As they ran, Marquall saw dark shapes loom out of the twilight groves around them, dark shapes deliberately concealed. More shelters, camouflaged supply dumps, Hydra AA batteries where the crews waited silent and alert, the veiled shapes of warplanes under shimmer netting.
They reached the shelter and scrambled inside. The pilots of Umbra and a gang of fitters were huddled within.
“Overslept?” asked Jagdea.
“My fault, commander,” said Van Tull.
“Really?”
“Marquall’s tag was defective and I was slow waking him.”
“I think that rather makes it Marquall’s fault, doesn’t it?” Jagdea said, looking sourly at the half-dressed boy with his unlaced boots.
“Sorry, mamzel.”
“Shut it,” Jagdea said.
Human silence draped them. Outside the blast shelter, the forest trembled with birdsong and odd animal cries.
Marquall had already decided he didn’t like this place. Hot, wet, stinking of rotten fruit. His skin itched. He’d seen bugs the size of fingers crawling on the walls of his habitent and, during the night, swarms of silk-winged beetles flitting around the down-lights of the camp’s stealth lamps.
The birds fell silent. Marquall heard the low whir of a nearby Hydra platform as it traversed slowly. Then the sound of jet wash, low, passing overhead. The distinctive warbling note of enemy vector-thrusters. In a moment, it was gone.
A muffled vox signal. “Understood,” Blansher said, removing his headset. “All clear,” he reported. Relieved conversations started up, activity resumed. The occupants of the shelter began to file out. The runes on all their bracelets had turned green.
“Begin day duties, please,” Jagdea announced. “Briefing at 06.30, but get fed and washed quickly. Snap calls can come in at any time. Marquall?”
“Yes, commander.”
“Go to the stores right now, and get a new tag. Before you leave stores, press the test switch and make sure it works. If it doesn’t, get another one. Do you understand?”
“I do, commander.”
“Funny, I thought you’d understood last night when I told you the first time.”
“I was slack, commander. It won’t happen again.”
“Carry on,” she said. He turned. “Wait!”
He sighed, and turned back. She was frowning. “Closer. Right here. Turn round.”
She examined the skin of his shoulders where the vest exposed it, then pulled up the hem and looked at his back.
“You have a dermal condition I should know about?” she asked.
“No, mamzel.”
“Then it’s scop bites. They say some people get them worse than others. The sweet-tasting ones. Are you sweet-tasting, Marquall?”
“Don’t know, mamzel.”
“The scops seem to think so. See the base medicae while you’re about it.”
“Yes, mamzel.”
Marquall laced up his boots properly and then trudged through the base. Now the risk of discovery had passed, the place felt more like a functioning air-base. Personnel hurried about on the boardwalks, and teams of fitters unwrapped hidden machines and resumed work on them. The smell of promethium almost overwhelmed the scent of the swamp.
The forward strike base, a makeshift encampment, lurked secretly in the kinderwood forests on the southern shore of Lake Gocel. The lake itself, immense and nearly a thousand kilometres east to west, was fed by headwaters coming down from the Makanites, and in turn emptied into the Saroja River to drain into the sea on the far-away western coast. This great system of rivers and lakes, around which flourished a gigantic swathe of rainforest, formed a margin between the Interior Desert to the south and the scrubby, temperate peninsula to the north. An enveloping green belt in which they could hide and then strike at anything that passed over.
The vast lake itself, so wide the far shore was all but a smudge, was visible between the thinning shore trees, a broad expanse of sunlit green. The entire territory was swampy and bug-thick: miasmal black ooze and pools of stagnant water interlacing the jumbled kinder groves. Beyond the lake, to the east, Marquall glimpsed the lazy flanks of the Makanites, dust-yellow in the rising sun.
Navy pioneer units and Munitorum workcrews had built a surprising amount at Gocel. Prefab hab modules, defence batteries, bunkers and covered hangars nestled under the trees and the ubiquitous shimmer nets. Modar stacks and vox masts poked discreetly above the leaf cover, or had been raised as cable-form aerials, cleated to the trees themselves. Clearings had been cut, dozens of them, each one levelled and decked with heavyweight vulcanised matting: thick grey material rolled out to form temporary hardstands. On each stand sat a warplane: the ten Thunderbolts of Umbra Flight, the twelve of the Navy 409th “Raptors”, and the eight Lightnings from the 786th “Spyglass” recon. Unless unshrouded for launch or landing, each matt-decked clearing was all but invisible from the air thanks to the camo-awnings.
Bulk landers, for support crew transfers, base supply, and fuel and munitions deliveries, used the wide, muddy beach of the lake shore, not needing to stay on station for more than a few minutes. There was no way a permanent large-scale matt-deck could be concealed from the air. Sentinel power lifters, striding through the mire, did all the base’s heavy lifting and carrying.
The FSB had a decent ring of Tarantula sentry guns watching the forest around it, as well as two dozen Manticore and Hydra anti-aircraft batteries. With the PDF troopers needed to man all these, the thirty pilots, the fitter teams and forward operations personnel, Lake Gocel FSB had a population of over two hundred.
“Hey, killer. Where you going?”
Marquall looked round and saw Larice Asche jogging up behind him along the flak boarding. “Stores,” he said.
Privately, he was in awe of Flight Lieutenant Larice Asche. She seemed so damn tough. Jagdea was a multi-kill vet too, but he mainly respected her because she was in charge. Asche, an ace before the liberation of Phantine had even finished, was the real thing, respected by all for her sheer talent. And young, too. Blansher had a huge tally, but he was an old guy. Larice seemed not much older than Marquall himself.
She was lean and gamine, with bony cheeks and a vicious, toothy grin. The previous afternoon, before they’d shipped out to Gocel, she’d had her famous blonde hair shaved down to a finger width. “Jungle lice,” she’d announced, adding, “do not want them.”
“The med-station’s near stores, isn’t it?” she asked him.
“I think so.”
“I’ll tag along. So much for precautions.”
“What?”
She ran a hand through her brutally cropped hair. “For this.”
“How so?”
She pulled off her jacket and showed him the multiple bites on her bare forearms. “Scops,” he said. “So they say.”
“Me too,” he said, dropping his flight coat off one arm and showing her his shoulder.
“Bitching,” she said.
The Munitorum station was a ring of hardened prefabs standing in the blue shadows of a massive frond-tree. They went inside, into the air-scrubbed cool. The duty attendant, his face full of ancient augmetics, looked up from his cogitator.
“I need a new tag,” Marquall said.
“I believe, pilot officer, you mean you need a new tag please, senior.”
“Ah… what?”
“I am Senior Lirek. You will address me civilly,” Marquall glanced at his chronometer. “There’s a war on,” he said. Asche sniggered.
“Indeed there is. And has civility run out? Where would the Navy be without the constant efforts of the Munitorum?”
“I have no idea,” said Marquall.
“Ah! Indeed!” Lirek said, rising to his feet and adjusting his heavy optics manually. “You expert us to be at your beck and call, and want this and want that but—”
“Do you know who that is?” Larice hissed at the old man.
“Uh… no.”
“Larice—” Marquall began n
ervously.
“That’s only Marquall,” Asche continued, her eyes fake-wide. “Killer Marquall. The one who… you know…”
“No,” mumbled Lirek. “I’m not sure I do—”
“The one who made the kill!” said Asche.
“The kill?”
“The kill. The kill. For Throne’s sake, and you talk about respect…”
“No, well, yes,” stammered the Munitorum senior suddenly. “I forget myself. Your device, sir?”
“It doesn’t work,” said Marquall, handing his bracelet over.
“So it doesn’t. A terrible oversight. Wait one moment, if you will.”
Lirek came back with a fresh tag unit. “Here, sir. I have tested it. In the event of a cover warning, it will illuminate, and, as required, silently alert or wake you by a gentle, non-harmful electric pulse.”
Marquall signed for it. “Thank you,” he said.
“I live to serve, sir,” Lirek said, his tortoise-head bowing.
Outside, Asche started sniggering.
“What did you do that for?”
“It got you your tag, didn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah. But you lied.”
“Have you made a kill or not?”
“Yes…”
“Then I didn’t lie. What does he know?”
“You’re bad, Larice Asche.”
“So they say.”
Next door to the stores, a long prefab huddled under the shimmer hoods. A tall man in early middle age, well-made and masculine, sat on the entrance steps. His arms were folded on his knees, and his head rested on his arms. His hair was matted with what looked like dry clay, forming dreadlocks. He wore the blue silk robes of an ayatani, one of the Bead’s priesthood.
“Father,” said Marquall. “Is the medicae in?”
“He’s out,” answered the priest.
“Maybe we can leave him a note?” Marquall suggested to Asche.
“No, I gotta find something. These bites are killing me.”
They went into the med-block. All the surfaces were polished steel and swabbed plastek. The circulating air smelled of mint. Asche began to rifle through the drug cabinets.
“What are you doing?”
The ayatani stood behind them in the doorway. “Helping myself,” said Asche.
“I told you the medicae was out.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Now he’s in again.”
They both looked at the tall priest. He raised a hand and shook back his sleeve to reveal a Navy-issue ident cuff. Divisio Medicae.
“I’m Ayatani Kautas… I also happen to be serving medicae at this FSB. Take your filthy hands out of my drug store.”
Asche jumped back, causing boxed packets to scatter on the grille floor.
“What’s the problem?” the priest snapped.
“Uh, scop bites,” said Marquall, starting to turn to show the practitioner his blisters.
Kautas strode past, ignoring him. He picked up two tubes of salve and threw them at Marquall. The boy caught them, just.
“Twice a day!” he snarled. “Don’t come back unless you get crotch-rot.”
“Thank you, father…” Marquall began. “Piss off, looters.”
“What was all that about?” Asche said as they walked away.
“I’m not sure,” Marquall said.
“Oh, who cares?” Asche smiled at him. “So, killer, what are you—”
They both jumped as their tags went off, zapping their wrists and flashing the red rune.
“Shit!” cried Marquall. “Who’s on? Are you on?”
“No,” said Asche, and pulled him towards the nearest shelter.
Jagdea was already in her Bolt when the thrill hit her arm. On matt-decks east and west of her, Blansher and Cordiale stood by in their own machines.
Her chief fitter closed her hood and gave her the sign of the aquila.
She sat in her machine, angled seventy-five degrees towards the sky on a hydraulic fast-launch ramp. The base had three, all of them ready to answer a snap call at any time. Above, all she could see was sunlight playing through shimmer net.
Her thumb rolled over the red toggle-cover and rested on the “rocket fire” stud.
She waited, sweat trickling down her face onto her mask.
Silence. Heat. The distant stir of the forest.
“Umbra Leader…” the vox began.
Above her bird’s elevated nose cone, the shimmer nets were suddenly drawing back and daylight spilling in. She knew the order before it was given.
“…you are go for launch.”
Her thumb stabbed down.
With a terrible punch and a roar, she left the world behind.
The Cicatrice, 06.50
“You’re okay. You’re okay. Trust me.”
“What’s the use, sir?” asked Matredes. “I think he’s gonna die.”
“No,” said LeGuin. “I reckon he’s just thirsty. Give him some water.” Matredes and Emdeen looked at him, unhappy.
“We’re down to the last recyc,” Emdeen said.
“I know,” said LeGuin.
“I think we should’ve just left him where we found him,” Matredes said.
“We’re not leaving anyone,” said LeGuin.
“Damn it,” sighed Emdeen, and moved forward to dribble water from his flask into the prone man’s cracked mouth.
“Greta,” he moaned. “Greta…”
“Who’s Greta?” Matredes wondered.
“His girl?” suggested Emdeen.
“What’s his name?” asked LeGuin.
Emdeen reached into the man’s scorched flight coat and pulled out a set of clinking Imperial tags.
“Viltry,” he said.
Over the forests, 07.00
The forest canopy was like a vast green rug that had been rolled out over the top of boxes and furniture to form a soft, undulating mass. The three Thunderbolts skimmed as low as possible, following the contours of the tree mass, trying to keep below any ranged sensor cones. Their aftershock rocked and roiled the canopy like an angry sea, and flocks of disturbed avians and other flying creatures regularly mobbed out into the air like bursts of gaudy shrapnel.
Blansher and Cordiale kept their birds tucked close to Jagdea’s lead.
“Umbra,” Jagdea voxed. “Turn zero-six-two west. Contacts presenting at nineteen kilometres and six thousand. Wait for my order to rise.”
“Read you, Lead.”
Jagdea had a feeling something was not quite right, and it wasn’t just the markedly different terrain. They were a good few minutes into the flight when she realised it was her own Bolt, the parts of the nose and wings she could see from the cockpit. She wasn’t yet used to the fact they were green. The crews at the FSB had sprayed them with a lime-green wash to aid concealment. She was so used to a grey shape encasing her.
Up in the cloudless blue, she caught a flash, a glint of sunlight on metal. A second later, she resolved tiny dots against the glare, and traces of white contrail.
“Umbra Two, Lead. I see vapour trails at three.”
“Got it, Two. The bastards are coming across above us. Weapons live, flight. Get ready to climb like hell.”
Five specks. No, six. Small. Razors, perhaps.
“On my mark… three, two, mark!”
The three pilots opened their throttles and heaved on their sticks, swinging the heavy Thunderbolts up and away from the forest hood into the clear sky. Jagdea could see the hostiles plainly now. Six Locusts in cruise formation.
Umbra was climbing as hard as their turbofans would allow, pressed firmly back in their seats. The bats appeared not to have seen them yet, but that would change very soon. Jagdea settled her hand around the stick grip, placing her thumb carefully on the fire stud.
Intercept in ten seconds, nine, eight…
Suddenly, startled like the birds that their jets had scared out of the treetops, the bats broke, their formation exploded.
But Umbra was already commi
tted.
“Divide and conquer,” Jagdea instructed.
She went straight up into the heart of the splitting pack, choosing a Locust that was vivid amber and striped with gold. It was already turning out, but she had fine lead time. She banked slightly and let it fly into her sights.
Squeeze.
Electric blue, the las-bursts zapped away from her nose cone. She let off three pairs of shots, and it was the second that caught the Locust squarely. Pieces of its hull flew off in a puff of smoke, and it flopped over on its back. Fire began to rush out of its underbelly, and it described a long, laboured dive down into the rainforest. Jagdea saw a flash deep beneath the thick canopy, and smoke and steam broiled up out of the trees.
Blansher’s chosen target, a bright blue machine with vile yellow insignia, evaded his first blasts, and managed a fine power dive under Blansher’s trajectory that Umbra Two couldn’t hope to follow. Blansher swung around and started to chase a copper-coloured Locust that was fleeing south. He came up, but the Locust was extending fast. The small enemy machines had a terrific turn of speed and climb rate. Blansher cursed, broke off and rolled back into the brawl.
Cordiale was locked onto a crimson bat that was trying to shake him by diving towards the forest. Accepting the invitation, Cordiale stooped, chasing the red speck into the green bosom of the forest. Levelling out at the tree-tops, the bat began to jink and switch, and Cordiale had to stand his plane on one wingtip and then the other to stick fast. He punched off a shot, missed, corrected and fired again.
Another miss.
“Tricksy little bastard…” Cordiale muttered, wrenched back and forth by the centrifugal force of the constant turns.
Above him, Jagdea was hunting down her second scalp. She had her eyes on a yellow bat that was breaking west, but abruptly rolled out as she heard a shrill lock warning. The blue Locust Blansher had lost on his first pass was on her back. It fired twice, gleaming streamers of bolter fire, but she dodged out of line each time and finally managed to throw it by hitting her speed brakes and viffing almost to a standstill. The blue hostile ripped by under her starboard wing, realised he’d been dummied, and broke right and high. Jagdea screwed over to follow its climb.