Out on the ascent strip there was a burst of gunfire as the sail-wing flyer lost his nerve and turned on Armik and his men with a reaction pistol. They went down as one, but not before one of them managed to shoot back. The flyer jerked, staggered, then fell into the
starboard propellor. The adjunct hesitated. An accident, perhaps. A misunderstanding. His finger trembled on the flintlock lever that would fire the smoke rocket. The other sailwings circled lazily at about a thousand feet. One of the wingcaptains waved to the crowd from his cockpit, but the compression engines continued to idle.
Carbineers with reaction carbines bounded down the ramps of each super-regal at some signal unseen by the adjunct, opening fire as they ran. The adjunct blew his whistle and triggered the smoke rocket together. Three carts disguised as floats draped with leaves, vines, and ribbons transformed suddenly into heavy reaction gun carriages, as the gunners opened fire on the cockpits of the super-regals. The wingcaptains and navigators were riddled within moments through the fabric of the aircraft. The cheering crowd abruptly dropped into three lines, lying, kneeling, and standing, and three volleys slashed into the carbineers who were already charging them. Ninety elite Mounthaven carbineers, most of them from royal guard squads, fell, staggered, or dashed onward while firing. The murderous fusillade continued for no more than twenty seconds before the survivors of the two groups merged. Smaller squads of aviads skirted the fighting and dashed up the hatch ramps of the super-regals with their reaction carbines at the ready.
By the time the smoke rocket was in the air Samondel was with the sun at her back and still climbing. Her flock was also close enough to be noticed by the approaching sailwing flyers. The enemy wings had drop tanks, and were painted sky blue beneath and red on top. Hard to see against the sky, easy to see from above if they crashed. There were no other markings apart from numbers from 01 to 11. No heraldic crests, no serial numbers, no names, no decorations. Some had three engines, some had two. Samondel closed as pairs began forming up to cover each other.
"That's not the way to greet your welcoming party," she whispered.
Her own triwing was still painted in Yarronese camouflage, but had the Avianese serial number AX-09, red flames, and a pair of fangs painted on the engine's cowling. It also had a more recently painted symbol on the side: a starflower.
The original Starflower was probably still at the palace wingfield in her tiny domain of Highland Bartolica, but that did not matter. There was a message to be conveyed here, and if anyone was feeling nervous, they might well see the starflower, assume the worst and—
Panic. The leading sailwing rolled into a dive, belatedly shedding its drop tanks. Samondel opened her throttle and began a turn that stood the gunwing on its starboard wingtip, and she came around just in time to see the trailing sailwing discard its tanks, looking for all the world as if it had just exploded. Samondel came around still on her wingtip and firing side-on. The other sailwing banked and came around. Faster. Samondel was in a stolen gunwing, serviced by amateurs who had learned by trial and error, and which was as badly worn as a carbineer's bootheel. The enemy flyers had been fifteen or more hours into the mission, but their sailwings would have been tended by guildmasters who had been flown to Lake Taupo. The sailwing smoked, trailed flames, then exploded in a gaudy fireball.
The second sailwing was pouring compression spirit from its wing tanks as she turned to chase it, and it banked away and into a dive. He was trying to lose weight, but already her bullets were among the blades of its propellers. A propellor shattered, the flyer panicked, flung open the hatch, and jumped at no more than three hundred feet. His parachute was still in the process of opening when he hit the trees. Samondel had already turned away.
Smoke suddenly billowed out along the ascent strip, like a rolling explosion. A smokescreen rocket, thought Samondel, but then she saw that the thing was wedge-shaped, red, as big as a kitewing and climbing almost as fast as her gunwing could dive. It closed with a sailwing, the sailwing began to trail smoke, then rocketwing rolled into a dive. The rockets on the red, wedge-shaped wing died and fell away, but another red wing was ascending by now.
Samondel banked, looking for a target. A larger group was wheeling about a quarter mile away. Two sailwings began diving at the wingfield, but two more red wedges were ascending on pillars of smoke and flame. There was a head-on pass, then a wedge and sailwing collided. The other sailwing slammed into the wingfield,
while the surviving rocketwing continued on upward. Samondel began a long turn to come at her targets out of the sun.
The Avianese had bypassed the limitation of sophisticated compression technology, they had instead bolted simple rockets onto high-speed gliders. They could only ascend for a short time, but during that time they were lords of the air.
A Mounthaven sailwing banked into an angled convergent pass with the other Avianese rocketwing, and in spite of fifteen hours in the air, the enemy flyer calmly fired a long burst into the Avianese aircraft. The rocketwing seemed unaffected. Incredibly, the enemy numbers had been halved, but the survivors were not to be taken lightly. Samondel dived out of the sun at a knot of three sailwings that were forming up to dive on the wingfleld, but her attack was cut off by a fourth making a very accomplished head-on attack. The number was 01: it had to be Bronlar or Serjon. A kitewing trailing smoke swirled past her, then bullets thudded harmlessly through her gunwing's fabric and empty wingtanks. She rolled and dived, saw a parachute with Avianese markings. Another pass from sailwing 02, a sensible, considered pass. Bronlar
Samondel did not see the next pillar of smoke and flames erupt on the ascent strip, nor did she see the red rocketwing streaking into the air on a trail of smoke. It banked slightly, climbing unbelievably fast, then the smoky flames ended and the wedge began to slow. Two stubby, dark things fell away. A new streamer of smoke appeared and another wedge could be seen climbing up from Launceston Wingfleld. The three sailwings held together, preparing for a head-on pass, then at a combined speed of nearly four hundred miles per hour an Avianese rocket interceptor collided with the middle sailwing. The other two broke away, but now another rocket was climbing and shooting, and this time its target began to trail smoke, then it stalled.
Two more streaks of flame and smoke lanced out along the ascent strip, but at no more than five hundred feet the trailing rocket lost a wing. Wrenched around under full power, it disintegrated, but somehow a parachute appeared amid the descending wreckage. A Monthaven sailwing blundered into the path of the wreckage and a
tumbling fragment of wing smashed all three propellers. Higher up, a sailwing pursued a descending, unpowered rocketwing, only to be cut down by his wingman on his last solid fuel rocket.
Samondel had seen none of this, she was in a chasing circle, with sailwings 01 and 02 bracketing her. She could turn more tightly, but her engine was becoming sluggish and the heat gauge was off the scale. The triwing slewed through a stream of fire and rolled away to dive out of the circle. Sailwing 02 rolled out to pursue, but Samondel's gun wing continued to roll a moment longer, then dropped after the sailwing. The huge, shallow V shape and pusher propellers of sailwing rose up through her reaction guns' sights and she pressed the firing key. Lines of bullets walked across the starboard wing to the compression engines, then off into empty air.
Samondel plummeted past. The other sailwing slashed at her with his reaction guns, then swerved to avoid the stricken sailwing. They broke off in different directions, Samondel came around more sharply because of her lighter weight and three wings, and she fired at the descending 02 again. Suddenly shots tore up out of her instrument panel and past her head, oil splashed over her face and goggles. Blinded, she rubbed at them with her free hand, shots thudded against wood, fabric, and wing tanks, Samondel rolled and tried to dive vertically with no more than a vague idea of whether she was at a safe height, pulled down her goggles, and saw something red loom up in front of her with twin reaction guns flashing. It shot past her, blanketing he
r in smoke, then Samondel was trying to pull out of her dive and trees were before her, individual branches distinctly visible. She was down among the treetops before she had leveled out, and as she climbed again she saw sailwing 01 with one compression engine dead and a red rocket wing with R5 painted on it dropping unpowered above it. Another burst of reaction gun fire hit something within the sailwing's structure, for the port wing buckled and tore away. The sailwing was in a wild, gyrating fall when a parachute streamed out but tangled in the wreckage, then it hit the trees, not far from the wingfield's perimeter.
I he super-regal had been inspected and all crewmen declared dead, but then, this was a battle, and people tend to work in haste. Someone had been in haste when feeling for a pulse at the neck of the wing-captain of the super-regal Moonwing. No controls had been disabled, because nobody knew any functions, and everyone was fearful of traps that would set off hidden firebombs.
Suddenly the entire bank of engines were throttled up and the Moonwing began to roll away toward a dispersal track. Fire from dozens of guns raked the body of the super-regal, but not the engines. Every aviad warrior had been forced to recite over and over that engines were more precious than gold, and that engines were not to be targeted under any circumstances. With compression spirit streaming from bullet-riddled tanks, the Moonwing gained speed, but two aviads sprinted after it and leaped for the open ramp at the rear. The super-regal roared on at full throttle as the aviads clambered toward the cockpit. One stopped, his reaction gun at the ready to cover the other as he flung the internal cockpit hatch open.
"It's empty, the thing started by itself!"
"Wrong," said the wingcaptain as he opened fire from a storage locker.
Both aviads went down, and the wingcaptain scrambled through the cockpit hatch and grasped for the controls with blood-slick hands. The super-regal rotated while still on the dispersal track, was airborne as it crossed the ascent strip, snagged a treetop with one of its wheels, then slowly leveled out and began a gentle bank to come around on a heading north.
The wingcaptain expected the sound of more bullets thudding through fabric and splintering wood at any moment, but there was nothing but the drone of the compression engines. Through sheer luck the rocketwings were all gliding back to the wingfield, their charges spent. Some flyers saw the Moonwing escaping, but assumed that Samondel's gunwing could catch it. Samondel's gunwing had experienced a massive bearing failure, however, and was struggling to maintain even a sixth of normal power. It was left to two little kitewings to take up the chase, but even the lumbering super-regal had a twenty-miles-per-hour edge over their maximum speed. Re-
alizing that they could do nothing but lose ground, the two Avianese flyers opened fire with their reaction guns at a range of half a mile. At that distance even a lucky shot was out of the question, and once their guns were empty, they both turned back for Launceston.
The Moonwing reached the open sea, still heading north. The wingcaptain locked the controls and pulled open a medical kit. He had three wounds to his legs and one to the lower abdomen. All that he could do was wrap bandages over the bloody rents in his trousers and flight jacket to slow the bleeding. Next he began to check the condition of the super-regal. There was fuel left for seven hours, but the levels in two tanks were dropping even as he read the gauges. He pulled down on levers, diverting compression spirit so that the leaking tanks were used first.
Nobody was pursuing, he had somehow escaped amid the confusion. If they shot him down now, the super-regal was lost to the Avianese, and even though he had barely enough fuel to fly a quarter of the way back to Lake Taupo, there was a chance that he might find one last way to hurt the enemies that had destroyed the rest of the attack flock. He changed course to several points to the west of north, then locked the controls again and washed down a near-overdose of stimulants. He switched back to the only undamaged tank, noting that three hours of compression spirit remained.
"That's enough to pluck and gut you featherhead bastards," he gasped. "All I need now is three hours of blood."
Jamondel's compression engine was laboring even to maintain level flight as she approached the wingfield. She counted nine pillars of smoke nearby, and there were fires burning amid the buildings near the super-regals. All four were intact, in fact most of their engines were still idling. Crowds of aviads swarmed over the wingfield, dragging the rocket wings off the ascent strip as soon as they had come to rest. Her engine missed, caught again, then evened out into a shuddering idle as she enriched the mixture and dropped to approach the ascent strip.
Once on the ground Samondel's body automatically attended to all that was needed to be done. The dying compression engine dragged the gunwing onto the dispersal path, then Samondel threw the cutoff lever. Nothing happened. She flicked it again, then again. Finally the engine died of its own accord and ground crews ran up to drag it clear. Covered in oil and soot but unharmed, Samondel climbed to the ground, then dropped to her knees to wait for everything to stop spinning.
"Are you all right, Frelle?" asked a medician carrying a white bag with red crosses painted on the sides.
"Death was so near, I felt the feathers of her wings brushing against me," she said in Bartolican.
"Your pardon?"
"Not hurt, help others."
Samondel glanced at her watch as he hurried off. Just fourteen minutes had passed since the smoke rocket had been launched but now Rl, R2, R3, and R7 were lying idle beside the ascent strip. The flyers of the incredible rocketwings were gathering, still wearing their numbered black jackets as they removed their leather balaclavas. Samondel shakily got to her feet and approached the loudly babbling flyers.
"Look at that! Peed my pants."
"Me too."
"I didn't."
"You're too stupid to be frightened."
"Elcrin got a synthetic funeral."
"Took one with him."
"That was safer than training. Remember that day we lost three?"
"Told you nobody'd give us a welcome."
"And the crowd roared!" shouted the flyer with Rl on his jacket.
"Roar!" they shouted together.
"And the crowd cheered!"
"Cheer!"
"And the crowd was bitterly disappointed!"
"Ah, shyte!"
Flyers, flyers like her, thought Samondel. Boys, half-hysterical with relief and surprise at still being alive, and even being victorious. Each had colors from aviad girls on his right arm. Samondel stroked Martyne's black band on her own arm, then hailed them.
"Gentlefolk, good to see you having colors," she said, slapping R3 on the back, then draping her arms over the shoulders of flyers R7 and R3.
"Hie, it's royalty," said R2, doing an exaggeratedly low bow that turned into a somersault.
"Remember, bad luck to kiss a girl of colors before reporting to the adjunct," she warned.
"Get any, Princess?" asked Rl.
"Got three, but R5 stitched up last one before I am turning."
"No consideration!" cried R3.
"Now we go to pennant pole, tell adjunct kills and losses. Big tradition."
"Wait, here comes Shadowmouse in R5."
"What of escaped super-regal? Someone chasing, yes?"
"No, but fuel was pissing out of the wing tanks."
"Both wings?"
"Port and starboard, Frelle."
"Then is not enough to reach Taupo. That wing is lost."
Through the drifting clouds and swirling streamers of smoke came the R5, red and sleek, unpowered yet faster than most Mount-haven gunwings in level flight. Its single skid slammed into the grass; it bounced, tipped, straightened, and bounced again before sliding to a stop in the middle of the grass ascent strip. It was resting on its starboard wingtip as they ran over, followed by the handlers with a trolley and jacks.
"He's our newest," said Rl as they ran over.
They helped the handlers attach a trolley to the rocketwing and drag it clear of the as
cent strip. The flyer opened the hatch in his canopy and jumped clear as they stopped.
"Fras, am owing you big favor." Samondel laughed.
Martyne removed his leather balaclava and shook out his hair.
EYES OF THE CALCULOR 499
"Think nothing of it, Frelle Airlord."
The silence between them spread to the other rocket flyers and the handlers. The two stood motionless, staring at each other.
"You are Fras Shadowmouse?" said Samondel at last.
"Yes."
"Why—you did not tell me?"
Martyne shrugged. "How?"
The rocketwing flockleader was aware that the tension in the air was extreme, but he had no idea why and even less idea of how to defuse the situation.
"Wings of my Colors, welcome to the ground you have defended," declared Samondel.
Martyne blinked, then touched the bunch of ribbons tied to his arm. Attached to Samondel's arm was a small strip of black.
"Wings of my Colors, welcome to the ground you have defended," he echoed.
She brought her right arm up, bending it and draping Martyne's black band over her forearm before touching her lips to it.
"Colors of my Wings, in your name, three victories have I won," declared Samondel.
Martyne raised his arm to kiss the bunch of ribbons draped over his forearm.
"Colors of my Wings, in your name, three victories have I won," he responded.
"Ah, you know each other?" ventured Rl.
Samondel and Martyne reached for each other, but the spell was broken by the other rocket flyers, who seized them by the arms and dragged them farther apart.
Eyes of the Calculor Page 50
