the end of the world, and eight Thunderbolts slammed up into the air from a hangar in the cliff beneath them. The throaty roar of the formation’s afterburners shook their diaphragms.
As the planes climbed away, they both laughed.
“Until something like that happens,” Viltry said.
She kissed his cheek. “To hell with them. We can make our own romance. You go and fly, Oskar. I’ve told the Emperor to protect you.”
Over the Midwinters, 14.10
Umbra Flight was barely up when they spotted the air battle. To the west, the pale green sky was bright with flashes and tinged with smoke. And it wasn’t the only battle. Wings from Onstadt were coming in on a major fight to the east, and everything Viper Atoll had was lofting against a thousand-bomber wave heading out across the Sea of Ezra towards Limbus.
“Umbra, rise to four thousand,” Jagdea ordered. She had four machines with her: Marquall, Van Tull, Cordiale and Viltry. Viltry’s first flight. She had sensed his nerves as he’d run to his bird.
Umbra Flight had already been up twice that day. A full flight sortie at 09.00 hours that had lasted two hours and seen them turn back a ninety-plane bomber formation with me help of three Lightning wings out of Tamuda MAB. Three kills—Ranfre, Del Ruth and Jagdea. Then Del Ruth, Ranfre and Zemmic had gone up just before noon with Blansher as lead, and had a short but ferocious duel with the top cover of a Hell Talon formation. Zemmic and Blansher had scored kills, but they’d been grateful to see the 56th coming in to help break the wave up.
All four were now on refit turnaround and Blansher was spending time coaching Kaminsky. Blansher was patient, but he seemed to have doubts about Kaminsky’s talent.
“He’s getting the basic layout of the Bolt, but he refuses to relax,” Blansher had told her. “Maybe he’s not the best choice.”
“Stick with it,” Jagdea had ordered.
They could see the hostiles now. Sixty Tormentors pounding across the sea towards the Northern Affiliation, laden with bombs. The 51st had already engaged.
“Any sign of escort?” Jagdea voxed.
“Nothing on the scope,” replied Cordiale. “But you’ve got to assume.”
“Start assuming,” she said. There was also no sign of the promised support for them from Longstrand. Jagdea keyed the vox. “Lucerna Operations, this is Umbra Leader. Confirm other units aloft.”
A buzzing crackle. “Operations, Umbra Lead. Kodiak Flight and Orbis Flight show as launched. East of you, seventy kilometres, closing low. Twenty, repeat, twenty machines.”
“Thank you, Operations. We have visual on the enemy. Closing to intercept.”
Jagdea was reassured to hear that the Phantine wing commanded by her friend Wilhem Hayyes was inbound. She switched on her gunsight and toggled her lascannons to active.
“Guns live, Umbra. Come back.”
“Umbra Eight, copy.” That was Marquall.
“Umbra Three, four-A.” And Van Tull.
“Umbra Eleven, check and ready.” Cordiale.
A pause.
“Umbra Four? Come back,” Jagdea voxed. “Umbra Four? Do you copy? Viltry? Dammit, Viltry!”
“Copy you, Lead. This is Umbra Four. Sorry, I just tried to switch on my gunsight and appear to have turned on the de-mister and the cockpit light instead.”
“Viltry?”
“Just kidding, Lead. Guns live. On your command.”
Jagdea smiled. “Operations, show Umbra as attacking. Umbra Flight… Attack, attack, attack!”
Viltry was nothing like as confident as he sounded. As he nursed the throttle, following Jagdea’s shallow dive, he saw the lumbering packs of Tormentors filling the sky ahead. The slow, medium bombers were already firing from their turret mounts, chattering out streaks of heavy fire.
Viltry had flown Bolts before, but this seemed strange after so many tours in Marauders. It wasn’t the differences in cockpit layout, or the considerably greater agility. It was the fact that he was alone again. One man, one machine. No trained crew manning other stations.
So focused. So very concentrated. It was all down to him.
Viltry decided he’d better enjoy it. The Thunderbolt certainly felt like a tiny, speeding dart compared to G for Greta. They sliced down into the enemy lines.
He was reminded that air tactics were now utterly different too. Ordinarily, he’d have been the one flying the heavy plane in formation, fighting off the interceptors. Not the other way round.
Jagdea and Van Tull went over the formation, blitzing fire. Viltry followed them, seeing Marquall and Cordiale go under.
Immediately, three enemy machines started to drop out of line, making thick smoke. One suddenly pitched down, violently. Umbra came up and around for the second pass.
“Must do better,” Viltry said to himself.
Cordiale had the lead on the turn and prosecuted the attack. His lascannons flashed white. One of the Tormentors wavered for a moment then blew up in a huge cloud of flames as its payload ignited.
Burning debris rained down. The Tormentors in immediate formation wallowed away in the shock burst, two collided and the destroyed plane’s sheared apart. Viltry saw scrap metal and bodies falling.
He had a decent line-up. The nearest Tormentor was pumping streams of tracer his way, but the shot-stream was dropping low. He smiled as he got a clean lock ping and started firing.
The Thunderbolt tugged hard, its airframe pulsing as it discharged its cannons. Bree had warned him it would do that. He compensated and turned high.
“Umbra Four, this is Lead. Nice kill.”
“I didn’t even see it,” he said. “Did I get it?”
“Yes, Four.”
He rolled back, exhilarated by the light performance of the Thunderbolt, and pounced on another Tormentor.
Its turrets tried to pin him. He knew from bitter experience how a fighter could ride up underneath a straight-flying bomber. It was all a matter of judging the cones of fire.
There was always a sweet spot.
He found it.
Viltry fired, lancing dazzling bars of las energy from his nose cone.
The belly of the Tormentor burst, and then it started to dive, ablaze, leaving a curl of brown smoke in the air behind it.
“Scratch two,” he voxed. “Think I’m getting the hang of it, Bree.”
Marquall banked, quietly furious. He’d missed his targets on both passes. And this man, Viltry, had just come along and in the space of two minutes, he’d equalled Marquall’s career score. The bastard! It was insufferable. The upstart was even on first name terms with Jagdea.
Who the hell did he think he was?
Nine-Nine shuddered as bolter rounds kissed its flank. Marquall banked out. Part of the formation went by under him, and he dropped back onto the lead pair.
He was too high. The tail guns nailed him hard, cracking his canopy and ripped out part of his cowling.
He dropped out of the line of fire. How the devil did Viltry know where to place himself? He climbed again, hammered at by gunfire from the enemy pack.
He snuggled in, lining up on a bomber, but before he could deploy the trigger, the thing exploded in a giant wash of smoke. Van Tull had nailed it.
“Oh give me a break!” Marquall exclaimed. “Someone give me a frigging break!”
The 51st, tanks spent, had pulled off. Now Kodiak and Orbis Flights powered in and entered the engagement. Kodiak, a flight from the 789th Navy, were flying dark green Bolts; Orbis were dressed in Phantine grey with blue trim.
“Hello Orbis, hello Orbis,” Jagdea voxed. “Nice to see you.”
“Umbra Lead, this is Hayyes. Any left?”
“Plenty. Take your pick, Orbis leader.”
Ha
yyes turned his Thunderbolt long and peppered a Tormentor that went down in flames at once. Two of his wingmen scored, and Kodiak Flight ripped another three hostiles out of the sky.
“All wings! Break left! Now!” Kodiak leader voxed. “Fighters coming in!”
Hell Razors stooped out of the high clouds, hammering down at full thrust. They were firing.
“Break wide!” Jagdea ordered.
Viltry felt his machine buck as shots scorched by. He started to climb steeply. Marquall started to dive.
The enemy fighters slammed through their scatter. One of the Kodiak planes broke apart under fire. Another sank on a wide turn towards the sea.
The Razors were crimson and black, except for their leader, who was pearl-white.
Lucerna AB, 14.30
“Switch.”
“And say it again.”
“Switch.”
“Okay, sir,” called Racklae. “Now give the command “fire’.”
“Fire!” said Kaminsky.
“Again?”
“Fire!”
Racklae stood up, checking his tech-plate, and looked down at Kaminsky in the cockpit.
“Right, the system now knows your voice. The commands are logged.” Racklae leaned in across the cockpit well and pointed to a brass switch on the panel beside the throttle.
“That’s your arming toggle. Throw it, guns are live. After that, it’s all voice. You say ‘fire’ and the system will fire a burst from whatever’s selected. Default is las. You say ‘switch’ and it auto-toggles to the quads or back. Is that clear?”
“Yes, thank you,” Kaminsky nodded. “And if I want continuous fire?”
“Just keep saying “fire’, sir.”
Kaminsky pulled himself up out of the cockpit. “Thanks, Mr Racklae. You’ve done a fine job.” The fitter seemed distracted. “What’s up?” asked Kaminsky.
Racklae jumped down off the wing plate. “The boys are monitoring the vox, sir. It sounds like Umbra’s in trouble.”
Kaminsky followed the fitter across to the clutch of crewmen around the vox set. Blansher was tuning the dial. Ranfre, Zemmic and Del Ruth were crowded round amongst the techs. At least Kaminsky was pretty sure that’s who they were. He’d only just been told the other pilots’ names.
“What’s going on?” he asked Zemmic. The young man was playing with a chain of lucky charms.
“Jag’s gone into a Tormentor formation,” Zemmic said. “And now they got bats. Bad bats. The Killer’s there.”
“The Killer?” Kaminsky asked.
“The pearl-white bastard,” said Zemmic.
Over the Midwinters, 14.33
Viltry screamed his Bolt round. The fighter pack was all over them. He tried to twist out. Jagdea and one of the Orbis birds swept in under him crosswise, gunning. He saw a Kodiak explode in mid-air, stung by a red bat.
He got a brief warning ping and rolled. A black Razor was trying to tag him. Viltry swept down and, ignoring the turret ordnance whipping up at him, plunged in amongst the Tormentor formation. The Razor slowed, unwilling to risk hitting one of the bombers it was supposed to be protecting.
Pleased with his ruse, Viltry throttled hard and came back up through the formation, this time with his guns alight. Firing impaired his climb rate, but it was worth it. As he came up diagonally under a Tormentor, he hit it two or three times. Its engines began to gush blue vapour.
Rising clear, Viltry could no longer spot the black bat.
But there was the pearl-white Razor, the leader of the enemy pack. It came around about five hundred metres starboard of him, moving a lot faster than Viltry’s machine, and dipped low. Another Thunderbolt, Orbis Six, was ascending past it.
“Orbis Six! Watch yourself!” Viltry called.
The pearl-white Razor executed a perfect viff correction, a deft little simultaneous climb-and-slide, and spat fire at Orbis Six.
Hit, the Thunderbolt folded, spraying out burning fuel.
The lead Razor was already climbing out, hunting for another target. Viltry started to go after it, but suddenly found he had his hands full evading hard as the black bat reappeared.
Jagdea and Cordiale banked together, and began chasing a red bat down towards the formation. What had been clean, bright air was now thick with exhaust trails, vapour, bars of smoke and weapons discharge residue. Nevertheless, she could see the white bat.
The red Razor they were after was beginning to outrun them. She gave up on it and banked out, searching for the white bat again in the chaos of the rolling dogfight.
A black Razor chopped across her, head to head, and they traded shots. She checked her fuel. Low. The demands of the brawl had really emptied the tanks.
“Umbra Flight, fuel status?”
Cordiale responded, then Viltry and finally Marquall. All of them were virtually running on empty like her. “Lead instructs flight, disengage and turn for home.”
“Umbra Four, copy.”
“Umbra Eleven, yes ma’am.”
“Marquall? Umbra Eight? Respond.”
Marquall had just spotted the white hostile too, and recognised it at once. Most definitely the one that had nearly killed him on his second sortie, the bat that had claimed the Apostle.
“Umbra Eight?”
“One moment, Lead.”
He turned towards the bat, but immediately had to crank away because he had inadvertently run into the range of a pair of cruising Tormentors. Marquall pushed Nine-Nine’s throttle, dropped the nose and looped in under the bomber string, taking a futile pot-shot at the now-ascending white Razor. Another bat started firing at him as it crossed his two and Marquall banked, barely avoiding a Tormentor that was dropping, engines burning.
“Umbra Eight! Break off now!” Jagdea sounded mad.
Marquall heard a persistent warning chime. Fuel limit reached.
“Copy that, Leader. I’m coming.”
He took one look back, and saw to his dismay that the white bat had lined up on Orbis Leader.
“Orbis Lead! Break! Break wild!” Marquall yelled.
Orbis Leader turned to the right. Cannon fire from the white bat chewed his Bolt into pieces. The debris flew out on a spear of flame for almost half a kilometre.
Marquall climbed out of the dogfight, chasing the other three Umbra birds.
“Did you see?” he voxed. “Did you see? That damned white Razor! He got Orbis Leader!”
“I saw,” Jagdea replied. She felt nothing except numb and sore from the physical extremes of the engagement. She knew the misery would hit her later. Hayyes had been her friend since flight school.
Right now, only one thing stuck in her mind. In the turmoil of the last part of the clash, she’d finally remembered why she’d recognised Eads’s junior.
Lucerna AB, 15.10
The noise of the jets died away. As Jagdea and her wing-men dismounted, the fitter teams and the other flight pilots applauded. Jagdea knew they were saluting a hell of a fight, a clutch of good kills, and the fact that all four were back alive. They were also showing support for Viltry on his successful debut.
But it felt wrong. Not just because of Hayyes. How many Imperial planes had she seen go down in that one brawl? Men were dying at a hell of a rate.
“Good work,” she said to Cordiale, who had sat down on the deck to unlace his boots and massage circulation back into his feet. Exposure to multiple negative G events often left a pilot with pins and needles, or worse.
“Thanks, commander,” he said.
Viltry was removing his helmet. He looked pale, shaken, but there was a grin on his face.
“Enjoy that?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“You did well, Viltry. Like you’ve been on Thunderbolts for years.”
He smoothed his sweat-flattened hair. “I must admit it was fun cutting loose in something so agile. You forget how heavy Marauders are.”
Marquall was just climbing down from Nine-Nine.
“Nice going, Marquall,” sh
e said. “You kept your head.” She dropped her voice so only he could hear her. “Don’t ever ignore a direct instruction again, pilot. I called you out because it was time to go. That happens, you obey without question. Are we clear on that?”
He looked at the deck. “Yes, commander.”
She walked away. “Rearm and refuel, please!” she shouted to the fitter crews, knowing they were already on it.
A tall man in a Commonwealth uniform was waiting for her with Blansher.
“Major Frans Scalter,” Blansher said, by way of introduction. Jagdea shook Scalter’s hand and looked him up and down. Scalter had a slightly stunned expression.
“I take it you’ve explained the basics to Major Scalter, Mil?”
“I took the liberty of spoiling your surprise, commander.”
Jagdea looked at Scalter. “Well, major? Are you interested in taking a place in my flight? Commander Eads has given you his personal recommendation.”
Scalter opened his mouth, but couldn’t find any words immediately. He nodded, and then said, “I would be honoured, Commander Jagdea. I have been longing to get the chance to fly for my home world again.”
“That’s agreed then. Good. Your designation will be Umbra Seven. Mil, if you’re busy with Kaminsky, find someone like Del Ruth or Cordiale to get Mr Scalter oriented, kitted up, and checked out on a simulator.”
“Yes, mamzel,” said Blansher. “You off somewhere?”
“I won’t be long,” said Jagdea.
Marquall stood by his bird for a while, stripping off his jacket and gloves, not wanting to mix with the others.
“Everything all right, sir?” asked Racklae.
“Fine,” he replied. He was hardly going to tell his fitter that he was still smarting from the dressing down Jagdea had given him. At least she’d had the decency not to do it in front of the others.
He wandered across the hangar space, through the teams of working fitters, skirting a power lifter as it offered up munitions drums, stopping to let an electric bowser trundle past.
Kaminsky was seated on a jerry can beside his Thunderbolt, carefully studying a data-slate of specifications and procedures.