Interceptor City, page 16
The wood panelling above and around the refectory’s huge fireplace was covered with lists of names, written up in chalk. A roll call, an honour board. Many names had at least one tally mark beside them, some multiple. Far too many of the names had lines through them. Down at the right-hand end, she saw the most recent additions: DRIVER, SMOKE and DOLLFACE. The latter had to be Gumm. These people were unsparing.
Most squadrons put names on the ready room wall when a pilot had been lost, as a mark of respect. At Six-Six, evidently, your name – or whatever insult they had decided was your name – went up when you arrived, and then got bluntly crossed out when you died. It seemed brutal, and devoid of empathy. There were more names on the wall struck through than not.
Jagdea looked up as applause began. Pilot Sister Meredith had walked in, solemn. The preacher dragged a chair to the fireplace, stood on it, and took a stick of chalk off the high mantel. Stretching up, she marked a tally line beside the name LEAD and another beside MERRY DEATH. The personnel present began to cheer and bang the tables. The Sister turned to face them, still standing on the chair. She made the sign of the aquila and bowed, accepting their approval. Then she stepped down, and knelt before the fireplace.
Jagdea saw that the dead cave of the fireplace itself had been turned into some kind of shrine. A large golden aquila was surrounded by dozens of smaller icons and figurines, along with candles and offerings in pots and jars. Medals, icon pins and strips of parchment had been fixed to the wood of the fireplace surround. To Jagdea, the shrine seemed tribal, a far cry from the trappings of an Ecclesiarchy chapel.
The Sister lit a candle and some incense, then bowed her head and recited something. A hush fell. Jagdea couldn’t hear what Meredith was saying, but a good number of those around her joined in, intoning with the Sister, heads down. Those that did so appeared to be the more sober present; the ones dressed in black and darker hues, the ones not drinking. The others, the drinkers and the rogues, fell silent out of respect, or raised their glasses to toast.
Meredith rose, and business resumed. As the Sister walked past, Jagdea scraped to her feet.
‘Thank you,’ Jagdea said.
The Sister looked at her, expressionless. She had marked her eyes and lips again with black ash from the grate, and remade the shape of the aquila on her brow with a fingertip.
‘You saved me,’ said Jagdea, in case it wasn’t clear.
‘I did not save you,’ Meredith replied. ‘I was killing sinners as the God-Emperor has asked me to do.’
She walked away.
Jagdea sat back down, and picked at her food.
Lopard dropped his tray on the table beside her, and took a seat. Like her, he was still in his flightsuit, and his face was streaked with sweat. His tray was piled with food. He lit a lho-stick, but tucked in anyway.
‘I hear you dropped,’ he said, chewing.
Jagdea nodded.
‘Exhilarating, isn’t it?’ he smiled. He tucked the stick in his teeth, and produced a bottle of amasec from his coat pocket. He filled his glass, and went to fill hers.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
He did anyway.
‘I’ve been here longer than you, Driver,’ he said. ‘These are the rules.’
‘I may still be called to go-ready,’ said Jagdea.
‘Me too,’ said Lopard.
‘And you don’t care if your head’s not clear–’
‘I don’t care. Try not to care yourself. Life won’t get any better. I know the remedy for a shit day, and we’re both having one.’
‘You dropped?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He drank his shot, and refilled. ‘Splashed one. And lost one,’ he added, and knocked back the second glass.
‘You lost one?’
‘Some poor smoke who arrived a month ago. I didn’t even see it. He’d never really got the hang of this.’
‘Does anyone?’ asked Jagdea.
‘No,’ Lopard said with a chuckle.
He stood up, abruptly, drink in hand. Senior Deck Dampier had walked into the refectory, her face like stone. A stillness fell. Everyone stood. Dampier crossed to the fireplace, stood on the chair, and marked a tally beside the name HARLOT. There were some noises of approval, but they were muted. Jagdea realised that Dampier only came in to mark the wall for one reason. Dampier drew a chalk line through the name VOXBACK. The name had no tally beside it.
She got down.
‘Call sign Voxback,’ she said to the room. ‘Lost oh-nine-fifty this morning. The Emperor protects, the Aeronautica remembers.’
Everyone present raised their glass, of water or otherwise, and chorused, ‘Voxback.’
Jagdea barely sipped hers. The stink of amasec made her gag.
‘Carry on,’ said Dampier, and left the refectory.
Jagdea sat down. Lopard was already digging back into his meal.
‘That wasn’t even his name,’ said Jagdea.
‘Who?’
‘Voxback,’ she said. ‘What was his name?’
‘Hell if I know,’ said Lopard.
‘You were with him?’
‘Didn’t see it,’ said Lopard. ‘Longlas and I were gunning through a vent between the manufactories at Haleside Point. Hard chase. Two Talons. Both of us realised Voxback was no longer with us. Longlas peeled back. Nothing but debris. Side of a tower on the approach.’
‘Bat-kill or mis-judge?’ asked Jagdea.
‘Same thing, here,’ said Lopard. He sat back, frowning. ‘You know, if I could, I’d spare them all. All of them,’ he mused. ‘Spare them the pain and the shred. Four weeks he’d been here, that boy. Four weeks, screaming inside every second of it. Not even a kill. Not even close. He had no hope. If I was a good man, Jagdea, a properly good man, I’d have gone into his billet the night he arrived and put a pillow over his face. Just let him go before he had to suffer any of that.’
He fell silent, his mind somewhere very far away and very dark. She stared at him.
He smiled suddenly. ‘No wonder I drink,’ he announced, raising his glass in a red-gloved hand.
‘To dull it?’
‘To stop me saying things like that out loud,’ said Lopard. He looked her up and down.
Jagdea turned away. She picked up her glass, and managed to knock back a little of the amasec. It was actually decent stuff.
‘Smoke?’ he asked, offering her his silver case.
‘No.’
‘Something stronger?’ he asked. ‘I know who to ask. Yellodes. ’Roma. Obscura. Stimm.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I need to sleep.’
‘You won’t sleep now,’ he said, ‘I can see how wired you are.’
The room was full of voices again suddenly. Three more aviators had entered. One was a small, athletic woman with her flightsuit zipped down and peeled from her waist. Her hair was black, and her tanned skin was covered in tattoos. Behind her came an older pilot with an augmetic eye embedded in scar tissue. Behind them, Gumm.
Gumm stood back. The older pilot offered the woman his hand, and she stepped up onto the chair. People were beating the tables. The woman grabbed the chalk and marked a tally stroke beside the name BLINDSIDE, then turned, teetering on the chair, to wildly clap the older pilot, who took a mock bow. Then she turned back, and marked a tally beside the name GANGSTER. The table-pounding got louder. She looked back at the room, a coquettish glance, a finger to her lips, like an exotic dancer teasing the crowd before removing her last garment. Then she added a second tally mark beside GANGSTER.
‘Splash two! Splash two!’ the audience chanted. Gangster stood on the chair and began a little snake-armed, sway-hipped dance.
‘The infamous Gangster,’ said Jagdea.
Lopard nodded. ‘Disa Yesof. The infamous Gangster.’
Billet, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 15:20
‘I didn’t have time to grasp any of it,’ said Gumm. He was sitting on her chair while she sat on the cot.
‘Me neither,’ said Jagdea.
‘I mean, nothing,’ said Gumm. ‘Just so fast, every second on the stick. I pushed past everything I knew, and it still wasn’t enough. I was just hanging on for dear life. Vesperus is no war sky. Not like any I’ve ever known.’
‘I hear you,’ said Jagdea.
‘I got off a few shots when a bat went over me. It turned out. I got a missile lock, but these damn things they fit us with… It ran wide like it had no guidance. Took out a silo nowhere near the bat, which was, by then, exiting my weapons envelope at full burn.’
‘Better than me,’ Jagdea replied. ‘I didn’t even fire in anger. Came back racks full.’
‘But you came back.’
‘And so did you.’
‘I’m trying to replay it all in my head,’ said Gumm. ‘You know, dissect it? See if there’s anything I can learn from it. Anything.’
‘Me too, I suppose. I made one turn that I have no idea how I recovered.’
He nodded. ‘I mean, there have got to be tricks, right?’ he said. ‘New tricks. The veterans here have survived, because they’ve learned how to cope.’
‘I think they’ve learned how not to frigging care,’ said Jagdea.
‘That,’ agreed Gumm. ‘I could barely track Gangster or Blindside. It seemed to me their approach was “fly as hard as you can and don’t die”. I wouldn’t say either of them are very good, as fliers. They just monster in at full burn like nothing matters.’
‘Fearless.’
‘Fearless. But there’s got to be more to it.’
‘Has there?’ asked Jagdea. ‘Really?’
‘Got to be,’ said Gumm. ‘This is a new kind of theatre with very specific challenges. There have got to be techniques we can learn and employ. They may well be techniques that bend an aircraft further than we’ve ever pushed, but even so. Turning, for instance. Anticipation. Reaction.’
‘Or we’re just old and slow, Gumm,’ she said.
‘No one’s fast enough for this,’ he replied. ‘The longer we live, Jagdea, the more we’ll learn.’
‘Well, there’s another happy motto to add to the list of stupid things that get said around here,’ she replied.
She looked at him.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. I need to sleep.’
‘We’re both supposed to be alert-ready.’
‘Then someone can wake me.’
She didn’t sleep. After Gumm had gone, she peeled off her compression suit. As expected, her flesh was so banded with bruising it looked like she had been camo-striped. Everything hurt, and everything ached. She stank, but water rationing was in force and there was no hope of a shower.
Naked, she sat on her cot and fished out the bottle of good amasec that Lopard had insisted she keep. There was about a third left. She took a swig. She thought that Gumm was probably right, but she couldn’t break down her recall well enough to analyse it. The sortie just kept playing back, full-bore, too fast to deconstruct.
She lay back, feeling the bruises on her spine and shoulders. The marks of her harness, pulling her through the flightsuit at every g-turn, still had not faded. There had to be something, some small detail she could tease out, and unpack, and use. She thought about that turn. That turn, how had she recovered from it? Stumbled into a hard stall, stick slack, yet…
Her mind drifted. She thought about the deck at Psalter 96, waiting in the cold darkness. It was only the night before last, but it seemed like years back. She remembered what she’d said to Wilzar. Be better.
That was all she had.
DAY 90
Second drop, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 06:53
Jagdea limped onto the launch deck. Her bruises had become more painful overnight. Her legs were weak. Tail 044 was secured for launch on its landing claws, nose-down.
The day was a mauve haze, underlit by the distant rusty glow of municipal reactors that had been left to cook, untended, for years. Same deck as the day before, though the Campanile had several.
Different pilots, though. The young, thin executive officer was checking his jet-black Voss. She had learned the Exec was called Ricou Badler, but all it said on his visor plate was EXEC. He glanced at her with the same look of disappointment that had been on his face when she’d told him she hadn’t brought the caff.
The other pilot was call sign Joiliq. Jagdea didn’t want to know how he’d come by that. He was wearing a crimson compression suit. His bird was another Voss, dark green. Jagdea had assumed that her Lightning, and Wilzar’s, had been pre-painted in the squadron colours for delivery, but perhaps they had just still been wearing their old squadron colour schemes. Or maybe people chose their colours? Or maybe, after patching and repair, a bird just ended up whatever colour ground crew had left in the stocks?
Exec approached. A huddle, she presumed. A blessing. Joiliq wandered over too, but seemed disinterested.
‘Any words?’ Exec asked her. His face was so young, so slender. His eyes were so old.
She shook her head. Joiliq didn’t bother replying.
Exec nodded. He bent his head, mumbled a few lines of blessing, touched the Ecclesiarchy pin at his throat, and stepped back.
‘Saint preserve you,’ he said.
‘Saint?’ asked Jagdea.
‘Saint Sabbat, who has returned to save our souls and our arses,’ sneered Joiliq.
‘Shut your hole,’ Exec told him. ‘Deck says we have moderate vis, but there’s a smog-storm closing in the next hour.’
‘Let’s get up before that shit blows in,’ said Joiliq.
‘We’ll get up when there’s a shout,’ said Exec.
Joiliq muttered a curse. Jagdea glanced at him, eyebrow raised.
‘They’ll use the storm,’ he explained. ‘Bet your arse. The bats. They’ll use the storm.’
‘Go-ready, please,’ said Exec. ‘Mount up.’
She got in her bird. The ground crew was still finishing their checks. The fitters, led that morning by a man called Voris, were bull-whipping the fuel hoses clear, and starting to coil them. An enginseer chanted, hands raised. Boa was reversing the lifter truck back. Jagdea saw that, once again, Four-Four’s rails had been hooked up with the unreliable Urdeshi missiles.
‘No walk-round?’ asked Voris.
‘Why bother?’ said Jagdea.
Voris grinned. He had lost teeth to serious obscura use. ‘I heard you like a walk-around, Driver,’ he said. ‘We got time.’
Jagdea cinched in her straps, and felt them bite the sores on her collarbones.
‘Run me,’ she said.
‘Checks Four-A,’ Voris replied. ‘Nice and prime. The throttle has a little give. Hydraulics will show you red, but it ain’t nothing.’
Jagdea glanced at him.
‘Find me a spare bulb and I’ll buy you a drink,’ she said.
‘If I find a spare bulb every bastard in the squadron will buy me a drink,’ Voris replied.
‘Lid me up,’ said Jagdea.
‘Don’t you want me to sight-check your surfaces?’ he asked. ‘Maybe fetch you a glass of tea on a silver tray?’
‘Piss off and lid me up,’ said Jagdea.
He sniggered. ‘Done this before?’ he asked.
‘Once,’ said Jagdea.
‘You’ll be an expert, then,’ said Voris, and latched the canopy.
Jagdea flipped the voltaic master. The instruments lit. She walked the parish, quickly, efficiently. There was time, but she did it fast. Her slam-check was complete before the vox woke up.
‘Vox check,’ Exec said over the comms.
‘Vox check, Exec, Driver receiving.’
‘Vox check, Joiliq, copy.’
The comms fell silent, apart from a brief instruct to deconflict auspex. Jagdea armed her seat, and sat very still. Her own slam-check now, biopathic: pulse, heartrate, breathing, mind.
Do better.
‘Control to wings. ROP Nine-Zero reporting hostile track Machinko Circuit. Go for start. Go for start.’
The bats weren’t waiting for the storm after all.
‘Copy, Control,’ she heard Exec reply. ‘Track received. Going for start, immediate release.’
Her hand was already on the release lever.
‘Exec to wings. Dead drop now.’
Jagdea thanked someone, maybe Saint Sabbat herself, that they weren’t going to have to wait in harness for hours. The last thing she needed was time to dwell on her thoughts.
Engine primed but unstarted, she fell nose-first down the side of the Campanile. Free-fall. She fired the starter. The forced-plasma exciter ignited the fuel aspirating into the spinning turbine. The ram lit.
The dead drop was more terrifying than it had been the last time. Now she knew what to expect.
Logis was red-lining. She tensed into the g-load and felt her suit bladders puff. Orundo Street rushed up. She dragged the stick full-back and decreased throttle. The Voss shook as its nose came up. The headache blinked its blizzard of red lights. She held the stick back and gradually levelled out. No street dive this time, no slalom around light-poles, no savage climb out.
She banked east, onto Exec’s tail. Joiliq was lagging behind, still rising. Exec accelerated to full military power and began to pull away. An intercept required to-the-second response. Joiliq ripped past her at full throttle.
She cursed them both. This was the game now. The hive-grave game.
She advanced her throttle too.
They came out into Machinko through the shell of a burned-out hab. Exec was in clear lead. Jagdea was in tail spot. One hundred and ninety-six seconds to intercept target. Not bad.
They peeled hard left into the wide bowl of the Circuit, a massive habitation zone that still retained some of its original hard-shell geodesic dome. The light caught below it was arsenic green.
‘Don’t see ’em,’ Joiliq voxed.
