Last Flight - Edoardo Albert Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Last Flight – Edoardo Albert

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Double Eagle’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Last Flight

  Edoardo Albert

  ‘And having completed the attack run, return on the opposite bearing. The fleet will be steaming to meet you.’

  Baruch Neriah, pilot commander of Marauder Spirit of St Pascale, glanced round the rest of the flight crews in the briefing room. Wasn’t anyone going to ask the obvious question? But they were all studiedly staring ahead at the tacticae simulation that the briefing officer was standing beside. The air in the room was heavy with what had not been voiced.

  ‘If that is all, gentlemen…’ The briefing officer bent over the desk and began to gather together the tactical readouts.

  Neriah held his hand up.

  The briefing officer paused.

  Neriah raised his hand further.

  The briefing officer straightened. ‘Yes?’ He peered across the brightly lit briefing room, squinting to see the name tag. ‘Pilot Commander Neriah?’

  ‘Sir, range to target is seven thousand miles.’

  ‘Current intelligence tells us that is correct.’

  Neriah did not need to look round to feel the tension in the room.

  ‘Maximum range in my Marauder is ten thousand.’

  ‘The fleet will be making full speed towards you. Simulations suggest that the lead vessels should be coming into range just in time for your return.’

  ‘The carriers?’

  ‘They will be following.’

  ‘So we’ll be ditching.’

  The briefing officer paused. ‘That is a possibility.’

  ‘I hope you all know how to swim, boys.’

  The laughter that filled the briefing room was loud, and brittle. Pilot Commander Baruch Neriah watched the briefing officer gather his papers. Behind him, the tacticae screens were showing the pictures that had led the fleet commander to authorise the mission: the heretic carrier fleet. To escape the hurricane that was turning the great northern ocean into a deathtrap, they had had to steam south. Within range of a flight of Marauders.

  Well, within range so long as you weren’t too bothered about the Marauders getting back again. But, so far as the fleet commander was concerned, the risk of losing a squadron of Marauders was worth it for the chance to attack the enemy carrier fleet. Sink them, and the long struggle for Sagaraya would be all but won.

  Winning the war was worth a sacrifice.

  Baruch Neriah looked around the briefing room at the silent crews slowly absorbing the knowledge that they were the sacrifice.

  The briefing officer stepped back to the lectern. ‘If you do have to ditch, use your life rafts. They have all been fitted with transponders. We will find you.’

  Neriah held up his hand again. ‘Have you seen the things that live in the sea?’

  ‘We will find you.’

  ‘Hopefully before they do.’

  The world was water.

  There had been cases, during the war for Sagaraya, of pilots losing themselves in the endless heave and shift, and flying on, in a wave-induced trance, until their fuel tanks were exhausted and their planes slid down from the sky to be embraced by the ocean. It was mainly a problem for the fighter boys, the single-seat jockeys, but Neriah had heard of Valkyries getting lost in the big blue, and there was a rumour that even a couple of Marauders had gone missing, flying on until they disappeared.

  Pilot Commander Baruch Neriah pulled his focus back from the horizon. Under the respirator, he licked his lips. He had lost himself in the blue. His eyes flicked to the mission-time clock. He had been lost for at least ten minutes. And if he had been lost, then so were the rest of the crew – any comms talk would have snapped him out of his reverie.

  Neriah glanced to his left, to his co-pilot and navigator, Mehem Radin, and saw the long stare and still face that told of a soul slowly flowing into the blue.

  ‘Mehem.’

  As the name sounded, Radin’s face shifted, the co-pilot waking from his distant daze. He looked round, eyes still stupid with the sea, and saw Neriah looking at him.

  ‘Sorry. Got a bit lost there.’

  ‘The forever stare.’

  ‘Not so much,’ said Radin. ‘I… I knew the crew of Wind Bird well.’

  Neriah stared ahead. Losing one of the craft on take-off was not a good start to the mission. Wind Bird, burdened with the fuel drop tanks needed to extend its range, had failed to gain height from the carrier flight launch, instead scything into the sea in a welter of fracturing debris. Even with Spirit, who had always been a light-flying bird, Neriah had had to push the control stick forward on clearing the deck of the carrier to pick up enough speed for lift before he could haul the labouring plane upwards, and for a moment he had thought that he had overcooked it, and the wave ridges were going to trip the Marauder up and send it tumbling into the sea.

  ‘They sent out recovery craft.’

  ‘Didn’t look like much to recover.’

  Neriah, never one to let silence fester, keyed the comm open. If he had gone into the blue, others might have too.

  ‘Crew, report status.’

  As the comm began to squawk into life, Radin turned to his navigation panel.

  ‘Shivkin reporting, pilot commander. All well.’ The bombardier. During the approach run, he would be down in the blister below the fuselage – the glasshouse, they all called it – lining up the torpedo slung under Spirit of St Pascale’s belly. The torpedo was designed to run ten feet below the water’s surface. The enemy carrier, the size of an island, had barely noticed the munitions dropped from the sky on the very few occasions it had come within range of Imperial forces: the carrier’s decks and forecastles were heavily reinforced and had shrugged off the bombs that had managed to pierce the vessel’s fighter screen.

  But the sea of Sagaraya was restless and hungry: give it a breach and it would push it open and wide, flooding in and pulling the vessel down into its dark deeps. The torpedo each Marauder carried was designed to do exactly that.

  ‘Gasko, pilot commander. Nothing to report.’ Eitan Gasko, nose turret gunner.

  ‘Pilot commander, Salk reporting.’ Tsvi Salk was the top turret gunner, the sky sight.

  Neriah waited. He waited a beat longer. Then he sighed.

  ‘Plotnik. Are you still with us?’

  Pinye Plotnik was the tail gunner. Like all tail gunners, he existed within a separate world, all but cut off from the rest of the crew, to whom he sometimes reported, normally only to tell of the downing of some approaching enemy craft.

  ‘…five…’

  Neriah sighed again. ‘Plotnik, report.’

  ‘…six… seven, eight… nine, ten.’

  Plotnik was not one to disappear into the blue.

  ‘Are you reporting a contact, Pinye?’

  ‘I’m counting,’ said Plotnik.

  Neriah glanced at Radin, who raised his eyes and shook his head – a familiar response to one of Plotnik’s whimsies. But the man was the best tail gunner in the Circus, the Third Air Fleet, with an uncanny ability to down enemy aircraft – he had even taken out at least six locked-on air-to-air missiles, which was four more than any other gunner in the Circus.

  ‘Counting what, Pinye?’

  ‘Drop tanks. They make a nice splash. Some even float for a minute – until the sharks get them.’

  ‘They’re n
ot sharks,’ interrupted Radin, who when in his cups had been known to take an aviator aside and explain to him, with all the truthful sincerity of a man who would remember nothing of what he said in the morning, that the only reason he had joined the Navy was to see something other than the hive of his birth. ‘They appear to be aquatic reptiles that returned to the water when the ocean covered all the land of Sagaraya.’

  ‘They’ve got teeth and they’re in the sea – they’re sharks.’

  ‘We’ll leave aside questions of xenobiology for the moment,’ Neriah said. ‘Give me a visual check on the flight, Plotnik and Salk.’ With the mission flying in vox silence, the tail and top turret gunners had the best visual for the other two Marauders in Neriah’s flight.

  ‘Glory Two, check,’ said Salk.

  ‘Glory Three, check,’ said Plotnik.

  ‘Waymark four,’ Radin added.

  ‘Noted,’ said Neriah. ‘Is it time to descend?’

  The navigator checked then rechecked the distance readings before looking to the auspex.

  ‘On the mark, descend to flight level one – three, two, one, mark.’

  Neriah gently eased the control stick forward, bringing the nose of Spirit of St Pascale down. Rolling blue filled the world beyond the cockpit canopy.

  The ramjets, set for maximum fuel economy during the approach, were quiet – it would have been possible to speak to Radin without comms.

  ‘Salk, Plotnik, check that Glory Two and Glory Three are following us down to flight level one.’

  Neriah heard the confirmation as he concentrated on bringing Spirit down to the correct altitude. The ramjets, appreciative of the richer air, struck up a deeper, more full-throated note.

  ‘Listen to the music,’ Radin called out.

  ‘Just got to make sure I don’t choke it,’ said Neriah.

  Flight level one was wave tops plus three hundred feet. But on this world of water, waves exceeding three hundred feet were not uncommon, even far from storm zones. On a previous mission, Neriah had been flying at flight level two – wave apex plus sixteen hundred feet – when a water wall had come at him from the horizon, the meeting of sky and sea, that had him hauling back Spirit’s control stick and keying the afterburners for every pound of additional thrust they could give him, and still spray had rung like las-rounds on the underside of the plane.

  Flight level one took them down below reliable auspex coverage. At that level, they could get in close to the enemy carrier. Even overflying fighter patrols would have difficulty picking out the Marauders moving that low over the wave tops. But flying at that altitude meant that Neriah, as pilot commander, was going to earn his stripes.

  ‘Time to go surface,’ said Neriah, a grin of concentration on his face. This was what flying was about. Yes, you could throw a Lightning around over the water banks, letting it ride the rollers and surf the breakers, but to keep a Marauder touching the wave tops – and then to bring it down to flight level zero for the attack run, using the wave troughs as protection and cover until close enough to let the torpedo run – that was real flying. This was what the war on Sagaraya had taught him, and he had learned the lessons of the water world well.

  Eyes slit against the glitter glare that splintered through the filters of his goggles, Neriah read the water as much as the air – for he had learned that the two obeyed many of the same laws.

  ‘ETA to final waymark?’

  Radin checked the navigation console. ‘Fifteen minutes, thirty seconds.’

  ‘Did you hear that, Shivkin?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’

  ‘Torpedo ready to release?’

  ‘Primed and ready.’

  ‘Say again – when we make our run, I’ll give the signal when I’ve got as close in as I can. Drop the torpedo as soon as the track is clear.’

  ‘Understood, pilot commander.’

  ‘Gunners, keep watch. We can expect hostile fighters from here on in.’

  Gasko, Salk and Plotnik chorused their readiness.

  ‘Crew, we are at flight station amber. Flight station red expected in– Radin?’

  ‘Ten minutes and five seconds.’

  ‘You all heard that. We’re going to make those traitor scum drink seawater.’

  Neriah, while keeping both hands on the control stick and his eyes scanning the blue, keyed voice-to-voice to Radin. ‘Listen on the vox-channel. Wrath Flight should be making their run soon. Let me know if you hear anything.’

  They flew on in silent concentration until, from the slight tremor Neriah saw with his peripheral vision, he knew that Radin had heard something.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked over his direct channel. ‘They’re supposed to be keeping vox silence.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound good,’ said Radin.

  ‘Patch it through.’

  ‘…size of that thing… Contacts, twelve o’clock… Torpedo running… miss… Can’t lose them…’

  ‘I’ve heard enough,’ said Neriah. Squinting ahead, where blue met blue, was that…?

  It looked like land.

  ‘Auspex,’ he said to the navigator.

  ‘Contacts,’ said Radin. He stared at his screen. ‘No, contact. It’s the size of a city.’

  Rising up on the horizon, battlemented, turreted, prowed and proud, was the carrier. It was the size of a floating island, tended and surrounded by a flotilla of craft that, in comparison, looked no more than rowing boats, but were themselves cruiser- or even battleship-class. Next to the carrier, they seemed but toys.

  ‘Flight station red.’ Neriah adjusted the mask over his face.

  ‘It’s buzzing like a rockmite mound over there,’ said Radin, his face lit orange by the auspex streaks.

  ‘I always liked poking them when I was a kid,’ said Neriah, ‘and running away before they could catch me. Time to do it again.’ He took a breath. ‘Going to flight level zero.’

  ‘Glory Two and Glory Three following.’ The report was from Plotnik.

  Neriah banked beside a mile-long wave, running its ridge, the exhaust from the ramjets sending up trailing water spumes that would look, to any carrier deck observers, as if the wave were cresting.

  Hiding behind the wall of water, even the vast bulk of the Chaos carrier was out of sight. More importantly, Spirit of St Pascale, with Glory Two and Glory Three following close in its wake, was invisible to the carrier and its surrounding convoy, the heretics distracted by the attacks coming in from the first two flights.

  Neriah glanced left, saw his wing tip all but slicing the water, and eased the control stick over.

  ‘Bane Flight attacking,’ Radin reported.

  ‘Acknowledged.’ Neriah’s glance flicked to the altimeter, then back to the blue. According to the instrument, he was running below sea level. Neriah grinned. He continued shooting the wave trough, using it as the attack channel, and pulling Glory Two and Glory Three along behind him, the water flattened out by the ramjet wake.

  ‘Bane Two reports hit,’ said Radin.

  ‘Acknowledged.’

  ‘Bane Three down.’

  Neriah said nothing. He glanced at the auspex trace. The wave trough was beginning to lead him away. He was going to have to rise above wave height and vector towards the target.

  ‘Contact! Five o’clock.’ The signal was from Plotnik.

  ‘Contact. Hell Blades. Nine o’clock.’ Salk, the top turret gunner.

  ‘Engage.’ Neriah had his gaze fixed on the blue, his peripheral vision tracking the auspex reading of the carrier and its fleet, while another part of his mind, working in the pilot’s cold calm of vector space, calculated angles of approach and attack runs.

  ‘Shivkin, you ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Torpedo ready, pilot commander.’

  Even as he heard the answer, Neriah felt the percussive thump of h
eavy bolter fire. Salk had opened up. A moment later, the counterpoint judder of the tail gunner. The water in front of Spirit suddenly thrashed, fountaining in a diagonal stream, as a burst of fire raked just clear of the plane’s nose, the spray rattling against the canopy like talons.

  Radin ducked, despite himself, but Neriah barely blinked, his focus so tight on the wave tops that he hardly registered the spray.

  The guns fired again, the tenor thrum of the nose lascannons constant under the baritone and bass of the top and tail heavy bolters. Spirit of St Pascale resonated with them, the note different according to where in the fuselage they were located.

  Together, the three turrets formed a choir. They sang, their music making a bass threnody to the high-pitched chatter of the Chaos Hell Blades’ autocannons. It was a familiar melody, and one that allowed Neriah to concentrate on what he had to do: fly the plane to the target.

  ‘Call the vector.’ With the pursuit so close, Neriah had to keep Spirit flying low over the water.

  ‘Vector three-thirty degrees, on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.’

  Neriah caressed the control stick to the left, floating Spirit up to the top of the wave that they had been running alongside. As they reached the crest, they saw it. Radin gasped. Gasko swore. Neriah rode the plane down the rolling level, hiding it in another trough.

  Now, within visual, they could see what they were attacking: a fortress island, rising from the sea.

  How could you sink something like that?

  He began vectoring north-east across the line of travel, waiting for the final moment to turn for the approach run. Then, they would be running perpendicular to the wave front, flying over the top of the waves, a target for the full brunt of the anti-aircraft fire from the Chaos carrier.

  The brief glimpse over the wave tops had shown that the hits claimed by Wrath and Bane Flights had barely damaged the carrier. It was steaming onwards, as inexorable as a tsunami, bringing the full weight of its thousand aircraft to the battle for the southern ocean. It was their job to stop it.

  Seeing it, Neriah realised why the fleet commander was willing to sacrifice a flight of Marauders for the chance of stopping its progress. Any sacrifice would be worth making to send it under the sea. The Imperial Navy had nothing on Sagaraya to match this behemoth.