Interceptor City, page 2
Jagdea had been on heavies for ten years and six worlds. Oneros, usually, sometimes Destriers. Occasionally something smaller, on a delivery run, a day out that would remind her of other times, and leave her with both heartache and zero regrets. She missed the spittle and fury, but she remembered the shred that had gone with it, the constant acid hiss of adrenaline, the searing stress, the physical and mental punishment. Combat pilots either died young, or lived long enough to wish they had. Veterans like her, long past their consume-by date, were patched and limping and broken. Fightbirds were a young smoke’s game. You had to be young to be fit enough, to be sharp enough. To be dumb enough.
The chop was getting heavy. The stick twitched in her palm, like a door rattled by the wind. She felt the gale and the driving rain kneeling on the aircraft, pushing it off true with little jerks and bumps, like someone trying to move a sofa that was too big to lift outright. The Firmament scraped the air, shifting and fidgeting.
‘You got it, Jags?’ Menomar asked, glancing at her.
‘Oh, piss off.’
‘Only asking,’ he replied with a grin.
‘It’s Four-A,’ she replied, something she hadn’t said in a long time. And it was. She edged the stick, leaned the big bastard into the wind. Logis-programs adjusted trim for her. It was almost like flying.
Five-Nine had run non-stop from Port Halgart on the Black Glaciers. The southern polar region was Lysander’s main landfall point for orbital supplies: munitions, fuel, consumables, fighting vehicles, spares and sometimes even troops. The glacial region had been the primary war zone back in ’74, when Innokenti’s wounded host had hit the world during the retreat from Herodor. Rand-Huppert had them driven out by ’75, and now the black ice plains had become crusted with city-sized Munitorum depots supporting the second phase of Lysander’s conflicts, known as the Orison Wars or the Mainland Wars, depending on who you asked. They’d begun in ’86, when the Archonate had attempted a take-back in the Cabal Systems, and they had been burning ever since.
Jagdea didn’t really keep up with the minutiae. She was no longer required to appreciate combat objectives. She flew logistics. Her targets were times and destinations and cargoes-by-weight. The crusade was the theatre show, and she and Menomar were, as he liked to put it, stage hands, lugging the scenery so that the show could go on.
That summer, she’d made nineteen runs between Orison and Port Halgart, pretty much all of them freight turnarounds; standard bulk-lifts to the hive, then a run back empty, or with a hold full of blank-eyed Militarum rotating out, many of them carrying wounds.
Nineteen runs, but Orison still impressed. In daylight, it was an urban mountain range, a tiered cliff of a city that ran the length of the gulf coast for some two thousand miles. Ramparts of stone and ocean walls, and behind them, the hazy summits of the main spires further inland. This was the first time she’d seen it at night.
And she could see it, despite the darkness and the rain. Passing the marker forty miles out, she began to see the glow, the smudged fuzz of yellow and white, a smudge that slowly resolved into countless unfocused lights as the Firmament rumbled closer. A billion windows, tower lights, mast lights, search cones, the wash of radiance against curtain walls, the sodium cast of lamps along thoroughfares, the yellow glare of decks, the beady wink of red navigation markers on spire tops. It was like a mass of stars, a generous serving of the local spiral arm, scooped out and served on the black plate of the world. And behind them, the gauzy shimmer of the main spires, upright cities, illuminated staircases leading up to the heavens, and perhaps to some kind of god.
Jagdea wasn’t sure whose.
‘Glacier Heavy Five-Nine, this is Orison Traffic. Reading you now inbound. Slow your approach to one-twenty and descend to one thousand.’
‘Copy that, OTC.’
‘Routing you to Hymnal Four-One for put down. Make your turn zero-two-zero onto guidepath two-one and begin final. Switch to autotrack option, over.’
‘Received, OTC. Turning zero-two-zero on descent, over.’
Jagdea eased the stick, watching the azimuth dial. On the display, the cross-runes had begun to bunch up as the convoy closed its spacing. They were crossing the coastline, coming in over the glow of the sea ramparts. They were close enough to buildings, either side and below, that the proximity warnings went off briefly. The cross-shear grew worse. The night gale was planing off the armoured walls and creating an eddying river of turbulence and backwash. Something loose in a cubby behind her seat started to rattle.
The transponder pinged. She ignored it, calmly cupping the stick as if she was raising a pot from wet clay on a wheel.
It pinged again.
‘Autotrack?’ Menomar asked.
She shook her head. Hymnal 41 Field was transmitting an autotrack datastream that would guide the bird in on full automatic via logis-engines. The complete, hands-free, autoglide experience, what Klay Menomar liked to call the ‘full hat to sack service’, micro-adjusting in real-time to smooth the buffet and shear.
‘Autotrack, Jags?’ Menomar asked again.
‘Autotrack option,’ she replied, eyes on the dials. ‘Means it’s optional. I like to earn my pay once in a while.’
‘You do?’
‘Keeps me honest,’ she said.
Menomar chuckled. He leaned over and threw a switch on the transponder. A panel lit up: A/TRACK REJECTED.
She could see the strip lights ahead. The tower’s voice was in her ear. The shear was really strong, and irregular. The enormous mass of the multiengine amplified the effect. It was pushing at the tail, causing both pitch and yaw. Jagdea corrected, each touch on the stick imperceptible, a little pressure, a little ease, smooth yet firm, not allowing an ounce of over-response.
Almost like actually flying.
The heavy was ducted, but only an idiot tried to set down a capacity-laden Firmament at night, in a storm, on vector only. Textbook recommended a short conventional down, with vector assist, and Jagdea was nothing but textbook.
Except for those few pages that, now and then, got stuck together.
She had the leviathan balanced at the happy edge of stall. Chin up, the phosphor glow of the Militarum field, and the glittering city beyond, flashing by at what seemed like a suicidal rate. The world was ripping past, breakneck, but she felt like she was floating, like a mote of dust.
‘Cart down,’ she said.
‘Lowering cart,’ Menomar replied. He slunked over the oiled steel levers. There was a thump, and they both heard the slow, straining groan of the gear extending. Lights flicked on over the levers, all green and prime.
‘Cart clean, cart down,’ Menomar said.
‘Copy,’ she replied. The stripway was rushing up at her, marker lights flitting past on either side, like tracers from a surface battery. She could see the veil of rain, the shimmer of standing water on the rockcrete. A little more chin, a squeeze less power. Vector ducts around to two-seventy, down forward, front. She did that manually, overriding logis-control, not even looking as she turned the rotary dial with her left hand.
The ground proximity alert started sounding. Menomar muted it.
‘Ducts at five per cent, build to ten,’ she instructed.
‘Copy,’ said Menomar. He smoothly switched in the vector thrust secondary system, diverting five per cent of thrust from the eight massive turbofans to the ducts aimed down and forward. A little judder as the ducts took up the slack and robbed out more speed. Menomar increased output to ten, and the Firmament felt like it was stuck to the air, way below stall speed.
‘Little more,’ said Jagdea. He obliged. They barely felt the touch as the wheels kissed the ground. Jagdea powered back and applied reverse thrust to arrest the roll. The Firmament hissed forward on its massive wheels, and gently came to a stop in less than sixty yards.
Menomar began the power down. Jagdea cross-checked, and damped the ducts. A cargo-4 ran out onto the bright stripway, swung in ahead of their nose, and lit up a bright, flashing ‘follow me’ indication display. She eased off the brakes, and taxied the heavy after it, steering off the strip onto the wide hardpan of a parking stand.
Behind them, the rest of the convoy began to thunder in, one at a time, two more Firmaments, a Destrier, three Oneros; gear down, nav-lights blinking, ducts wailing, home to roost.
Hymnal 41 Field, Orison, 19:03
They were idly looking at the routing board in the sickly glare of the wire-domed lamps when the assistant deck officer approached them. His name was Dillady, and he wore his dark blue battlefleet uniform with a fastidious attention to detail. The pins on his sleeve and collar, well-polished, indicated Imperial Navy, the Aeronautica Warfare Arm, and Logistics. He was career Aeronautica, which meant he had spent most of his time on the ground. He had data-plug ports over his left ear, and a moustache that looked like a crow that had failed to notice a cliff. He also had a data-slate, and Jagdea was always wary of career men with data-slates.
‘Glacier Heavy Five-Nine?’ he asked.
They turned, her and Menomar. They had just walked in off the field, ready-bags over their shoulders, and water was dripping off their coats. Outside, under the floods, servitors were unloading cargo from the whale jaws of their Firmament. The off-load would take another four hours, and one of them was supposed to stay on site until it was done, but those were pages in Jagdea’s textbook that had stuck, and they’d left supervision to the payload officer because it seemed far more like his job. First down, first out, first look at the routing board. The other crews were starting to wander in. If there was anything remotely decent, Jagdea and Menomar wanted to stake it.
But, as ever, there wasn’t.
‘Yes,’ Jagdea answered, with slight reluctance. She didn’t know Dillady. She usually flew into Hymnal 32 or Spire Field 19. But she had a feeling she knew his type.
‘Non-standard,’ said Dillady. He glanced at his slate as though to confirm the diagnosis. ‘Non-standard,’ he repeated.
Jagdea and Menomar exchanged glances. It wasn’t clear what Dillady was referring to. They were wet, tired and cold. Almost everything about their flight gear was non-regulation. Both wore heavy flight boots, black leather coats, and quilted flight bottoms with high waists and braces over thick, white knitted sweaters. Was it possible that they were too wet for indoor use? Or was it the sweaters? It was the sweaters, Jagdea decided.
‘Your approach and landing,’ said Dillady.
‘I seem to remember landing intact,’ Menomar said. He looked at Jagdea, widening his eyes. ‘Shit, Jags, did we crash? Are we dead? Is this… paradise?’
Jagdea hid her smirk.
‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.
Dillady looked at her, yearning for a ‘sir’ that would never come.
‘Non-standard approach and landing,’ he said. He checked his slate again. ‘Which one of you is Jagdea?’
Jagdea pointed to herself. Menomar pointed at her too.
‘Pilot Officer Jagdea,’ Dillady said. ‘You had craft command. You were also element lead. You were at the stick.’
‘I was.’
‘You did not engage autotrack.’
‘Must’ve forgot,’ she said.
‘OTC instructed you. Logis would have prompted you. You did not engage.’
‘Slipped my mind,’ she said.
Dillady consulted his slate.
‘It didn’t slip your mind, pilot officer. System data shows that you manually rejected it.’ He held up the slate to show her, and pointed at a line of metadata.
‘Oh, that was me,’ said Menomar. ‘I turned it off. I’ll be honest, it was bothering her. Very persistent. Borderline harassment, if you ask me. It kept making these advances, making suggestions, all kinds of stuff. So I said, no, that’s got to stop. I’m not having it–’
‘What?’ said Dillady.
‘I just shut it down,’ said Menomar. ‘It was the gentlemanly thing to do, really–’
‘Is this a bit?’ Dillady asked, frowning. ‘Is this a bit you do?’
‘It could be,’ said Menomar.
‘I decided on a manual landing,’ said Jagdea. ‘I didn’t see the harm.’
‘It was non-standard,’ said Dillady. ‘It was contrary to field protocol, and contrary to Orison Traffic regulations.’
‘Still,’ said Jagdea. She shrugged. ‘Landed it.’
‘In these conditions?’ Dillady said. ‘Night flight. Storm advisory. Precipitation. Over an urban zone. Eighteen hundred tons of aircraft. Use of autotrack is a safety countermeasure, which is why it is mandated. Guidance and guidepath regulations are fully enforced by Wing Command, and circulated on a more than regular basis to all multiengine drivers, including pool reservists like you. Besides which, you were element lead. You’re supposed to set an example to the other pilots in your convoy. What do you have to say?’
‘I felt like flying,’ said Jagdea. She knew her reply was off-hand, but she just wanted to be left alone.
‘If you’d misjudged,’ said Dillady, ‘and piled that bird in, we’d have had to close the stripway. Probably the field. We’d have lost a valuable air asset, and a vast tonnage of materiel. And we’d be frantically trying to reroute twenty-five other freight elements, all low on fuel after a transoceanic run, to other fields with capacity before they fell out of the sky.’
‘And eight personnel,’ said Menomar.
‘What?’
‘A valuable air asset, a vast tonnage of materiel, and eight personnel,’ said Menomar.
Dillady stared back at him.
‘I am not letting this kind of laxity slip through,’ Dillady said. ‘Inexperienced pilots making poor judgements when–’
‘Inexperienced?’ said Menomar. ‘Do you know who this is?’
‘Don’t,’ said Jagdea quietly. She felt a spike of anxiety. Menomar leaping to her defence was the last thing she wanted to handle.
‘Pilot Officer Jagdea,’ said Dillady, using his slate to make sure he got it right, ‘Aeronautica Logistics Reserve.’
‘Wing Commander Bree Jagdea, Phantine Twentieth Fighter Squadron,’ said Menomar, taking a small but aggressive step forward.
‘Don’t, Klay,’ said Jagdea.
‘Flew Bolts, flew Lights, flew every last damn thing,’ Menomar went on heedlessly. ‘Flew the Cirenholm Air War, flew U-Minor, flew Lotun, flew Khan IV. Flew Srady Bay and Zinc Hill under Hydun. Flew Enothis in ’73. The frigging Battle of the frigging Zophonian Sea. That one must ring a bell, for f–’
‘Stop it,’ said Jagdea.
Dillady looked at her. ‘You were combat?’
Jagdea nodded.
Dillady glanced down at his slate.
‘I don’t pull up biographical data,’ he said, the crow on his upper lip expressing mild curiosity. ‘You were a wing commander? A squadron lead?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t use the rank or the pins?’
‘I drive cargo,’ she said. ‘A squadron leader only exists when there’s a squadron to lead.’
Dillady paused, then nodded. ‘New routings will be posted at oh-six-thirty tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There are bunks and washrooms on level four. Carry on.’
Jagdea picked up her ready-bag, and pulled the still-glaring Menomar away by the arm. As they turned, Dillady called out to her.
‘Jagdea? Report to the deck officer at twenty-two hundred. His office is East Block, level five. Be prompt.’
‘The deck officer?’ Jagdea said.
‘You heard me.’
‘Over this?’ she asked. ‘About this?’
‘Follow instruction when issued, please,’ said Dillady, and walked away. His ‘please’ irked her. People always treated her differently when they discovered her past. The courtesy rankled, but not as much as being sent up in front of the deck officer.
East Block, Hymnal 41 Field, 21:58
Deck officer. Such a mild, insipid title. But ‘deck’, more properly ‘war deck’, was a basic unit of measurement in the mighty Imperial Navy, referring literally to the carrier deck or decks of a battlefleet warship, and by extension to any field, ground base, port or platform out of which the Aeronautica ran squadrons. Hymnal 41 Field was a deck. On a big ship of the line, the ‘deck’ might mean thirty full wings or more. It was the deck officer’s purview, his domain, his command. On a war deck, the deck officer was god, or at least a proxy, local god. He was base command, operations oversight, and wing commander, all rolled into one. On a war deck, even admirals and wing leaders saluted the deck officer.
She waited in the corridor outside the suite of offices. Most had shut down for night operation. Lights were only on in a few. She could smell food, decent food, from somewhere close by. Her stomach growled.
Klay had insisted on coming with her, to take his share of the heat, but she had out-insisted. Rank had its privileges. She’d sent him to catch some sleep. One of them had to be fresh in the morning to snag a half-decent routing.
The corridor was gloomy. Large ports on the opposite side to the offices overlooked the stripway. The windows were flushed with rain, like someone had turned a pressure hose on them. If she pressed close and squinted, she could see multiengines lined up on the rockcrete, crews working to unload them in the downpour. More distant lit pinpricks suggested the swell of the towering hive. She saw the wink of a wing light as a bird came in on an outside strip. Something big, maybe an Onero. Too far away to tell. Too much rain.
She turned her gaze back to the hive again, the glow of it. Orison wasn’t really a hive. It was a hive-plex, and not even the biggest on Lysander. As far as she could remember, there were nine major conurbations. Orison was one of the key densities. It was a family of hives, hives that had prospered and grown to the point where they had started to blend into one. They covered the western seaboard and large territories inland, like thick lichen encasing a rocky outcrop. Like all families, some members had done well for themselves, and grown old and fat, while others were still young and breeding. And, like all families, there had been deaths.
