2020 Hours
T- 3 Hours, 40 Minutes and Counting
Aboard Spirit of Rio
Julius Rosemont had always loved night flying the best. It had been a deadly love when he'd first started flying in the wake of the Great War, when flying on instruments was only a dream, cockpit lights an undreamt-of luxury and the sky full of weather fronts and mountain tops ready to dash your fragile kite to pieces. His first outfit of Airmail pilots had lost more men than his squadron had even in the worst of the Pacific fighting, and most of them had gone down on night flights with nothing but the strewn-about wreckage of their planes to say why. He'd survived, though, and found beauty there like there was at no other time and place.
Now it was with him again, as his Revenant skimmed over the tops of dirty-grey overcast at its cruising altitude of 15,000 feet. The waning moonlight was just strong enough to dance along his plane's darkened metal skin and give a hint of silver to the very tops of the clouds. There were no holes in the clouds, letting him forget for a moment the world below that they would all unleash hellfire on before the sun rose. Once that would have worried him, with no way to check for landmarks, but not tonight. The stars were clear up here, and Fujita had a good eye with the sextant. Rosemont's eyes flicked over the instruments, drinking in the information there with the practiced ease of a quarter-century in the air before coming up to scan through the windscreen again.
"Pilot, right three degrees." Rosemont heard Fujita's calm call-out and twitched the Spirit's control yoke, blipping her into a turn. "Should have some of Sicily on the scope. Can I do a sweep to check it?" Rosemont weighed that in his mind. Any radar emissions could alert the Draka defenses, but the navigator knew his business. He wouldn't have asked if he didn't think the fix would help.
"Walker, got anything?"
"Clear, Skipper." The boy's voice was casual, but Rosemont would lay his last month's pay that he hadn't looked up from the crowd of meters and oscilloscopes in his rear cockpit since they lifted off over an hour before. Walker's jammers were shut down to keep them electronically quiet, but his sensitive receivers would probably be the first warning they got of any hostiles. "If anybody's watching the sky they're doing it with bloody binos."
Rosemont nodded. "Okay, Nav. Couple sweeps, then shut down."
"Roger." A pause, then Fujita came back. "Looks good, Skip. The island's right where we left it." And more to the point, Warhammer 03 was where he thought it was. Given that their next good radar target would be Sardinia and Corsica over two hours further on, it paid to make certain. Rosemont relaxed and swept his eyes over the skies again. Looked like some thunderheads off to the north. Hope nobody has to fly through that.
2045 Hours
T-3 Hours, 15 Minutes and Counting
Aboard Night Terrors, callsign Warhammer 08
North of Sicily
Lieutenant Walter Applebaum cursed under his breath and forced his eyes to maintain their instrument scan. Five thousand feet over his assigned cruise altitude, and still no end to this bloody damned soup he was in! They'd all wanted bad visibility on The Night, for God's sake, but this was weather as bad as any he'd ever seen- and considering he'd learned to fly at the airport near his hometown in Nebraska, that was saying something. At this rate, by the time he saw anything like a landmark on the ground he'd be somewhere over London.
He could feel the bone-chilling cold of the stratosphere trying to leach in around his heavy leather flying gloves and the fur cuffs of his jacket as he sucked stale bottled oxygen in through his mask. Scan. Altimeter, airspeed indicator, compass, variometer. Keep climbing, try to get above this stuff- but not too much, or you'll use too much gas on the climb and not have enough left for the cruise. Don't look outside, or you'll get vertigo. Don't think about Bayreaux down there in the nose, marking his chart with pencil and compass and steering us over Draka-occupied Europe by dead reckoning. Don't think about the payload, or the Snake radar beams out there in the night.
"We still clear, Al?" Allright, maybe that last bit hadn't gone as well as he'd have liked. There was a sigh over the intercom.
"Alles klar, Herr Leutenant." Damn it, the man spoke perfectly good English. On the other hand, he was also a Sudeten German who had been kicked out of three countries by various armies at last count and very sticky about what pride he had left. And he hated being called Al.
"Sorry, Albrecht. Just a little nervous in all this crap." Applebaum ran his eyes over the instruments again, trying to keep his breathing even. "Wish we could just get a-"
Warhammer 08 bucked in midair, and Applebaum felt her slide off to the left as the power seemed to drain away, making the yoke shake as the airplane juddered on the brink of a stall. He pushed the yoke forward and tried to get his speed back up, feeling his heart stop in his chest as a flash of orange light caught his eye from the wing. His eyes jumped to the engine temperature gauges- the left one was off-the-scale high, tapping against the peg at the end of the meter.
Fire! Applebaum reacted instantly, yanking the number one engine's yellow striped fire handle and pulling it back towards him as he pushed Night Terrors over into a steep dive. Had to get it out before something else caught, like the fuel line.
"Pilot, what the hell's going on?" Beayreaux sounded more pissed off than frightened, but Applebaum knew he had to answer. If the fire was spreading, they needed to get out now. If it wasn't, he needed to make sure his crew didn't eject, because it was going to take all of them to get back to the ship. He risked another look out the window, then thumbed the intercom button on the control yoke.
"Fire in number one engine. Looks like I got it out, but the engine's toast." Now that the immediate emergency was past, Applebaum cursed himself mentally. He'd been so damned fixated on the weather that he'd forgotten to look at the engine instruments in his scan. He could have opened the cooling flaps or pulled power back from the climb, but he'd been too busy worrying about where they were going to pay attention to the bird. Now they were in some serious shit. "Get me a course back to the ship, pronto. Albrecht, check your gauges, we're going to have to dump some fuel here in a minute." The gunner had a backup set of gauges to help the pilot during delicate situations like this. "Before you do, get on the horn to the ship. Tell them we're aborting."
"Are you certain, Lieutenant?" Wallenstein's English was picture-perfect now, taut with tension. "If we break radio silence-"
"If we don't, the ship won't know to launch a backup for another hour and a half. That'll put whoever it is coming back near dawn. You want to hand someone else that deal?" There was a moment of silence over the intercom, and when Wallenstein spoke again it wasn't to anyone on the plane.
"Vendetta, Vendetta, this is Warhammer 08. Punchout. Say again, Punchout-"
Bayreaux waited until the transmission was over before he tried to get the pilot's attention. Applebaum had to keep her in a dive now with their power cut in half, but they were high enough that it wasn't a crisis yet. "Shall I dump the bomb, Sir?"
Applebaum thought. "Can we dump fuel instead?"
"We could, but it won't leave us much margin-"
"Never mind that." Applebaum reefed the Revenant around into a turn, spiraling down and heading back for Reprisal. "We've got exactly two spare bombs for this thing, and we just called for one of 'em. We miss a target, you all know what could happen. We're getting this bomb back aboard or we're going in the drink with it." Silence. He wondered if the Frenchman would just dump the bomb into the drink anyway, but all Bayreaux said after a moment was,
"Course back to Vendetta 150 magnetic, Pilot." Applebaum nodded.
"Thank you, Nav."
2300 Hours
T- One Hour and Counting
Aboard Spirit of Rio
"Heads up, Skipper." Walker's voice was tight now, alert. "Starting to get some signals breaking out of the background." A pause, and Rosemont could almost see him adjusting one of the knobs in his rear cockpit. "Sweeping azimuth only, it's a pretty broad beam. This it it, lads. Snake Watchtower-type surveillance radar, probably the one Intel picked up on Corsica."
"They get us yet, Jimmie?" Rosemont's fingers tightened on the yoke.
"Don't think so, Skip. They're getting something but we oughtn't to look like more than another ghost up here. Give them a minute to get it sorted." The pilot snorted and felt his lips curling up into a smile behind his oxygen mask.
"How about we don't. Prepare for descent, crew." He carefully trimmed the engines back to make sure they didn't overspeed, then nosed the Spirit over into a dive, watching the altimeter unwind on his instrument panel. Without prompting, Fujita started calling out the altitude as they passed ten thousand feet, first every thousand and then every five hundred. His radar could see through the overcast and down to the dark ocean below them, more accurate than the pilot's altimeter at a time when a slight error could kill them all before they knew it. Rosemont started to pull level when his radar man called three thousand, making sure he was level at 1500 feet above the waves before telling Fujita to kill the set. He would have liked to be lower, losing himself in the wave return as they'd practiced off the lonely Newfoundland coast, but even with Fujita on the radar there were limits to the risks he'd run on a night like this. Flying too low was an invitation to run into something solid in an abrupt and fatal manner, and the fact that they wouldn't appear on Draka radar screens while doing so wouldn't be much comfort. That done, he shifted a bit in his seat.
"Right on time, crew. We are one hour to target."
Fujita spoke for them all. "I hope the rest of the squadron is doing as well."
2400 Hours
T-One Hour and Counting
Aboard Tannhauser, Callsign Warhammer 01
Over Greece
Dieter Dortmunder took another deep breath and smiled to himself. It hurt, of course, just as every breath had since he'd woken up after the Battle of Vienna to find he owed his life to a retreating band of Polish partisans who would have shot him out of hand months before. Instead, they'd taken him with them in the nightmare retreat across Germany to Denmark, a ship to England, and now a chance at revenge fighting with the Americans. He would say this for the Draka: they had done more than all the treaties and diplomats in the world to bring nations together.
He smiled because although it hurt, it hurt a good deal less than usual. Part of that was because he was flying. Part of it, he thought, was the mask- he'd managed to salvage a helmet meant for high-altitude night fighter pilots, with a full faceplate and hose rather than the usual rubber mask, and having his burns bathed in pure oxygen seemed to help.
And part of it was because he was home.
He'd never been here before, but ever since he'd first read a translation of the Odyssey as a boy in school he'd dreamed of this place. Now his plane had just shot out between Mounts Ossa and Pelion and he was guiding it down over the wine-dark Aegean Odysseus had sailed with islands already passing beneath his wings. Only a dim and diffuse moon lit the scene, but Dieter had seen them a thousand times in his mind and needed only the briefest visual cues to fill in the details.
For a moment, he allowed himself a fantasy that after they dropped the bomb, he and his comrades could abandon their airplane, paddling their life raft around the wine-dark sea for twenty years while the world shook itself to pieces around them. He shook his head. He remembered too well what it had been like standing out in the summer heat at Nuremberg, cheering along with the rest of the crowds as the Party banner went past. His countrymen had been seduced into trying to become the Draka- he had been seduced into thinking it was the right thing to do. Now that bill had to be paid in full, and Dieter knew what would be required of him. His crewmates were Schmitt, another German, and a Latvian named Palcikas, none of them with homes to return to. Reprisal would be moving west now, further away from them, in an effort to reach Spain before the Draka could sink her, and Tannhauser still had miles to go.
At least he had gotten to see this place once. And as he turned his Revenant towards its target, another thought occurred to him.
At least the Draka had restored Istanbul's name to Constantinople. It was fitting, that the city should die with the same name it had been born with.
2400 Hours
T- One Hour and Counting
Aboard Miss Unlucky, Callsign Scythe 01
300 Miles South of Archona, South African Province
Commander Ben Inness sucked in a breath as white combers passed beneath his wings. Scythe 01 was already as low as he dared, but his hands kept trying to push her even lower. Instead, he keyed the intercom to his crew.
"Feet dry, gentlemen. One hour to Archona."
2310 Hours
T- 50 Minutes and Counting
Somewhere near Corsica
Flight Officer Alicia Venners banked her Night Owl fighter into a lazy turn, trying to keep her eyes from glazing over. She didn't mind her assignment, usually- most of the rest of her class in pilot training had gone straight into Rhinos, hanging onto a pair of big radial engines down in the dirt where everybody and his bedwench could bang at you with anything they could find to shoot. Being a night fighter pilot wasn't a glamorous job, but these days it was at least a safe one. None of the Draka's likely foes flew much by night, and Alicia for one was just fine with that. Her plans included finding some strapping young man after demobilization, making a pile of money selling to planters in the New Territories, doing her duty to the Race and enjoying the fruits of conquest. She was a warrior born, but no sense in overdoing it.
Of course, sometimes it was just Wotan-damned dull.
"Black Buck three-two, this is Manorhouse." The intercept controller sounded just as bored as she was. Alicia keyed her mic.
"Go, Manorhouse."
"Black Buck, we've got somethin' on our scopes, bearin' about two hundred, range about thirty miles from yo' position. Nothing solid, but it's headed for Argos, so we'd like yo' to check it out. Unless yo' too busy, that is." Alicia pursed her lips and contemplated a sarcastic reply, but the man was just trying to liven up his shift. Couldn't fault even a serf for that. Besides, anything headed for Marseilles did deserve to be checked out.
"Roger, Manorhouse. Black Buck's on it." She turned out of her orbit and settled down on a new course.
"Weiss." No answer. "Weiss!"
"Guh?" There was a sleepy sound from the back of the cockpit. "Whassamatter?" Alicia rolled her eyes.
"Mother Freya, Weiss. How yo' made it through aircrew trainin', I will never know. We got a job." Her radar officer cleared his throat, then responded.
"Yo' mean we do something besides bore holes in the sky for the whole night, then go back to hear the Rhino boys piss and moan about how easy we have it? Loki bless, it's a miracle." Alicia snorted.
"Well, look alive. Just might be somethin' out there." They both laughed at that, as the twin-engined fighter surged forward against the angry grey sky.
2430 Hours
T-30 Minutes and Counting
Aboard Spirit of Rio
"That's it, Skipper." Walker sounded a bit regretful, as though the horse he'd bet his last five-pound note on had just dropped into second or tea would be late half an hour. Certainly no more than that. "Definitely a Draka Night Eyes set. Can't lock it down for sure, but it's somewhere off to our starboard side and heading this way. They may still miss us." Unspoken, of course, was that they probably wouldn't.
"Thanks, Gunner." Rosemont bent the throttles forward a bit, keeping one eye on the engine indicators as he did so. Wouldn't do to have a fire now, oh no. "Bag of tricks ready?"
"We'll dazzle them, Skip. Any better and we'd have to charge admission."
"Just do your best to keep him off us for a little bit." Fujita's voice was light over the intercom, and Rosemont could tell the bastard was grinning to himself. "Then leave it to me, please. I have something to really dazzle him."
Rosemont pulled his straps tighter across the chest. "Okay, knock it off, boys. We're headed downtown, and it looks like the Snakes just got serious.