by Various
‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ insisted Larice. ‘It wasn’t like that in the Phantine XX, and they exceeded your combined kills on Enothis.’
‘Then why don’t you go back to them?’ said Krone.
Larice hesitated, suddenly missing the easy back and forth of the crew dorms perched on the rock above the Scald or the card schools Milan Blansher used to run in the hold of whatever Munitorum transport they were travelling within.
‘I don’t know where they are,’ she said, now realising how much that hurt to say.
‘You’re an Apostle now, Larice,’ said Seekan. ‘I know it’s hard to adjust to our way of thinking, but if you want to survive, it’s the best way.’
‘It’s the only way,’ said Quint, surprising them all. ‘It’s the Apostles’ Creed. Live by it or get the hell out.’
Laquell returned to Rimfire and Larice took her place in the rotation as the war on Amedeo continued at its brutal pace. The flyers at Rimfire found themselves under ever more pressure as the attacks over the Breakers increased in frequency and the cities of the Ice were hit by more and more bomber waves. The Apostles flew a dozen intercepts in three days, splashing sixty-eight craft between them.
As expected, Quint took the highest tally. Larice was a hair’s breadth behind him.
Nothing more was said of the night Larice brought Laquell to the Aquilian, yet it festered like a splinter of rotten wood beneath her skin. In the short period between flights she checked the Operations logs for any mention of Laquell, and was gratified to see his kill count climb steadily.
Eight days passed before she saw him again, amid a furious intercept in the skies ten kilometres north of Coriana. A huge wave of bombers and fighter escorts, two hundred and ten aircraft in total, appeared without warning over the snow-lashed Breakers, and the Lightnings and Thunderbolts based at Rimfire had only moments to scramble.
Less than three-quarters of the planes managed to get airborne before the first bombs hit, flattening the makeshift runways and obliterating what little infrastructure there was. The Imperial aircraft immediately tangled with the bombers’ escort planes, a mix of Razors, Talons and Hell Blades, and a furious engagement began.
The Thunderbolts danced with the escorts while the faster Lightnings powered through the low-flying formations to target the slow movers above. Like wolves in the fold, the Lightnings savaged the packs of bombers, sending twenty to the ice in palls of smoke and fire, before the Archenemy escorts could break from the fight below to come to their aid.
The Thunderbolts followed them up, but before the two groups of fighters locked horns, another forty enemy fighters screamed down from the north. Operations at Coriana screamed a warning to the pilots, unable to believe that so many bats had simply popped into existence on their auspex.
The arrival of so many enemy aircraft forced the flyers from Rimfire to disengage.
And with their base now a volcanic crater in the ice, they turned south for Coriana.
Larice yanked the stick hard right, viffing down and barely avoiding a drifting stream of cannon fire from a diving Hell Talon. The pilot had misjudged his deflection, and she rolled back and deployed her air brakes, coming in around behind the bat as it slashed through the formation. She pushed out the throttle, lining up her shot, when she heard the shrill warning tone of a weapons lock.
‘Five, break left!’ shouted Leena Sharto.
Her target forgotten, Larice pulled left and down, driving the engine to full military power and weaving in and out of the morass of duelling planes. A Razor flashed in front of her, a Navy bird in hot pursuit, and she squeezed off a short burst of las. The pilot’s canopy disintegrated in a shower of diamond splinters as it spun away.
Larice didn’t watch it die. She twisted left and right, trying to locate her pursuer. It was still locked on to her, but she couldn’t see it. An eye-wateringly bright blizzard of las-fire flashed over her and she threw her aircraft down, finally catching the blaze of light from the enemy guns.
Larice flew like a flock of Killers were on her tail, jinking and viffing through the air like an aerial acrobat. Her pursuer stayed with her, but there were few who understood how a Thunderbolt danced as well as Larice Asche, and it couldn’t match her turns.
‘You’re fixated,’ she said, grunting as a high-g turn drove the breath from her. ‘And that’s gotten you killed.’
She hauled back on the stick and flexed her plane through a screaming hammerhead turn, pulling vertical before rolling her tail section over and aiming her aircraft straight down. It was a risky manoeuvre, bleeding speed and leaving her hanging in the air. The Razor was right below her, lining up its shot, but Larice fired first.
Her quads banged and thumped, and the Razor split open in a storming burst of debris. Larice dropped through the flaming wreckage, her canopy awash with fire and the fuselage thumping with impacts. Nothing flashed red and she pulled out of her dive, coming level and increasing speed in case any other enemy craft were waiting to pounce.
None were, and she rolled back into the fight. The sky was thick with bats, swarming, razor-winged darts that flew aggressively and protected the slower bombers with the tenacity of a mother grox defending her offspring.
They outnumbered the Imperial aircraft, but that advantage wasn’t counting for much. Larice knew the Archenemy were careless with their craft, preferring overwhelming numbers to skill and talent in the air. With every passing minute, the bombers were getting closer to Coriana, but their numbers were thinning as they went. The Apostles and sixty other planes were dancing with them at low altitude, screaming over the ice and outlying industrial complexes surrounding the city.
Larice saw a stretched V of aircraft taking the low-level approach to Coriana and thumbed the vox.
‘This is Five, seven plus heavy bombers with escort going in low over the refineries.’
‘I see them, Five.’ Seekan.
‘Take the lead, Five. I’m right behind you.’ Suhr.
‘Lead us in, Larice,’ said a familiar voice and she smiled as she recognised the laconic tones.
She smiled. ‘Good to have you on board, Laquell.’
‘I’ve got Schaw and Ysor from Indigo with me,’ voxed Laquell. ‘On your left wing.’
Larice looked over, seeing Laquell’s trio of fighters, and pushed her stick forwards and surged power to the afterburners.
‘Five on lead,’ said Larice, switching to quads.
‘Bear in mind that we’re flying over incredibly volatile structures,’ advised Seekan as though informing them of light cloud cover. ‘Short, controlled bursts only.’
‘Diving in now,’ said Larice. ‘Stoop and sting those escorts!’
Almost as soon as she’d armed her guns, the two groups of aircraft were tangled up in a madly spinning, close-range dogfight. Larice rolled hard left, catching sight of a Razor’s tail section, and followed it down.
Every move the Razor made, Larice was with him, the planes spinning around the sky like insects in a bizarre mating ritual. The plane spun right, but Larice was waiting for it. It flashed across her gunsight and she pulled the cannon trigger.
‘Got you,’ she hissed as bright laser bolts tore into the enemy plane’s fuselage and ripped the darting craft in two. The plane spewed smoke and flames, tumbling downwards, and Larice caught a glimpse of the blood-splattered pilot as he struggled weakly with his doomed aircraft.
She rolled out of her attack, turning back into the fight. Aircraft swooped and dived around her, and she watched Seekan saw the tail off a Tormentor with a precise burst of las-fire. Owen Thule peppered a Hell Blade with his quads and lit up a Razor seconds later as he viffed over the wreckage and stood his plane on its wing to shred a spinning Hell Talon.
A diving Razor slotted itself in on his six and gunfire punched holes in his right wing.
‘Eight, break rig
ht!’ yelled Larice as her threat board lit up. She slammed the stick right and feathered the engines as a white rocket contrail speared past her canopy.
Red metal suddenly filled her vision and she swore, pushing the plane down and left as the belly of a Hell Blade screamed over her canopy, so close she felt she could reach out and touch it. Its jetwash threw her around for a moment until she was able to bring herself level again and come back on Owen Thule. She breathed deeply, amazed at how close the near miss had been.
‘He’s stuck to my six!’ shouted Thule.
‘I’m on him,’ shouted Laquell, spinning his Thunderbolt into a rolling S to come in on the bat’s five. His deflection was perfect and the bat flew straight into his storm of shells, blowing apart as its engine detonated.
‘Thanks,’ voxed Thule, turning into another engagement.
‘Laquell! Heads up!’ called Larice, ‘You got one on your high six!’
Cannon shells spat from a Hell Blade’s guns, a couple raking the topside armour of the Thunderbolt. Larice saw it was armed with underslung rockets too.
‘Damn! Bad guy on my tail! Schaw, get him off me!’
‘I’m on it,’ replied his wingman.
The rear of Laquell’s Thunderbolt spat brightly burning flares in an attempt to prevent the enemy rocket from locking onto his engine emissions. He threw the plane into a series of wild manoeuvres to try and shake his pursuer.
‘Damn, this guy’s good!’ swore Laquell as the bat matched him move for move.
‘Rocket away!’ shouted Schaw.
‘Breaking left!’ answered Laquell, rolling hard and down.
‘Come on...’ prayed Larice, kicking in the afterburner and diving hard. She felt her vision greying under the pressure of the increased G-forces. Her flight suit expanded and she felt the composition of her air-mix change as she pushed the craft to the edge of the envelope.
She mashed the cannon trigger and filled the air behind Laquell’s plane with las-fire.
The missile detonated prematurely as one of Larice’s shots clipped its warhead. She felt the shockwave of its detonation and laughed in relief.
Laquell spun his plane round in a screaming turn and chopped the throttle, almost stalling the craft. The pilot of the Hell Blade tried to stay with him, but the explosion had concealed Laquell’s survival, and its pilot couldn’t match the Thunderbolt’s turn.
The cocky pilot of the 235th rolled inverted and pulled in behind the red aircraft, slotting it neatly between his gunsights. Quad fire banged from the nose guns, shredding the bat’s tailpipe and blowing the aircraft apart in a spectacular orange fireball.
Laquell hollered his triumph over the vox and flew over the debris.
Larice checked the auspex and saw the remaining five bombers had broken through the fighter cordon and were heading towards the civilian areas of Coriana. A screen of twelve bats lingered in their wash, ready to turn on any pursuit.
‘Apostle Five in pursuit,’ said Larice. ‘Who’s with me?’
‘Apostle Lead,’ said Seekan.
‘Indigo Lead,’ replied Laquell.
‘Apostle Nine,’ said Ziner Krone.
‘Apostle Six,’ said Saul Cirksen.
‘Indigo Two,’ said Schaw.
‘Rise to Angels minus five hundred and dive on burners,’ ordered Seekan, asserting his natural authority over this ad hoc squadron. A flight’s destination altitude was never given in the open, and ‘Angels’ was a set altitude that changed every day. In this case it had been set at a thousand metres.
The Thunderbolts, a mix of camo-green and cream, snapped up in a sharp climb before aiming their guns down upon the bats.
‘Turn and burn,’ ordered Seekan.
Larice hit her afterburners, closing the distance to the bombers and their escort in a matter of moments. The bats broke into a combat spread and the Thunderbolts slashed through their formation. Larice tagged one plane, shearing its left wing off with her quads. It tumbled end over end into the ground, and ploughed a fiery gouge through a maze of pipework extending from an aluminium-skinned structure.
Laquell splashed another and each of the Apostles claimed a kill before they vectored back into the fight. Now it was one on one, and Larice shot her quads at a crimson Hell Talon with bloody teeth painted on its swept wings. The Talon threw itself into a low dive, sweeping under an aqueduct of pipes, and Larice followed him down. The bat slashed through the air, jinking past flame-topped towers, around vast, portal-framed fabriks and between enormous cylindrical ore-silos.
Larice kept to her quads, loosing a sharp burst every time she got weapons lock, but the bat was good. He kept her at arm’s length, always anticipating her deflections and viffing out of the way in time.
‘Stand still, frig you,’ she hissed, deploying air brakes and vectoring right to sidestep around the tall lifter derricks of a Leman Russ assembly yard. Swaying pallets of building materials flashed past her canopy and she caught the terrified ‘O’ of the derrick’s crewman, passing within a metre of her wingtip. The bat spun around a blazing plume of venting gases from a promethium refinery and a host of las-bolts exploded around her. She felt the hammer blows on her fuselage and jinked down.
Whip aerials on the roof of a manufactory snapped off on her underside and she snagged a trailing cord from a Mechanicus banner. It burned up in her heat bloom, and Larice couldn’t decide what kind of omen that was. The bat arced past her canopy, and she stood her plane on its end, rolling inverted and hitting the burners again to get on its tail.
The gases from the refinery surged in her jetwash and punched her after the bat like she’d been launched from the rails with her rocket assist. The acceleration slammed her back in her seat, but seconds later she was right on the bat’s tail. Larice cut her burners and mashed the firing trigger. A stream of autocannon shells ripped into the bat’s engines and sliced through its entire length. Literally sawn in two, the shorn halves of the bat fell out of the sky in flames.
Larice pulled up, hearing triumphant shouts from the other pilots as they splashed their targets. Only Schaw failed to take down his bat, misjudging a turn and ending up with a bat on his tail instead. Seekan shot down the bat, and the Imperial planes roared after the rising bombers as they started their attack runs.
Too slow to evade the Imperial pursuit, the Tormentors unloaded their bombs early and aimed their aircraft towards the ground. Each one ploughed into the tangle of pipes, bridges and construction yards of Coriana’s industrial hinterland, leaving a trail of devastation hundreds of metres long. Fires raged in the swathes of burning jet fuel wreckage, and Larice pulled up through banks of shimmering thermals and buffeting winds of exploding ordnance.
It wasn’t pretty, but looking towards the untouched hab-stacks, residential sprawls and commercia districts, she knew it could have been a lot worse.
Two more attacks came in over the mountains, again with little warning until they’d crossed the Breakers, and the Apostles flew round-the-clock sorties with the regrouped diaspora of aircraft from the forward airbases. It was brutal flying, the Archenemy planes battering at the gates of Coriana as though it were the ultimate prize in the war.
Larice supposed it was, looking up at the map pinned to the wall of the market hall. The air carried the taste of spoiled fruit and dairy products, of decay and abandonment. She sat on a camp chair with her booted feet resting on a packing crate that had once contained Mark V magazines for lasguns.
Pilots on the rotation hustled back and forth between mission briefings and Munitorum supply depots where cold caffeine and hot food were on offer. The abandoned market hall now served as a makeshift Operations centre. At the far end of the vaulted, echoing chamber, a heaving mass of cogitators and logic engines were hooked up to a series of coughing generators. A gaggle of uniformed officers and tech-priests surrounded an illuminated plotting table. It bathed the
ir faces in a bleaching light, and a fug of incense hung over their deliberations. Runners sped back and forth, updating senior flight officers on developments over the Ice, and commands were barked into vox-horns to scramble this flight, divert that flight or assist another. One particular flight officer, a fat man in a voluminous robe, seemed to be the centre of attention, and Larice wondered how he’d ever managed to fit in the cockpit of an aircraft.
Seekan stood next to him, taking animatedly and using his hands a lot. He seemed to be demonstrating air combat manoeuvres and gesturing over to where the Apostles waited.
Larice had never thought much about the men and women who directed her in the air, assuming they were sitting in a calm, ordered command centre. Watching the chaos surrounding the plotter and hearing the barked flood of information gathered by the ground-based and aerial augurs, she found a new respect for their skill in juggling so many variables.
Ziner Krone lay sprawled in a cot bed, arms crossed over his chest like a body in a funerary parlour. Jeric Suhr and Quint played a bad-tempered game of regicide, and Larice wondered if it was a continuation of the one they’d been playing in the ballroom of the Aquilian. She looked over at the duty roster, confirming that she wasn’t on the rotation for another two hours.
Larice knew she should rest, but she was too wired to sleep, and the noise from the freshly hammered-down runways and launch rails beyond the walls of the market hall made it too difficult to sleep. Some aviators found a natural rhythm in flight operations, snatching sleep when they could, eating on the run and flying in the spaces inbetween. Larice always found it took time to settle into any kind of routine, and they’d flown out of three different bases already.
In any case, she’d hooked up with Laquell, whose squadron was deployed in the same hangars and runways as the Apostles. They’d taken to spending their downtime playing cards and talking of particularly memorable intercepts, and Larice found herself warming to the handsome flyer. Seekan still hadn’t offered him a place in the Apostles, which Larice found baffling. Laquell’s kill count had climbed steadily, now standing at an impressive seventy-three, and he’d provided assists to no fewer than six of the Apostles.
