The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  He must have passed out for a moment, because the next thing he knew Tanya was leaning over him, struggling with the quick release wheel for his straps.

  He reached up and brushed away the hair that was tickling his nose, then cupped her cheek. ‘I’m fine, dear; I’ve had some practice at this, and I think I did it much better this time.’

  She froze and lifted her eyes to stare at him. The corners of her mouth twitched, as if she were about to smile, but then her expression turned hard and she slapped his cheek and started shouting at him in Russian. The outburst only lasted a couple of seconds before she broke down in tears and began kissing him frantically, holding his head firmly between his hands.

  When he was finally able to come up for air, Drake smiled at her. ‘While I am quite enjoying this, do you mind if we do it somewhere a tad more comfortable?’

  He finished the job of detaching himself from the aircraft and his glidewings, then let her help him stand on his seat. He shakily lifted a foot to swing it out of the cockpit, but then stopped.

  ‘Golly.’

  While he was in one piece, his aircraft certainly wasn’t - one entire wing, half the tail and the forward part of the fuselage were still attached to the Hawking Cage which had once again protected him, but the rest of the aircraft formed a trail of broken and twisted metal leading back to where he had first hit the ground. About a hundred men, women and children, both RAC personnel and local volunteers, were already on the airfield, carefully picking up pieces of debris and filling in the huge divots he’d made in the airfield every time he’d bounced.

  ‘Up to your old tricks again I see, Digger.’

  Drake turned away from the cleanup efforts and found the Misfits standing in a loose group behind Tanya, watching him. Gwen was smirking up at him, her arms crossed across her chest. He wasn’t sure if it was the bump he could almost feel growing steadily larger on the back of his head or the exhaustion, but in that moment she reminded him so much of the little girl who’d given him so many similar looks while they’d been learning to fly together that he couldn’t help but cringe.

  ‘Hey, this one wasn’t my fault.’ He glanced at the wreckage strewn across the airfield and grimaced. ‘Well, not entirely, anyway.’

  Gwen shook her head, but before she could say anything, Abby spoke up. ‘Leave the bickering until later, please; we need to clear the airfield and you need to get to the infirmary, Squadron Leader Drake.’ She beckoned to the crew of the wagon that was waiting to drag what was left of the aircraft out of the way.

  Drake stepped out of the cockpit and hobbled over to the group of Misfits on Tanya’s arm. He found his fitter, Gertrude Forrester, with them.

  ‘Well, Sergeant, when can you have her back in the air?’

  Drake winked at her, but she just gave him a sad look, then walked away.

  Abby had been watching the mechanics hitch the wreck up to the wagon and even though she knew perfectly well he had been joking she still gave him a serious answer. ‘I don’t see much we can even salvage from her, actually. The spring, obviously, and most of the cockpit, but the frame is twisted to heck and the panels are worse. It was a valiant effort to save a valuable machine, but I’m afraid she’ll just have to go in the Graveyard with the rest.’

  ‘Excuse me, Group Captain.’

  The Misfits turned to find Father Bugelli had been hovering discreetly behind them, just within earshot, with a group of strong-looking men.

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘If you are going to discard her, then we would like to take her off of your hands.’

  Abby blinked, puzzled. ‘She’ll never fly again, Father.’

  ‘But she will still serve; Faith and her two companions became symbols for the people of this island and she will continue to be one, even exiled from the sky.’

  Abby smiled her understanding. ‘In that case, please, feel free to take what you want.’

  The priest gave her a bow and made to turn to his parishioners, but something occurred to Abby and she called out to stop him. ‘Father!’

  He turned back and gave her a quizzical look. ‘Yes, Group Captain?’

  ‘Please leave the guns and ammunition with us, though. For your own safety.’

  The priest chuckled and gave her another short bow. ‘As you wish.’

  Chapter 5

  As the day progressed, the convoy crept ever closer to the island. Every mile it sailed meant a mile less that the Misfits had to fly, which in turn meant that they had more time to engage the Prussians.

  The Fleas had learnt their lesson and no longer tried to block the Misfits en masse like they had before, but instead tried to swamp them from all sides. It was a much more effective tactic and they managed to force the Misfits away during their third sortie, but the British adapted and in the following two sorties used their greater speed and extra spring tension to draw them away and string them out, before sweeping past them and attacking the bombers.

  It was a game of cat and mouse, but it was a game which the mouse couldn’t possibly win; there were just far too many cats, and all the while the convoy was slowly being whittled down.

  By the time the sun was going down, the remaining ships were only a handful of miles away from Malta, less than an hour from relative safety. With them so close, the Misfits now had a clear positional advantage and they were able to get back into the air far quicker than the enemy. They were already at thirty thousand feet when the enemy raid took off and they circled at a point midway between Sicily and Malta, ready to intercept it before it could attack the convoy.

  The pilots couldn’t help using the moment of calm to silently contemplate the extremely sorry state of the convoy. Of the twenty-two that had set out from England, only a couple of weeks before, less than half remained and most of those were trailing thick black smoke.

  They were too high up to make out exactly what was going on aboard the vessels, but they could imagine the pandemonium as brave men and women fought the fires or encroaching seas, trying to save their badly-needed cargoes. They could imagine their fear as the incoming enemy aircraft came back time and again, promising a renewal of the nightmare after all too brief a respite. Worst of all, they could imagine all too well the pain of those unfortunates who’d been injured in the attacks and were in desperate need of better medical attention than they could receive on board their ships.

  They were, however, able to see quite clearly that the Arturo was in trouble. She was low in the water and listing badly, the flight deck canted at something like a twenty degree angle, her belly exposed and vulnerable. Several tugs had rushed out from the island as soon as the ships had come within range, to help the worst damaged ones, and four had lashed themselves to the sides of the carrier in an attempt to stabilise her. Lagging behind the rest of the ships, she would be the last of them to enter the harbour. If she didn’t sink first.

  ‘Eyes up, Misfits, bandits approaching.’

  Gwen tore her eyes from the disturbing scene below to look north and her mouth went dry at the sight of the black cloud that had gathered while she’d been distracted.

  Seeing their chance to completely obliterate the convoy slipping away from them, the Coalition had marshalled their combined forces for one last attack and put more than three hundred machines in the air, rivalling the size of the raid which had been sent over the English Channel on September 15th of the previous year.

  Two hundred British fighters had been sent up to face the Prussians on that fateful day, though.

  The plan for this last, crucial engagement of the day was simple - the three British aircraft had a height advantage over the bombers and would use it to carry out as many sweeping attacks as they could. It was a tactic that B flight used often and to great effect, but they usually had the turn fighters of A flight to keep the Fleas off their backs during their runs. The three Misfits didn’t have that luxury, though, and would be extremely exposed when they were clawing their way back up.

  It was a ri
sky tactic, but it was the only one that would allow them to punch their way through the fighters and actually engage the bombers, preventing them from having a clear run at the ships.

  They began their attack ten miles out to sea, diving at the Prussian’s at a thirty-degree angle - any sharper and they would be going too quickly to get a shot at more than one bomber each run, any shallower and they would be going too slowly and would fall easy prey to the MU’s.

  The Misfits performed attack after attack, destroying or damaging two, three or even four bombers with each run. They knew it would never be enough, but they were hoping that the others would lose heart and flee or at least be scared enough for their aim to be off. It was a vain hope, though; a few, mostly red and gold Italian machines, did balk in the face of the continuous attacks, but most of the Prussian pilots were very experienced and weren’t to be put off by only three enemies, not even if those three were Misfits.

  Abby pulled up from her latest dive, her fifth, and swore when she glanced at her instruments; she was getting dangerously low on tension. Dragon wasn’t nearly as fast as Excalibur or Jaguar and she’d had her throttle at maximum emergency unwind for the entire battle in order to stay out of the reach of the enemy fighters. She was going to have to break off and sprint for home soon, but she had enough for at least one more run.

  She waggled her tail to look behind her for the Prussians. The nearest one was well out of range of even the most optimistic shot, so she dropped her left wing a touch and began a gentle bank while still climbing, hoping to skirt the swarm of fighters still chasing her.

  She slotted lenses in place to take in the general disposition of the bombers, but instead spotted something that made her stomach sink as if she were pulling negative G’s - a flight of FU87 dive bombers had somehow snuck in undetected behind the main bomber force and had just peeled off and dived away almost vertically, heading directly for the stricken Arturo.

  She swore again, far more vehemently this time; the Arturo wouldn’t be able to withstand a concentrated assault from the deadly accurate aircraft and she was far too far away to do anything except watch.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of gold from within the bomber fleet and Jaguar broke free of the large machines to drop after the FU87’s.

  Mac was already going flat out from diving on the bombers and he caught them within seconds. Fire flashed from his wings and one of the bombers disintegrated, ripped apart by the cannons of the large fighter. He was in danger of overshooting the entire pack, though, and Abby winced as he began a dizzying spiral, bleeding off speed; she could only imagine the kinds of G forces he was subjecting himself to in an effort not to overshoot the bombers, which all had dive breaks that he didn’t. However, in spite of the stress on his body and the confusion of the manoeuvre, Mac still managed to find his targets and he blew apart another Flea, then another, and another.

  Abby spared a glance behind her, checking to make sure that the Prussian fighters on her six hadn’t somehow caught up with her, but then looked back, needing to witness the Scotsman’s heroic attempt to save the Arturo.

  In the couple of seconds she had turned away, Mac had scored another victory - he had cut the Prussian squadron in half, leaving only six. He was going to have to give up the chase, though; in her estimation they were at about two thousand feet and the FU87’s were capable of pulling out of such a steep dive far later than Mac could.

  ‘Pull up, Seven! Let them go!’

  ‘Negative, Leader. These bastards will sink the Arturo.’

  ‘I...’ Abby started to respond, but then remembered a similar dive towards the placid waters of Loch Etive, what seemed like a lifetime before. She bit the words off, deciding to trust the Scotsman; he knew the capabilities of his machine far better than she did.

  More fire sprouted from Jaguar’s wings and two more FU87’s disintegrated, leaving only four.

  She tasted salt in her mouth and realised she had bitten her lip hard enough to draw blood.

  The aircraft kept dropping and she kept watching.

  Two more aircraft spun away, then a third.

  There was only one left.

  Mac blew it apart, moments after the bomb it was carrying detached from its belly.

  Instantly, Jaguar stopped its tumbling and levelled off. Her nose came up towards the horizon as she began pulling out of the dive.

  Abby’s headphones crackled and Mac’s voice sounded softly in her ears. ‘It’s been a laugh, Abby. Thank...’

  The Scotsman was cut off as Jaguar struck the waves, sending up a huge plume of water and wreckage.

  Chapter 6

  The underground mess was just as spectacular at night as it was during the day. The overhead lighting gradually dimmed as the sun went down as the mirrored shaft that provided natural light gradually closed, if it wasn’t already for an air raid, while at the same time lanterns on the tables were slowly brought up in intensity. Once the process had been completed, different lights came on behind the green canopy. Less bright, but a stark white instead of the warm yellow of the day, they sent shafts of moonlight to illuminate the tables and paths through the forest below. The birds, so active during the daytime, slept, and fireflies now took to the air, flitting through the trees.

  It was beautiful, but the Misfits barely noticed, they just sat in silence, staring morosely into their dinners. The death of Mac would have been bad enough under normal circumstances, but the fact that most of them had been grounded and unable to do anything to prevent the tragedy just made it worse.

  Bruce startled them all by swearing and shoving away his glass of water, knocking it over. ‘We don’t even have a decent bloody bottle of whisky to send him off with.’

  There were murmurs of agreement from around the table, but it was Abby who reached out and picked up his glass and placed it back in front of him. ‘It wouldn’t be right to do it without the others, anyway, so we’ll do it when they get here tomorrow. But we’re not going to mope around with long faces until then because he wouldn’t want that. Right?’ She met his eyes and gave him a hard look.

  Bruce held her gaze without flinching and for a moment it looked like he was going to continue his rant, even in the face of her unspoken command, but then the tension flowed out of him, his fists unclenched and he gave her his trademark grin. ‘Yeah. Just cos he was such a miserable sod, doesn’t mean we have to be.’

  The Misfits laughed, the mood broken, and began eating in earnest. However, unnoticed by anyone except Abby, Bruce’s grin quickly faded to nothing and he resumed toying with his food.

  Drake had approached in the semi-darkness, unseen by the Misfits, who’d been too absorbed with their own thoughts and Bruce’s outburst. He cleared his throat gently, drawing their attention.

  Abby looked up at him. ‘Yes, Squadron Leader?’

  ‘I’m sorry about Mac. He was a good man.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Abby nodded. ‘Was there anything else?’

  Drake grimaced. ‘Actually, yes. I’ve just had a long conversation with Commander Twining aboard the Arturo and he gave me a provisional list of casualties...’

  He hesitated, reluctant to go on and Abby sighed. ‘Just get it over with, please.’

  ‘When the Heart of Oak went down her surviving aircraft landed on the Arturo and the Misfit Squadron fitters volunteered to help out with them. I’m afraid several of them were in the hangar when a bomb came down the aircraft lift. Um... as were the Llewellyns.’ He looked down at the note he had hastily scribbled whilst speaking on the radio, unwilling to look at the pilots he’d come to know so well, not wanting to see their expressions when he gave them the bad news. ‘Three fitters are reported as dead and four more are in critical condition. The Llewellyns...’ He wet his lips before he continued. ‘Owen and Wendy were together when the explosion went off. Owen was badly burned and hit in the back by shrapnel. He’s also in critical condition.’

  ‘And Wendy?’

  ‘Apparently Owen tried to cover her w
ith his body. She sustained only minor burns and the rest of her wounds are superficial. They are being evacuated with the rest of the injured to Valletta hospital and I’ve asked for regular updates to be sent.’

  Abby nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Do you have the names of the dead?’

  ‘Yes. Um.’ He looked down at the paper again. ‘Sergeant Jenkins, Airwoman Pierce and Airman Williams. Apparently they were assigned to the aircraft that was going to be next up the lift and were killed instantly in the explosion.’

  All eyes turned to Gwen as she put her face in her hands; the men and women he had named were her fitters, people who had been with her since the day she’d joined the squadron, who had taken care not only of her and her aircraft.

  Kitty put her arm around Gwen’s shoulders and pulled her close.

  ‘What about the rest of my people?’ Abby looked back to Drake, wanting to get the bad news over and done with as quickly as possible.

  ‘Most are still on board, helping clear the damage. Until it’s cleared we won’t be able to get at the supplies or C flight aircraft in the hold.’

  ‘Are they still intact?’

  Drake shrugged. ‘Twining didn’t know - there’s extensive flooding in the lower levels of the ship and much of it is blocked by debris.’

  He looked around the group, taking in the downcast expressions. ‘If it’s any consolation, Commander Twining told me that the damage from that single bomb from the 87 was nearly enough to sink the ship. They only just got her to the dock in time and they’re still fighting to keep her afloat. He says that if any others had hit, the carrier would likely have gone down with all hands. Mac saved a lot of lives today.’

  He nodded to them, then hobbled away - he was still station commander, even if Abby had taken control of the squadron itself, and he had more people to take care of than just the Misfits.

  Abby glanced around her pilots and found them all looking back at her, even Gwen, whose eyes were red-rimmed, but clear. ‘I’m going to the hospital. Who’s coming?’