“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.
Theda MAB South, 15.34
“She’s jinxed, isn’t she?” Milan Blansher said.
“Who’s that, sir?” asked Hemmen, the chief fitter. In the shadow of the great hangar, his team was working on the refit of Espere’s Thunderbolt. The air was popping with the rattle of power ratchets.
“Her,” Jagdea said, pointing at the wounded machine.
“Serial Nine-Nine?” Hemmen shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly comment, mamzel commander.”
Jagdea shook her head and led Blansher out of the bam. The field was clear apart from Umbra Flight’s birds, and a thundering pack of Commonwealth Interceptors taxiing for take-off.
“Espere?” Blansher asked.
“Forget it. He’ll be out for months. And even with augmetics, he’s a wreck.”
“So we’re a man down?”
“Yes. I asked Navy reserve, but they said every able pilot was committed. Unless there’s suddenly a bird down and a pilot recovered, or a bird malfunctioned. God-Emperor, Mil, this warfront’s stretched really thin. Every man, every plane, thrown in. I think this could be the big one.”
“What do you mean?”
“The decider. The Archenemy’s got the Crusade trapped, over-extended. They’re attacking here and at Herodor. That’s the latest news. Either planet falls, and the Crusade line gets beheaded. Snip, good night. Goodnight Warmaster Macaroth. Goodnight us, and goodnight Crusade. If our line breaks here, they’ll be all over us like a bodybag.”
“We’d better fly our balls off then,” Blansher said.
She smiled. “Speak for yourself.”
“How’s Marquall?”
She shrugged. “Still trying to heave the soles of his feet out through his mouth in the shower block. I thought about slipping him some detox tabs, but then I had a bad attack of what the hell. A crippling hangover is the Emperor’s way of making us remember our mistakes.”
“He blames himself for Espere?”
“Yes, he does.”
“Should he?” Blansher asked.
Jagdea shrugged. Her reply was totally drowned out by the squadron of prop planes taking to the air. “Say again?” said Blansher.
“Marquall screwed up. He flew like a virgin and made just about every mistake going. Espere was covering him. So, yes… he should. But he’s also a decent pilot. I know that. We need him, and we need him back, confident, learning from his mistakes.”
“I still don’t know how you trawled him in,” Blansher said.
“Doesn’t matter. I had help. Not the sort of help I wanted, but… Well, it worked.”
Blansher shrugged.
“I’ll tell you one day,” Jagdea smiled.
“I’m up at 18.30, I believe,” Blansher said.
“And Larice is taking a unit four out at 21.40. I’ll stand down until Marquall is compos mentis.”
“Good flying,” he said, and jogged away to check on his machine.
I wish people would stop saying that, Jagdea thought.
Palace Pier, 15.50
Night had arrived early and a wan darkness had settled over the sea. It looked as if a storm was brewing. Afternoon trade had been bad all week, and now with a gloomy pall spreading in the west, it had dried up altogether. Beqa sent Latrice home, and closed up early. It would make a change. A few extra hours’ sleep.
She was locking the cafe door when the man appeared. There was a brisk wind coming off the foreshore, tugging at her coat and buffeting her, so she hadn’t heard him walk up.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, jumping. It was the sad-faced pilot who’d never tasted shellfish. He was huddled in a heavy leather coat.
“Are you closed?” he asked.
“Ah, yes,” she said, brushing wind-tugged hair out of her eyes. “Sorry. There was no one around this afternoon. Didn’t like the look of the weather, I suppose.”
He glanced up at the sky, as if he hadn’t really noticed. The first few spats of rain were falling.
“I understand,” he said. “I got a decent walk at least. Good afternoon, mamzel.”
“Wait,” she called after him. Beqa shook her head at herself. She was too soft for her own good. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“A little,” he admitted.
She unlocked the door. “Come on. I’ll make you something.”
“But you’re closed.”
“I can open again.”
She had him sit at the table he’d chosen the day before while she went behind the counter, turned on the water heater and started looking through the pantry bins. Viltry noticed she didn’t change the card in the window. The cafe was still shut to others.
“This is very kind of you,” he called.
“It’s no problem. You don’t like fish, do you?”
“I don’t really know.”
“You’re in luck. We have some salt-ham today.”
The storm closed in, turning the sky as dark as twilight. Beqa turned on the cafe’s oil-lamps. Rain began to patter and drum against the windows and the skylights, running down them in torrents so they seemed to be melting. The whole pier creaked gently as the sea stirred around it.
She’d never been out at the pier-end during a storm before. It felt unnerving, and half of her wished she’d simply been firm with him and gone home. The whole place felt exposed and vulnerable, alone amid the turbulent elements. It was like riding aboard some fragile craft though a maelstrom.
He didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered.
When she brought his food and drink, she sat down with him.
“You’re an aviator, sir?”
“Yes.” He took a bite. “This is really very good. I don’t think I’d realised how hungry I was.”
“Imperial Navy?” she asked.
He shook his head and wiped his lips with a napkin. “Sort of, I suppose. Imperial Phantine Air Corps. My name’s Viltry. Oskar Viltry.”
“Beqa Mayer.” He held out his hand and shook hers courteously.
“Thank you for your hospitality, mamzel. And act of kindness towards a stranger to your world.”
“Seeing as you’ve come here to risk your life fighting for my world, I think a plate of ham and bread is the least I can do.”
He stopped eating suddenly and frowned. “I… I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”
“I was here yesterday.”
“No, somewhere else.”
“The templum, early the other day. You held the door for me.”
“Yes, that’s it.” An especially fierce gust of wind rattled the windows and threw the rain against the glass with renewed vigour.
“I suppose this place will stand up to a storm?” Viltry asked.
“I think it’d take a lot to bring the palace down,” she replied.
It was another hour before the storm abated enough for them to want to risk a dash back towards the town. Refilling his cup, she chatted idly, to no real point, as if simply letting go of conversation that loneliness had dammed up inside her. Viltry was content just to listen. His day had been terrible: the savage air-brawl, the panic and fear. The bats had locked them up so long, they’d finally been forced to ditch their payloads and turn back on the long, exposed slog for home. No target destroyed. No target even seen. Just a portion of the Dish of Sand heat-fused into glass. Halo had lost no one, but five of its machines had been damaged, and several crewmen hurt. K for Killshot had been unable to do more than crawl home. Part of its pay-load had been hung, and Viltry feared that even if it got back, it might stumble on landing and be annihilated by its own munitions. But they’d made it. Three of Egsor’s wing, and two Thunderbolt escorts, however, had not.
Some aviators dealt with the pressure of a combat tour by drinking, or hedonistic escapes, others by
sounding off about what had happened to anybody in the crew room who’d listen. That had never been Viltry’s way. These days, he was afraid that if he started talking, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
But listening to the woman talk eased him. It was like an antidote to the tension of combat. It gave him a touch of perspective, reminded him the universe was not simply him, harnessed into a G-chair, waiting for Fate’s wheel to turn. Her life was evidently hard. She was forced to work two shifts: here during the day, and overnight at the munitions manufactory. She was worried about the tide of the war. Fresh food was getting harder to come by. What if the cafe was forced to close? She had a brother called Eido, who was serving in the land army. She’d not heard from him for over three months, since the fighting at the gates of the Trinity Hives. He’d be home soon, she was convinced. She lit a candle for him every day.
“I light three: one for Gart, one for Eido and one for whoever else needs it.”
Viltry smiled. “I’ll remember that. Pardon me, but who’s Gart?”
“My husband, Commander Viltry. He was a pilot officer in the Commonwealth PDF. He was lost over the desert the winter before last.”
“I’m sorry, mamzel. Is he listed missing?”
She shook her head. “I can assure myself my brother is alive, because I’ve not had proof otherwise. But Gart is dead.”
The Commonwealth had given her a widow’s pension, but that had dried up when the war-effort took its latest bad turn. Hence the two jobs. The lack of sleep.
Viltry noticed that the rain had eased. There was a lightness back in the sky. She would be late for her shift if they didn’t take advantage of the break.
She locked the cafe doors, and they hurried down the wet boardwalk towards the town, where the evening lamps were coming on.
DAY 255
Theda MAB South, 08.00
“I’m reporting as ordered,” Darrow told the Navy guardsman under the adamantite portico. The guardsman looked at Darrow’s docket wafer and nodded him through.
From the outside, Operations could have been mistaken for a Ministorum chapel built in the muscular Early Ornate style. But the many soaring spires and finials were copper and electrophyte-sleeved detector columns, the braced flying buttresses housed pneumatic blast dampers, and where stained glass windows might have glowed, there were deep shutters of loricated steel. Operations dominated the north end of the field area, surrounded on three sides by metal forests of vox masts, auspex towers and modar arrays, where the ground was baked dry and the air smelled cancerously of ozone and electromagnetics.
Inside, a vaulted and soaring atrium lit by caged lumin strips led to the various control areas. Men and women in the dark uniforms of Navy and the Departmento Tacticus bustled to and fro. Vox announcements called for detail rotations. Darrow followed the enamel wall signs, and made his way to a busy staircase that led underground. The main part of Operations was buried in deep, rockcrete bunkers below the ground.
Down below it was cool, and the air was damp and recirculated. He shivered and wished he’d worn his flight coat, despite the hasty patching he’d made to the sleeve.
There was a series of blast doors and another checkpoint, where he had to wait in line under the eyes of three burly guardsmen while a Munitorum servitor checked his papers, conducted biometric tests and issued him with a duty pass.
To Darrow’s surprise, Eads was waiting for him at the main hatch.
“Reporting for duty, sir,” Darrow said, saluting.
“Call that a salute?” Eads said. “Welcome to Operations, Darrow. Stick close by me today as you learn the ropes. Don’t be afraid to ask questions; there’s a lot to know. If I need you to shut up, I’ll tell you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Eads turned and used his sensor cane to trace a path into the chamber. Darrow walked with him.
“Expect to be referred to as ‘junior’, Darrow. Even by me. You’re not a pilot cadet down here. You’re a junior assistant flight controller.”
Darrow was about to ask a question, but Eads reached out and squeezed his wrist. They had just entered the chamber, and a hush had fallen.
Darrow gazed around him. Central Operations was a vast rotunda, three floors deep. There were two tiers of consoles around the walls, the upper one accessible by an iron walkway. These console stations were manned by Navy operators, some of whom were servitors plugged directly into the interface sockets of the displays. Above them was an observation deck where senior officers gathered to look down on proceedings. In the centre of the chamber was the principal hololithic display, which projected a flickering tactical animation six metres into the air from a wide, brass-edged base unit. Around that stood a ring of semi-opaque glass screens onto which the modar returns were projected. A stern-looking placement operator stood ready at each screen, with a stylus in one hand and an eraser in the other.
Around them lay a further ring of primary control consoles, massive codifier stations that sprouted from the floor like standing stones. Each one, panelled with wood, its instruments turned in brass, had its own valve-screen pict display and hololithic repeater.
All the personnel present currently stood or sat silently, heads slightly bowed.
A rector from the Navy chaplaincy, imposing in his selpic blue robes and sable ruff, was intoning a rite of blessing upon the station. As he spoke, one hand on his breast, the other tucked behind his back, tech-priests moved around the room, anointing the stations and offering holy water from gold ampullas to those personnel in need of personal benediction. Darrow noticed most received it, even the higher ranking staffers.
“Let this day be profitable and successful,” the rector said. “Let the strength of will and the clarity of sight that is the province of the most high and glorious Imperator, he that is the God-Emperor of all Mankind, inform your work this day. May his glory be everlasting, and his beacon of enlightenment shine to us all in the darkness. For the Golden Throne, everlasting, and in his name’s sake, let his will be done.”
The rector made the sign of the aquila across his breast, and everybody did the same.
The deck officer stood, nodded to the rector, and announced, “Day shift begins, 255, 773.M41.”
At once, activity resumed. A sudden wash of voices, of un-muted vox channels. Deft hands chattered over metal keys. Eads nodded at Darrow to follow him.
As a flight controller, Eads’s station was one of the primary control consoles. Darrow helped him into the high-backed seat and stowed the sensor cane where Eads could find it.
“Principal cortical plug and tech-reader link, please,” Eads said as he settled himself. Darrow glanced around, and unhooked the two leads from a bracket on the console’s side. He handed them to Eads. Eads read the raised identifier stamps on the plugs with the tips of his fingers, then inserted the cortical plug into the dermal socket behind his left ear. The other lead, from which withered parchment labels dangled, went into a second dermal socket under his hairline at the base of his skull. Eads winced slightly as it went in.
The console came to immediate life. The hololith display lit up and began to rotate. The pict screen shimmered into life, showing a scrolling menu of tight-beamed data. Darrow knew that Eads was now seeing all this for himself, in his mind. Eads began to review the details.
Darrow looked around again. Each of the flight controllers was attended by at least one junior aide. All of the other controllers were sighted, although one had bulky augmetic optics, but many had enhanced their overview with cortical links.
“Vox mic, please,” Eads said.
Darrow unhooked that too, played out the flex, and helped Eads to fit it around his ear so the bead was in place and the wire stalk set by his lips.
“This is Eads, 7513,” Eads said softly. “I am now on station.” He was answered by a murmur of vox responses.
His fingers began to glide over the mechanical keyboard. The data on the screen altered. The cortical plug was simulating a version of the console in E
ads’s head so he could operate it.
“Climate plot, please,” Eads said to the link. A swollen 3D image bloomed across the hololith. “Tactical… and quadrant operations.” More changes, more overlays. Hard yellow lines showing aircraft tracks, dotted red lines of mission sequences, winking green runes positioning the machines themselves.
“There’s a spare headset if you want to listen,” Eads remarked.
Darrow took the opportunity. What he heard as he wired up was a nonsense of human and machine voices, digital transmissions, and binary codes and atmospherics, which sucked and roared behind the voices.
“Use the dial there to select,” Eads pointed. “It’ll seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll learn to differentiate and fine tune. For the next two hours, we’re assigned flight control for two fighter units: Umbra Flights Four-One and Four-Two. There are the mission parameters, on screen.”
Suddenly nervous, Darrow read the details, trying not to miss anything. Two intercept units, four machines in each. Routing down across the Peninsula to the headwaters of the Lida, hunting intruders. Time of launch, 08.15.
He looked at the brass chronometer mounted above the console top. It read 08.14.
Theda MAB South, 08.15
“Straps tight?” Racklae shouted, barely audible over the rising howl of the fanjets.
Marquall nodded. Racklae gave him a finger-and-thumb “O”, then ordered the ground crew clear. They jumped off, the last of the hoses disconnected and stowed, rolling the primer cart back. One fitter carried the yellow boarding ladder away.
Perched beside the cockpit, Racklae tapped his ears and mouth.
Marquall nodded again. He keyed the vox.
“Test, test,” he said. “Umbra Eight, Umbra Eight, am I loud?”
“Umbra Eight, this is Lead. You’re loud and live. Okay there, Marquall?”
“Yes, ma’am. Lights are green, I repeat green. Ready to lift.”
“Stand by, Eight.”
Marquall made the sign of the aquila, then looked up at Racklae. He showed him a thumb. The chief fitter grinned, saluted him, and closed the canopy. Immediately, the sound changed. The wail of the jets was dulled, but Marquall was suddenly contained in a resonating box of ultrasonic vibrations.