Marching Through Georgia (28 page)

"One minute." The voice of the controller sounded, olympian and distant; Johanna felt a moment's fierce resentment that faded into the blank intensity of concentration. Nothing… then a line of black dots. Growing, details; single-engine fighters. Large canopies set well back, long cylindrical noses. Focke-Wulf 190's, the best the Germans had.

Oh, joy
, she thought sardonically, picking her target. This would be a celestial game of chicken, with whoever banked first vulnerable. The oncoming line seemed to swell more swiftly, speed becoming visible as the range closed. Hands and feet moved on pedals and stick, feedback making the Eagle an extension of her body. Like
another
body: she had seen a barracuda once, spear-fishing along a reef off Ceylon, on a summer's holiday with a schoolfriend; hung entranced in the sapphire water, meeting an eye black and empty and colder than the moon. A living knife, honed by a million years of evolution.

Here she had that, the power and the
purity
of it…

The Focke-Wulf was closing. Closing. Toy-model size, normal, huge, filling the windscreen the crazy fucker's not turning
now
.

Her thumb clamped the firing button just as lights sparkled along the wingroot firing ports of the Focke-Wulf. Fist-blow of recoil, like a sudden headwind for a fractional second, and a multiple
punk-tingggg as
something high-velocity struck the Draka aircraft's armor. Then she was banking right as the German flipped left; they passed belly-to-belly and wings pointing to earth and sky, so close that they would have collided had the landing gear been down.

A quick glimpse into the overhead mirror showed the German going in. Not burning, but half his rudder was missing. Johanna flipped the Eagle back onto the level with a smile that turned to a snarl as a red temperature warning light began to flicker and buzz on the control panel. Her hand reached for the switches, but before she could complete the movement a flare of light caught at the corner of her right eye. A rending
bang
and she felt the
Lover's Bite
shake, pitched on her side and dove for the earth six thousand meters below in a long spiral, trailing smoke from the port engine nacelle; more than smoke, there were flames licking from ruptured fuel lines; a sudden barrage of piston heads and connectors hammered the side of the cockpit as the roar of a functioning engine abruptly changed to the brief shriek of high-tensile steel distorting under intolerable stress.

G-force worse than the pull-out from a power dive pushed Johanna into a corner of the seat, weighing on her chest like a great soft pillow. Will and training forced her hand through air that seemed to have hardened to treacle, feathering the damaged engine and shutting the fuel lines, opening the throttle on the other.
Stamp
on the pedal
left
stick… she could almost hear the voice of her instructor, feel the wind rattling the wires of the training biplane:
recruit, next time yo' needs three tries to pull
out of a spin I'll put us'n into a hill myself to spare the Race the
horror of yo' incompetent genes
…

So
you were right
, she thought. You're
still a son of a bitch
.

The
Lover's Bite
came out of the spin, straight and level. Also horribly slow and sluggish, and she had to keep the stick over…

"Mayday." Her voice was a harsh blur in her own ears.

"Mayday, engine out, altitude—" she blinked out the cockpit at muddy fields grown horribly close, unbelievably fast "—three thousand." A glance at the board. "B engine running, losing hydraulics slowly, fuel fast."

"Acknowledged." The Merarch's voice was steady, calming.

"Run for it, we'll cover as long as we can." A pause. "And your stray duck de Grange is back."

"Acknowledged," she answered shortly. Mind and body were busy with the limping, shuddering aircraft. For a moment sheer irritation overrode all other feeling; the effortless power and response of the Eagle had become part of her life, and this limping parody was like a rebellion of her own muscles and nerves. Her eyes flicked to the gauges. Hydraulic pressure dropping steadily; that meant multiple ruptures somewhere. The controls were growing soft, mushy; she had to overcorrect and then correct again. A glance at the ruined engine: still burning, fuel must be getting through somehow, and the gauge was dropping as if both engines were running on maximum boost.

And—

The Focke-Wulf dove from over her left shoulder. Reflex made her try to snap the Eagle aside, and the unbalanced thrust of the single engine sent the aircraft into the beginnings of another flat spin that carried her six hundred meters closer to the ground.

Cannon shells hammered into the rear fuselage; then the
Lover's
Bite
pitched forward in the shockwave of an explosion. Pieces of the German fighter pitched groundward, burning; another Draka Eagle swooped by, looped and throttled back to fly wing-to-wing, the pilot giving her a thumbs-up signal. He was as impersonal as a machine in bonedome, dark visor and face mask, but she could imagine the cocky grin on de Grange's freckled face.

"Thanks," she said. "Now get back upstairs."

"Hell—"

"That's an
order
, Galahad! If I want a knight-errant, I'll send to Hollywood." Reluctantly, he peeled off and climbed. She fought down a feeling of loneliness; an Eagle had the advantage in a diving attack on a Focke-Wulf, but in a low-and-slow dogfight the smaller turning radius of a single-engine fighter made it a dangerous opponent.

Until then emergency had kept her focused, consciousness narrowed down to the bright point of concentration. Now she drew a ragged breath and looked about. More smoke and fire trailed from the right engine, and she could smell somewhere the raw stink of high-octane fuel. That was bad, fuel didn't explode until it mixed with air… Ahead and high above shone the peaks of Caucasus;
very
high, she must be at no more than two thousand meters. A push at the stiff joystick and the plane responded, slowly, oh so slowly. Still losing pressure from the hydraulics; it was a choice between the controls freezing up, midair explosion, and the last of the fuel coughing through the injectors. As for clearing the mountains, even through one of the passes, as much chance of that as of flying to the moon by putting her head between her knees and spitting hard.

But I'm
me
, something gibbered in the back of her mind. I'm only twenty, I can't die, not
yet
. Images flashed through her mind: Tom, Eric, Rahksan, her mother's body laid out in the chapel, Oakenwald… her father giving her a switching when she was seven, for sticking one of the housemaids with a pin in a tantrum. "You
will use power with restraint and thrift, because
your ancestors bought it with blood

and pain. The price is high; remember that, when it comes
your turn to pay."

"Dying, hell," she said. "Damned if I'm going to do that until I'm fuckin'
dead
." Her hand reached to hammer at the release catch of the canopy. Jammed: she flipped up a cover on the control panel and flicked the switch beneath that should have fired the explosive bolts.

"No joy," she muttered, then looked down sharply. Fuel was seeping into the cockpit, wetting the soles of her boots. "
Shit
!" A touch keyed the microphone. "Merarch, she's a mess, no hope of getting her home."

"Bail out. We've seen those Fritzes off, we'll cover you."

"Can't. Cockpit cover's jammed, I think part of the engine hit it. I'll have to ride her in." There was a moment's silence filled with static buzz and click. "I'll see if I can shoot out the catch, then make it to our lines on foot. Got my 'passport,' anyway."

That was the cyanide pill they all carried; Draka did not surrender and were not taken alive.

"Right… goodbye."

The other voices murmured a farewell; high above, she could see the silver shapes turning and making for the south. Johanna set her teeth and forced her eyes to the terrain ahead, easing back on the throttle. If the fuel lines were intact it would have been better to fly the
Lover's Bite
empty, less risk of fire, but by then the stuff would be sloshing around her feet. Easy… the plain was humping itself up into foothills, isolated swells rising out of the dead-flat squares of cultivation. All the arrangements had been made: updated letters to Tom and Eric and her father, a new home for her cat Omar, a friend who had promised to see Rahksan safely back to Oakenwald, and Pa would see her right.

Patches of forest among the fields now, the blackened snags of a ruined village, a rutted road… Almighty Thor, it was going by fast; speed that had seemed a crawl in the upper air becoming a blurring rush as she dropped below a hundred meters.

Slow
down
. Throttle back again, flaps down, just above stalling speed. Floating… up over that damned windbreak, White Christ she's hardly responding at all… good, meadow, white-and-black cows scattering… floating, nose up and—

Slam
, the belly hit, rending scream of duralumin ripping, pinwheeling, body flung forward in the harness, something struck her head…

Blackness.

"
… so the Draka are not different from other peoples because
they violate the Golden Rule, or Bentham's derivative idolatry
of the 'greatest good of the greatest number.' Everyone does.

We do not violate them
, we reject them.

Others have conquered and ruled; we alone conquer for
conquest's sake, and dominate for no other purpose than
Domination itself; the name we half-consciously chose for our
Stats is no accident We. and we alone, have spoken aloud the
great secret that the root function of all human society Is the
production and reproduction of power—-and that power Is the
ability to compel
others to
do your will, against theirs. It Is end.

not means. The purpose of Power is Power
.

The Draka will conquer the world for two reasons: because
we must and because we can. Yet of the two forces, the second
Is the greater: we do this because we
choose
to do it By the
sovereign Will and force of arms the Draka will rule the earth,
and in so doing remake themselves. We shall conquer we shall
beat the nations into dust and reforge them In our self-wrought
image: the Final Society. 'a new humanity without weakness or
mercy, hard and pure. Our descendants will walk the hillsides
of that future, innocent beneath the stars, with no more
between them and their naked will than a wolf has
. Then
there
will be Gods in the earth
."

Meditations: Colder than the Moon

by Evira Naldorssen

Archona Press. 1930

CASTLE TARLETON, ARCHONA APRIL 15, 1942: 1200

HOURS

Arch-Strategos Karl von Shrakenberg leaned his palms on the railing and stared down at the projac map of Operations Command. Steel shutters rose noiselessly behind him, covering the glass wall and darkening the room, to increase the contrast of the glass surface that filled the pit beneath them. That white glow underlit the faces of the ten
Arch-strategoi
spaced around the map, pale ovals hanging suspended, the flat black of their uniforms fading into the darkness beyond, the more so as few of them wore even the campaign ribbons to which they were entitled. Scattered brightwork glowed in soft gold stars against that background: here a thumb ring, there the three gold earrings that were the sole affectation of the
Dominarch
, the Chief of the Supreme General Staff.

Ghosts
, jeered a mordant shadow at the back of Karl's mind.

Hovering over a world we cannot touch directly
. Below them the unit counters moved, Draka forces crowding against the shrinking German bridgeheads south of the Caucasus, pushing them back toward the blocking positions of the airborne Legions at their rear.

Ghosts and dreams
, he thought.
We stand here and think we
command the world; we're lords of symbol, masters of
numbers, abstractions
. So antiseptic, so cool, so rational… and completely out of their hands, unless disaster struck. Twenty years they had planned and trained; worked and argued and sweated; moved millions of lives across the game board of the world.
Or does the world dream us? Are we the
wolf-thought-inescapable that puts a face on their fear
?

Karl looked around at the faces: his contemporaries, colleagues—his friends, if shared thoughts and work and belief were what made friendship. Quiet well-kept men in their middle years, the sort who were moderate in their vices, popular with their grandchildren, whose spare time was spent strolling in the park or at rock-meditation. When they killed it was with nod or signature, and a detachment so complete it was as empty of cruelty as of pity.

For a moment he blinked: a fragment of song went through his mind, a popular thing, how did it…
frightened of this thing
that I've become
…

And yet we were young men once
. Karl looked across at John Erikssen, the Dominarch. His head was turned, talking to his aide, young Carstairs.
Ha. I must be nodding to my end
—
she's
forty and I think of her as "young
." John and he had been junior officers together in the Great War. He remembered…

The shell hole
. Outside Smyrna: winter, glistening grey mud under grey sky, stinking with month-old bits of corpse. Cold mud closing about him, flowing rancid into his gasping mouth, the huge weight of the Turk on his chest. The curved dagger coming down, straining millimeter by millimeter closer to his face as his grip on the other man's wrist weakened, and he would lie there forever among the scraps of bone and rusty barbed wire… There had been a sound like the
thock
of a polo mallet hitting a wooden ball, and the Turk had gone rigid; another crunch, softer, and his eyes had widened and rolled and Karl rose, pushing the corpse aside. John had stood looking at the shattered buttplate of his rifle, murmuring, "Hard head.
Hard
head.