Interceptor City, page 23
They turned in under the flying buttresses of a reactor complex, and opened out down a long canyon with walls made of dirty spires.
‘Merry Death to Driver. Where are your stores?’
‘I’m not loading stores, over.’
‘Is there a fault?’
‘A choice, over.’
‘That is non-standard.’
‘Driver, copy. That’s me.’
‘How will you kill sinners without missiles?’
‘The God-Emperor will show me a way, over.’
‘I will report you for this infraction when we return,’ Merry Death stated.
For what? Jagdea wondered. The lack of standard order-out payload, or taking the Emperor’s name in vain?
But it wasn’t a lie. Her thumb was ready on GUNS. Tarr hadn’t fitted the cannons yet, so all Jagdea had was the twin-linked K68s. But they were more than enough to kill something.
She thought about following Gumm’s tip, and actually turning her targeters off, but that would take a display blank-down and a logis sub-system reset, which would require several seconds, several console controls, and sustained visual attention. She had none to spare. There was no time to look at the CAD because she had to keep her eyes on the way ahead at all times. Any distraction would pile her in.
Still, the multi-coloured lights of the CAD were glinting off the canopy. They reminded Jagdea of the lights on the radiation counters she’d glimpsed through the rebreather hood when Lopard had led her through the dead zone. Distractions. Visual noise.
They banked down a transit, under a series of powerducts, and swung out into the refinery belt, a vast industrial zone of processors, silos and reactor towers. The rain was heavy still, and the air was dirty from ash, micro-particulates and residual clouds of refinery waste.
Two hundred and twenty seconds. Merry Death’s pace and hazardous route had chopped a whole twenty-six seconds off the intercept time.
‘Contact, west-west,’ Gumm called.
Auspex had just picked it up. Two contacts, moving fast and low. The three birds veered away, and came around the immense drum of a bulk reactor plant that dominated the landscape like a mile-high tree stump.
There was a red glow. Reactor fires were still burning inside it, over a year later.
They punched through a trailing plume of polluted smoke. Jagdea saw the tell-tale glint of exhaust flares at her low nine.
‘Driver, contacts low nine position, south-east. Follow me,’ she voxed, banking out hard in pursuit.
She heard Merry Death say something, probably an objection. She ignored her. Gumm was right on her wing. Guns live. Target system up. Hard steer around a venting scoop, fast dip under a derelict mining conveyer.
Two Talons, burning straight through a manufactory district. One suddenly banked out hard. They’d been detected.
‘Stay on it,’ Merry Death voxed. ‘Pursuing the runner.’
‘Copy, Merry Death,’ Jagdea replied.
She shunted the throttle and rode the kick. G-strain grabbed her as she pulled in past a factory siding to get on the Talon’s tail. She gripped into it, into the squeeze of her pressure suit, feeling every bruise sing. Her thigh started to cramp. Her vision narrowed, then cleared as she pulled true and the load slid away. The Talon was trying to extend. She came in high, leaning on her port wing, hunting for a lock. Manufactory structures lashed past. The Talon executed a hard right onto an adjacent concourse without warning. It had shaken her.
But she pulled her suicide turn.
She heard Gumm yell her name as he shot past, unable to match.
She wrenched the Voss into the twist, feeling it stall out and stumble. She’d overcooked it this time, too confident in her ability to bend the performance beyond book limits. Logis red-lined and screamed. G-load greyed her out. The shred swallowed her, laughing at her stupidity.
Then the Voss levelled as logis compensated for her madness with ducts. The plane hated her. The logis-systems hated her. They did not wish to be treated with such disrespect. They would teach her how the plane wanted to be flown. Wild, fast, true.
That was fine with her.
The Talon ahead banked and faltered, startled to find that she was still, somehow, on its six.
Murderlock.
She let go with the guns.
The Talon wrenched to port, avoiding her chasing shots. But it was too frantic, and clipped a fuelling derrick, losing a significant portion of wing-edge.
She blew past it as it tumbled, trying to level. She banked hard right around a trio of waste tanks to come around and get her nose back on it. Hard g-strain, almost choking on bile and adrenaline. The shred wasn’t laughing any more. It was gnawing her heart out through her ribs.
The wounded Talon was rising, climbing hard. It was slipping out of her reticule.
Gumm’s Voss came across at ultra-high rate from the north, his cannons flashing. The Talon went up in an annihilating fireball, scattering burning debris.
Clean kill.
‘Set them up,’ Gumm voxed.
‘Knock them down,’ Jagdea responded, levelling out.
There was a bright flash, low in the darkening sky to the west.
‘Kill!’ they heard Merry Death shout on the link.
‘Splash two,’ chuckled Gumm as they turned out to find her.
Intercept 66, Vesperus, 19:41
‘That’s two for you,’ Jagdea said to Gumm as they dismounted in the hangar.
‘Technically,’ he agreed, pulling off his helmet. ‘That Talon was yours, to be fair. I only got it because you’d popped it up.’
‘I don’t think you get a tally mark for an assist,’ she replied.
Jagdea peeled her gloves off. She could feel the sweat on her back. The liner of the pressure suit was either too old or too dirty to wick her perspiration away. Her shoulders ached from strap-drag, and her legs felt weak. She looked over at Tarr.
‘I’m off the clock, chief,’ she said. ‘Can you fit the cannons?’
Tarr nodded. ‘Be done for morning,’ she said.
‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ said Jagdea. ‘Need some food, but there are some things I want to do.’
Tarr shrugged. She didn’t care. ‘Coming to the wake?’ she asked.
‘Wake?’
‘For Bloodspot,’ Tarr said. ‘Midnight. Harlot says you know where to come.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jagdea.
They passed Merry Death on their way out of the hangar. She was climbing down from her Bolt.
‘Good kill,’ the Sister said to Gumm. ‘I am reporting your lack of stores,’ she said to Jagdea.
‘May the God-Emperor forgive you,’ Jagdea replied.
She limped up the corridor towards the refectory beside Gumm.
‘That turn?’ he said.
‘You saw it?’
‘I could hardly miss it,’ he replied softly. ‘That was the turn you were talking about? Your trick?’
‘Not the best example, but yes. Want to learn how it’s done?’
‘I don’t,’ said Gumm, ‘because I enjoy being alive.’
‘You want to really.’ She smiled.
‘What I really want, Jagdea,’ he replied, ‘is to hear you trying to explain it to a bunch of smokes. You honestly intend to teach them that?’
‘Well, they’re dead anyway,’ she said. ‘Least this way, they’ll go out with a bang.’
‘That’s a terrible philosophy,’ he said.
‘It is,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve been spending too much time with Harlot.’
‘I don’t want to know what you get up to with Harlot,’ he said.
‘Nothing to know,’ she said. ‘But we’ll talk about something else. Let’s talk about CAD displays.’
Hangar bay, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 20:47
Full of food and freed from her flightsuit, Jagdea wandered back into the hangar. It was quiet now, the exhaust stink dissipating. Rainwater was still dripping from the ceiling. Tarr, an enginseer, and two of her fitters were at work, under lamps, securing the cannons to Jagdea’s rails.
Jagdea strolled over.
‘We’re nowhere near done,’ Tarr growled at her before she could speak.
‘Not here to chivvy you,’ Jagdea said.
‘Just want to watch the real experts at work?’ Tarr asked with a sneer.
‘Sure,’ said Jagdea. ‘When do they get here?’
Tarr glowered. ‘What do you want, Driver?’ she asked.
Jagdea thought for a moment. She pointed at a nearby tool trolley.
‘That roll of lagging tape,’ she said.
‘Help yourself.’
Jagdea took the roll, a tight drum of grey adhesive taping, and climbed up onto Four-Four’s WALK ONLY. The canopy was open. She peered in. The cockpit stank of her stale sweat. Or maybe that was just her. One of the wiring looms had been pulled clear of the CAD like a small drawer to expose the data-card slots, and a small mechanical roll-counter had been screwed to the left-hand slope of the CAD’s cowling, its wires dangling. Power was off.
‘Can I throw the master voltaic?’ she called down.
‘Wait,’ Tarr’s voice replied. A pause. ‘All right.’
Jagdea flipped the voltaics, and the CAD lit up. Bright as ever. She peeled a short length of the adhesive roll, tore it off with her teeth and held it up to the lamp rigs. That wouldn’t work.
‘Chief? Have you got any hose tape?’ she called down. ‘The heavy-duty stuff?’
She heard Tarr swear somewhere below her, and a prone inspection cart trundle across the deck. Tarr rose into view.
‘Hose tape?’ she asked.
‘The heavyweight kind?’
‘Probably.’ Tarr walked over to a tool trolley. ‘This bitch wants everything,’ Jagdea heard Tarr mutter to her crew, who were somewhere under the bird.
Tarr held up a roll of black tape.
‘Like this?’
‘Yes,’ said Jagdea. Tarr tossed it up to her. Jagdea snatched it out of the air one-handed, and threw the lagging tape back with the other. Tarr caught it against her chest and dropped it back in the trolley.
‘This bitch thanks you,’ Jagdea said. She climbed into the cockpit. Inside, with some effort, she reached down, face pressed against the CAD, and slipped her utility knife out of its boot sheath. She tore off several short strips of the heavy black tape, and fixed them along the edge of her canopy frame. Then she took the strips one by one, and carefully began to stick them over various banks of the console, trimming each to fit with her blade. When the strips were used, she tore off more and continued. The tape was thick, thicker than the lagging tape. It was not light-permeable.
The work, painstaking, took several minutes.
‘Frig are you doing, Driver?’ Tarr asked, suddenly leaning in the cockpit at her shoulder.
‘Masking to reduce light noise and reflection,’ said Jagdea.
‘You’re masking controls,’ Tarr began.
‘None that I need,’ Jagdea said. ‘The Voss has way too much instrumentation. Half this stuff is completely redundant in a war sky like Vesperus. I don’t need the distraction.’
‘But–’
‘Proximity sensors?’ Jagdea said, pointing. ‘Don’t need them. I’ve got eyes. Secondary Auspex? Useless. Attitude?’
‘You’ve got plenty of that,’ said Tarr.
‘So I don’t need that either,’ said Jagdea. ‘Seriously, there’s no open sky out there, Chief. You are constantly surrounded by verticals and horizontals to reference. Logis flow? No thanks. Logis activity? Not for me. Ad-mix monitor? I can listen for engine tone, and if it’s gagging on a dead drop, I won’t need six different red lights to tell me so. Hardpoint reporting? Surplus to requirement.’
‘I suppose, with hard guns…’ Tarr admitted.
‘There’s too much going on in here,’ said Jagdea, ‘when there’s already far too much going on outside. In Vesperus, we shouldn’t be looking at our CAD. We should barely be looking at our visor data. We should be looking at the city every second, or it will kill us. Plus, this frigging lightshow reflects off the canopy. Easy to mistake for passing fire, or distant exhaust burns, so that compounds awareness errors. I want everything I don’t need masked.’
Tarr frowned, thinking. ‘Done this before?’ she asked.
‘Never,’ said Jagdea. ‘Never flown a sky like this before.’
Tarr pondered for a moment more.
‘You probably don’t want Aux/Gfd or Range Graphing then,’ she said, leaning in and pointing.
‘You’re damn right,’ said Jagdea, tearing off more strips. ‘And I’d kill the sound too if I could.’
‘Sound?’
‘The cautions. Again, so many. Proximity comes on auto-set, so I have to deselect. Analytics has a chime for everything. Countermeasure Dispense. Logis Instruct and Logis Compensate. G-load meter. Autotrack.’
‘Some of those are important,’ said Tarr doubtfully.
‘Usually,’ agreed Jagdea. ‘But not if they all go off at once, and they keep all going off at once because of the conditions. In most cases, it’s a false alert. If it’s really something vital then, well, it’s probably too late. I need comms. I need master threat and lock threat warning. And I need murderlock. That’s all.’
Tarr rubbed the inside of her cheek with the tip of her tongue thoughtfully.
‘I can get into the advisory hub and reset them all to a mute default,’ she said. ‘Except the ones you mentioned. If you like.’
‘You can?’
‘Sure,’ said Tarr. ‘If it works, it works. If it kills you, you can’t come back and complain. Now are you done? I want to flip the power off again.’
‘One more,’ said Jagdea. She tore off a final, small patch of tape and stuck it down over the hydraulics indicator, hiding its red glow.
‘That one was just pissing me off,’ she said.
Hangar bay, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 22:05
‘We’re all scared,’ said Jagdea. ‘This is a hell of a sky, and there is no safe way to fly it. Me and Gumm, we’ve been trying to find new methods. New tricks. Ways of dealing with this particular environment.’
She paused.
‘Scratch that,’ she said. ‘We’ve been trying to find ways to stay alive. Nothing I’ve got to say is recommended. Nor is it officially sanctioned. But if I say it out loud, and you happen to be in the same room in earshot…’
She shrugged. Gumm, seated to her left, said nothing. Her audience maintained an uneasy silence.
‘I’m not telling you to do any of this,’ she went on. ‘Pick and choose. Take what you want. Ignore everything. It’s up to you.’
‘I just want to do better,’ said Wilzar quietly.
‘I just want to learn that turn,’ said Tantrum.
Jagdea nodded. Four of them had turned up. Just four smokes. Wilzar, Tantrum and two others Jagdea didn’t know. They had pulled up crates or folding stools to sit in front of her. None of them looked comfortable being there. Gumm was staying out of the way, off to her side, observing. Behind her, Tarr and her team were still working on Tail 044, the only other people in the hangar.
‘You want to do better?’ Jagdea asked Wilzar.
He nodded, weary. ‘I thought I could frigging fly, Jagdea.’
‘You can,’ she said. She glanced at the others. ‘All of you. Tell me, who are the best bat-killers in Six-Six?’
‘Gangster,’ said Tantrum. ‘Gangster and Merry Death.’
‘Lead Garrant,’ said Wilzar. ‘Blindside. Slumbag. Jongleur.’
‘Harlot,’ said one of the smokes, a young woman.
‘Bloodspot,’ said the other.
Jagdea nodded sadly.
‘Yes, he was,’ she agreed. ‘So what have they all got that you haven’t?’
‘Kills,’ said Tantrum emphatically. The smokes laughed.
‘Yes, but not that,’ said Jagdea. ‘That’s the goal. That, and being alive long enough to collect kills. I have no doubt that some or all of you have kills. You all got transferred to Six-Six from active units, recommended by your previous leads. Wilzar’s a multi-ace. I know that for a fact.’
Wilzar looked at the deck, embarrassed.
‘Something else,’ said Jagdea.
‘Hours,’ said the girl.
‘Right,’ Jagdea nodded. ‘Logged hours. They’re all older. They’re all veterans. Banking hours on the log doesn’t necessarily make you a better pilot. But experience gives you confidence. You think less about what you’re doing, and more about just doing it. Muscle memory. Familiarity. Maybe an adaptive attitude to regulations and the rules you learned in flight school. The names you mentioned are the best bat-killers, because they’ve accumulated the confidence to fly on instinct. You’ve seen them all in the refectory. Taking no shit. The swagger, in some cases. The way they act on the deck is the way they act in the sky. Proactive. Positive.’
‘They’re not afraid?’ asked Tantrum.
‘They’re as shit-scared as you,’ said Jagdea. ‘But they use that fear, that shred, to be bold. Listen, you’re all good pilots. I don’t know you, but I don’t have to review your records to know that. You are all Aeronautica. Just wearing that pin means you have trained to the highest level, shown potential and talent, made every cut, and reached the top percentile. You can all fly like bastards. It’s in you. You can probably fly better than me or Gumm, because you’re young. Sharper, quicker reflexes. I envy you. The bat-killers in Six-Six treat you like dirt, because you’re young. They can taste your caution. And because you’re young, you treat yourselves like dirt. Remember who the frig you are, and what you can do.’
‘So this is about confidence?’ asked Tantrum. ‘An assertiveness seminar? Screw that.’
The others laughed, even Wilzar.
‘What’s your name?’ Jagdea asked.
