Devon's Blade (12 page)

“Control this is Flame. I’m shot up pretty bad and losing altitude. State is two plus five.”

I waved to the controllers to send up a rescue shuttle. She was not going to make it back.

“Copy Flame. We’re sending a pick up now. Can you ditch it safely?”

“Negative. I’m shot up pretty bad. Bleeding arm...”

Her signal cut out. I lowered my head.
Shit
.

“Control this is Karvuk. I have her in sight. I’m staying with her until the shuttle arrives. Hank’s heading back.”

I lifted my head. She had disobeyed me but I didn’t care. If it meant bringing back another pilot to fly again, I could live with the insubordination.

“Copy Karvuk, shuttle ETA is twenty mike. You got enough fuel for that?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my chronometer and did a rough fuel calculation. She didn’t have the fuel to stay long.

“Can you assess her damage?” I asked.

There was a pop of static discharge on the line. I looked up and for the first time noticed the storm clouds gathering out to sea in the direction they were in.

“Her ship’s pretty much shot to hell. I don’t see any movement in the cockpit.”

Swifts had an auto-return control that would let them fly back to base without any human intervention. It would sense her lack of movement and automatically navigate home. The trouble with that is if the ship was badly damaged, it might not be able to fly itself.

“Best guess for a water landing?”

Karvuk was silent for a few moments, presumably assessing the situation.

“Control, Karvuk. She’s got power, but not much airspeed. Right wing is just about gone and she has taken hits to the nose. I can see lots of her blood on the fuselage.”

Shit
.

“Karvuk, Control. There’s nothing we can do for her until the shuttle gets there. Fly cover for her and keep your eyes peeled. Over?”

“Copy, Control.”

I could hear the helpless tone of her voice over the comm and knew exactly how she felt. I’ve been in similar situations with fellow pilots. One time I stayed with someone all the way back to base only to find out that he had been killed instantly during combat.

I looked out over the horizon at the shuttle’s exhaust through binoculars until it disappeared into the dark clouds. That’s when I spotted Hank’s bird coming in.

“Here comes Hank,” I pointed to the controllers. They jumped on the mic and talked him in while I headed out to the flight line to meet him. A truck picked me up and drove me out to the landing zone.

Hank’s fighter touched down and was descended upon by ground crew. I waited for him to climb down and waved him over to my truck. He climbed aboard and we headed back to Ops.

“She ordered me to return, Commander. I wanted to stay with her.”

I nodded. “That’s okay Hank, you did good. We don’t need two fighters splashed trying to save one.”

Even as I said it I knew it sounded harsh. He shook his head and swore. I’d never heard him cuss before, it kind of startled me.

“We headed for their position immediately after our last run and we still didn’t get there in time to help the others,” he lamented.

“Did you see any of the Fivers?”

“Not a single one. We saw one crash site, but it was impossible to tell what it was. The atoll base was still burning. No signs of life there.”

We were dropped off outside the Ops door and hustled inside. The remaining pilots were there, listening to the rescue shuttle on the comm. Fingers approached me with an anger-reddened face.

“Flame’s down, they picked her up but her plane sunk,” he said.

“She alive?” I asked.

He shook his head and said, “Barely.”

I jumped on the console and looked up the closest starship with an infirmary. There was a squadron of frigates about two day’s travel away. I hoped she wasn’t critical.

“Control, Karvuk. Coming in zero, zero. Will try to make it to shallow water.”

“Roger Karvuk. Shuttle has priority, we’re sending a boat out for you.”

“Copy. She alive, Control?”

“Unknown.”

A double click of the mic signaled Karvuk understood.

* * *

The rescue shuttle touched down near the base hospital and Flame’s torn body was carefully moved inside for surgery. She was surrounded by her fellow pilots, trying to stay out of the way of the corpsmen. I watched from the Ops shack and then heard the boats launching out after Katya’s bird. Hank and I fetched another truck and drove out to the beach in time to watch her pancake her Swift into the shallow surf a few klicks off shore.

We walked out into the tide to greet the rubber boat that picked her up. She was soaking wet and had a cut across her forehead that was still bleeding. The rescue trooper gave his okay for me to take them to the hospital in the truck.

Katya hugged Hank on seeing him and he helped her into the bed of the truck. I wanted to talk to her, but focused on driving to the hospital as quickly as I could. I was more concerned about Flame’s condition than Katya's.

Hank helped Katya get inside where hospital orderlies took her back into the white rooms behind the curtains. I could hear the commotion inside the sealed tent of the operating room and went over to where the other pilots were gathered around watching them work on Flame.

It looked worse than it was, according to a nurse. She had lost a lot of blood when a round pierced her cockpit and burned a hole into her thigh. Quick thinking on her part had probably saved her leg as she had used her parachute strap as a tourniquet.

The news hadn’t comforted the other pilots much as they lingered around hoping for the best. I went back to where they were treating Katya. She had her flight suit off at the waist and was sitting up getting her head bandaged by a nurse.

“You deviated from your return Lieutenant,” I said.

She glared at me. I put my hand on her arm and smiled reassuringly.

“You may have saved Flame’s life.”

Katya’s black eyes seemed dark as deep space. “She going to make it?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Then I guess it was worth losing rank over,” she said bitterly.

I dropped my smile and stared at her for a moment. Part of me wanted to bust her right there just for being snotty with me. But I let that slide too.

“I’m not pressing charges this time. But don’t counter me again. All you had to do was ask and I would have consented.”

She looked away as the nurse stepped back and started entering something in the medical computer. I started to leave and then turned back to the nurse.

“See if you can fix her attitude for me, will ya?”

The nurse looked quizzically at me and then went back to her job.

Things were quiet for the rest of the week, regular patrols and no further losses. Which was a good thing because our squadron morale was pretty down. I called for a Roll Call at the end of the week to recognize the fallen and wounded. It can be a solemn affair but it’s usually done with plenty of alcohol to ease the pain of loss. I felt we deserved it.

I made arrangements to hold it on the beach around a bonfire. Maintenance stacked up a pile of scrap wood and brush from the last few weeks and I had the hootch shack set us up a couple of kegs for the occasion.

The master of ceremony for a Roll Call is called the Mayor. It’s usually a younger pilot and so I appointed Hank to be the Mayor. It was his job to keep the party moving and not let everyone get too rowdy or inebriated. Being so new to the service and this being his first Roll Call, I talked him through it before hand. Every fighter squadron has its own variant of Roll Call and the 389th was no different. It typically was held at the hooch shack, but I didn’t want anyone to happen by for this one. It was to be a closed affair intended to help us lick our wounds and get our spirits back up. No need for any of the ground pounders to witness that.

We set the time for 18:38, which was typically related to the unit’s number, for instance, the thirty-eight minutes came from the first two digits of the unit’s number. At that time Hank called out “Hack!” and the ceremony started. Anyone straggling in after that, paid with a round of drinks for everyone. I didn’t see anyone late to this Roll Call.

The first part of Roll Call for this squadron involved singing the Fighter Pilot’s song. It was one of the oldest songs in the inventory and had been updated to reflect modern combat and the current war with Voton. There was even a verse that pertained to life on Kew which really brought a level of camaraderie to the singing. While the singing commenced, everyone was served a mug of locally brewed beer from a tap that sat away from the fire. We were pilots, but not dumb ones.

As the song concluded I motioned for Hank to commence the Grievances. This was where pilots were encouraged to have it out with whoever pissed them off since the previous Roll Call. It usually started with minor quibbles that were more often than not funny misunderstandings. I had hoped that nobody would bring up anything serious. But as luck would have it, someone had a serious one - Katya.

Her head still had a small bandage on it from her crash landing and her hair was a mess of tangled and sweaty black hair as she stood up with her mug of beer.

“I have a grievance,” she announced.

Everyone quieted down until you could only hear the fire crackling and the waves pounding in the distance.

“I’m freaking pissed at the Red Ace for killing Choke and the others. I want to avenge them by forming a posse to kill that Blueskin bastard.”

She was deadly serious and everyone there could see it. Finally someone seconded the motion and then another, until everyone was swearing to join her in hunting down and killing the enemy ace. While I loved the sentiment and the desire for revenge, it was not SOP. I stood up and moved to her side. She eyed me with that serious, deadly look she often had.

“We all miss those taken from us this week in combat but we’re not a mob, we’re professional killers and we will fly our missions as ordered,” I looked back at Katya, who was silently fuming and said, “Or I will take appropriate action to ground your ass.”

The conversation was not about the others, only me and Katya, but everyone seemed to get that. Especially when Katya threw down her drink and got in my face.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to kill that pilot, even if it kills me.”

I could feel her toxic breath on my face. Flames from the fire danced across her dark eyes.

“If your actions endanger your wingman or the mission, you’ll answer to me,” I said.

For a moment I thought she was going to punch me in the face and then she started to break down and cry. Her tears flowed hard as she tried to talk over them.

“I loved him so much. I can’t stand living without him. He was everything to me. Everything to this whole damn squadron!”

“We all miss Choke, it’s okay to feel this way,” I said.

I turned around to face the others. “He was one of the best of us. But he was not the only ace in this unit. Lots of you are just as good as Choke was. Even if you don’t have a dozen kills like he did, you’re all still incredibly skilled fighters. But none of us is good enough to get this bastard on our own. We must act together to get him. Together we can avenge Choke, Sweetness and Hilltop.”

Flame had been discharged early from the hospital and was sitting in a hover chair nearby. She had been pretty quiet after her last mission and nobody had pressed her for details about how any of her mates had died. She glided up to Katya and I and turned around to face the other pilots. The fire behind her made her hair flicker like flames.

“Choke wasn’t shot down by the Red Ace.”

Everyone looked at her and waited silently for her to explain. Katya wiped her tears away and furled her brow.

“He was trying to get me out of the fur ball. He splashed one of the Fives and Sweetness got the second one. Hilltop was my wingman and he got attacked from behind before we knew what was happening. He rolled over and hit my starboard wing as he went down in flames. My Swift was damaged and I couldn’t engage anymore.”

I watched the other pilot’s faces flickering in the fire light as they listened intently to Flame’s account.

“That’s when Choke decided to quit the fight and try to get me back to base. Sweetness was the crazy one. She took out after the Red Ace after Hilltop failed to get out of his bird. It was like watching him impact the island set her off. She got on the Red Ace’s tail and stayed there like a magnet. I don’t know how many times she shot at him but his Fiver was smoking when he finally got behind her. She must not have had any more fight left in her because it only took him a few seconds to disintegrate her Swift.”

Katya put her hand on Flame’s shoulder.

“How did Choke die then?” she asked quietly.

Flame lowered her head and I could hear her let out a single sob before she gathered herself and continued.

“He, he let the Red Ace get on him and dove away so I could flee. I never saw him again.”

Katya walked around and sat in front of Flame. Looking down into her eyes I could see the hope on Katya’s face.

“So he might not have died then? I mean you didn’t see him crash, right?”

Flame shook her head slowly.

“I didn’t see him again. But I saw the Red Ace.”

Confusion wrinkled Katya’s brow and caused everyone to look around at each other.

“What?” Katya asked, her voice thick with revulsion.

“He flew up beside me and followed me for a while. I was close to passing out, but I saw him hanging there off my damaged wing. I thought he was confirming my damage and that he might duck behind me and finish me off but he never did.”

Nobody could believe what she was saying. Votainion pilots never acted that way to any human pilot. They were blood thirsty killers who would shoot you down and never look back.

“Are you saying the Red Ace flew cover for you?” I asked, coming around to look at Flame. I could see the from her expression that she firmly believed what she was saying. As hard as it was for anyone else to believe it.

“I might have imagined this, but I saw him tuck his wing under mine and boost my altitude for a while before he rolled away and was gone. I passed out not long after that and then you guys found me.”