They came in with rockets now, turrets blasting again. The wing-loads loosed, and snaked off on spiralling trails of smoke. There was nothing like the same weight of flak on them now.
The rockets splashed, sheeting fire and hull fragments into the desert sky as the Marauders went over.
They began to pull away, climbing.
Something primal and catastrophic happened to the carrier. Most likely, one of the rockets had penetrated the magazine or the drive section. The carrier spasmed, shook, and then incinerated in one stupendously bright flash.
The Shockwave almost knocked Halo out of the air.
They soared out, stabilising. A giant cloud of smoke, shaped like a forest mushroom, filled the sky behind them.
Theda MAB South, 09.30
The Operations rotunda was frantic with activity and chatter. Between them, the flight controllers were overseeing four major air-fights and nine intercept sorties. “Darrow?”
Darrow was staring up at the roof dome, where sunlight was spilling in through the collar of stained glass.
“Darrow? Junior?” Eads sounded tetchy.
Darrow started. “Sir, I’m sorry. My mind was drifting. No excuses. What were you saying, Flight?”
Eads turned his face towards the young man. There was sympathy in its sightless look. Eads held out a scrap of printout wafer. “I thought you might like to announce this, son,” he said. “Proof that not just bad things happen in this life.”
“Flight?”
“They told me about Heckel, son. I’m sorry that it had to be you who found him. Think about something else now. Announce that.”
Darrow looked down at the flimsy printout, then smiled. He looked up and cleared his throat. He’d heard junior flight controllers and assistants make proud announcements like this. Now it was his turn. And it beat them all.
“Attention, attention. Halo Flight confirms it has destroyed a mass carrier in the north desert. That is confirmed. Enemy carrier destroyed.”
Darrow’s smile widened as the rotunda broke out in cheers and applause. The first carrier found and killed. Even Banzie was clapping and grinning.
Eads said something. Darrow leaned forward to hear him over the tide of applause.
“Say again, Flight?”
“I said,” Eads whispered, “we might just do this. We might just win this against the odds.”
Palace Pier, 14.02
It was a grey, flat afternoon, and no one was in. Hardly a surprise, as the smoke wash from Ezraville had been fuming down the straits since daybreak.
The cafe door opened. Beqa looked up from the slates she was reading at the counter and saw Viltry in the doorway. Thirty empty tables stood between them. A Thracian waltz idled in the background.
He smiled, and took off his cap.
“Hello. You look pleased with yourself,” she said, rising. He walked between the vacant tables to reach her and slid a haversack off his shoulder.
“A big success today. A really big one. My crews are away celebrating, madly. They will be draining the vats of Theda dry tonight. And woe betide any ladies of easy virtue…”
“Have you been drinking?” Beqa asked.
“Um, a little, maybe. In dispersal. I do apologise.”
“Why are you here, Viltry? It sounds to me like you’re missing parties and celebrations and—”
Viltry opened his haversack. He pulled out two paper-wrapped haunches of vere, a bag of sweet tubers, bunches of fresh greens, dessert biscuits and a bottle of sjira red.
Beqa’s eyes widened. Her mouth watered. She’d never seen the like, not even before rationing.
“I was given these. Sort of a tribute. Ornoff sent a hamper down to reward the unit. The men had away with most of the drink, obviously. But I kept the rest. I thought you might know what to do with it. I mean, food-wise. As a cook.”
He looked at her. His eyes were wide and honest.
He added, “And I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather share it with.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it is.”
DAY 258
Ezraville MAB, 11.31
“Thanks!” Jagdea shouted, and jumped down off the transport. She strode across the mud to the hut and ducked as she went in through the door. Behind her, Imperial machines thundered up off their hardstands into the smoke-stained sky.
He was sitting on a fuel drum, gazing at his boots.
“You all right?” she asked. He looked, saw it was her, and rose with a quick salute.
“I guess,” said Marquall.
“Tough break, there. Good kill, I hear.”
“Then I got stung. A Talon, I think. Right on my tail. I didn’t see it. I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Don’t be. You ejected. You came down alive. That’s all that matters to me.”
“Can I fly again?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Uhm… if you want to.”
“What does that mean?”
“The only available bird is Nine-Nine. She’s been repaired. You may not want her.”
“Nine-Nine?” Marquall asked.
“Yes.”
Marquall laughed dryly. He couldn’t decide which was worse—the fact it was Espere’s old bird, or the fact it was rumoured to be badly jinxed.
Then, after a moment’s consideration, he realised that the worse thing of all was the prospect of not flying again.
“I’ll take Nine-Nine,” he said. “Maybe my jinx and hers will cancel each other’s out.”
Theda MAB South, 16.10
They’d seen them from the coastal highway, and the sight had filled both of them with hope. Wings of Navy machines, in line formations, moving down over the sea towards the Thedan fields. Reinforcements, flying in from mass landing centres in the Northern Affiliation.
Jagdea and Marquall had both got to their feet in the back of the rocking transport, pointing to the sights and talking. Thunderbolt wings turning gently towards Theda North. Two packs of Vulture gunships slimming south into the Peninsula. The afternoon was clear and blue and, despite the sooty sky behind them over Ezraville, and the distant moan of raid warning sirens, they almost felt like cheering.
The mood was buzzing in the base when the transport dropped them off. Eager pre-flight activity around Umbra’s hardstands, and dozens of carriers and freight-tractors hurtling to and fro.
With Marquall at her side, Jagdea jogged across the rockcrete, dodging through a slow-striding queue of Sentinel power lifters carrying cargo pods to waiting transport lifters. Blansher and Asche were standing with some of the chief fitters.
“Welcome back, killer,” Asche said to Marquall playfully. He blushed slightly.
“Good to see you in one piece, lad,” said Blansher.
“What’s the commotion, Mil?” Jagdea asked.
“Deployment orders,” Blansher replied, pulling a data-slate out of his coat. She skim-read it.
“As of 18.00 hours tonight, Umbra are shipping out to a forward strip in the south,” Blansher said. “I think they want to make some room here for the newcomers. We’ll be flying short notice intercepts from a place called Lake Gocel.”
Jagdea looked at the location on the slate map. It was a vulnerable spot, well inside the enemy’s air range. But it would allow them to mount rapid challenges to anything coming north or east out of the Interior Desert, tagging them long before they reached the Peninsula or cities like Theda.
“Operations says that several large sections of our ground forces are now clearing the east of the Makanites on the home run,” Blansher said. “I think the idea is we’ll be protecting them, too.”
“Not just us, surely?” said Marquall.
“No,” said Jagdea, reviewing the slate. “The 409 are going with us, and there’s a Lightning wing already down there.”
“Transports are already starting to ship our crews out,” added Asche. “We’ll be travelling light and fas
t.”
“We’d better get started,” said Jagdea.
Marquall walked across to the hardstand and looked Nine-Nine in the eye. The fitters had done a fine job of patching her up. A slight blemish to the plating and the paintwork. Nothing really to show the pounding she’d taken.
“You’re mine now,” he said softly. “I’ll treat you right if you treat me the same.” Dark, fierce, the Thunderbolt made no reply.
DAY 259
Over the Cicatrice, 13.43
The search for another mass carrier to pound was going to have to wait.
Viltry turned his wing west and brought them lower over the rushing canyons and gorges of the great rift scar. For the first time, he felt the notorious shake and tear of the Cicatrice winds as they tried to pluck Greta’s lift away.
Two kilometres dead ahead, a huge blizzard of fire and smoke was coming off the desert.
A section of the shattered land armada, a line of men and machines seven or eight kilometres long, had been struggling down one of the rift’s wider passes when the ambush had come down on it. Three at a time, Hell Talons were dipping in and tearing down the length of the column, depositing bombs and rockets, or shooting up ground targets. Dozens of tanks and armoured transports were on fire, and in places so were patches of sand where burning debris and fuel had scattered out.
Tiny dots, individual figures, were running for cover in the jumbled stones of the valley sides. The valley air was striped vertically with rising smoke, and horizontally by tracer fire and jet exhaust plumes. The strafing machines made curious vortices and eddies in the smoke palls with their slipstreams.
At the south end of the valley, squadrons of enemy stalk tanks, bright yellow and venomous-looking, were scuttling in, overtaking the hind part of the crawling Imperial mass. Heavy-gauge lasfire flashed and seared from that section of the fight.
Viltry’s Marauders weren’t built to intercept air attacks like this, but he hoped their presence would at least discourage the enemy from its relentless strikes. Lacombe had called in for fighter assist, and there were apparently Thunderbolts eight minutes away.
“Head on, low level!” Viltry ordered. “Drive them off and away from the column, deny their attack runs. If you make it to the south end without having to pull off, unload munitions on those enemy stalkers.”
“Understood, Lead.”
“Right with you.”
Viltry led by example, swinging Greta round at the front end of the column and bringing her in down the line in the opposite direction to the raiders’ approaches. He kept as low as he dared, whipping through dense smoke streams, feeling the damned rift-winds screwing and twisting the airframe.
As soon as he had lined up and begun his run, he saw three Talons coming in ahead of him. Bolter fire from the ground chopped the air in their direction.
“Make them change their minds!” he growled, fighting with the stiff, jerking stick.
Top and nose opened fire, aiming high. The tracking tracer lines chewed ahead of the Marauder, sizzling into the trio of enemy machines that powered towards it.
Damaged perhaps, surprised certainly, the Talons banked out wildly, left and right, aborting their runs and pulling off the column. Gaize tracked the turret and kept shooting at one that was slow skipping away.
Viltry kept on track. They were almost at the south end of the pass now. The gates of the gorge were coming up fast. A flash of sun caught yellow metal: stalk tanks. The arachnoid war machines were pelting laser cannon fire into the rear echelon of the Imperial column.
“Judd!”
“Ready!”
Viltry clung on, anticipating the jerk-lift of a clean release, but what came was far more violent than that. A sudden, bone-rattling, sideways slam caused by the especially fierce crosswinds at the gorge mouth. Greta stumbled. Viltry caught her and held her.
The bombs had gone.
He could hear Judd cursing. The crosswinds had ruined his release. Greta’s huge payload had dropped wide, detonating across the upper valley slopes.
Viltry brought the nose up and climbed wide, coming around again in a large circuit. Behind and below him, four of his five wingmen were flying in series to protect the pass. Consider Yourself Dead had broken off its run and was turning out over the valley tops, mobbed and chased by three Talons.
He heard Orsone open up in the tail. There was another bat behind them. Fire streaked past like scattering sparks. Viltry dived away, turning against the sun so a shadow rolled slowly through the cockpit.
“Lost it!” Orsone voxed.
Down onto the valley fight again, into the smoke, and against the savage wind shear that was as much an enemy as the bright-painted bats.
Viltry banked hard as two Talons went past the other way, just blurs of colour. What was keeping those damn fighters?
G for Greta shuddered. Klaxons wailed. They were flying head on into a blitz of ground to air las. The stalk tanks were ready for them this time.
“We’re taking hits!” Lacombe screamed. Terrible noises: fracturing metal, shattering plastek, the blasting tone of an engine-out alarm. Greta slewed badly, the wind clawing at her, the controls like iron.
Something exploded in the compartment underneath him. Viltry heard Judd shrieking. A grown man, heavy as a bear, shrieking like a child.
“We’re losing it!” Lacombe yelled.
Vibrations, shaking them like toys. Viltry’s juddering teeth bit his own tongue-tip. He fought to hold on. The engines were making a terrible, ailing note.
He saw the gorge mouth, the yellow machines, the lasfire hosing into the sky towards him. Wing puncture. Tail damage. Naxol was shouting from the nose turret, virtually inaudible over the raging sounds.
Viltry launched his wing-mounts and saw them puff away on streaks of white smoke. Stalk tanks tore apart, flung into the air, severed machine-limbs scattering. The cockpit canopy shattered, and wind slammed into his face, full of glassite chips.
They came out through the gates of the gorge. The engines howled, two of them churning black smoke. Climb now, climb, climb…
Battered by the wind in his face, Viltry glanced around. Many cockpit instruments were broken, burned out. Lacombe hung in his harness. One side of his head, and the seat-rest behind it, were missing.
Fate’s wheel.
The instruments told him nothing. But Viltry had flown Marauders long enough to know the feel and the sound of a dying bird.
“Eject! Eject!” he ordered, though he knew they were far too low already.
The ragged, beige wasteland came up under them rapidly. Slicks of sand, rocky outcrops, salt-pans. So huge, so fast, there didn’t seem to be any sky left any more.
Viltry closed his eyes.
DAY 260
Theda Old Town, 00.05
The templum was all but empty. A few glow lamps were lit along the nave. The main light came from the stand of fluttering votive candles.
“Is there anything you need?” the hierarch asked gently.
Beqa was sitting at the end of a pew stall. She looked up at him. “I’m just waiting,” she said.
“It’s late.”
“I know. I know it is. Can I stay here?”
“Of course, daughter,” he said. “As long as you wish. I will be in the reliquary if you require my offices.”
When he had gone, she sat where she was for a few minutes more.
Late. It was very late. She’d waited for him past the end of her shift, men waited on the seafront for another hour as the daylight faded. She knew she should have sent a note to the factory chief. Her pay would be docked for missing a scheduled shift.
She had thought about going to the airfield, but realised that she didn’t know which one. Besides, the trams didn’t run out that far any more, and she had no money for hire-transport. And they’d never let a civilian in through the gates.
She rose and walked to the votive stand. Three small coins in the cup, three fresh candles from the box. She fixed them in
place beside the dozens of others already burning, and took up a taper.
One for Gart, one for Eido.
One for—
A main door opened somewhere and slammed. There was a blast of cold air. All the little candle flames blew out.
THE LAST OASIS
LAKE GOCEL
Imperial year 773.M41, day 261 - day 264
DAY 261
Lake Gocel FSB, 05.32
“Get up! Wake the hell up,” the urgent whisper said.
Vander Marquall blinked and rolled over. Van Tull was leaning over him in the violet gloom of the tent, shaking him by the shoulder.
“What? What?”
“Cover drill!” the older pilot hissed. He tapped the aluminoid bracelet around his wrist. “Didn’t your alarm wake you?”
Marquall yawned and shook his head. He glanced down at his own metal strap, which was dormant. Van Tull’s had a red rune illuminated on its cover.
“I think mine’s broken,” Marquall decided.
Van Tull scowled at Marquall, then took him firmly by the wrist and unclasped the bracelet. He studied it for a moment, then tossed it back to the boy.
“You’ll have to get a new one from stores. Not now, later. Come on.”
Van Tull opened the flap-seal of the habitent and let light and warm air in. He was already dressed. Marquall pulled on his breeches and looked around for his boots.
“Come on!” Van Tull called. Marquall yanked on his boots, but there was no time to fasten them. He hurried outside after Van Tull.
The habitent they shared was one of almost a hundred and fifty camo-skinned shelter domes that clogged the ground under the stands of dripping kinderwood trees. Even though it was early still, the air was humid. Bright sunlight filtered down through the lacy leaf canopy and the blast nets strung between the tree trunks, like a roof over the shelters.
The pair of them ran through the molded shadows, keeping carefully to the flakboard planking where the path crossed the frequent marshy pits and swamp pools. Scops hissed around them like vox static.