‘Five, break, break!’ ordered Quint.
Larice sidestepped, viffing up to let the enemy fire paint the air beneath her. A Hell Blade had broken from attacking the Navy flyers and turned into her.
‘He’s good,’ she said, dancing through the air in a dazzling series of rolls, banks and vectored slips. He stuck with her, firing bursts of las as he tried to anticipate her next move. She put her plane into a shallow climb, and slammed the throttle back as the air brakes flared. She was risking a stall, but her manoeuvre worked and the bat zipped past her port wing. She took a snap shot, jinking sideways and ripping her fire along its wing and hull.
Its wing snapped off and it rolled uncontrollably, spinning down towards the ice and leaving a plume of black smoke in its wake.
Five on five, suddenly the odds were evened.
Or they would have been if Quint hadn’t already splashed another two bats.
Two more Navy birds were down, and Larice didn’t see any chutes. Not that the odds of survival punching out over the ocean ice were much better than going down in flames. She’d hit the silk once before and it wasn’t an experience she cared to repeat.
A las-round smacked her Thunderbolt. She jinked low, rolling to bring her guns back on target. She had a fraction of a second to act. Her quads barked, and booming thunder spat from her craft. The deflection was bad and her shots went over the bat. Correction, another burst. This time the bat blew apart in a shredding flicker of mauve and crimson.
She turned hard, pushing the envelope in the race to get behind the last bats. She grunted as heavy g-forces pressed on her, despite the grip position supposed to make it easier to bear. The rubber of her mask flattened against her face, and she tasted the metallic quality of her air mix.
She rolled and pulled hard, feathering her air brakes and flattening out as she caught a flash of a Hell Blade’s vector flare.
‘Got you,’ she hissed, unleashing a brilliant salvo. The Hell Blade blew apart, its engine exploding as her bolts blasted it from the air. Her guns coughed dry, the battery drained, and she switched back to her quads.
‘Apostle, break, break!’ shouted a voice she didn’t recognise.
Larice hauled on the stick and threw out her tail rudder, twisting her plane into a tight loop. A blitz of tracers flew past her port side, a single shell kissing the rear quarter of her canopy and crazing the toughened glass.
She snapped left and right, hunting the bat that had her.
‘On your seven,’ said the voice.
‘I see it,’ she said, pulling into the Hell Blade’s turn and opening out the throttle as she viffed in a jagged sidestep. The bat matched her turn, pushing her outwards, and she knew there was more than likely another aircraft waiting to take the kill shot. Instead of playing that game, she threw her plane around, using the vectors to pull a near one-eighty and reverse her thrust. The pressure pulled the cracks in the canopy wider.
The pursuing Hell Blade filled her canopy and she mashed the trigger, feeling the percussive recoil from the heavy autocannons mounted in the nose. The Hell Blade viffed up over her burst. It had her and there was nothing she could do.
A camo-green shape zipped over her canopy, quad cannons blazing.
The bat ripped in two. Black smoke and a blooming fireball blew outwards. Larice threw her Thunderbolt into a screamingly tight turn and inverted to take the brunt of the explosion on her underside. Air was driven from her lungs, and her vision greyed at the force of the turn. Her fuselage lurched, and hammering blows of metal on metal thudded along its length as debris from the Hell Blade struck her bird.
Warning lights and buzzers filled the canopy. She flipped over, restoring level flight.
Larice loosened the throttle. Her breathing eased and she screwed her eyes shut for a second to throw off the greyness lurking at the edge of her vision. She tasted blood and pulled off her mask, spitting into the footwell.
A dark shape appeared off her starboard wing. She looked up to see the last surviving Navy flyer of Indigo Flight.
‘You okay there?’ said the pilot. ‘Your bird’s pretty banged up.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, though the stick felt sluggish and unresponsive in her hand. It galled her that she’d needed an assist, but it had been a hell of a move coming in over her to take out that bat. Only a pilot supremely sure of himself would try something that risky.
One wrong move from either pilot would have seen them both splashed.
Quint pulled in on her port wing, the ivory of his aircraft untouched and pristine.
‘Indigo Flight, identify,’ said Quint.
‘Flight Lieutenant Erzyn Laquell, 235th Naval Attack Wing,’ said the pilot with a thumbs-up. ‘You’re the Apostles. It’s an honour to fly with you.’
‘You’re not flying with us,’ said Quint. ‘You just happen to be sharing my sky.’
‘Of course I am,’ returned Laquell. ‘I’ll be sure to tell my pilots to steer clear next time one of your high and mighty Apostles needs an assist.’
Though a glossy black visor and rubber air-mix mask covered Laquell’s face, she just knew he was grinning a cocksure grin.
‘Keep talking like that and I’ll make sure you never fly again,’ promised Quint.
Before Laquell could answer, a flurry of winking lights appeared on the auspex and Larice blinked away moisture to be sure she was seeing what it was telling her correctly.
‘Seven, are you getting this?’
‘Affirmative.’
The auspex was a mass of returns. From their speed and height they were clearly fighters. They weren’t squawking on any Imperial frequency, and that made them bad news. Razors most likely. Or more Hell Blades.
‘Ten more bats,’ she said. ‘High and coming in fast. Too many to fight.’
‘Agreed,’ answered Quint. His plane dipped below her wing before coming level once more. He chopped his hand down towards the belly of her Thunderbolt.
‘Five, you’re leaking fluid,’ he said ‘Check your fuel status.’
Larice scanned her gauges, watching with dismay as the numbers unspooled like an altimeter in a power dive. She tapped the dial with her finger, but the numbers kept going.
‘Frig it! I’m losing fuel fast. Must’ve taken a hit to the feed lines.’
‘Do you have enough to return to Coriana?’
‘Negative, Seven,’ said Larice. The airfield where the 101st were stationed was way beyond her range now. ‘At the speed I’m losing fuel, I’ll be lucky to get down in one piece, let alone back to Coriana. I’ll need an alternate.’
‘I’ll get your wounded bird down,’ said Laquell, doing a passable job at keeping the smugness from his tone. ‘Rimfire is only a hundred and ten kilometres east.’
Rimfire was the designation for the airbase set up to face the Archenemy’s newly opened flank. It was a rush job, hardened hangars cut into the ice and honeycomb landing strips laid out on the Ice by Munitorum pioneers. Its tower facilities were mobile command vehicles and its auspex coverage came from airborne surveyor craft originally designed to hunt for ground minerals. Flyers based at Coriana joked that the pilots based at Rimfire were either too dumb or too reckless to be based anywhere else.
‘Will you make it that far?’ asked Quint. ‘That’s a valuable piece of machinery you’re flying and we need all the aircraft we have.’
‘Thanks for your concern,’ replied Larice. ‘I’ll be flying on fumes and the Emperor’s mercy by then, but, yeah, I think I can make it.’
‘Then head for Rimfire. I’ll see you back at Coriana if you live. Seven out.’
Quint’s plane peeled off, leaving a slick of vapour-white fumes in his wake. His plane surged back towards the Breakers and within seconds it was lost to sight.