Together, they walked to an iron-hinged door, set down from the street by three little steps. Kaminsky knocked, and the door opened.
The door-guard was a massive Ingeburgan with fat-hooded eyes. He looked them up and down, then waved them through.
The den was almost empty. Some chairs were already up on tables. Half a dozen Commonwealth fliers, all male, were playing cards around a corner table. A yawning waitress was serving them another bottle of joiliq. Two Navy fliers shared another booth, talking in low, fierce voices about something. A few other patrons sat alone, or played the chancer machines with their last pieces of change.
“Is he here?” whispered Kaminsky.
“That’s him. At the bar.”
There was a boy sitting at the bar side. A handsome sort, Kaminsky realised. He put the thought aside. Any one of the bastards in the room was handsome compared to him.
But still, this boy was especially handsome. Dark-haired, fair-skinned, tall… clearly from the same gene-pool that had produced the striking Commander Jagdea.
The boy was very drunk. A weary barman was cleaning a glass and watching in horrid fascination as the boy tried to find his mouth with a shot-cup. He missed, emptied the dregs of the liquor down his front, and then settled the glass on the marble bartop again.
He tapped it with an index finger.
“Whu’more.”
The barman shook his head.
“Oh fershizake. Whu’more, s’all I ask.”
“No,” said the barman.
“Time to go home, Vander,” Jagdea said.
The boy looked at her, blinked, and shook his head.
“Yes, Vander. Come home now, and we can forget this.”
“No. No. No-no. I’m woshup.”
“You’re in your cups, but you’re not washed up. Come on. I’ve got transport.”
The boy—Vander—fixed her with suddenly probing eyes. “Espere!” he spat.
“He’s in the infirmary. They’re patching him up.”
“Espere. He won” fly “gain.”
“No, he won’t. But that’s not down to you.”
“I got him hurt.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Y’esss! Yes, I got him hurt. I got him hurt. I got him. Hurt. I did. Me. I screwed up.”
“Maybe you did, Vander. Maybe you didn’t. No one’s blaming you for what happened to Pers.”
“Killacyclone too.”
“What?”
The boy made a shrugging movement with his hands. “Killacyclone. Killed. Killed a Cyclone. Shot the frigging thing to pieces, like—”
“No, Vander. We went over the gun-cam footage. The Cyclone was stung by a bat. Not you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Not you.”
“Hnh. Thassomething.”
“Yes, it is. Now come on, pilot. Get up. We’re going now.”
Vander shook his head. “Espere…” he muttered.
Jagdea took a step towards him and put her hand on his arm. “That’s it, Marquall. Enough with the self-pity. Get your arse upright and follow me.”
“G’way!”
“Marquall, I’ve stuck my neck out for you. My whole neck. I came looking for you rather than report you were overdue. So far, it’s off the record.” She looked round at Kaminsky. “It is off the record, isn’t it?”
Kaminsky shrugged. “Sure.”
She shook Marquall. “See what I do for you? It’s off the record. I didn’t report you to the Commissariat. I could lose command for letting you run off like this. FTR. Failed To Return. You’re four hours late back at billet. The commissars would shoot you for this. Shoot me, too. Don’t mess me up, Marquall. Don’t you dare earn the Phantine a rep for screw-ups and disobedience. We’re running with the frigging Navy now! Get up, Marquall! Don’t you disgrace me! I need you!”
He looked at her, blinking to focus. “Y’don’ need me…”
“I lost a pilot yesterday. I’ll be damned if I lose two!”
She pulled his arm, and he struggled back. Kaminsky winced as the boy fell off his seat. He spilled Commander Jagdea over with him as he went, and a glass broke.
“That’s enough!” the barman cried. The Ingeburgan thug was closing in.
“It’s okay,” Kaminsky said, holding up his hand. He helped Jagdea up and pushed her aside. Then he stood over the boy.
“Call yourself a flier?” he said.
“What?” Marquall gurgled.
“What are you doing?” Jagdea began.
“Don’t worry,” Kaminsky told her. “Let me speak to the lad. I don’t want any trouble.”
He looked down at the boy again.
“You’re a pilot? You get to fly? I tell you what… you’re a piece of crap.”
“What?”
“A. Piece. Of. Crap. You disgust me. Your mamzel there has gone out on a line to pull your arse in, and this is what you do? Can you fly? Can you fly?”
“Y-yes…”
“Can you fly?”
“Yes!”
“Why don’t you then?”
“I… I don’t know…”
Kaminsky reached under his coat and pulled out his service auto. He dropped it onto the boy’s belly. The falling weight winded him.
“Just use it.”
“What?”
“Use it. Use it now.”
“What?”
“Use the frigging gun, you waste of space. Put a shot through your stupid brain. It’d be quicker than drinking yourself to death. Do us all a favour.”
Marquall stared at the gun on his belly as if it was a venomous arachnid.
“What are you waiting for? Eh? You get to fly, you bastard! You get to fly! Why would you run away from that? I used to fly too! But I got crisped! See this? My face? My hand? They say I can never fly again! I’m not airworthy! I’d give anything to be you! Anything! So pick up that frigging gun and stop me envying your stupid little life!”
“Shit…” said Marquall. “You can’t say that to me…”
“No, he can’t,” said Jagdea, kneeling beside him. “But it seems he just did. Now are we going home or am I going to leave you with him?”
“Home,” agreed Marquall, closing his eyes.
Jagdea tossed the service pistol back to Kaminsky. He caught it. “Yours, I believe.” Then she hauled Marquall up on her shoulder and carried him out of the bar.
She was sitting with him in the back space of the truck when Kaminsky came out. He looked at her.
“Drive, please,” she said firmly.
Kaminsky got up into the cab. Alone again, he started the engine.
South of the Makanites, 08.30
Thirty thousand metres, not a cloud in the sky, just twenty-four silver giants leaving white lines of vapour across the blue.
Viltry felt much more at ease on this early run, Halo Flight’s second sortie of the tour. He wondered if it was strength of numbers: Halo was running in formation with Marauders of 2212th Navy, and they had a wing of Thunderbolts five thousand metres above them, flying top cover. Formation safety.
Or maybe it was the soothing effects of a long afternoon spent gazing at the sea.
Whatever, he was more relaxed. Greta felt good and responsive. Sunlight filled the cabin with a golden glaze, and the world seemed almost silent. At this altitude, the engines were a muffled throb. The loudest sounds were the hiss of the air-mix and the pump of his mask. He imagined this serenity was what it was like to be deep under the sea.
Lacombe passed a sheaf of plastek-sheathed charts over to him. He took another look at the recon data. As of 17.00 hours the day before, it had been confirmed (thanks, he was proud to note, to the action of a Phantine wing—Jagdea’s mob, bless them) that the enemy had secured air-range beyond the mountain limits. That meant almost certainly they had established forward air bases in the Interior Desert, maybe even mobile land-carriers, far further north than had been previously estimated by Operations. Aerial recon had spotted a few probable heat
-sources overnight, and now their formation—call sign Hightail—and nine other formations like them were aloft on interdiction missions. If the enemy had air bases in the northern desert, they had to be hit now and taken out, or the show would be over before it began.
Hightail had already spotted half a dozen possibles during their flying time, but all had turned out to be masses of Imperial ground forces labouring north.
From this great height, Viltry enjoyed an awesome panorama of the desert, intractable and vast. It was ragged terrain, resembling worn sandpaper. Over to the west, hundreds of kilometres away, he could make out the margins of the Cicatrice, a huge rift of scarred land that ancient geology had gouged out across the continent, probably around the same time it had lifted the Makanites to overlook it. Flying in that region was said to be tough, especially at lower levels. The scar-valleys caused savage and unpredictable wind shears and crosscurrents.
According to the recon brief, they were now just fifty kilometres short of one of the most likely target areas, a high-density heat and magnetics return from a dune sea region called the Dish of Sand.
There was a Navy Marauder—Hightail One—flying about twenty kilometres ahead of them. Carrying zero payload to remain svelte and fleet, its auspex boosted and amped, Hightail One was their pathfinder.
Viltry waited patiently for the go or no. He had a good feeling about this one.
Then he saw the bats.
It was the strangest thing. It was like no one else had seen them. No alarm had come up, no squawk. There were nine of them, crimson blades, knifing in out of the east across the formation’s port flank.
“Enemy! Enemy! Nine o’clock and inbound!” Viltry yelled. He heard the main turret above and behind him whirring as the servos spun it. The vox was suddenly bursting with voices. Greta shook gently as, up in the turret, Gaize began firing the twin heavy bolters. Viltry saw tracer fire stitch out and fall to his left. The bats—Hell Razors—smashed in through the belly of the formation, weapon mounts flashing as they came. Where the hell was top cover?
“Vox discipline! Vox discipline!” Viltry yelled, trying to still the agitated shouting of his crew. “Visual scanning. Conserve fire. We’re in a formation, so no wild firing. Pick targets. Track them.”
Hightail was flying in overlapping diamond formations. Effectively, that meant each machine had the protection of its neighbours, and each diamond the protection of the diamond or diamonds adjoining it, plus top cover to fill in as needed. So deployed, and carrying such heavy turret weapons, the Marauders effectively formed a flying fortification that should, technically, be impossible to breach.
But the Hell Razors had gone under them once, and two of the Navy machines were reporting hits taken. The lead Navy Marauder, called Holy Terra, had formation command. Viltry could hear the Terra’s commander, a man called Egsor, barking orders to the flight to maintain pattern.
Viltry was checking to his starboard. The bats had gone that way, and logic said that was where they’d come back in from. He jumped in his harness as two Thunderbolts power dived past his starboard wingtip, burning around west. Greta rocked in their slip wake.
“Where the hell were you, top cover?” he voxed.
“No chatter!” he heard Egsor snarl back.
“Six! Six! Six o’clock!” It was Orsone in the tail, and his yells were echoed by the tail gunners of all the other machines. The bats had swept out wide and come in from the rear for their second pass.
“Tail gunner engaging!” Orsone screamed over the vox, and Viltry felt the shudder of the tail-mount unloading. A moment later and the top turret, now screwed over to face the rear, joined in. The twin heavy discharge did slight but strange things to Greta’s ride, and Viltry compensated expertly. Then the bats rushed by them. The tail guns ceased fire, the targets having crossed beyond their traverse limit, but the top turret continued blazing as it rotated, following the pass. As the rear ends of the Hell Razors, bright with full burn, swept ahead and away from them, the nose turret joined in too.
“Cease! Cease fire!” Viltry cried out. The bats were at three kilometres now and extending, pulling out of reasonable range. He could still just see their engine flares as they broke, scattering into a fan.
Damn, Viltry thought. Now they’ll be making individual passes.
There was a screech over the vox. Viltry looked around desperately, and saw one of the Navy Marauders in the adjacent diamond begin to fall out of formation. It seemed as if its engines could no longer hold its weight in the air. A gout of black smoke coughed from one engine, then flames took fierce hold of the entire leading edge of the port wing. The bats had scored on their second pass.
Trailing flame, the Marauder began to steepen in its descent.
“Eject! Eject!” he heard Egsor yelling to the distant crew.
The dipping Marauder suddenly shuddered and blew up. Its bomb load made a vast fire cloud in the clear sky, jetting debris out in a whirl of scrap. The main part of the nose, burning like a comet, arced away down towards the desert.
“Here they come!” Naxol cried. At least the nose gunner had shown the good sense to keep scanning, instead of watching the Marauder die.
Three Hell Razors were coming in on a frontal attack. Their weapons crackled and flashed brilliantly. Naxol and Gaize opened up on the nearest as it came in across them. Naxoi’s meaty lasfire chopped the air behind it, but Gaize had held a fine deflection. The bat as good as flew into his bolter stream. It came apart in a drizzle of metal shards and flame, its fore-wings separating and spinning out like broken plate-glass. Whipping over and under as it tumbled away, the starboard wing nearly hit Greta’s tail.
Viltry sucked in his breath at the near miss. “Good one, Gaize,” he voxed.
Get Them All Back and one of the Navy machines had also scored good hits. A Hell Razor went into an uncontrolled spin and fell out of the sky, and another pulled a wobbly turn out and began to limp away west, making smoke.
But it wasn’t over yet. Another Navy Marauder had been hit and had fallen out of formation, unable to keep up. And K for Killshot had taken vector duct damage. The bats were coming in again, and the auspex showed that another wave had now joined them. Over in the western sky, Viltry saw a starburst flash as a Thunderbolt detonated.
His hands were shaking again. Fate’s wheel. Fate’s wheel.
Turning closer every moment.
Theda MAB North, 12.01
Noisy, chattering, the streams of Commonwealth personnel flooded out of the station towards the waiting transports. All of them carried kitbags, or hefted crates in teams. They joked in the sunny air, throwing wisecracks and jibes around.
It was a mask, a front. Bravado. Darrow knew that. In a few hours, these men would be on their way to rear-line postings down the coast, possibly across the sea. Friendships would be broken, comrades parted from one another. Out on the concourse, hundreds of silent Navy men waited around the transports that had just brought them in, ready to move in and take over as soon as the Commonwealth bodies were gone. Darrow glanced at them. Some smoked, others basked in the sun, stretched out on the rockcrete. Many stared, flat, unfriendly stares. If you’d done this properly, you know… really fought for your world properly, we wouldn’t have to be here.
That’s why Darrow’s fellow staffers and crew were laughing and joking. They didn’t want to have to look at the Imperials, hovering like vultures over a corpse.
Darrow felt like dropping his own kitbag and returning the stares. Supercilious bastards! You think we wanted this? You think we’re grateful you show up now? Go screw yourselves. We fought for Enothis, we bled, we died. Thanks to us, it’s still here to fight for. We did the hard work, now you sweep in to get the glory. And so help me, you had better get the glory. You had better win, or… or…
“Darrow! Darrow!”
He turned. Major Heckel had appeared on the station steps, waving at him. He made his way back through the mass of personnel to reach him.
??
?Congratulations, sir,” he said.
“What?”
“I saw you’d been posted to Quarry Flight.”
A muscle under Heckel’s left eye ticked slightly. “Yes. Ah, yes. Lucky me. They’ve got to keep us old hands going, I suppose.”
Heckel made a high-pitched little laugh, a false sound. His eye ticked again.
“You wanted me, sir?”
“Oh, yes,” said Heckel. He reached into the pocket of his flight coat and produced a docket wafer. It was sealed. Darrow’s name was printed on the flap. Darrow noticed how badly Heckel’s hand was quaking as he passed it to him. “This is for you.”
Darrow tore open the wafer.
“Eads had it sent down. I think he was feeling sorry for you. It’s not active as such, but he says he hopes it will do.”
“He’s… he’s posting me to Operations. Effective immediate.” Darrow grinned. Heckel was right, it wasn’t active, but it would mean he’d stay at Theda, and be part of the real thing.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Just the messenger,” shrugged Heckel.
“You put in a good word, I’m sure.”
Heckel shrugged again, but he was grinning this time. Then his expression grew serious. “Just between you and me, Darrow. The enemy got airspace reach into the Lida Valley yesterday. The schedule’s really moved up. The Navy’s decided it needs local experts who are familiar with the topography to guide them, so they asked Eads to consult at Operations. He told me he wanted a few good bodies to assist him. I suggested you, and a couple of others who’d been moved to reserve.”
“Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.”
Heckel nodded. “Just do a good job, Darrow.”
Darrow put down his pack and saluted his former leader.
“Darrow,” Heckel said. His face had a strange, wistful look. “Darrow, do you think they know I’m sorry?”
“Who, sir?”
“The cadets. Hunt Flight. Emperor save us, so many of them died.”
“You did everything you could, sir.”
Heckel breathed deeply. “You know, Darrow? That’s just what I’m afraid of.”
Heckel picked up his pack, patted Darrow on the arm, and hurried away towards the transports.