The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  ‘Yes, ma’am!’ The blonde man beamed happily at the prospect of getting back in the air.

  ‘As for the rest of you, I’m pleased to announce that my request has been approved. The boys and girls who just arrived will take over the 261 Squadron designation and Misfit Squadron are now themselves once more and authorised for independent duty.’

  She smiled and waited for the boisterous celebrations her announcement sparked to die down before continuing.

  ‘So, I’m going to keep 261 here in reserve, in case the Prussians decide to try something silly, but you lot are going to be flying escort for the bombers - we’ll see if we can’t cut those supply lines completely.’

  Bruce laughed. ‘Yeah! And next week we’ll conquer Italy!’

  Chapter 16

  Chalky flew regular reconnaissance missions, just as Dorothy Campbell had ordered, but it wasn’t until the fourth day that he actually spotted something for the Nelson squadrons to do with their new weapons - twelve ships leaving Tripoli, eight supply ships and four escorts. It was unfortunate that they were sailing towards and not from Italy because they would probably be empty, but that was no reason to let them pass safely.

  As Wendy’s bombs wouldn’t be ready for a while, the Misfits were relegated to a supporting role and were forced to circle and watch as the Nelsons carried out their first ever torpedo runs. Only the thirty-two Nelsons from Luqa had been sent on the mission, the commander of the bomber wing thinking that sixty-four torpedoes would be more than enough to sink all of the ships, but the destruction wasn’t quite as comprehensive as he’d hoped.

  The Nelson hadn’t been designed as a torpedo bomber and the pilots had never trained for it either, so understandably they made quite a few errors, like making their runs too fast or dropping the torpedoes from too high so they couldn’t deploy properly. Two of the bombers were also lost to anti-aircraft fire because their pilots had flown straight and level for far too long, trying to get the release exactly right.

  Only seven of the ships, including one of the escort destroyers, received direct hits and of those, only five of the supply ships were sinking by the time the Nelsons were on their way home, but it was an encouraging start, despite the losses, and the pilots knew that they would only get better with practice.

  That didn’t mean the remaining Italian ships made it safely home, though. The bombers from Ta’Kali were given their chance and they sank almost all the remaining ships, for the loss of a single bomber, leaving only one of the faster-moving escort ships to report back to Italy.

  With the prospect of very little flying to do over the following weeks until the Coalition could move further aircraft into the area, the Misfits were given a week of leave, with the only stipulation that they remain in contact and be able to get in the air within four hours of an enemy convoy being sighted.

  Unfortunately, that meant that Chalky had to remain on duty. He didn’t mind one bit, though, and even insisted that he stay in the air the entire day, arguing that it was more hydrogen-efficient to use his balloon to float around, rather than continually going up and down. He used the time to catch up on his reading and service his cameras, although a couple of mornings he was spotted sneaking a woman on board Vulture in the darkness of the hangar.

  Several spring-powered RAC vehicles, autocars and motorcycles, were put at the disposal of the rest of the pilots, in case they wanted to go to other parts of the island, and a few of them did just that.

  Derek borrowed an autocar so he could tour a few of the vineyards around the island, bringing quite a few samples back with him, which were more than appreciated by the rest of the Misfits. The first day he went with a friend, the RAC officer from Luqa he’d met at the party, but the man had only been able to get that single day off from duty. After that Derek was joined by Scarlet. She wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as he was about wine, but, in the absence of pubs to crawl around, leapt at the opportunity to consume alcohol.

  Bruce had somehow managed to make the acquaintance of quite a few women in his brief moments off-duty and he used one of the motorcycles to race around the island, visiting a different one each day. His joking around and easy-going nature, as well as his status as a Misfit, had always made him popular with women, but he had never before been with more than one at a time. However, after he’d been hurt so badly in Muscovy, something had changed in him and on Malta he was flitting from one to another, avoiding any possible commitment by having several “on the hook”, as he put it, at a time.

  Monty missed his life with the flying circus and secured permission to take Ghoul on an aerial tour of the island, putting on impromptu stunt shows over any village he came across. After the first day every village and town was clamouring for him to visit them and he had to draw up a schedule and publish it in the newspaper, although many of the islanders, especially the children, followed him around to watch show after show.

  Wendy had very little to do while Strangeways and the undersea boat squadron workshops created her munitions and spent most of her time with Owen, who was expected to be discharged within a week or two at most.

  For some reason, Freddy Featherstonehaugh had not been granted permission to accompany the Misfits to Malta. The British press had almost revolted, threatening to turn the public against the War Minister, whose decision it had been, so he had reluctantly allowed them to appoint Chastity in his stead as an unofficial correspondent. She had made plenty of notes, since arriving on the island, but been kept too busy to do much more than send a weekly digest, so she spent most of her time off at the house or the private beach, writing up reports on the various attacks on the Prussian air bases, the destruction of the Italian convoy and the heroic circumstances of Mac’s death. Once she was done, she took them to the undersea boat base to be carried to Gibraltar, where they would be transmitted to the Ministry for approval before being published.

  Farrier went and stayed with her naval friends for the entire week in one of the houses they had been assigned on the west coast. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been fully accepted by the Misfits or made friends with them, it was just that she missed the men and women that she had gotten to know and love from her old ship, the Heart of Oak, and there were so few of the left alive that she felt even more compelled to spend as much time with them as she could.

  Abby spent most of her leave with Dorothy Campbell, keeping her friend company while she remained on duty at Hal Far, sitting in her office and rereading the letters from Jimmy which had come with the convoy. He had protested as much as ever when he’d been left behind, but had been quickly won over when the King himself had found him a place with the Royal Guard Squadron at Hyde Airfield to continue working as a fitter.

  With the help of Father Bugelli, Tanya and Rudy found a small house in a picturesque area just north of Birzebbuga. They moved in for a few days to have some time alone for a kind of anticipatory honeymoon, not knowing whether they would ever get the chance to do so again.

  Neither Gwen nor Kitty much cared what they did, as long as they did it together. They went for walks in the town, along the beach and spent a lot of time in their room in the house, taking advantage of the fact that hardly anyone else was there. Gwen did ask to have a few hours to herself, though and Kitty was puzzled by her request, but agreed because she wanted to speak to Dorothy Campbell about contacting Generale Jilani and making sure that the Marinos had gotten home alright.

  Gwen walked to Hal Far in her work coveralls first thing in the morning, while Kitty was still getting her uniform on, and went in search of Giuseppe. She’d already let him know that she would be coming and he had what she’d asked him to get from the Graveyard, so many weeks before, ready for her in the small workshop.

  The Misfit aircraft had been so comprehensively destroyed on the ground when they’d arrived that there was very little left of Hawk for Gwen to play with. The wings and fuselage had been so filled with holes that Giuseppe had only been able to cut away four small pieces of Duralumin, bu
t, rather surprisingly, two of the instruments had survived the ruin of the cockpit - the air speed indicator and the artificial horizon that sat next to it. It made a depressingly small pile on the workbench, but it was enough for what Gwen intended.

  She had never been particularly artistic. Her drawings had always been true to life or strictly functional and her efforts at sculpting clay had been laughable at best, but she knew how metal went together and she could see how the instruments and metal panels could be joined to make something that would be pleasing to the eye. Especially for an aviator. The only really artistic choice she had to make was what part of the panels to use to best show off the colours of Hawk.

  She held the picture of the finished piece in her mind and began to cut. For someone with her background in aircraft construction it was an easy matter to shape the panel into what she wanted and it took less than half an hour for her quick hands to finish with the Duralumin. It was then only a matter of fitting the instruments and attaching them to the small clockwork mechanism she’d asked Giuseppe to acquire for her so that they wouldn’t just be dead things.

  She took another ten minutes to smooth the edges of the metal and polish it to a high shine, but then it was done and she stood back to admire it, inspecting it from all sides. Satisfied, she wrapped it in a felt cloth and hefted it in her arms for the walk back to the house.

  ‘I think you’ve thanked me enough now.’ Gwen gasped, wiping the sweat from her brow.

  The American smiled down at her from where she was propped up on her elbow, her free hand trailing idly over Gwen’s belly. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever have thanked you enough...’

  Gwen groaned. ‘You’re going to kill me...’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Kitty laughed. ‘What a way to go, though.’

  She bent down and stole Gwen’s remaining breath away with a deep kiss.

  When they came up for air, Gwen rolled onto her side and Kitty cuddled up behind her and together, they looked towards the nightstand, where what Gwen had created sat, shining brightly in a beam of sunshine from the open window.

  It stood about two-foot tall and was made from a single piece of Duralumin, which was mostly blue, apart from thin red and white stripes at the very top. Gwen had bent the panel ninety degrees, about a third of the way from its bottom, then gently curled it back under itself, forming a base so that it would stand on its own. She had rippled the top of the horizontal surface and scored it gently so that it looked like the sea over which they flew every day. From that sea, the vertical plate rose like the sky and, at the very top, Gwen had engraved the metal, incorporating the red and white into the familiar silhouette of Hawk, forever climbing into the air.

  To finish it off, she had embedded the instruments in the base, where it curled back on itself, so that they faced outwards and hidden the clockwork mechanism behind them. The wind up device kept them powered, their indicators live, and a tiny switch on the back of the base toggled their interior lights on and off.

  Gwen had been afraid she would be reopening an old wound with the sculpture, but Kitty’s expression when she had first seen it had told her that the wound had never healed and probably never would. She hoped that her gesture would provide a modicum of closure for the woman, though, at least until they could rebuild her aircraft.

  She turned over to face Kitty and stroked her hair absently while gazing into her clear blue eyes.

  Kitty must have seen something in her expression because a frown creased her smooth and lightly sun-browned brow. ‘What’s up, darling?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Kitty raised an eyebrow and grinned at her sardonically and Gwen grimaced; Kitty knew her too well and was too American to let her get away with being so British.

  ‘I’m, er, wondering if we’ll ever get a chance to rebuild Hawk for you.’

  Kitty chuckled. ‘Right... and what else?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you’ve been very clingy since I got back. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, and it’s not as if I haven’t been too, but I’m the one who was captured and threatened with being Gruberized, not you.’

  ‘Gruberized?’ Gwen laughed. ‘That sounds like one of the processes people keep inventing names for, like vulcanized rubber, or teslarized batteries.’

  ‘It does a bit, doesn’t it?’ Kitty grinned. ‘It’s pretty catchy, maybe I’ll invent a new waste-management process that I can use the name for after the war.’ She put on a voice like a radio announcer. ‘Has your garbage been Gruberized? Never flush a toilet again, just Gruberize!’ She chuckled then turned serious again. ‘Now, stop changing the subject and just bloody tell me what’s on your mind!’

  Gwen started at the commanding tone in Kitty’s voice. She considered jokingly reminding her who had the highest rank, but decided against it; there was just something about the young woman’s expression that told her she wouldn’t put up with her beating around the bush any longer.

  She sighed. ‘Alright. Yes, I’m being “clingy” these days because I was sure I was never going to get you back, but that’s only part of it, it’s...’ Gwen took a deep breath as she tried to sort out the thoughts and feelings she’d denied for so long but had been unable to keep under control since Kitty’s capture. ‘When we arrived and the aircraft were destroyed, things were damn hard for a while, then when Mac was killed I thought he was just going to be the first of us to die, that me or Abby would be next. But that didn’t happen and we got the Spitsteams and now it looks like we’re winning somehow. Yes, we’ve lost Drummond and Smith, and Owen is...’ she stopped, unable to continue as her stomach heaved involuntarily when the vision of the horribly scarred man swam into her mind. She pushed the image away and forced herself to continue. ‘Look, all I’m trying to say is that things are going far better than they should be. We’re so vulnerable her it’s laughable, and if the Prussians realise that, then things will start going very badly, very quickly, and we’ve got nowhere to go...’ she trailed off, her thoughts too jumbled to express herself clearly. ‘Do you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Of course!’ Kitty smiled. ‘And everybody’s thinking that, darling, you can see it in their faces.’

  ‘Can you? Because I can’t.’

  ‘That’s because your daddy’s not a psychiatrist. Mine is. Anyway, that stuff Rudy said to you in Muscovy is true just as much for the possibility of losing people as it is for actually losing them - all we can do is fight as hard as we can in the air and live our lives to the fullest on the ground. That way, when our time comes, and it will, there are no regrets.’ She reached out to tuck a lock of Gwen’s unruly hair behind her ear. ‘And believe me, I do intend to live what time we have left to the fullest.’

  A slow smile spread across the American’s face. ‘Speaking of which, I still don’t think I’ve thanked you nearly enough for my present yet.’

  Gwen looked at her in alarm. ‘Don’t you dare! I haven’t...’ Her voice trailed off in a moan as Kitty leaned forwards to kiss the soft skin of the side of her neck. ‘That’s not fair; you know I can’t resist... oh!’

  Gwen felt herself melting into the pillow and losing all sense of herself, but, before she let go completely, there was something she needed to say. ‘By the way, I quite liked it when you went all bossy. Feel free to do it again sometime...’

  Chapter 17

  The week was over far too quickly and the Misfits returned to duty. There was still no sign of any movement by the Fliegertruppe, the Legione Aerea, or any ships, but, instead of extending leave, Abby let the Misfits know in uncertain terms that the fun was over and that they had work to do. So, the next morning, after a moderately lazy breakfast, they wandered down to the airfield together.

  Normally, when they passed through the town at the crack of dawn it was deserted and quiet, apart from a few fishermen making their way down to the sea, but it was later than usual and it was alive with people.

  Things were still hard for the islanders. The
government was worried that the convoy might be the last to arrive for a while and had imposed rationing, just in case. The ships had been unloaded directly into storehouses scattered around the island and supplies were parcelled out from them. It was a lot of extra work, with each village having to collect and then distribute the food every day, but it was a hardship that the islanders faced willingly, knowing that the British were dealing with them as fairly as possible and suffering the same privations that they were.

  The inhabitants of Birzebbuga turned out en masse to meet the wagons each morning and many of the men, women, and children paused in what they were doing to wave or shout a greeting as the Misfits went past and the pilots cheerfully responded.

  Hal Far was a short distance from the town along a quiet country lane and as they crested a slight hill the pilots caught sight of the airfield. They were surprised to see their aircraft lined up on the apron, but they were even more surprised to see that there were two unfamiliar grey machines among them, in place of two of the Spitsteams and more than one pilot crammed their heads into the helmets they’d been carrying so as to get a better look with their lenses.

  ‘Our fighters!’ Tanya exchanged a glance and a grin with Drake and then the two of them broke out into a run, racing each other.

  The other Misfits laughed and called out encouragement, but just kept to their leisurely pace; the pair were still wearing standard issue RAC flightsuits and they would never have been able to keep up with them in their custom suits with the pockets of liquid in their thighs stiffening their legs.

  The two pilots had put on weight since the arrival of the Misfits and the lessening of their duties, but they still hadn’t recovered fully and the Misfits jeered and catcalled good-naturedly when neither of them made it anywhere near all the way to the flight line. Drake and Tanya didn’t pay them a blind bit of notice, though, they only had eyes for their aircraft.