Will ran a hand over his Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29D multi-role fighter, NATO codename 'Fulcrum'. It was a sleek, sharklike aircraft with a remarkable turn of speed and good all-round combat capability. It had only seven hardpoints, however, one of which was taken up by a fuel tank. The remaining six hardpoints contained four AA-10 Alamo radar guided beyond-visual-range missiles and a pair of AA-11 Archer heatseekers. The aircraft nearby had anti-radar missiles instead of Alamos; they were designed to home in on hostile radar sets, and intended for air-defence suppression. This would be the job of pilot number four, Yuri Kamarov. He was a polite if somewhat formal man, and still slightly suspicious of NATO aircrew; a product of training by men who were having second thoughts about glasnost, perestroika and detente.
Will's fighter was painted a gleaming silver, the colour of the first aircraft he'd flown in on a combat mission. A convincing rendition of the Northern Lights were painted on the tailfins, and an image of the Knife pointed along each side of the nose. It looked almost as good as the original Aurora Borealis, and Will hoped that Dave would have approved. Lyra had gone for a deep scarlet finish with streaks of flame along the sides on her own machine, whilst Jack had his painted matte black with a detail from an Iron Maiden album cover (that skeleton guy called Eddie The 'Ead, in case you were wondering) on each tail fin. Yuri had been relatively restrained, selecting midnight blue with hammer-and-sickle tail art.
"Well, nobody's ever going to think we're official military personnel," John remarked. He'd left his aircraft in camoflauge colours as it would be operating much closer to the enemy lines; the same had been done for the Hueys. "The President would be less than impressed if I got him in that sort of mess!" The UN had implored all nations to coordinate their peacekeeping efforts and not do things their own way, bicker amongst each other and make life pointlessly difficult, like they usually did. Some chance,Will concluded grimly. He'd been on a peacekeeping jaunt in Iran just after the mullahs overrode the elected government one time too many and all hell broke loose. Everybody ignored what the others were doing, and refused point blank to listen to suggestions from anybody else. The British were as bad as anybody else at this, to be honest.
"Are we nearly set?" Will asked.
"Just sorting out some things at Petrovic's end, and then we leave. Looking forward to it?"
Will gave his friend a look. "Getting shot at is not something I EVER look forward to. You'd think I'd have got used to it by now, but I haven't."
"To be brutally honest, I rather enjoy this sort of thing; that's not right, is it?" John said with a faintly self-depreciatory grin.
Will just sighed. "You need professional help, old pal!"
Eighteen hours later, seven aircraft left a small field in central Russia and headed south towards what used to be Yugoslavia. The three heavy transports flew in a remarkably tight V formation, with the huge great 'Condor' in front and the smaller 'Candids' trailing behind. The MiGs flew above and behind in a loose line abreast formation, radars set to non-aggressive search mode. To track a specific aircraft as a precursor to launching a missile required a detectable shift in radar beam configuration that could be picked up in seconds, so as long as they left the radars on search then nobody would get trigger happy. Or so they hoped.
Will's own radar detection systems began to beep at him. "AWACS radar just swept us. Hey, it just shut off- must be worried we'll home in on them."
"Well, I'd be nervous driving a bus like that in a warzone," Jack replied. "Did you get a position on him?"
"Not on my screen, but the radar warner says he's in our two o'clock, not sure of range yet."
"We make it three-zero miles or thereabouts," John said from the Condor, which had more sophisticated threat-detection avionics to compensate for being unarmed. "Hmm. A couple more radar sets just came online. Computer says they're APG-68V5s, the one from the F16." He broke off. "Jesus Christ, they're trying to lock onto us!"
Yuri began yelling angrily over the international emergency channel, playing the aggrieved military pilot escorting a humanitarian aid mission and hamming up his accent a bit. They evidently didn't buy it.
"Okay, Ivan," a Texan voice drawled, "if you wanna mix it up with the US Air Force then go right ahead!" Every threat warning reciever in the formation lit up as an AMRAAM launched from one F16 towards the Condor. There was a confused thirty seconds as all seven aircraft swerved, the transports away from the enemy and the fighters towards them. Everybody's radar screen started to scramble as the electronic jamming and decoying metallic 'chaff' interfered with the radar. The profusion of false and genuine radar returns confused even the sophisticated AMRAAM, and it exploded short of the mark. The US fighters moved in, switching to heatseekers and guns, but found themselves dangerously outnumbered. One of them caught a volley of cannon fire and spun away, the pilot bailing out seconds later. "Choke on it!" Jack yelled, rolling his wings derisively. The remaining fighter shoved the throttles forward and gave it full afterburn, running for his life. Lyra locked her Alamos on him, and the F16 dived to increase its speed.
"That took 'em down a peg or two," she remarked. "Next time they'll brings some friends along!"
"Good," Jack replied. "There'll be enough to go around next time!"
"You've been around John too long."
"Yeah, s'pose. Oh, now what?"
The Aegis radar system can pump out six million watts of energy, enough to seriously endanger the health of anybody standing close to the dish, and the one aboard the Spruance-class destroyer stationed in the Sea of Azov was pointing every single one their way. Yuri launched a radar-homing missile, which locked on in half a second. The destroyer shut its radar off and hastily went to full astern. The missile dived for the last point of emanation, detonating less than a boatlength from its target. The destroyer evidently took the hint, and left its radar turned off.
They landed without further incident, the local US military detachment having evidently filed them under 'To Be Left Alone' for the time being. There was a couple of buses and a truck waiting for them courtesy of Colonel Petrovic, who was here to greet them in person. He was a tall and exceptionally broad man with a beard with which you could stuff a mattress, and had a booming voice that could be heard over an idling jet engine. Think Brian Blessed with a Russian accent.
The four fighter pilots popped the canopies and clambered awkwardly over the side of their cockpits, making do without the cockpit ladders that would be provided under normal circumstances. A thud and a curse from the direction of the black Fulcrum indicated that Jack had been unsuccessful. There was sniggering.
"Yes thanks, I'm quite alright," he said sarcastically. "God, what a dump!"
Will took in the expanse of potholed concrete, crumbling hangar buildings and decrepit prefabricated huts, and was forced to agree. "The Soviets certainly couldn't build stuff too well," he agreed. "I hope the town's a bit better."
"It was, before the Serbs spent three days bombarding it with heavy artillery," Petrovic observed gloomily.
"This is starting to feel like a very bad way to spend half a year's accumulated leave," Lyra said sourly.
"Who's idea was it to agree to this?"
"Oh give it a rest, you two!" John said irritably; he hated long-distance flying. "Are those prefabs habitable, colonel?"
"I doubt it, but we can provide accomodation for your pilots in the town when not on alert."
"I suggest we cut cards for who goes first," Will added. "Asking for volunteers strikes me as a bit pointless."
"Yeah. Look, let's check and see if those prefabs are really as bad as they look while they finish unloading," John suggested. "Can you handle things here, Eddie?"
"Sure!" Meacom took over, calling instructions to the assembled personnel in fluent Russian.
John forced the door of the nearest prefab, and winced. "Did something die in here?"
"Probably... Oh, shit!" Will turned away from the door he'd opened and threw up at the sight of the mutilated corpses.
Petrovic ordered the huts, and the bodies dumped in them by the hardliners, burned. "This is what we are up against," he said simply. "They are not men, not by any standard."
John chambered a rifle round. "Let's go get the bastards," he said grimly. "We use the fighters to hit their camp, finish them off with the choppers and ground troops. Can you spare anybody, Colonel?"
"I will send some of my best men, but the bulk of my forces will be needed to act as rearguard. If we leave the town exposed then what we saw in those huts will be repeated."
"I understand. Okay, people, you heard! Let's GO!"
If there was any reply it was lost, as Will and Lyra were suddenly engulfed in a blaze of light and snatched away.
Eddie took a deep breath. "What the HELL just HAPPENED?" he half-screamed.
"I'm not sure," John admitted. "But I doubt that this is a good sign," he added with impressive prescience.
The two of them found themselves standing in the middle of a circle of witches, somewhere in the Arctic. Their daemons were visible, so this was Lyra's world.
Will drew his pistol. If Serafina wanted to talk to them, he reasoned, she'd come and visit. Kidnapping wasn't her style, unless for some reason she couldn't travel, in which case things were VERY bad indeed...
The large number of bows levelled at them suggested another explanation that hadn't previously occurred to him. These witches were in league with one of the many organisations, individuals and occasional supernatural entities that Lyra and himself had pissed off at one stage or another.
Lyra had her own weapon drawn, but saw that it was hopeless. Frustrated, she tossed the pistol away. Will followed suit.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
The witches parted to reveal a man in gleaming white robes. He looked thirtyish, and was handsome in a harsh sort of way. He grinned like a lizard.
"Welcome," he said in what was suppposed to be a friendly way. "I don't believe we ever met face to face, but you certainly caused me a great deal of inconvenience. I was just about to be promoted via dead men's shoes through the unwitting auspices of your late father, Ms Silvertongue, when you and your companion succeeded in messing things up royally. As you can well imagine, I take a dim view of this." Metatron paused for effect. If he was hoping them to clutch at each other fearfully then he was disappointed. Man, woman, cat and pine marten looked at each other. "Shit," they chorused.
"So what are you going to do now?" Lyra said pleasantly. "Explain your devious plan to rule the universe before putting us in a situation from which we will have to escape by some improbable means? After all, you've been sticking religiously -pardon the expression- to the James Bond villan cliche thus far."
Metatron permitted himself a tight little smile. "You are showing considerable bravery for somebody whom I can have killed with a mere word of command. You are quite wrong, in fact. I was rather hoping to enlist your aid, as it happens."
"To do what, rule SEVERAL universes? I'd love to know how you intend to convince us to have anything to do with THAT!" Will said derisively. "Do tell, please."
"By offering you absolute control of your respective worlds, and returning your parents from the world of the dead. Also by taking your children hostage if you turned down the first offer. Interested yet?" He paused, smiling that tight little smile that both Will and Lyra dearly wished to punch.
"What do you need us for, anyhow?" Will asked, frantically trying to keep him talking whilst he looked for some way of getting away without dying. "You certainly aren't without allies. What difference would the two of us make?"
"Better to recruit you as allies than face you as enemies, in my opinion," Metatron explained. "After all, you do have a knack for upsetting the best-laid plans of angels and men when you so choose. I'd rather that they weren't MY plans for a change," he added sourly.
"Got any bright ideas?" Will asked hopefully.
"Nope," Lyra replied.
However, luck was on their side. A large contingent of witches aligned with the forces of truth, justice and liberty dived from above, showering the rival clan with arrows. Lyra dived for the guns, tossing Will his own weapon and aiming two quick snapshots at Metatron, who was regarding the battle unfold with an expression of mild annoyance. He didn't appear to notice.
"Come on, let's get out of here!" Pan yelled at her, being the voice of reason as usual. She nodded, shoved him inside her flight suit and ran like hell, Will close behind. The battle was sufficiently intense that nobody noticed them, though the odd miss and ricochet came perilously close.
"So," Will gasped once they were at what they judged to be a safe distance, "what do we do now?"
"I can see a town over that way," Lyra replied. "It'll be at least a day's walk, but we've got compasses, survival money and reasonably warm clothes. This is just the kind of thing we trained for in Norway back when we were cadets." She had apparently forgotten how far behind them THAT was, not that either of them had any desire to remember.
"Okay, let's get going." Will sighed. "Stuff like this shouldn't happen to the over-thirties, you know."
"You getting premature middle age, or what?" she laughed, nudging him. "We aren't over the hill yet!"
It occurred to Will, as he began trudging wearily towards the distant lights of town, that Lyra secretly rather enjoyed this sort of thing. This presumably explained her continuing enthusiasm for camping holidays.
A witch on a cloud-pine branch hurtled overhead, looped the loop and came to a skidding halt a few yards from them. Serafina Pekkala waved them over. "Climb on!" she ordered.
"Oh, you have GOT to be kidding! That thing'll never take our weight!" Will said, but he climbed on nevertheless.
"You're thinking too conventionally," Lyra replied. "Hold tight!"
The branch rocketed into the sky, its occupants clinging on for dear life. "This kind of crap should NOT happen to the over thirties!" Will grumbled, his eyes tightly shut. Lyra, by contrast, seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.
"Wow!" she shouted above the rushing wind. "Where are we going?"
"To the Fens," Serafina replied. "We will be safe there for the time being. I have to confess that I am uncertain how we will successfully defeat Metatron this time, but no doubt you will think of something."
"Us? Oh God, not again! How many times do we have to save the bloody universe before we'll get some peace and quiet?" Will groaned. Kirjava bit him viciously on the thumb.
"Stop whinging!" she said crossly. "Listen, we're going to need John and his crew; he's got a small private army back in our world. With them onboard we can take on just about anybody!"
Will declined to comment.
Will's fighter was painted a gleaming silver, the colour of the first aircraft he'd flown in on a combat mission. A convincing rendition of the Northern Lights were painted on the tailfins, and an image of the Knife pointed along each side of the nose. It looked almost as good as the original Aurora Borealis, and Will hoped that Dave would have approved. Lyra had gone for a deep scarlet finish with streaks of flame along the sides on her own machine, whilst Jack had his painted matte black with a detail from an Iron Maiden album cover (that skeleton guy called Eddie The 'Ead, in case you were wondering) on each tail fin. Yuri had been relatively restrained, selecting midnight blue with hammer-and-sickle tail art.
"Well, nobody's ever going to think we're official military personnel," John remarked. He'd left his aircraft in camoflauge colours as it would be operating much closer to the enemy lines; the same had been done for the Hueys. "The President would be less than impressed if I got him in that sort of mess!" The UN had implored all nations to coordinate their peacekeeping efforts and not do things their own way, bicker amongst each other and make life pointlessly difficult, like they usually did. Some chance,Will concluded grimly. He'd been on a peacekeeping jaunt in Iran just after the mullahs overrode the elected government one time too many and all hell broke loose. Everybody ignored what the others were doing, and refused point blank to listen to suggestions from anybody else. The British were as bad as anybody else at this, to be honest.
"Are we nearly set?" Will asked.
"Just sorting out some things at Petrovic's end, and then we leave. Looking forward to it?"
Will gave his friend a look. "Getting shot at is not something I EVER look forward to. You'd think I'd have got used to it by now, but I haven't."
"To be brutally honest, I rather enjoy this sort of thing; that's not right, is it?" John said with a faintly self-depreciatory grin.
Will just sighed. "You need professional help, old pal!"
Eighteen hours later, seven aircraft left a small field in central Russia and headed south towards what used to be Yugoslavia. The three heavy transports flew in a remarkably tight V formation, with the huge great 'Condor' in front and the smaller 'Candids' trailing behind. The MiGs flew above and behind in a loose line abreast formation, radars set to non-aggressive search mode. To track a specific aircraft as a precursor to launching a missile required a detectable shift in radar beam configuration that could be picked up in seconds, so as long as they left the radars on search then nobody would get trigger happy. Or so they hoped.
Will's own radar detection systems began to beep at him. "AWACS radar just swept us. Hey, it just shut off- must be worried we'll home in on them."
"Well, I'd be nervous driving a bus like that in a warzone," Jack replied. "Did you get a position on him?"
"Not on my screen, but the radar warner says he's in our two o'clock, not sure of range yet."
"We make it three-zero miles or thereabouts," John said from the Condor, which had more sophisticated threat-detection avionics to compensate for being unarmed. "Hmm. A couple more radar sets just came online. Computer says they're APG-68V5s, the one from the F16." He broke off. "Jesus Christ, they're trying to lock onto us!"
Yuri began yelling angrily over the international emergency channel, playing the aggrieved military pilot escorting a humanitarian aid mission and hamming up his accent a bit. They evidently didn't buy it.
"Okay, Ivan," a Texan voice drawled, "if you wanna mix it up with the US Air Force then go right ahead!" Every threat warning reciever in the formation lit up as an AMRAAM launched from one F16 towards the Condor. There was a confused thirty seconds as all seven aircraft swerved, the transports away from the enemy and the fighters towards them. Everybody's radar screen started to scramble as the electronic jamming and decoying metallic 'chaff' interfered with the radar. The profusion of false and genuine radar returns confused even the sophisticated AMRAAM, and it exploded short of the mark. The US fighters moved in, switching to heatseekers and guns, but found themselves dangerously outnumbered. One of them caught a volley of cannon fire and spun away, the pilot bailing out seconds later. "Choke on it!" Jack yelled, rolling his wings derisively. The remaining fighter shoved the throttles forward and gave it full afterburn, running for his life. Lyra locked her Alamos on him, and the F16 dived to increase its speed.
"That took 'em down a peg or two," she remarked. "Next time they'll brings some friends along!"
"Good," Jack replied. "There'll be enough to go around next time!"
"You've been around John too long."
"Yeah, s'pose. Oh, now what?"
The Aegis radar system can pump out six million watts of energy, enough to seriously endanger the health of anybody standing close to the dish, and the one aboard the Spruance-class destroyer stationed in the Sea of Azov was pointing every single one their way. Yuri launched a radar-homing missile, which locked on in half a second. The destroyer shut its radar off and hastily went to full astern. The missile dived for the last point of emanation, detonating less than a boatlength from its target. The destroyer evidently took the hint, and left its radar turned off.
They landed without further incident, the local US military detachment having evidently filed them under 'To Be Left Alone' for the time being. There was a couple of buses and a truck waiting for them courtesy of Colonel Petrovic, who was here to greet them in person. He was a tall and exceptionally broad man with a beard with which you could stuff a mattress, and had a booming voice that could be heard over an idling jet engine. Think Brian Blessed with a Russian accent.
The four fighter pilots popped the canopies and clambered awkwardly over the side of their cockpits, making do without the cockpit ladders that would be provided under normal circumstances. A thud and a curse from the direction of the black Fulcrum indicated that Jack had been unsuccessful. There was sniggering.
"Yes thanks, I'm quite alright," he said sarcastically. "God, what a dump!"
Will took in the expanse of potholed concrete, crumbling hangar buildings and decrepit prefabricated huts, and was forced to agree. "The Soviets certainly couldn't build stuff too well," he agreed. "I hope the town's a bit better."
"It was, before the Serbs spent three days bombarding it with heavy artillery," Petrovic observed gloomily.
"This is starting to feel like a very bad way to spend half a year's accumulated leave," Lyra said sourly.
"Who's idea was it to agree to this?"
"Oh give it a rest, you two!" John said irritably; he hated long-distance flying. "Are those prefabs habitable, colonel?"
"I doubt it, but we can provide accomodation for your pilots in the town when not on alert."
"I suggest we cut cards for who goes first," Will added. "Asking for volunteers strikes me as a bit pointless."
"Yeah. Look, let's check and see if those prefabs are really as bad as they look while they finish unloading," John suggested. "Can you handle things here, Eddie?"
"Sure!" Meacom took over, calling instructions to the assembled personnel in fluent Russian.
John forced the door of the nearest prefab, and winced. "Did something die in here?"
"Probably... Oh, shit!" Will turned away from the door he'd opened and threw up at the sight of the mutilated corpses.
Petrovic ordered the huts, and the bodies dumped in them by the hardliners, burned. "This is what we are up against," he said simply. "They are not men, not by any standard."
John chambered a rifle round. "Let's go get the bastards," he said grimly. "We use the fighters to hit their camp, finish them off with the choppers and ground troops. Can you spare anybody, Colonel?"
"I will send some of my best men, but the bulk of my forces will be needed to act as rearguard. If we leave the town exposed then what we saw in those huts will be repeated."
"I understand. Okay, people, you heard! Let's GO!"
If there was any reply it was lost, as Will and Lyra were suddenly engulfed in a blaze of light and snatched away.
Eddie took a deep breath. "What the HELL just HAPPENED?" he half-screamed.
"I'm not sure," John admitted. "But I doubt that this is a good sign," he added with impressive prescience.
The two of them found themselves standing in the middle of a circle of witches, somewhere in the Arctic. Their daemons were visible, so this was Lyra's world.
Will drew his pistol. If Serafina wanted to talk to them, he reasoned, she'd come and visit. Kidnapping wasn't her style, unless for some reason she couldn't travel, in which case things were VERY bad indeed...
The large number of bows levelled at them suggested another explanation that hadn't previously occurred to him. These witches were in league with one of the many organisations, individuals and occasional supernatural entities that Lyra and himself had pissed off at one stage or another.
Lyra had her own weapon drawn, but saw that it was hopeless. Frustrated, she tossed the pistol away. Will followed suit.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
The witches parted to reveal a man in gleaming white robes. He looked thirtyish, and was handsome in a harsh sort of way. He grinned like a lizard.
"Welcome," he said in what was suppposed to be a friendly way. "I don't believe we ever met face to face, but you certainly caused me a great deal of inconvenience. I was just about to be promoted via dead men's shoes through the unwitting auspices of your late father, Ms Silvertongue, when you and your companion succeeded in messing things up royally. As you can well imagine, I take a dim view of this." Metatron paused for effect. If he was hoping them to clutch at each other fearfully then he was disappointed. Man, woman, cat and pine marten looked at each other. "Shit," they chorused.
"So what are you going to do now?" Lyra said pleasantly. "Explain your devious plan to rule the universe before putting us in a situation from which we will have to escape by some improbable means? After all, you've been sticking religiously -pardon the expression- to the James Bond villan cliche thus far."
Metatron permitted himself a tight little smile. "You are showing considerable bravery for somebody whom I can have killed with a mere word of command. You are quite wrong, in fact. I was rather hoping to enlist your aid, as it happens."
"To do what, rule SEVERAL universes? I'd love to know how you intend to convince us to have anything to do with THAT!" Will said derisively. "Do tell, please."
"By offering you absolute control of your respective worlds, and returning your parents from the world of the dead. Also by taking your children hostage if you turned down the first offer. Interested yet?" He paused, smiling that tight little smile that both Will and Lyra dearly wished to punch.
"What do you need us for, anyhow?" Will asked, frantically trying to keep him talking whilst he looked for some way of getting away without dying. "You certainly aren't without allies. What difference would the two of us make?"
"Better to recruit you as allies than face you as enemies, in my opinion," Metatron explained. "After all, you do have a knack for upsetting the best-laid plans of angels and men when you so choose. I'd rather that they weren't MY plans for a change," he added sourly.
"Got any bright ideas?" Will asked hopefully.
"Nope," Lyra replied.
However, luck was on their side. A large contingent of witches aligned with the forces of truth, justice and liberty dived from above, showering the rival clan with arrows. Lyra dived for the guns, tossing Will his own weapon and aiming two quick snapshots at Metatron, who was regarding the battle unfold with an expression of mild annoyance. He didn't appear to notice.
"Come on, let's get out of here!" Pan yelled at her, being the voice of reason as usual. She nodded, shoved him inside her flight suit and ran like hell, Will close behind. The battle was sufficiently intense that nobody noticed them, though the odd miss and ricochet came perilously close.
"So," Will gasped once they were at what they judged to be a safe distance, "what do we do now?"
"I can see a town over that way," Lyra replied. "It'll be at least a day's walk, but we've got compasses, survival money and reasonably warm clothes. This is just the kind of thing we trained for in Norway back when we were cadets." She had apparently forgotten how far behind them THAT was, not that either of them had any desire to remember.
"Okay, let's get going." Will sighed. "Stuff like this shouldn't happen to the over-thirties, you know."
"You getting premature middle age, or what?" she laughed, nudging him. "We aren't over the hill yet!"
It occurred to Will, as he began trudging wearily towards the distant lights of town, that Lyra secretly rather enjoyed this sort of thing. This presumably explained her continuing enthusiasm for camping holidays.
A witch on a cloud-pine branch hurtled overhead, looped the loop and came to a skidding halt a few yards from them. Serafina Pekkala waved them over. "Climb on!" she ordered.
"Oh, you have GOT to be kidding! That thing'll never take our weight!" Will said, but he climbed on nevertheless.
"You're thinking too conventionally," Lyra replied. "Hold tight!"
The branch rocketed into the sky, its occupants clinging on for dear life. "This kind of crap should NOT happen to the over thirties!" Will grumbled, his eyes tightly shut. Lyra, by contrast, seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.
"Wow!" she shouted above the rushing wind. "Where are we going?"
"To the Fens," Serafina replied. "We will be safe there for the time being. I have to confess that I am uncertain how we will successfully defeat Metatron this time, but no doubt you will think of something."
"Us? Oh God, not again! How many times do we have to save the bloody universe before we'll get some peace and quiet?" Will groaned. Kirjava bit him viciously on the thumb.
"Stop whinging!" she said crossly. "Listen, we're going to need John and his crew; he's got a small private army back in our world. With them onboard we can take on just about anybody!"
Will declined to comment.