Author's note: in the unlikely event of this reaching the silver screen, 'Silver Machine' by Hawkwind MUST feature in the soundtrack. Period.
It was a dull party. The occasional SS and Wehrmacht uniform was a welcome change from the unrelieved greyness of the men, whilst the women were all trying to outdo each other for gaudiness- I've known more tastefully dressed hookers. The SS were only talking to each other, shunned even by the Wehrmacht. This was neutral ground so far as the organisers were concerned; it had become quite la mode to invite travellers from other worlds to this sort of thing, so we fitted in quite well.
"Important lesson for you, Lyra," Elaine remarked. "If you buy a pair of pricey stilettos, A: wear them home and B: keep the reciept. Ten more minutes in these bloody things and I'll need to see an osteopath, I swear."
"Alright for some, don't you think?" Will remarked. I laughed. I was wearing a temporary prosthetic that worked more or less okay, though it was a long way short of being as good as my actual leg. It beat crutches, though.
"Oh my God! Look," Lyra hissed suddenly. I looked. A woman in a refreshingly understated green evening gown was leaning against the wall by the buffet, looking thouroughly bored with the whole affair. I looked for her daemon, who suddenly appeared bearing a cocktail.
It was a golden monkey. "Jesus CHRIST. Is that-?"
"Yeah. It's my mother." Lyra resisted the temptation to put one hand near the velcroed slit in her dress over the top of her pistol. "What the HELL is SHE doing here?"
I adjusted the jacket of my old Navy dress uniform. "I'll go talk to her. No, Elaine, if she's got half a brain she'll realise who you look like. There's not much chance she'll recognise me or Mary, and she'll probably respond better to me on account of the fact that I'm male, unless she went to a certain sort of boarding school."
"Yeah, she always struck me as that sort," Lyra said vehemently. "And I was always getting my bum pinched at St Sophia's."
"How does a guy cope with that sort of competition, huh?" Will said, shaking his head. We didn't laugh.
//Here goes.// "Lady Marissa," I said formally. She glanced up at me without a great deal of enthusiasm.
"Who the hell are you?" Refreshingly direct, anyway.
"Let's just say we have a few mutual acquaintances," I replied smoothly.
"Well, that's marvellous. Now leave me in peace. You aren't my type," she said dismissively. So much for the uniform theory.
"My lady, you misread my intentions totally," I replied charmingly. "Apart from anything else, my wife is watching." I glanced in Elaine's direction, grinning ruefully.
"Oh, is that your wife?" she said, contempt plain in her voice. "And I assume that that is your son..." she paused, somewhat taken aback. //Trouble!//
"Stepson, actually," I replied. "His late father was Dr Grumman. Did you ever meet him? One of my oldest friends."
"Oh. OH. Is that why you married his wife?" She laughed without humour.
"What are you implying?" I retorted, anger creeping into my voice. "You are hardly in posession of the moral high ground even if it were true, which it most certainly isn't!"
Elaine had heard the last part of the exchange, and her eyes were flashing dangerously.
"You know, I think your mum and mine are about to have an almighty catfight," Will remarked.
"Yep. Fiver on yours," Lyra remarked, turning to watch with interest. I was hastily backing away, as I caught a hint of that almost electric force Lyra had described her mother as posessing when roused. Elaine didn't even BLINK when the full beam hit her, but simply moved within range and attacked. You can't spend a few Saturday nights in reception at the A&E in Aldershot without learning a few things about hand to hand combat, so I truly feared for Mrs Coulter's life; no, that's the wrong word. I certainly wouldn't have taken Lyra up on that bet, though.
I'd been anticipating a slap, but Elaine had better ideas. She went for a vicious jab to the solar plexus, bringing her knee up as Mrs Coulter doubled over. There was a crunch. Mrs Coulter didn't lose her cool, but took Elaine's legs out from underneath her with a fast sweep of her leg. Blood pouring from her nose, she straightened and produced a small silver Colt .25 pistol from her bag.
"Grumman had no taste," she remarked, levelling it at Elaine. I grabbed her gun arm and hammered her knuckles against the wall until she let go, then stepped back and drew my own gun. The others followed suit.
"By that last remark I assume you mean he turned you down," Will said coldly. "Sensible man." Lyra retrieved the little pistol she'd drawn on Elaine, and tossed it to me. I examined it critically.
"I bought you two BB guns for Christmas that could do more damage than this toy. Honestly," I remarked as I turned to Mrs Coulter, "if you're going to carry a weapon then carry a proper one. I could hurt somebody more if I THREW it at them." I chucked it carelessly over one shoulder, illustrating my point when I caught somebody on the ear.
"I'm not without influential friends, you know," Mrs Coulter pointed out. "They won't be pleased."
"We've made a few of our own over the years," Mary replied evenly, "and most of them would happily see you staked out on a cowshed floor, when they're in a good mood. On a bad day they'd flay you alive, nail you to a tree and set fire to it."
"I'd personally rather shoot you myself," Lyra added.
"I've got a parenting manual you can borrow!" Elaine said with a smirk. There was a general laugh from the other guests, who were watching with interest. I wondered what to do next. We had gained no intelligence worth anything, but we had to get out of here before all hell broke loose. Should we take her with us, though? Preventing Lyra from shooting her would be more effort than it was worth in my honest opinion, and it was that or let her go. At this stage I wasn't prepared to let Lyra just kill her now, though, a decision I would later regret.
Mrs Coulter solved the problem rather dramatically by stamping viciously at the side of my knee, or what should have been my knee if not for that car accident a while back. The prosthetic collapsed, sending me flying. She snatched my pistol and fired off three rounds before being knocked backwards by enough lead to make fifty-odd HB pencils. Amazingly, she rolled and came up shooting. //Body armour,// I realised. //Why didn't we think of that?//
A hasty snapshot from Will ricocheted off a wall fixture and shattered a window. People started to scream and duck. Mrs Coulter emptied my pistol's clip in Lyra's direction, grazing her shoulder and knocking her down. Instantly Will let fly half a dozen rounds after her, but she escaped through a side door.
"Christ, she shot her own DAUGHTER! You okay?" I helped Lyra to her feet. Will tossed me my now empty pistol, and made to pursue.
"Forget her," Lyra told him, massaging her shoulder. "Let's just get out of here before the police start asking questions."
"Right." I adjusted the prosthetic and walked a touch awkwardly to the door. "Bloody thing's bent. She's going to suffer for that."
We hailed a cab and piled in, requesting the aerocraft landing strip that in my world is Heathrow. "You okay to fly with that leg?" Will asked.
"Think so. Let's check that shoulder of yours, Lyra." Elaine and I checked the graze. It looked nasty, but hadn't done much besides break the skin.
"Stings like hell, but I can move my arm alright. A stiff drink'd be nice, though."
"Not if you're going to be on one of the turrets or radar," I replied. "I s'pose we'll be needing another damn base now, as well."
"Actually, I wouldn't worry. I'd trust Jack, Mitch and Carrie-Anne to the ends of the earth. I've known them for years; Jack was my wingman in the second Falklands campaign." Will had indeed followed in his father's footsteps, and taken on the dreaded Argies once again two years ago.
"Besides, who'd believe him?" Lyra added. I nodded, reloading my Beretta. We pulled up at the airstrip and headed for the familiar gleaming hull that had been our semi-permanent home for the last decade or so. We boarded the Aurora Borealis with some relief, running the startup checklist.
"Engines one and two lit."
"Hydraulics green. Radar green. FLIR... green."
"Weapons stations one through six, green. No faults showing on gun systems or rocket pod."
"Jump drive green. FTS scan pattern underway."
Checklist completed, I opened the throttles and took off. Once we were in the air, I deployed the turrets, missile pylons and rocket pod. "Battle stations, people. We could have hostile fighters dropping in on us any second." The three women manned the turrets, leaving Will in charge of the radar and infared systems.
"Four contacts at extreme range in our seven o'clock, one one zero miles and closing. Their attack radars are on. No IFF signal."
"Right. I'm switching our transponder on. Lets see how they react... Shit!" The threat warning reciever screamed into my headphones, signalling that a missile lock radar was seeking us. I switched on the radar jamming system and turned in a 180-degree bank, hoping that any missile launched would have trouble hitting a target coming at it head-on. However, the enemy aircraft fanned out and came to bear from different angles. The TWR changed note, and I could see four bright glows at various points in the sky.
"They've launched! Hang on!" I fired the chaff dispenser and hauled Aurora over in a loop, gaining height before diving towards the ground, and levelled out with about six inches to go. The radar screen filled with mush and back echoes from the ground, and hopefully our adversaries would be similarly hampered. Unless...
"Two bandits, right on our six!" Mary warned. I glanced at my screen, which had automatically switched to a rear view camera when the radar picture went.
"I see them. Never seen anything like them before in my life, but I see them. Brace yourselves!" I pulled up, deploying the airbrakes, and watched as the fighters overshot. They were painted black, with a vaguely diamondlike shape reminiscent of the Stealth fighter, but with numerous external missile pylons. I sprayed the nearest one with gunfire, punching holes through the bodywork but doing no apparent damage. They veered off, and lined up for an attack from port and starboard. I leaned heavily on the left rudder, pulling up at the same time so that Elaine and Lyra could get a crack at them. They retreated somewhat, and launched heat seekers. I deployed a burst of flares and pointed Aurora's nose straight at the sky, giving the engines a few seconds of afterburn to propel us a few hundred feet up, and then pulled back all the way. Aurora gracefully turned over on her back like a leaping dolphin, and went into a steep dive. I levelled out at fifty feet, and stuck the burners on again. Will switched his screen over to jump drive control whilst I retracted the turrets.
"Three degrees right, two up, and we're locked. Jump speed in three, two, one... burn it!" I hit the jump button, closing my eyes against the glare and bracing for the sudden deceleration. I'd never got used to the transition process, and it still rattled me somewhat. Will and I exchanged looks, as men who have just survived a nasty experience together.
I glanced at the rearview screen. Blindingly bright spheres opened, resembling holes in the sky. The fighters emerged from them at top speed. "What the-? Christ, they're coming through!" I hadn't throttled back yet, and we were still on full burners, but they were catching up fast. I briefly debated whether to leave the turrets in and use the extra hundred miles or so an hour afforded by the better aerodynamics, but the sound of cannon rounds hitting the tail convinced me that this was a bad idea. I reduced speed, and turned to face the enemy. Hell's bells, there were more of them! I counted at least eight.
"That's not good." I frantically assigned a target to each Sidewinder, and let fly before putting the nose down and storming straight through the formation with guns blasting.
"Five more just showed up," Will warned. "No, make that six. We've got a problem!"
"Yep," I agreed. This wasn't QUITE the worst mess I'd ever been in -Elaine letting herself into my flat [why did I give her a key?] and finding Will, then aged fifteen, and I watching Natural Born Killers and drinking Stella Artois takes that accolade- but it was certainly in the top five.
"Alpha Bravo three zero one, this is Fleet Air Arm 55 Squadron interceptor Blue Leader, do you require assistance, over?"
"Yes, please assist me, yes!" I replied. "There's about a dozen fighters after me and I just ran out of Sidewinders, over."
"Roger that. Blue section, engage the enemy!"
The four Joint Strike Fighters let fly with long-range missiles, knocking several fighters out of the sky and forcing the others to retreat. "Alright, Alpha Bravo, you'll be okay for now. Can you set that thing down on an aircraft carrier?"
"Funnily enough the only thing I never thought to install was a tailhook, but I'll have a go," I replied, with a confidence I didn't feel.
Non-pilots frequently underestimate just how dangerous and difficult a carrier landing is even under optimal conditions. You have to glide down and aim to snag a hook on a length of steel cable on a pitching deck, often in the dark or low visibility, and a minute miscalculation can be deadly. I switched to the vertical-takeoff Harrier from the old Phantom without many regrets, and the Phantom was one of the better carrier-borne designs.
I had quite literally never even attempted to land a plane this size on a carrier; Fleet Air Arm doesn't operate anything as large. Aurora is about the size of the E-2 Airborne Early Warning aircraft used on the USA's largest carriers [rumour has it that they seriously considered the rather detuned airframe design I sold to Shorts to replace the aging Hawkeye], but this was a significantly smaller ship. We also lacked any arrester gear. There is a proccedure for stopping aircraft that have inoperative gear, which consists of stringing a large, taut net across the deck for the aircraft to hurl itself against. This was something that I had experienced precisely once, in training, and it was definitely not high on the Top 100 Things I Want To Do Again.
The others secured themselves in their cockpit seats, the cabin being easier than the turrets to escape from if we went in the drink. "Hold tight, everybody!" I deployed the gear and airbrakes, adopting a nose-high-tail-low position, and made contact with the deck. We bounced, skidded, and slammed straight into the netting. It parted with a tearing sound, and I wrenched the nosewheel around, stamping on the gear brake pedal. We came to a halt with our tail overhanging the foredeck.
With shaking hands, I reached for the open packet of cigarettes on top of my instrument panel, fumbling to light one. After a moment's hesitation, Elaine took another. I made no reference to her constant lectures about smoking as I lit it for her; now was not the time.
It was quite a while before I was able to taxi away from the foredeck, and even longer before I felt able to get up from my seat. Rather unsteadily, I left the plane and headed for the group of officers waiting for me.
"Are you alright?" asked a familiar voice. "Hey, I remember you!"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
Owen Richards was an old drinking buddy of mine, whom I'd first encountered back in 1986 when I was still with Fleet Air Arm. I was a Squadron Leader and he was the new Warrant Officer (Stores), and it pays to be nice to the guy who has absolute power over things like food or spare parts in my job at that time, so we ended up on each other's Christmas card lists. The captain's insignia he was wearing suggested that he'd come on quite some way since.
I explained as much of my circumstances as I thought he'd believe, how I'd begun working with Mary on interdimensional travel after agreeing to look after John's kid. Two years after that, I'd had the most eventful six months of my life; I'd caused a train wreck, been buried in falling masonry, got mixed up in a war AND got off with John's widow. I've probably missed a few things out, but that's the gist of it.
"Only you could get mixed up in that lot, pal! Your mate Johnny West has been explaining about the bits you left out; I don't believe a word of it, of course."
I accompanied him to the aircrew mess. "So the missionary remarks to the chief that he's quite pleased with the reception he got. The chief looks slightly bemused about this, but smiles and nods," a familiar voice was explaining. "So the chief says to him, 'Mind out for the cattle on your way back, and mind you don't step in the humdingi.' Well, I thought it was funny, anyway." [Author's note: apologies to the guy I quite have shamelessly stolen this joke from- he tells it much better, of course]
John was sprawled on a battered sofa, looking his usual rather unkempt self. He was in his usual attire of faded black jeans and T-shirt -this one had a Star Treck motif- accompanied by scruffy trainers. He also hadn't shaved for a couple of days, and his hair was in a state of mayhem as usual. He looked more like a student than a professional killer, especially since he looked as if he could be any age between eighteen and about thirty five. The natty leather shoulder holster containing a handgun somehow jarred with the rest of the image. Isobel, perched on the arm of another sofa, looked an even less likely candidate for Public Enemy Number One. She was pale, and had an air of shyness and distance from the world that I attributed to the hearing aids she'd worn for most of her life. That she was five months pregnant made her look even less ike a hired gun. At least the others looked fairly... criminal-ish, for want of a better word.
Charlie was currently engaged in an animated dispute with a pilot from HMS Queen Elisabeth about the relative merits of Milwall and Tottenham Hotspur, whilst the others looked on in anticipation of the fistfight that usually resulted from Charlie's football enthusiasm.
"Hi guys," I said cheerfully. "How's things in London?"
"A right mess. They've wrecked so much of the city we let them have what was left of it, and much joy may it bring them," Sandy replied. "They're using the same worldhopping technology as you, so we can't even predict where they'll strike next."
"Apart from that, just great," John replied a little scratchily. I got the impression that it hadn't been his week.
"Do we know how many of our forces have gone over to their side?"
"About twenty percent, maybe more. They only make up about a tenth of the forces we're dealing with anyhow." I did the mental arithmetic and winced. "We're in the crap, frankly," Trish concluded. "I think you're about to rejoin the RAF."
"We won't actually try and draft you, or requisition your plane," Richards told us shortly afterwards, "but we desperately need your help; especially you, Dr Malone. Our people are totally mystified by the dimension jump system they're using, but you're this particular universe's leading authority on the technology. As for the rest of you, we need every pilot we can lay hands on, and Aurora is especially important to us."
"Look, if you want the Aurora Borealis to act as a strike aircraft then forget it," I told him. "She doesn't have the ordinance capacity, the speed, or any beyond visual range capability. I never even fitted a proper target acquisition radar. Contrary to our reputation, Aurora is nothing but a scientific research aircraft with a VERY limited self defence capability, and she just isn't up to the job."
"She's all we've got," Elaine replied. "If we use multiplier racks like on the A-10 then we can expand our missile load, and it shouldn't be too hard to strip out the forward guns and fit something heavier. Hey, wait a minute...!" She had a manic gleam in her eye. "We might be able to adapt the jump drive to open a wider portal. It wouldn't be easy, but maybe a couple of fighters in close formation could follow us through."
"Too dangerous; an inch too little clearance and the fighter would lose a wing, and I doubt we could generate a powerful enough EM field to give much margin for error," Mary replied. "Can you imagine trying to keep formation that close at Mach 2.3?"
"What about shoehorning the technology into an F22, or a Typhoon?" suggested Owen.
"Only by stripping out all the avionics and about half the internal fuel tanks," I replied. "Just the projection gear would take up most of the nose, and one jump uses as much power as an AWACS radar does in a whole day. You'd have to build a whole new design of aircraft around the drive system, same as I did."
"Wonderful. I take it that speed is important?" I nodded, and Owen's face fell further. "Then we can forget missile racks; they'll tear off at that speed. You might carry them in the fuselage and fit them once you'd jumped, I suppose. Can that thing land on an unpaved runway?"
"I've landed her on Arctic tundra," I replied. "Aurora needs perhaps four hundred yards of landing strip, half that on takeoff. Hell, we've flown strike missions from forward bases before."
"Not against an enemy like this, though," Will replied gloomily. He had a point; the Magisterium was fifty years behind our equipment. "We desperately need a way to take the fight to them with our main force. What about those portal generators they were using?"
"They're keeping them well behind their lines; capturing one would take a whole battalion, assuming they didn't blow it up themselves."
"Here, maybe," I replied. "But in another world? They might be more complacent there."
"Worth a try, I suppose," Owen admitted. "If you could ferry a small force there, and provide air cover..."
"Sounds right up John's street. We can probably put the Young Guns in the turrets, as well," Lyra suggested. "I imagine the rest of us'll be needed here; pilots are in shorter supply than planes, and that's saying something!"
"Yeah," I agreed. "That means you as well, Ellie. I can handle Aurora on my own, just as long as I've got a gun crew. With the five of them -Isobel is staying here- and a couple of qualified tank crew, we'll be fully loaded."
"I'll see to it," Owen replied. "But how do we go about launching Aurora?"
"We'll have to winch her overboard. It can be done, though it isn't easy," I told him, recalling the time we'd done just that with very little pleasure. It was one of John Faa's few errors, since we could easily have flown the requisite distance and it could have gone wrong in about four million different ways.
"We'll do it as soon as we're in calmer waters. This is just crazy enough to work!"
It was a dull party. The occasional SS and Wehrmacht uniform was a welcome change from the unrelieved greyness of the men, whilst the women were all trying to outdo each other for gaudiness- I've known more tastefully dressed hookers. The SS were only talking to each other, shunned even by the Wehrmacht. This was neutral ground so far as the organisers were concerned; it had become quite la mode to invite travellers from other worlds to this sort of thing, so we fitted in quite well.
"Important lesson for you, Lyra," Elaine remarked. "If you buy a pair of pricey stilettos, A: wear them home and B: keep the reciept. Ten more minutes in these bloody things and I'll need to see an osteopath, I swear."
"Alright for some, don't you think?" Will remarked. I laughed. I was wearing a temporary prosthetic that worked more or less okay, though it was a long way short of being as good as my actual leg. It beat crutches, though.
"Oh my God! Look," Lyra hissed suddenly. I looked. A woman in a refreshingly understated green evening gown was leaning against the wall by the buffet, looking thouroughly bored with the whole affair. I looked for her daemon, who suddenly appeared bearing a cocktail.
It was a golden monkey. "Jesus CHRIST. Is that-?"
"Yeah. It's my mother." Lyra resisted the temptation to put one hand near the velcroed slit in her dress over the top of her pistol. "What the HELL is SHE doing here?"
I adjusted the jacket of my old Navy dress uniform. "I'll go talk to her. No, Elaine, if she's got half a brain she'll realise who you look like. There's not much chance she'll recognise me or Mary, and she'll probably respond better to me on account of the fact that I'm male, unless she went to a certain sort of boarding school."
"Yeah, she always struck me as that sort," Lyra said vehemently. "And I was always getting my bum pinched at St Sophia's."
"How does a guy cope with that sort of competition, huh?" Will said, shaking his head. We didn't laugh.
//Here goes.// "Lady Marissa," I said formally. She glanced up at me without a great deal of enthusiasm.
"Who the hell are you?" Refreshingly direct, anyway.
"Let's just say we have a few mutual acquaintances," I replied smoothly.
"Well, that's marvellous. Now leave me in peace. You aren't my type," she said dismissively. So much for the uniform theory.
"My lady, you misread my intentions totally," I replied charmingly. "Apart from anything else, my wife is watching." I glanced in Elaine's direction, grinning ruefully.
"Oh, is that your wife?" she said, contempt plain in her voice. "And I assume that that is your son..." she paused, somewhat taken aback. //Trouble!//
"Stepson, actually," I replied. "His late father was Dr Grumman. Did you ever meet him? One of my oldest friends."
"Oh. OH. Is that why you married his wife?" She laughed without humour.
"What are you implying?" I retorted, anger creeping into my voice. "You are hardly in posession of the moral high ground even if it were true, which it most certainly isn't!"
Elaine had heard the last part of the exchange, and her eyes were flashing dangerously.
"You know, I think your mum and mine are about to have an almighty catfight," Will remarked.
"Yep. Fiver on yours," Lyra remarked, turning to watch with interest. I was hastily backing away, as I caught a hint of that almost electric force Lyra had described her mother as posessing when roused. Elaine didn't even BLINK when the full beam hit her, but simply moved within range and attacked. You can't spend a few Saturday nights in reception at the A&E in Aldershot without learning a few things about hand to hand combat, so I truly feared for Mrs Coulter's life; no, that's the wrong word. I certainly wouldn't have taken Lyra up on that bet, though.
I'd been anticipating a slap, but Elaine had better ideas. She went for a vicious jab to the solar plexus, bringing her knee up as Mrs Coulter doubled over. There was a crunch. Mrs Coulter didn't lose her cool, but took Elaine's legs out from underneath her with a fast sweep of her leg. Blood pouring from her nose, she straightened and produced a small silver Colt .25 pistol from her bag.
"Grumman had no taste," she remarked, levelling it at Elaine. I grabbed her gun arm and hammered her knuckles against the wall until she let go, then stepped back and drew my own gun. The others followed suit.
"By that last remark I assume you mean he turned you down," Will said coldly. "Sensible man." Lyra retrieved the little pistol she'd drawn on Elaine, and tossed it to me. I examined it critically.
"I bought you two BB guns for Christmas that could do more damage than this toy. Honestly," I remarked as I turned to Mrs Coulter, "if you're going to carry a weapon then carry a proper one. I could hurt somebody more if I THREW it at them." I chucked it carelessly over one shoulder, illustrating my point when I caught somebody on the ear.
"I'm not without influential friends, you know," Mrs Coulter pointed out. "They won't be pleased."
"We've made a few of our own over the years," Mary replied evenly, "and most of them would happily see you staked out on a cowshed floor, when they're in a good mood. On a bad day they'd flay you alive, nail you to a tree and set fire to it."
"I'd personally rather shoot you myself," Lyra added.
"I've got a parenting manual you can borrow!" Elaine said with a smirk. There was a general laugh from the other guests, who were watching with interest. I wondered what to do next. We had gained no intelligence worth anything, but we had to get out of here before all hell broke loose. Should we take her with us, though? Preventing Lyra from shooting her would be more effort than it was worth in my honest opinion, and it was that or let her go. At this stage I wasn't prepared to let Lyra just kill her now, though, a decision I would later regret.
Mrs Coulter solved the problem rather dramatically by stamping viciously at the side of my knee, or what should have been my knee if not for that car accident a while back. The prosthetic collapsed, sending me flying. She snatched my pistol and fired off three rounds before being knocked backwards by enough lead to make fifty-odd HB pencils. Amazingly, she rolled and came up shooting. //Body armour,// I realised. //Why didn't we think of that?//
A hasty snapshot from Will ricocheted off a wall fixture and shattered a window. People started to scream and duck. Mrs Coulter emptied my pistol's clip in Lyra's direction, grazing her shoulder and knocking her down. Instantly Will let fly half a dozen rounds after her, but she escaped through a side door.
"Christ, she shot her own DAUGHTER! You okay?" I helped Lyra to her feet. Will tossed me my now empty pistol, and made to pursue.
"Forget her," Lyra told him, massaging her shoulder. "Let's just get out of here before the police start asking questions."
"Right." I adjusted the prosthetic and walked a touch awkwardly to the door. "Bloody thing's bent. She's going to suffer for that."
We hailed a cab and piled in, requesting the aerocraft landing strip that in my world is Heathrow. "You okay to fly with that leg?" Will asked.
"Think so. Let's check that shoulder of yours, Lyra." Elaine and I checked the graze. It looked nasty, but hadn't done much besides break the skin.
"Stings like hell, but I can move my arm alright. A stiff drink'd be nice, though."
"Not if you're going to be on one of the turrets or radar," I replied. "I s'pose we'll be needing another damn base now, as well."
"Actually, I wouldn't worry. I'd trust Jack, Mitch and Carrie-Anne to the ends of the earth. I've known them for years; Jack was my wingman in the second Falklands campaign." Will had indeed followed in his father's footsteps, and taken on the dreaded Argies once again two years ago.
"Besides, who'd believe him?" Lyra added. I nodded, reloading my Beretta. We pulled up at the airstrip and headed for the familiar gleaming hull that had been our semi-permanent home for the last decade or so. We boarded the Aurora Borealis with some relief, running the startup checklist.
"Engines one and two lit."
"Hydraulics green. Radar green. FLIR... green."
"Weapons stations one through six, green. No faults showing on gun systems or rocket pod."
"Jump drive green. FTS scan pattern underway."
Checklist completed, I opened the throttles and took off. Once we were in the air, I deployed the turrets, missile pylons and rocket pod. "Battle stations, people. We could have hostile fighters dropping in on us any second." The three women manned the turrets, leaving Will in charge of the radar and infared systems.
"Four contacts at extreme range in our seven o'clock, one one zero miles and closing. Their attack radars are on. No IFF signal."
"Right. I'm switching our transponder on. Lets see how they react... Shit!" The threat warning reciever screamed into my headphones, signalling that a missile lock radar was seeking us. I switched on the radar jamming system and turned in a 180-degree bank, hoping that any missile launched would have trouble hitting a target coming at it head-on. However, the enemy aircraft fanned out and came to bear from different angles. The TWR changed note, and I could see four bright glows at various points in the sky.
"They've launched! Hang on!" I fired the chaff dispenser and hauled Aurora over in a loop, gaining height before diving towards the ground, and levelled out with about six inches to go. The radar screen filled with mush and back echoes from the ground, and hopefully our adversaries would be similarly hampered. Unless...
"Two bandits, right on our six!" Mary warned. I glanced at my screen, which had automatically switched to a rear view camera when the radar picture went.
"I see them. Never seen anything like them before in my life, but I see them. Brace yourselves!" I pulled up, deploying the airbrakes, and watched as the fighters overshot. They were painted black, with a vaguely diamondlike shape reminiscent of the Stealth fighter, but with numerous external missile pylons. I sprayed the nearest one with gunfire, punching holes through the bodywork but doing no apparent damage. They veered off, and lined up for an attack from port and starboard. I leaned heavily on the left rudder, pulling up at the same time so that Elaine and Lyra could get a crack at them. They retreated somewhat, and launched heat seekers. I deployed a burst of flares and pointed Aurora's nose straight at the sky, giving the engines a few seconds of afterburn to propel us a few hundred feet up, and then pulled back all the way. Aurora gracefully turned over on her back like a leaping dolphin, and went into a steep dive. I levelled out at fifty feet, and stuck the burners on again. Will switched his screen over to jump drive control whilst I retracted the turrets.
"Three degrees right, two up, and we're locked. Jump speed in three, two, one... burn it!" I hit the jump button, closing my eyes against the glare and bracing for the sudden deceleration. I'd never got used to the transition process, and it still rattled me somewhat. Will and I exchanged looks, as men who have just survived a nasty experience together.
I glanced at the rearview screen. Blindingly bright spheres opened, resembling holes in the sky. The fighters emerged from them at top speed. "What the-? Christ, they're coming through!" I hadn't throttled back yet, and we were still on full burners, but they were catching up fast. I briefly debated whether to leave the turrets in and use the extra hundred miles or so an hour afforded by the better aerodynamics, but the sound of cannon rounds hitting the tail convinced me that this was a bad idea. I reduced speed, and turned to face the enemy. Hell's bells, there were more of them! I counted at least eight.
"That's not good." I frantically assigned a target to each Sidewinder, and let fly before putting the nose down and storming straight through the formation with guns blasting.
"Five more just showed up," Will warned. "No, make that six. We've got a problem!"
"Yep," I agreed. This wasn't QUITE the worst mess I'd ever been in -Elaine letting herself into my flat [why did I give her a key?] and finding Will, then aged fifteen, and I watching Natural Born Killers and drinking Stella Artois takes that accolade- but it was certainly in the top five.
"Alpha Bravo three zero one, this is Fleet Air Arm 55 Squadron interceptor Blue Leader, do you require assistance, over?"
"Yes, please assist me, yes!" I replied. "There's about a dozen fighters after me and I just ran out of Sidewinders, over."
"Roger that. Blue section, engage the enemy!"
The four Joint Strike Fighters let fly with long-range missiles, knocking several fighters out of the sky and forcing the others to retreat. "Alright, Alpha Bravo, you'll be okay for now. Can you set that thing down on an aircraft carrier?"
"Funnily enough the only thing I never thought to install was a tailhook, but I'll have a go," I replied, with a confidence I didn't feel.
Non-pilots frequently underestimate just how dangerous and difficult a carrier landing is even under optimal conditions. You have to glide down and aim to snag a hook on a length of steel cable on a pitching deck, often in the dark or low visibility, and a minute miscalculation can be deadly. I switched to the vertical-takeoff Harrier from the old Phantom without many regrets, and the Phantom was one of the better carrier-borne designs.
I had quite literally never even attempted to land a plane this size on a carrier; Fleet Air Arm doesn't operate anything as large. Aurora is about the size of the E-2 Airborne Early Warning aircraft used on the USA's largest carriers [rumour has it that they seriously considered the rather detuned airframe design I sold to Shorts to replace the aging Hawkeye], but this was a significantly smaller ship. We also lacked any arrester gear. There is a proccedure for stopping aircraft that have inoperative gear, which consists of stringing a large, taut net across the deck for the aircraft to hurl itself against. This was something that I had experienced precisely once, in training, and it was definitely not high on the Top 100 Things I Want To Do Again.
The others secured themselves in their cockpit seats, the cabin being easier than the turrets to escape from if we went in the drink. "Hold tight, everybody!" I deployed the gear and airbrakes, adopting a nose-high-tail-low position, and made contact with the deck. We bounced, skidded, and slammed straight into the netting. It parted with a tearing sound, and I wrenched the nosewheel around, stamping on the gear brake pedal. We came to a halt with our tail overhanging the foredeck.
With shaking hands, I reached for the open packet of cigarettes on top of my instrument panel, fumbling to light one. After a moment's hesitation, Elaine took another. I made no reference to her constant lectures about smoking as I lit it for her; now was not the time.
It was quite a while before I was able to taxi away from the foredeck, and even longer before I felt able to get up from my seat. Rather unsteadily, I left the plane and headed for the group of officers waiting for me.
"Are you alright?" asked a familiar voice. "Hey, I remember you!"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
Owen Richards was an old drinking buddy of mine, whom I'd first encountered back in 1986 when I was still with Fleet Air Arm. I was a Squadron Leader and he was the new Warrant Officer (Stores), and it pays to be nice to the guy who has absolute power over things like food or spare parts in my job at that time, so we ended up on each other's Christmas card lists. The captain's insignia he was wearing suggested that he'd come on quite some way since.
I explained as much of my circumstances as I thought he'd believe, how I'd begun working with Mary on interdimensional travel after agreeing to look after John's kid. Two years after that, I'd had the most eventful six months of my life; I'd caused a train wreck, been buried in falling masonry, got mixed up in a war AND got off with John's widow. I've probably missed a few things out, but that's the gist of it.
"Only you could get mixed up in that lot, pal! Your mate Johnny West has been explaining about the bits you left out; I don't believe a word of it, of course."
I accompanied him to the aircrew mess. "So the missionary remarks to the chief that he's quite pleased with the reception he got. The chief looks slightly bemused about this, but smiles and nods," a familiar voice was explaining. "So the chief says to him, 'Mind out for the cattle on your way back, and mind you don't step in the humdingi.' Well, I thought it was funny, anyway." [Author's note: apologies to the guy I quite have shamelessly stolen this joke from- he tells it much better, of course]
John was sprawled on a battered sofa, looking his usual rather unkempt self. He was in his usual attire of faded black jeans and T-shirt -this one had a Star Treck motif- accompanied by scruffy trainers. He also hadn't shaved for a couple of days, and his hair was in a state of mayhem as usual. He looked more like a student than a professional killer, especially since he looked as if he could be any age between eighteen and about thirty five. The natty leather shoulder holster containing a handgun somehow jarred with the rest of the image. Isobel, perched on the arm of another sofa, looked an even less likely candidate for Public Enemy Number One. She was pale, and had an air of shyness and distance from the world that I attributed to the hearing aids she'd worn for most of her life. That she was five months pregnant made her look even less ike a hired gun. At least the others looked fairly... criminal-ish, for want of a better word.
Charlie was currently engaged in an animated dispute with a pilot from HMS Queen Elisabeth about the relative merits of Milwall and Tottenham Hotspur, whilst the others looked on in anticipation of the fistfight that usually resulted from Charlie's football enthusiasm.
"Hi guys," I said cheerfully. "How's things in London?"
"A right mess. They've wrecked so much of the city we let them have what was left of it, and much joy may it bring them," Sandy replied. "They're using the same worldhopping technology as you, so we can't even predict where they'll strike next."
"Apart from that, just great," John replied a little scratchily. I got the impression that it hadn't been his week.
"Do we know how many of our forces have gone over to their side?"
"About twenty percent, maybe more. They only make up about a tenth of the forces we're dealing with anyhow." I did the mental arithmetic and winced. "We're in the crap, frankly," Trish concluded. "I think you're about to rejoin the RAF."
"We won't actually try and draft you, or requisition your plane," Richards told us shortly afterwards, "but we desperately need your help; especially you, Dr Malone. Our people are totally mystified by the dimension jump system they're using, but you're this particular universe's leading authority on the technology. As for the rest of you, we need every pilot we can lay hands on, and Aurora is especially important to us."
"Look, if you want the Aurora Borealis to act as a strike aircraft then forget it," I told him. "She doesn't have the ordinance capacity, the speed, or any beyond visual range capability. I never even fitted a proper target acquisition radar. Contrary to our reputation, Aurora is nothing but a scientific research aircraft with a VERY limited self defence capability, and she just isn't up to the job."
"She's all we've got," Elaine replied. "If we use multiplier racks like on the A-10 then we can expand our missile load, and it shouldn't be too hard to strip out the forward guns and fit something heavier. Hey, wait a minute...!" She had a manic gleam in her eye. "We might be able to adapt the jump drive to open a wider portal. It wouldn't be easy, but maybe a couple of fighters in close formation could follow us through."
"Too dangerous; an inch too little clearance and the fighter would lose a wing, and I doubt we could generate a powerful enough EM field to give much margin for error," Mary replied. "Can you imagine trying to keep formation that close at Mach 2.3?"
"What about shoehorning the technology into an F22, or a Typhoon?" suggested Owen.
"Only by stripping out all the avionics and about half the internal fuel tanks," I replied. "Just the projection gear would take up most of the nose, and one jump uses as much power as an AWACS radar does in a whole day. You'd have to build a whole new design of aircraft around the drive system, same as I did."
"Wonderful. I take it that speed is important?" I nodded, and Owen's face fell further. "Then we can forget missile racks; they'll tear off at that speed. You might carry them in the fuselage and fit them once you'd jumped, I suppose. Can that thing land on an unpaved runway?"
"I've landed her on Arctic tundra," I replied. "Aurora needs perhaps four hundred yards of landing strip, half that on takeoff. Hell, we've flown strike missions from forward bases before."
"Not against an enemy like this, though," Will replied gloomily. He had a point; the Magisterium was fifty years behind our equipment. "We desperately need a way to take the fight to them with our main force. What about those portal generators they were using?"
"They're keeping them well behind their lines; capturing one would take a whole battalion, assuming they didn't blow it up themselves."
"Here, maybe," I replied. "But in another world? They might be more complacent there."
"Worth a try, I suppose," Owen admitted. "If you could ferry a small force there, and provide air cover..."
"Sounds right up John's street. We can probably put the Young Guns in the turrets, as well," Lyra suggested. "I imagine the rest of us'll be needed here; pilots are in shorter supply than planes, and that's saying something!"
"Yeah," I agreed. "That means you as well, Ellie. I can handle Aurora on my own, just as long as I've got a gun crew. With the five of them -Isobel is staying here- and a couple of qualified tank crew, we'll be fully loaded."
"I'll see to it," Owen replied. "But how do we go about launching Aurora?"
"We'll have to winch her overboard. It can be done, though it isn't easy," I told him, recalling the time we'd done just that with very little pleasure. It was one of John Faa's few errors, since we could easily have flown the requisite distance and it could have gone wrong in about four million different ways.
"We'll do it as soon as we're in calmer waters. This is just crazy enough to work!"