“Sir?”
“Speak your mind. Let’s get it done with.”
Darrow glanced at Heckel. The major’s face seemed even paler than before, and his hands were both clearly shaking. But he shrugged an okay to Darrow.
Darrow cleared his throat. “I know I’ve only been operational four weeks. I’m a cadet. All of that. And yesterday was a… a…”
He looked at Heckel. Heckel frowned and shook his head.
“Anyway, I believe I can fly, commander. I mean, I can fly well. I’ve hardly had the chance, and I hate to trumpet myself. But yesterday, I really felt I… There was this bat and…”
“Yes, Darrow?”
Darrow felt stupid even trying to say it. “It doesn’t matter, sir.”
Eads sat forward and lifted a data-slate out of the pile to his left. He put it down in front of him. “Your modesty does you credit, cadet. I have Heckel’s report right here. It’s… How should I put it? Glowing, isn’t it, major?”
“It’s just an account, sir,” said Heckel.
“You took on that bat and flew your boots off. Instinctive, brilliant. The major praises you in no uncertain terms. Hell, If I’d seen you fly the way he said you did, I’d be calling for a commendation.”
“You said that?” Darrow murmured.
Heckel stared at the floor. “Just reporting what I saw, cadet.”
“So, well done,” Eads said.
Darrow blinked. “Sir… If I’ve earned such praise… If I’ve shown what I can do… why am I being sent to reserve?”
“My choice, Darrow. Don’t you go blaming Heckel for this. His recommendation was to get you a transfer to Quarry Flight. But there’s this little matter…”
“Sir?”
“It was your first combat. Your first fly-fight. You did well, but that’s the way first fly-fights go. Novices usually die in those situations. The ones that survive seem to punch above their weight. And almost always, that’s down to luck. You did gloriously in one sortie, Darrow, but that doesn’t make a career. I decided to send you to reserve for that reason.”
“Commander?”
“Luck, cadet. I think, yesterday, you used up an entire lifetime of luck. You used it all in one dogfight. If I keep you active, you’ll be dead the next time you go out.”
Darrow didn’t know what to say. He blinked. His mouth was dry.
“So, are we done?” asked Eads.
“Sir,” they both said, and left the office.
Heckel caught up with Darrow on the stairs. “I’m sorry!” he said.
Darrow looked back up at him. “God-Emperor, don’t be sorry, sir,” he said. “You didn’t have to make a report like that.”
“I only wrote what I saw, Darrow. That piece of airmanship was fantas—”
“You saved my life, sir. Gunning in like that. He had me. You saved my life.”
Heckel hesitated, caught in the sunlight of the stairwell. “I did what I could,” he said.
“You saved my life. He had me,” Darrow repeated.
“But—”
“Thank you,” Darrow said.
Darrow continued on down the stairs and strode along the hall past the chapel. Only then did he notice the smudge.
On the blackboard, the service of honour. The names of Hunt Flight. At the bottom of the list was a name that had been written up in chalk and then smudged off.
It was his own.
Theda MAB South, 13.01
The chainmail aviator’s glove thumped onto the desktop like a lead weight.
“I borrowed that from stores,” Bree Jagdea said. “So, do you want to explain or should I smash you round the face with it?”
Wing Leader Etz Seekan looked down at the glove for a moment. His manicured fingers drummed deftly on the edge of the desk.
“Let me see…” he said softly. He was a beautiful man, perfectly built, with twinkling blue eyes and a captivating grin. His dark hair was superbly groomed and oiled, and his manner was annoyingly relaxed and charming.
He looked up at Jagdea. “Part of me wants you to—what was it?—smash me round the face. Just to see Ornoff when it comes to filing charges. But I don’t think that will get us anywhere. Why don’t you sit down?”
He gestured to the armchair in front of his desk.
“I prefer to stand,” Jagdea snapped.
Seekan shrugged. “Around this time, I like to take a small glass of joiliq. Can I interest you in one?”
“I prefer to—no, you bloody can’t!”
Seekan shrugged and rose. He walked over to the cabinet and poured a very small measure of liquor into a tumbler. “I’ve heard about you,” he said.
Jagdea stiffened. What the hell did that mean? Part of her wanted to gush: I’ve heard about you too, all of you… all the Apostles. The finest fliers in the western Navy. Quint, ace of aces, Gettering, Suhr… and always Seekan. Wing Leader Seekan, master of the Apostles. Never a famously high score, but renowned for his leadership and tactics. Loved by his men. Seekan, the Imperial hero.
She chewed her lip instead.
“About me?” she said.
“Not you particularly,” Seekan said. He thought about that for a second and then frowned. “Throne, I didn’t mean to offend you. I meant the Phantine. The only founded Imperial Guard regiment who are fliers. Because of the nature of your home world, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
Seekan nodded. He raised his glass and rolled the spirit around inside it. “All other air wings come under the command of the Imperial Navy, except yours. That makes us allies rather than kin.”
“I suppose.”
Seekan smiled. “And you value female pilots as much as men. Females are few in the Navy. This is a rare…”
“Pleasure?” asked Jagdea.
“‘Thing’. I was going to say, “thing’.”
“There is no viable land on Phantine,” Jagdea said. “Everyone learns to fly, men and women. Our ability is said to be intuitive and exceptional.”
“The same has been said of the Apostles.”
“You have no reason to celebrate your own virtues. The Apostles’ reputation is clear enough.”
“Thank you.”
“So… would you like to explain why your man struck my pilot with a glove like that?”
“Because he was angry.”
“Angry?
Angry?”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down, commander?”
“Answer the damn question!”
“Captain Guis Gettering… Sixty-two kills. His bird is called the
Double Eagle.
He was offended that your man would copy that name for his own plane.”
“That’s it?”
“What else can I say?” Seekan shrugged.
“My pilot will rename his plane. No offence was intended. In return, I suggest your Captain Gettering makes a written and formal apology to Pilot Officer Marquall. Then the matter may be concluded without higher attention.”
“My pleasure,” said Seekan. Jagdea turned and strode to the door.
“Commander?” Seekan called. She paused in the doorway and looked back. “Good flying,” he said.
Over the Lida Valley, 15.16
It wasn’t an auspicious start to their first official sortie. A bright, promising day had turned sour in the time it had taken to get their machines aloft. At ten thousand metres, with a lousy eight-tenths cloud, and an even more lousy side wind, they were running up the wide valley of the River Lida towards the mountains.
Jagdea’s normally sweet-running Thunderbolt, serial Zero-Two, was flying rough and heavy. Too long in the belly-hold of a Navy carrier, Jagdea supposed. The devoted maintenance crews had done their best to keep systems at optimum, but there was no substitute for regular flying time. Apart from the delivery run to Theda MAB South, all the Thunderbolts in Umbra Flight had been out of use for three and a half months.
Then again, she wondered, maybe it was her. Serial Zero-Two wasn’t the only thing not to have flown in three and a half months. Jagdea felt clumsy and inept. She’d even made a sloppy job of take-off. They’d had simulators on the carrier of course, regular sessions to keep them sharp, but it wasn’t the same, just like turning a bird’s turbofans over on the flight deck every morning wasn’t the same.
Good flying.
Seekan’s presumably honestly meant remark now seemed like a jinx.
They were flying in unit teams of four machines. With her were Van Tull, Espere and Marquall. Blansher had the second unit four about forty kilometres behind them, and Asche the third, running a wide patrol over the Littoral. Essentially, Umbra Flight had split into three independent Interceptor units. That was optimum size for routine hunting or opportunist intercept work. If more than three or four Thunderbolts tried to share the same slice of sky, things tended to get a little crowded.
Anyway, this wasn’t a hunt. It was a shakedown. A little wind-in-the-hair run to get pilots and machines into the swing of things. Umbra Flight had traditionally been a Lightning wing, but after the liberation of Phantine, they’d switched to the heavier Thunderbolts, and come to love them during the air war on Urdesh Minor. Sometimes Jagdea missed the sprightly performance of the III-IX Lightning, the exhilarating rates of its climb and dive, the darting grace of its turns. The Thunderbolt was almost half as heavy again and, at lower speeds, particularly climbing, it felt as if it barely had the power to lift its massively armoured body. But it was heavy and robust, and could soak up the sort of punishment that would send a Lightning fluttering to its doom like a moth. It had longer legs too, and a snout-f of killware. Where the Lightning was a playful ambush-cat, the Thunderbolt was a full-grown carnodon. Blansher had once said that a pilot flew the Lightning for the joy of flying, and the Thunderbolt for the joy of killing. That seemed about right to Jagdea. She adored her Bolt. It was muscular, indomitable, responsive.
Except on days like today. The port fan was simply not running clean. There was nothing on the display, but she could feel it, something in the rhythm of the engine tone.
She checked the fuel. Roughly a third gone, and they hadn’t opted for reserve tanks. She keyed the vox.
“Umbra Four-One Leader to Four-One Flight. Let me hear you.”
“Umbra Three, Four-A.” Of course he was. Van Tull was always Four-A.
“Umbra Five, I’ll be fine once I’ve remembered what the controls do.”
“Roger that, Five. I know the feeling,” Jagdea returned.
“Umbra Eight. Okay here.”
Marquall sounded unhappy still. The stupid business with Gettering had knocked him back, the last thing a novice wanted on his first day out. He’d tried to make light of it, remarking that his Bolt was now called
The Smear,
because Racklae hadn’t had time to do any more than paint out his nose art with a wash of undercoat. But Jagdea knew he’d been hurt.
“Let’s refresh the pattern, flight,” she said. “Eight, you slip into point, Five and Three change over. I’ll take the hanger.”
They all responded, “Okay”. A nice little manoeuvre test to get them flexing their brains Jagdea reckoned, and getting Marquall up in what was technically lead position might do his confidence some good.
“On the mark… three, two, one… execute.”
Unit fours flew in a line formation, with one machine forward and another two flanking to rear on either side. The fourth, or “hanger”, flanked one or other of the wingmen to rear, forming an asymmetrical V. It was an excellent pack formation, each pilot covered by his comrades, the hanger able to switch from side to side as needed. Currently, Jagdea was in point, with Van Tull to her port and Espere to her starboard, Marquall at Espere’s five as the hanger.
On her mark, they shuffled the deck. Jagdea throttled down and slid back out of the point of the V. Van Tull rolled three-sixty high and Espere did the same, but in reverse and low, until the two wingmen had swapped places. Marquall peeled out low, then gunned forward under the V and pulled ahead before dropping to cruise speed and coming up gently. The two wingmen then matched speeds and flanked him sweetly to his five and seven. Jagdea throttled back again, just a touch, and came around onto Espere’s five.
Textbook. The first thing that had gone right all day.
“Nice work, flight. Very slick. Let’s stay put for another five.”
The undercast was thinning. They had about six-tenths cloud now, and dark patches of the Lida’s arable valley appeared below them, distant patchworks of field-systems, irrigation webs and hydroponic rafts.
“Flight Leader?” It was Van Tull. “Go, Three.”
“Check your auspex. I’m tagging eight or nine contacts below us at twelve kilometres, south, inbound.”
Sure enough, Jagdea’s scope showed seven pippers, moving north-east at under three thousand metres. Not eight or nine, but that could just be the conditions masking returns.
“Umbra Four-One Leader to Operations. Come in, Operations.”
“Receiving, Umbra Four-One Leader.”
Jagdea reached forward with her heavily-gloved left hand and transmitted the auspex fix.
“Four-One Lead. Should there be anything up?”
“Plenty, Four-One Leader, but not there.”
“Understood, Operations. We’ll check it out.” Jagdea shifted in her seat, and tweaked the air-mix a little richer. “Lead to flight. I’ll take a look.” That was the hanger’s job, to peel off for sweeps. “Hold it here and come around three points south.” There was no time to shuffle the deck again, which meant she was leaving Marquall at point. A good idea? No time even to worry about it. “Umbra Eight, you have point. Stand by to stoop if I need you.”
“Read that, Leader. I’ve got it.”
At last. A touch of excitement in the boy’s voice. Good. He could do with this. Besides, Van Tull was right there, solid and dependable. And Espere was a consummate wingman.
Jagdea kicked the afterburners a touch and rolled out, feeling the delicious punch of G as she inverted and began to dive away, wide, to the left of the trio V. the long dive loaded power into her wings, and she was touching two thousand kph as she closed on the targets. Enough load to pull off beautifully if they were friendly. Enough punch to turn it into an intercept if they weren’t.
Five kilometres and closing. Four.
The sky was suddenly very clear, less than four-tenths cloud. The vast green rift of the Lida Valley stretched out beneath her, and for the first time she could see the hazy line of the Makanites.
Three kilometres. There they were. Below her still, but closing at an alarming rate because they were travelling towards her, and adding her speed to their own. Nine machines. Clustered rather than in formation.