She found herself in a damp, echoing chamber. It smelled of rotting plyboard and salt water.
“What the hell is this?” she asked.
“Shut up and follow me,” he said.
They edged through the gloom, Kaminsky leading. Jagdea saw fitter trolleys, compact bowsers, shelf-racks of tools. There was a scent of promethium jelly in the air.
Kaminsky opened another hatch and daylight spilled through. “This way,” he said.
She followed him through the hatch and out onto a metal catwalk. They had entered a deep, flakboard-built hangar. The mouth of the bay, facing the sea, was open to the air, the floor cut away right down to the lip of the cliffs. Pale light flooded in through the opening. Jagdea could hear the breakers far away and below.
Directly beneath them, in the shadows, two Commonwealth Cyclones sat on steam catapult launch racks.
“Coastal defence,” said Kaminsky, clattering down the metal staircase ahead of her. “They haven’t been used in months, but I hoped they were still here.”
“My lord,” gasped Jagdea, following him down.
Kaminsky ran to the nearest machine, opened the cockpit door, and leaned in.
“It’s got electrics, but we’ll need fuel. And a primer can.”
Jagdea came up behind him. “And then what? Fly one out of here?”
He looked at her. “Exactly.”
“We can’t…” Jagdea began.
“Of course we can. You’ll quickly get the hang of it. Simple, basic, that’s all a Cyclone is.” Kaminsky ran back along the machine’s length, and opened the tank cocks. He hefted a fuelling line from nearby bowser and connected it, fumbling slightly because of his prosthetic hand.
“I can’t fly that,” Jagdea said.
Kaminsky started the bowser’s pump motor. The fuel line wriggled and flexed as pressurised liquid surged through it.
“I know you’re not used to props, but she’s real easy to handle, I promise,” he said, and hurried to the catapult stations at the back of the bay. Kaminsky threw some switches, and got a generator firing. Then he pulled down a handle that started the catapult’s steam engines, pumping up me piston track mechanism.
“No, Kaminsky,” Jagdea said. She held up her slung arm. “Even a machine like this needs both hands. Throttle and stick. Remember that, airman? With the best will in the cosmos, I can’t do it.”
Kaminsky came to halt. “I suppose you can’t,” he admitted. He seemed deflated.
“But you could,” she said.
“Me? I’m not rated airworthy.”
“Right now, this deep in the shit, I hardly think that’s the point any more. Let’s be pragmatic, shall we? I’m a wing leader. I’ll clear you as airworthy. I have the authority.”
“I’ll need your help,” he said, uncertainly.
“Anything,” she promised.
“Keep an eye on the fuel dial.”
Jagdea peered into the cockpit. The gauge was barely registering. “Slow,” she called. “How long?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes to full tolerance. The pumps aren’t famously efficient.”
Jagdea did what all pilots have done since the beginning of aviation. She leaned over and flicked the glass dial with the fingers of her good hand. As with all pilots since the beginning of aviation, it made no difference.
The steam pressure was rising. Between them, Jagdea and Kaminsky unhooked the support hawsers and suspension straps holding the Cyclone in place.
“Can you do a cockpit check?” Kaminsky asked.
“You’re more familiar with the layout.”
“Yeah, but there’s something I need to do.”
“What?”
“The record files. I think I should burn them. Not just leave them here.”
“I’ll do it,” Jagdea said. “You finish the prep.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. How long have we got?”
Kaminsky checked his chronometer, and then looked at the fuel gauge. “Ten minutes.”
“I’ll be five,” she promised, and hurried towards the stairs.
Kaminsky checked the catapult controls. They’d reached full pressure. He locked them off and tripped the lever that switched release control to the plane itself. Then he went to the bowser. Its pump seemed to be ailing.
“Come on!” he hissed. There wasn’t time to find another and switch over.
He clambered into the tiny cockpit.
He’d done a few hundred hours on Cyclones. It was oddly familiar. He tested the electrics, the glycol levels, the radiator levers. Then he checked the trim, leaning out of the cockpit to look backwards as he pitched and turned the stick and the rudder bar, watching the ailerons and the fin respond obediently.
“Come on, Jagdea,” he hissed. He looked at the fuel gauge. It was still so very low. “And come on pump,” he added.
In the upper part of the shed, Jagdea fumbled around and filled a can with liquid promethium from one of the tank trolleys. It was hard to do, one-handed. The only light came in under the buckled shutter. Hefting the heavy can in her right hand, she ducked out into the open air.
A few papers from the truck’s load were fluttering free in the breeze. Jagdea set the sloshing can up on the tail gate and then hauled herself up after it.
She started to spill fuel onto the record boxes. It was a huge effort. She felt stupid and weak, having to set the can down so often to catch her breath.
She heard an odd, clattering noise.
She resumed the work dousing the entire pile. Then she jumped down, biting back the urge to cry out as her left arm jarred, and poured the last of the can into the truck’s cab.
That sound again. Not a clattering so much as hammering. Like steel pistons.
She checked her chronometer. She’d already been five minutes.
Then there was the matter of ignition.
Jagdea cursed herself for not thinking it through.
She hurried back into the shed, and started to search in the gloom. Tool boxes crashed over. Drawers upturned. Something. Anything.
Nothing.
Panting, she stepped back. On the flakboard wall, a distress gun hung on a hook in a glass-fronted box. She picked up a ten mil wrench and smashed the box off the wall.
The distress gun was smooth and old, and it had started to rust. She snapped its barrel open and rummaged for a shell.
That noise, again. Clatter clatter. Louder.
She chambered the flare cartridge and closed the gun, then ducked back outside, aimed it at Kaminsky’s truck and—
Hesitated.
Jagdea took several long paces backwards and aimed again. She fired.
The flare barked out, white hot, struck the side of the transport and ricocheted off up into the air, where it spattered out streamers of green fire.
“Shit!” she cried, and ran back into the shed to find another shell.
The clattering noise was getting much louder.
She found another flare and tucked a spare into her belt for good measure. Loading the distress gun, she ran outside again.
The glow of the first flare was beginning to subside. She raised the gun again.
To her right, at the mouth of the yard, a stalk tank strode into view.
It was painted bright red. Its striding metal limbs screwed it around and it galloped in down the access way, hunting for the source of the distress flare.
Clatter clatter clatter went its feet.
Behind it, Blood Pact troopers ran in squads, weapons raised.
Jagdea fired the distress gun. The flare struck the record boxes and in an instant, the entire vehicle was consumed in broiling fire.
The heat-blast knocked her over.
Approaching, the stalk tank started firing. Its heavy laser batteries recoiled and spat as they fired off volleys at the sheds.
Jagdea got up and ran towards the broken shutter. Inside, she kept running, colliding with a munitions cart and bruising her thigh. She yelped and pulled he
r head down as the ferocious shots of the stalk tank punched through the flakboard wall behind her, splintering holes, letting in daylight. The air was full of swirling fibres and ash.
She darted through the hatch, onto the catwalk and down the stairs.
“We have to go! Now!” she was shouting.
“We’re not fully fuelled!” Kaminsky yelled back from the open cockpit.
“Tough!” she replied. She ran to the bowser, deactivated the pump, and then struggled to disconnect the line from the cock.
“Just start her up!” she screamed.
“I’ve not connected the primer—” Kaminsky yelled back.
“No time! Just do it!”
Kaminsky threw the starter switches. The port engine growled, turned over and then burst into raging life, kicking out blue smoke from its exhausts.
The starboard engine cycled once and then froze.
Jagdea clambered into the cockpit.
“Come on!” she urged. She could heard sustained lasfire above them.
“Trying!” Kaminsky yelled over the single, roaring engine.
He switched off the starboard power plant, fluffed the throttle, and opened the choke.
“We don’t have much time,” Jagdea said. She closed her door, and snapped up.
Kaminsky turned the starboard engine over again. Dry fire. Again. Another cough. Again.
This time it took. The prop howled into life. They both felt the airframe shaking.
“Okay, we’re good,” Jagdea said.
In the pilot’s seat, Kaminsky seemed to freeze.
“You all right?” asked Jagdea.
“It’s… been a while. Didn’t think I’d ever—”
“Kaminsky, will you shut up? We don’t have time for the whole emotional thing now.”
“Right. Of course.”
Jagdea threw some of the switches. “Launcher at pressure. Current on. Armed.”
“Props at thrust,” he said.
“So… gun it,” she replied with a smile.
The hangar was dogged with dense smoke from the engines.
“Jagdea?”
“What?”
“Help me. Help me fit my hand on the stick.”
“Of course. Sorry.” She leaned over, closing his prosthetic hand around the control stick. His other hand was busy regulating the twin throttles.
“Now I need you to hit the release,” he said.
“Okay. Ready?”
“No. So just do it,” said August Kaminsky.
Jagdea hit the switch. The steam catapult engaged and flicked their Cyclone out of the hangar and into the air with bone-jolting force. For a second, it began to drop, but Kaminsky nursed it, and opened the throttles, lifting the delta wing-up over the coast in a fast ascent.
Jagdea felt the steady pun of the props and smiled.
“How’s that feel, mister?” she asked.
He was grinning. “Like coming home. You torch my truck?”
“As promised.”
They rose, banked around and turned east. “Smooth,” said Jagdea.
“Old habits,” said Kaminsky. He was grinning.
They were rising to about a thousand metres when the Cyclone’s antiquated detector systems emitted a warning beep.
“Someone’s got us!” Jagdea cried.
“Where? I can’t see him?”
“I don’t know! What does the auspex say?”
“This bird isn’t equipped with an auspex.”
“Oh frigging great!” Jagdea began craning her head around, turning as far as she could to scan out of the Cyclone’s bubble nose.
“Locust! Eleven o’clock!” she yelled.
She got a brief glimpse of a bright red bat stooping in, cannons lit, then Kaminsky turned the Cyclone over in a suicidal bank.
“Kaminsky! Kaminsky!”
“Will you shut up, woman? Will you ever shut up?” The sea rushed towards them. Kaminsky suddenly leaned on the throttles and rolled the Cyclone. “Guns,” he stammered.
“Uhh!” Negative G was slamming at her. “What?”
“Guns, dammit, Jagdea! I can’t press the gun stud! I don’t have a thumb! You’ll have to do it.”
She wrestled over, all her blood in her feet, fighting against the centrifugal force of the turning Cyclone. She clamped her fist over his dead, prosthetic hand.
“Tell me when!”
“Wait!”
He feathered the Cyclone up on a corkscrew and then wafered it down violently as the Locust slipped under them.
“How the hell did you do that?” she yelled. “You just out-danced a vector-thrust machine!”
“Shut the hell up and shoot,” Kaminsky replied. “Fire! Just fire! Fire!”
He rolled the Cyclone hard and Jagdea heard the sudden, sweet sound of target lock. She clamped her hands around the grip. Around his plastek hand.
Flame-flash blitzed from the Cyclone’s gun ports. The Locust banked out, rising hard.
Then it ignited and blew apart.
“Holy hell!” Jagdea whooped.
“Got him,” hissed Kaminsky.
“Yes you did,” said Jagdea, as Kaminsky banked the Cyclone east. “Yes, you damn well did.”
OPERATE TO DENY
THE MIDWINTER ISLANDS
Imperial year 773.M41, day 267 - day 269
DAY 267
Lucerna AB, 12.30
Marquall was dozing in his flightsuit when the hooters started their strident blaring throughout the base’s deep, rock-cut hallways and buried decks. He jumped up out of his seat, grabbed his helmet, and ran out of the dispersal room, down the narrow companionway onto the floor of the hangar bay. Zemmic and Ranfre were close behind him, and Van Tull followed them, though more slowly. Van Tull’s airline had taken a hit during the exit from Theda, causing an intermix fault that had allowed carbon dioxide to leak, undetected, into his supply. By the time he’d reached Lucerna, he’d been suffering from borderline hypoxia and had only just made it down.
Marquall paused and let Zemmic and Ranfre go by. “You okay?” he asked Van Tull.
“Four-A,” said the older pilot. He was over the worst effects, or so he said. But he was now suffering with bleeding gums and sinuses, and kept dabbing at his mouth and nose with a folded handkerchief, like a consumptive. “Sure?”
“I’ll be fine once I’m up,” Van Tull said flatly.
They hurried across the bare stone floor onto the rigid deck plating. The entire air-base had been hollowed out of the island’s rock. Hangar three, assigned to Umbra, was a gigantic rectangular cave, its floors and walls smoothed by industrial mason-cutters. Both ends of the cave, north and south, were open to the sky.
The Thunderbolts of Umbra Flight waited, lined up in three ranks facing the south. Fitter teams were disengaging the last of the cables and fuelling lines, and whirring elevator platforms carried the empty munitions trolleys down to lower levels.
Cordiale and Del Ruth were already with their planes. Blansher ran out across the gratings of the deck, reading a wafer of printout paper.
“Air cover, evac protection!” he shouted. “Immediate launch, track six-nine-two, no higher than two thousand.”
There was a chorus of acknowledgements and the pilots dropped into their cockpits. The chief fitter of each plane crew made sure his pilot was secure, closed the canopy then signalled to the primer technician to start as he jumped off the wing. Each primer cart fired and the Thunderbolt engines began to turn over. Within moments, the engine noise in the enclosed space was so loud that it drowned out the screeching hooters.
Deck crews with goggles and ear protectors took up position in front of the formation, directing with lumin paddles. Signal to go.
In the front rank were Blansher and Ranfre. Behind them, Marquall, Cordiale and Del Ruth. The third rank was Van Tull and Zemmic. The flight rose up in a swaying hover almost simultaneously. The deck chief swung both his lumin paddles together and pointed, then dropped down onto one knee, head down in a
braced position as the front rank rushed out over him, swiftly followed by the second and the third.
They came out into the open, exiting the hangar through a rectangular slot in the sheer cliff face. The sea was two hundred metres below them. The seven machines immediately started to turn and come onto their track.
The sky was greenish-blue with two-tenths of long, wispy cloud. The sea was a richer, more intense green. Lucerna Island dropped away behind them, a plateau of craggy pink granite jutting out of the water. Marquall could see the AA defences nested in the cliffs and on the headlands. Two more flights of Thunderbolts were coming up after Umbra from other hangar mouths. Far below, he could see the masses of shipping and barges that had been arriving at the island’s jetties for the last twelve hours.
They climbed higher, steady. Marquall adjusted his nitrous mix carefully. He watched the formation around him, and kept his eyes on the auspex returns of the other Thunderbolt wings that were running below and behind them. From this altitude, he could see out across the range of the Midwinter Islands, an archipelago of pink atolls that filled nearly seven hundred thousand square kilometres of ocean at the eastern end of the Zophonian Sea. It was to the larger of these islands, places like Lucerna which had airbases and ports, that the majority of the planes, transports and extraction barges from Theda had fled.
The islet-speckled sea below him was full of shipping, powering east towards safe ports in the island chain. The auspex was also alive with air contacts. A few Imperial machines were still heading in from the mainland retreat, but the rest of the activity was Navy wings, coming back out of their new island bases to guard sea convoys or hunt for Archenemy intruders. Marquall could see the patterns of a large dogfight going on, twelve kilometres south of them, and another, more condensed, nineteen kilometres to the south-west. To the east, there was a progressive intercept on a bomber formation, and another large air-brawl, down at low level amongst the islands.
Visually, the southern horizon line was a smudged belt of black, at odds with the clarity of the clean sky and the sparkling sea. That was the smoke line, the vapour of death and destruction that crowned the Thedan coast for hundreds of kilometres. The filthy mark of the Archenemy, branded across his newly-taken territory.