Kaminsky followed the fitter across to the clutch of crewmen around the vox set. Blansher was tuning the dial. Ranfre, Zemmic and Del Ruth were crowded round amongst the techs. At least Kaminsky was pretty sure that’s who they were. He’d only just been told the other pilots’ names.
“What’s going on?” he asked Zemmic. The young man was playing with a chain of lucky charms.
“Jag’s gone into a Tormentor formation,” Zemmic said. “And now they got bats. Bad bats. The Killer’s there.”
“The Killer?” Kaminsky asked.
“The pearl-white bastard,” said Zemmic.
Over the Midwinters, 14.33
Viltry screamed his Bolt round. The fighter pack was all over them. He tried to twist out. Jagdea and one of the Orbis birds swept in under him crosswise, gunning. He saw a Kodiak explode in mid-air, stung by a red bat.
He got a brief warning
ping
and rolled. A black Razor was trying to tag him. Viltry swept down and, ignoring the turret ordnance whipping up at him, plunged in amongst the Tormentor formation. The Razor slowed, unwilling to risk hitting one of the bombers it was supposed to be protecting.
Pleased with his ruse, Viltry throttled hard and came back up through the formation, this time with his guns alight. Firing impaired his climb rate, but it was worth it. As he came up diagonally under a Tormentor, he hit it two or three times. Its engines began to gush blue vapour.
Rising clear, Viltry could no longer spot the black bat.
But there was the pearl-white Razor, the leader of the enemy pack. It came around about five hundred metres starboard of him, moving a lot faster than Viltry’s machine, and dipped low. Another Thunderbolt, Orbis Six, was ascending past it.
“Orbis Six! Watch yourself!” Viltry called.
The pearl-white Razor executed a perfect viff correction, a deft little simultaneous climb-and-slide, and spat fire at Orbis Six.
Hit, the Thunderbolt folded, spraying out burning fuel.
The lead Razor was already climbing out, hunting for another target. Viltry started to go after it, but suddenly found he had his hands full evading hard as the black bat reappeared.
Jagdea and Cordiale banked together, and began chasing a red bat down towards the formation. What had been clean, bright air was now thick with exhaust trails, vapour, bars of smoke and weapons discharge residue. Nevertheless, she could see the white bat.
The red Razor they were after was beginning to outrun them. She gave up on it and banked out, searching for the white bat again in the chaos of the rolling dogfight.
A black Razor chopped across her, head to head, and they traded shots. She checked her fuel. Low. The demands of the brawl had really emptied the tanks.
“Umbra Flight, fuel status?”
Cordiale responded, then Viltry and finally Marquall. All of them were virtually running on empty like her. “Lead instructs flight, disengage and turn for home.”
“Umbra Four, copy.”
“Umbra Eleven, yes ma’am.”
“Marquall? Umbra Eight? Respond.”
Marquall had just spotted the white hostile too, and recognised it at once. Most definitely the one that had nearly killed him on his second sortie, the bat that had claimed the Apostle.
“Umbra Eight?”
“One moment, Lead.”
He turned towards the bat, but immediately had to crank away because he had inadvertently run into the range of a pair of cruising Tormentors. Marquall pushed Nine-Nine’s throttle, dropped the nose and looped in under the bomber string, taking a futile pot-shot at the now-ascending white Razor. Another bat started firing at him as it crossed his two and Marquall banked, barely avoiding a Tormentor that was dropping, engines burning.
“Umbra Eight! Break off now!” Jagdea sounded mad.
Marquall heard a persistent warning chime. Fuel limit reached.
“Copy that, Leader. I’m coming.”
He took one look back, and saw to his dismay that the white bat had lined up on Orbis Leader.
“Orbis Lead! Break! Break wild!” Marquall yelled.
Orbis Leader turned to the right. Cannon fire from the white bat chewed his Bolt into pieces. The debris flew out on a spear of flame for almost half a kilometre.
Marquall climbed out of the dogfight, chasing the other three Umbra birds.
“Did you see?” he voxed. “Did you see? That damned white Razor! He got Orbis Leader!”
“I saw,” Jagdea replied. She felt nothing except numb and sore from the physical extremes of the engagement. She knew the misery would hit her later. Hayyes had been her friend since flight school.
Right now, only one thing stuck in her mind. In the turmoil of the last part of the clash, she’d finally remembered why she’d recognised Eads’s junior.
Lucerna AB, 15.10
The noise of the jets died away. As Jagdea and her wing-men dismounted, the fitter teams and the other flight pilots applauded. Jagdea knew they were saluting a hell of a fight, a clutch of good kills, and the fact that all four were back alive. They were also showing support for Viltry on his successful debut.
But it felt wrong. Not just because of Hayyes. How many Imperial planes had she seen go down in that one brawl? Men were dying at a hell of a rate.
“Good work,” she said to Cordiale, who had sat down on the deck to unlace his boots and massage circulation back into his feet. Exposure to multiple negative G events often left a pilot with pins and needles, or worse.
“Thanks, commander,” he said.
Viltry was removing his helmet. He looked pale, shaken, but there was a grin on his face.
“Enjoy that?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“You did well, Viltry. Like you’ve been on Thunderbolts for years.”
He smoothed his sweat-flattened hair. “I must admit it was fun cutting loose in something so agile. You forget how heavy Marauders are.”
Marquall was just climbing down from Nine-Nine.
“Nice going, Marquall,” she said. “You kept your head.” She dropped her voice so only he could hear her. “Don’t
ever
ignore a direct instruction again, pilot. I called you out because it was time to go. That happens, you obey without question. Are we clear on that?”
He looked at the deck. “Yes, commander.”
She walked away. “Rearm and refuel, please!” she shouted to the fitter crews, knowing they were already on it.
A tall man in a Commonwealth uniform was waiting for her with Blansher.
“Major Frans Scalter,” Blansher said, by way of introduction. Jagdea shook Scalter’s hand and looked him up and down. Scalter had a slightly stunned expression.
“I take it you’ve explained the basics to Major Scalter, Mil?”
“I took the liberty of spoiling your surprise, commander.”
Jagdea looked at Scalter. “Well, major? Are you interested in taking a place in my flight? Commander Eads has given you his personal recommendation.”
Scalter opened his mouth, but couldn’t find any words immediately. He nodded, and then said, “I would be honoured, Commander Jagdea. I have been longing to get the chance to fly for my home world again.”
“That’s agreed then. Good. Your designation will be Umbra Seven. Mil, if you’re busy with Kaminsky, find someone like Del Ruth or Cordiale to get Mr Scalter oriented, kitted up, and checked out on a simulator.”
“Yes, mamzel,” said Blansher. “You off somewhere?”
“I won’t be long,” said Jagdea.
Marquall stood by his bird for a while, stripping off his jacket and gloves, not wanting to mix with the others.
“Everything all right, sir?” asked Racklae.
“Fine,” he replied. He was hardly going to tell his fitter that he was still smarting from the dressing down Jagdea had given him. At least she’d had the decency not to do it in front of the others.
He wandered across the hangar space, through the teams of working fitters, skirting a power lifter as it offered up munitions drums, stopping to let an electric bowser trundle past.
Kaminsky was seated on a jerry can beside his Thunderbolt, carefully studying a data-slate of specifications and procedures.
“Hi,” said Marquall.
The shockingly-scarred face tilted up at him. “Hello. Marquall, right?”
“Yeah. So… you got your wish, then?”
“I beg your pardon?” Kaminsky replied.
“That night in Zara’s. You said you’d give anything to be like me. To fly again.”
“Ah, I did, didn’t I?”
Marquall nodded. “I can’t quite remember if it was before or after you called me a bastard and a waste of space, and suggested I shot myself to make the sector a better place.”
“Damn,” said Kaminsky. He put the slate down carefully, but still did not get to his feet. “I was kinda hoping you’d forgotten about that. Yes, I got my wish, Marquall. And what about you? Fallen off any barstools recently?”
Marquall coloured. “No,” he said.
Kaminsky picked up the slate and started to read it again. “Then it sounds like things are working out for both of us,” he said.
Lucerna AB, 16.01
Eads had quarters in the lower levels of the base. The evacuation influx had put huge pressure on accommodation. The rock cut passages down here smelled damp, and the glow globe lighting was poor. Some of the rooms she saw were storage bays, and she was sure the quarters she passed had also been storage bays until recently.
She found Eads’s room and knocked on the metal hatch. After a moment, it opened and Darrow peered out.
“Commander Jagdea?”
“I’ve come to see Eads.”
“Yes, mamzel. He’s expecting you.”
Darrow opened the door and let her in. The room was small and bare. Litter had been swept into one corner. There was a camp table and two chairs, an unmade cot, and a bottle of amasec with a dirty glass.
The one concession to comfort was an old, tatty armchair. Eads was sitting in it, apparently asleep.
“I can come back,” Jagdea whispered.
“I’m awake, Jagdea. Just resting my thoughts. It was a long and demanding shift.”
Darrow collected up a stack of data-slates and paper files from the table.
“I was just finishing the shift reports,” he told Jagdea. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“No, stay,” she said. He paused, and put the paperwork back down.
“Excuse the drabness,” said Eads. “I’m told it’s drab. I can’t help it. I came out of Theda with just the clothes I was standing up in. Take a seat and let’s get down to business.”
Jagdea sat down, and put the folder she was carrying on the table. “I saw the white bat today,” she said.
“Did you?” said Eads. “That devil’s still out there, then?”
“It reminded me of the notice of report that had been circulated at the time of the Lida incident. This report,” she said, tapping the folder. “It contains a written account of a brawl with the bat. Very useful, very cautionary. It’s been required reading for the Navy wings. You wrote it, didn’t you, Darrow?”
“I did, commander,” the young man replied.
The report also contained your commanding officer’s account. “I forget his name.”
“Major Heckel,” Darrow said.
“Major Heckel. Not confined by modesty as you were in your part of the file, he describes the most extraordinary piece of flying.”
“Heckel was not exaggerating,” said Eads quietly. “He said it was one of the most gifted displays of natural ability he’d ever seen.”
“So it seems,” said Jagdea. “Out-running an expert killer, probably an echelon commander, a pilot at the height of his powers. What’s more, doing it in a totally out-classed machine that lacked the speed, power and vector abilities of the enemy’s bat. What puzzles me is this, Commander Eads. When I came to you asking for recommendations, you chose to ignore the young pilot serving with you on a daily basis.” Eads was silent.
“Commander?” Darrow said softly. “May I ask… recommendations for what?”
“My wing is short a frontline pilot, Darrow.”
“You… you’d consider me?” he said, astonished.
“I understand you’ve been clocking simulator time on Thunderbolts,” Jagdea said.
“I have,” said Darrow. “Sixty hours. Who told you?”
“Major Scalter. So where does this leave us?”
Eads sat forward, his hands on his knees. “Enric’s not the one you’re looking for, commander,” he said.
“Why not?” Darrow asked sharply. “I’m sorry, sir,” he added, adjusting his tone. “Why not, sir?”
Eads addressed his answer to Jagdea. “He’s barely a cadet, Jagdea! His combat hours are minimal. Oh, he’s got talent. But that one dogfight? It was luck. He got very lucky indeed. If you send him into combat now, he will die. He’s not ready. My recommendation would be an act of murder.”
Darrow rose to his feet. “I disagree, sir.”
“It’s not up to you, Enric,” Eads said.
“Isn’t it?” Jagdea asked.
“How will I ever be ready if I don’t get the experience?” Darrow said.
“This is not the time,” said Eads.
“Oh, I think there’s no time like it,” said Jagdea. “Enothis needs all her pilots for this war, Commander Eads. If men like Darrow don’t try, then there may not be a future available for other chances.”
“I won’t have his blood on my conscience,” said Eads emphatically. “I will not recommend him.”
Jagdea looked at Darrow. “I think it’s up to an individual wing leader to decide if she needs a man to be recommended before she takes him. Your objection is noted, commander, and your loyalty in trying to protect him is admirable. Cadet Darrow, I’m offering you that place. Will you take it?”
“Yes, commander. Gladly.” Darrow looked over at Eads. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Jagdea got to her feet and collected her folder. “You’ll have to report immediately, Darrow. You can come with me now.”
They walked to the hatch. In the doorway, Darrow turned and saluted crisply. “Call that a salute?” Eads said.
“Yes, sir.”
Eads rose to his feet stiffly, and then saluted back. “That’s a salute,” he said, and sat down again. “Good luck, son. Prove me wrong.”
Darrow followed Jagdea down the passageways to one of the main staircases. They clattered up the stone steps, side by side. “You alright?” she asked him.
“Yes, mamzel. I’m very fond of the commander. It’s sad to see him upset like that.”