Marquall checked the canopy lock, then made a gesture almost like a genuflection to his chief. Racklae saw it, nodded, then jumped down and hurried over into cover behind the revetment wall of the pad enclosure.
“Umbra Eight. Locked and ready.”
“Got you, Eight.”
“Umbra Ten, ready.”
“Umbra Seven. Fit.”
“Stand by,” Jagdea said again. “Four-Two are lifting out ahead of us.”
There was a warble of voices across the vox-channel, then a wailing rush that was loud even with the canopy down and helmet on. From hardstands nearby, four Thunderbolts hoisted themselves up vertically into the air. The space beneath each one was a heat-distorted wash of vectored thrust. Blansher, Asche, Cordiale and Ranfre; Umbra Two: Four, Eleven and Twelve respectively.
On Blansher’s expert lead, they began to climb and move forward as their vector ducts gently swung around. In neat formation, they rose, gaining speed. As they crossed away down the length of the field, their primary exhausts lit up hot and yellow as full thrust switched through them. Already, they were receding, climbing higher, accelerating.
“Operations, this is Four-One Leader,” Marquall heard Jagdea say. “Permission to rise.”
“Four-One Leader, this is Operations. You are cleared for immediate launch. Good hunting.”
“Four-One, this is Lead. Let’s go.”
Marquall opened the throttle and felt his machine quiver, as if it had become enraged. Maximum thrust. He felt the gentle wobble as The Smear left the stand. Even though it expended masses of fuel reserve, Marquall preferred vector take-offs. He hated ramp launches, and the bludgeoning smack of the rocket boost. He was thankful that no ramps had yet been erected at Theda.
He glanced around, compensating for the wallow of his rising Bolt. To his left, Umbra Ten was coming up. Marquall could almost hear Zemmic fiddling with his rosary of lucky charms as his bird rose. To his right, Jagdea lifted to vertical, and Clovin, two stands down from her. Forty metres up, perfect station keeping.
“Wait for it,” Jagdea’s voice cautioned. Blansher favoured the slow, gentlemanly climb from vertical to full forward, but Jagdea preferred the hammer start. The fitter crews knew it. They’d already hit the bunkers.
“Wait…”
Fifty metres.
“On me, extend, full thrust,” Jagdea ordered.
Her machine roared forward, crossing the field at fifty metres, ducts violently thrown to level flight. Clovin gunned after her, then Zemmic. Marquall nursed his throttle and then bulleted after them.
The ground shot away underneath them like speeded-up pict images. The punch kicked Marquall back into his seat. At full burn, they’d cleared the deadlands beyond the field and had already reached close to six hundred kph before they formed up and began to rise.
“Four-One Leader, we have cleared the field. Climbing now to five thousand. Heading south-west, ten-eight-four.”
“Ten-eight-four, copy Leader,” Operations replied. “Nice launch. Maybe you can apologise to our eardrums later.”
“Copy that, Operations. Fast up, fast away. That’s the way we do things where I come from.”
“Understood. What else do you do where you come from?”
“We kill bats.”
“Copy that, Leader. Good to know. Make your level nine thousand and turn south-west eleven-eight-five.”
“Eleven-eight-five. Understood. Four-One, check in.”
“Four-One, Seven. On your lead.”
“Four-One, Ten. At your heels, to port. Nice day for it.”
“Clear as a bell, Zemmic. Count your lucky charms.”
Marquall adjusted his mask. “Four-One, Eight. Right with you.”
“Stay close, Marquall. This is going to be a breeze.” It was. He knew it was. He was going to make sure it was.
He’d screwed up on his virgin outing. He could still see Pers Espere, sitting in his cockpit, blood on everything. The image was in his dreams and his waking thoughts.
But Jagdea hadn’t given up on him. He could do this. He was Phantine. He wasn’t going to screw up a second time.
Natrab Echelon Aerie, Interior Desert, 08.16
Barbed limbs glinting in the fierce light, the slave servitors carried him out onto the foredeck of the aerie in his burnished litter. His pearl-white machine sat in its launch cradle below him, the desert light winking off its stark lines.
The servitors were moaning a litany of providence and blood-hunger. Flight Warrior Khrel Kas Obarkon smiled. The litter came to a stop. Obarkon disconnected the heavy golden pipes that linked his body to the carriage’s life-support and slid his helmet down into place so that it locked.
He pulled back the silk drape and stepped out onto the sunburned deck. Tall, lean, encased from throat to foot in glinting black grav-armour, he raised his spidery arms, and the slaves fell to their knees.
The sun was still low in the sky, and the platform beneath his feet rocked slightly as the massive land carrier trundled on over the dunes.
Obarkon waved a skeletal hand and one of the servitors ran up with his speaking cone. Engraved and ornate, it was a bell fashioned from solid gold, mounted on a bronze stand. Obarkon took hold of the dangling lead and plugged it into his larynx socket.
“Fifth echelon!” His digitally corrupted voice boomed out over the upper and lower launch decks. “You who are of the Anarch, so sworn to he that is Sek! Heed me!”
All along the burnished decks of the carrier, the flight warriors of the fifth echelon stood to attention beside their cradled machines. Their litter bearers were retreating into the blast cavities.
“The Anarch wills us, so we obey! Who shall find blood in the air?”
“We will!” the flight warriors howled back.
“Who will make the kill?”
“We will!” The decks shook.
“Who will stain the earth with the enemy’s life?”
“We will!”
“To your machines, your chieftain commands!”
Raising a bloody cheer, the flight warriors clumped to their waiting bats. Obarkon plucked out the speaker cord and walked over to his Hell Razor unsupported. He insisted on doing this, even though he could last less than ten minutes without full life-support. It was a show of personal strength that the crew admired.
Servitors lifted him into his cockpit and automated systems linked him in. He breathed more easily again once the Hell Razor’s augmetics took over the maintenance of his life.
The spinal plugs engaged. The systems came to life, feeding their data of fuel tolerance, payload and energy into his cortex. His eyes saw through the guns now.
The canopy closed, shutting him in darkness.
Displays lit in his head.
“Clear!” he ordered.
A whining began, rose, exploded.
“Launch!” he commanded.
The ion catapults rose to power and discharged. The pearl-white Hell Razor fired off the carrier deck into the sky. Only his grav-armour prevented Obarkon from being crushed into his seat. Behind him, like darts from a bow, twenty more machines launched into the desert air, some crimson, some mauve, some silver, some black.
They formed up around him as he turned west, towards the mountains. Obarkon switched to his rear pict relays and watched Natrab aerie fall away behind him. The scale of it always delighted him. A leviathan, fully a kilometre long, bristling with weapon ports, riding across the dune sea on a hundred bogeys of five-metre diameter wheels.
Such was the might of the Anarch, sworn unto him that is the High Archon, blessed Gaur. “Echelon,” he said, adjusting his link. “Let us kill.”
Palace Pier, 09.12
“You’re early,” Beqa said.
Viltry shrugged. “The sortie was called off. Repairs, you see. Maybe this afternoon.”
“Breakfast?”
“Please.”
“I have eggs, You eat eggs, right?”
“Not fish eggs?”
&n
bsp; “No, not fish eggs.”
“Then, yes.”
“Have a seat,” she said.
Viltry wandered over to his favoured table. The cafe was quite busy. Old folk out for breakfast, and groups of manufactory workers chasing a hot meal after their night shift.
Outside, the sky was spare and pale, a strong wind chasing the clouds out of the air. The sea was dark and moody, rolling with white horses.
A good flying day.
“You know him?” asked Letrice, dubiously.
“Who?”
“The mental case. The flier.”
“Yes,” said Beqa, turning the skillet. “He’s okay.”
Over the Lida, 10.01
They got the call from Operations about twenty minutes before Jagdea was going to throw it in for the day. Relief flight under attack, urgent support requested. According to the grid plot, the fuss was less than fifteen kilometres south of them. Jagdea immediately instructed them to crank to max and burn away down the valley. She called in Blansher’s four as support. His unit was coming round in a patrol sweep forty kilometres north.
Marquall swallowed, trying to stay sharp. They were at about four thousand now, and pushing it to twenty-one, twenty-two hundred kilometres. The world was a passing rush. They went over a straggled collection of agricultural stations, then a small town, then a long series of derelict chemical plants. The river basin was stained florid pink and maroon from years of manufacture. Ahead of them, a vast plume of black smoke rose into the sky.
His mouth was dry.
“Gunsights,” Jagdea voxed.
Marquall deftly activated and aligned his targeter. “Select primary weapons.”
No mistakes this time. Guns live, toggled over to the “las” setting.
The relief flight had been composed of six superheavy Navy transports, Onero-pattern, with an escort of six Lightnings, shipping desperately needed fuel out to the retreating ground forces in the desert. Full of promethium jelly and motor oils, the lumbering six-engined transports were ponderous. Easy targets.
Four-One came in on what looked like a feeding frenzy. One transport was already down, having engulfed a square kilometre-plus of the arable valley in its firestorm. The bloom of smoke, fat and black, was what they’d seen on the approach. Another had an engine fire and was dropping badly. At least three of the Lightnings had been stung out of the air.
No less than fifteen black and crimson bats swirled in and out of the convoy formation, evading the tracer streams from the transporters’ turrets. Hell Razors. Before they even had range, Marquall witnessed a jet-black Razor roll in and punch lasfire into the silver flanks of the tail-end Onero. It went up in mid-air. Bright, like a suddenly-lit sun, a massive torus of white flame so hot and fierce no shred of debris survived vaporisation. He winced at the glare, blinded for a moment.
The vox bleeped. Jagdea’s voice was hard and curt. Four words: “Split up. Kill them.”
Zemmic rolled away left, Clovin right. Marquall stayed at Jagdea’s seven until they were right into the brawl, then broke left as she split off. The air was full of dancing machines and streamers of contrails, exhaust and smoke. Too many objects to track. He had to stay focused. Concentrate on the bats. Not even all the bats he could see. Just the ones his speed and angle had a chance of intersecting.
Two to port, going the other way. No point even thinking about it. Another, bright red, climbing hard. He wouldn’t catch it. There at his ten… no. A Lightning, sun glinting off its aluminoid skin as it turned. Keep jinking, keep moving, keep twisting, keep dancing. Fly straight for more than five seconds and you might as well paint a target on your arse cheeks.
Hexan, his aged instructor back at the scholam. His mantra, his words. Marquall could hear the old bastard saying them.
A bat there. He rolled over on it. No good. It was breaking and turning the other way. Damn it. Another… but Clovin was on it, the nose of Umbra Seven lighting up with las discharge. A hit? Too late to see. Marquall had gone over, past, round again. That put him low under one of the transports. The damn thing’s turrets opened up at him, chasing his tail with yellow tracer.
“Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!” he yelled into the vox, knowing they probably didn’t care. Terrified beyond measure by now, the gunners were blazing away at anything in the sky.
He banked around again and a crimson bat went across his nose. Without even thinking, he clenched his thumb and felt The Smear shudder as its guns lit off. Had he hit it? Chances were low. He didn’t care. There was another. He was in the game now.
Jagdea couldn’t see Marquall. She couldn’t worry about that now. This wasn’t the place for nurse-maiding. They were desperately outnumbered, by machines every bit as fast and heavyweight as the Thunderbolts. Her initial stooping dive and turn-out had brought her clean in on a bat, but it had the edge on power because she was turning, and zipped out of her target field before she could fire.
She kicked the rudder round and rolled to port, and saw a scarlet Razor streak by underneath her. It was gunning for one of the Lightnings, stuck to its six. The Navy plane was doing everything it could, but it wouldn’t shake off.
Jagdea almost had to loop to line up. The angle of deflection was poor, so she saved her shots, and banked around again until she came up right on the Razor’s tail.
It must have seen her there, because it broke off furiously. But her instinct was as keen as ever. Jagdea had a natural talent for anticipation. A simple matter of logic, that’s how she saw it. She regularly guessed what a hostile was going to do by imagining what she’d do in its place. Blansher once remarked that if it was such a simple trick, why could no one else in the wing do it quite so well? As the Razor pulled off, she was pulling off too, at exactly the same angle. Two bursts. Four las-rounds. All four went straight up the Razor’s intakes and it blew apart in a sizzling cloud of debris.
Small parts of the wreckage clattered off her upper hull as she came through the flame-cone. Immediately, she had a lock tone. Something on top of her. Tracers sailed by, pink and bright. She rolled, with a touch of viff from the vectors, and let the bat go wide.
Another one. No, two. One red, one mauve, sweeping in towards the transport with the engine fire. The massive Onero had been holed badly, weeping torrents of fuel mix out into the air.
“No you don’t…” she hissed. She cut round, crunched by negative G, grunting out of her defensive “grip” posture. The angle was bad, but she let go anyway. A long, pumping stream of lascannon. The red Razor lost part of its starboard wing and went into a savage spin, falling away. The mauve one broke off, turning down and out at the limit of pilot tolerance.
Then it exploded. One large blast that skewed it around in the sky, then two smaller ones that shredded what was left of it into metal dust.
Milan Blansher’s Bolt ripped past under her.
Four-Two had joined the fight.
Theda MAB South, 10.07
A curious hush had fallen across the Operations rotunda. Eads was the only flight controller who had birds in a fight. Maintaining their own watches, the other controllers were looking his way. Darrow felt like they were in the spotlight. The deck officer had come over to stand at Eads’s side. “Status?”
“Four-One and Four-Two have engaged. Sixteen confirmed hostiles. Four hostiles now show as killed.”
There was a murmur around the room.
“Relief flight situation?” asked the deck officer. His name was Banzie, a short, jocund man in a high-collared uniform of Imperial purple.
“Two tankers lost. One damaged. Three escorts downed.” Eads’s voice was frail and distant. He was looking ahead of him into open space, the data swirling in his mind. His hands crept over the console displays, correcting, rewriting. The placement officer at the modar screen in front of Eads’s station was making constant adjustments to the glass with her stylus.
Darrow realised why the air in Operations was kept so cold. There was no chance of getting dozy or slack. No cha
nce of drowsiness clouding judgement.
“Assessment?” Banzie asked Eads.
“Tight. Anything in range?” Eads replied.
“Requesting assist!” Banzie cried out to the room. “Quickly, now!”
“I have the 44th Wing, six machines, fourteen minutes away,” a controller called out from a nearby console.
“No, Deck. Too far,” Eads muttered.
“The 101. Four machines, returning over the Northern Makanites. Three minutes,” called another from across the chamber.
“Tolerance?” asked Banzie.
“They’ve been up for two hundred minutes, and have engaged once already. If we instruct, they’ll have about five minutes of fight in them.”
“Anyone else?” Banzie urged.
Nothing closer than fourteen minutes.
“Controller?” Banzie asked.
“Another Lightning just bought it, sir,” said Eads. “And… can’t confirm, but we may also have lost one of Umbra. Requesting commit.”
Banzie nodded and looked up, his voice rising to drill instructor volume. “Instruct commit! Bring them in, please.”
Darrow looked over at the flight controller on the other side of the chamber as he began feverish activity. “101, 101, this is Operations. You have an instruction to commit. Please confirm plot.”
There was an answering swirl of vox noise. The placement officer in front of the controller began scribing quickly and expertly on the reactive glass display.
Then Darrow heard the controller say, “Copy that, Apostles. I’m sure that they’ll be happy to see you.”
The Apostles! Holy Throne! Darrow’s heart began to race. He looked back at Eads. Beads of sweat were trickling off Eads’s brow.
“Confirmation,” he said. “We’ve lost one of Umbra.”
Over the Lida, 10.08
“Where’s Clovin? Where’s Clovin?” Jagdea yelled into the vox. She’d just seen a plane go in and make a fireball in the hydro-ponds below. It had looked like a Thunderbolt.
“No visual,” Asche replied.