Double Eagle (21 page)

He woke his crew, who were sound asleep in the shadows of the tank. Only in the cool of the night was it possible to get some rest. He sent them off to rouse the other crews. All down the narrow pass, armour and transporters were parked and silent.

Engines began to turn over. Voices lifted into the air.

Another day in the great retreat had begun.

Lake Gocel FSB, 08.43

In full flight armour, Van Tull, Del Ruth and Marquall arrived for the preliminary briefing, which Jagdea held around the camp table outside her habitent. It was a fresh, bright day, with a breeze coming in off the lake, and strong shafts of sunlight beaming down through the shimmer nets, making everything a checkerboard of light and dark. Blansher came along, and brought a pitcher of caffeine from the commissary. For some reason, Larice Asche turned up too, dressed in flight baggies and a vest top. She had a smile about her, but Jagdea didn’t really give her presence much thought.

She waited to begin until 08.45 had ticked by. Right on cue, they heard the simultaneous thump of three ramp launches. The Raptors had first slot that morning, punching up into the blue.

“Order of the day is combat air patrols running on staggered overlap,” Jagdea said. “Three Raptors, three of us, and so on, through the day, six machines aloft at any time. That means you’ll probably be up again before sunset. It’s going to be tiring, so keep it steady. Overnight picture is this: the enemy is still hitting the coast hard. The word from the Peninsula is bad. They hit Theda for the first time yesterday. But unless a bombing formation comes-into our catchment, that’s not our concern right now. Large sections of the land retreat are starting to come clear of the mountains. In the next few days, a major evac is going to gear up, getting them across to the northern coast. Recons show several of those columns coming this way, intending to cross the Saroja west of Gocel. They are being hunted.”

“Land or air?” asked Van Tull.

“Both. Mission profile is threefold. If you locate a friendly column, make it the epicentre of your patrol. Stay with it, give it what protection it needs while fuel lasts. If you sight hostiles, engage and prosecute. If you identify enemy land forces, you may also engage. You’ll be carrying rockets for that purpose. Targets of opportunity, Umbra. Get out there and see what needs doing.”

“What if we find an enemy carrier?” asked Del Ruth.

“Use your head. Get a fix and get out. We’ll call in Marauders. Likewise, if you find a bombing formation up there, or you’re outnumbered more than two to one, get on the vox and yell for support. I expect heroism, not stupidity.”

She paused. “Questions? No? Good, let’s go.”

Jagdea and Blansher followed the three pilots to their birds. Jagdea saw how Larice Asche hung around Marquall, laughing with him. At the edge of Nine-Nine’s pad, Asche kissed Marquall hard.

“Looks like Larice has made another kill,” said Blansher.

“Marquall? That’s a surprise.”

“Not really. His first confirmed, some heroics. He’s hot stuff right now. She always goes for that.”

“She ever go for you?” Jagdea asked.

“A gentleman is always discreet,” Blansher replied.

“Oh, what’s the matter, Mil? A little miffed you never caught her eye? What is it, an age thing?”

He smiled at her tolerantly. “If you must know, she hit on me about eighteen months ago. The Urdesh tour. That afternoon I splashed those three Talons.”

“What happened?”

“She had me in her sights, tone lock. But I broke, rolled out and got home safely.”

“She not your type?”

“She’s perfectly lovely. It’s her motivation that doesn’t appeal.”

A hooter sounded. Marquall was ready to go. They moved in behind the blast shields.

Racklae closed the canopy and shot Marquall a grin. Clamped into his mask and helmet, Marquall nodded back. He adjusted his air-mix and settled back. Throne, how he hated ramp launches. He felt sweat trickle inside his suit. He watched the diode counter marking down. Systems on. Hypergolic intermix valves open. Operations chatter on the vox. Rocket was primed.

Buzzer. Five seconds. The shimmer nets began to crank open, revealing the soaring blue sky.

Three seconds. Thumb on the fire stud. Two.

With a crackling, gut-shaking roar, Del Ruth fired into the air, then Van Tull. Then…

Marquall looked around in dismay. He’d pressed the stud. He was sure he had. He pressed it again. Nothing. He swore.

“Umbra Eight, status?”

“Malfunction!” he called back. “Restart…”

Again, nothing. Red runes suddenly lit up across his instrumentation. A warning tone sounded.

“Crap!” Marquall snarled.

“Say again? Status?”

“Rocket malfunction!”

“Understood, Umbra Eight. Observe emergency procedures. Stabilise your intermix and activate suppression jets.”

“Yes, Operations.”

He hit several switches, disarming his weapons and payload, sealing his tanks and injecting a neutralising chemical flow into the rocket tanks so that the primed and volatile chemical propellants couldn’t accidentally light or trigger late. It would take hours to wash the tanks out and recharge them.

“Umbra Eight made safe,” he voxed.

Only then did the fitters emerge and hurry to the plane. Inspection hatches were opened, cables hitched in to drain off fuel via the tank cocks. A power lifter and a squad of armourers moved in to unload the wing-mounts and stow them in hardened caissons.

A ladder went up at the machine’s side.

Marquall popped the canopy. “Thanks for frigging nothing, Nine-Nine,” he hissed, and hauled himself out.

When Marquall hit the matting, Racklae was beside himself.

“I’m so sorry, sir, I’m so sorry. We thought she was four-A. Not a sign of anything wrong.”

“Jinxes don’t show up on your diagnostics, do they?” Marquall said bitterly. He could see Racklae was mortified.

His fitters, however, were not. Many were trying to hide their laughter. Nearby, fitters from the 409th, and other base personnel, were not even bothering to conceal their amusement. His face burning, Marquall heard mocking laughter. There was nothing more amusing, apparently, than a cocksure young pilot, on his first combat sortie, in a newly and boldly decorated bird, getting his pride punctured.

He was a laughing stock.

He strode off the pad.

“Bad luck, Marquall,” Jagdea said. “We’ll get you up again this afternoon.”

“Yes, mamzel,” he snapped, walking past her.

He went towards Asche, who was watching the farce. There was laughter in the air still. Marquall spread his hands in a wide shrug.

“What can I say? How crap is this? Maybe we can catch that breakfast together after all.”

Larice Asche stared at him contemptuously. “Another time, killer,” she said, and marched away towards the camp.

Over the forests, 09.02

Kitting up fast, as if it was a snap call, Jagdea lifted her waiting Bolt off its matt on a standard vector launch, and climbed to join Del Ruth and Van Tull, who were in a holding pattern as per Operations’ advice.

“Three, Six? Umbra Lead. Sorry for the delay. Marquall suffered a misfire and he’s out. So you’ll have to make do with me.”

“No problem, Lead,” Van Tull voxed.

“Always a pleasure, mamzel,” Del Ruth came back.

“Let’s get on with the game,” Jagdea said. Serial Zero-Two felt fine, loose and finessed despite the unexpected scramble. “Let’s make our level four thousand, cruise speed, turning one-one-nine.”

“Got that, Lead.”

“Understood.”

“Umbra Three, take the point.”

“Four-A, Lead,” Van Tull voxed back.

They formed a flat V as they climbed hard, with Van Tull at the apex, Jagdea at his port eight. The air was clear and visibility generous, but it was still cold enough for them to be making vapour from wingtips and exhausts. Auspex showed nothing in the sky, except the three Raptors sixty kilometres east.

Jagdea felt uncomfortable. She hadn’t expected to be flying so soon, not before midday, given the original schedule. She’d eaten a full breakfast and was still digesting. Pressure was doing nauseous things to her guts. She tweaked the air-mix and felt a little better.

They cruised for an hour, snagging a wide arc eastwards, until the thickness of the forest cover petered away and they were out across the scrublands of the sierra that marked the hinterland between rainforest and desert. The view was huge. Sundogs from the bright daylight hovered in the canopy lense. Open, coarse land slipped by underneath them, scabbed with rocks, thistle, cactus trees.

“I have a hard metal return, point two west, four kilometres,” Van Tull voxed. “It’s cold.”

“Let’s check it,” Jagdea replied. They turned tight, pulling a quarter G, but it was enough for Jagdea to feel a twinge of cramp in her stomach.

“You okay, One?” Del Ruth called.

“Four-A,” Jagdea replied.

“Little late on the turn there, s’all I was wondering.”

“Too much breakfast,” Jagdea said.

They came up on the contact, and made a low pass. Straggled out over the ragged crest of a dune sea basin, two Imperial tanks and four troop carriers, silent and still. No sign of damage. Some hatches were open. Auspex showed no heat sources. No engines, no life.

“They’re dead,” Van Tull voxed.

“Let’s come around again,” Jagdea said.

They banked west, and came in a second time, lower now, throttles idling so they were almost gliding in. A lingering look. Jagdea saw how the wind-blown sands had begun to cover the machines. She saw what could have been a body, a lump in the dust beside one of the carriers.

The enemy hadn’t done this, or rather, it hadn’t done this directly. This was not the aftermath of an air strike or an ambush. This was extinction brought on by the unforgiving desert. What had they run out of? Fuel? Water? Either one would have killed them. Jagdea supposed it had been fuel first. Grinding to a halt, dry and gritty, power gone. Then heat and thirst. Had any of them tried to walk? The bodies would never be found now.

How miserable. How pointless. Had they known how close they’d come? Another sixty kilometres, and they’d have reached the forest line. She hoped they hadn’t. Death was one thing. Death tormented by the knowledge that salvation was just out of reach…

The vox burbled, snapping her alert.

“Umbra, Umbra. Assist request from Raptor Flight, urgent!”

“Coordinates, please,” Jagdea replied. The squirted data flashed up on her main display. “Received, Operations. We are inbound, nine minutes.”

They banked away and started to climb, opening their throttles.

“Punch it,” Jagdea said.

Lake Gocel FSB, 09.31

“Bites still bothering you?”

Marquall, sitting by the lake shore, glanced up. It was the priest, Kautas. The brisk inshore wind tugged at his blue vestments.

“I was under the impression you scarcely cared,” Marquall replied.

The ayatani shrugged. “I never asked for this. Actually, I’m not sure what it was I asked for. Not this, anyway. But it is my lot. I am reminded by the regular dispatches from my church that I have a job to do. A calling. So try me.”

“You seem very jolly this morning.”

Kautas sat down beside Marquall. “An illusion, I assure you. I’m the very same noxious bastard as I was yesterday.”

Kautas slid a metal flask from his robe pocket and swigged. Marquall smelled liquor. The priest didn’t offer any to him.

“Ah,” said Marquall.

“Ah what?”

“Nothing.”

“Sounded to me like you’d had some great epiphany, fly-boy.”

“My name is Vander Marquall. And no, it wasn’t a… whatever you just said. I just realised why you were in a better mood.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Enlighten me, Vander Marken.”

“Marquall. If you start drinking at breakfast, father, no wonder you’re happy by nine o’clock.”

Kautas chuckled and took another swig. “Who said I started drinking at breakfast? That’s the behaviour of a hopeless drunkard. Young man, I started drinking many years ago.”

Marquall shook his head. “With respect, what are you doing here?”

“I saw you here, alone on the beach, looking pissed off, so I thought I’d come and share your gloom. I have an appetite for melancholy.”

“I meant here. Enothis. Lake Gocel.”

Kautas prised a pebble from the shoreline mud and tossed it out into the lake. He had a good arm. It went a long way, and sent a ripple out across the oily green water.

“Why did that stone land there?” Kautas asked.

“You threw it.”

“Yes but…” his voice trailed off. “No, you’re right. I threw it. It’s too bloody early for clever philosophical analogies. Or too late. Whatever. I’m here because this is where I stopped. It’s a matter I intend to bring up with the God-Emperor, when at last I am granted celestial audience before the Golden Throne as part of the Beati’s magnificent host.”

“Good luck.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s all about faith.”

“You don’t seem to have much, father. You seem very… bitter.”

“Do I? How crap is that? I meant to supply spiritual reinforcement to this station. And medical assistance. Actually, I think the latter is why they sent me here. I was a medicae first, before I became an ayatani.”

Marquall looked at him. “Take it from me, you’re not excelling at either.”

“Yeah, well…” sighed Kautas. “Stuff you too.”

They sat in silence for a long moment. Scops hissed around them. At length, Kautas cleared his throat and said, “Go on, then. Test my worth. What’s this mood about?”

Marquall smiled sourly. “A plane. A woman.”

“Planes I don’t do,” said Kautas. “Noisy great buggers. Can’t help you there. Women, more my field. Spurned? Unrequited? Inadequate?”

“Whoah, whoah… the first. Spurned. Last night she was all over me like a body bag. This morning—”

“Well, you must learn to get over it…”

“I hadn’t finished.”

“Well. Uhm. Even given that, just get over it.”

“Get over it?”

Kautas nodded sagely.

“Father, you’re really bad at this.”