2210 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
"Sidelobes dropping off, Skipper." Walker's voice was soft, regretful. "Remaining Night Eyes set is heading for home, and there's nothing else radiating over there."
Commander Rosemont kept his eyes fixed on the artificial horizon, altimeter, airspeed indicator in an evenly flicking scan, barely blinking. There was no room for spare action two hundred feet over the nighted Mediterranean and little room for spare thought, but he still managed a muffed "Goddammit" over the intercom as the implications of that sunk in. Walker's receivers had been picking up a scattered mess of radar emissions from over by Night Terrors' flight path for the past ten minutes or so, and if they'd all shut off there was really only one explanation.
"Twenty minutes to IP." There was no particular need to for him to know that, but after a year of training together Fujita could read his silences as well as his words. He'd needed something to distract him from thinking about Applebaum and his crew, and that had been enough to refocus his thoughts onto flying and the mission.
"Anything up ahead, Jimmie?" Walker could probably use something similar.
"Wait one, Skipper." Rosemont could almost see the boy bending over his scopes as Spirit thundered through the night, eating up the miles between them and Genoa. After a long half-minute Walker came back on the intercom.
"Watchtower and Night Eyes sets up ahead, Skipper. The real fun ought to be kicking off in a couple minutes."
2215 Hours
Air Defense Operations Room, Genoa Area Command
Air Marshall Vorhees was not a happy man.
They'd shot down one damnyank nuclear bomber, but for all the crowing that had been going on in the ops room when the news came in the victory tasted sour in his mouth. Three planes lost and four Citizens dead to stop one of the Wotan-damned things? At that rate the Race would find itself in considerable shit before long.
What was worse was the current threat board, and what it showed. Which was, other than the penciled-in patrol stations and etched locations of radar sets and airfields, precisely fuck-all.
The singleton they'd had coming in just after sunrise had been one thing- that had smacked off desperation, a hasty attacked launched because doing it half-assed was better than not getting the chance to do it at all. Not this time. The strike Graiae had seen had launched over twelve hours later, and the Yankees would have known it would be their last shot. They were too good not to have gotten all their shit in one sock.
All of which meant there were more bombers out there, reaching for the center of that plot like claws reaching through the night. Reaching for him, and the last chance for the Draka Race. And he couldn't find the damned bastards!
"Contact!" Vorhees started up and watched as a new trace was grease-pencilled onto the plot, coming in at an oblique angle towards Genoa the way the other one had. He opened his mouth to snap out an order, but the young duty officer was already in motion, lifting the direct line to the Peregrine fields even as he snapped his fingers and pointed at the director officer patched into the Night Owls for that sector. Good man. Vorhees let his eyes wander back to the plot and frowned. Something about it…yes.
"Oh, you are a clever Yankee, aren't you?" Vorhees wasn't aware he was speaking aloud until he saw the phone talkers turning to look at him, staring at the chart as he spoke to his absent American adversary. "Such a very clever Yankee…but you shouldn't have made the hole that obvious." He motioned the duty officer over.
"Sir?" The Pilot Officer's face was carefully neutral. Even in the relatively informal Citizen Force, it didn't generally pay to look at your C.O. like he was a complete raving lunatic. Even if his behavior seemed to warrant that assessment. Vorhees grinned and pointed at the plot.
"What do you see, Pilot Officer?" To his credit, the boy didn't treat the question as rhetorical, turning and furrowing his brow at the plot. After a moment he shrugged.
"I don't know, Sir."
"I think you do. Plotter." The serf NCO looked up from his place. "Add in the first and last positions of that last Yankee we splashed, line between them." The Janissary's eyebrows rose, but he kept his face perfectly impassive as he paged through his logbook and went to work with grease pencil and straightedge. Vorhees turned to the duty officer.
"Do you see it now, son?"
"Yassuh." The boy was smiling too, the glow of excitement and pride at seeing what his superior did washing over his face. "Ninety degrees apart. Which means if they doin' a standard Yankee multi-axis attack pattern, and assumin' they can't fly too far over the ocean, would put the last part of the attack force right about…there." He pointed his stick at an area due south of the port, on a more or less straight line between them and the position Graiae had given in her report. Vorhees nodded.
"Full marks, Eyes." The young man grinned even wider at the traditional nickname for a Domination fighter controller. "Now get your reserve Night Owls moving down there and kick the Peregrines up to airborne alert." That would wear the squadrons down in a hurry as planes constantly rotated to relieve CAP birds low on fuel, but it would save precious minutes when they mattered. Besides, Vorhees expected they wouldn't have to keep it up for very long, one way or the other.
"We get lucky, we might just catch us a poacher sneaking in the back gate. And give him what he deserves." The grins in the center were even sharper at that. Draka law still allowed a landowner to hang other Citizens caught poaching on his land, and for feral serfs like these-
Well, it would be a very satisfying experience indeed.
2220 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
"Here they come." Walker grabbed a square of Navy-issue toilet paper from one pocket of his flight suit and cleaned off one of his scopes for a last look. "If they're not onto us now, Skipper, they will be soon. I say we do it."
"Agreed. When you're ready, Jimmie." Walker took in a deep breath and blew it out. He'd done this once. They'd all done this once. They could do it again.
"Roger that." He reached over and flicked power onto his jamming boards, counting off a long minute to make sure the tubes were warmed up. He carefully dialed the electromechanical leads for his main jamming transmitter onto the frequency for the Draka Night Eyes fighter radar and switched it to audio, setting the secondary for noise-mode against the more powerful Watchtower set. As the jammer started up, Walker was peripherally aware of Snake Eater climbing up and out of formation behind them to release her first salvo of chaff bombs. He could see the electronic noise of her jammers coming onto his other scopes, locking onto other frequencies and blotting them out, and the more distant signatures of Truth, Justice, and the American Way's transmitters. All of that faded away as he concentrated on the incoming pulses on his primary scope, and the beeping in his headphones as he rocked his finger on the transmit button, sending carefully distorted pulses back at the Draka fighters.
Had to get it right.
2222 Hours
Air Defense Operations Room, Genoa Area Command
"Gods curse it!" Air Marshall Vorhees watched as the screen for their primary search radar dissolved, snow and false returns filling the screen even as the contacts, both the old one and the new one that had cropped up right where he'd thought it would be, disappeared into blobs of jamming. From intel reports and what distant stations had seen during last night's attacks he'd expected the Revenant to have good jamming systems, but he hadn't thought they'd be that good. "Eyes, tell the Night Owls they goin' to have to take over. Ask them for the locations on their contacts."
"Suh." The young Pilot Officer's face slowly drained of blood as he listened into the fighter frequency. "They report that their contacts-"
"Out with it, man! I need position and speed on their contacts!"
"Suh…Black Buck 41 to the south has eight of them. Four for 11 to the east."
"Damnation!" They were fuckin' blind back here, and now the Yankees had some other trick up their sleeves that was making their night fighters see double. "Order them to close, work through the targets. Launch all Peregrines. Get the Eagles and Falcons up, close perimeter, now! Max illumination pattern, all guns, now!" A few carefully controlled looks of fear at that- the Draka Eagle and Falcon fighters had only secondary night-fighting capability, and the close-perimeter tactic was widely regarded as a last-ditch move. Put as many planes as you could into the air, pray that somebody was close enough to vector in when your radar saw something, pray that not too many of them blundered into each other in the pitch blackness, and pray that somebody got a lucky visual sighting. It was all Vorhees could think of, until the Yankees got close enough for their radars to burn through the jamming.
There was a pit in his chest, though, where a hunter's confidence had once been. Something that told him that the Draka had spent too long pissing off too many gods for their prayers to carry much weight now.
2223 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
"Yokatta!" As Fujita watched out the glassed nose from his position, the entire arc in front of their nose seemed to explode with brilliant light. Hair-thin tracer streams scored across the night like glowing live wires, while immense flare shells burst thousands of feet over the ground and cast cold yellow-white circles brighter than moonlight on the ground below.
"Yeah, don't see that every day." Commander Rosemont sounded calm as ever as he steered Spirit towards the center of the storm. Fujita grinned.
"Yes. I'd say it's a very good sign!"
"How the fuck does that go?" Walker sounded more amused than pissed off. "The Snakes are throwing everything but my Gran's bloody washtub into the sky, and that's a good thing?"
"Hai." Fujita grinned wider. "If they're shooting this much, they must be afraid of us. Wouldn't you say that's a good thing?"
"Mind on the job, people." Fujita could hear the smile in their pilot's voice despite his words. "Scared of us or not, there are still a lot of Snakes out there that really, really want us dead."
"Copy, pilot." Walker sounded a bit calmer, at least. "I have what looks like a Night Owl fighter in my tail warning arc, can I engage?"
"Closing?"
"No, crossing the arc, left to right."
"Hold your fire, then. If that idiot hasn't figured out what inning it is yet, don't point him at the scoreboard yet."
"Got it. If he turns towards us?"
"Smoke him with my blessings. How we doing on the bomb run, Fuji?"
"Four minutes. Standby…" Fujita bent over his scope and worked the tracking handle, sliding his cursor over the green phosphor screen and carefully matching the radar presentation against the one unspooling in his mind. He was just starting to get enough reflections off the land to figure out what was what, there was the harbor, which meant that right there-
Fujita squeezed the tracking trigger. Then squeezed it again, then frantically clawed at his circuit breakers and reset switches before he squeezed again. He stared at the bomb system console in disbelief, then swore violently into the intercom.
"Kuso! Pilot, tracking radar's packed it up. We can't toss bomb!"
2229 Hours
Air Defense Operations Room, Genoa Area Command
"Trackin', trackin'…yes!" The serf radar operator had a bandanna tied around his head to keep the sweat from his forehead and shaved scalp from running down into his eyes. Now, as Vorhees and the duty officer stared over his shoulder, he finessed the radar picture down onto a pair of returns. "Two blips, movin' too fast to be chaff clouds. Jammin' on the other side is headin' north and away from the city now. Got to be them!"
"Good man!" Vorhees slapped him on the back. Beside him, the Pilot Officer was already starting to talk Peregrines and Falcons towards the contacts. Vorhees stared at the screen, his experession feral.
"Gotcha, Yank."
2230 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
Rosemont's mind raced. This was falling apart in a hurry. Without a track radar or toss bombing computer, they'd have to overfly their target and lay the bomb down with a parachute. Saint-Laurence and his crew would be expecting them to stay on the toss-bombing run, and he didn't dare try to radio them- they'd have dumped their remaining chaff bombs and headed for Switzerland by now.
Well, he still had Yarrow on his wing. And there was nothing left but to try for it.
"Allright, high-altitude laydown it is. Set it up, Fuji." He thumbed on the boost pumps, pushing the Allisons past their safety lines as he yanked Spirit up into a climb.
In the nose, Fujita let out a breath, then turned carefully to his bomb panel. The Draka were closing in, they had no time, but he would not make a mistake by panicking like a yokaren cadet on his first day. Master delivery switch from TOSS to LEVEL. Release control from BRAIN+MANUAL to MANUAL ONLY. Fusing from AUTO to 2K'- that was about as low as the bomb could go and still give them a good airburst. Parachute package- ARM. Sure. They might have to worry about getting away.
Then there was nothing more to do, except watch his radar scope for the contacts that would tell him he was approaching the target. Presently he switched his eyes over to the other eyepiece, linked to the Revenant's Norden bombsight, and stared patiently down at the city below, and the streams of fire reaching up from it.
It was, he noted in abstract, very beautiful.
2234 Hours
Aboard Snake Eater
"That's not right." Dan Yarrow watched his leader keep on into his climb, matching it automatically. At first he'd thought Rosemont was just climbing a bit before he started his toss, but Warhammer 03 was still climbing, with no sign of pulling up into the high-g release. That didn't make any sense, unless-
"Cross Hairs!" His gunner barely had time to yell the warning out before Snake Eater's cockpit filled with the hammering of the 20mm guns. Yarrow could see Spirit's tail cannon joining in as well. The Snakes were here, and Rosemont had some kind of problem. Couldn't toss bomb. He needed time, had none. Have to buy him some.
Yarrow yanked the control yoke back, standing his Revenant on her tail and pulling her back into an arc across the sky, zoom-climbing for Heaven as the airspeed indicator unwound.
"Boss, what the hell are we doing?" Yarrow keyed his intercom as he craned his neck backwards to look at the world below them.
"Toss bombing!"
"We ain't got a nuke!" Yarrow laughed.
"Yeah, but the Snakes don't know that." As he watched, two sparks beneath them broke away from the Spirit and screamed up after them. He laughed again.
"That's right, you bastards. Watch the birdie…"
2235 Hours
Air Defense Operations Room, Genoa Area Command
"Separation!" The serf operator's warning was unnecessary as the two blips on the close-in radar split apart. Vorhees watched, his lips pursed. This was it. The moment of decision. What were the Yanks doing? Both climbing, one fast, horizontal rate almost to zero-
Almighty Thor. Vorhees grabbed the phone from the duty officer and yelled into it.
"All fighters, all fighters, this is Manorhouse Actual. Hit the trailer! Repeat, hit the trailer! Hit that bloody damn Yank with everything we've got, now, before he drops!"
2236 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
"They're off us, Skipper!" Walker watched as the two Peregrines pulled away, shaking his head. "Yarrow's got 'em fooled!" Up front, Rosemont closed his eyes. He knew all too well what that was likely to mean for Yarrow and his crew. Briefly, he wondered if the man was trying to make up for missing takeoff the first time, or if he'd have done the same thing regardless. It hardly mattered. What mattered was that they had the extra minute or two they'd need to seal this deal.
The engine temperature gauges were well above the redlines, but he ignored them. One of his instructors at Pensacola had had a saying that seemed apropos at the moment.
Red-line limits, Mister Rosemont, are only valid if you wish to fly that specific aircraft again. If subsequent flights do not appear likely, then there are no limits.
2238 Hours
Air Defense Operations room, Genoa Area Command
"Got the bastard!" The Peregrine pilot's howl of victory was tinny in Vorhees' headset, but he still reached over to slap palms with the Duty Officer. One down, one to go.
"Target altitude 21,000 and climbing." The serf operator stayed fixed on the blip. "All units vector for intercept."
2239 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
Spirit of Rio burst out of the thin, scattered clouds that had covered her for most of her flight. Looking up for an instant, Rosemont could see the stars, gleaming clear and bright above him, with the yellow-white fires of Draka antiaircraft guns reaching up from below.
"Now, Skipper!" Automatically, Rosemont pushed the nose over, leveling off by the artificial horizon. The Book said they needed more altitude, but they were out of time. Have to hope it was enough.
Down in the nose, Kenichi Fujita watched the outline of the Genoa docks slide beneath the reticle of his bombsight. He slapped the doors open, then jerked the release handle.
"Bomb away!"
The Spirit jerked with the sudden weight loss, seeming to surge forward as the power of her engines caught the lightened plane and pushed it forward through the air. Below her, the bomb's built in accelerometers sensed its release. Radar and pressure altimeters flicked on, pyrotechnics snapped, and a drogue chute blossomed from the tail in a long, flapping ribbon for a few seconds before the main parachute blossomed On the bomb's casing, a silver Dragon medal fluttered in the airstream from the twine that held it on, falling down towards the city below. Inside, its brain patiently watched the altimeter inputs unspool.
2239 Hours
Air Defense Operations Room, Genoa Area Command
"Speed shift!" The operator frowned as he looked up from his scope, where he had been coaching Peregrine fighters onto the remaining contact. "Suh, she just stopped climbing and picked up a hell of a lot of speed." Vorhees frowned. Extra speed. That meant-
The bottom dropped out of his stomach, and he turned to the young Pilot Officer beside him. The man was a subordinate, but he was also the closest member of the Dragon Race. The future he'd hoped to nurture.
"I'm sorry."
The fates were not kind to Air Marshall Andrew Vorhees. He had just enough time to watch the dawning comprehension and horror on the young man's face before the nuclear fireball bloomed over him, leaving only bits of ash and bone that no man would know or care had once belonged to a member of the Master Race.
2255 Hours
Draka Seventh Army Field Headquarters
"Strategos." For just a moment, Eric von Shrakenberg thought he was having a nightmare of the last time he'd been awakened this way. Then he heard Sophie's feet hit the floor next to him, and he knew it wasn't. For just another moment, he wished that it had been. Eric turned to the Tetrarch in the door and asked the only question that mattered.
"Genoa?"
The boy nodded. Eric ran his hand over his face and sat up in bed, waving the messenger away. His mind was working in smooth arcs, like the looted Turkish automaton his father had once owned back on Oakenwald when he was a child. Dancers had whirled around and liveried servants served a miniature ball, but all powered by cold, precise mechanical movement behind the scenes. Possibilities, options, consequences, and futures all unspooled in his mind, and he found himself thinking about what Roosevelt had said yesterday.
Rule, die, or change.
He knew that whatever he chose, some of the Race wouldn't follow him. They would try to rule, because they didn't know how to do anything else. And most likely they'd die. Once he'd have thought Yankees too idealistic to really finish the job, too ready to believe that the villain can see the error of his ways and change, but the last two days had shown that was far, far from the truth. Any Draka that stood where they were would die.
And that left him. Eric von Shrakenberg, commander of the last Draka field army. Scion of an old Draka family that was now reduced to one, or two if Johanna had been lucky over the last twenty four nightmare hours. Not the only one in a position to make that choice for a significant number of Draka, but one of damn few.
"Sophie?" She looked up from fastening her boots at his tone, and slid in next to him. Her hand was warm over his chest.
"Yeah?" Her voice was soft. She knew he didn't need to talk to an NCO right now.
"Yo' remember Dale Smythe-Thompson? Ran the armored cars back at Pyatigorsk, took us all to dinner in Alexandra after?" She nodded mutely against his chest. Unspoken between them was the fact that Dale and his trademark hunting horn were now miles behind them, trying to hold a rearguard and perimeter against vengeful Europeans as the Draka fell back towards a haven that no longer existed, and that the manor house he'd dined them all in was leveled with the rest of the city. "Remember the family motto that was carved into the mantelpiece?"
She nodded. "'Death before dishonor'. Always thought it was a silly notion myself."
"Oh?" Answered the question before I asked. I love you, Sophie.
Sophie nodded again. "Just a track-foreman's daughter, Eric, not a big-time planter. But, well, dyin' don't necessarily prevent dishonor, do it? An' if yo' dead, nothin' yo' can do about that, ever. No chance to make things right, or at least make 'em better. Hell, yo' and I both know sometimes dyin's the easy way out. Ends everything, no more responsibilities. Seems to me the harder thing…the nobler thing, sometimes…is to accept dishonor, so that our children can live." Eric smiled at that.
"Our children, Decurion?"
"Speakin' metaphorically, Strategos." She looked up at him with a small smile. "Of course, I'm still plannin' on yo' makin' it non-metaphorical soon. Or I will have to hurt yo'."
"Can't have that." Eric straightened and pulled his uniform blouse on. "Let's go then, Decurion. It seems we have an appointment to keep with dishonor and inglory."
2357 Hours
Aboard Spirit of Rio
Julius Rosemont finally felt safe enough to take one shaking hand off the control yoke and wipe blood out of his eyes. Spirit of Rio hadn't had nearly enough time to get away from their bomb before detonation, and he still wasn't sure how they hadn't been flipped over or dashed to the ground by the blast. As it was, he'd had to fight like a demon to get her back under control before they smacked in, and his head was still oozing blood from where it had smashed against the instrument panel. But they were still alive.
For the moment, at least. As he swept his eyes over the instrument panel, Rosemont's face drew tighter. Engine one seemed to be leaking oil, and both of them were overheated. Even with the auxiliary fuel injection off and the cowl flaps all the way open, he didn't know how long they'd last. The plane was out of trim, wobbling from side to side and nosing up every time he eased off the yoke, indicating that something in the airframe had bent. He keyed the intercom, wondering if that was out too.
"Everyone alive?"
"I hope so." Fujita's voice was dry as ever. "If my spirit is in Yasukuni Shrine, I'm putting in a complaint about the quarters. Nav radar's gone, my sextant's smashed. We're down to compass and chart navigation. I suggest north." Rosemont laughed. North was Switzerland. Anywhere else was Draka territory.
"Yeah." Walker sounded pretty shaky, but they probably all did. "Half my scopes are blown out and I'm really glad I had my flash shield down, but I'm here. Got tail radar and the guns, not much else."
"Okay." Rosemont took a shaky breath. "We're not in such hot shape, but it's less than half an hour to the Swiss border. We can make it."
"Maybe not, Skipper." Walker's voice was tight. "I've got something on the tail radar. Draka fighters…and they're probably just a bit unhappy with us."