Double Eagle (16 page)

She opened the front door. The night air was cold and smelled of rain. From the drawing room behind them, the raucous singing swelled to a lusty chorus.

“Thank you for your pains, commander,” Seekan said. “They’re not as unappreciated as you might think.”

Jagdea made a quick, clipped salute. “Good flying,” she said.

Coast Highway, 05.50

At first he thought it was a summer storm, glimmering the edges of the pre-dawn sky with sheet lightning.

It took him a few moments to realise it wasn’t.

He brought his heavy transport to a full stop, and jumped out onto the rockcrete surface of the hardtop, his scope in his hand. The other seven trucks in the convoy grumbled to a halt behind him. The convoy was an overnight munitions delivery to Fetona MAB, already overdue. A couple of the drivers sounded their horns, revved their stacks. Finally, they dismounted too.

They found Kaminsky on the far side of the highway, near to where the pelmet of the road track shelved away into a dry creek-bed. This area of the Peninsula was barren. Straw grasses, fibreweed, salt bars dotting the broken ground. Even in the cold half-light of dawn, there was nothing to spoil the view all the way to the Lida Valley.

Kaminsky was winding his scope.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked Velligan.

“Kaminsky, what’s the problem?” said Anderchek from behind him.

“See that?” Kaminsky asked. “That glow? Fire patterns. Towns along the Lida are being bombed.”

Theda MAB South, 06.17

There was something big going on. Darrow had slept badly, aware of a huge launch activity during the small hours. He’d been working late on the report Eads had asked him to write up, and with an hour and a half to go before his next shift at Operations, he went out to find Heckel, to get the major’s comments on the tangle they’d had with the white bat.

A pall of exhaust fumes hung in the still air over the field. The majority of the base’s machines were gone, on sorties. Darrow spoke to a Commonwealth fitter he knew, and the man told him bombing raids had begun, north of the mountains. River towns had been hit, agro-centres, mills. Someone reckoned the raiders had got as far as Ezraville.

Everyone he passed looked pinched and worried. Everyone was thinking the same thing. This was the start of the end.

Even Commonwealth reserve units like Quarry Flight were on standby. Morose, in full flight armour, they lurked in the dispersal areas, waiting for the call. Wolfcubs were being fitted to their ramps. Cyclones were being wheeled out of the housing barns, attended by fuelling trucks and munition trains.

“Heckel?” No one had seen him, and no one was in the mood to chat for long. According to the posts, Heckel should have been amongst the standby pilots.

Darrow got a room number, and headed down to the blast-proof hab block at the west end of the dispersal yards. By the light of the dingy corridor lamps, he found the right door and knocked.

“Major? Major Heckel? Are you there, sir?”

He knocked again. “Major Heckel? It’s Darrow. Have you got a minute, sir?”

He was about to turn away, but an ominous feeling made him try the door. It was unlocked.

In the narrow room, the cot was unmade. There was a clutter of papers and possessions on the small desk, clothes laid out on top of the officer’s trunk. A camp chair lay on its side in the middle of the room.

Major Heckel had hanged himself by a harness strap from the ceiling bracket.

“Oh God-Emperor!” Darrow cried. He rushed forward, seizing the major’s legs, struggling to lift him down and ease the constriction. “Help me! Someone help me!” he shouted out. He couldn’t unhook the body. Heckel was a lead weight. Darrow cried out in frustration. He let go, found Heckel’s kit knife in the pile on the trunk, then righted the chair and climbed up, sawing at the harness cord. It was aviation issue, tough, designed not to break. Darrow yelled out again, and cut his fingers on the knife as he wrenched it back and forth against the thick fabric.

“Don’t you die! Don’t you die!” he bawled. “How dare you do this, Heckel! How bloody dare you!”

Darrow was vaguely aware of two aviators coming in, drawn by his yells. He heard their appalled cries. They grabbed Heckel’s legs and raised him.

“Cut it! Cut it!” one shouted.

“I’m trying… I…”

The harness parted. Heckel fell heavily into the arms of the other men, knocking Darrow off the chair and onto the cot.

They wrestled the noose off his neck and started emergency resuscitation. Darrow got up, and dropped the knife. He knew they were wasting their time. The lividity around the neck, the pallor of the cheeks, the cyanotic blue of the lips.

“You poor bastard,” Darrow sighed. “You poor, stupid bastard.”

In his efforts to perform chest compressions, one of the men had dislodged an envelope from Heckel’s flight jacket. Darrow picked it up. The envelope was blank, as if Heckel had been unable to think of anyone to address it to. Inside was a single sheet of paper, inscribed with a single handwritten sentence.

May the God-Emperor forgive me, I cannot do this any more.

Theda Old Town, 07.31

The service was over. There had been many more in attendance that morning, three times the usual number for the daybreak blessing. Beqa had had to wait in line to light her candles. Everyone was scared. You could almost smell it in the streets. Everyone had been scared for months now, of course, but they’d got used to it, and got on with living through it. But over the last two nights, the fear had intensified.

From the west of the city, it was possible to see the fires in Ezraville. Thousands had died in the Lida bombings, and the raids were ongoing. How long before the bombs started falling on Theda as well? How long before the entire coast was on fire? How long? How long? How long did Enothis have left?

The one shred of good news had come in the hierarchy homily. It had been officially confirmed that the first elements of the retreating land armada had cleared the mountains and were returning to the coast. There were soldiers coming home. She lit her three votive candles. One for Gart, one for Eido. One for whoever—

No. One for Viltry.

Over the Interior Desert, 09.07

“If I’d just retreated from the Trinity Hives, marched all the way back across the desert, not to mention those mountains, I reckon I wouldn’t feel much like fighting any more after that.”

“You have a point, Judd,” Viltry said to his bombardier over the internal comm. Halo Flight had just passed over a shelf of desert upland across which a ten kilometre-long convoy of Imperial armour and weapons-carriers was slowly toiling.

“I mean,” Judd went on. “We’re meant to be holding the Archenemy off until the ground forces get home and regroup. Regroup? That’s a laugh. They’ll be fit for nothing.”

“Maybe,” Viltry said lightly. “Let’s just get on with our job and hope appearances are deceiving.”

Greta
was leading a flight of six Marauders. They were travelling low, skimming the dust seas, striving to remain under the modar and auspex cones of any land carriers hidden in the wastes. Meanwhile, recon Lightnings were flying somewhere above at their maximum operational ceiling, scoping for the elusive carriers. At any moment, Halo could be called in.

The desert formed an eerie, almost grey landscape below them. The shadows of the low-flying machines flickered and danced over the hard-lipped dunes, and the breaks of rock and scree.

Viltry felt remarkably composed. He wondered to himself if Beqa Mayer might have anything to do with his improved demeanour.

“Contact!” Lacombe suddenly said. Viltry stiffened slightly.

“Eight marks at seven thousand, bearing zero-seven-five.”

Viltry looked at the scope. Enemy machines, definitely, heading south-west, twelve or more kilometres away. Not a patrol sweep. Their course was too true, too determined.

“Lacombe—get on the vox and see if Operations can give us a back-plot for them.”

Over the engine roar, Viltry could hear his navigator talking on the main vox. The internal cut back in again.

“They had them on modar about fifteen minutes ago, turning south over the Makanite Ridge.”

“They’re going home,” Viltry said. “They’re going home, and they’re in a hurry because they’re right at the limit of their fuel. Halo Flight, Halo Flight, this is Lead. Maintain level, but come about on my mark, bearing zero-seven-five.”

The six laden machines banked around, still hugging the sand.
Greta
first, then
Hello Hellstorm, Widowmaker, Throne of Terra, Consider Yourself Dead
and
Miss Adventure.
Viltry ordered all birds to go weapons-live, arm payloads, and keep scanning.

Even if they couldn’t keep the bats in visual, they had to keep them on the scopes.

Because they were going to lead them straight to a carrier.

Over Ezraville, 09.18

“Attacking!” Jagdea sang out, and rolled serial Zero-Two into a scream dive, with Ranfre, Waldon and Del Ruth at her heels. Four thousand metres below them, partly obscured by wispy thread-clouds, the air was full of planes, darting and swooping like shoals of reef fish in a tropical sea. Another nine thousand metres below the huge air battle lay the vast, dark sprawl of Ezraville, a collage of blacks and greys beside the mirror-white expanse of the estuary mouth.

Behind Jagdea’s pack, Larice Asche led the second half of Umbra in: Cordiale, Van Tull and Marquall. Only two-thirds of the squadron were airworthy. Clovin was gone, Espere out, probably forever, and both Blansher and Zemmic were grounded while their machines underwent repairs.

The power dive was ferocious. Negative G glued them to their seats, and pulled their faces into rictus masks. Jagdea’s vision was spotty, but she tried to stay fixed, tried to make sense of the brawl they were coming in on.

They’d been called up to meet a huge wave of enemy bombers heading for the coast. Nearly two hundred machines, mainly Hell Talons and Tormentors, with fighter cover. Poor weather had delayed the auspex plot, so the raiders were already closing on Ezraville before the warning had gone up. By now, they were shedding their payloads on the city.

Other wings had already intercepted. Thunderbolts 2665 and 44, 138 Lightning, and a squadron of late-model Commonwealth Cyclones. With Umbra, that made about sixty Imperial machines committed. Others were inbound. More still, the majority, were engaged against two other equally massive raid forces over the Lida.

The enemy bombers, hooked, brightly coloured and menacing, were ranged out in long, straggling Vs, like migrating waterfowl, holding pattern while they let their payloads go. The Imperials were milling around those ranks, trying to pick them off—whilst fending off the fierce scatter of Locusts that were flying escort.

As soon as their bombs were gone, the big Tormentors tended to pull out and head for home, but the Hell Talons, vastly powerful fighter-bombers, stayed on station. Freed from the weight of their primary loads, they began peeling down to execute rocket or cannon attacks on the city, or even pulled up to provide additional top cover for the rest of the raid.

The air was full of swarming machines, flickering fire and puffs of smoke. Sections of the city below were ablaze.

Jagdea felt the hate fan in her heart. Her dive was bringing her right down on a Talon. She tracked the nose, keeping in her sights, right at the centre of her reticule, and squeezed her thumb.

The Talon detonated in mid-air with huge force. Jagdea had already swept down past it at mach one, banking round under the raid formation and coming up on a Tormentor from below. Her twin-las pumped, and the machine trembled as its belly opened like a gutted fish, spilling out tatters of debris, machine parts and lubricants in fine sprays. Trailing white smoke, it began to tilt and founder. It was dead, but she stayed on it, switching to the quad cannons and raking it end to end. The Tormentor combusted and vaporised. Burning debris showered down towards the benighted city, but better for it to blow up in the air than come down on a hab block with a full payload.

Tight on her heels in the dive, Ranfre and Waldon both destroyed Tormentors with fine intercepts and wheeled off, hunting. In less than thirty seconds, Waldon had lined up on a Talon that was in the process of unloading its bombs, and shredded its cockpit section with quad-fire. As the crimson machine spiralled away, coming apart, Waldon whooped. He’d just made his fourth and fifth confirmed career kills. He was now an ace.

Del Ruth, rearmost of the four, overshot her chosen target, which saw her coming down on it at the last moment and rolled a desperate evade. But she levelled out, and immediately picked up a Locust chasing one of the Commonwealth planes. Tone locked, she stung it hard, and as it began to judder, stung it again and blew it to fragments.

Asche’s four came in moments later moving, if anything, at an even higher rate. Asche got a Talon squarely and cleanly. Van Tull took a shot at a Tormentor, damaged it, looped around and finished the kill.

Cordiale, his timing just out, mis-hit a Talon, and then found he had a Talon and a Locust on him. He tried to jink out, but nearly collided with a Lightning coming head on. He screwed over to evade, almost stalling. The Lightning banked hard and its port-wing tip clipped the Talon behind Cordiale. The Lightning lost stability and began to spin, corrected, and then was blown apart by two other Locusts. Trailing debris, the Talon it had clipped came wide, right into Asche’s gun cone. She showed it little mercy.

Cordiale swung about and started to chase down a Tormentor. It had shed its load, and was turning for the home run. But it was still a viable target. If it died here, it couldn’t come back with another clutch of bombs.

Marquall, the last in, was sure he had a kill. He fired two bursts, but the Hell Talon was still intact as he rocketed down past it.

He tucked in and began to climb again, bleeding off some power so his controls weren’t quite so stiff with speed. In a flash, he realised he’d gone up between two Tormentors, both spilling out bombs like egg cases. He cursed his own luck. His haste to correct had made him miss a chance on two easy targets.