by Glen Cook
"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 expected. 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 under-the-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.
Horst (his preference) and I got on well, quickly advanced to first names. After familiarizing ourselves with the new equipment, we returned to regular patrols. Horst scattered no grit in the machinery. He performed his tasks-within-mission with clockwork precision, never straying beyond the borders of discipline...
He confessed, as we paused at the lip of Ginnunga Gap one morning, while walking to the catapults for launch, that he feared being grounded more than losing individuality to military conformity. Flying was the only thing his father hadn't programmed for him (the Commander had gotten him started), and he'd become totally enamored of the sport. Signing on with Ubichi had been the only way to stick with it after his father had managed his appointment to Academy; he'd refused, and been banished from paternal grace. He had to fly. Without that he'd have nothing. The Commander, he added, had meant what he said.
I think that was the first time I realized a man could be raised outwQild and still be deprived. We Old Earthers take a perverse, chauvinistic pride in our poverty and persecution-like, as the Commander once observed, Jews of Marrakech. (An allusion I spent months dredging: he'd read some obscure and ancient writers.) Our goals are so wholly materialistic that we can scarcely comprehend poverty of the spirit. That von Drachau, with wealth and social position, could feel he had less than I, was a stunning notion.
For him flying was an end, for me a means. Though I enjoyed it, each time I sat at catapult head credit signs danced in my head; so much base, plus per mission and per kill. If I did well I'd salvage some family, too. Horst's pay meant nothing. He wasted it fast as it came-I think to show contempt for the wealth from which he sprang. Though that had been honest money, prize and coup money from his father's successes against the Sangaree.
Steam pressure drove a glasteel piston along forty meters of glasteel cylinder; twenty seconds behind von Drachau I catapulted into the ink of the Gap and began feeling for the ups. For brief instants I could see him outlined against the aurora, flashing in and out of vision as he searched and circled. I spied him climbing, immediately turned to catch the same riser. Behind me came the rest of the squadron. Up we went in a spiral like moths playing tag in the night while reaching for the moons. Von Drachau found altitude and slipped from the up. I followed. At three thousand meters, with moonlight and aurora, it wasn't hard to see him. The four c
raft of my flight circled at ninety degree points while the rest of the squadron went north across the Gap. We'd slowly drop a thousand meters, then catch another up to the top. We'd stay in the air two hours (or we ran out of ammunition), then go down for an hour break. Five missions minimum.
First launch came an hour before dawn, long before the night fighters went down. Mornings were crowded. But by sunrise we seemed terribly alone while we circled down or climbed, watched the Gap for whales leaving the Harridans or the mantas that'd grown so numerous.
Daytimes almost every ship concentrated on keeping the whales north of the Gap. That grew more difficult as the density of their population neared the migratory. It'd be a while yet, maybe a month, but numbers and instinct would eventually overcome the fear our weapons had instilled. I couldn't believe we'd be able to stop them. The smaller herds of the 'tween years, yes, but not the lemming rivers that would come with winter. A Corporation imbued with any human charity would've been busy sealing mines and evacuating personnel. But Ubichi had none. In terms of financial costs, equipment losses, it was cheaper to fight, sacrificing inexpensive lives to salvage material made almost priceless by interstellar shipment.
VI
Signals from the ground, a searchlight fingering the earth and flashing three times rapidly. Rim sentries had spotted a whale in the direction the finger pointed. Von Drachau and I were front. We began circling down.
We'd dropped just five hundred meters when he wag-winged visual contact. I saw nothing but the darkness that almost always clogged the canyon. As wide as Old Earth's Grand Canyon and three times as deep, it was well lighted only around noon.
That was the first time I noticed his phenomenal vision. In following months he was to amaze me repeatedly. I honestly believe I was the better pilot, capable of outflying any manta, but his ability to find targets made him the better combat flyer.
The moment I wagged back he broke circle and dove. I'd've circled lower. If the whale was down in the Gap itself that might mean a three thousand meter fall. Pulling out would overstrain one's wings. Sailplanes, even the jackboot jobs we flew, are fragile machines never intended for stunt flying.
But I was wingman, responsible for protecting the attack pilot's rear. I winged over and followed, maintaining a constant five hundred meters between us. Light and shadow from clouds and mountains played over his ship, alternately lighting and darkening the personal devices he'd painted on. A death's-head grinned and winked...
I spied the whale. It was working directly toward Beadle. Size and coloring of the gasbag (oblate spheroid sixty meters long, patched in shades from pink to scarlet and sported with odd other colors at organ sites) indicated a juvenile of the Harkness species, that with the greatest potential for destruction. Triangular vanes protruding ten meters from muscle rings on the bag twitched and quivered as the monster strove to maintain a steady course. Atop it in a thin Mohawk swath swayed a copse of treelike organs believed to serve both plant-like and animal digestive and metabolic functions. Some may have been sensory. Beneath it sensory tentacles trailed, stirring fretfully like dreaming snakes on the head of Medusa. If any found food (and anything organic was provender for a Harkness), it'd anchor itself immediately. Hundreds more tentacles would descend and begin lifting edibles to mouths in a tiny head-body tight against the underside of the gasbag. There'd be a drizzling organic rainfall as the monster dumped ballast/waste. Migrating whale herds could devastate great swaths of countryside. Fortunately for Ubichi's operations, the mating seasons were infrequent.
The Harkness swelled ahead. Horst would be fingering his trigger ring, worrying his sights. I stopped watching for mantas and adjusted my dive so Horst wouldn't be in line when I fired...
Flashing lights, hasty, almost panicky. I read, then glanced out right and up, spied the manta pair. From high above the Harridans they arrowed toward the whale, tips and trailing edges of their wings rippling as they adjusted dive to each vagary of canyon air. But they were a kilometer above and would be no worry till we'd completed our pass. And the other two ships of our flight would be after them, to engage while Horst and I completed the primary mission.
The relationship between mantas and whales had never, to that time, been clearly defined. The mantas seemed to feed among the growths on whale backs, to attach themselves in mated pairs to particular adults, which they fiercely defended, and upon which they were apparently dependent. But nothing seemed to come the other way. The whales utterly ignored them, even as food. Whales ignored everything in the air, though, enduring our attacks as if they weren't happening. If not for the mantas, the extermination program would've been a cakewalk.
But mantas fought at every encounter, almost as if they knew what we were doing. A year earlier they'd been little problem. Then we'd been sending single flights after lone wandering whales, but as migratory pressures built the manta population had increased till we were forced to fight three or four battles to each whale attack-of which maybe one in twenty resulted in a confirmed kill. Frustrating business, especially since self-defense distracted so from our primary mission.
Luckily, the mantas had only one inefficient, if spectacular,
weapon, the lightning they hurled.
That fool von Drachau dropped flaps to give himself more firing time. Because I began overtaking him, I had to follow suit. My glider shuddered, groaned, and an ominous snap came from my right wing. But nothing fell apart.
Fog formed before Horst's craft, whipped back. He'd begun firing. His shells painted a tight bright pattern in the forest on the whale's back. Stupidly, I shifted aim to the same target. Von Drachau pulled out, flaps suddenly up, used his momentum to hurl himself up toward the diving manta pair, putting them in a pincer.
A jagged bite of lightning flashed toward von Drachau. I cursed. We'd plunged into a trap. Mantas had been feeding in the shelter of the whale's back organs. They were coming up to fight.
I'd begun firing an instant before the flash, putting my shells in behind Horst's. Before the water vapor from my cannon gas fogged my canopy I saw explosions digging into the gasbag. I started to stick back and fire at the mantas, but saw telltale ripples of blue fire beneath the yellow of my shells. The bag was going to blow. When the hydrogen went there'd be one hell of an explosion.
Following Horst meant suicide.
The prime purpose of the explosives was to drive cyanide fragments into whale flesh, but sometimes, as then, a too tight pattern breached the main bag-and hydrogen is as dangerous on Camelot as elsewhere.
I took my only option, dove. With luck the whale's mass would shadow me from the initial blast.
It did. But the tip of my right wing, that'd made such a grim noise earlier, brushed one of the monster's sensory tentacles. The jerk snapped it at the root. I found myself spinning down.
I rode it a while, both because I was stunned (I'd never been downed before, accidentally or otherwise) and because I wanted the craft to protect me from downblast.
The sun had risen sufficiently to illuminate the tips of the spires in the gap. They wheeled, jerked, reached up like angry claws, drawing rapidly closer. Despite the ongoing explosion, already shaking me, blistering the paint on my fuselage, I had to get out.
Canopy cooperated. In the old gliders they'd been notoriously sticky, costing many lives. This popped easily. I closed my eyes and jumped, jerking my ripcord as I did. Heat didn't bother me. My remaining wing took a cut at me, a last effort of fate to erase my life-tape, then the chute jerked my shoulders. I began to sway.
It was cold and lonely up there, and there was nothing I could do. I was no longer master of my fate. You would have to be an Old Farther near buying off to really feel the impact of that. Panicky, I peered up at the southern rim of the Gap-and saw what I'd hoped to see, the rescue balloon already on its way. It was a hot air job that rode safety lines payed out from winches at the edge. If I could be salvaged, it'd be managed. I patted my chest pockets to make sure I had my flares.
Only then did I rock my chute away so I could see what'd happened to von Drachau.
He was into it with three mantas, one badly wounded (the survivor of the pair from the Harkness-the other had died in the explosion). He got the wounded one and did a flap trick to turn inside the others. His shells went into the belly of one. It folded and fell. Then the rest of our flight was pursuing the survivor toward the Harridans.
I worried as burning pieces of whale fell past. Suppose one hit my chute?
But none did. I landed in snow deep in the Gap, after a cruel slide down an almost vertical rock face, then set out my first flare. While I tried to stay warm, I thought about von Drachau.
I'd gone along with his attack because I'd had neither choice, nor time to think, nor any way to caution him. But that precipitous assault had been the sort that'd earned him his reputation. And it'd cost again. Me.
Didn't make me feel any better to realize I'd been as stupid in my target selection.
A rational, unimpetuous attack would've gone in level with the whale, from behind, running along its side. Thus Horst could've stayed out of sight of the mantas riding it, and I could've avoided the explosion resulting from a tight fire pattern in the thin flesh of the back. Shells laid along the whale's flanks would've spread enough cyanide to insure a kill.
Part my fault, but when the rescue balloon arrived I was so mad at Horst I couldn't talk.
VII
Von Drachau met the rescue balloon, more concerned and contrite than I'd've credited. I piled out steaming, with every intention of denting his head, but he ran to me like a happy puppy, bubbling apologies, saying he'd never had a chance at a whale...righteous outrage became grumpiness. He was only nineteen, emotionally ten.
There were reports to be filed but I was in no mood. I headed for barracks and something alcoholic.