interface sockets of the displays. Above them was an observation deck where senior officers
gathered to look down on proceedings. In the centre of the chamber was the principal hololithic
display, which projected a flickering tactical animation six metres into the air from a wide, brassedged
base unit. Around that stood a ring of semi-opaque glass screens onto which the modar
returns were projected. A stern-looking placement operator stood ready at each screen, with a stylus
in one hand and an eraser in the other.
56
Around them lay a further ring of primary control consoles, massive codifier stations that
sprouted from the floor like standing stones. Each one, panelled with wood, its instruments turned in
brass, had its own valve-screen pict display and hololithic repeater.
All the personnel present currently stood or sat silently, heads slightly bowed.
A rector from the Navy chaplaincy, imposing in his selpic blue robes and sable ruff, was
intoning a rite of blessing upon the station. As he spoke, one hand on his breast, the other tucked
behind his back, tech-priests moved around the room, anointing the stations and offering holy water
from gold ampullas to those personnel in need of personal benediction. Darrow noticed most
received it, even the higher ranking staffers.
“Let this day be profitable and successful,” the rector said. “Let the strength of will and the
clarity of sight that is the province of the most high and glorious Imperator, he that is the God-
Emperor of all Mankind, inform your work this day. May his glory be everlasting, and his beacon of
enlightenment shine to us all in the darkness. For the Golden Throne, everlasting, and in his name’s
sake, let his will be done.”
The rector made the sign of the aquila across his breast, and everybody did the same.
The deck officer stood, nodded to the rector, and announced, “Day shift begins, 255, 773.M41.”
At once, activity resumed. A sudden wash of voices, of un-muted vox channels. Deft hands
chattered over metal keys. Eads nodded at Darrow to follow him.
As a flight controller, Eads’s station was one of the primary control consoles. Darrow helped
him into the high-backed seat and stowed the sensor cane where Eads could find it.
“Principal cortical plug and tech-reader link, please,” Eads said as he settled himself. Darrow
glanced around, and unhooked the two leads from a bracket on the console’s side. He handed them
to Eads. Eads read the raised identifier stamps on the plugs with the tips of his fingers, then inserted
the cortical plug into the dermal socket behind his left ear. The other lead, from which withered
parchment labels dangled, went into a second dermal socket under his hairline at the base of his
skull. Eads winced slightly as it went in.
The console came to immediate life. The hololith display lit up and began to rotate. The pict
screen shimmered into life, showing a scrolling menu of tight-beamed data. Darrow knew that Eads
was now seeing all this for himself, in his mind. Eads began to review the details.
Darrow looked around again. Each of the flight controllers was attended by at least one junior
aide. All of the other controllers were sighted, although one had bulky augmetic optics, but many
had enhanced their overview with cortical links.
“Vox mic, please,” Eads said.
Darrow unhooked that too, played out the flex, and helped Eads to fit it around his ear so the
bead was in place and the wire stalk set by his lips.
“This is Eads, 7513,” Eads said softly. “I am now on station.” He was answered by a murmur of
vox responses.
His fingers began to glide over the mechanical keyboard. The data on the screen altered. The
cortical plug was simulating a version of the console in Eads’s head so he could operate it.
“Climate plot, please,” Eads said to the link. A swollen 3D image bloomed across the hololith.
“Tactical… and quadrant operations.” More changes, more overlays. Hard yellow lines showing
aircraft tracks, dotted red lines of mission sequences, winking green runes positioning the machines
themselves.
“There’s a spare headset if you want to listen,” Eads remarked.
Darrow took the opportunity. What he heard as he wired up was a nonsense of human and
machine voices, digital transmissions, and binary codes and atmospherics, which sucked and roared
behind the voices.
57
“Use the dial there to select,” Eads pointed. “It’ll seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll learn to
differentiate and fine tune. For the next two hours, we’re assigned flight control for two fighter
units: Umbra Flights Four-One and Four-Two. There are the mission parameters, on screen.”
Suddenly nervous, Darrow read the details, trying not to miss anything. Two intercept units, four
machines in each. Routing down across the Peninsula to the headwaters of the Lida, hunting
intruders. Time of launch, 08.15.
He looked at the brass chronometer mounted above the console top. It read 08.14.
Theda MAB South, 08.15
“Straps tight?” Racklae shouted, barely audible over the rising howl of the fanjets.
Marquall nodded. Racklae gave him a finger-and-thumb “O”, then ordered the ground crew
clear. They jumped off, the last of the hoses disconnected and stowed, rolling the primer cart back.
One fitter carried the yellow boarding ladder away.
Perched beside the cockpit, Racklae tapped his ears and mouth.
Marquall nodded again. He keyed the vox.
“Test, test,” he said. “Umbra Eight, Umbra Eight, am I loud?”
“Umbra Eight, this is Lead. You’re loud and live. Okay there, Marquall?”
“Yes, ma’am. Lights are green, I repeat green. Ready to lift.”
“Stand by, Eight.”
Marquall made the sign of the aquila, then looked up at Racklae. He showed him a thumb. The
chief fitter grinned, saluted him, and closed the canopy. Immediately, the sound changed. The wail
of the jets was dulled, but Marquall was suddenly contained in a resonating box of ultrasonic
vibrations.
Marquall checked the canopy lock, then made a gesture almost like a genuflection to his chief.
Racklae saw it, nodded, then jumped down and hurried over into cover behind the revetment wall of
the pad enclosure.
“Umbra Eight. Locked and ready.”
“Got you, Eight.”
“Umbra Ten, ready.”
“Umbra Seven. Fit.”
“Stand by,” Jagdea said again. “Four-Two are lifting out ahead of us.”
There was a warble of voices across the vox-channel, then a wailing rush that was loud even
with the canopy down and helmet on. From hardstands nearby, four Thunderbolts hoisted
themselves up vertically into the air. The space beneath each one was a heat-distorted wash of
vectored thrust. Blansher, Asche, Cordiale and Ranfre; Umbra Two: Four, Eleven and Twelve
respectively.
On Blansher’s expert lead, they began to climb and move forward as their vector ducts gently
swung around. In neat formation, they rose, gaining speed. As they crossed away down the length of
the field, their primary exhausts lit up hot and yellow as full thrust switched through them. Already,
they were receding, climbing higher, accelerating.
“Operations, this is Four-One Leader,” Marquall heard Jagdea say. “Permission to rise.”
“Four-One Leader, this is Operations. You are cleared for immediate launch. Good hunting.”
“Four-One, this is Lead. Let’s go.”
Marquall opened the throttle and felt his machine quiver, as if it had become enraged. Maximum
thrust. He felt the gentle wobble as The Smear left the stand. Even though it expended masses of
fuel reserve, Marquall preferred vector take-offs. He hated ramp launches, and the bludgeoning
smack of the rocket boost. He was thankful that no ramps had yet been erected at Theda.
He glanced around, compensating for the wallow of his rising Bolt. To his left, Umbra Ten was
coming up. Marquall could almost hear Zemmic fiddling with his rosary of lucky charms as his bird
58
rose. To his right, Jagdea lifted to vertical, and Clovin, two stands down from her. Forty metres up,
perfect station keeping.
“Wait for it,” Jagdea’s voice cautioned. Blansher favoured the slow, gentlemanly climb from
vertical to full forward, but Jagdea preferred the hammer start. The fitter crews knew it. They’d
already hit the bunkers.
“Wait…”
Fifty metres.
“On me, extend, full thrust,” Jagdea ordered.
Her machine roared forward, crossing the field at fifty metres, ducts violently thrown to level
flight. Clovin gunned after her, then Zemmic. Marquall nursed his throttle and then bulleted after
them.
The ground shot away underneath them like speeded-up pict images. The punch kicked Marquall
back into his seat. At full burn, they’d cleared the deadlands beyond the field and had already
reached close to six hundred kph before they formed up and began to rise.
“Four-One Leader, we have cleared the field. Climbing now to five thousand. Heading southwest,
ten-eight-four.”
“Ten-eight-four, copy Leader,” Operations replied. “Nice launch. Maybe you can apologise to
our eardrums later.”
“Copy that, Operations. Fast up, fast away. That’s the way we do things where I come from.”
“Understood. What else do you do where you come from?”
“We kill bats.”
“Copy that, Leader. Good to know. Make your level nine thousand and turn south-west eleveneight-
five.”
“Eleven-eight-five. Understood. Four-One, check in.”
“Four-One, Seven. On your lead.”
“Four-One, Ten. At your heels, to port. Nice day for it.”
“Clear as a bell, Zemmic. Count your lucky charms.”
Marquall adjusted his mask. “Four-One, Eight. Right with you.”
“Stay close, Marquall. This is going to be a breeze.” It was. He knew it was. He was going to
make sure it was.
He’d screwed up on his virgin outing. He could still see Pers Espere, sitting in his cockpit, blood
on everything. The image was in his dreams and his waking thoughts.
But Jagdea hadn’t given up on him. He could do this. He was Phantine. He wasn’t going to
screw up a second time.
Natrab Echelon Aerie, Interior Desert, 08.16
Barbed limbs glinting in the fierce light, the slave servitors carried him out onto the foredeck of the
aerie in his burnished litter. His pearl-white machine sat in its launch cradle below him, the desert
light winking off its stark lines.
The servitors were moaning a litany of providence and blood-hunger. Flight Warrior Khrel Kas
Obarkon smiled. The litter came to a stop. Obarkon disconnected the heavy golden pipes that linked
his body to the carriage’s life-support and slid his helmet down into place so that it locked.
He pulled back the silk drape and stepped out onto the sunburned deck. Tall, lean, encased from
throat to foot in glinting black grav-armour, he raised his spidery arms, and the slaves fell to their
knees.
The sun was still low in the sky, and the platform beneath his feet rocked slightly as the massive
land carrier trundled on over the dunes.
59
Obarkon waved a skeletal hand and one of the servitors ran up with his speaking cone. Engraved
and ornate, it was a bell fashioned from solid gold, mounted on a bronze stand. Obarkon took hold
of the dangling lead and plugged it into his larynx socket.
“Fifth echelon!” His digitally corrupted voice boomed out over the upper and lower launch
decks. “You who are of the Anarch, so sworn to he that is Sek! Heed me!”
All along the burnished decks of the carrier, the flight warriors of the fifth echelon stood to
attention beside their cradled machines. Their litter bearers were retreating into the blast cavities.
“The Anarch wills us, so we obey! Who shall find blood in the air?”
“We will!” the flight warriors howled back.
“Who will make the kill?”
“We will!” The decks shook.
“Who will stain the earth with the enemy’s life?”
“We will!”
“To your machines, your chieftain commands!”
Raising a bloody cheer, the flight warriors clumped to their waiting bats. Obarkon plucked out
the speaker cord and walked over to his Hell Razor unsupported. He insisted on doing this, even
though he could last less than ten minutes without full life-support. It was a show of personal
strength that the crew admired.
Servitors lifted him into his cockpit and automated systems linked him in. He breathed more
easily again once the Hell Razor’s augmetics took over the maintenance of his life.
The spinal plugs engaged. The systems came to life, feeding their data of fuel tolerance, payload
and energy into his cortex. His eyes saw through the guns now.
The canopy closed, shutting him in darkness.
Displays lit in his head.
“Clear!” he ordered.
A whining began, rose, exploded.
“Launch!” he commanded.
The ion catapults rose to power and discharged. The pearl-white Hell Razor fired off the carrier
deck into the sky. Only his grav-armour prevented Obarkon from being crushed into his seat.
Behind him, like darts from a bow, twenty more machines launched into the desert air, some
crimson, some mauve, some silver, some black.
They formed up around him as he turned west, towards the mountains. Obarkon switched to his
rear pict relays and watched Natrab aerie fall away behind him. The scale of it always delighted
him. A leviathan, fully a kilometre long, bristling with weapon ports, riding across the dune sea on a
hundred bogeys of five-metre diameter wheels.
Such was the might of the Anarch, sworn unto him that is the High Archon, blessed Gaur.
“Echelon,” he said, adjusting his link. “Let us kill.”
Palace Pier, 09.12
“You’re early,” Beqa said.
Viltry shrugged. “The sortie was called off. Repairs, you see. Maybe this afternoon.”
“Breakfast?”
“Please.”
“I have eggs, You eat eggs, right?”
“Not fish eggs?”
“No, not fish eggs.”
“Then, yes.”
“Have a seat,” she said.
60
Viltry wandered over to his favoured table. The cafe was quite busy. Old folk out for breakfast,
and groups of manufactory workers chasing a hot meal after their night shift.
Outside, the sky was spare and pale, a strong wind chasing the clouds out of the air. The sea was
dark and moody, rolling with white horses.
A good flying day.
“You know him?” asked Letrice, dubiously.
“Who?”
“The mental case. The flier.”
“Yes,” said Beqa, turning the skillet. “He’s okay.”
Over the Lida, 10.01
They got the call from Operations about twenty minutes before Jagdea was going to throw it in for
the day. Relief flight under attack, urgent support requested. According to the grid plot, the fuss was
