“More than you were expecting…?” Thorne queried with a grin, also speaking in German.
“How could I have expected this?” Ritter replied finally, roused from his stupor by the Australian’s words. “Nothing I’ve ever seen comes close to this. This aircraft,” he pointed at the Lightning as it stood in the dark shadows beside the Galaxy’s nose. “This is a fighter… I can tell by the look of it…” As Thorne nodded silently, the pilot picked out the missiles hanging beneath its wings. “This aircraft fired on my pilots… these rockets are guided somehow…!”
“Exactly that… yes,” Thorne agreed as Ritter began to move slowly past the F-35E and on toward the Galaxy and tanker behind it.
“Please tell me these are not bombers!” The concern in the statement was reaclass="underline" something of such an immense size could reasonably be assumed to carry a great many bombs.
“Transport aircraft… like your Tante Ju.”
“This is nothing like our Tante Ju!” Ritter corrected instantly, shaking his head as emphasis. He took in the raised nose cone on the C-5B and the open loading ramp at its rear, and made a quick connection. “More like our Gigants… on a grand scale!”
“So you’ve called them ‘Gigants’ like the Me-323s in Realtime?” Thorne observed under his breath with interest. Hindsight had received many reports of the new Arado transport aircraft replacing the Ju-52/3m tri-motors on the front lines, and had instantly recognised them to be copies of the Fairchild C-123 Provider that had been their inspiration. “…plagiarising bastards…” he added for his own benefit, but Ritter was far too absorbed to notice.
“The one at the rear… it carries cargo also?”
“Cargo and fueclass="underline" it can refuel aircraft in flight from the boom beneath its tail, or from pods under its wings. The fuel it carries could take it and a fighter escort around with world.”
“Again, I see American insignia! How can this be? This is more than we could ever have expected was possible across the Atlantic!”
“I wouldn’t worry too much just yet,” Thorne gave a grin and clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder, regaining his full attention. “Come on… there’s much more to see…”
The Luftwaffe pilot’s face was a mask of awe, his eyes snapping this way and that as he followed Thorne up the Galaxy’s forward loading ramp and on into to the cargo bay past another pair of armed guards. The forward section of the aircraft was stacked almost floor-to-ceiling with crates and metal boxes of varying sizes that gave little indication as to their contents, while strip lighting stretched all the way along the ceiling of the cargo bay, bathing everything in its stark illumination. Thorne led the man to a flight of stairs just inside the ramp that took them up to the Galaxy’s flight deck, behind which was the seating for Hindsight personnel, and beyond that Thorne’s small ‘office’ with the PC and media storage racks. The computer itself was already running in stand-by mode, with a Windows screensaver floating here and there across the LCD screen.
“Have a seat, Herr Oberstleutnant,” Thorne offered with an extended hand, finding it difficult to keep the sharpness of his accent from increasing as his own nervousness and tension began to build substantially. His German probably wouldn’t prove fluent enough for him to completely explain some of the concepts he wanted to discuss, and the task at hand was going to be difficult enough without him having to repeat things because Ritter couldn’t understand an overly nasal, Australian ‘twang’.
“I somehow have the feeling I shall need one,” Ritter inclined his head in acknowledgement as he stepped forward and seated himself. “This will be a long interview?”
“Not necessarily,” Thorne replied with a grimace, “but it’s probably not gonna to be an easy one… for either of us… particularly you, I’m afraid.” He leaned one hip against the desk as the pilot swivelled to face him with a sharp expression. Thorne took a deep breath before continuing. “Let’s get something straight for a start: my name’s Max Thorne, but I’m not an officer… not really. This rank I’m wearing is kind of an honorary thing that enables me to get my job done easier.”
“I’d suspected as much,” Ritter mused, nodding thoughtfully. “You do not move or act with the regimen or pomposity of an officer of such high rank. You were an officer once, I think… you have the bearing required… but I think that was a long time ago, yes…?”
“Got it in one,” Thorne admitted, a little surprised by the man’s acuity. “That’s a pretty sharp assessment there… what gave me away?”
“The role of ‘Commanding Officer’ doesn’t sit easily on your shoulders,” Ritter explained his observations after a little thought. “You maintain the façade well when surrounded by your men, but quickly revert to a more natural, relaxed persona when among equals, as we are now.”
“That obvious, huh…?” Thorne grinned, inwardly pleased the German considered him an ‘equal’: that in itself was an important statement. “I was an officer once, as you guessed: many years ago, I was a squadron leader with the Royal Australian Air Force.”
“I knew it… a pilot!” Ritter smiled also, pleased his suspicions had been vindicated. “You’ve shown nothing other than honour and integrity so far, and this seems fitting for an officer of the Australian Luftwaffe…!” His use of the word ‘Luftwaffe’ instead of ‘air force’ caused Thorne to wince a little, and drew a wry smile. “You flew fighters, yes?”
The Australian nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“Hah! This is a man I can trust, here!” The pilot actually laughed: something was falling into place exactly in accordance with Ritter’s deductions, and that pleased him greatly. It never for a moment entered his head that Thorne might be lying in order to get him ‘on side’… he was far too shrewd a judge of character to think the man mightn’t be telling the truth. That last statement, light-hearted as it was, also made Thorne feel a good deal better. Above and beyond his intention to put the German pilot to use in their plans, he was also warming to the man as an individual, and was reassured by the man’s willingness to trust him in return.
“The problem isn’t so much what I used to do,” Thorne changed the subject, deciding it was time to get on with what he’d brought Ritter to Alternate for. “It’s more about when I used to do it…”
The play on words slipped past Ritter’s comprehension of English, and he shrugged and shook his head almost apologetically, causing Thorne to repeat the statement as best he could in German.
“I… I still don’t understand what you’re implying,” Ritter was forced to admit, almost feeling embarrassment, as if the meaning of the Australian’s words should be perfectly obvious to anyone else.
“Over the last two days, you’ve seen the kind of technology we have here, yes…?” He paused for a moment, allowing the man to nod silently in agreement. “All quite impressive no doubt… although you’ve already proven it to be quite vulnerable. Let me tell you something of the aircraft you shot down…” Thorne continued, adjusting his stance as he began to speak in earnest. “The Americans call it a Lockheed-Martin F-22A Raptor, although you’ll not find it listed anywhere on the books of the Lockheed or Martin corporations at the present time. Its role was that of ‘air superiority’ fighter — you might call it an ‘interceptor’ — and it could perform that role admirably. That Raptor was able to fly around three thousand kilometres on internal fuel alone, and was capable of travelling at almost twice the speed of sound — almost two thousand kilometres per hour at high altitude. It was also invisible to radar to all intents and purposes.