Seekan shrugged. “Around this time, I like to take a small glass of joiliq. Can I interest you in
one?”
“I prefer to—no, you bloody can’t!”
Seekan shrugged and rose. He walked over to the cabinet and poured a very small measure of
liquor into a tumbler. “I’ve heard about you,” he said.
Jagdea stiffened. What the hell did that mean? Part of her wanted to gush: I’ve heard about you
too, all of you… all the Apostles. The finest fliers in the western Navy. Quint, ace of aces,
Gettering, Suhr… and always Seekan. Wing Leader Seekan, master of the Apostles. Never a
famously high score, but renowned for his leadership and tactics. Loved by his men. Seekan, the
Imperial hero.
She chewed her lip instead.
“About me?” she said.
34
“Not you particularly,” Seekan said. He thought about that for a second and then frowned.
“Throne, I didn’t mean to offend you. I meant the Phantine. The only founded Imperial Guard
regiment who are fliers. Because of the nature of your home world, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
Seekan nodded. He raised his glass and rolled the spirit around inside it. “All other air wings
come under the command of the Imperial Navy, except yours. That makes us allies rather than kin.”
“I suppose.”
Seekan smiled. “And you value female pilots as much as men. Females are few in the Navy.
This is a rare…”
“Pleasure?” asked Jagdea.
“‘Thing’. I was going to say, “thing’.”
“There is no viable land on Phantine,” Jagdea said. “Everyone learns to fly, men and women.
Our ability is said to be intuitive and exceptional.”
“The same has been said of the Apostles.”
“You have no reason to celebrate your own virtues. The Apostles’ reputation is clear enough.”
“Thank you.”
“So… would you like to explain why your man struck my pilot with a glove like that?”
“Because he was angry.”
“Angry? Angry?”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down, commander?”
“Answer the damn question!”
“Captain Guis Gettering… Sixty-two kills. His bird is called the Double Eagle. He was offended
that your man would copy that name for his own plane.”
“That’s it?”
“What else can I say?” Seekan shrugged.
“My pilot will rename his plane. No offence was intended. In return, I suggest your Captain
Gettering makes a written and formal apology to Pilot Officer Marquall. Then the matter may be
concluded without higher attention.”
“My pleasure,” said Seekan. Jagdea turned and strode to the door.
“Commander?” Seekan called. She paused in the doorway and looked back. “Good flying,” he
said.
Over the Lida Valley, 15.16
It wasn’t an auspicious start to their first official sortie. A bright, promising day had turned sour in
the time it had taken to get their machines aloft. At ten thousand metres, with a lousy eight-tenths
cloud, and an even more lousy side wind, they were running up the wide valley of the River Lida
towards the mountains.
Jagdea’s normally sweet-running Thunderbolt, serial Zero-Two, was flying rough and heavy.
Too long in the belly-hold of a Navy carrier, Jagdea supposed. The devoted maintenance crews had
done their best to keep systems at optimum, but there was no substitute for regular flying time.
Apart from the delivery run to Theda MAB South, all the Thunderbolts in Umbra Flight had been
out of use for three and a half months.
Then again, she wondered, maybe it was her. Serial Zero-Two wasn’t the only thing not to have
flown in three and a half months. Jagdea felt clumsy and inept. She’d even made a sloppy job of
take-off. They’d had simulators on the carrier of course, regular sessions to keep them sharp, but it
wasn’t the same, just like turning a bird’s turbofans over on the flight deck every morning wasn’t
the same.
Good flying. Seekan’s presumably honestly meant remark now seemed like a jinx.
35
They were flying in unit teams of four machines. With her were Van Tull, Espere and Marquall.
Blansher had the second unit four about forty kilometres behind them, and Asche the third, running
a wide patrol over the Littoral. Essentially, Umbra Flight had split into three independent Interceptor
units. That was optimum size for routine hunting or opportunist intercept work. If more than three or
four Thunderbolts tried to share the same slice of sky, things tended to get a little crowded.
Anyway, this wasn’t a hunt. It was a shakedown. A little wind-in-the-hair run to get pilots and
machines into the swing of things. Umbra Flight had traditionally been a Lightning wing, but after
the liberation of Phantine, they’d switched to the heavier Thunderbolts, and come to love them
during the air war on Urdesh Minor. Sometimes Jagdea missed the sprightly performance of the IIIIX
Lightning, the exhilarating rates of its climb and dive, the darting grace of its turns. The
Thunderbolt was almost half as heavy again and, at lower speeds, particularly climbing, it felt as if it
barely had the power to lift its massively armoured body. But it was heavy and robust, and could
soak up the sort of punishment that would send a Lightning fluttering to its doom like a moth. It had
longer legs too, and a snout-full of killware. Where the Lightning was a playful ambush-cat, the
Thunderbolt was a full-grown carnodon. Blansher had once said that a pilot flew the Lightning for
the joy of flying, and the Thunderbolt for the joy of killing. That seemed about right to Jagdea. She
adored her Bolt. It was muscular, indomitable, responsive.
Except on days like today. The port fan was simply not running clean. There was nothing on the
display, but she could feel it, something in the rhythm of the engine tone.
She checked the fuel. Roughly a third gone, and they hadn’t opted for reserve tanks. She keyed
the vox.
“Umbra Four-One Leader to Four-One Flight. Let me hear you.”
“Umbra Three, Four-A.” Of course he was. Van Tull was always Four-A.
“Umbra Five, I’ll be fine once I’ve remembered what the controls do.”
“Roger that, Five. I know the feeling,” Jagdea returned.
“Umbra Eight. Okay here.”
Marquall sounded unhappy still. The stupid business with Gettering had knocked him back, the
last thing a novice wanted on his first day out. He’d tried to make light of it, remarking that his Bolt
was now called The Smear, because Racklae hadn’t had time to do any more than paint out his nose
art with a wash of undercoat. But Jagdea knew he’d been hurt.
“Let’s refresh the pattern, flight,” she said. “Eight, you slip into point, Five and Three change
over. I’ll take the hanger.”
They all responded, “Okay”. A nice little manoeuvre test to get them flexing their brains Jagdea
reckoned, and getting Marquall up in what was technically lead position might do his confidence
some good.
“On the mark… three, two, one… execute.”
Unit fours flew in a line formation, with one machine forward and another two flanking to rear
on either side. The fourth, or “hanger”, flanked one or other of the wingmen to rear, forming an
asymmetrical V. It was an excellent pack formation, each pilot covered by his comrades, the hanger
able to switch from side to side as needed. Currently, Jagdea was in point, with Van Tull to her port
and Espere to her starboard, Marquall at Espere’s five as the hanger.
On her mark, they shuffled the deck. Jagdea throttled down and slid back out of the point of the
V. Van Tull rolled three-sixty high and Espere did the same, but in reverse and low, until the two
wingmen had swapped places. Marquall peeled out low, then gunned forward under the V and
pulled ahead before dropping to cruise speed and coming up gently. The two wingmen then matched
speeds and flanked him sweetly to his five and seven. Jagdea throttled back again, just a touch, and
came around onto Espere’s five.
Textbook. The first thing that had gone right all day.
“Nice work, flight. Very slick. Let’s stay put for another five.”
36
The undercast was thinning. They had about six-tenths cloud now, and dark patches of the
Lida’s arable valley appeared below them, distant patchworks of field-systems, irrigation webs and
hydroponic rafts.
“Flight Leader?” It was Van Tull. “Go, Three.”
“Check your auspex. I’m tagging eight or nine contacts below us at twelve kilometres, south,
inbound.”
Sure enough, Jagdea’s scope showed seven pippers, moving north-east at under three thousand
metres. Not eight or nine, but that could just be the conditions masking returns.
“Umbra Four-One Leader to Operations. Come in, Operations.”
“Receiving, Umbra Four-One Leader.”
Jagdea reached forward with her heavily-gloved left hand and transmitted the auspex fix.
“Four-One Lead. Should there be anything up?”
“Plenty, Four-One Leader, but not there.”
“Understood, Operations. We’ll check it out.” Jagdea shifted in her seat, and tweaked the airmix
a little richer. “Lead to flight. I’ll take a look.” That was the hanger’s job, to peel off for
sweeps. “Hold it here and come around three points south.” There was no time to shuffle the deck
again, which meant she was leaving Marquall at point. A good idea? No time even to worry about it.
“Umbra Eight, you have point. Stand by to stoop if I need you.”
“Read that, Leader. I’ve got it.”
At last. A touch of excitement in the boy’s voice. Good. He could do with this. Besides, Van
Tull was right there, solid and dependable. And Espere was a consummate wingman.
Jagdea kicked the afterburners a touch and rolled out, feeling the delicious punch of G as she
inverted and began to dive away, wide, to the left of the trio V. the long dive loaded power into her
wings, and she was touching two thousand kph as she closed on the targets. Enough load to pull off
beautifully if they were friendly. Enough punch to turn it into an intercept if they weren’t.
Five kilometres and closing. Four.
The sky was suddenly very clear, less than four-tenths cloud. The vast green rift of the Lida
Valley stretched out beneath her, and for the first time she could see the hazy line of the Makanites.
Three kilometres. There they were. Below her still, but closing at an alarming rate because they
were travelling towards her, and adding her speed to their own. Nine machines. Clustered rather
than in formation.
At two kilometres, she identified their pattern. Cyclones. A flight of Cyclones, Enothian PDF.
The delta-winged double props were painted in a grey and white dazzle, and running north hard,
possibly at the top of their performance.
What the hell were they doing here? Were they… running?
Instinct made Jagdea flip off the red safety covers of her main guns.
“Cyclone intruders, Cyclone intruders, this is Umbra Four-One Leader—” she started to say into
her vox-mask.
But she stopped. One of the tail-end Cyclones wobbled and exploded. The brief fireball was
fuel-rich and sent streamers of white smoke twirling away into the clear air. The flaming debris
dropped towards the field-system below.
Something crimson and hooked ran in past it so fast it was climbing out of range again before
Jagdea had realised what it was.
“Bats! Bats! Bats!” she yelled into her vox.
Theda seafront, 15.20
They’d wanted to celebrate. Of course they had. First run in a new theatre, and a fine one at that. But
Viltry hadn’t felt like celebrating. It had taken a lot to just get them home. The final half-hour, fuel
low, belly-light, weapons all but empty. So exposed, so vulnerable. Operations insisted nothing in
37
the enemy’s air force could reach the Littoral and the home-stretch, but Viltry had been sweating so
much on the last section, he’d been able to pour moisture out of his flying gloves when he took them
off.
The field had come up, Theda North. Even closing in on the beacon lights, he’d still had the
distinct feeling that something was going to come down out of nowhere and kill them hard.
The field. The outer circuit. Blue flags all round. Power down to minimal, just kissing the edge
of stall speed for Greta’s massive airframe.
Then in over the cross, balancing the Marauder as he brought the vector nozzles around,
switching from forward flight to vertical. A squeeze or two of viff, a hunkering, and then down.
Intact, alive.
The rest of Halo came back around them.
Judd and the boys had already earmarked a tavern near the billets. They got out, loud and full of
themselves, scattering flight kit onto the hardpan as they whooped and slapped hands.
“I’ll join you later,” Viltry told them. “Paperwork.”
He’d taken the longest shower in the history of the Imperium of Man, standing silent and naked
under tepid water in the stinking rockcrete stalls behind dispersal, then changed into a spare uniform
suit he’d had the presence of mind to bring in his kitsack. He put on his tan leather coat. His hands
were still shaking.
The crew was already gone. Viltry found a transport that was doing a run down into the centre of
town to pick up a Navy crew, and hitched a ride. It dropped him off on a corner where the old
temple road met the fish-market.
There was no one around. Viltry walked north, away from the dark and boarded streets of the
town towards the coast. He could smell the sea.
He had no real idea where his billet was. Someone would know, when he was ready.
The piers came as a real surprise. He turned a dank street corner and suddenly found himself on
a bright and windswept esplanade. Ahead of him, beyond an iron railing, a reinforced seawall and a
narrow curb of grey foreshore, was the sea itself. There was no one in sight, except a truck that
groaned past. He crossed the wide roadway and came up to the railing. The sea fascinated him.
There were no seas on Phantine, not liquid ones anyway. The sun was slipping down, into the lazy,
low part of the afternoon, and the sky was yellow. The endless water seemed indolent and slow,
hissing in a languid rhythm against the crusty beach. The water was making frothy breakers at the
shore, but beyond that, it formed into a sinuous expanse of rolling gunmetal, stretching away to the
vague horizon. It reminded him of the Scald.
Three long piers, their ornate ironwork painted white, marched out from the esplanade over the
water. Though faded and rundown, Viltry realised they had once been pleasure palaces. There were
shuttered arcades, dance halls, flaking posters advertising weekly match-dances and cordial
functions. He was utterly taken with the idea of stepping out on an iron-and-wood bridge that
