Interceptor City, page 3
Lysander had been free of the Archenemy for just over ten years when the enemy take-back began in ’86. Jagdea had been on Gereon then, working with the occupation forces after the liberation nine years earlier, but she’d heard word of the big hit that Lysander had taken. An orbital attack, a year of land war, and then Great Haven, the easternmost hive of the Orison hive-plex, had fallen to the Archonate. Its neighbour, Vesperus, had followed a year later. Crusade forces, pushing out of the main Orison zone, had driven the onslaught back. Vesperus, already partly evacuated, had been smoked and killed outright. A whole hive, nearly as big as the one she was staring at, dead and empty, a city grave. Great Haven had survived. Since then, Great Haven and Orison had been slugging it out, a massive surface war mainly, but a major air fight too. Significant Aeronautica assets had been committed, some said as much as on Lyubov. There was glory out there in the rainswept darkness, glory to be chased and snatched by the brave and the reckless, the bat-killers and the gunfighters, the veterans who should know better, and the over-confident smokes who didn’t, and who probably wouldn’t live long enough to learn.
There was nowhere to sit. She waited. She leaned against the wall, easing the pins in her left hip. So many holes, so many patches, each one the souvenir of some shitfest or other. Jagdea believed she could make a popular mess game out of it: match the scar to the theatre. The burn tissue on her bicep? Tracer shot over Cirenholm, well done, sir! The blue, fibreweave grafts on her left arm, lower throat and shoulder? Cannon fire from a hell-bat over the Enothian littoral that had brought her down and opened her to the bone. Congratulations, everything still to play for. The scar on her thin cheek? Bursting canopy plex, Srady Bay, well spotted. The stipples on her belly? Aluminoid fragments, Urdesh Minor, correct. The hip, the ribs, the herniated spinal discs? Well, that crash on Lyubov, of course. Spectacular. The kind where they had to cut you out of the burning wreck of your career. The fibreweave patches on her throat, wrists, left forearm, groin, right calf and ankles? All elective reinforcements done at various times to armour circulation points against high-g compression, or repair thromboses or deep-vein collapses caused by high-g compression. Take your pick, but full marks to you, thank you for playing. Let’s move to round two…
Dillady’s words haunted her.
No, not his words at all. Klay’s. Frigging Klay Menomar’s. His angry defence of her. His roll call of her life. None of it fresher than a decade or more, all of it ancient history. Glory stories. She wasn’t ashamed of them, of any of it. But actually hearing it, hearing it spill into the air out of somebody else’s mouth, that had knocked the stick out of her hands. It had made all the faces come back.
They came back from time to time, but only when she let them, when she was ready for them. If she let herself remember, or was telling a story, like the ones she’d told to Klay, then she’d call them up and let them come to her.
Standing in front of Dillady, she hadn’t been ready at all, not even slightly braced. And they had all come at once. Van Tull and Zemmic. Milan Blansher, of course. Espere. Clovin and Waldon. Darrow, always eager, and Viltry with his sad eyes. Scalter. August Kaminsky. Aggie Del Ruth. Larice, with her shit-eating grin. Marquall and Ranfre and Cordiale, laughing about something. Padmus, Rodine, Alia Tan, and all Jagdea’s other peers from the Cirenholm days and the Urdesh Minor tour, from Halo Flight, and Orbis, and Talon, and always, always Umbra Flight, in each and every incarnation, like old flight-room picts, dwindling in the brutal years after Enothis. Zeto and Lal Mullane and the Dancers from Khan IV, the laughing boys and girls of the Bat Pack on Lyubov, gunfighters with their hair on fire and their claws out, forever fewer and fewer.
It had almost overwhelmed her. She had felt as though tears were about to explode her eyes. All the faces. All those years. All those fleeting friendships that were less than actual friendships, but far, far more all the same. Born out of the shred. Born out of the fire, and the stress, and the necessity. Bright and hot and gone, like las-bolts. Her combat years, and she’d had more than most and been blessed with far too many, had been a constant, extreme state, relentlessly high on adrenaline. For almost ten years, she had never come down, never, not once. She had stayed high in the shred until she couldn’t stay up any more.
Did that make her lucky, or the unluckiest one of all?
She’d had friends since, co-pilots, wingmen. Menomar was one of the best. But the friends you make in the fire melt into you and fuse, and leave their marks on you like scars.
A door opened along the hall. A bar of light spilled across the corridor floor and up the wall.
‘Pilot Officer Jagdea?’
She straightened up. She rubbed her eyes, and shook out the sleeves of her coat. She had thought about changing for this, putting on a uniform, but there was nothing in her ready-bag except two pairs of clean shorts, two fairly clean pairs of wool socks, a definitely-not-clean vest, and a rolled compression bodyglove. So she’d settled for a strip-wash in the billet sink. Menomar had offered her a comb, which was a typical Klay Menomar joke, because Jagdea’s hair was about as short as hair could get and still deserve the name.
She walked down to the door, went in, and closed it behind her. She saluted, then stood, head up, hands behind her back. The room was a large command office, with hooded lamps over the desk, charts on the wall, and giant observation ports running with rain. The smell of food was stronger. She ignored her stomach.
The Hymnal 41 deck officer wore a clean, battlefleet regulation uniform that someone had probably pressed for him. He was standing with his back to her, pouring an amasec from a drink cart. She noticed his augmetic hand gripping the decanter.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Well, sir. Thank you,’ she replied.
He put the decanter down and turned to look at her.
‘You probably don’t remember me,’ he said.
Her eyes widened. It was hard to process what was happening. She felt like she was back in the hall with Dillady, the faces swarming back against her will.
‘Shit,’ she said.
‘Oh, charming,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly a face you forget, I confess, but still.’
‘Kaminsky?’ she whispered.
‘Hello, Bree,’ said August Kaminsky. ‘How’s the Emperor been protecting you?’
‘I was trying to work it out,’ said Kaminsky, handing her a second amasec. ‘What is it? Nineteen years? Twenty?’
‘Twenty, I think,’ she said. She had taken an armchair by the desk before he’d even offered it. ‘Twenty. ’75. Khan IV.’
‘The Dancers,’ he said, raising his glass. His smile made an odd crease in the burn tissue of his face. ‘My last go-around.’
‘I was sorry to lose you.’
‘Don’t be,’ he replied. ‘I was done, and no good to you, or Umbra Flight. It was time. Thanks to you, I got, what, two extra years combat rotation I never thought I’d see? Three tours, and I wouldn’t give them back. But the shred gets you. The smart ones know when it’s time to step back. Yet you went on.’
‘Which makes me not one of the smart ones?’ she asked wryly.
Kaminsky laughed. ‘No, you weren’t ready. You had tour-time left in you.’
‘Umbra didn’t,’ she said. ‘It lasted about four months after you went. Not enough of us left. Wing Command retired us as a unit, but offered places to pilot officers, because they were desperate for decent sticks. So I signed off and folded into the Aeronautica. Two more tours with Fifty-Eight Aquila, then on to Twelfth Squadron Stratoraptors, and Lyubov.’
‘Some show,’ he said. ‘And I question the adjective “decent” in that account. The Aeronautica was lucky to have you. Any of you.’
‘What about you?’ Jagdea asked.
Kaminsky shrugged.
‘Same story but from the other side of the desk,’ he said. ‘Put in for transfer to Aeronautica after I stepped down from active combat, got accepted, served in munitions on the Clarion, then made junior deck. Then assistant deck on the Grace And Majesty Of Khulan. Eight years doing that, then four on the Imperator Resurgam. Then here.’
‘So what rank are you?’
‘Senior deck officer, Hymnal Forty-One Field, please and thank you and where’s my salute?’
‘You run the frigging place. I get it. But what rank does that make you?’
‘Well, technically,’ he mused, ‘that makes me a wing commander, wing commander.’
‘Good for you,’ she said, and tipped her glass to him.
‘I just can’t quit the smell of aviation fuel,’ he said, ‘but this is as close as I’m prepared to get any more.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘a question, senior deck officer… Dillady?’
‘Good question.’
‘Answer?’
‘Oh, arsehole.’
‘Good answer.’
‘But I didn’t appoint him,’ said Kaminsky. ‘Turns out you don’t get to choose these things. We are obliged to get along. One does not join the Aeronautica to make friends.’
‘Or keep them,’ she said.
‘Brutally true,’ he replied. ‘Look, Bree, I saw your name on the day log when I was reviewing the inbounds this morning. I had to call you in, just to say hello.’
‘I would have been offended if you hadn’t.’
‘Glacier Heavy Five-Nine, was it?’ he asked. ‘What the hell are you doing driving multis and running airlifts?’
‘I have one skill,’ she said. ‘I fly things. And I’m too broken for combat. So I wound up in the Logistics reserve pool, doing whatever jobs needed to be done.’
‘Well, I think that’s a crime. You know what, recon’s crying out for decent sticks. A little mono fightbird, high alt, picters in place of guns, no shooting guaranteed? That’s more you.’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, come on. Bree Jagdea flying freightbirds?’
‘They don’t fly themselves,’ she said.
‘Well, I hate to break it to you…’ he began, and they both laughed.
He got up.
‘Hungry?’ he asked.
‘Hell, yes. I’ve been smelling food since I got up here. Good food, too. Is the canteen still open?’
He walked over to a sideboard and took the steel domes off two warming plates.
‘Oh, Throne,’ she said. ‘That’s what I could smell.’
‘I took the liberty of ordering supper from the officers’ refectory,’ said Kaminsky. ‘I mean, if a senior deck officer can’t treat an old friend to a good meal, where’s the frigging justice in life?’
Kaminsky had been Enothian Commonwealth Aviation Corps when she’d first met him, invalided to service duties. In the crunch, before the Battle of the Zophonian Sea, she’d dragged him back into combat duty, got him a brevet assignment to the Phantine Air Corps, and handed him a place in Umbra Flight. Kaminsky had stayed there, through the rest of Enothis, then through Lotun, and most of Khan IV.
‘I was junked,’ he said as they ate. ‘But you brought me back from the dead, and gave me a lease of life I never expected.’
‘That’s an overly generous description of what happened,’ she replied. ‘I pulled strings and bent more than a few rules to give you a chance to kill yourself. Because I needed a stick. That’s not what friends do.’
‘One does not join the Aeronautica to make friends,’ he said.
‘Who said we were friends?’ Jagdea grinned, raising a forkful of steak.
‘I was just thinking,’ Kaminsky said, ‘maybe I can return the favour this time around? Bring you back from the dead. I have connections.’
‘I’m happy being dead,’ she said.
‘How long since you flew combat?’
‘Not long enough, August.’
‘But when? Lyubov?’
She nodded.
‘Long time,’ Kaminsky mused, refilling their wine glasses from the carafe. ‘But still…’
‘Drop it, Kaminsky. It’s a young bastard’s game. A smoke’s game. I am well past my prime.’
‘You were the hottest stick I ever saw.’
‘Yeah, well, thanks, but that was then. I wore out. And I’m old. Reactions don’t get faster.’
‘But you miss it?’
‘No,’ she said firmly.
‘You do.’
‘It was what I did. Combat pilots burn bright and fast. What, five, six years, if they’re lucky? Much less, usually. The attrition is brutal. If you survive, by some miracle, the mental cost is too much. Remember Viltry?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, then.’ Jagdea sipped her wine. ‘Those are the career arcs. Physical burn-out, mental shred, or just plain, old-fashioned fiery death.’
‘The same could be said of the Astra Militarum,’ he said. ‘More so, in the meat-grinder. But there are Guard veterans pushing sixty, seventy… more, even, with augmetics and enhancement juvenat.’
‘Yeah, but a seventy-year-old colonel in the Guard doesn’t get out of bed each morning, strap himself to a ramjet, and fire himself at the enemy, does he?’
‘I believe there are a lot of people who would like to see that happen.’
‘I’m sure,’ she said, smiling. ‘My point is that the only gunslingers who last more than a decade, by means of luck or damnation, are freaks. Crazy, psychopathic freak-monsters. And they are, thankfully, a rare breed. No, the only outs are switching to non-combat stick work, or desk duties, or promotion to Navy Command.’
‘Or death.’
‘Or that.’
Kaminsky paused, glass in hand, and studied her across the table.
‘No, you miss it,’ he decided. ‘I know this because I chose to fly a desk, Bree, but you’re still flying actual birds.’
‘Multis,’ she corrected.
‘And you reject autotrack during a class-three gale. I saw the report. Why would you do that, unless you still wanted to be tested?’
‘It was a cheap thrill,’ she said. ‘Change the subject.’
He shrugged. ‘Do you ever wonder what happened to them?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘The ones that aren’t here. Those friends we didn’t make?’
‘Now and then,’ she said.
DAY 87
East Block, Hymnal 41 Field, 01:45
The rain had stopped just before midnight. They took their amasecs out onto the observation gallery and watched the field while a servitor silently cleared away their plates in the office behind them. The night air stank of promethium and petrichor. Two Destriers were rolling out into the floodlit glow of a launch slip. A late-flight Arvus was coming in on the boundary pad.
‘Zemmic went down on Lyubov,’ she said. ‘We lost so many there, actually. It was a shitshow. Prycel, Mullane, Banerjee… but you probably don’t remember them.’
‘Lal Mullane, I do. He joined on Khan IV.’
‘Right, right.’
‘Van Tull?’ Kaminsky asked.
Jagdea pursed her lips.
‘No idea. He was with us all the way to Lyubov, and made it through that. Transferred to Thirty-Three Angelic, I think, or Forty-Three Angelic, and was posted to the Erinyes front. I don’t know after that. I like to think he’s out there somewhere. Aggie Del Ruth retired to Phantine after Enothis. Ended up as senior instructor at Hessenville.’
‘Still there?’
‘I think so. We haven’t kept in touch.’
‘What about…’ Kaminsky tapped his brow as he tried to recall. ‘What was her name? Asche? Larice Asche?’
Jagdea had often wondered that herself.
‘I never knew what became of her,’ she said. ‘Always was bound for glory, one way or the other. The Apostles stopped posting pilot lists after ’75. Probably because they didn’t want to admit they were mortal. Their attrition rate was the worst of all, because they took the biggest chances. Had that reputation to preserve. I doubt very much that she’s still alive. If she is, she’d have burned out of the Apostles years ago.’
‘Maybe she’s Queen Apostle?’ said Kaminsky.
‘Maybe. But the Apostles are exactly what I was talking about before, August. You get to that level, multi-ace, the best of the best, and there’s nowhere left to go. You kill until you’re killed, and you will be killed. They’re the freaks, the ones with the skill and luck to outrun Fate’s wheel longer than anyone else. The Apostles seemed so brave and glorious to us, but they were dead inside. Dead from shred. Terrified, because every day was another day overdue, another hour stolen, another I.O.U. to death. I never, ever wanted to end up like that. And, Throne knows, I was headed that way.’
Kaminsky nodded and sighed.
‘I hear you. That’s why I got out. That moment you realise you’re not so quick on the stick any more, not so tight in the turns. Breaks your heart, but you walk away if you’ve got any sense.’
‘That’s right, August. And that day, for me, was about seventeen years ago.’
They stood in silence for a while. Down below, trolley starters banged and coughed as the ground crews got the compressors running on the brace of Destriers.
‘I think that’s about all of them,’ Jagdea said. ‘Oh, Darrow, of course. Transferred to Aeronautica after Lotun. I don’t know what happened to him after that.’
She looked at Kaminsky, noticed the crooked smile.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I know. Darrow’s upstairs.’
She frowned at him. Kaminsky pointed one prosthetic finger at the sky above them.
