Heart of Granite

by James Barclay

  Max dived, the two trios coming with him. He monitored them, noting the individual sensory signatures as they flew in mini-chevrons fifty metres either side of him.

  ‘Level out at fifty and get used to the bumps. Don’t drop below ten until they start firing. We’ll go to five to be sure.’

  Affirmations came through the com.

  ‘I have incoming,’ said Monteith. ‘Twenty plus contacts, no formation. Looks like a multi-point attack. Speed it up down there.’

  ‘Copy that,’ said Valera.

  ‘We see them too, Monts,’ said Max. ‘They’ll try and cut us off before we reach our targets, and stay clear of the forty cals themselves. Check the quad forming at four o’clock. They’re on point.’

  ‘Got ’em,’ said Monteith. ‘C-Two, let’s take them before we do our run.’

  ‘Levelling at fifty,’ said Valera. ‘It’s rough down there. Nev, Ant, let’s drop to twenty. Get straight, get trimmed.’

  Max and Martha cruised ahead of the others and descended to five metres. Her hip wings flicked out and they stabilised, closing fast on their target.

  ‘Holy fuck, Max, how are you doing that?’ asked Valera.

  ‘Look, no hands!’ Max laughed. ‘Another new trick, Skipper. Stay in our tail wake. Low as you dare.’

  Forty cal weapons began to fire. Max focused forwards, hearing the whine of shells going past. All three targeted geckos were firing.

  ‘Mind your flanks,’ said Max. ‘One’s about to go down now. Fireworks acoming.’

  ‘Fucking show-off,’ said Stepanek.

  ‘You’ll find I’ve hardly changed at all,’ said Max.

  ‘No surprise there,’ said Stepanek.

  ‘Max, the flankers are closing up fast,’ said Xavier.

  ‘Distract them, Xav,’ said Max. ‘I’m staying on target.’

  Gunfire sounded right and left; the flanking geckos had slowed. Forty cals swung back angling fire towards him. They pressed even lower for a few beats, gliding, their belly brushing the ground. Through Martha’s eyes, Max kept focused on the gecko looming before them, dunes and lesser sand undulations whipping by either side, their wings making minute adjustments to keep them flying.

  Shells ripped into the ground next to them sending spats of sand against them. And then they were in the shadow of their target. They bumped up and their fire scorched great tracks in the gecko’s spine as they passed by just a couple of metres above it. They spiralled hard into the air, long gone when the missiles exploded.

  ‘Waaaaaaa hoooooooo!’ yelled Max as they rolled and hovered. Martha bled anxiety into his mind and Max checked his sensory map. ‘Xavier. Xav-X you’re too wide. Pull away!’

  They came hard about and dived on the left flank gecko.

  ‘I’m in the slipstream,’ said Xav-X. ‘He can’t track me.’

  ‘Negative, negative,’ said Max. ‘It’s a one-six-five flank angle.’

  ‘Got to distract him from Valera.’

  ‘You’re too wide!’ Max yelled. ‘Go low!’

  ‘Do it, Xav-X,’ said Valera.

  They flattened their wings against their flanks, diving almost vertically, hoping to get into position to strike before it was too late. Xavier was still tracking on his original course and hadn’t corrected enough when the gecko had tucked into try and defend its mate.

  Valera was still a hundred and fifty metres adrift and wouldn’t be able to fire in time. Nevant was right with her, perfectly in position to distract or come in behind if something happened to her.

  ‘Shit,’ said Xavier, seeing the angles and his error.

  Xavier veered sharply as the forty cal fired. Shells tore into his right wing and flank, tearing great holes in the flesh and shredding wing membrane.

  ‘Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!’ shouted Xavier as he fought for control and slewed down and right.

  His dying drake was flailing with its one good wing, tail desperately trying to balance it when it collided with Valera’s. She had seen it coming at the last moment and tucked in her wings but Xavier still sent her spinning, cutting across Nevant’s line, forcing him to pull up sharply, then take desperate evasive action as both gecko’s forty cals spat into life.

  Everything seemed to slow down. Beyond Valera, Xavier struck the sand, his drake tumbling over and over, the man himself silent in the pouch, his drake losing the damaged wing completely, smearing blood across the desert. Valera was out of control, spinning closer to the ground, impact seemed inevitable. But with a flick of her right wing, she killed the spin and a quick beat sent her forward again. She cleared hard to the right, the attack run forgotten, gunfire chasing her skywards.

  Max, about to become the focus of gecko fire himself, swooped out of his dive to the right as a great bloom of fire gouged at the sky on their right. Clouds of smoke billowed up as three drakes soared away.

  ‘Good work, Step-X,’ said Max.

  ‘I can still teach you a thing or two, puppy,’ said Stepanek.

  ‘Focus, you two. I-X is one down,’ snapped Valera.

  Max checked in on the remainder of Inferno-X high above them. A Maf drake, engulfed in flame, tumbled down, trailing smoke. Elsewhere two Infernos were harrying another. One had a grip on its neck while it tried to get its head round to breathe fire. The other spun about them, looking for the gap to strike. A tail spike went in, tearing through a wing. The Maf drake shuddered and the Inferno scorched fire along its back. It was released to fall.

  ‘Orders, Skipper.’

  ‘You’ve got to get the last three. Stepanek’s trio have holes from forty cal. They won’t manage another strike.’

  ‘Tall order. Reckon I can get one before they reach their target zone.’

  ‘Do it and let me think. We’ll shadow you. The rest of I-X will keep the Mafs off you, best they can.’

  ‘Copy that.’ You heard the skipper, princess.

  They turned into a shallow dive. Below, the three surviving geckos were racing towards the partially open ramp. They were just a couple of kilometres from the Heart’s nose and maybe fifteen hundred metres to her left, well out of range of small arms and handheld missile fire. Five minutes and they’d be in range of the flight deck.

  They had changed formation; running in a flattened triangular pattern, each one able to rely on defensive fire from the other two. It gave them a new problem. Even flying ultralow, they could be exposed by a rise in the ground; and bumping up to score the kill would paint a target on their back.

  Any smart ideas?

  Images cascaded into what Max was coming to realise was a shared consciousness. Allied and enemy positions, possible and preferred targets, flight plots and firing solutions. He added his own and their plan formed at the speed of thought.

  They dropped to fifty metres and hurtled in, only three klicks from the rear left gecko and looking to stay in its left flank shadow to stop at least the lead lizard from firing. Max checked the organic map. The HoG loomed huge at its centre. Above him, Inferno-X battled and he could see Maf runners coming for him, pursued by the HoG’s finest.

  ‘You don’t have a prayer of getting to me.’

  Just the other side of the Heart and closing fast, was a mass of blips, like a cloud of flies. Drakes of both sides flooding into the combat zone.

  ‘. . . oh, but you might.’

  Time for plan B. They dropped further and came round a tight curve to bead on their target’s flank, seeing the forty cal begin to track. Martha rattled phlegm in her throat and they flew low and fast into a twisting run of shallow dunes. Their combined senses went off the scale. Max could feel the pings in his pierce points, minute movements of his muscles in perfect sync with Martha’s movements.

  The sensory map blazed inside him, dunes flashed past, low walls of sand around which they flew. Their wing tips clipped sand from the ground, her belly, and almost the pouch, brushed it too. Her hip wings . . . he had to think of a better name than that . . . flicked and ruffled, keeping her body level.

&
nbsp; The signature of the gecko was huge and close, hidden by the desert. Max gasped, his face so close to the ground he could almost lick it. His whole body raced with energy, his limbs vibrated, their bodies were in total harmony, their minds locked together. It was, well, it was . . .

  ‘Waaaaaaaaa hooooooooo!’

  They were just a couple of hundred metres adrift now and still flying flank-on. They switched left and then right, and came out of the dunes no more than ten metres from the target’s rear left leg. Great tongues of flame surged out and covered the gecko’s body in yellow- and red-hot fire.

  The lizard screamed and deviated sharply from its path. They beat their great wings and pulled above it. Just beyond it, thelast two geckos’ weapons were tracking. They breathed a cloud of flame downwards and turned their back to the enemies, climbing hard.

  They howled at the impacts of forty cal rounds, the pain exquisite and intense, burning into their reptilian body. They ached with the shock and it took Max a moment to realise that the move to turn their back on the enemy, natural as sunrise as it was, had been to save his life. Their life.

  ‘Max! Are you okay?’ came Valera’s voice. ‘Max?’

  ‘We’re still flying. We’ve taken one round through the left wing. Minor tear, nothing to seriously compromise agility. Three to the upper back, right opposite the pouch. Hurts like fuck, I can tell you.’

  ‘I saw you spin over. Without that, they’d have taken you out, Max.’ Valera’s voice had a break in it. ‘Another new trick?’

  Max was going to reply but a host of drakes swept over the HoG’s motionless body and everything went completely insane.

  Chapter 39

  Sex used to be better than flying.

  Maximus Halloran

  ‘No, Carlos! You can’t patch the imaging that way, you’ll compromise the central processing core. Love to see you explain that to Avery.’

  ‘You’re right, you’re right,’ said Carlos over the com. ‘All right, if we reroute primary air flow systems via junction eight, that gives us space to jack in the radar at least.’

  Rosenbach smiled and checked her route map.

  ‘That works, Carlos. Who’s on J-eight?’

  ‘Who else would be in the sludge pits beneath leaky old hydroponics?’

  ‘Hey, Asha. Did you bring a hat?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Carlos is going to pass you primary air flows. You’ve got the capacity. Then we can get radar up on nineteen and we’re two steps from a few guns. And I understand guns will make everyone happy.’

  ‘Yep. Nothing makes me smile more than a flank gun ripping someone’s life away,’ said Asha.

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Carlos, you ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘On three. I’ll patch up behind you to make sure we don’t close the loop prematurely. One, two, three.’

  A few taps on interface screens and it was done. The ampage didn’t spike and each system came back online in sequence.

  ‘Commander Avery, Rosenbach. You should be seeing radar imagery.’

  ‘Confirmed and well done . . . What the flying bastard is going on out there?’

  ‘Sir?’ asked Rosenbach.

  ‘I’d say two behemoth’s worth of drakes are in the sky right over us. Keep your head down . ..’

  As if to make his point, there was a heavy impact to the HoG’s skull, audible even as deep as she was.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Carlos.

  ‘Well, if I was a betting girl, I’d say it was a drake crashing into our head. Let’s just hope it was one of theirs.’

  ‘Rosenbach, Avery.’

  ‘Commander.’

  ‘Where are my guns?’

  ‘Coming.’

  ‘I need my guns,’ said Avery. ‘Still got two killers inbound. Drakes can’t stop them both.’

  ‘We’re working on it, Commander.’

  ‘Even releasing them for manual works. I’ve got people in position.’

  ‘We’re working on it, ma’am.’

  ‘Avery out.’

  ‘Do you enjoy pressure?’ asked Asha.

  ‘Can you guess why I sent you to the slime pit, Ash?’

  They were like a fog over the remaining geckos. Swirling and clouding, obscuring the targets, alive to every move, and throwing sand back into the sky to further degrade visibility. The HoG’s drakes, warned by Valera, were clashing hard, trying to winnow the numbers down. But the Maputo’s drakes were tough opponents.

  Max, with Redfearn and Monteith on his flanks, scorched in low about five klicks from the target gecko. Max called the incoming, the sensory map becoming easier to translate every wing beat.

  ‘I have three in line astern, coming in on our eight. Who’s got them?’

  ‘Ours,’ said Stepanek.

  ‘Four more on our three. Reckon that’s your zone, Skipper.’

  ‘I see them, Hal-X.’

  ‘Okay, let’s take this gecko down,’ said Max.

  ‘Copy that, Max,’ said Redfearn.

  ‘In your slipstream, Hal-X,’ said Monteith.

  No training could have prepared them for this fight. Maf drakes were using themselves as battering rams. Flying in from all corners, they smashed into escort drakes, blocking attackers out physically, running decoy, and flying obstruction formations, anything to keep the geckos on-track.

  The way ahead was a maze of drake bodies. HoG drakes were doing a fantastic job keeping the mass of Maf drakes away from the runs on the geckos. They’d had two aborted runs so far, leading to this last desperate attempt. One gecko had already reached its goal, with a fierce battle being fought in the sky above it.

  Martha dropped to five metres, Max relaying the move to his flankers who settled in at ten. Monteith suddenly pulled away right. Max saw him intercept an incoming drake, slapping it hard with his tail before his drake toasted the spinal scales with wide-angle fire. Nothing fatal but plenty of damage nontheless.

  ‘Good work, fella,’ said Max.

  ‘I do my best work within touching distance of the ground,’ said Monteith.

  ‘All right, we’re a klick out. Break on my mark,’ said Max.

  They appeared from nowhere or so it seemed. Even with the sensory map, Max missed them. They came out of the fog of pulsing signatures ahead of the gecko, five of them suddenly front and centre. Redfearn reacted beautifully, twitching out right and suggesting fire to her left which caught an enemy broadside and sent him ploughing the sand. Monteith took one full on, flaring back his wings and stabbing out with main talons, ripping into enemy wings. But three came on fast and low or not, they were history if they held their course.

  They held course for a split second more before twitching an h-wing and rolling just enough to release their electronic counter measures, naturally produced electrical discharges like balls of drake chaff, right into the face of their nearest attacker. They switched h-wings and snapped out their right wing too, turning ninety degrees on as close to a sixpence as a drake could get within the laws of physics.

  Oh yeah. Their quad beams lit up the enemy pouch. We are soooo good.

  The third had broken away, its job done, but they didn’t give up. They dropped back on course as a fourth Maf drake barrelled into the space vacated by Redfearn, side swiping her. They flashed over the gecko and breathed wide fire. Flame splashed across the gecko but their speed took them by too fast and they couldn’t angle the strike properly to make the kill. The gecko sprinted on.

  ‘Shit! Negative result,’ said Max, as they twitched higher. ‘We’ll circle again.’

  ‘They’re reaching firing position,’ said Monteith. ‘We should get across the line of fire and chaff the fuck out of the whole area.’

  ‘It’s a plan,’ said Valera. ‘Who’s in position? Max, you have to get in another run. Suggest you go vertical. They might be vulnerable as they set up.’

  ‘Copy that, Skipper.’

  ‘Val-X, Fligh
t Com, do you have guns?’

  ‘Negative, Val-X. Stand by.’

  ‘Enemy carriers in position imminently. You need the flank guns.’

  ‘Understood, Val-X. Stand by.’

  ‘Dammit!’ shouted Val-X.

  ‘I’m in position,’ said Calder. ‘Got Reds with me, too.’

  Max and Martha surged high. Ahead a Maf drake was running across their bow. They dragged round into a tight left, coming up right behind her and stamping their talons down, feeling the satisfying ripping of scales. The enemy juddered beneath him. They curled her neck down and breathed before dropping the carcass and surging back into the climb.

  On sensory and in vision, they spotted the gecko through a crowd of drakes.

  This is going to be some ride, princess.

  ‘Get me my guns, Rosenbach!’

  ‘I’m trying, Commander! If I give them to you now the Heartwill stop breathing.’

  ‘Manual flankers, it’s all I ask.’

  ‘I know. Give me a second.’

  ‘I’m counting.’

  ‘Carlos,’ said Rosenbach. ‘Or Ash, Rachel, Yuvraj, Charlie, Evie, any of you. We have to enable the flank weapons.’ ‘We can enable the lot for manual but you aren’t going to like what gets turned off,’ said Charlie from j-twelve. ‘Hit me,’ said Rosenbach, and Charlie did, ‘That’s complete systems failure.’

  ‘We can get it all back. Eventually,’ said Charlie. ‘Even the airflow pressure.’

  ‘We might get it all back eventually,’ said Ash. ‘But you’re talking about key bio-electrical systems going offline. No guarantee they’ll spark up again.’

  ‘Well if we don’t we’re going down anyway,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Chemical warfare about to break out on the flight deck, you know? Not something you see every day.’

  ‘Shit, but it’s still a big call,’ said Rosenbach, pressing her sweating palms together. ‘Do it. Three stage downlink and enable. Let’s go.’

  Max and Martha screamed down the few hundred metres to his target. Enough enemies had seen him to make it difficult. Enough of his friends had seen him to give him a chance. A Maf came in from the left at ten o’clock. Martha twitched right and it missed by a hair. Another was closing from below. Max watched it come. He also watched as O’Regan hammered into its side, claws on its wing, and jaws around its throat. A third was on the dive. But it wasn’t fast enough.