Flying the Storm (35 page)

It was happening. There could be no other object with a signature that size. The naval officer in him took over then.

“No,
Enkidu
, the
Gilgamesh
is not friendly,” he said. “Give me main armament firing solutions to the
Gilgamesh
, now.”

“Of course, Commodore.”
Even as the voice spoke, two red arcs had appeared before him, stretching off into the distance to the red circle where the
Gilgamesh
hid in the haze.

“The target is inside maximum range, however for nominal damage the target should be within-”

Solomon interrupted the voice. “Are the main guns loaded?”

“Yes, Commodore.”

He who does not strike first will be the first struck
. Solomon knew what had to be done.

“Elevate the guns.”
Fins on the projectiles would correct any slight errors, but the guns still had to be well aimed. The Enkidu’s nose raised, tilting the whole ship and the guns that ran along its length. Then it stopped.

“
Firing on your command, Commodore.”

“Fire.”

The ship’s engines spooled up for a second, thrusting to take some of the recoil.

And then
the
Enkidu
roared.

When the display had recovered from the huge, blinding flash, it showe
d Solomon the two white-hot points spearing up into the sky, already impossibly distant, trailing vapour and plasma and smoke as they arced perfectly towards their target. Through the optical zoom the slugs shimmered and wobbled, before disappearing into the haze.

And Solomon waited.

Many seconds later,
Enkidu
spoke to him again. “Both rounds have impacted, but target is still too distant to verify effect. Multiple additional signatures received. The
Gilgamesh
is launching fighters, Commodore.”

Fighters meant that
escape under primary engines was not an option. He’d just be too slow. He had to give his missile defences every help he could. Altitude would give them energy.

“
Take us to three-point-five kilometres.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

“And target those fighters as soon as they are in range.”

“
Of course, Commodore.”

“Why are they not launching missiles yet?”

“It is probable that the
Gilgamesh
and its fighters still cannot achieve radar lock. The report from the main armament will have revealed us momentarily, but beyond visual range the
Enkidu
is essentially invisible.”

Solomon felt a swell of pride in his warship.
Essentially invisible
.

“Commodore, would you like the factory defences to be activated?”

“I would like every scrap of help I can get,” he replied.

“Factory defences are coming online now, Commodore.
Their effectiveness will be limited to repelling the fighters, however, since they are not designed for-”

“Thank you,
Enkidu
.” Solomon did not have time for lengthy explanations. What he needed was the main guns to be ready to fire again.
One shot every twenty seconds
, the tech notes had said. Solomon was close to calling it bullshit. Maybe if the reactor didn’t have to supply anything else… “Is the main armament rearmed yet?”

“Three seconds, Commodore. Increasing reactor output to
augment fire rate.”

“
Enkidu
, fire at will.”

“Yes, Commodore.
”

Momentarily, the ship thundered again with the shock of the guns.
Once more the two white points shot into the distance, following the firing solutions.

“Change altitude to four kilometres,
and take us north three kilometres,” ordered Solomon, not wanting to linger where the guns had fired.

Sure enough,
roughly where the
Enkidu
had first fired its guns a rippling volley of rail shells exploded, thrashing the surface of the sea loch and throwing up spires of white spray. That hammered it home for Solomon. This was a fight. They wanted him dead.

Well come and get me then
.

From the steep angle the shells had come in at, Solomon realised just how much more powerful the
Enkidu
’s armament was. The
Gilgamesh
’s railgun batteries would be firing at the limit of their range. He wondered if they would even penetrate the
Enkidu
’s skin. Possibly the only real threat at this range was the explosive charge they apparently carried.

He knew that if the
Gilgamesh
made it to close range, it was over. Though the
Enkidu
’s guns were bigger, the sheer weight of firepower that the
Gilgamesh
could bring to bear would be overwhelming. At close range, even its lightest railguns would cut right through his warship.

But Solomon did not intend to let this engagement become close-range.
He could put a lot more one-ton slugs into the
Gilgamesh
before then, and every time he fired the target would be closer, and his slugs would hit it with more energy. This was a fight he would not lose.

“Hostile fighters are crossing in to visual range,” said the female voice.
Solomon could see them marked on the display now, and an optical zoom showed twelve dark spots slowly spreading out into six pairs.

“
Enkidu
, defend yourself as necessary.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

Suddenly the
Enkidu
jolted and thrusted, shaking Solomon around in his seat.

“What on Earth-”

“Performing evasive manoeuvres and deploying electronic countermeasures. Incoming missiles.”

The fighters were marking him for the
Gilgamesh
. Clever idea.

On the display, little flashes and blooms of flame signalled the missiles that the
Enkidu
had destroyed with its lasers, though these ones had been launched from the fighters. Solomon knew that there would be long-range missiles incoming from the
Gilgamesh
, but they would be out of laser range yet. The fighters were dispersing further now, twisting and weaving, trying to dodge the lasers. One of them failed, and the little dark speck disappeared in a ball of igniting fuel.

He silently congratulated the
Enkidu
. She was clearly perfectly capable of fighting her own battles. She weaved and accelerated, firing lateral thrusters until she lined up for another shot at the
Gilgamesh
.

The two slugs were only a few milliseconds out of their barrels when the
Enkidu
manoeuvred again, not giving the gunners on the distant
Gilgamesh
any semblance of an easy shot.

A moment later, another return barrage cracked and thundered a kilometre from the
Enkidu
, but this one was less intense than the first. Instead, shells began detonating regularly in different positions, all close to the
Enkidu
. They were exploding almost constantly, pocking the air with grey smoke and supersonic fragments.

It was no surprise to Solomon, then, when a hail of those fragments glanced from the port-side armour of the warship a second later.
It was hardly a scratch to the
Enkidu
, but it was enough to get the anger pumping into Solomon’s bloodstream.

They hit his ship.
The sons of bitches hit his ship.

“
Enkidu
,” he snarled, gripping the arms of his chair.

“Yes, Commodore?”
asked the
Enkidu
, manoeuvring through the rippling explosions.

“Bring that bastard down.”

Aiden stumbled out from under the
rock to what sounded like thunder. But the sky was blue and clear, and though there were dark clouds in the west they were still far away. The source of the sound was hidden from him: it seemed to come from the mountains themselves, echoing and booming back and forth between the slopes. What it was he dreaded to think.

T
he
Iolaire
was right where he’d left it. So was the
Gilgamesh
’s aircraft. The sight of it made him look for his new companion, Hammit. The boy had been following him back out through the twisting and winding tunnels, and was currently clambering from under the rock, looking around for the source of the noise. He didn’t seem to speak much, but then Aiden hadn’t spoken a great deal either. The only thing he’d managed to glean was that the boy had been with the
Gilgamesh
’s team, had somehow avoided being shot by the turrets and had hidden away in the dark for God knew how long, terrified of moving.

But Aiden hadn’t taken the time to ask the boy anything more than that.
He’d been rushing to get back to the surface to tell Fredrick of Solomon and Vika’s betrayal. He wasn’t entirely sure why, though, since there wasn’t anything Fredrick could have done about it anyway.

He hoped that the sound of explosions was the
Enkidu
having some kind of catastrophic failure. Something to wipe the smirk off of Solomon’s smug face. Oh how he would laugh at that.

The
Iolaire
’s cargo ramp was down. Aiden ran across the saddle as fast as the lumpy ground allowed, with the scrawny boy not far behind.

“Fredrick!” he shouted as he got closer, but the sound of detonations drowned him out.
He spotted the pilot clambering onto the wing to reach the starboard engine.
That’s not good
.

“Fredrick!” he shouted again as he reached the aircraft.
“What’s happening?”

His friend turned to him then, glancing only for a moment at the boy.
“It’s the warship!” he shouted back, pointing to the north-west. “The
Enkidu
! Something’s attacking it!” He bent down to open a maintenance panel, hurriedly reaching into it to feel for something.

Aiden spun around to look where Fredrick had pointed
. He could see nothing. The mountain was in the way.
What on earth would attack the Enkidu…
?

“What are you doing?”

Fredrick swore and drew his hand back out of the hatch. “The bloody engine won’t start!”

Shit
.

“Why the hell not?” cried Aiden.

“I think… I think it’s a coolant valve…but-”

“Let me look at it,” said the boy, suddenly.
Aiden turned to face him. He was looking him hard in the eye. “I’m an engineer.”

Aiden looked
to Fredrick, who just shrugged. “Go on then,” he said.

Fredrick stooped down to give the boy a hand up onto the fuselage.
The oversized flight suit hung ridiculously from his skinny frame, getting in the way of his climbing.

Aiden turned to the sky again, to the north-west.
Then, as if it knew he was watching, the
Enkidu
backed into sight, several kilometres distant, just cresting the ridge before Aiden. The air around it was filled with flashes and long, conical clouds of smoke almost as long as the warship. They reminded him of something. His heart seemed to stop when he remembered what.

“It’s the
Gilgamesh
!” he yelled, watching as the
Enkidu
ducked and weaved, little thrusters firing from its sides. “It has to be the
Gilgamesh
!” The barrage of explosions continued, clearer and louder now that the ridge no longer blocked the sound. How they weren’t hitting the warship he couldn’t tell. It was diving and swerving randomly, but surely
one
of them would get lucky.

Slowly but surely, the
Enkidu
was being fought backwards. Through all its small bursts of speed, its general motion was westwards; out to sea. Then it seemed to raise its nose, becoming still for a moment.

A massive
blue flash erupted from under its bow, like a bolt of lightning that disappeared suddenly in a shower of sparks. Two bright white lances, as thin as needles, streaked off into the blue sky unbelievably fast.
Impossibly
fast. All that remained visible of their passing were twin lines of smoke and steam; white tracks on a blue field. Aiden stood gaping at them.

He
forgot to expect the sound. He stood there watching slack-jawed, not even noticing when the shock crossed the slopes in a pale wave of grass.

Then
hit the most shattering explosion he’d ever heard. It sounded like the air itself had
burst
. He’d never heard anything so loud in all his years. He jumped, losing his balance for a second, stumbling backwards with his hands clasped to his ears. Fredrick fell off of the wing, landing amongst the tussocks in a startled heap.

“
For fanden
!” Aiden heard through muffled ears. He went to help his friend to his feet.

“I shit myself the last two times as well,” s
houted Fredrick, wiping grass and mud from his front.

Hammit seemed unperturbed by the
Enkidu
’s shot. He seemed to find what he was looking for, and swung down from the wing to where the two airmen stood.

“
It’s the coolant valve, right enough,” said the boy-engineer. “Something’s ate it right through. It’ll need replacin’.”

“Replacing?”

“Replacin’, aye. A new one. Might be I’ve got just the thing… only, I’m not rightly meant to take bits from Commander Petrus’ craft…” The boy went sheepish all of a sudden, wringing his hands and eyeing the aircraft just across the meadow.

Aiden
tried to reassure the boy. “Hammit, I don’t think the Commander will mind much, given his current state.”

The boy looked at him.
Aiden could see the argument behind his eyes. It could have been loyalty to his masters… or maybe just fear. He pitied him, then.

“Go on, mate,” he said gently.
“We need your help.”

That seemed to settle it.
The boy nodded and set off at an ungainly lope across the grass to the other aircraft.

Aiden watc
hed him go for a moment before turning to the east. The saddle had a fairly uninterrupted view that way, he saw, but even so he couldn’t see what the
Enkidu
had been shooting at. Neither could he see where the constant barrage of shells was coming from. It had to be incredibly far away. But there, near the horizon where the blue haze turned to white, he thought he could see little specks of cloud maybe… or maybe smoke. Something was happening over there.

The
Enkidu
was giving as good as it got.

He found that the noise was starting to get to him.
Every shell burst thumped in his chest like a blow, and alarmed him more and more each time. He looked then for Hammit, seeing him working away at one of the
Gilgamesh
’s aircraft’s engines. The sooner he found that part, the sooner they could get into the air and out of there.

But maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
Maybe they were actually safer on the ground. It wasn’t the
Enkidu
he feared: if Solomon had wanted him dead he would have pulled that trigger. If they were in the air when the
Gilgamesh
arrived… But then, how would it be any better to be on the ground?

“Who the hell is he, anyway?”
asked Fredrick, over the noise of the blasts.

“He was with the team the
Gilgamesh
sent. They were all killed by the factory’s defences, all except him.”

“Lucky guy.
What… what happened in there?”

With everyt
hing that was happening outside, Aiden had forgotten his hurry to tell Fredrick about Vika and Solomon. Now the urgency had gone, it seemed a bit foolish. What would it actually change?

“There’s a bloody factory inside that mountain, Fred,” said Aiden.
“A whole bloody automated factory. I got to see the warship… But Solomon chased me out of there with a gun. Told me the
Enkidu
was his, and nobody would tell him what to do with it.”

“So his intentions weren’t entirely noble then?” He sounded unsurprised.

Aiden shook his head. “I should have seen it coming. We handed it to him, man. We just
handed
it to him…”

“If it hadn’t been us, he’d have found others to take him.”

There was truth in that. Aiden tried to take some solace from it. “Fred, there’s something else. Vika-”

“Is fucking Solomon,” completed Fredrick.
“Yeah, I’d noticed.” He spat in the grass and took a swig from his hip flask. “I have two theories about that. Either she likes the guy with the biggest aircraft, or she has daddy issues and wants an older man.”

Daddy issues
. That might have held some water… “Maybe she’s looking for help for her father’s cause.”

“Or that,” nodded Fredrick reluctantly, in a way that
suggested he already knew. Maybe he preferred to hold on to the bitter reasons. Maybe they made it easier to swallow.

Vika is aboard that warship
, Aiden thought suddenly. He’d known it all along, only now he’d realised the consequences of that. If the
Enkidu
went down, so would Vika. Though she’d played them false it still bothered Aiden. If she was really just trying to help her father and her people, then who was he to judge her? He’d done worse things just in the past week than she had by abandoning them for Solomon.

In truth, he doubted that Solomon would fall for her
in the way she probably hoped he would. He was definitely a man with big plans, and those almost certainly did not involve uniting a fragmented Armenia. She was fighting a losing battle if she thought she could persuade him to do that.

But then
, that begged another question. What did Solomon want her for? He reckoned he could have a good guess at that. She’d be strung along for as long as he wanted her, baited with vague promises and hope.
That poor girl
.

Aiden felt helpless
, stuck on the ground while a growing battle filled the air above. The noise was intensifying, and the
Enkidu
launched a pair of missiles from hidden ports in its sides. They howled off up into the blue sky, arcing towards the little cluster of dark shapes above the horizon. The barrage of shells continued.

He was
trying to find something good to salvage from the situation. The engineer, maybe. He was only a boy, and yet he had been crew on the
Gilgamesh
. Did they recruit children for the menial tasks? It would make sense. Children would be easier to control; children would be cheaper. Aiden already knew that the warship didn’t operate on the same moral compass as everybody else.

Whatever his reasons, the boy had made it clear he didn’t want to go back.
Take me with you
, he’d said.
Don’t leave me here
. He could have just meant the stinking, death-filled tunnels, but Aiden had thought that there was more behind the words. He’d been given a chance that surely not many engineers on the
Gilgamesh
got.

That was another unsettling thought.
Children aboard the
Gilgamesh
: young boys and girls working away in its depths, oblivious to its actions and motives. And the
Enkidu
was shooting its monstrous guns at it, trying to bring it down. If the crew had been thousands of grown adults knowingly doing wrong, it would have been different. But now Aiden had the horrible feeling that there might be hundreds, if not thousands of children aboard.

He ran to the
Gilgamesh
’s aircraft. “Hammit!” he shouted, seeing the boy poke his head up from behind an engine cowling. “Are all the engineers like you? Your age, I mean?”

Hammit looked at him like he’d asked a stupid question.
“I’m one year away from senior rating. About half are younger than me, half older.”

“How many engineers are there?”

The boy shrugged. “A couple of thousand.” He ducked back behind the cowling then.

T
here could be two thousand adolescents and children keeping that monstrosity in the air. Several thousand more adults, he knew, for the rest of the crew and the marines. And all of them would die, if what Solomon had told them of the
Enkidu
was true.