“Nothing,” called Ranfre.
“Throne, what kind of party have you brought us to?” Cordiale screeched. Jagdea saw him, below and left, turning wildly with a bat on his tail. The air was full of tracer and las. Her own lasers were spent. She toggled to hard cannons and stooped.
Something forked and white bent across her bows and raced after Zemmic’s machine.
“See him?” That was Blansher.
“Say again,” Jagdea voxed.
“The pearl-white bat. That’s the bastard who stung Clovin.”
Blansher’s Bolt slewed in behind her and then rolled away loose. Asche went under her, followed by Marquall.
“Umbra Four-One, this is Operations. We have assist committed to you. Three minutes and closing.”
“Understood,” Jagdea gasped, the G she was pulling compressing her lungs.
She saw Zemmic flick out to dodge his attacker. Smoke was pumping from his port fan.
“Umbra Ten, Umbra Ten, this is Flight Lead. Break off and quit.”
“I can hold it…”
“I don’t care, Ten. Break off and quit for home now.”
“Copy you, Lead.”
There was the white bat now, banking over through the tails of a cloud bar. Blansher was on it, Asche too. As good as dead, Jagdea decided.
She was needed elsewhere, anyway.
The burning Onero had finally given up. Its fire-damaged wing tore away and it went down into the valley basement like a meteor. Another bright flash-burst. Another vast section of farmland torched. Jagdea saw the Shockwave mash trees, demolish silos, and send segments of plastek hydroponic rafts slewing into the air.
A black Razor swept over her gunsight, rolling hard, firing on Ranfre’s machine. She hit the speed brakes, her body arrested by the harness, and fell nose-down onto it, pumping her cannons.
It twisted and turned out as Ranfre pulled clear. Jagdea swung around onto it again. Resighting, she got a decent lock.
“Bang,” she said.
The arcing bat vanished and left a drizzle of fire in its place.
Blansher blinked in amazement. He’d had Clovin’s pearl-white killer square in his reticule, with a firm tone.
And then it had just vanished.
He banked hard, expecting a trick. But there was no sign of it.
“Umbra Four, Umbra Four… Did you do that?”
“Negative, Umbra Two,” Larice Asche replied. “Frig it, Mil, he’s dummied you. He’s right under you!”
Blansher inverted, then curled into a dive. Asche was right with him, popping shots at the merciless white Hell Razor. It stuck and turned, and matched every move Umbra Flight’s number two made.
This wasn’t right. This was insane. Blansher and Asche were Jagdea’s two best pilots, aces both. How could this hostile out-dance them together?
Asche rotated steeply and got a lock, but then pulled her thumb back as Blansher’s Bolt got in the way. The bastard was playing with them. Playing them off.
The Razor screwed off left, then punctured Blansher’s wing with a flurry of hard rounds. Asche scored a shot that left a dark scorch on the bat’s right wing. Then it rolled and fired again. Blansher’s port engine exploded.
Trailing smoke, he fell out of the fight. The Razor seemed to consider going after him, but pulled away. Asche turned with him, smiling under her breather mask.
And… he was gone. She switched her head around, looking for it. A las-shot tore through her wing.
It was on her. Lock tone.
Four cream-skinned Thunderbolts came out of the south, nose guns blasting.
One rolled perfectly, came in under her, and fired bursts at the pearl-white Razor.
It side-stepped, and extended at a furious rate.
The white Thunderbolt swung past her.
One of the Apostles. He dipped his wings to her.
“Many thanks,” Asche voxed.
So certain. So assured. The four Apostles ripped into the air-fight and broke it up, like bouncers in a tavern brawl. Seekan secured one kill, his wingman Suhr another. It was the legendary Quint, ace of aces, who had saved Larice’s skin.
The hostiles began to snap off and break away from the tumble.
Then Asche saw the pearl-white razor lining up on Marquall. He was chasing one of the fleeing hostiles, firing wildly.
“Umbra Eight! Break! Break!” she yelled.
She started to turn. Jagdea’s machine swept by her, gunning.
The hostile was right on Marquall’s six.
Tone ping. Hard lock. He couldn’t shake it. Marquall shouted in frustration.
And in desperation, Vander Marquall did the only thing he could think of. He fired his Thunderbolt’s rocket drive. It was there only for launch assist. No one ever used it in open flight. It was against text book directives. Fire your rocket and you lose control.
He fired it anyway.
The sky and land became a blur. He greyed out for a moment. Somehow, he held on.
The pearl-white Razor turned, bemused, as its target banged away.
“Yours, Harlsson,” Seekan’s voice sounded calm and controlled over the vox.
“On it, Leader,” Harlsson responded.
Major Velmed Harlsson. Ninety-seven kills. Jagdea watched his consummate skill with humble appreciation. A perfect bank. Not too much throttle. Totally composed. He arched over onto the target expertly, guns blazing.
But somehow, the bat managed to viff out under him, and then swung onto his rear.
She heard Harlsson’s voice. Just a hint of confusion in the calm tone. “I’m locked. I—” Harlsson began. “Seekan, where are y—”
The bat’s guns blew his tail assembly away. Harlsson tried to control his flailing machine. The huge silver bulk of one of the transports suddenly filled his forward view.
The mangled Thunderbolt impacted into the side of the Onero at five hundred kph. The fire wash lit up the valley.
Theda MAB South, 10.18
“Apostle down!” the flight controller on the far side of the chamber yelled out. There was a brisk gasp from the personnel around them.
Darrow looked at Eads. Eads sighed. “Enemy has broken off. Bats retreating.”
Banzie nodded. There was some sporadic clapping.
Eads glanced round at Darrow. “A white bat. Pearl-white. Ring any bells?”
“Sounds like the one, sir,” Darrow nodded.
“He’s a devil of a pilot. A real devil. Summarise everything you remember from your encounter and I’ll get the report copied out. The wings need to be aware of him. Everything you remember, please, junior.”
“Yes, sir.”
DAY 256
Theda Old Town, 00.10
The address she’d been given was a merchantman’s house on the Gehnstal, one of a row of elderly mansions on a broad pavement. Many were boarded up now, thanks to the war, but adjacent blocks of cheap habs showed that the area’s fortunes had been in decline for some time.
Jagdea brought the staff car she’d borrowed to a halt, switched off the engine and got out. Lights burned brightly around the shutter edges of the house she was looking for.
Nervously adjusting her uniform, she hurried up the front steps. Was that singing she could hear? She found an iron bell-pull and yanked on it. Service bells tinkled faraway in the house.
After a moment, the door opened. The hallway inside was dimly lit. She found herself facing a high-function domestic servitor, its silver form engraved with intricate chasework.
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “I was looking for… is this 133 Gehnstal?”
“Yes, commander,” it replied, digitising the gentle, mannered voice of an elderly male through his voxponder. The servitor had recognised her rank.
“I’m looking for the billet used by the Apostles. The 101.”
“Please come in,” the servitor said.
It was definitely singing she could hear in the background. A recording of Frans Talfer’s Gaudete Terra, with male vo
ices booming along.
“Follow me,” the servitor said. “May I ask your name, commander?”
“Jagdea,” she replied.
The servitor’s exquisite silver hands reached out and smoothly opened a double set of panelled doors, letting through a bright glow light and the full force of the music.
“Commander Jagdea,” it announced.
The singing stopped, but the music languished on, fizzing slightly through the speaker horn of the recording player on a side table. Seekan rose out of an armchair to greet her. “Good evening, commander.”
Around the room were the other six Apostles. All of them, Seekan included, were wearing full dress uniforms, heavy with medals. They had glasses in their hands and had obviously been drinking for a while. Faces were flushed, and jackets undone.
Seekan looked as fresh as night frost.
“I’m sorry,” Jagdea said. “I’m interrupting.”
“Not at all,” said Seekan. “Domo, a drink for the commander.” The servitor crossed immediately to a lacquered drink stand.
“Is this the Phantine leader?” one of the Apostles asked. He was a big man, his eyes red and hooded from too many amasecs.
“It is indeed, Ludo. Commander Jagdea, may I present Major Ludo Ramia.”
“Mamzel,” the big man nodded.
“Major Ziner Krone, Major Jeric Suhr.”
Suhr was a sharp-faced, skinny man. He nodded curtly. Krone was of noble build, a Glavian perhaps, by the look of his gleaming black skin. His face was badly scarred on the left cheek. He too nodded, then busied himself changing the recorder disk.
“Captain Guis Gettering.” Gettering was pugnacious and jowly, with short, sand-white hair. He was standing by the hearth, a crystal balloon in his hand. “Mamzel commander,” he grunted.
“And Major Dario Quint.”
Quint. Ace of aces. Reclined in a battered tub chair in the far corner, he seemed more like an observer than a participant. He was a surprisingly small man, well-proportioned, compact, his oval face boyish, though his hair was zinc-grey. His hands were folded across the breast of his uniform jacket. He stared directly at her and held her gaze, though he made no sound.
The servitor handed Jagdea a flute of joiliq, and she took it even though she didn’t want it.
“I—” she began, and cleared her throat. “I thought it was appropriate for me to come here in person and express my wing’s appreciation for your assistance. Especially given the cost.”
“You lost a machine too, didn’t you?” Ramia asked.
“Yes, I did. But the loss of an Apostle—”
Ramia snorted. “Harlsson was an odious shit. He couldn’t fly worth a fart.”
Jagdea was startled. “I… what?”
“Detestable man,” Suhr agreed. “Don’t look so bloody shocked, mamzel. Harlsson was all luck and flair. Not a gram of skill in his whole body. It’s a miracle he lasted as long as he did.”
Jagdea frowned. She put her drink down, untouched, and said, “I wanted to express my appreciation and my sympathies. I’ve done that now, so I think I’ll go.”
“Saving the neck of that upstart boy, wasn’t he?” Gettering asked suddenly. Jagdea paused and turned back.
“What?”
“Harlsson. Got stung getting a Razor off that boy of yours, mamzel. Isn’t that right? The boy who thought naming his machine Double Eagle was a bright idea.”
“That matter is over and done, captain, though I believe Pilot Officer Marquall is still waiting on your letter of apology. And no, you’re not right. Marquall had already shaken the Razor.”
“Had he now?” said Gettering.
“He used his rocket assist,” said Suhr.
“Did he?” Gettering laughed. Ramia chuckled too. “So the boy was your casualty?”
“No,” said Jagdea. “Marquall recovered control of his machine.”
There was a look on Gettering’s face that suggested he was about to accuse her of lying. Instead, he just shook his head and looked away. The recorder started blaring again. Krone had put on Nuncius’s Salve Beatus, loud and strident. Jagdea walked out of the room.
“Commander!” Seekan caught up with her in the hall. Behind him, the drunken singing had resumed.
“You’ll have to forgive my men, Commander Jagdea. They’re dealing with their loss in their own way.”
“By throwing a boorish party and defaming the dead man?”
“Pretty much,” said Seekan. “Sentiment does not figure largely in the souls of those men, Jagdea. They’re steeped in death. Immune to its touch.”
“Clearly not immortal,” she snapped.
“No. That’s not what I meant. Your unit, now. I imagine there’s sadness. Low spirits. Mourning the loss of a friend.”
Jagdea nodded. That was exactly the mood in the billet when she’d left. A few were raising a glass to Clovin’s shade, but there was a general, numbing gloom.
“I remember that myself,” Seekan said. “In the early days. But we Apostles are war-weary. When I said we are immune to the touch of death, I meant we just don’t feel its bite any more. No sense of grief, no loss, no regret, no sadness. Just an inevitability. When an Apostle dies, we put on our dress white and our ridiculous numbers of medals, and we get filthy drunk. We rage, we sing, we drink some more. We do it to show fate, or fortune, or whatever else lurks out there in the dark, that we don’t care.”
She had no reply. His voice dropped slightly. “We’re freaks, Jagdea. Do you know why we’re Apostles? Not because we’re especially fine pilots. Not at all. We’re Apostles because we’ve had unnatural luck. We should have died long ago, but there’s been some oversight and our souls have not been claimed. So we go on flying, and killing. And eventually, the oversight is corrected. Today, it was Harlsson’s turn.”
“That’s a very bleak view,” said Jagdea. “Was Harlsson really that disliked?”
“Who knows? Probably not. He was a reasonable pilot. But none of us are friends, you see. There’s no point. By the time you become an Apostle, friends are a vulnerability none of us chooses to afford.”
“I pity you,” Jagdea said.
Seekan shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t need pity, either.” He paused. “Do you know what I have to do tomorrow morning?”
“No.”
“My driver’s taking me down the coast to Madenta MAB. There’s a pilot stationed there with the 567th. His name’s Saul Cirksen. Seventy-two kills, superb service record. I will be inviting him to fill Harlsson’s spot.”
“Will he accept?” she asked.
“If you are invited to become an Apostle, Jagdea, you’re not allowed to decline.”
She opened the front door. The night air was cold and smelled of rain. From the drawing room behind them, the raucous singing swelled to a lusty chorus.
“Thank you for your pains, commander,” Seekan said. “They’re not as unappreciated as you might think.”
Jagdea made a quick, clipped salute. “Good flying,” she said.
Coast Highway, 05.50
At first he thought it was a summer storm, glimmering the edges of the pre-dawn sky with sheet lightning.
It took him a few moments to realise it wasn’t.
He brought his heavy transport to a full stop, and jumped out onto the rockcrete surface of the hardtop, his scope in his hand. The other seven trucks in the convoy grumbled to a halt behind him. The convoy was an overnight munitions delivery to Fetona MAB, already overdue. A couple of the drivers sounded their horns, revved their stacks. Finally, they dismounted too.
They found Kaminsky on the far side of the highway, near to where the pelmet of the road track shelved away into a dry creek-bed. This area of the Peninsula was barren. Straw grasses, fibreweed, salt bars dotting the broken ground. Even in the cold half-light of dawn, there was nothing to spoil the view all the way to the Lida Valley.
Kaminsky was winding his scope.
“What the hell’s going on?” asked Velligan.
>
“Kaminsky, what’s the problem?” said Anderchek from behind him.
“See that?” Kaminsky asked. “That glow? Fire patterns. Towns along the Lida are being bombed.”
Theda MAB South, 06.17
There was something big going on. Darrow had slept badly, aware of a huge launch activity during the small hours. He’d been working late on the report Eads had asked him to write up, and with an hour and a half to go before his next shift at Operations, he went out to find Heckel, to get the major’s comments on the tangle they’d had with the white bat.
A pall of exhaust fumes hung in the still air over the field. The majority of the base’s machines were gone, on sorties. Darrow spoke to a Commonwealth fitter he knew, and the man told him bombing raids had begun, north of the mountains. River towns had been hit, agro-centres, mills. Someone reckoned the raiders had got as far as Ezraville.
Everyone he passed looked pinched and worried. Everyone was thinking the same thing. This was the start of the end.
Even Commonwealth reserve units like Quarry Flight were on standby. Morose, in full flight armour, they lurked in the dispersal areas, waiting for the call. Wolfcubs were being fitted to their ramps. Cyclones were being wheeled out of the housing barns, attended by fuelling trucks and munition trains.
“Heckel?” No one had seen him, and no one was in the mood to chat for long. According to the posts, Heckel should have been amongst the standby pilots.
Darrow got a room number, and headed down to the blast-proof hab block at the west end of the dispersal yards. By the light of the dingy corridor lamps, he found the right door and knocked.
“Major? Major Heckel? Are you there, sir?”
He knocked again. “Major Heckel? It’s Darrow. Have you got a minute, sir?”
He was about to turn away, but an ominous feeling made him try the door. It was unlocked.
In the narrow room, the cot was unmade. There was a clutter of papers and possessions on the small desk, clothes laid out on top of the officer’s trunk. A camp chair lay on its side in the middle of the room.
Major Heckel had hanged himself by a harness strap from the ceiling bracket.
“Oh God-Emperor!” Darrow cried. He rushed forward, seizing the major’s legs, struggling to lift him down and ease the constriction. “Help me! Someone help me!” he shouted out. He couldn’t unhook the body. Heckel was a lead weight. Darrow cried out in frustration. He let go, found Heckel’s kit knife in the pile on the trunk, then righted the chair and climbed up, sawing at the harness cord. It was aviation issue, tough, designed not to break. Darrow yelled out again, and cut his fingers on the knife as he wrenched it back and forth against the thick fabric.