by Glen Cook
*This paragraph is an editorial insertion from a private letter by Salvador del Gado. Dogfight believes it clarifies del Gado’s personal feelings toward his former wingman. His tale, taken separately, while unsympathetic, strives for an objectivity free of his real jealousies. It is significant that he mentions Hartmann and Galland together with von Richtoffen; undoubtedly they, as he when compared with von Drachau, were flyers better than the Red Knight, yet they, and del Gado, lack the essential charisma of the flying immortals. Also, von Richtoffen and von Drachau died at the stick; Hartmann and Galland went on to more prosaic things, becoming administrators, commanders of the Luftwaffe. Indications are that del Gado’s fate with Ubichi Corporation’s Armed Action Command will be much the same.
-Dogfight
II
The signals from Clonninger came before dawn, while only two small moons and the aurora lighted the sky. But sunrise followed quickly. By the time the convoy neared Beadle Station (us), Camelot’s erratic, blotchy-faced sun had cleared the eastern horizon. The reserve squadron began catapulting into the Gap’s frenetic drafts. The four of us on close patrol descended toward the dirigibles. The lightning in the Harridans had grown into a Ypres cannonade. A net of jagged blue laced together the tips of the copper towers in the Gap. An elephant stampede of angry clouds rumbled above the mountains. The winds approached the edge of being too vicious for flight.
Flashing light from ground control, searchlight fingers stabbing north and east, pulsating. Mantas sighted. We waggle-winged acknowledgment, turned for the Gap and updrafts. My eyes had been on the verge of rebellion, demanding sleep, but in the possibility of combat weariness temporarily faded.
Black specks were coming south low against the daytime verdigris of the Gap, a male-female pair in search of a whale. It was obvious how they’d been named. Anyone familiar with Old Earth’s sea creatures could see a remarkable resemblance to the manta ray-though these had ten meter bodies, fifteen meter wingspans, and ten meter tails tipped by devil’s spades of rudders. From a distance they appeared black, but at attack range could be seen as deep, uneven green on top and lighter, near olive beneath. They had ferocious habits. More signals from the ground. Reserve ships would take the mantas. Again we turned, overflew the convoy.
It was the biggest ever sent north, fifteen dirigibles, one fifty meters and larger, dragging the line from Clonninger at half kilometer intervals, riding long reaches of running cable as their sailmen struggled to tack them into a facing wind. The tall glasteel pylons supporting the cable track were ruby towers linked by a single silver strand of spider silk running straight to Clonninger’s hills.
We circled wide and slow at two thousand meters, gradually dropping lower. When we got down to five hundred we were replaced by a flight from the reserve squadron while we scooted to the Gap for an updraft. Below us ground crews pumped extra hydrogen to the barrage balloons, lifting Beadle’s vast protective net another hundred meters so the convoy could slide beneath. Switchmen and winchmen hustled about with glass and plastic tools in a dance of confusion. We didn’t have facilities for receiving more than a half dozen zeppelins-though these, fighting the wind, might come up slowly enough to be handled.
More signals. More manta activity over the Gap, the reserve squadron’s squabble turning into a brawl. The rest of my squadron had come back from the Harridans at a run, a dozen mantas in pursuit. Later I learned our ships had found a small windwhale herd and while one flight busied their mantas the other had destroyed the whales. Then, ammunition gone, they ran for home, arriving just in time to complicate traffic problems.
I didn’t get time to worry it. The mantas, incompletely fed, spotted the convoy. They don’t distinguish between whale and balloon. They went for the zeppelins.
What followed becomes dulled in memory, so swiftly did it happen and so little attention did I have to spare. The air filled with mantas and lightning, gliders, smoking rockets, explosions. The brawl spread till every ship in the wing was involved. Armorers and catapult crews worked to exhaustion trying to keep everything up. Ground batteries seared one another with backblast keeping a rocket screen between the mantas and stalled convoy-which couldn’t warp in while the entrance to the defense net was tied up by fighting craft (a problem unforeseen but later corrected by the addition of emergency entryways). They winched their running cables in to short stay and waited it out. Ground people managed to get barrage balloons with tangle tails out to make the mantas’ flying difficult.
Several of the dirigibles fought back. Stupid, I thought. Their lifting gas was hydrogen, screamingly dangerous. To arm them seemed an exercise in self-destruction.
So it proved. Most of our casualties came when a ship loaded with ground troops blew up, leaking gas ignited by its own rockets. One hundred eighty-three men burned or fell to their deaths.
Losses to mantas were six pilots and the twelve man crew of a freighter.
III
Von Drachau made his entry into JG XIII history just as I dropped from my sailship to the packed earth parking apron. His zepp was the first in and, having vented gas, had been towed to the apron to clear the docking winches. I’d done three sorties during the fighting, after the six of regular patrol. I’d seen my wingman crash into a dragline pylon, was exhausted, and possessed by an utterly foul mood. Von Drachau hit dirt long-haired, unkempt, and complaining, and I was there to greet him. “What do you want to be when you grow up, von Drachau?”
Not original, but it caught him off guard. He was used to criticism by administrators, but pilots avoid antagonism. One never knows when a past slight might mean hesitation at the trigger ring and failure to blow a manta off one’s tail. Von Drachau’s hatchet face opened and closed, goldfishlike, and one skeletal hand came up to an accusatory point, but he couldn’t come back.
We’d had no real contact during the Sickle Islands campaign. Considering his self-involvement, I doubted he knew who I was--and didn’t care if he did. I stepped past and greeted acquaintances from my old squadron, made promises to get together to reminisce, then retreated to barracks. If there were any justice at all, I’d get five or six hours for surviving the morning.
I managed four, a record for the week, then received a summons to the office of Commander McClennon, a retired Navy man exiled to command of JG XIII because he’d been so outspoken about Corporation policy.
(The policy that irked us all, and which was the root of countless difficulties, was Ubichi’s secret purpose on Camelot. Ubichi deals in unique commodities. It was sure that Camelot operations were recovering one such, but fewer than a hundred of a half million employees knew what. The rest were there just to keep the wind-whales from interfering. Even we mercenaries from Old Earth didn’t like fighting for a total unknown.)
Commander McClennon’s outer office was packed, old faces from the wing and new from the convoy.
Shortly, McClennon appeared and announced that the wing had been assigned some gliders with new armaments, low velocity glass barrel gas pressure cannon, pod of four in the nose of a ship designed to carry the weapon system... immediate interest. Hitherto we’d flown sport gliders juryrigged to carry crude rockets, the effectiveness of which lay in the cyanide shell surrounding the warhead. Reliability, poor; accuracy, erratic. A pilot was nearly as likely to kill himself as a whale. But what could you do when you couldn’t use the smallest scrap of metal? Even a silver filling could kill you there. The wildly oscillating and unpredictable magnetic ambience could induce sudden, violent electrical charges. The only metal risked inside Camelot’s van Aliens was that in the lighters running to and from the surface station at the south magnetic pole, where few lines of force were cut and magnetic weather was reasonably predictable.
Fifty thousand years ago the system passed through the warped space surrounding a black hole.
Theory says that’s the reason for its eccentricities, but I wonder. Maybe it explains why all bodies in the system have magnetic fields offset from the body centers, th
e distance off an apparent function of size, mass and rate of rotation, but it doesn’t tell me why the fields exist (planetary magnetism is uncommon), nor why they pulsate randomly.
But I digress, and into areas where I have no competence. I should explain what physicists don’t understand? We were in the Commander’s office and he was selecting pilots for the new ships.
Everyone wanted one. Chances for survival appeared that much better.
McClennon’s assignments seemed indisputable, the best flyers to the new craft, four flights of four, though those left with old ships were disappointed.
I suffered disappointment myself. A blockbuster dropped at the end, after I’d resigned myself to continuing in an old craft.
“Von Drachau, Horst-Johann,” said McClennon, peering at his roster through antique spectacles, one of his affectations, “attack pilot. Del Gado, Salvador Martin, wingman.”
Me? With von Drachau? I’d thought the old man liked me, thought he had a good opinion of my ability... why’d he want to waste me? Von Drachau’s wingman? Murder.
I was so stunned I couldn’t yell let me out!
“Familiarization begins this afternoon, on Strip Three. First flight checkouts in the morning.” A few more words, tired exhortations to do our best, all that crap that’s been poured on men at the front from day one, then dismissal. Puzzled and upset, I started for the door.
“Del Gado. Von Drachau.” The executive officer. “Stay a minute. The Commander wants to talk to you.”
IV
My puzzlement thickened as we entered McClennon’s inner office, a Victorian-appointed, crowded yet comfortable room I hadn’t seen since I’d paid my first day respects. There were bits of a stamp collection scattered, a desk becluttered, presentation holographs of Navy officers that seemed familiar, another of a woman of the pale thin martyr type, a model of a High Seiner spaceship looking like it’d been cobbled together from plastic tubing and children’s blocks. McClennon had been the Naval officer responsible for bringing the Seiners into Confederation in time for the Three Races War. His retirement had been a protest against the way the annexation was handled.
Upset as I was I had little attention for surroundings, nor cared what made the Old Man tick.
Once alone with us, he became a man who failed to fit my conception of a commanding officer. His face, which usually seemed about to slide off his skullbones with the weight of responsibility, spread a warm smile. “Johnnyl” He thrust a wrinkled hand at von Drachau. He knew the kid?
My new partner’s reaction was a surprise, too. He seemed awed and deferential as he extended his own hand. “Uncle Tom.”
McClennon turned. “I’ve known Johnny since the night he wet himself on my dress blacks just before the Grand Admiral’s Ball. Good old days at Luna Command, before the last war.” He chuckled. Von Drachau blushed. And I frowned in renewed surprise. I hadn’t known von Drachau well, but had never seen or heard anything to suggest he was capable of being impressed by anyone but himself.
“His father and I were Academy classmates. Then served in the same ships before I went into intelligence. Later we worked together in operations against the Sangaree.”
Von Drachau didn’t sit down till invited. Even though McClennon, in those few minutes, exposed more of himself than anyone in the wing had hitherto seen, I was more interested in the kid. His respectful, almost cowed attitude was completely out of character.
“Johnny,” said McClennon, leaning back behind his desk and slowly turning a drink in his hand, “you don’t come with recommendations. Not positive, anyway. We going to go through that up here?”
Von Drachau stared at the carpet, shrugged, reminded me of myself as a seven year old called to explain some specially noxious misdeed to my creche-father. It became increasingly obvious that McClennon was a man with whom von Drachau was unwilling to play games. I’d heard gruesome stories of his behavior with the CO JGIV.
“You’ve heard the lecture already, so I won’t give it. I do understand, a bit. Anyway, discipline here, compared to Derry or the Islands, is almost nonexistent. Do your job and you won’t have it bad. But don’t push. I won’t let you endanger lives. Something to think about. This morning’s scrap left me with extra pilots. I can ground people who irritate me. Could be a blow to a man who loved flying.”
Von Drachau locked gazes With the Commander. Rebellion stirred but he only nodded.
McClennon turned again. “You don’t like this assignment.” Not a question. My face must’ve been a giveaway. “Suicidal, you think? You were in JG IV a while. Heard all about Johnny. But you don’t know him. I do, well enough to say he’s got potential-if we can get him to realize aerial fighting’s a team game. By which I mean his first consideration must be bringing himself, his wingman, and his ship home intact.” Von Drachau grew red. He’d not only lost seven sailships during the Sickle Islands offensive, he’d lost three wing-men. Dead. “It’s hard to remember you’re part of a team while attacking. You know that yourself, del Gado. So be patient. Help me make something out of Johnny.”
I tried to control my face, failed.
“Why me, eh? Because you’re the best flyer I’ve got. You can stay with him if anyone can.
“I know, favoritism. I’m taking special care. And that’s wrong. You’re correct, right down the line. But I can’t help myself. Don’t think you could either, in my position. Enough explanation.
That’s the way it’s going to be. If you can’t handle it, let me know. I’ll find someone who can, or I’ll ground him. One thing I mean to do: send him home alive.”
Von Drachau vainly tried to conceal his embarrassment and anger. I felt for him. Wouldn’t like being talked about that way myself-though McClennon was doing the right thing, putting his motives on display, up front, so there’d be no surprises later on, and establishing for von Drachau the parameters allowed him. The Commander was an Old Earther himself, and on that battleground had learned that honesty is a weapon as powerful as any in the arsenal of deceit.
“I’ll try,” I replied, though with silent reservations. I’d have to do some handy self-examination before I bought the whole trick bag.
“That’s all I ask. You can go, then. Johnny and I have some catching up to do.”
I returned to barracks in a daze. There I received condolences from squadron mates motivated, I suppose, by relief at having escaped the draft themselves.
Tired though I was, I couldn’t sleep till I’d thought everything through.
In the end, of course, I decided the Old Man had earned a favor. (This’s a digression from von Drachau’s story except insofar as it reflects the thoughts that led me to help bring into being the one really outstanding story in Ubichi’s Camelot operation.) McClennon was an almost archetypically remote, secretive, Odin/Christ figure, an embastioned lion quietly licking private wounds in the citadel of his office, sharing his pain and privation with no one. But personal facts that had come flitting on the wings of rumor made it certain he was a rare old gentleman who’d paid his dues and asked little in return. He’d bought off for hundreds of Old Earthers, usually by pulling wires to Service connections. And, assuming the stories are true, the price he paid to bring the Starfishers into Confederation, at a time when they held the sole means by which the Three Races War could be won, was the destruction of a deep relationship with the only woman he’d ever loved, the pale Seiner girl whose holo portrait sat like an icon on his desk. Treason and betrayal. Earthman who spoke with forked tongue. She might’ve been the mother of the son he was trying to find in Horst-Johann. But his Isaac never came back from the altar of the needs of the race. Yes, he’d paid his dues, and at usurous rates.
He had something coming. I’d give him the chance he wanted for the boy... Somewhere during those hours my Old Earther’s pragmatism lapsed. Old Number One, survival, took a temporary vacation.
It felt good.
V
Getting along with von Drachau didn’t prove as difficult as e
xpected. During the following week I was the cause of more friction than he. I kept reacting to the image of the man rumor and prejudice had built in my mind, not to the man in whose presence I was. He was much less arrogant and abrasive than I’d heard-though gritty with the usual outworlder’s contempt for the driving need to accomplish characteristic of Old Earthers. But I’d become accustomed to that, even understood. Outworlders had never endured the hopelessness and privation of life on the motherworld. They’d never understand what buying off really meant. Nor did any care to learn.
There’re just two kinds of people on Old Earth, butchers and bovines. No one starves, no one freezes, but those are the only positives of life in the Social Insurance warrens. Twenty billion unemployed sardines. The high point of many lives is a visit to Confederation Zone (old Switzerland), where government and corporations maintain their on-planet offices and estates and allow small bands of citizens to come nose the candy store window and look at the lifestyle of the outworlds... then send them home with apathy overcome by renewed desperation.
All Old Earth is a slum/ghetto surrounding one small, stoutly defended bastion of wealth and privilege. That says it all, except that getting out is harder than from any historical ghetto.
It’s not really what Old Earth outworlders think of when they dust off the racial warm heart and talk about the motherworld. What they’re thinking of is Luna Command, Old Earth’s moon and the seat of Confederation government. All they have for Old Earth itself is a little shame-faced underthe-table welfare money... bitter. The only resource left is human life, the cheapest of all. The outworlds have little use for Terrans save for work like that on Camelot. So bitter. I shouldn’t be. I’ve bought off. Not my problem anymore.