A siren screeched. Amongst the blizzard of flak bursts, Viltry glimpsed the trail smoke of
missiles banging off from the carrier.
Wordlessly, he hit the chaff switch, and clouds of glittering, distorting material puffed out of
Greta’s launchers. Then heat-flares too. Near-miss explosions shook the airframe. The space
between the onrushing planes and the vast carrier was muddy with flash flowers and blooms of
black and white smoke.
A rocket struck Miss Adventure and killed her dead. The torn wreckage and hull sections,
moving at close to mach one, cartwheeled over the desert floor, raking the sand, spitting flame like a
firework.
“Nose and top. Anytime you like,” Viltry said.
The turrets opened up, playing fire along the carrier’s starboard hull. Viltry, concentrating as
hard as he could, saw bats trying to launch from the lower chutes. Naxol had seen them too. A
Locust came off its ion catapult and burst like a flare.
Ten seconds. Five. Flak damage to the port wing. Ignore it, hold her true. Two seconds. One.
Release.
Halo pulled off over the giant carrier. Every single bombardier had placed his drop perfectly.
Vast eruptions lit up the deck, puncturing the armoured ramps, blasting flak mounts out of their
sockets, toppling lifter assemblies and crane gantries. Someone—Viltry’s guess was Widowmaker—
dropped their clutch into the command spire that rose over the top deck section. A massive fireball
spread out, felling the spire in ragged chunks.
Four Marauders pulled clear of the blazing carrier. Throne of Terra, bombs gone, had been hit
by flak. In his rear-picter, Viltry saw it flip onto its back and crash into the sands.
The four remaining planes arced round in formation, turning high, and began their second pass.
Monumental palls of smoke rose from the stricken carrier.
They came in with rockets now, turrets blasting again. The wing-loads loosed, and snaked off on
spiralling trails of smoke. There was nothing like the same weight of flak on them now.
The rockets splashed, sheeting fire and hull fragments into the desert sky as the Marauders went
over.
They began to pull away, climbing.
Something primal and catastrophic happened to the carrier. Most likely, one of the rockets had
penetrated the magazine or the drive section. The carrier spasmed, shook, and then incinerated in
one stupendously bright flash.
The Shockwave almost knocked Halo out of the air.
They soared out, stabilising. A giant cloud of smoke, shaped like a forest mushroom, filled the
sky behind them.
Theda MAB South, 09.30
The Operations rotunda was frantic with activity and chatter. Between them, the flight controllers
were overseeing four major air-fights and nine intercept sorties. “Darrow?”
74
Darrow was staring up at the roof dome, where sunlight was spilling in through the collar of
stained glass.
“Darrow? Junior?” Eads sounded tetchy.
Darrow started. “Sir, I’m sorry. My mind was drifting. No excuses. What were you saying,
Flight?”
Eads turned his face towards the young man. There was sympathy in its sightless look. Eads held
out a scrap of printout wafer. “I thought you might like to announce this, son,” he said. “Proof that
not just bad things happen in this life.”
“Flight?”
“They told me about Heckel, son. I’m sorry that it had to be you who found him. Think about
something else now. Announce that.”
Darrow looked down at the flimsy printout, then smiled. He looked up and cleared his throat.
He’d heard junior flight controllers and assistants make proud announcements like this. Now it was
his turn. And it beat them all.
“Attention, attention. Halo Flight confirms it has destroyed a mass carrier in the north desert.
That is confirmed. Enemy carrier destroyed.”
Darrow’s smile widened as the rotunda broke out in cheers and applause. The first carrier found
and killed. Even Banzie was clapping and grinning.
Eads said something. Darrow leaned forward to hear him over the tide of applause.
“Say again, Flight?”
“I said,” Eads whispered, “we might just do this. We might just win this against the odds.”
Palace Pier, 14.02
It was a grey, flat afternoon, and no one was in. Hardly a surprise, as the smoke wash from Ezraville
had been fuming down the straits since daybreak.
The cafe door opened. Beqa looked up from the slates she was reading at the counter and saw
Viltry in the doorway. Thirty empty tables stood between them. A Thracian waltz idled in the
background.
He smiled, and took off his cap.
“Hello. You look pleased with yourself,” she said, rising. He walked between the vacant tables
to reach her and slid a haversack off his shoulder.
“A big success today. A really big one. My crews are away celebrating, madly. They will be
draining the vats of Theda dry tonight. And woe betide any ladies of easy virtue…”
“Have you been drinking?” Beqa asked.
“Um, a little, maybe. In dispersal. I do apologise.”
“Why are you here, Viltry? It sounds to me like you’re missing parties and celebrations and—”
Viltry opened his haversack. He pulled out two paper-wrapped haunches of vere, a bag of sweet
tubers, bunches of fresh greens, dessert biscuits and a bottle of sjira red.
Beqa’s eyes widened. Her mouth watered. She’d never seen the like, not even before rationing.
“I was given these. Sort of a tribute. Ornoff sent a hamper down to reward the unit. The men had
away with most of the drink, obviously. But I kept the rest. I thought you might know what to do
with it. I mean, food-wise. As a cook.”
He looked at her. His eyes were wide and honest.
He added, “And I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather share it with.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it is.”
75
DAY 258
Ezraville MAB, 11.31
“Thanks!” Jagdea shouted, and jumped down off the transport. She strode across the mud to the hut
and ducked as she went in through the door. Behind her, Imperial machines thundered up off their
hardstands into the smoke-stained sky.
He was sitting on a fuel drum, gazing at his boots.
“You all right?” she asked. He looked, saw it was her, and rose with a quick salute.
“I guess,” said Marquall.
“Tough break, there. Good kill, I hear.”
“Then I got stung. A Talon, I think. Right on my tail. I didn’t see it. I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Don’t be. You ejected. You came down alive. That’s all that matters to me.”
“Can I fly again?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Uhm… if you want to.”
“What does that mean?”
“The only available bird is Nine-Nine. She’s been repaired. You may not want her.”
“Nine-Nine?” Marquall asked.
“Yes.”
Marquall laughed dryly. He couldn’t decide which was worse—the fact it was Espere’s old bird,
or the fact it was rumoured to be badly jinxed.
Then, after a moment’s consideration, he realised that the worse thing of all was the prospect of
not flying again.
“I’ll take Nine-Nine,” he said. “Maybe my jinx and hers will cancel each other’s out.”
Theda MAB South, 16.10
They’d seen them from the coastal highway, and the sight had filled both of them with hope. Wings
of Navy machines, in line formations, moving down over the sea towards the Thedan fields.
Reinforcements, flying in from mass landing centres in the Northern Affiliation.
Jagdea and Marquall had both got to their feet in the back of the rocking transport, pointing to
the sights and talking. Thunderbolt wings turning gently towards Theda North. Two packs of
Vulture gunships slimming south into the Peninsula. The afternoon was clear and blue and, despite
the sooty sky behind them over Ezraville, and the distant moan of raid warning sirens, they almost
felt like cheering.
The mood was buzzing in the base when the transport dropped them off. Eager pre-flight activity
around Umbra’s hardstands, and dozens of carriers and freight-tractors hurtling to and fro.
With Marquall at her side, Jagdea jogged across the rockcrete, dodging through a slow-striding
queue of Sentinel power lifters carrying cargo pods to waiting transport lifters. Blansher and Asche
were standing with some of the chief fitters.
“Welcome back, killer,” Asche said to Marquall playfully. He blushed slightly.
“Good to see you in one piece, lad,” said Blansher.
“What’s the commotion, Mil?” Jagdea asked.
“Deployment orders,” Blansher replied, pulling a data-slate out of his coat. She skim-read it.
76
“As of 18.00 hours tonight, Umbra are shipping out to a forward strip in the south,” Blansher
said. “I think they want to make some room here for the newcomers. We’ll be flying short notice
intercepts from a place called Lake Gocel.”
Jagdea looked at the location on the slate map. It was a vulnerable spot, well inside the enemy’s
air range. But it would allow them to mount rapid challenges to anything coming north or east out of
the Interior Desert, tagging them long before they reached the Peninsula or cities like Theda.
“Operations says that several large sections of our ground forces are now clearing the east of the
Makanites on the home run,” Blansher said. “I think the idea is we’ll be protecting them, too.”
“Not just us, surely?” said Marquall.
“No,” said Jagdea, reviewing the slate. “The 409 are going with us, and there’s a Lightning wing
already down there.”
“Transports are already starting to ship our crews out,” added Asche. “We’ll be travelling light
and fast.”
“We’d better get started,” said Jagdea.
Marquall walked across to the hardstand and looked Nine-Nine in the eye. The fitters had done a
fine job of patching her up. A slight blemish to the plating and the paintwork. Nothing really to
show the pounding she’d taken.
“You’re mine now,” he said softly. “I’ll treat you right if you treat me the same.” Dark, fierce,
the Thunderbolt made no reply.
77
DAY 259
Over the Cicatrice, 13.43
The search for another mass carrier to pound was going to have to wait.
Viltry turned his wing west and brought them lower over the rushing canyons and gorges of the
great rift scar. For the first time, he felt the notorious shake and tear of the Cicatrice winds as they
tried to pluck Greta’s lift away.
Two kilometres dead ahead, a huge blizzard of fire and smoke was coming off the desert.
A section of the shattered land armada, a line of men and machines seven or eight kilometres
long, had been struggling down one of the rift’s wider passes when the ambush had come down on
it. Three at a time, Hell Talons were dipping in and tearing down the length of the column,
depositing bombs and rockets, or shooting up ground targets. Dozens of tanks and armoured
transports were on fire, and in places so were patches of sand where burning debris and fuel had
scattered out.
Tiny dots, individual figures, were running for cover in the jumbled stones of the valley sides.
The valley air was striped vertically with rising smoke, and horizontally by tracer fire and jet
exhaust plumes. The strafing machines made curious vortices and eddies in the smoke palls with
their slipstreams.
At the south end of the valley, squadrons of enemy stalk tanks, bright yellow and venomouslooking,
were scuttling in, overtaking the hind part of the crawling Imperial mass. Heavy-gauge
lasfire flashed and seared from that section of the fight.
Viltry’s Marauders weren’t built to intercept air attacks like this, but he hoped their presence
would at least discourage the enemy from its relentless strikes. Lacombe had called in for fighter
assist, and there were apparently Thunderbolts eight minutes away.
“Head on, low level!” Viltry ordered. “Drive them off and away from the column, deny their
attack runs. If you make it to the south end without having to pull off, unload munitions on those
enemy stalkers.”
“Understood, Lead.”
“Right with you.”
Viltry led by example, swinging Greta round at the front end of the column and bringing her in
down the line in the opposite direction to the raiders’ approaches. He kept as low as he dared,
whipping through dense smoke streams, feeling the damned rift-winds screwing and twisting the
airframe.
As soon as he had lined up and begun his run, he saw three Talons coming in ahead of him.
Bolter fire from the ground chopped the air in their direction.
“Make them change their minds!” he growled, fighting with the stiff, jerking stick.
Top and nose opened fire, aiming high. The tracking tracer lines chewed ahead of the Marauder,
sizzling into the trio of enemy machines that powered towards it.
Damaged perhaps, surprised certainly, the Talons banked out wildly, left and right, aborting
their runs and pulling off the column. Gaize tracked the turret and kept shooting at one that was
slow skipping away.
78
Viltry kept on track. They were almost at the south end of the pass now. The gates of the gorge
were coming up fast. A flash of sun caught yellow metal: stalk tanks. The arachnoid war machines
were pelting laser cannon fire into the rear echelon of the Imperial column.
“Judd!”
“Ready!”
Viltry clung on, anticipating the jerk-lift of a clean release, but what came was far more violent
than that. A sudden, bone-rattling, sideways slam caused by the especially fierce crosswinds at the
gorge mouth. Greta stumbled. Viltry caught her and held her.
The bombs had gone.
He could hear Judd cursing. The crosswinds had ruined his release. Greta’s huge payload had
dropped wide, detonating across the upper valley slopes.
Viltry brought the nose up and climbed wide, coming around again in a large circuit. Behind and
below him, four of his five wingmen were flying in series to protect the pass. Consider Yourself
Dead had broken off its run and was turning out over the valley tops, mobbed and chased by three
Talons.
He heard Orsone open up in the tail. There was another bat behind them. Fire streaked past like
scattering sparks. Viltry dived away, turning against the sun so a shadow rolled slowly through the
cockpit.
“Lost it!” Orsone voxed.
Down onto the valley fight again, into the smoke, and against the savage wind shear that was as
much an enemy as the bright-painted bats.
Viltry banked hard as two Talons went past the other way, just blurs of colour. What was
keeping those damn fighters?
G for Greta shuddered. Klaxons wailed. They were flying head on into a blitz of ground to air
