Interceptor City, page 32
The Talon tried to peel out and run. Wilzar somehow J-turned out of the mast line, then reverse J-turned in a tight S to reacquire. At that point, the Talon stood zero chance.
A burst from Wilzar’s cannons. Nothing excessive. Just sufficiently plenty. Hit, shedding debris, engine and one wing on fire, the Talon spat into a mad climb, out of control, leaving a long ripple of combustion behind it. It went straight up and hit the fan of the last turbine mast dead centre. The Talon exploded, taking the fan with it, burning segments of vane the size of a Firmament’s wing falling like petals.
‘Four-A,’ Jagdea voxed.
Wilzar turned high. Ignited debris from the turbine scattered into the sea wind. The top of the mast, headless now, was ablaze and lifting black smoke, like a beacon fire on an ancient watchtower.
‘Bats, bats.’ It was Gumm. He’d scared up the bait that the two Talons had been covering, and was chasing them down the trench. Jagdea and Wilzar rolled out together to join him.
As they dropped into the outflow, black water twinkling below them, she heard it again.
‘Bats, bats.’
It wasn’t Gumm this time. It was Harlot.
‘Driver copies, Harlot,’ she replied. ‘More, please.’
‘Six bats inbound, seawall trench,’ she heard Lopard say. His voice sounded tight, like he was pulling a g-load. ‘In pursuit. On you in ten.’
‘Copy.’
Harlot’s flight, with Lopard leading Slipstream and the Sister, had dropped ten minutes before Jagdea’s after a possible track in the Pallisades. Jagdea’s gut told her that those hostiles had changed heading to support the bats her pack was hunting.
It suddenly got very busy over the seawall zone. The bats – four Blades and two Razors – appeared at high rate, in hard pursuit of Gumm, who was several miles ahead, chasing the bait-portion of the original hostile formation: two Talons and a Venom laden with ordnance for the south ’plex. Jagdea voxed Gumm to warn him and advise a breakaway, but he waved her off. He was closing, in hot, and adamant he wasn’t going to let the bombers get away.
Jagdea and Wilzar gunned up the moment the enemy hunters went over, high and fast. Jagdea pushed back her concern that Gumm was out on his own, and her deeper worry that Gumm, in his determination, had sounded too much like the old Sagittarius Gumm she’d got to know the day before. The risk-taking gunslinger, hell-bent on success.
Harlot’s flight came up on their six just seconds after Jagdea and Wilzar had extended in pursuit. Slipstream, in his green Bolt, and Merry Death, in her chequered black Bolt, seemed especially eager to burn past Driver and Smoke to reach the hostiles. They’d been chasing them for nearly forty miles.
‘Intercept, ease back,’ Jagdea voxed. ‘They’ve seen us.’
The bats had. They’d been aware of Harlot’s strenuous pursuit, but now they had five interceptors running the seawall after them. Jagdea knew they wouldn’t like those odds, and would undoubtedly break, at least some of them. If the Six-Six fightbirds were maxing when that happened, they’d go under the scattering bats and be forced to turn before they could engage.
‘Copy, Driver,’ Harlot responded, no idiot.
Instantly, the bats broke as predicted. One Blade kept going after Gumm. The others umbrellaed into high turns above the trench. Though she had warned them, Slipstream and the Sister overshot the manoeuvre, running too hard. Jagdea, Harlot and Wilzar, exercising cool restraint, pulled up out of the trench to greet the scatter.
The war sky, damp and pale with a stiff crosswind, was more open above the seawall and the coastal zone. There were far fewer structural obstructions. Eight machines met in a whirling dogfight, belatedly joined by Merry Death and Slipstream to make it ten. It was the first proper turning knife-fight Jagdea had known since arriving in Vesperus. The first she had known in years.
The brawl was messy, bewildering, spilling its improvised dance down through the sky. Gripping, inverted, after a Blade, Jagdea was almost hit by Slipstream crossing high. A Razor shot past, spewing fuel burn. It was all a blur. The g-load chop was so fierce, her vision coned and then greyed out into monochrome. She got a lock, lost it. Tracers speared past. The world revolved, sky, trench, the expanse of the ocean with a nearly vertical horizon.
She got on a Blade, pulling g so strong she felt her cheek sutures part and blood weep down her face. She achieved a lock, but then a threat warning sounded, and she pulled tight to evade. She passed a bat and then the Sister nose-on, too close, and banked into a dive. Below, in the trench, Wilzar was chasing a Blade.
Threat lock. The bat was still on her. Or another one was. It was impossible to tell. She dipped into the outflow trench, came up again hard, and saw las-fire stripe past her. The bat had levelled out, still on her six. There was no way to turn and spot it, not pulling this load. Looking over her shoulder would clamp blood vessels, and somatogravics would fox her inner ear, and disorientate her into thinking she was travelling in a direction that she wasn’t.
Grip position. Discipline. Focus. Instruments. When the threat lock sounded again, she popped a flurry of flares, and banked out of the trench through one of the ragged holes where the seawall had collapsed.
She was out over water, over half-submerged lines of rusting transport barges, over white crinkles of waves, over Helot Bay.
She swung wide. The sun was playing for her side. She could glimpse the flickering shadow of the bat behind her on the water to her left.
Hard right. High rolling rate. Hard right. She spat the bat out. She saw it, a green Blade, at her eleven, lifting to turn. Hard roll. Harder. Almost inverted, the horizon line sweeping up to midnight like the second hand of a timer. The Blade bent around over the sea in a broad curve and began to burn back towards the seawall.
Murderlock. Heat track. Missile selected, and away with a jolt.
It was a long walk for the heater. It seemed to take forever. She chased the Skystrike’s motor plume as it sliced the air, jinking and snatching to stay on-heat as the Blade tried to lose it. At the last gasp, the bat kicked out some kind of countermeasures, a flurry of lurid violet cinders. Whatever they did, they did it. The Skystrike detonated short.
But it was too late anyway. The shockwave of the near-miss airburst slapped the green Blade’s tail, kicked it askew, and sent it into a crazy, spasmodic tumble. It tried to recover, failed, and screwed into the seawall with a bang of fire.
Jagdea lifted her nose and hopped back over the wall. In the trench, she saw a burning fuel slick and a litter of floating debris. No clue as to friend or foe. She started to call for a check-in and regroup.
Harlot cut her off with a bellow of, ‘Splash!’
His call was then also truncated by Wilzar triumphantly proclaiming his second kill of the day.
Then the vox rasped. A sharp burst of electromag distortion. Someone was screaming.
Wilzar’s bird shot past over her left shoulder. Tail 035’s entire back end was missing. It had been replaced by a cloud of flame. He’d either taken a heater to the tail, or a direct burst of cannon into the engine.
There was no hope. The bird was gone. She heard the screaming and knew it was Wilzar.
‘Eject! Eject! Eject!’ she yelled.
Tail 035 was already falling. She saw a flash of canopy, the creased banner of a deploying ’chute. Then it was all behind her, and the burning Voss was exploding in the trench bottom below.
‘Wilzar! Copy! Wilzar!’
She thought she heard him screaming again, just for a second. But there was no chance of that being real.
Infirmary, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 13:00
As it turned out, there was.
‘Jagdea,’ Garrant growled, in both warning and compassion. He blocked her way.
‘He’s alive?’ she asked.
‘Recovery Valks just brought him in.’
‘Step aside, Asa.’
‘You don’t want to see him, Jagdea,’ Garrant said calmly. His face looked as though it couldn’t withstand many more losses before collapsing like a rockslide. ‘Stanslaf’s still working on him anyway.’
‘I want to see him.’
‘No,’ said Garrant. He put a hand against her shoulder. She looked past him, and saw the trail of blood spatters leading up the corridor to the infirmary door, the blood-wet splats of soaked, discarded dressings.
‘Status?’ she asked, looking Garrant in the eye, and not liking what she found there.
‘Wilzar banged out,’ Garrant said. ‘It was low. You know that. But he ejected. Jagdea, Wilzar is tall.’
He stopped talking. She knew what that meant.
‘Both?’ she asked.
‘Both, above the knee.’
She turned away, so there was only the empty hallway and the shred to see her face.
‘He was getting it,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘I mean really,’ she said. ‘Two kills today.’
‘I know.’
‘The first was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Just… good flying. He was listening. He was learning.’
‘Jagdea…’
She wouldn’t look at him.
‘It was good flying,’ said Garrant. ‘Another good sortie. A full bag.’
‘I don’t want to hear it, Asa.’
‘Well, I need you to hear it, pilot officer. I want you to put it in perspective. This is the loss of a promising pilot. I despise these moments. You have to think about the gains, or you won’t get past it. None of the bats got through. Wilzar took two. You took two. The Sister took two. One each for Harlot and Slipstream. Gumm matched the record you set yesterday. Three in the trench. No one got away.’
She turned, and looked at him. She could feel the tightness of her cheek where the blood from her burst sutures had dried.
‘You got the job done,’ Garrant said. ‘But the job costs.’
She heard footsteps. Gumm hurried down the hall to them.
‘Did he die?’ he asked simply.
‘No,’ said Garrant.
‘Lead means not yet,’ said Jagdea. ‘Wilzar punched out. The canopy frame took both of his legs off.’
Gumm swore.
‘I don’t know what other injuries he took,’ said Jagdea. ‘Some, I’ll bet. And I don’t know how long he was in the water.’
She glanced at Garrant. She still had a coal of hope inside her.
‘Ninety minutes,’ he replied.
‘So if blood loss and shock-trauma don’t get him,’ said Jagdea, as the coal sputtered out, ‘infection probably will.’
Refectory, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 13:30
They sat in the refectory, and ate food they didn’t want. The tallies had been chalked up, but the place had emptied since then, taking any celebration with it. Other shouts had come up.
‘It’s getting busier,’ said Jagdea. ‘More raids.’
‘More intensive,’ Gumm agreed. ‘Suggesting increased desperation on the part of the enemy.’
‘You matched my record,’ she observed.
‘I don’t really care about that,’ he replied.
‘You didn’t really like Wilzar,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t your friend.’
‘You didn’t much like him either,’ said Gumm. ‘That doesn’t matter. He had begun to stick well. What I saw today, superb. I never thought he’d be the kind to learn. And anyway, whether we liked him or not, he was a person.’
Jagdea pushed her plate aside.
‘You matched my record,’ she said.
‘Shut up about that…’
‘No, Gumm,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m returning the favour. Yesterday, you watched my back. Reminded me how not to be the hero of the Zoph again. My turn, Sagittarius.’
‘You’re mistaken, Jagdea,’ he replied. ‘My performance today–’
‘You upped your game,’ she insisted. ‘Ran solo after three bats. Splashed them all. It was reckless, given the coverage. Besides, I could hear it in your voice.’
‘Really?’ he said.
‘Definitely. The bottle’s on the table, Gumm. You’re still staring at it, but your hand is a little closer.’
He sat back and folded his arms.
‘This is your opinion?’ he asked.
‘This is my observation,’ she replied. ‘Offered without malice. That’s what friends do.’
Gumm hesitated.
‘Copy instruct,’ he said.
They looked up as Steeley approached their table.
‘Lead said to tell you that Wilzar’s awake,’ he said.
Infirmary, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 13:50
The sheet-covered shape on the surgical gurney didn’t seem to represent enough to be Wilzar, even with the covers tented above his amputated legs. His head was bandaged and gel-packed, and his splinted arms were raised and tubed to portable life-sustain units.
Garrant ushered them in. Dampier was present too. The little infirmary, pungent at the best of times, reeked of blood, chemicals and bio-waste.
Med Stanslaf glanced at Jagdea with professional concern.
‘I’ll need to re-dress that cheek,’ he said.
‘Just tell me how he is,’ she said.
‘Stable,’ said Stanslaf. ‘Critical. Both legs severed by canopy collision. Considerable loss of blood volume. I’ve debrided and cleaned the stumps, but I can’t do more for now. Breaks to arms and ribs. Head trauma. I’m watching for pollution-triggered sepsis, which is inevitable, because both skin and open wounds were in the water. The next thirty-six hours are critical. If he survives those, I strongly recommend medical evac to Orison at the first possible opportunity. We really don’t have the apparatus to support personnel so seriously injured here. And we certainly don’t have recuperation programmes or access to augmetic rebuild, which should be applied as early as possible if he’s going to have any quality of life.’
Jagdea looked at Garrant.
‘So, a place on the next transport out,’ she said. ‘What’s that? Twelve days from now?’
‘Four,’ said Garrant quietly. ‘They brought it up.’
Jagdea nodded.
‘Four,’ she echoed.
She moved past the medicae, and looked down at Wilzar. She didn’t recognise him. His head was too swathed in dressings, and his face too swollen and blood-bruised.
‘You did better,’ she told him, even though she was certain he couldn’t hear her.
‘Let’s clear the room, I think,’ said Stanslaf.
‘Agreed,’ said Dampier. ‘Everyone out.’
Jagdea stared at Wilzar for a final moment.
‘I didn’t even see it, Smoke,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t even see the bat that got you.’
She flinched as the swollen mask below opened the one eye that would still open. The cornea was bright red. The puffed slot that used to be his mouth moved.
‘Did he say something?’ asked Gumm.
‘Come on, everybody out,’ Dampier insisted.
Jagdea leaned in close, close enough to smell the stink of meat and putrid breath, close enough to hear the slow, sucking purl of respiration.
‘Wilzar?’ she whispered.
‘Not,’ he gurgled.
‘Not? Did you say not?’
‘Not… bat…’ the gurgle answered, so very far away and drowning in its own mucus. ‘Fight… bird…’
BACK FROM THE DEAD
VESPERUS
IMPERIAL YEAR 795.M41, DAY 94 – DAY 103
DAY 94
Intercept 66, Vesperus, 16:41
‘You must have misheard,’ said Gumm.
‘You were there,’ Jagdea replied.
‘I didn’t hear him,’ said Gumm. ‘You must have misheard.’
He’d come to find her in the hangar. She was sitting in One-One’s open cockpit, painstakingly masking the instruments with hose tape. Gumm leant against the fuselage below, arms folded.
‘I know what he said,’ she said.
‘Fightbird?’
‘Right.’
‘So you think Wilzar was telling you that he was splashed by one of us?’ asked Gumm.
‘By someone,’ she said, tearing off another strip of tape with her teeth. ‘By a friendly. One of us, Aeronautica… I don’t know. Not the Archenemy, is my point. Wilzar was splashed by someone he should have been able to trust.’
Gumm thought about it.
‘He was delirious,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Jagdea. ‘And now Stanslaf’s put him in an induced coma, so we can’t ask again. But he got four words out. Took a huge effort. It wasn’t raving, Gumm. It was something he needed to say.’
Gumm remained silent for a while.
‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘it happens. It’s ugly, but it happens. Friend-on-friend. Especially in a turning knife-fight like that one. It’s unavoidable. A situational hazard. You must have seen it?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Too many times, even at the highest discipline. Tragic, accidental, terrible. I often think it’s worse for the shooter. To have to live with it, afterwards.’
She smoothed down a piece of tape, then tossed the roll onto the top of the headache’s casing.
‘But I’ve never known anybody not put their hand up to it,’ she said, staring at the dead control panels.
She got up, and swung out of the cockpit. He was looking up at her.
‘Never,’ she said. ‘Pilots always step up, even when an incident isn’t witnessed. That’s just the code. Service honour. You admit it, you confess it, you take the consequences.’
