“Yes,” said Viltry.
“So do I,” said Blansher. “I’ve been on to Operations. They’re jumpy. They know this is odd. Every base in the Zophonian is on standby.”
“Get the crews up and prepped,” she said.
Viltry nodded and hurried off.
“Something you said,” Blansher remarked.
“What?”
“That we could fend them off, deny them, unless they sent everything they had at us at once.”
“I must stop talking so much,” said Jagdea.
“Why would they all be down, Bree? All of them? Every last machine? Why would they be doing that if they weren’t aiming and fuelling and fitting their entire air command?”
A buzzer sounded and Jagdea jumped. It was the vox intercom. Blansher lifted the set and answered. “Hangar three Umbra. Yes, sir. I see. Show us ready.”
He hung up. “We’ve just gone to primary standby. Long range auspex has detected a significant background temperature rise in the air above the southern coast.”
“Meaning?”
He shrugged. “Maybe an awful lot of engines just started up at the same time.”
The hangar lights came on. Fitters scrambled to perform last minute pre-flight. Only the vaguest hint of dawn fell in through the hangar mouth. Marquall could smell the cold sea, the air. He fought his nerves. Everyone was tense. Some because they seemed to know what might be coming. Others precisely because they did not.
“All right, Vander?” Van Tull said, walking over. He was eating dried rations. How could the man eat under pressure like this, Marquall wondered?
“Four-A,” he replied. Van Tull smiled. There was blood on his gums. He was still suffering from the hypoxia. Throne help me, thought Marquall, of all the ways to die, all the ways I’ve imagined and had nightmares about, wouldn’t that be the worst? Poisoned by the air-mix. Dead without realising it.
Van Tull nodded over at Darrow, who was doing a walk round of his Thunderbolt.
“Lad did well yesterday, didn’t he? Fine debut.”
“Yeah,” said Marquall. He was deciding whether or not he needed to dash to the latrine to vomit. “He’ll be fine. They all will.”
“You’ve changed your bloody tune,” said Ranfre, joining them.
Marquall shrugged. “Just hoping for the best, I think. I hope they’ll be fine—because if they’re not, we’re all screwed.”
Viltry buttoned up his flight coat and adjusted his gauntlets.
He saw Jagdea approaching. “Anything?” he asked. She shook her head.
“Look Bree,” he began, “There’s something I—”
“What?”
He smiled. “No, now’s not the time. I’ll talk to you later.” Jagdea nodded. She passed through the waiting pilots. Zemmic was sitting on a camp chair, counting off his chain of charms, one by one, over and over. Cordiale and Del Ruth were playing knuckles to take their mind off the tension. “All set, you two?” Jagdea asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Aggie Del Ruth. She had such an appealing smile. Not what a man might call a pretty woman, Jagdea thought. Too stern in the face, too heavy in the jaw. Del Ruth was what Jagdea’s father had liked to call “cute”.
“Cordiale?”
Cordiale grinned, and patted his lapel. “Got my lucky feather, commander.”
Scalter was chatting to Blansher, asking him some technical question about fuel pumps. He seemed calm enough. Pretty stable, that man, Jagdea thought.
Kaminsky was standing alone, staring out of the hangar mouth at the slowly lightening sky.
“Are you set?” she asked as she came to stand beside him.
“I think so,” he said.
“Just… do your best,” she said.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to do just that, mamzel,” Kaminsky replied. He held out his left hand. “I never did thank you properly for this opportunity.”
She shook his hand. It seemed odd to do it left-handed, but she knew he didn’t want to use his dull prosthetic.
“I never thanked you for getting me out of Theda,” she said. “Shall we call it even?”
He smiled.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Everyone’s scared,” said Kaminsky. “That’s what I think. It’s natural, I suppose. Frankly, I can’t wait.” He didn’t have to. The klaxons began to howl.
Over the Midwinters, 05.39
Umbra Flight cleared the dock and began to rise in formation, burners bright. Every other hangar bay in Lucerna spat out its flights. Seventy-two Thunderbolts darted up from the island plateau, which was now glowing pink in the rising daylight.
Operations chatter was constant. All along the archipelago, the airbases were launching en masse. Squadrons were snapping up from Limbus, Zophos and the major islands, and also from the northern coast and the Ingeburg stations.
From carriers on the Littoral and the Peninsula, a broad and solid auspex return had manifested.
Jagdea had indeed tempted fate. It seemed like everything the Archenemy had was coming for them.
“Climb to eight. Umbra. Hold formation. Make your speed two and a half.”
They called in. The sky was four-tenths cloud, and there was a strong northerly that would aid the enemy’s approach speed.
“Everyone tight?” she called.
“Leader, this is Eight. I’ve got an engine warning.”
“Can you sort it, Marquall?”
In his cockpit, Marquall fiddled with the throttle. His port engine kept misfiring, juddering
Double Eagle.
“Trying now, Lead.”
The engine stuttered and then died altogether. Nine-Nine wobbled back out of the line.
“Umbra Eight, please advise status.”
“Engine out,” Marquall said. He pressed restart once, twice. Nothing.
“Leader, engine is definitely out.”
“Peel off, Eight, Get home and get it fixed. You’re no good to me running on one.”
“Copy that,” he said and dived away.
“Snuggle up, flight,” she said. One down already and they hadn’t even fired a shot yet.
The auspex started showing a mass of contacts at fifty kilometres. She fiddled with her gain control. It couldn’t be that massive.
But it was. Auspex assessed overlapping bomber streams, five hundred units in each.
“Holy Throne of Earth,” she murmured.
“Umbra Flight, this is Lead. Mass targets at fifty kilometre. Climb to ten thousand and let’s go in onto them. Targets for all.”
“Copy that, Lead,” voxed Blansher, and the planes began to climb.
Darrow adjusted his air-mix and stuck to Van Tull’s eight. He could feel the pulse in his wrists against the tight snapping of his gloves. He toggled his guns on and off to make sure he got a green rune.
The vox channels started going mad. Via Operations, they were getting the first reports of contacts. At St Hagen, the Sea of Ezra, the Festus Delta. Navy flights had encountered vast waves of Archenemy bombers and their fighter support. Monumental air battles were now igniting over the Zophonian Sea.
“Five kilometres and closing,” Jagdea called. “Hold steady. Keep scanning for fighters.”
High altitude seemed empty, by visual and auspex, but there was a huge mass of returns from the lower level.
Could there be that many machines in the air, wondered Darrow, or was his auspex faulty?
“Umbra Flight, weapons live, sights on, targets below at four thousand. Stoop and sting.”
The Thunderbolts peeled off and went into their attack dives. Nose down, reaching maximum velocity, Darrow saw the clouds stream away. Below them, the bombers. His auspex had not lied. The air was studded with mass bomber formations.
“Attacking!” Jagdea voxed.
The air lit up. Festoons of tracer streams hosed up from the enemy formation, filling the air. Darrow felt the thump and bang of close detonations rattle his bird. The dive was intense. Pick one, he thought, pick one, you bloody fool or you’ll just go through them. Explosions blossomed below. Two or three of the bombers in visual range had gone up.
He chose one, a massive thing, bright red, with four wings and eight vector engines. He had no idea what pattern it was. It was the size of an Onero at least. Its multiple bolter turrets ripped up at him and he felt a solid hit against one wing.
Diving vertically onto it, he opened fire. His lascannons lit up. The huge machine’s dorsal plating ruptured and burst apart. Darrow realised that he was diving so steeply and so hard he was going to impact into the back of it. He tried to pull out. Velocity had frozen his stick. He fired again and again.
Hit, hit, hit—
The enormous bomber blew up. A fat, hot, torus of flame out of which little white tendrils of smoke spat and trickled. Darrow shot through the flames and out under the formation. If the bomber hadn’t exploded, he would surely have collided with it. He fought to raise the nose. It was a huge effort. He gripped the way Jagdea had taught him, but still nearly blacked out from the G.
His bird climbed, the stick looser. He saw Scalter’s machine whirl past, chasing down another of the massive super-bombers. Scalter’s sustained shooting dropped it into the sea.
Darrow ascended, nursing the throttle. Perspiration was pouring down his face and making his mask itch. He blinked the sweat-drops out of his eyes. His targeter pinged as another of the super-heavies filled his sights. Bright blue bolter rounds cindered down around him from the belly guns.
He viffed up, adjusted to the right, and gave the thing four bursts of las. It lost a wing. The damage caused the huge craft to wallow and then invert suddenly. It was on fire by the time it hit the water.
Jagdea killed a Tormentor on her way down, and another on her way back up. Las batteries drained, she wound over onto a heavy bomber, and switched to quad. She gave it a few bursts, but its turrets forced her to back off.
To her left, she saw Zemmic make a kill, and Del Ruth zoom over, chasing a Tormentor that had broken from formation, wounded.
Jagdea kicked her rudder bar and rolled down under the heavy. Viltry had been telling her about the sweet spot, the point that no turret could track.
Two rounds went through her tail armour before she was sure she’d found it. She chattered quad fire into the beast’s stomach.
It slumped to port, dropping out of its line, making hot smoke, and exploding long before it reached the sea.
With Blansher to his port, Kaminsky dropped in on a Tormentor, letting it come wide into his gunsight.
It had been a long time since he’d felt this right.
“Fire!” he said. “Fire! Fire!”
The lascannons charged and unloaded. The Tormentor broke like an eggshell and fell into a tumble. “One to you, Kaminsky,” Blansher voxed. Yeah, he thought.
One to me.
Viltry followed Ranfre and Cordiale down through the chaos of shots and wafting smoke. He rolled right and got a lock on a Talon that was attempting to climb.
Before he could commit to shoot, he saw stripes of fire coming up from below. He rolled and looked down.
The air below was full of bats, ascending, shooting. The bomber waves had escort all right. But low, not top cover.
“Bats! Bats! Bats!” he yelled. “Six o’clock and coming up vertical!”
Lucerna AB, 06.01
Floundering on one engine, Marquall came into hangar three and set down. He did it badly, denting the deck plating and slewing hard, leaving deep gouges from his landing claws.
The fitters ran to Nine-Nine. Marquall clambered out, throwing off his helmet in disgust.
“Sir?” asked Racklae. “Damage?”
“No! No, it’s the bloody port engine! She’s cut out on me!” Furious, Marquall kicked his helmet across the deck-way.
“We’re on it, sir,” Racklae said, running to open the cover. “Just fix it! Fix it! Bloody fix it!” Marquall yelled at them. Racklae stopped, and turned, dignified. “We’re trying, sir,” he said.
Marquall saw the look on his chief fitter’s face. He raised his hands for calm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Racklae. It’s just that I should be out there. I should be engaged. It’s this bloody jinx. The jinx of Nine-Nine! It’s frigging with me and—”
“There’s no jinx,” said Racklae sharply. “Why don’t you shut up, boy? Always blaming your failures on something. Your fellow fliers… the pilots who score better than you… your jinxed plane. Anything, just so long as it isn’t you. Wake up. Look closer to home, and start doing something about it, or by the Throne, I’ll lamp you with a wrench myself.”
Marquall stuttered and took a step back. Racklae turned away. “Crews!” he yelled. “Get this bloody bird airworthy now!”
Over the Midwinters, 06.15
The Razors and Locusts swept up amongst them, trying to force them away from the monstrous bomber formation. Kaminsky decided he wasn’t having that.
He banked over and went to meet the fighters head on.
“Umbra Five, where the hell are you going?” Blansher yelled over the channel.
Kaminsky didn’t say anything except, “Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire.”
Blansher followed him down through the fire-sneaked air. He saw a Razor vibrating as it fell away, bleeding smoke. He saw a Locust blow out as it climbed. Kaminsky was ploughing into them with deliberate, single-minded fury.
Blansher pulled in beside Kaminsky’s port, took a shot at a rising Locust, then banked out as he saw a crimson Razor turning close. The Razor was looping to line up on Kaminsky. Blansher took him with the last three bursts of his las.
Switching to quad, he barrelled down. Kaminsky had lined up on a Locust and was peppering it with las-fire. Cordiale and Del Ruth rushed past, gunning at three Locusts that had turned away in a harsh dive.
He saw a Razor going across him, viffed his Bolt to get deflection, and ripped the hostile down its length with quad rounds.
Kaminsky came up out of his long stoop, and locked a Locust. “Fire.”
Nothing. His las batteries were exhausted. “Switch. Fire. Fire.”
The quads burst off at empty sky. Kaminsky soared around, and found a bomber right ahead of him. “Fire. Fire. Fire.”
The bomber tilted and began to come around. Several engines out, it was turning back for home “Fire. Fire,” Kaminsky said.
The stricken bomber went down, suddenly encased in a shroud of its own burning fuel.
Bats blazed up past Kaminsky. He rolled over to greet them.