Interceptor City, page 45
Life wasn’t anything like so neat and clean. No bright flash and quick ending. They had survived the death they had chosen, and traded it for a slow and helpless doom. These last minutes, last seconds, were just the inevitable tick-down of dying. The ugly part. The hard part.
She tried to spot Badler. There was no sign of him. She saw bats ahead now, two miles out, rising from the hive floor and bearing in to block off any viable exit.
Badler shot under them and pulled out ahead. His port wing was shot up, and he too was trailing smoke.
The vox squawked and rasped. Then she heard his voice.
‘Recon, Recon. This is Lead. Burn now.’
‘Lead, this is Driver. Nowhere to burn.’
Had he even seen the bats ahead of them?
‘–frigging all over us!’ Gangster was yelling.
‘This is Lead, Recon. Follow the damn instruct. Burn now. Five-Two has got us covered.’
They weren’t bats. The specks approaching dead ahead were birds. Three V-formation trios. Avengers from Five-Two.
As they shot past the Six-Six fightbirds, Jagdea heard wolves again, just for a second.
Intercept 52, Vesperus, 08:59
There was no way to reach Six-Six. Jagdea put Four-Four down on a rooftop deck, standard duct arrest. As she powered down, she saw ground crews running out to Gangster’s Voss on the deck nearby. It was broiling smoke from its underside, and the teams were spraying it with foam.
Intercept 52 occupied the upper storeys of a ragged Munitorum storehouse. The main deck was far bigger than any at the Campanile, and ran open all the way to blast shelters at the west end. It was sleeting rain.
She put her hands on her head until she couldn’t keep them there any more, then unplugged, popped the canopy and almost fell out. She couldn’t breathe. Her compression suit had cinched so tight, for so long, that even now the bladders were deflating, her lungs refused to fill and her ribs refused to move.
She sank to her knees, and dragged off her helmet and flight cap with numb, shaking hands. She sucked in cold, wet air and spat out blood. There were people crowding around her. She heard voices. None of them made any sense. The deck was sloping like a ship at sea. Someone got her to her feet. She pulled off her flight gloves. Bandages and shreds of synth-flesh came with them. He hands were gore-slick and clawed.
‘You’re down,’ someone was saying. ‘Breathe. You’re down.’
She heard laughter. Familiar laughter. Gangster was pushing through the throng of bodies to reach her. She was laughing in glee, like a child, even though her face was drenched in grease and sweat.
‘How many? How many?’ Yesof yelled.
Jagdea couldn’t speak.
‘I got eight!’ Yesof yelled. ‘Eight! That was something! Hey, talk to me! Driver?’
‘Ten,’ murmured Jagdea. ‘I think… ten.’
‘Ten?’
‘Not all gun-kills, but…’
‘Ten?’ Yesof howled. ‘You bat-killing bitch!’
She hugged Jagdea as tight as any compression suit.
‘You were meant to go,’ Yesof exclaimed, right in her ear. ‘I told you to go.’
‘You turned back…’
‘Yes, so you could go, you frigging gak!’
‘Couldn’t just…’
Gangster grabbed her by the face with both hands and glared jubilantly into Jagdea’s blurry eyes.
‘Four-A!’ she cried. ‘That was Four-A! That was a real frigging thing!’
It was something, all right.
There was a howl as Badler’s Voss went over, pulling down for duct arrest.
‘Are you two claiming eighteen kills between you?’ someone asked. ‘Is that what I’m hearing?’
A tall, grey-haired man was looking at them. Jagdea blinked to clear her vision and made sense of his pins. She started to salute.
‘Forget that,’ the man said with a brush of his hand. ‘Welcome to Five-Two.’
His name was Bastine, senior deck at Intercept 52. In the Intercept’s rec room, a fairly handsome and refined space, he poured them drinks. Even Badler took one.
‘Some show,’ Bastine remarked. He had a dry voice that sounded rusty or smoke-damaged.
‘We appreciate the assist, Deck,’ said Badler. He was putting on a decent show of civility, but Jagdea could see his shakes and tremors.
‘Happy to oblige,’ said Bastine. ‘That was a significant nest. It’s marked and plotted. Orison Command will be running raids by tonight.’
‘It won’t be the only one,’ said Jagdea quietly.
‘You know that how?’ asked Bastine.
‘The numbers, sir,’ replied Jagdea. ‘A big nest, as you said. The enemy’s moved into the hive. They won’t have put everything in one place. So a nest that big speaks to significant supply lines and other big nests. We’ll all be running recon for weeks.’
‘Well, one’s a good start,’ said Bastine.
‘Yes.’
‘And on your first sweep.’
‘We got lucky,’ said Jagdea.
‘Is that how you’d describe it?’ Bastine asked, with a wry smile.
‘It’s the only word that comes to mind, sir,’ said Jagdea.
‘I suppose so,’ said Bastine. ‘Against those numbers. Eighteen, eh?’
‘Estimated,’ said Jagdea.
‘For definite,’ said Gangster.
‘And you, Lead?’ Bastine asked.
‘Just six, sir,’ said Badler.
That made Bastine laugh. ‘That’s Zoph Sea numbers,’ he said, with a glance at Jagdea.
She didn’t reply. Bastine got to his feet, finished his drink, and set the glass aside.
‘Clean up,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to refuelling and temp repairs on your birds. Get you back to Six-Six this afternoon. Lead Badler, make sure you pass on my regards to Julett Dampier.’
Once he’d gone, they sat in silence for a moment. The light from the old glow-globes was almost sepia. There were picts tacked to the wall, flight crews, pilots. Jagdea gazed at them for a while. She sipped her drink. Blood from her fingers had smeared the glass.
‘You locked me up,’ she said at last.
‘What?’ asked Gangster.
‘Badler,’ said Jagdea. ‘Locked me up.’
Badler had been staring into space. He twitched, as though waking up.
‘On my tail,’ said Jagdea. ‘Hard lock.’
‘Did you?’ asked Gangster, turning on the sofa to look at Badler.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought… I thought you’d get it. That you’d understand. I was trying to get you to spit ahead so I could get a clear heater-lock on that bat. You wouldn’t budge, Jagdea.’
‘Ah,’ said Jagdea. She sighed.
‘You were in my line,’ said Badler. ‘Vox was out. I just wanted you to run out so–’
‘I get it now.’
‘I thought you’d read my–’
‘I get it.’
Gangster sniggered. ‘She thought you was the crow, Badler,’ she chuckled.
‘I realise,’ said Badler tightly.
‘I did,’ said Jagdea. ‘Just for a second. But not now. Not after that.’
She looked at Badler, and raised her glass.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘For thinking it. Six-Six, Lead Badler.’
‘Six-Six,’ he responded. She could tell he was trying really hard not to cry.
‘Six-Six!’ Gangster cried, over-loud, and went to help herself to more amasec.
The Saint was there. Just as Jagdea remembered, though she seemed smaller and paler in the gloom of the hangar. Beautiful Beati. Jagdea stood and stared at the Avenger’s nose art for a while. From behind her came the sounds of power-drivers, and the shouts of fitters at work.
‘Help you?’
Jagdea looked around. A burly woman with dark skin and a bleached-blonde buzz-cut was staring at her. An aviator in full flight gear. She had the heavy chain-mail gauntlets of a gunner.
‘I’m looking for…’ Jagdea said, trying to remember names. ‘Omarti and Hodd. Tail Forty.’
‘I’m Hodd,’ said the woman. ‘Who are you now?’
‘Jagdea,’ said Jagdea.
The woman frowned for a moment. ‘Oh, right,’ she said.
‘I just wanted to express my thanks in person,’ said Jagdea.
‘No need for that,’ said Hodd.
‘I feel I owe you–’
‘Yeah? Then tell me the story.’
‘What… story?’
‘That scrap today. Walk me through it.’
Reliving that was the last thing Jagdea felt like. But it was the least she could do.
Who are you, now? That’s what Hodd had asked. Yes. That was the real question.
Refectory, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 20:23
They could hear the thunder before they were even in the room. Hands banging tabletops, feet drumming. A menacing crescendo.
As they entered, the drumming almost stopped completely because everybody present put their hands on their heads. A vocal assault of yells and whoops replaced the thunder.
Yesof grinned. She stepped forward and executed a low bow, arms spread like back-raked wings, accepting the adulation. Then she rose, and gestured like a showman to Jagdea, and to Badler, who was standing slightly shell-shocked behind Jagdea.
Lopard stepped forward, clapping and smiling. He dragged over a chair, and held out a stick of chalk to Jagdea.
Jagdea took it and stared at it, the din ringing in her ears. Then she handed it to Yesof.
‘I think it’s Lead’s turn,’ Yesof yelled over the shouting. She turned to Badler, and offered the chalk. Badler shook his head. He actually looked scared.
‘Frigging do it, Bads,’ said Yesof.
Badler took the chalk, and accepted Yesof’s hand to get him up on the chair. He looked awkward and precarious. He quickly scratched up six marks beside his name, then paused and smiled as the shouting and drumming blew up again. Then, with a slightly more dramatic flourish, he marked the eight kills beside GANGSTER. The noise grew louder. Yesof was giving herself a round of applause. Badler leaned out and drew the ten strokes in beside DRIVER.
The tumult was deafening.
‘Now you do the dance!’ Yesof yelled up at him.
Badler shook his head.
‘I’m not… doing that,’ he said.
Yesof turned to the hall and did it for him.
DAY 103
Rec room, Intercept 66, Vesperus, 04:47
Lord Militant Jahkel’s water-stained features gazed down at her in lofty disdain. Meeting his eyes, Jagdea wondered if the great lord ever thought about the people at the far end of his orders. She doubted it. She’d never encountered a single soul among the upper ranks who spared a moment for the individuals executing their will, except, of course, when it came time to make public speeches with an appropriately solemn air. Compassion tended to stop at deck officer level, and even there, it was in precious short supply. She supposed Jahkel, and his ilk, thought of them only as marker tags on a strategium table, or specks of coloured light on a hololith display, playing pieces on a board to be moved, and squandered, at will.
If they ever thought of them at all.
The musty little rec room was quiet, and she was alone. She sat in a battered armchair, alert-ready in full gear, her black helmet at her feet. She had pulled an early rotation, standard intercept with Gumm and Harlot. After the sustained uproar of the night before, she hadn’t felt like facing the refectory’s noise and bustle. She waited in silence, regulating her breathing, her hands resting on the arms of the chair to ease the ache and the throb of fresh synth-flesh re-bonding.
Everything ached. Everything, right to the core. She’d numbed the harness burns on her body with neuro-gel and strapped the bruising on her ribs and belly, but nothing could ease the deeper pain. She felt as though she had a piece of shrapnel lodged in her soul, a fragment that turned and tore every time she moved.
The weather was poor. Heavy rain. She heard the clang and thump of lifters and carts from elsewhere in the Campanile as the crews prepped the upper decks. Once or twice, the screaming bang of rams igniting as they fell past the bell tower outside, dead-dropping their way to victory, or something that would look like victory until the last moment.
Footsteps. The door opened.
‘There you are,’ said Gumm, flight helmet under his arm.
‘Here I am,’ she agreed.
‘Heavy night?’ he asked.
‘Heavy day. Just fancied a little quiet.’
Gumm nodded. ‘I’ll leave you alone, then,’ he said. ‘I was just on my way up.’
‘Did we get called?’
‘No, but Boa’s taken our birds up, and a walk-around never hurts.’
He paused, hesitant in the doorway, like a shade that needed to be invited in.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘Extraordinary, what you did yesterday. But exhausting.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And hard to get past, I should imagine,’ he added. ‘To do that, and then have to start again the next day.’
‘And the day after, and the day after,’ she said.
‘We need to talk to Badler,’ he said. ‘Convince him to honour Garrant’s promise and let us go.’
‘Never going to happen,’ she said. ‘We’re too valuable.’
‘You, certainly. After yesterday.’
‘Both of us, Gumm. And Badler’s a hardline believer. He won’t let a dead man’s promises get in the way of service and duty.’
Gumm sighed softly.
‘You’re thinking about Sagittarius, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘He’s not here yet,’ said Gumm. ‘But another few weeks…’
‘Like the old Jagdea,’ said Jagdea.
‘No, she’s already here, I’m sorry to say.’
She looked at him sharply.
‘You know it,’ he said, his voice fur-soft. ‘You may not want to admit it, but you don’t do what you did yesterday and not know it, deep down.’
‘Not true,’ she said. ‘I was covering Disa’s back–’
‘Which is exactly what the hero of the Zoph would do, no matter the odds. The insane odds.’
Jagdea got up. ‘There’s no point pushing at Badler,’ she said, ‘but I’ll work on Dampier.’
‘You have an in there?’ he asked. He sounded surprised.
‘The hint of one,’ she replied. ‘Just a glimmer. But she’s Deck, not Badler. And she was tight with Garrant. If anyone is going to process our papers, it’s her.’
‘Before it’s too late, eh?’
‘Before that.’
Gumm nodded. He didn’t seem convinced.
‘Well, I’ll go up,’ he said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she replied.
They crossed the landing and turned to the steps that led up to launch deck one. A cold wind was driving the rain in through the roof hatch, and the spatter was darkening the rockcrete. They heard the scream of distant drop-launches from another deck, probably number four on the far side.
‘Driver!’
Jagdea turned, and saw Camo hurrying after them.
‘I’ll catch you up,’ Jagdea told Gumm, and walked back down the steps to meet her.
‘Got you this,’ said Camo. She pulled a bottle of fine amasec from her jacket. ‘It’s the good stuff. From Harlot’s stash.’
‘There was no need, Kinny,’ said Jagdea.
‘You said we’d be even,’ Camo objected. She handed the bottle to Jagdea, and then rummaged in her pocket. ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘this too.’
She pulled out a handful of loose lho-sticks.
‘Like you asked,’ she said, carefully dribbling them into Jagdea’s hand. ‘Couldn’t get a pack, so I sneaked them out of Harlot’s case when he wasn’t looking.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jagdea, and dropped them into her thigh pocket.
‘He won’t miss them,’ she said. ‘He’s got more. He’ll probably think he smoked them.’
Jagdea nodded, and turned to go. But something about the girl’s affect made her stop. Camo was grinning, pink shades on, her usual cheerful self, but there was a tension in her.
‘Something else?’ asked Jagdea.
‘You don’t mark your tally on your bird,’ Camo said.
‘I don’t,’ said Jagdea. ‘Not enough room now,’ she added, trying to make light of the girl’s curious focus.
Camo laughed, but it was just a courtesy giggle.
‘Some people do,’ she said. ‘Some people keep tallies.’
‘They do.’
‘On the wall,’ said Camo, ‘on their birds…’
‘Yes.’
‘Why… why wouldn’t a pilot’s tallies match?’ asked Camo.
‘Match?’
‘Different tallies,’ said Camo. She seemed edgy. ‘Different scores. Why would that be?’
‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ said Jagdea.
Camo shook her head hastily.
‘Forget it. Forget it. I want to have your back, Driver, but I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.’
‘Kinny?’
‘Forget it. I’ve said too much. I don’t want to be the one. It’s all about trust, right? You don’t betray that. I’m not that person. But I heard what you said that night…’
‘Which night? Why don’t you relax and tell me–’
‘No, no,’ said Camo. She forced up a big grin. ‘I don’t want to say the wrong thing. Just… just think about it.’
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be thinking about,’ said Jagdea.
‘Forget it,’ said Camo. ‘Good flying!’
She hurried away.
Jagdea walked up the steps into the wind and driving rain. By the time the squall hit her in the face, she’d put the pieces together.
