The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  With Bruce in the hospital and Owen and Wendy up in Bloodhound keeping a twenty-four hour watch on Bertha, it didn’t feel right to drink to Monty’s memory yet, so the Misfits wearily went straight to bed, determined to get a good night’s sleep and be rested in order to give the Prussians and Italians a good seeing to the next day.

  Chapter 23

  The Misfits were woken an hour before dawn by the sound of honking horns coming from right outside.

  Gwen was absolutely exhausted after not having slept the previous night and then being injured, but she came instantly awake as two MG’s burst in through the front door of the house, shouting for them to stand to. She immediately knew what it signified and cursed. ‘They’re coming. We’re not ready.’

  Kitty looked up at her sleepily and snorted. ‘When are we ever?’

  ‘Report, Sergeant!’

  Abby’s bawled order over the banisters carried to every corner of the house, as did the sergeant’s answer.

  ‘Commodore Campbell has put all aircraft on two-minute readiness, ma’am. All pilots are to go to their aircraft immediately, please.’

  ‘Right you are, Sergeant, we’ll be down directly.’ Abby looked up from the man to find every one of her pilots peering at her, either from their doorways or over the banister of the landing above. She frowned. ‘Well? You heard the man! Chop bloody chop!’

  The Misfits raced for their clothes, putting on the bare minimum for decency, knowing that they would be changing into their flightsuits as soon as they got to the airfield, then ran down the stairs and into the dark of the night where two of the fastest of the base’s autocars were waiting for them.

  A hair-raising minute and a half later the autocars bounced onto the airfield and raced directly across, past the long lines of aircraft already waiting for their pilots, and almost literally flew down the ramp into the hangar. They came screeching to a halt in front of the ready room and they ran through the door, held open for them by another MG, and sprinted to the changing room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Farrier asked, as she shrugged into her dark blue naval flightsuit.

  Abby shrugged, using the movement to seat her suit properly. ‘I would assume the attack that we thought wasn’t going to take place for a while is in fact taking place.’

  As soon as each of the pilots was ready they grabbed sandwiches from the tray by the door and stuffed them in their mouths as they ran back out, then up the ramp, where they were waved to their aircraft by the ground coordinator.

  The fitters had worked through the night, as they had so often before, and the Misfits’ aircraft were, if not spotless, at least serviceable, although Dragon’s missing tail sections looked like they had been replaced by those of an MU9 from the graveyard - it was actually a fairly close match, design-wise.

  Two-minute readiness meant, very simply, that the pilots had to be ready to be in the air within two minutes of the call to scramble coming. This required their fully-wound aircraft to be on the airfield and for them to be strapped in and ready to flick the switches which released their spring tensions. Pilots were only ever brought to two minute readiness if a raid was imminent or expected imminently because it was extremely stressful for them to be kept in a constant state of tension, not to mention uncomfortable if the weather was hot, like it had been over the summer in England. However, the Misfits had only been in their cockpits for five minutes before the order for them to take off came and they immediately accelerated onto the field, leaving the Harridan and Spitsteam squadrons waiting patiently behind them for their turn.

  No sooner were they airborne and climbing towards what seemed like a million stars than Campbell’s voice came over the radio. ‘Badger Leader, this is Haven. Watcher reports contacts heading this way. Possibly fighters.’

  ‘Only possibly, Haven?’

  ‘Roger, Badger Leader. There are ten plus medium-sized contacts which read as either light bombers or twin-springed fighters. They are currently at angels fifty, though, hence the uncertainty.’

  ‘Say again, please, Haven... Fifty? Five zero?’

  ‘Roger, Badger Leader. Angels five zero.’

  ‘And what on earth are you expecting us to do about them, Haven?’

  ‘Nothing directly, Badger Leader. At that altitude it is likely that they are intending to threaten Watcher. He has been sent west thirty miles. If they alter course towards him we will know he is their target, in which case he will be ordered to descend. This might be a prelude to an attack, though, so we have to keep him up for as long as possible. He’ll make angels ten over the island and you are to position above him to cover. Understood?’

  ‘Roger, Haven.’

  The Misfits flew on in silence, climbing west towards Owen and Wendy in Bloodhound, waiting for further instructions. ‘Badger Leader, be advised that contacts are changing course towards Watcher.’

  ‘Well, bloody well get him down, then, Haven!’

  ‘Roger, Badger Leader, the order has already been given.’ There was a chiding note in Campbell’s voice as she replied, letting Abby know that her outburst was unnecessary, but there was no real reprimand in it; it was obvious that the Misfits’ leader would be worried about her people. ‘Watcher is descending through angels twenty-five, fifteen miles due west of you.’

  Gwen peered into the gloom, searching for any sign of the large aircraft. At that distance she should easily have been able to make it out, glinting in the light of the rising sun, but found that her new RAC lenses were completely inadequate for the job.

  ‘Three here. I see him, Leader. He’s slightly above and to the right of us.’

  ‘I don’t... Alright, got him. Thank you, Three. Badger Leader to Watcher, we have you in sight.’

  ‘Roger, Badger Leader, and thank you.’

  The Misfits waited until Bloodhound had descended past them, then turned to take up positions over her.

  ‘Herr Gruber,’ the communications officer came to a halt in front of his two senior officers and saluted. ‘Seraph Squadron reports the spy aircraft has descended to ten thousand feet and is being shepherded by the Misfits.’

  ‘Good.’ Gruber grinned and rubbed his hands as he turned to the admiral. ‘You have your instructions, Admiral. Launch the attack.’

  The admiral seethed as he watched Gruber leave the bridge, going to join his squadron for the assault on Malta. The man was strutting around giving the orders as if it was his plan, but it wasn’t. He hadn’t even come up with the solution to the main obstacle to the plan, namely how to force away Owen Llewellyn’s aircraft so that the operation would be able to proceed unobserved. It had been the Crimson Barons’ engineer, Walter Blume, who had actually come up with the solution to that problem - a squadron of specially-designed high-altitude fighters - and he’d had to approach the admiral directly with it after Gruber had refused to listen to him.

  The imbecile would probably end up taking the credit for the day’s work anyway, just as he had for the innovation of the glidewing troopers, even though it had taken the daring escape of Lord Drake and his friends for anyone to realise the possibility of dropping troops from Bertha - ironically, the British peer had handed them the victory in Greece on a platter and would now give them Malta as well.

  Not for the first time, the admiral wished that someone would shoot the arrogant popinjay down. Not only would life be a lot less stressful for so many people, but Gruber’s death would actually make the war so much easier to win.

  It was not the moment for such thoughts, though, and he thrust them aside to concentrate on the delicate coordination of the operation. He turned to the communications officer. ‘Tell Seraph Squadron to hold their position and send codeword Caesar to all forces.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  As the man walked to the bank of radios, the admiral looked to his first officer. ‘Turn Bertha towards Malta and ready the fans for full thrust, then inform Oberst Kühn that we will be over the objective in two hours and that he should ready his troo
ps for drop.’

  ‘Aye aye, Admiral.’

  As the man hurried off to the wheel to carry out his orders, the admiral walked to the observation window in the floor and peered down through the plate glass. It was the work of a couple of seconds to get the correct angle through one of the metre-square magnifying lenses embedded in it and find what he was looking for - the fleet of ships outside Catania, almost forty kilometres to the north. As he watched, they received his order and the white lines of their wakes began to extend behind them as they set sail.

  He smiled; it felt good to have a proper naval command again.

  ‘Haven, this is Watcher. I’m seeing a major raid taking off.’

  ‘Roger, Watcher. Waiting for details.’

  It took almost a minute for Owen and his four-person crew to sort through the various radar returns coming from Sicily; the relatively low altitude that Bloodhound was flying at complicating matters and when his voice came back on, there was an incredulous note in it.

  ‘Three... make that four hundred plus aircraft total. Advance group of one hundred plus fighters coming in fast at angels ten. Estimate arrival of the fighters in ten minutes.’

  ‘Understood, Watcher.’ There was a brief pause as Campbell considered the situation, but then she made the only decision she could. ‘Land immediately, Watcher.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘That’s an order, Watcher.’

  ‘Roger, Haven, landing now.’

  ‘Badger Leader, make angels twenty and move to intercept bandits. Gladiator, Soldier and Warrior Squadrons are scrambling now. Gladiator will join you when they can, while Soldier and Warrior will intercept the bombers.’

  ‘Rodger, Haven. Badger Squadron moving to intercept.’

  Abby replied calmly and matter-of-factly, but she had just acknowledged an order for eight fighters to try to hold off more than a hundred until the other RAC squadrons could arrive. What was left unsaid was why it was necessary - it would take Owen in the slow-moving Bloodhound ten minutes to land and at least another couple to be taken down into the safety of the hangar. He would be a sitting duck if the enemy were left unchecked and the British would be left without any kind of surveillance whatsoever, right when they needed it the most.

  Gwen glanced around, as the Misfits raced to meet the incoming fighters, taking in what had become of the squadron since leaving Britain.

  What had once been A and B flight were now unrecognisable; only Dragon and Excalibur remained of the aircraft which had travelled to the island and, of the four which had been built since, only Lion survived. Everybody else was flying a Spitsteam, most of which had been hastily assembled and lacked even a splash of colour to mark them as Misfits.

  The pilots had changed almost as much as the aircraft, with almost as many new faces as old and she idly wondered at what point they would cease to be Misfit Squadron. Would it be when they were all flying mass-produced aircraft? Or would Abby be the keystone without which the whole thing collapsed? She suspected the latter, but hoped her theory never had to be put to the test.

  As it was, Misfit Squadron was going to have a hard time surviving the War Minister if they ever made it home; after disobeying the order to rebuild, the King was probably going to have a hard time keeping them from being turned into a normal squadron, or even disbanded completely and spread around the RAC.

  A future without the Misfits bringing hope to the British people and confounding the enemy wherever it was most needed wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, but before she could get too depressed by the thought, her radio crackled and Abby’s voice broke in, dragging her back to the present and the more immediate threat to the squadron’s continued existence.

  ‘Alright, Badgers, we’ve done this before, no need to get nervous.’

  ‘Who’s nervous, Leader?’ Drake laughed, apparently feeling that he had to take over the job of making the fight less serious in Bruce’s absence. ‘I’m seeing nines, double h one-nineties and those new Italian machines, but no Barons. This’ll be a piece of cake! We just need to keep bouncing them until they run home crying to their mothers.’

  While the enemy had greater numbers, the Misfits had been in the air already and had the height advantage over them. That would usually mean that they could dictate the terms of the fight, but unfortunately, they had other concerns apart from just shooting down as many aircraft as they could and Abby silenced any chuckles that Drake’s comments had given rise to by pointing them out.

  ‘It’s not going to be that simple, Seven; we have to get as many of them interested in us as possible to keep them off Owen. So we’re only going to do one pass on the lead group before getting into the mix.’

  ‘Sounds like fun, Leader.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be, Seven. Alright, Badgers, stay in your pairs, watch out for each other and happy hunting.’

  After the chorus of replies, Gwen heard her radio click as Abby turned to their private frequency. ‘Check in, Two.’

  ‘Excalibur’s fine, Leader.’ Despite the damage Excalibur had taken the day before she was handling well. The only quibble Gwen could possibly have was a vibration in her canopy and a freezing cold draft which was making her cheeks ache - the glass panel that had replaced the one which had been shattered in the attack on Bertha had been cut in a hurry and wasn’t a particularly snug fit.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, we’re going to need her in tip-top condition. Dragon’s a bit twitchy today, though; she doesn’t like this new tail one bit, so I might have to ask you to take the lead at some point.’

  ‘Understood, Leader.’

  ‘Good. Right then, we’re going for the group of one-nineties in the middle at the front. Diving in ten seconds.’

  Gwen peered over Excalibur’s nose at the huge group of fighters in a roughly square formation, several thousand feet below them. Strangely, the fighters weren’t even trying to climb towards the Misfits, instead they seemed to be ignoring them, a tactic which was tantamount to suicide. Gwen wondered what they could be thinking of, but then felt a chill when she realised they were probably under orders to make directly for Owen, which would make the job of distracting them that much harder. It also meant that he was in real danger.

  More determined than ever to shoot down as many of the enemy as possible, she searched the incoming aircraft for the Hock-Hund 190’s. It should have been easy, due to their having a shorter, stubbier silhouette than the other fighters, but the RAC lenses just weren’t up to the job and she cursed them again as she squinted down at the mass formation. She found them right as Abby did a neat roll into a steep dive and kept her focus on them as she followed her down. Abby hadn’t been exaggerating, Dragon was twitching and moving extremely erratically and she had to keep making small adjustments to stay on her wing. It was going to take some neat piloting for her hit anything, but if anyone could it was Abigail Lennox.

  Abby always went for the lead aircraft with her first pass, so Gwen set her sights on the leader of the second pair. The gap closed incredibly fast and she opened fired, just as flashes in the corner of her eye told her that her wingmate was doing the same, but then she was too busy to take any more notice of Abby. She gave her first target a half-second burst, then touched her controls to give his wingman the same treatment. The aircraft were so densely-packed that she even had time to fire on a third aircraft as it swam lazily across her nose, but then she was through the formation and underneath it.

  ‘Damn, these guys are either the most disciplined pilots I’ve ever seen or the dumbest.’

  Once again Drake’s comment was worthy of Bruce and Gwen found herself chuckling, but was cut off almost immediately when intense G forces took her breath away as she followed Abby into a tight loop.

  The stress lessened as Excalibur’s nose came above the horizon and when she was more or less vertical she was able to peer up at the enemy fighters.

  The accepted tactics when being dived on were either to turn into the attack or scatter, but the enemy
fighters had done neither, which had just made the Misfits’ job easier and meant they suffered much higher losses than the needed to. More than a dozen of the aircraft had fallen out of the formation, either stricken and turning for home or falling towards the sea below. However, it was the group of forty or so fighters which had left it voluntarily which caught her attention.

  ‘Looks like you spoke too soon, Digger.’ Gwen said.

  ‘Looks like, Goosy.’ Drake replied, his grin audible.

  ‘They’re still not very clever, though,’ said Abby. ‘They’re doing our job for us and taken themselves out of the fight. Ignore them, concentrate on the others.’

  The group of fighters had been able to turn tighter than the speeding Misfits and had already reversed course towards them, but the Misfits’ manoeuvre allowed them to regain their height advantage and they were able to simple fly over them. A few of the Fleas pointed their noses skywards, trying to bring their guns to bear, but they were out of range and their desperate firing did nothing more than waste ammunition.

  The Misfits had more than enough speed to catch up with the first group of fighters and they began to pick them off, putting burst after burst into them. It was a duck shoot and they were knocked out of the sky one by one, but they continued to press on stubbornly towards Malta, now less than a dozen miles away, making only the barest of efforts to evade the incoming fire.

  When they caught sight of the other British squadrons rising up to meet them something snapped, though, and their determination evaporated. They spun and banked in all directions, turning to confront the aircraft which had been dogging them, seeking to destroy them before the reinforcements arrived, and the Misfits suddenly found themselves swarmed, caught between the two enemy fighter forces and fighting for their lives.

  ‘Seraph Squadron report that the spy aircraft has just landed, Admiral.’ The communications officer called out from the other side of the room. ‘They can no longer see us.’