Byrd tried one more time, but the soldiers on the ground still didn’t reply.
“Hornet, Bluebird.”
“Go ahead, Bluebird,” Bowden replied.
“I don’t know if you heard, but we’ve got negative comms with Cookie.”
“We heard.”
“We have the fuel to hold here and give them a chance to check in. Looks like two blimps in the target area. We’re going to thin them out while we wait.”
“Roger,” Bowden said as the other craft peeled off. “Good hunting.”
* * *
Ferenc shoved the throttles to the firewall, and Byrd looked at the pilot as the craft leaped forward.
Ferenc smiled. “You said speed is life. So, more is better, yes?”
Byrd nodded. “The worst place to be is low, slow, and out of ideas.” He nodded toward the target area. “Let’s go for the one on the left; it’s a little closer.”
The pilot nudged the thrusters back gently and moved the nose of the craft toward the intended target.
“Master arm is on,” Byrd said, throwing the switch that energized the weapons system. “Sidewinder is selected.”
A veteran of numerous dogfights over Vietnam, Byrd knew what to expect. The adrenaline boost as the craft rocketed forward into the fight. The dilation of time. The sharpened focus. What he wasn’t prepared for was the relative difference in their target’s speed. Every other fight he’d been in, the MiGs had been going as fast—or faster—than his craft. Compared to the interface craft, now approaching the speed of sound, the blimp was at a standstill, and it expanded in the front canopy faster than any target he’d ever seen. Without his radar, he had to guess the distance, but with a closing velocity of more than a mile every six seconds, it swelled quickly.
But it was also starting to drop a little lower on the windscreen. “Nose down a little,” he coached. “We have to be aimed at the gondola.” Ferenc dropped the nose of the craft until it was boresighted on the gondola.
“Fire!” Byrd yelled when they reached what he thought was five miles. Nothing. “Fire! Now!”
Still nothing.
“Shit!” Byrd exclaimed, figuring Ferenc had forgotten what he was supposed to do. It happened in combat, sometimes, where newer pilots lost track of what they were supposed to do next on their checklists. Byrd slapped the missile launch button on his console, and the missile roared off the left wing. “Break left!” he yelled. The blimp almost filled the windscreen.
They continued heading straight at it. Byrd risked a glance over at the pilot.
Ferenc was staring at the blimp, his eyes wide and mouth open as he watched the missile race toward the floating oval. “Shit!” Byrd had heard of crews that had gotten target fixation and augured in—and had even had to yell at a pilot once to break him out of it—but as a backseater, he’d never seen the corresponding look on a pilot’s face. Until now.
The lights were on, but Ferenc had left the cockpit.
Byrd grabbed the control stick and ripped it to the left. He had a glimpse of one of the crewmen jumping off the blimp—the image of which now blocked any view of the sky—then the missile impacted the gondola, followed immediately by the right wing of Byrd’s interface craft.
* * *
Bowden watched in horror as the interface craft clipped the blimp at more than 800 kilometers an hour. The impact sheared the gondola from the airship, while simultaneously ripping the right wing from the interface craft.
Free of the weight of the gondola and with massive holes torn in the underside of the envelope, the blimp deflated like a balloon that had been blown up and then let go. It traced a lazy rising spiral as the plane went down and to the left, crashing just short of the antenna complex. Some of the debris may have ended up on the antenna’s panels, but nothing that couldn’t be easily and quickly cleaned off.
Bowden’s life—and Byrd’s friendly face—flitted past his mind’s eye as he saw the interface craft’s fuselage to roll to a stop. There’s no one left to destroy the antenna; it’s all on me.
“What just happened?” Samkamka asked. “Why did they do that?”
The remains of the blimp, deflated, floated down between the J’Stull town and the fireball that marked the end of the interface craft. In Bowden’s mind, the corpses of little kids bounced up and down on the gas bag as if it were a trampoline.
“What happened?” Samkamka asked again. The SpinDog’s voice was indistinct and came from somewhere far away. The little kids on the trampoline had all become girls with holes in their stomachs, and blood sprayed out as they bounced, streaking their bright white dresses.
“What happened?” Samkamka roared. He grabbed Bowden’s arm and tugged fiercely.
Bowden pulled his arm away, but the spell was broken. He shook his head and looked back at the crash site. The children were gone; all that remained was the pyre of a Marine aviator who’d given his life a long, long way from home.
“I don’t know,” Bowden said, trying to put himself in Byrd’s place. “It looks like they got too close to the blimp and flew into it. No way to know. They were going pretty fast, though. Maybe they just couldn’t pull out in time.” He shrugged. “Maybe they fixated on the target, too. They always tell you not to watch the missile come off the rails.”
“So, what do we do now?” Samkamka asked with a healthy amount of fear in his voice.
“We destroy the antenna,” Bowden said, and his voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “It’s all on us now.”
* * *
Dork’s stomach groaned as the squad came to a halt unexpectedly. He put his hands on his knees, trying desperately to keep everything inside where it belonged, but the pressure was building up, and if he didn’t get a rest stop soon, there were going to be issues. Explosive, nasty ones.
“Hey, Sublete,” Sergeant Cook said. “Have you heard anything from the aviators yet?”
“No,” the radioman replied. “I may not, either, as long as we’re down in this ass-crack.”
“According to the map, we’ve got about a mile to go, and then we’ll be at the target. We’ll pop up when we get there. No sense giving ourselves away early.”
Aliza looked at her watch. “According to what I was told and where we are, we should be hearing something very soon.”
As if she’d called it into being, the ground rumbled slightly. Seconds later, a Boom! rolled over them.
“What was that?” Aliza asked. “Are they bombing already?”
“I’ve been bombed before,” Sergeant Cook said. “That didn’t sound like a bomb, but something definitely blew up.”
“We had better hurry then,” Aliza said.
“Can I get a couple of minutes for a rest stop?” Dork asked. “I think I got some bad jerky or something. My insides are tied up in a knot, and I’m about to explode. I need to stop.”
“Seriously, Dork?” Cook said. “We’re almost there and you need to take a crap? Now?”
“I can’t run with confidence,” Dork replied. “I’m having to squeeze my cheeks together, hard, just to walk.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cook said. “We don’t have time for this. Take your crap and catch up to us.” He looked at his map. “There’s only one fork in front of us. When you get there, go right.”
“I’ll be right with you,” Dork said, stepping aside as everyone went past. No matter how badly he had to go, he couldn’t do it with the woman watching. That wouldn’t be right. Once she was out of sight, though, he couldn’t get his trousers down fast enough.
* * * * *
Chapter Seventy-Seven
R’Bak
“Blow up the antenna?” Samkamka asked. “All by ourselves? How?”
“Well, first we’re going to have to blow up that last blimp, then we’re going to have to self-designate the control station for the antenna and bomb the shit out of it.”
“But I thought we needed to drop the transmitter facility, too.”
Bowden shrugge
d. “It would be nice if we could, but we don’t have a chance in hell of doing it. In my Hornet, back home? Sure, I could do that. With all this jury-rigged shit? I’ll be happy to just take the control station out. Even so, the columns being led by Moorefield and Tapper will probably still have to roll in here hard and hit this thing again. If they can push through, that is. Our intel on ground defenses was incomplete to start with, and we haven’t had an update in forty-eight hours. But at least the satraps won’t get a message off today or any time for the next week or two.”
“I think we should abort the mission,” Samkamka said. “We no longer have the other aircraft to ensure success.”
“No, we don’t,” Bowden said, “but this mission was planned all along as something one aircraft could do, it if had to.” It just wasn’t supposed to be mine! “We had three airborne so that two could make it to the target and at least one would have weapons that worked and could hit the array.” He shook his head. “No. We press on.”
“I am the pilot of this craft. If I say we go back, then we go back.”
“Sure you are, Samkamka, and if that’s what you decide, I can’t stop you, but let’s look at what’s already been invested in this attack. One aircraft with its gear ripped off is back at the airfield. That plane will fly again—maybe—but not for a while. The one Ferenc and Byrd were in is gone. And we’re never going to have the opportunity that we do now.
“What’s worse, though, is that the J’Stull are almost ready to transmit. If we don’t stop them—now, today—then they’re going to get a message off to Kulsis. I’m not going to be the one who could have stopped it but didn’t. If we go back without hitting the target, you’re the one who’s going to have to explain it to the Primus. You’ll have to explain why you chickened out and decided not to attack the target when we were within visual range with a full bomb load and only one blimp in our way.”
Samkamka shied away at the mention of the Primus, and Bowden knew he had him.
“So, what’s it going to be?” Bowden asked. “Are we going to do this, or are we going to go back to base with our tails between our legs?”
“I do not have a tail,” Samkamka muttered stubbornly. Bowden continued to glare at him, and the pilot finally sighed. “Yes, we will do this, but I do not want to fly into the blimp.”
“Neither do I,” Bowden said. Nor do I want to do the rest of this crap, but there’s no one else who can. He set his shoulders and looked out the front windscreen. “Let’s keep the airspeed at about 700 kilometers per hour. That will be fast enough to make us hard to hit, but slow enough to get things done.”
“What do I do?”
“You fly this thing straight at the blimp, and I’ll fire the missile. We’ll take out the blimp, then come back around to drop bombs on the control station. Sound good?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You left out, ‘Then we fly home and get drunk with the local women.’”
Bowden smiled. “Okay, after we drop our bombs and flatten the control station, we fly home and get drunk with the local women.”
Samkamka laughed long and hard. “Now that, my friend, is a plan I can embrace. Let us do precisely that.”
* * *
Dork cleaned up the best he could, pulled his pants up, and grabbed the designator pack. It had taken a little longer than he’d wanted, but now he knew he could jog; he would catch up to the squad in no time.
Two minutes later, he came to the fork in the crevice and stopped, unable to remember which way Sergeant Cook had said to go. The ground was hard, and there were no boot prints he could use to indicate the correct direction of travel.
“I think he said to go right,” Dork said. In fact, he was pretty sure the sergeant had said to go right, but the longer he looked at the two passages, the more he doubted his memory and sense of direction.
“Right is always right,” he said, “but I’m always wrong, so I’m going to go left.”
His mind made up, he hustled down the left-hand cleft in the surrounding rock formations.
* * *
Samkamka pointed the nose of the craft at the blimp in the distance and advanced the throttles.
“Not too fast,” Bowden warned. “And don’t watch the missile when it launches.”
“Just perform your tasks and allow me to fly the craft.” Samkamka’s voice was testy, but his statement sounded like it was still half-request.
“Sure.” Bowden said. Getting into a pissing match inbound to the target wasn’t the best way to score hits.
Bowden risked a glance at the ground in front of them. The town extended for several kilometers, almost to where two fingers stuck out from the mountain range behind it. The massive dish sat in the little valley between the two projections, with some sort of militia or army base in front of it.
He could see a number of vehicles, tents, and small figures running around as they approached. The men wouldn’t be much of a factor this time, as they didn’t have to fly over the base, but they’d have to fly over all of them on the bombing run. That’s going to suck.
His eyes snapped back up to find the blimp growing in the windscreen. It really was a monster, its lifting bag more than a hundred meters from end to end and held together by a latticework of heavy ropes, like a coarse fishing net. Hanging beneath the envelope was a long, enclosed gondola with two propellers mounted amidships and an exhaust stack projecting to its starboard.
And now they were almost co-altitude with it. “Master arm is on,” Bowden said, throwing the switch. “Port Sidewinder selected.”
He looked back up in time to see several tracers arc up in front of them. He pointed them out to Samkamka “Tracers. Every fifth or tenth bullet is one of those, so the guys on the ground can tell where they’re aiming.”
“Shit!” Samkamka exclaimed as he jerked the craft away from the tracer streams. “There are more bullets than the ones I can see?”
Bowden chuckled. “Yeah, lots. Bring us back onto the target.”
Samkamka gingerly pushed the nose back toward the dirigible. “How can we fly through them? There are so many!”
“Big sky, little airplane,” Bowden said, chanting the mantra from back home. Except he wasn’t in a little, agile plane anymore; he was in a big, fat, 120-foot-long interface craft that was never meant to dodge ground fire. Or soak it up, if the truth were known.
“If it makes you feel better, move the plane around in three dimensions to make their targeting harder,” Bowden suggested. “Just try to keep our nose close to the blimp.”
They were only a minute from firing range, and the blimp continued to grow. “Fifteen kilometers,” Bowden guessed. “We’ll fire when it’s at eight.”
“Thirteen klicks. Twelve, eleven …” Bowden’s held his finger poised over the release button. “Ten…nine…steady now…”
A stream of tracers flashed in front of the craft, and Samkamka jerked the stick back and right, flinching from the fire as Bowden hit the missile release. The Sidewinder leaped from the rail and roared off into the sky, arcing high over the blimp. Bowden knew there was no chance the seeker would acquire the blimp.
“D’jeq!” Samkamka cursed, trying to push the nose of the plane back down toward the blimp.
“No, no, no!” Bowden exclaimed. “Break right and get us out of here. You’re going to run into the blimp!”
Almost too late, Samkamka saw the airship right in front of them, and, at the last instant, yanked the stick back up and right, narrowly averting another mid-air collision.
“What do I do?” Samkamka asked.
“Take us out to fifteen klicks,” Bowden said, internally seething but keeping his voice level. “We’ll turn back in and set up for the shot again.”
Samkamka continued the turn away from the target, and Bowden looked down to turn off the armament switches.
Ptink! Something struck the cockpit blister. The plane seemed to wiggle once, then rolled wings-level; Bowden lo
oked over at Samkamka.
“Big sky, little airplane” was something aviators said to steel their nerves; however, they all knew it was a lie. Never had that been more clear than now. A bullet had pierced the starboard canopy at an angle and gone through Samkamka’ neck. Blood painted the back of his seat and the firewall behind as it sprayed out.
Bowden started to unstrap to go to Samkamka’ aid, then caught sight of the mountain toward which they were now flying. At high speed.
* * * * *
Chapter Seventy-Eight
R’Bak
Bowden dove back into his seat, slammed the throttles forward, and pulled back and right as hard as he could, continuing the turn they were in before Samkamka was shot. The climbing turn helped him miss the promontory sticking up, but Bowden knew it hadn’t been by much. He came back to wings-level in time to see motion out of the right corner of his eye.
A handheld missile plumed up toward him, clearly having acquired lock.
“Shit!” Bowden exclaimed, pushing forward on the stick. He’d climbed so sharply that he’d highlighted himself against the clear sky. He pulled toward the missile in a diving turn, taking the engines out of the missile’s field of view, and watched as the missile went ballistic, unable to keep track of him.
Luckily, the weapon had been an early-model IR missile. A more advanced model, something like an SA-18, wouldn’t have been fooled as easily. He breathed a sigh of relief.
However, the close call answered the question of whether or not the satrap’s forces had missiles. Great. One more thing to watch for.
He pulled out of the dive at about 100 feet and retarded the throttles to keep from over-speeding his ordnance. A quick glance showed Samkamka not only dead but ghostly pale; the bullet had clipped his carotid artery.
Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel Page 68
