Interceptor City, page 33
‘True,’ he said.
‘We own our mistakes and failures, no matter the shame or ignominy,’ she said.
‘Unless a pilot doesn’t know they’ve done it,’ Gumm offered. ‘Loose fire. A stray heater that locks the wrong plume. If a pilot doesn’t see–’
‘Wilzar was splashed by direct fire from the rear,’ said Jagdea. ‘Whoever took that shot knew all about it. But no one’s come forward.’
‘Out of shame? Guilt? Fear?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. She jumped down to the stand beside him. ‘Or something else.’
She started to wipe her hands on a rag. She looked around and saw him staring at her.
‘I had a hunch this was where you were going with it,’ Gumm said wearily. ‘A white crow?’
‘It could be a white crow,’ said Jagdea.
‘It could not be a white crow!’ he exclaimed. ‘White crows are myths! Just scuttlebutt. All these years, I’ve never even heard of one, let alone encountered one–’
‘Neither have I,’ she agreed. ‘But there have been some.’
‘In the whole history of the service?’ he asked. ‘Yes, all right. I’m sure. A few. One or two psychos or freaks, one or two traitors or heretics. But in actual, real life, it’s groxshit. Made up, just like glory stories. Creepy rec room tales to scare the smokes.’
‘Like they’re not scared enough already,’ she said.
‘You think that a pilot from this squadron deliberately tried to murder Wilzar?’
‘From this squadron, or maybe one of the other Intercepts covering Vesperus.’
‘Why would they?’ Gumm asked.
‘Any number of reasons,’ said Jagdea, tossing the rag aside. ‘Mental illness? The corruption of the warp? Personal grudge? To serve some secret agenda, perhaps because they’re a traitor to the Throne? To feed some psychopathic urge? Or just for frigging kicks?’
‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘Six-Six is Aeronautica. High levels of–’
‘Six-Six is full of drunks, stimm-heads, and pilots burned clean through by shred. There are plenty of psychos.’
‘Yeah? What about zealot fury, Jagdea?’ asked Gumm sarcastically. ‘It could be someone on some personal holy crusade to purge the weak. We’ve got plenty of hellfire here too!’
‘Yep,’ she nodded. ‘Could well be that instead.’
He shook his head. ‘I have great respect for you, Jagdea,’ he said, ‘but I am not having this conversation. Poor Wilzar was wrong, or delirious. It wasn’t any of us.’
‘Well, it wasn’t you or me,’ said Jagdea.
‘Really? You’re making a suspect list? Really?’
‘Starting from the centre, scene of crime, moving outwards,’ she said. ‘Opportunity and motive. You or me? No. Harlot–’
‘Harlot?’ Gumm exclaimed.
‘Drunk. Stimm abuser. Risk-taker. A predator in every other aspect of his life. Desperate for a new challenge and a new high–’
‘Drop it,’ growled Gumm, dead serious.
‘Slipstream,’ she went on. ‘Dying painfully, bitter. Despises smokes, almost eager to see them suffer because he has to suffer.’
‘Jagdea–’
‘You were there when he said it. Sister Merry Death. Fire-breathing zealot who wants to kill sinners, and seems to think the label “sinner” applies to everybody–’
‘No!’ Gumm barked, so suddenly it made her start. ‘Stop it, Jagdea. I’m not listening to this. I’m walking away.’
‘All right,’ she said.
He strode past her, heading down the stand towards the exit.
‘But watch your back,’ she added.
He stopped. He turned back.
‘I’m walking away,’ he said.
‘So you said,’ she replied.
‘No, I mean…’ His voice had softened. ‘Not just from this stupid conversation,’ he said. ‘I’m walking away. Garrant said the resupply was coming in four days. I had a private word with him. He said he was prepared to honour the informal agreement he made with me. With both of us. He’ll let us leave if we want to. Emergency retention over.’
‘He said that?’
‘I asked him directly. He’ll let us go in four days. So I’m going.’
Jagdea exhaled. She nodded.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘For leaving you in the lurch. For abandoning you. Unless you’re coming too?’
‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to get out of this since we arrived.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s good. I was worried. I had this feeling that you might have wanted to stay. I was worried you might hate me for quitting on you.’
‘We both want out, Gumm,’ she said.
‘Yes, but Six-Six needs us,’ he said. ‘And you have a startling sense of responsibility. So I thought you might resent my reason for quitting.’
‘What reason, Gumm?’
‘You,’ he said. ‘You were right, Jagdea. My hand is inching too close to that bottle. I can feel it. I can feel Sagittarius Gumm, back from the dead and riding in the seat behind me, about to snatch the controls. If I stay any longer, I’ll never go back. So I’m going while I still can.’
DAY 95
Refectory, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 05:20
Jagdea gathered in with the other alert-ready aviators as Garrant led the morning huddle. Breakfast was being fried and stewed in the food carts behind them. The huddle formed in front of the fireplace, with the roll call and tally board above them.
Garrant began with the usual: atmospherics, projected conditions, ROP reports, flight rotas. Jagdea listened attentively, but found her gaze wandering. She studied Sister Meredith, who stood with her eyes down, as though in meditation. As ever, there was no clue as to what might be going on in the preacher’s mind. Why would there be? Jagdea had no idea what kind of tell she fancied she might pick up. How do you detect a killer in a room full of killers? How do you detect a killer when you are a killer?
Nearby, Lopard. He looked sick that morning, tired and drained, the tell-tale wear of excessive drinking or stimm-use. Or too much empty sex instead of sleep. Or whatever else Lopard had numbed his downtime with. He was fiddling with his silver lho-stick case. Lopard clearly wanted to smoke, but he couldn’t in the middle of Garrant’s huddle. The silver case was like a set of worry beads in his red-gloved hands, something to fidget with to soothe… to soothe what? Anxiety? The urge to smoke? Shred? No, Jagdea decided. She could see Lopard’s hands were trembling. A red flag for narcotic abuse. He was playing with the case to disguise the tremor.
Garrant moved from brief basics to a blessing, thanking the God-Emperor for the previous day’s vital fuel resupply from Four-Three, and then reciting one of the Benedictions of Saint Kiodrus, which he clearly knew by heart. Jagdea looked up from her study of Lopard, and saw Gumm watching her. His face said nothing, but she understood his disapproval. Maybe he was right. Maybe the shred of the Six-Six tour was pushing her into paranoia and mania. It wouldn’t be the first time non-stop rotations had done that. It made her smile. She couldn’t read much in Lopard, or anything in the Sister, but Gumm could tell exactly what Jagdea had been thinking.
The instruction session the night before had gone well enough. Jagdea had feared no one would show because Wilzar’s inevitable fate had demonstrated the sheer folly of her efforts. But only to her, it seemed. There had been even more in attendance than the night before, more smokes, more veterans. Maybe Wilzar’s fate had done the opposite, and motivated more of them to seek new tricks that could keep them alive. What had saddened her was that no one mentioned Wilzar at all, not once. No one seemed to care. He was a smoke, and smokes were just bags and toe-tags waiting to happen. Everyone had forgotten him already.
Like hell the Aeronautica remembers, she thought.
But the session had gone well enough. Even Slipstream, watching from his cot alongside Mischief, had kept his resentment to himself.
Garrant finished with a prayer. They all lowered their heads.
‘Good flying,’ Garrant said, as the huddle broke up. ‘Driver? With me.’
She walked beside him down the hall, heading for Campanile Control.
‘Problem, Lead?’ she asked.
‘Not a new one, Jagdea,’ he replied. ‘I need you for something.’
At the foot of the stairs, he paused and looked at her.
‘Before we go in,’ he said.
‘Lead?’
‘Wilzar,’ he said. ‘What Wilzar said. You sure it was “fightbird”?’
Control, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 05:37
Dampier and Badler were waiting for them in Campanile Control. The stations were already busy, ROP traffic coming in, Garrant led the three of them into his office and closed the door.
‘Am I in trouble?’ asked Jagdea.
Badler sneered at her.
‘I have reviewed the wafer,’ said Dampier. ‘Begun to, at least. There’s a lot of it. Your instinct was correct, Pilot Officer Jagdea. The data contains full route mapping for Vesperus, multi-level. It’s not foolproof, obviously, because aspects of the hive structure have changed since it was compiled, but if we use it, I estimate it might reduce accidental collision losses by as much as a third.’
‘And improve performance stats?’ asked Badler.
Dampier nodded. ‘Response times, catch ratios, kill rates,’ she said. ‘So my recommendation is that we use it.’
‘And I have approved that,’ said Garrant.
Badler looked annoyed. Jagdea doubted the exec had any problem with improved performance. He just seemed to begrudge the fact that the idea had come from her.
‘There will be considerable logistical difficulties implementing the data,’ said Dampier. ‘As discussed, we need to divide it into packets, and distribute the packets according to sortie. I will detail a working party to begin that process. And pilots will need to be trained to use it.’
‘Maybe Driver could run the training?’ said Badler. ‘She fancies herself as a mentor, after all.’
‘I’m not a mentor, Badler,’ Jagdea said.
‘What would you call it, then?’ the exec asked with disdain.
‘An instigator,’ she replied.
‘Enough, you two,’ said Dampier. ‘It could be a month before a mapping programme is running comprehensively. We need it slam-checked and reliable before we fully commit.’
‘A month,’ murmured Garrant. ‘If we’re still running intercepts by then…’
‘Why wouldn’t we be?’ asked Jagdea.
‘Rumblings from high command,’ Garrant said. ‘A possible shift of strategy coming down the track.’
‘A shift to what?’ asked Jagdea.
‘That’s outside of this conversation and your need to know, pilot officer,’ said Dampier. ‘My point is, we’ll implement the mapping on a trial basis to see how it works in practice. Shake it down. See what refinements we need to make.’
‘When?’ asked Jagdea.
‘Today,’ said Dampier. ‘With you.’
Badler chuckled.
‘And you, exec,’ Dampier added.
Eighth drop, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 07:12
Rain was bleating in across the launch platform. From the top of the Campanile, the hive was a malicious rumour lurking behind polluted cloud. Jagdea walked out with Badler, who went over immediately to the fitters setting up the three birds. Gangster was waiting, sheltering from the rain under the blast shields.
‘What is this?’ she asked Jagdea.
‘We’re trying out some new mapping,’ said Jagdea.
Gangster explained in anatomical detail what new mapping could do with itself.
‘Think of it as a new trick,’ said Jagdea.
‘Yeah?’
‘One of mine, actually,’ said Jagdea. ‘I’m surprised they even went for it.’
This seemed to make the whole thing more agreeable to Disa Yesof.
They waited while Badler talked to the ground crew and the preset was completed. Boa, shrouded in a bright yellow plastek rainslicker, backed the cargo-8 tractor away from the stands, its tyres hissing on the wet deck. As usual, the servitor swung the lifter around in fast, swerving lines, even up on the open platform, oblivious to the sheer drop on three sides. The thought of hurling a truck like that around like that, so high up, on a comparatively small deck with no proper barrier rail, made Jagdea go cold.
‘He looks like a pile of groxshit under a tarp,’ Gangster snorted.
‘Boa?’
‘Doesn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t let him hear you say that,’ said Jagdea.
Gangster fiddled with her helmet straps, and glanced sidelong at Jagdea. It was painfully furtive body language.
‘So,’ she asked, ‘it true?’
‘What?’
‘What Smoke said?’
Jagdea stiffened. ‘And what did Smoke say?’
‘You know,’ said Gangster. ‘He said “fightbird”, right?’
‘Where’s this coming from?’ Jagdea asked.
‘It true or not?’ Gangster asked. ‘Smoke got splashed by a fightbird?’
Jagdea hesitated. No way Gumm would have told her. Definitely not Dampier or Garrant.
‘Med Stanslaf’s got a big mouth,’ she said.
‘And a drawer full of spare stimms, if you play nice with him,’ Gangster said, grinning. ‘And I do.’
‘I don’t know what Wilzar said, Yesof,’ said Jagdea. ‘He was half-dead and rambling. So don’t go spreading stuff around.’
‘It’s spread already, Driver,’ Gangster replied, amused. ‘Like a fire.’
Jagdea said nothing.
‘So, which gak done him?’ Gangster asked.
‘I don’t know. What have you heard?’
Gangster shrugged, an expressive movement that was almost her sway-armed victory dance for a moment.
‘Nothing,’ she said. A long pause followed. ‘You think we got a white crow?’
‘Do you think we’ve got a white crow?’
‘I think anything is possible in this shithole,’ Gangster replied.
‘White crows aren’t real, Yesof.’
‘Nuh-huh,’ she said, shaking her head emphatically. ‘There were white crows in Vervunhive. At the end of the siege. This is actual true fact. Didn’t call ’em white crows, but. And not pilots, maybe, but soldiers on the ground. Scratch troops. Citizens too. People who were killing just for the buzz of killing. Crazy gaks. And there was so much killing, no one noticed till too late. You hide murder with murder, right? Like hose tape.’
‘Well…’
‘I’m saying, if soldiers and what not can do it, why not gunslingers? This place is psycho. No regs, no rules. Who would notice?’
‘Why would you say this, Yesof?’ Jagdea asked.
But Badler was calling their names and waving at them impatiently.
‘’Cause Smoke weren’t the first,’ Gangster replied as she hurried away.
Jagdea mounted One-One, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. Tarr’s team was unlatching the hoses. Jagdea saw two Skystrikes on One-One’s rails.
‘Checks Four-A,’ Tarr said. ‘The blower lag will be an old friend of yours by now. So, this mapping packet thing, it’s gonna load direct from Control via the autotrack system. I’ve cleaned that off for you, no need to thank me, all part of the service.’
Jagdea saw where the hose tape had been peeled off the autotrack display and the auspex, leaving little outlines of sticky adhesive.
‘It’ll show like a track,’ Tarr continued, ‘and run via logis on your auspex and visor. Right?’
‘Copy. Active logis control?’
‘No, unless you want it, in which case you select the routing on the autotrack, then throw the 8/10 and 8/12 switches to approve.’
She leaned into the cockpit to point and demonstrate.
‘Then logis will go auto-stick,’ she said. ‘But that’s off as a default. Right now, it’ll show you routing options for any track you steer onto or select. Then threat warning will ping if you deviate.’
‘Threat warning?’ asked Jagdea.
‘Not ideal, I know,’ agreed Tarr. ‘I avoided missile threat lock and threat lock, because you’ll want to know those for real, and if they keep going off, they’ll scare you empty, and I ain’t washing your seat off when you get back. So I enabled hydraulics warning instead. It’s a higher “ping-ping”.’
‘I am familiar.’
Tarr looked pleased with herself.
‘And the hydraulics indicator will show red,’ said Tarr. ‘For a reason, this time, but not the usual one.’
The patch of tape had also been removed from the hydraulics indicator. It glowed green. Jagdea sighed.
‘I thought you’d enjoy that,’ said Tarr.
‘What if there’s an actual hydraulics issue?’ asked Jagdea.
‘Oh, then you’re screwed,’ said Tarr, ‘because you won’t know nothing about it. I hear this was all your idea.’
‘It seemed like a good one when I had it,’ said Jagdea.
‘Lidding you up,’ said Tarr. She looked at Jagdea. ‘Done this before?’ she asked.
‘Obviously not,’ said Jagdea.
‘First time for everything,’ said Tarr and latched the canopy.
Jagdea began walking the parish.
‘Vox check,’ Badler crackled over the comms.
‘Vox check, Driver receiving.’
‘Check check, Gangster.’
Jagdea went to arm her seat, remembered there was no point, then continued her steady slam-check.
‘This is Exec, deconflict auspex. Control reports shout from ROP Four-Zero. Power plant noise, Pallisades West. Stand by for route packet.’
‘Copy,’ said Jagdea. She waited. The Pallisades packet had been the first one prepared, and their flight had been held go-ready until a shout came in from that zone. The autotrack flickered as the data loaded, then the auspex came up with a lo-res map that indicated a path in red. It wasn’t the usual flat mapping. It was a tri-D wireframe projection.
