Kyrklan had been flying Marauders for just a year less than Viltry, and for the last six had been Viltry’s second in Halo. He loved the man, and would follow him anywhere. In Wassimir Kyrklan’s opinion, no one quite knew how to play a four-ram bird the way Viltry did. It was a gut thing, a nerve thing. Like he was born to it. When Viltry had gone missing, presumed lost, over the Scald in 771, Kyrklan had mourned not just for his friend but for the generations of Phantine pilots to come. They would never see Viltry fly, never learn, never understand. The fact that Kyrklan had gained flight command was no consolation. He’d had to lead the wing in on the Ouranberg raid. Viltry would have done that job better. Now the captain was back and everything would be four-A.
Kyrklan pushed his dangling mask up to his face. “Slow down, eh, Osk?” he laughed into the vox.
“Say again, Halo Two?”
“Nothing, Halo Leader. Let’s go get.”
In the juddering cockpit of Halo Lead, Viltry shivered. Inside his armoured gauntlets, his knuckles were white.
This is it. This is the one. Fortune’s frigging wheel. This is the payback. Death. Death now. Death now—
“Target sighted!” Judd sang out.
They had just whipped over a straggled formation of Imperial armour, over two hundred vehicles hemmed in on a shelf of the steep pass. Up ahead, mobile batteries and heavy cannon began to punch the air with shot.
Viltry’s hands were quivering on the stick. “I can’t…” he began.
“Captain?” Lacombe asked, looking round at him.
Holy Throne! Just do it. Just do it!
Viltry shook himself, and screamed into his mic. “Forward guns fire now! Now! Judd! Fry them!”
Naxol, in the bow turret, began firing, kicking out backwashing flame around the plane’s nose as he raked the ground positions.
“Load away!” Judd reported.
Gee Force
lifted suddenly as the belly and wing weight let go.
A ripple of flame below. Then
Mamzel Mayhem
added to it, then
Hello Hellfire.
It whipped up into a firestorm. The others, in swift succession, followed.
By then,
G for Greta
was banking up out of the pass, the crystal mountainscape under her. Sucked back into their harness rigs by the extreme G, her crew was still cheering.
Levelling out at five kilometres over the peaks, Viltry sagged over the controls for a moment, breathing hard.
“We cooked them! We cooked the bastards and—”
The voice was shrilling from Gaize, the turret gunner.
“Shut up. Shut up!” Viltry yelled. “Shut up for Throne’s sake! Pick up your visual scanning right now or we won’t get home! Do you hear me? We won’t frigging well get home!”
Theda MAB South, 12.12
The sky was empty, but Pilot Officer Vander Marquall wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at his bird.
The I-XXI Thunderbolt sat on its skids in an anti-blast revetment on the east side of the Theda South field. It was a hefty beast, fourteen tonnes dead weight without fuel, with a blunt group of cannons for a nose and a body that swelled out into forward swept wings around the thrust tunnels of the double turbofan engines. The canopy was set amidships, giving the Bolt a reclined, louche look.
It was painted matt grey, with the marks of the Phantine XX on its tail and nose. Its exposed engine ducts glinted copper.
Racklae, Marquall’s chief fitter, looked up from under one of the gun housings. “Be good as new, I promise,” he said.
Marquall grinned. Racklae’s subs were just finishing up the nose art paint job on the bird. The Phantine stylised eagle, clasping the jagged lightning bolt, with the name “Double Eagle” beneath it in inverted commas.
Marquall became aware of someone coming up behind him. He turned, and stiffened in surprise.
It was Captain Guis Gettering of the Apostles, his white suede flight coat almost glowing in the midday sunlight.
“Sir, I—” Marquall began.
Gettering calmly removed one of his chainmail gauntlets and slapped Marquall across the face with it so hard that the young man was knocked down onto one knee.
Dazed, stunned, his face grazed by the chain, Marquall looked up.
Guis Gettering was striding back to his hardstand.
“What…” gasped Marquall, rising with the assistance of his fitters. “What the bloody hell was that about?”
Theda MAB North, 12.26
When Darrow finally got back to his station, it seemed like the place had been abandoned. He stood for a few minutes on the sunlit assembly yard and looked out across the main field. A kilometre away, along the western side of the area, he could see rows of big machines under nets. Imperial birds, Marauders. Darrow could just make out fitter crews at work on the heavy fighter-bombers. To his north, Munitorum crews were dismantling six of the twelve launching ramps used by the Wolfcubs. Activity, but all of it remote.
The complex of operations and barrack buildings behind him felt deserted and empty. He wandered up the main steps and into the cool gloom of the main hall. Darrow was wearing a borrowed pair of old overalls. His clothing had been ruined in the crash. He’d managed to keep hold of his aviator boots, and his heavy leather flying coat, though one sleeve of it had been badly torn. He’d refused to let the medics toss it away.
They’d insisted on keeping him in Theda South’s infirmary overnight for observation, even though it was clear to anybody that he was fine apart from a few scratches and bruises. In the morning, he’d been forced to wait, twitchy with impatience, to fill out forms and incident statements. Only then had he been written up cleared and allowed to snag the first available transport back to North.
He just wanted to get back, get into the routine again and put the previous day, that terrible day, behind him.
No one seemed to want to let him do that. The forms, the medical checks, the incident statements. Even the transport driver who’d brought him back from Theda South seemed like a sick jibe. The man’s face had been a mess of pink scar tissue.
The entry hall was empty. Nobody hurried past along the polished wood-tile floor. He walked past the gilt-lettered rolls of honour on the panelled walls, one for each Commonwealth squadron, including his own, the 34th General Intercept, and under the brooding hololith of the late Air Commander Tenthis Belks. It was a time-honoured custom for all pilots to salute the old man’s portrait as they went past. Darrow didn’t feel like such frippery today.
There was no one in the day office, or behind the desk at company and area. Darrow went down to the dispersal room, but there was nobody there either. The air smelled of over-brewed caffeine and stale smoke. A circular regicide board, its game unfinished, sat on one of the small tables, Darrow went back out into the hall, and walked down to the station chapel. On the wall beside the double doors hung a blackboard where the names of the dead and missing were written up prior to the morning service. He stood for a moment and stared at the list written there now. The dead cadets of Hunt Flight. Such a damnably long list. But for five names, it was a roll call for the entire wing.
He opened the doors and looked into the chapel. It was quiet and very dark, save for the daylight falling in multi-coloured rays through the lancet windows at the far end. There was an odour of wood-wax and floor polish, and also fading flowers. Someone was sitting down at the front, at the end of the first pew. Darrow couldn’t make out who it was, and felt reluctant to disturb them.
Retreating back into the hall, Darrow noticed for the first time the printed posts tacked up on the wallboards outside the day office.
He started to read them.
Major Heckel came out of the chapel and walked over to him. “Darrow?”
“What… what is this?” Darrow murmured.
Heckel could hear the tinge of anger in the pilot cadet’s voice. “You just got back then?” he asked. “You’re checked out? You’re all right?”
“What does this mean?” Darrow snapped, pointing at the posts.
Heckel’s face was pinched and pale, and he seemed to shrink back timidly from Darrow’s bitterness. “It’s just the way things have worked out, Darrow.”
“Did Eads sign off on this?”
“It was his decision, he—”
“Is he here?”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
“I want to see him.”
Heckel bit his lower lip and then nodded. “Come on.”
The major led the way up the front stairs to the main operations chambers. Their boots rang on the hard wood. Heckel seemed to have a need for small talk.
“Everyone’s been given day leave,” he said, almost cheerfully. “As of this morning. Everyone… Well, news like that, yesterday. Sort of knocked everybody back. And as we were about to go into turnaround and move out to make way for the Imperials, well, it seemed like the best thing, so Commander Eads issued passes and…”
Darrow wasn’t really listening. The door to the main operations room was open, and he saw unfamiliar personnel in Imperial Navy uniforms stare out at him as he went by.
They reached the commander’s outer office and Heckel ushered Darrow in. Darrow noticed how badly the major’s gesturing hand was shaking. Really shaking.
The outer office was empty. The desks there had been cleared, and transit cartons labelled with the aquila badge were stacked up in the middle of the well-worn floor. Heckel knocked gently at the inner door. He was answered by a grunt.
They went in. It was pitch-black inside.
“Sir…” Heckel began.
“What? Oh, my apologies.” There was a click, and the steel blast shutters over the windows retracted to let the daylight in.
“I forget, sometimes,” Eads said.
The entering daylight revealed Air Commander Gelwyn Eads behind his brass desk in the bay under the main window. The walls of the office were covered with hololiths—formal squadron group shots, individual pilot portraits, pictures of Wolfcubs and Cyclones, cheerful scenes from base formals and dinners, a picture of Eads with old man Belks. A tattered Commonwealth flag was suspended in pride of place over the fireplace.
Eads was sorting data-slates and charts into filing boxes around his desk. He was a short, wiry man in his sixties, his grey hair shaved so short it looked like metal filings coating his scalp. Little, round dark glasses covered his eyes.
“Make yourselves known,” he said. “It’s you, Heckel, am I right?”
Eads had been blind for nineteen years. He had refused augmetic optics. There was a dermal socket behind his left ear which allowed him to plug into operation systems and “see” tactical displays during sorties, but that was the only compensation he made for his disability. The plug was in now, permitting him to identify and sort the data-slates using the code-reader sitting on the desk.
“It is, sir,” said Heckel. “And Pilot Cadet Darrow.”
Both men saluted with special formality. Long ago, Eads had decided that men probably weren’t bothering to salute him properly because he couldn’t see, and had taken to saying “Call that a salute?” to anyone who visited him. As a consequence, everyone saluted him with more care and correctness than they did sighted officers.
“Call that a salute?” Eads said, and smiled. “Make yourselves easy. Hello, Darrow. Are you recovered?”
“Yes, commander.”
“Good to hear it. They want me to pack up and leave. The Navy. I suppose I should be thankful for their coming, but it sits uneasily.”
Eads rose, unplugging himself from the code-reader, and walked around the desk. He used a sensor cane, topped with the Enothian crest in worn silver, which trembled in his hand if he came too near to obstacles. He hardly needed it in his own office, he knew the layout perfectly. Eads walked over to the fireplace and touched the edge of the old flag. Then he pointed at some of the framed hololiths.
“Company dinner, wintertide 751. Wesner looks particularly pissed in that shot, doesn’t he? His cravat is terribly skewed. That’s… that’s Jahun Nockwist, standing next to his Magog, with his fitters. Old Greasy Barwel and his team, Emperor bless them. There, that’s
Humming Bird,
my first Cub. Bad old lady. Dropped me in the Sea of Ezra after a flame-out in ’42. I imagine she’s still down there, crusted into some reef.”
He turned to face them. “Am I correct?”
“Yes, commander,” said Heckel. “Every one.”
Eads nodded. “I only know because I remember where I hung them.” He took one of the pictures off the wall, weighed it in his hand, and then carried it over to the desk. It went into one of the boxes. “I don’t suppose I’ll hang them in my new office, wherever that ends up being. Barely any point. I won’t be able to see them. I mean, remember how they looked. Might as well nail empty frames up. Still, I should take them.”
Eads was still for a moment, deep in thought. Then he swung his dark lenses round at them again.
“I imagine this is about the re-assignment, Darrow.”
“Yes, sir. I’m disappointed to say the least—”
“I’m sure you are, cadet. I damn well would be. But I’m not going to change my mind. With the losses yesterday, we’ve scarcely got enough serviceable K4Ts to keep even twenty of the 34th flying, and that’s with pilots sharing Cubs between sorties. We’re scaling the wing down, we have to. Once we’ve shipped out to another field, we need to trim the numbers. Some pilots will remain active… pretty much Vector Flight and Quarry Flight. Others will be stood down for the time being. Experienced pilots get priority, Darrow. I’m sorry. Hunt Flight was a cadet section. And—forgive me for putting it so bluntly, Heckel—there are precious few of Hunt left. Darrow, you’ll be reassigned to ground duties, and probably moved back to Zophos Field or Enothopolis in reserve. It’s just the way it has to work.”
“Yes, sir.” Darrow’s teeth were gritted.
“Reserve isn’t so bad, Darrow,” Eads added. “You’ll be kept plenty busy, rewarding work. And if things come good, you could be flying again before the end of the year.”
Darrow nodded.
“Darrow?”
“Yes, sir. I… Yes. I nodded, sir.”
“Nodding doesn’t work for me, airman.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Eads walked back around his desk and resumed his seat. “Tell you what,” he said. “Just get it off your chest, Darrow.”