Interceptor City, page 17
‘Negative tracking,’ Exec confirmed.
Jagdea leant her bird over to improve visibility.
‘Three position, west-west, floor level,’ she voxed. ‘Two contacts.’
‘Copy that,’ Exec replied. ‘Target acquired. Follow me in.’
She banked after him. They chopped down ultra-low, ripping along a hab-street at sub-roof level. Joiliq broke away to port. He seemed to have a different understanding of the instruct, ‘Follow me in.’
Two contacts, moving south-west at zero alt. Now they were low, and street-clipping, she no longer had visibility. She tried for auspex lock, but the clutter was too bad. She tried modar, but turned it off again right away when it started to squeal.
Hard right. Hard right. Hard left. Under a bridgeway. She stuck to Exec’s tail. Hard right. Over a raised processional. Hard left. Along a thousand yards of echoing drainage duct, like flying down a plug hole. Daylight, turn out hard. Drop. Street level. Hive floor.
Bat.
It streaked past at twice their speed. Exec rolled and took off after it. She stressed her airframe to turn and follow.
But there had been two bats. Two contacts, at least. Where was the other? Were they on the lead or the chasing wingman?
Hard left. Hard left. The hive was doing its best to kill her again. Hard right. Hard pitch. She could still see Exec on the bat’s tail. It was jinking to evade his lock.
Las-fire sprayed past her starboard wing and she felt a knock as something hit. Damage buzzers sounded and, after a second, a belated weapon lock warning. The second bat was behind her. She went into evasion, zagging hard, but it wasn’t going to be enough and, as ever, there was no space to break. She attempted a hard-brake overshoot, but the bat was wary. It stuck to her.
Jagdea swore as another stream of fire raked past her. Another hit warning. She hoped to the Throne she was taking it on her Voss’ heavy plating. It seemed so, because no systems were going dead. She tried to visualise the bat, but she couldn’t detect an engine echo over the shrill chorus of her protesting logis-systems, and she kept mistaking the reflection of the headache’s constantly flashing panel lights for shots passing her canopy. She’d lost sight of Exec, and there was no turn out. None she could see.
She flipped the modar back on, ignoring its howling confusion. She switched over to terrain only. She got a modarlock on a tight left ahead, a cross-street impossible to visualise from her speed and position.
Shots streamed past. Hit warning. She turned at the very last second.
Hard turn. Hard, hard turn. She threw power from thrust to vectors, braced into grip, and veered as sharply as possible, g-force crushing her into the seat. Frame-load warnings went off. The bat shot past behind her, unable to match her turn.
The Voss stumbled, and stalled into an uncontrolled flutter, overstrained. It was exactly like the impossible turn she’d recovered the day before.
But worse. Deeper. Harder. Serious intake momentum drag threatened a brutal departure from controlled flight. The bird’s tail swung out in the stick-slack air-skid.
And then settled true. A sickening lag, but it settled. She had control.
For a second, she began to understand something.
There was no time to contemplate or review the thought. She gunned into a hard climb, inverted over the ridgeline of the hab’s high roofs, and dropped back onto the street she’d been running before.
There was the bat. A Hell Razor. It was in front of her now.
Tone lock. Missile lock. She toggled and fired. One of her underwing stores streaked away. She felt the knock of its motor wash. Jagdea began to grin.
The grin faded. The missile seemed to have decided on its own journey. It raked right and destroyed the facade of a hab.
Was the bat jamming guidance? There was no trace of logis countermeasures showing.
The bat started to jink, aware of her threat. It hard-braked, trying to throw her past. She dropped speed, obtained missile lock and fired again.
Nothing. A thump. A rune lit on her panel.
MISFIRE.
She had a hung weapon.
She throttled back, and selected FIRE again. Nothing. The bat was extending. Her mind raced. She’d heard of pilots hard-spinning or hard-rolling to tear hung stores off a rail by means of centrifugal force, but there was no room for that.
Nothing she could do. She kicked in the burner briefly, and poured up speed to get back on the bat’s six. It decelerated hard and managed to spit her out. She snarled and did the same, rocking the bat back onto her nose the moment it thought it had the upper hand. Hard right. Hard right. A ductwork bridge. The bat split under it, and she went over. The jolt made something bang. A strip of smoke streaked away from her.
The hung weapon had finally fired, all by itself. It must have come off her rail skewed, maybe losing a fin to her wing, because it immediately tumbled into a non-ballistic spin, end over end, motor sputtering and seething.
It was… tumbling back towards her.
Without thinking, she stood the Voss on its wingtip and let the heater swirl past her belly. It detonated behind her, levelling another hab.
She tried to stabilise. The vicious bank had robbed her of speed and lift. She pulled into a climb to reload power. Ahead and below, the bat climbed too, inverting and coming at her. It had so much more vertical pull than her.
They were under the lid of the Circuit’s ruined dome, climbing into green shadow and smoke-clotted air. Shots striped past her. Jagdea banked out and almost collided with a vox-mast. She jerked to avoid it, then fumbled as the fightbird slipped away from her. The Voss started to roll, and threatened to depart flight again for a second. She applied opposite stick to counter.
Overburning, the bat went past her and began to turn. She turned after it and they both started to climb hard. Vertical rolling scissors. She squeezed off a burst of guns, but the bat forced a split. Above her, the fractured roof of the dome was coming down at them fast.
The bat rolled flat and began to skim the dome’s underside, dodging stanchions and dangling girders. She levelled her wings as she turned out at the top, and then chased after it down the belly of the roof. It started to burn again to widen the space differential. She stuck to it, waiting for the tone, her thumb on the gun switch.
Tone lock. A clean modarlock. Murderlock.
Before she could fire, something got in her way. A dark green Voss. Joiliq.
She braked off to avoid clipping him. He followed the bat down the curve, gunning hard.
So that was it. Joiliq was a poacher. She’d met his kind before. He hung back high and let his wing-mates do all the hard work scaring bats up, then dropped in to steal a kill.
She cursed him. No warning, no courtesy. He’d almost steered her into the dome with his surprise arrival.
And now that he had her kill, he was botching it. He was firing wildly, without waiting to get his nose on. His las-fire was chewing down the dome’s underside, spalling debris in a huge, lethal cloud.
Jagdea pulled clear, debris thumping off her. She bent the stick to dodge a large chunk of dome plating that Joiliq’s shots had torn loose.
He could have her kill. She had no wish to wing that kind of crazy. She curled into a dive towards the hab roofs below. A flash. Light on canopy glass. There was Exec. The other bat, a Talon, was on him, chasing him relentlessly. He couldn’t shake it.
Jagdea stamped the rudder into a tight corkscrew. She went down after the chasers, loading enough g to clench her jaw shut and reduce her vision to thirty per cent. On the vox, dulled by the blood in her ears, she could hear Joiliq whooping and crowing. He’d finally scored his kill. Clean or messy, it was still a kill.
The Talon spotted her, and broke off its chase to engage. It wanted Exec, but it was smart enough not to leave its back exposed to his wingman. It came at her, climbing fast, head-on. Far below, she saw Exec, freed from its threat, turn up hard to reverse the chase positions and get back on it.
Jagdea and the Talon passed each other, nose-to-nose, at a combined speed of almost twelve hundred. Both were gunning, but Jagdea couldn’t get off more than a quick squirt. She was about to turn, knowing the bat would too, but held her trajectory at the last moment as Exec came burning up past her. They also passed nose-to-nose.
Now she turned. Max g. Exec was chasing the Talon back up towards the broken lip of the dome. She saw him fire. One burst. Two. Both missed. The Talon was rating hard and forcing him to the outside. It was starting to get lateral separation. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Joiliq’s bird muscling up on a hard burn to close the box. And, she was certain, steal a second kill.
Then. Then. It was too fast, really. She was too far back to do anything but watch. As the Talon tried to separate, Exec switched from guns to missiles, and launched a brace. They had just started running on their dirty plumes when Joiliq ripped between them, guns hammering, trying to blow the Talon’s tail off from a passing side attack. She saw a puff of debris as his shots hit the Talon. A second later, one of Exec’s missiles took it square in the engines and the Talon went up like a small sun. But the other heater was still running, curving. It heat-locked Joiliq as he shot between them.
She heard Exec screaming, ‘Pop flares! Pop flares!’
Joiliq must have known. He must have heard the sudden wail of missile lock. Jagdea saw him turn, a good, strong turn. She saw countermeasure decoys, phosphor-bright, sown like spring flowers in his wake. The missile streaked into the cloud of tiny flashes, half a second off Joiliq’s exhaust.
And detonated. Joiliq had evaded a friendly kill by the skin of his teeth. But the blastwave rocked him hard. He tried to level off. His un-centred Voss flew straight into the overhanging lip of the dome.
The last thing Jagdea heard on vox was Joiliq laughing at the near-miss.
Hangar level, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 08:52
Jagdea popped her canopy and climbed out the moment Boa’s tractor set her down on the stand. Tarr and the crew crowded in.
‘Joiliq?’ Tarr asked.
‘Gone,’ said Jagdea.
Tarr swore.
‘Because he was stupid,’ said Jagdea.
Tarr shot her an ugly look. Jagdea didn’t care. She was angry. She peered under her wings. There was blast scorching on the armour, but no real damage. Her two remaining missiles were secure. No hang.
‘Don’t rack me with missiles any more,’ she told Tarr.
Tarr shrugged, sullen. ‘Standard order-out,’ she replied. ‘We have plenty of them.’
‘Because we keep bringing them back,’ said Jagdea. ‘I don’t want them on my rails again.’
The cargo-8 was reversed back down the hangar, Exec’s black Voss in its hoisted forks. They watched him go past. Exec was still masked and visored.
‘The Voss is a missile platform,’ said Tarr reluctantly.
‘I don’t care,’ said Jagdea. ‘Tell me that when you have decent ordnance that will synch guidance with logis.’
‘So what then?’ Tarr asked. ‘What do you want?’
‘Cannons,’ said Jagdea. ‘Hard slug cannons.’
‘That’s non-standard…’
‘Me all over. Find me some.’
‘I might be able to…’ Tarr hesitated. ‘There might be something in the Tomb. I think I can scare up a belly cannon from a Twin. Maybe. But not two.’
‘One is fine.’
Tarr shook her head. ‘Nah, the load displacement. A cannon and its munition pod on one wing? That’ll frig up your load symmetry real bad…’
‘Then you’d better find me two,’ said Jagdea.
She walked away. Fitters were approaching Exec’s fightbird, but he was still sitting, canopy closed.
‘Back up a sec,’ she told the crew. They stood back, waiting. She hauled herself up onto the WALK ONLY. Exec was at the stick, harness on, visor down, mask up. Jagdea unlatched the canopy. He still didn’t move. She glanced down, and checked the cockpit side for puncture marks. She thought for a moment he was dead, shot through in his seat.
‘Exec?’ she said. ‘Badler?’
She reached in, pulled off his mask and slid up his visor. His old eyes were filled with tears that were streaming down his young, thin face.
‘You gotta get down,’ she said.
‘Can’t let them,’ he whispered.
She leaned in. ‘Can’t let them what? Exec?’
‘Can’t… can’t let them see me like this. The crews. I’m the frigging exec.’
‘No, you can’t,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how long you’ve been exec. Not long, I imagine. But no, you can’t let them see you like this.’
‘Ten days,’ he sniffed.
She nodded. Badler had moved up to fill the exec slot when Garrant made lead. The Six-Six turnover. No one stayed anywhere long, not even alive. Had he been over-promoted? Probably. He was so young. But he was a good stick. She’d seen that much. More natural talent, or experience, or both, than the average multi-ace smoke from the Eastern Front. In another theatre, he’d have prospered. But like all the young pilots – no, scratch that, all the pilots period – he was coping with the non-stop shred of flying Vesperus, and now command responsibilities on top of that. She could see from his face that he was broken, living on his nerves.
‘Joiliq…’ he murmured. He refused to look at her. ‘He just…’
‘Wasn’t you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t kill him, Badler. He killed himself.’
He glanced at her, flushed.
‘Don’t say that,’ he said. ‘He was one of our best! And I–’
‘He flew into your track,’ said Jagdea quietly. ‘He was a poacher. You know he was poacher. He flew into your track. He must’ve known you’d go for missiles at that separation. Badler, he was an idiot.’
‘Don’t say that!’ he snarled. He pulled off his helmet and glared up at her. ‘Shut your hole, Driver! He’s frigging dead! Why would you say that about him?’
‘Because now you’re angry, you’re not crying and you can get out,’ said Jagdea.
He breathed hard, staring at her.
‘Let’s go, Exec,’ she said. ‘Stay mad at me, and walk out like an executive officer.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Get to the washrooms. Cry there. Splash some water on your face.’
‘There is no water.’
‘Then slap yourself a few times and pretend.’
He stared at her, then rubbed his eyes, and unclamped his harness. Jagdea jumped down. He followed, and strode out of the hangar without a word to anyone.
Refectory, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 12:26
Senior Deck Dampier chalked a tally mark beside the name EXEC, then another beside the name JOILIQ. Then she put a line through Joiliq’s name. Jagdea stood watching. Exec hadn’t cared to attend.
‘Call sign Joiliq,’ Dampier said to the room. ‘Lost oh-eight-twenty this morning. The Emperor protects, the Aeronautica remembers.’
Everyone raised their glasses and called out, ‘Joiliq.’
Jagdea got a tray of food. She saw Gumm at a table already, dining alone. He was eating a forkful, then taking a sip of water. Gumm took his refuelling and rehydrating routines seriously. As she came close, she passed Voris on his way out with some member of his fitter crew.
‘Hey,’ Jagdea said. ‘Is there a copy of the Voss-pattern book in the workshop?’
Voris looked at her with an amused leer. ‘Just realising you know shit-all?’ he asked.
‘Is there, or isn’t there?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look. I think we burned all the books last month in the cold snap. We don’t need them, see? We know ’em by heart.’ He tapped a grubby finger to his temple knowingly, as though that’s where he thought his heart might be.
‘Tell me if you find one,’ she said, and moved on.
Gumm glanced up as she sat down.
‘Why d’you need the book?’ he asked.
‘I’m having trouble sleeping,’ she said.
‘No, really, why?’
She tucked into her fried slab. She had a pile of it. ‘I want to check something. Loading thresholds. Logis parameters. The book limits.’
‘On a Voss? Why?’
‘Just something. Nothing, maybe. A turn I made. Twice now. A bad turn, if I’m honest. But–’
‘But what?’
‘I want to find out how far I can push it,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Stop saying “why”. Just an idea I had. Maybe a trick. A technique. We want those, right? You said as much.’
‘New tricks? Sure.’
She drank some water. ‘So, how was your day, dear?’ she asked.
Gumm sat back, and pointed to the wall. Jagdea looked. She didn’t see it at first. Then she noticed the fresh tally mark beside the name DOLLFACE.
‘You got one?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got one, Gumm?’
‘Lucky, but yes.’
‘Good for you,’ she said. She clinked her glass against his.
‘It’s unlucky to toast with water,’ he remarked.
‘It’s unlucky to drink this water, Gumm,’ she replied. ‘And I don’t have anything stronger.’
‘Unlike… almost everybody else in this room,’ said Gumm.
He took another bite. He had to cut his food into small, neat pieces because his porcelain mouth didn’t move much.
‘So tell me all about it,’ she said.
‘Just lucky, as I said,’ he replied. ‘I was up with Gangster. Again. And Rockcrete. Went out south, towards the big reactor burn, chasing a track. Track was bogus, but then we fell over three Talons that were short-cutting in from Intercept Five-Two’s area. Had a high angle of attack, so we just went for it. Well, Gangster went for it. I rolled in. This Talon just flew into my lock. There was no skill involved.’
‘I’m sure there was a little skill involved…’
