“Pursuit?” asked Marquall.
The boy’s blood was evidently up.
“Negative, Eight. Turn for home.”
They cruised back through what was now night, each pilot isolated in the darkness. Nine kilometres from Gocel FSB, a large area of forest was ablaze.
In the darkness, the nets were back and the lumin barrettes were lit. Umbra One, Two and Eight followed the shine down and settled perfectly on their mats.
Lake Gocel FSB, 21.02
Racklae hauled Marquall out of his machine. The fitters were running in for after flight. Vapour fumed the pad. Already, the shimmer netting was closing, the barrettes had been killed, and stealth lighting resumed over the base.
Marquall pulled off his helmet. The night air smelled good. Insects were screaming in the thickets and under the dark trees.
“Okay, pilot?” Racklae asked.
“About time I started a tally,” Marquall said. Racklae grinned. It wasn’t done for a pilot to stripe up a single kill. But once it was more than one…
“How many should I put, sir?” Racklae asked.
“Keep it modest. I got another one, Racks.”
“Number two!” Racklae yelled, and the ground crew began jumping around and cheering. Several ran up to shake Marquall by the hand.
“There was a fire in the forest,” Marquall said, trying to make himself heard over the jubilation.
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir,” Racklae said. “You’d better go to dispersal.”
Marquall nodded, and patted Nine-Nine’s flank.
“Look after her, Racks,” he said.
“Will do, sir,” said the chief.
The fitter crew gave him a series of hearty cheers as he left the matt-deck. Weighed down by his flight armour, Marquall limped down the path through the trees towards Operations.
There was a commotion there. Still wearing their flight gear, Larice Asche and Zemmic were in the process of recounting some furious dogfight to Del Ruth, Cordiale, Ranfre and Van Tull. Base crew, and some Raptor pilots gathered around, listening.
Marquall saw Blansher standing in the shadows of the awning outside Operations, talking to someone.
He went across. The cries and laughter from the gaggle of pilots was loud and vigorous.
It was Kautas standing with Blansher. Both men were smoking lho-sticks. Marquall saw how pale and drawn Blansher was. The older man smiled as he saw Marquall.
“Over here, Vander,” he called.
Blansher shook Marquall’s hand. “Thanks,” he said.
“For what?”
“I think that double stern attack might have stung me if you hadn’t been chasing them down.”
“Rubbish. You got yourself out of that one.”
Blansher shrugged. “Well done, by the way. Two, was it?”
“I wish,” said Marquall. “One, clean and definite. I hit another, but he stayed up.”
Kautas reached into his robe pocket with his left hand, pulled out a silver stick case, and opened it, offering the contents to Marquall.
“No thanks, father,” said Marquall.
“Such a clean-living boy,” Kautas said to Blansher as he put the lho-stick case away. In his other hand, the priest held a bottle of amasec. “How about this, then?”
Marquall took the bottle and knocked off a finger that burned in his mouth, then his throat, then his belly. He handed the bottle to Blansher.
“To your three kills, sir. What is it now?”
Blansher took a swig. “I forget, Vander.” He passed the bottle back to the priest.
“Do we know what happened yet?” Marquall asked.
“Not entirely. What I’ve been told is the flight got into serious trouble on the edge of the desert. The Lightnings had picked up something important, and then there were hostiles all over them like a swarm. Forty-plus machines. From what Asche has said, it must have been a monster of a fight. One of the Lightnings was stung almost immediately. Then another of them got a kill, and was promptly killed itself. Meanwhile our three went into the brawl. Waldon splashed two and then, ammo zilch, he pulled out and started to nursemaid the remaining Lightning, which had been shot to crap and was running home. Asche and Zemmic stayed on station, and kept going until they were out, trying to buy Waldon and the Lightning some time to get clear. We’re waiting for gun-pict confirmation, but allegedly Zemmic bagged four, and our dear Larice got nine.”
“Nine?”
“That’s what she says,” Blansher nodded.
Blansher had made three, Jagdea two. Amazing scores for one sortie. Zemmic himself put them to shame. But nine.
Nine.
That made Marquall’s triumphant one seem so paltry.
“Nine?” Marquall said again.
“Seems so,” said Blansher.
“She’s a foxy one,” said Kautas.
“That must be a record,” Marquall murmured.
“I’ve not heard anything to match it,” agreed Blansher.
The bottle came back to Marquall. He wiped the snout and took another sip.
Nearby, the crews were clapping and cheering Asche as she reached the climax of her turn-by-turn account. Knocking back a drink, she leaned over and mashed her lips into Zemmic’s. There was laughter and whoops.
Zemmic. A clean four. The new hot stuff. The new one with the shine.
Marquall turned away. “Who belonged to the fire I saw?” he asked.
Blansher looked down. “Waldon,” he said.
Waldon had guarded the wounded Lightning back home, every step of the way. Just short of the FSB, his damaged Bolt had given up and dropped nose-down into the rainforest. No chute, according to their Lightning pilot, who had landed safely. No chute.
Someone came out under the awning behind Marquall, and Blansher stiffened. Marquall turned. It was Jagdea. Oil still smeared her face. She looked grim. “Come in,” she said.
The three of them crossed to her.
“What about the others?” Blansher asked.
“Leave them,” Jagdea said. “They’re having fun. I don’t want to spoil it.”
They walked into Operations. Blansher and the priest stubbed out their sticks before entering.
Blaguer was there, leaning over a display intently with Oberlitz. The operators sat at their stations.
Commander Marcinon sat at a desk, reviewing pict slides on a back-lit writing slope.
“Kills confirmed,” Jagdea said. “Two for me, three for Mil. One for you, Vander. Good work.”
“Thank you, mamzel.”
“Zemmic got his four. Turns out, from the picts, Asche got ten.” Kautas whistled.
“Unheard of,” said Jagdea. “Though by the look of the footage, the sky was so full of bats it would have been hard not to hit something.”
“Why so grim?” Blansher asked her.
“We’ve studied the recon data the Lightning was so desperate to bring home.”
Jagdea went over to the light table and cycled up some images into the projector. Hololithic shapes formed in the air.
“What’s that?” said Kautas. “I can’t—”
“That’s armour, father,” said Jagdea. “Seen from above at high altitude. Stalk tanks mostly, but also lines of main battle tanks, troop transporters and some super-heavies.”
“It just looks like specks,” Kautas said.
Marquall stiffened. He was more used to reading aerial picts than the priest.
“Holy Throne…” he sighed.
“Summary count is nine thousand units,” Jagdea said. “Coming in out of the deserts. These enlargements here modify for dust cover. See this? Identified as the sigil markings of the Blood Pact.”
“They’re coming north,” whispered Blansher.
“Undoubtedly,” said Marcinon, coming over to join them. “The Archenemy clearly believes its air war has been successful in hammering the Littoral. The ground forces of Chaos are now invading. I have sent word to the coast. The evacuation is being stepped up. I… I somehow doubt we will be ready in time.”
“What about us?” asked Marquall.
“Us, boy?” Marcinon asked.
“Sir, we’re in the direct path of this. The enemy land forces must already be in the forests.”
“Yes. Auspex returns paint them sixty kilometres south and moving fast. Operations has ordered our immediate withdrawal. Us, and all the other FSBs in the forest region. Transports will arrive tomorrow at 08.00 hours.”
Jagdea looked at Marquall and saw his sadness. “Time to retreat,” she said. “It happens.”
Lake Gocel FSB, 06.30
The extraction transports were an hour and a half away. Marquall watched the dawn come up. All through that long, humid night, the personnel of the base had moved with a single purpose, crating up equipment and spares, bagging possessions, collapsing habitents and getting them stowed, deactivating secondary detection systems. The prefabs would have to be left, and the mats and the ramps probably. Certainly the ring defences. The pilots would fly the planes out, the transports would extract the rest.
Marquall had spent the small hours of the night lugging packages around and making sure his fitters were clearing out swiftly. Racklae insisted they run a full pre-flight on Nine-Nine before they went, and told Marquall plainly that two fitters would stay on station to see him aloft.
The pathways were full of hurrying bodies under the lamps, and the huffing shapes of laden Sentinels.
Everyone was active and alert. No, not everyone. Several of Umbra Flight had drunk too much enjoying Larice Asche’s celebration, and had to be whipped into shape by Jagdea and Blansher.
Asche herself, and Zemmic, had disappeared. Their tent-mates, Del Ruth and Cordiale, picked up their gear. Marquall volunteered to gather up Waldon’s belongings, but Jagdea said she’d do that herself.
The sun was just rising. There was rain in the air, beating on the leaf canopy and the shimmer nets. It was cold.
Weary, strung out, Marquall sat down by a tree bowl, and wiped the rain off his face. He had to go to dispersal to suit up, and then to his bird in time for the pull out.
Shades hurried past him along the pathway. Fitters carrying crates. A power lifter.
He jumped as he heard a strange, crackling noise. It went on for some seconds, so odd and loud, that he failed to realise at first that his alarm bracelet was sounding.
Panic hit the base.
Marquall realised that the crackling noise was the sound of the automated Tarantula guns along the perimeter firing out into the forest.
They’d been tripped.
“Oh hell!” he yelped and leapt up. His kit was nearby, and he reached into the haversack, yanking out his service pistol and a belt of battery clips.
There was a bright flash in the trees ahead of him as something went off. Marquall could smell fyceline and burning oil. Gunfire chattered.
The enemy had arrived, far earlier than expected.
Lasfire zipped through the air, ripping apart shimmer nets and sections of the arboreal canopy. The chunter of the Tarantulas increased.
“Throne alive!” Marquall said. Klaxons were now wailing. Pistol raised, he ran across to one of the maintenance shelters and ducked inside.
Heavy gauge lasfire crisped the air outside. The flak-board shivered.
Marquall ran across the floor space of the shelter and fell over something.
“What the bloody hell…?” a voice murmured.
Marquall looked down. Asche and Zemmic, both naked, were curled up together, half-covered by a section of blast curtain.
“Marquall?” Larice narrowed her eyes, bleary and annoyed. “There better be a bloody good reason why—”
A shelter nearby exploded loudly, raining debris out.
“Shit!” Larice Asche said, leaping up and pulling on her flight pants. She kicked Zemmic.
“Get up! Wake up!” she cried at him.
Zemmic sat up, blinking.
Asche had got her vest on now. She turned to Marquall. “What’s the situation?” she said.
“They’ve found us,” Marquall replied. He was hunkered in the opposite doorway, looking out, gun ready. “I think they—”
He shut up quickly. Three figures, armoured in red, were running up towards the side of the shelter. Without thinking, Marquall leaned out and shot the first one through the head.
He dropped hard.
Shaking, Marquall realised the warrior had been wearing a snarling mask of black metal. Blood Pact.
Blood Pact.
Shots ripped his way, punching holes in the side of the shelter. Her boots still undone, Asche joined him by the doorway, and started shooting her own service pistol into the trees.
“Where’s Zemmic?” Marquall asked.
“Running? Who cares?” Asche replied. She fired again.
Bright yellow, a stalk tank ripped into the outer clearing of the concealed base. Its underslung turrets recoiled as they spat out bursts of heavy las.
A section of the maintenance block exploded, sending shingles and pieces of spar into the sky. A kinderwood nee creaked and fell over. Stripped-away shimmer netting revealed pale slices of dawn sky. The clattering stalk tank felled more trees, and their collapse severed a series of power cables that showered white crumbs of light out in a savage flurry.
The Blood Pact warriors rushed them. Marquall and Asche, decently covered, opened fire into the charging figures and killed both of them. It took a surprising number of shots to stop the enemy shock troopers. The necessary blasts exhausted their clips.
Asche threw up noisily.
“Not so easy when it’s face-to-face, eh?” Marquall asked, dragging the retching girl upright.
“It’s the drink, you idiot,” she coughed, spitting.
Lasfire tore past them. The stalk tank reached one of the matt-decks.
A Commonwealth trooper with a tube launcher killed it dead. The blast tore out a section of the canopy and lifted smoke into the air clear of the forest.
Calm returned for a while. The attack had been from an advance force. Marquall prayed no more would arrive until the final minutes of the evacuation had counted off. Just before eight, they heard the sound of Navy mass-lifters powering in across the lake. The huge transporters settled on the shoreline mud and opened their gaping maws to accept the lines of aircrew personnel, fitter teams and Sentinels. Pack after pack of machinery and material was carried on board.
About then, drawn in by the land attack, the enemy air cover reached Gocel. The base’s planes were just beginning to lift off.