“They’re lost…?” Reuters asked finally, meaning Schwarz and Hauser in the Flanker. His voice thick with tension, and the slow, lifeless shake of Schiller’s head struck at the Reichsmarschall’s heart as much as the reply that came with it.
“…Sentry and the tanker…” he took a breath before continuing, allowing the unthinkable situation to register in the others’ minds and sink in. “Wuppertal lost contact fifteen minutes ago at about the same time an emergency data-dump came through. The decoded information indicates they picked up a missile launch from close range – there was no time to react. They picked up nothing before that…no enemy aircraft at all…yet whatever it was launched from within twenty kilometres. There was a fleeting return from something at the moment of launch detection, but it was gone again before they could identify…” he shrugged. “Schenke and the rest of them at Wuppertal just don’t know. One moment, they were there… the next they were… gone…”
“Hawk-Three and -Four…?” Müller had to ask, but was afraid of the answer that might come.
“Probably landing as we speak…confirmed back over German airspace twenty minutes ago.” There was little relief in that small piece of good news.
“Should we send them back out…?” Müller ventured. “They’re already armed – they just need refuelling… they could follow back down the track of whatever it was and perhaps overhaul it…?” His gaze turned to Reuters as he voiced the idea, as did Schiller’s, and for a moment there was no reaction.
“No…” the Reichsmarschall finally stated with soft certainty as he met both men’s gaze each in turn, and then repeated with more volume and strength. “No…we do nothing… yet…”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Kurt?” Müller reasoned carefully. “They’ve hurt us badly…twice…in just twenty-four hours. If we let Hindsight keep the initiative now, we might actually end up with a real battle on our hands…”
“No, Joachim…” the reply wasn’t angry, but would accept no argument nevertheless. “Sending our last Realtime fighter jets back into danger against aircraft invisible to radar, without knowing exactly what they have, there would be playing even further into their hands. Raptor…F-35 Lightning…whatever they have there closed to within spitting distance of an AWACS aircraft with a radar antenna nine fucking metres wide without anyone seeing it. Those Flankers are multi-role fighters, not interceptors – one of them wouldn’t stand a chance against an F-35 in a stand up fight, let alone against a fucking Raptor!” He shook his head slowly, following his own instincts. “We wait until we get the images from the recon pod and we know what they have: if there is an F-22 out there, an entire squadron of Flankers wouldn’t be enough! When we know, we can plan properly…” a cold, vicious light glowed then in his eyes “…and we can wipe them from the face of history!”
It was late into the night by the time Davies had landed once more at Scapa Flow, his F-22 parked safely on a hardstand alongside the F-35E. Thorne was standing on the flight line awaiting his arrival, and accompanied the pilot on the long walk back to the barracks.
“Hell of a thing that,” Davies observed solemnly, thinking more about what he’d just done from a moral perspective now the adrenalin of combat had drained away. “A whole bunch of people just like you and me were in those aircraft. It’s been nearly ten years since I fired a live shot at anyone, and it don’t get any easier to take afterward.”
“Yeah it’s a real ‘We ain’t in Kansas anymore’ thing, isn’t it,” Thorne agreed with nod as they walked. “The crew of one of those Flankers I hit went up with their plane last night…they were the first people I’ve ever killed…” He gave a faint smile that held little mirth. “Part of me – the rational part – thinks ‘fuck ‘em!’…they were out to get me too, and they deserved what they got…” he shrugged “…but they’re still two people I just killed…” The smile grew a little as he decided to lighten a mood that was becoming decidedly sombre. “Anyway, fuck it…we should be celebrating your safe return and another successful effort at sticking it up Reuters and his ‘boxhead’ mates! You’ll feel a shitload better once you’ve got a few JDs into you!”
“I heard that, boy!” Davies agreed, honestly laughing for the first time. “Ain’t gonna be a few though!”
“I’ll say one thing: first thing tomorrow there are going to be some serious changes to the air defences around here!” Thorne added on a more serious note as they continued walking. “They could have had us on toast today!”
“Think we’re safe for the rest of the night…?”
“Probably…we managed to get close enough to an AWACS aircraft to smoke it without even showing a blip on their screens…that’ll keep them guessing for a few hours at least…and once they get a look at the images from their recon flight and they know for sure we have two stealthy aircraft here, they’ll know better than to come at us half-cocked. They’ll be back all right, but it’ll take time for them to mass an assault of any strength.” He shook his head in mild frustration. “We’re going to be prepared next time, whenever that may be: we’ll need to break out all the BRTs we have in store, including back ups, and get them positioned so we get damn sight more warning than that. Next time they come… and they will… we need to be ready to hit ‘em with everything we have! If we lose the Galaxy and Extender, we might as well just give up altogether!” He halted in mid step, catching Davies unprepared, as another idea caught him.
“You okay, Max?”
“Yeah, I’m fine…” Thorne answered after a moment’s thought. “I just remembered something I should take care of before I hit the mess.” He clapped a friendly hand on the Texan’s shoulder. “Go and get a few into you, mate,” he suggested, then added: “And make sure Alec Trumbull gets a few into him as well…he might need ‘em.” He left Davies with a quizzical expression on his face and began striding purposefully back toward the flight line.
Thorne found Trumbull in the officer’s mess an hour later, sharing a few quiet drinks and some lively discussion with Nick, Eileen and Jack. The Texan pilot had indeed managed to consume a more than reasonable amount of the Jack Daniels Bourbon he and Eileen had ‘somehow’ managed to stash a healthy supply of somewhere on the Galaxy. The Jack Daniels distillery had only just restarted production in 1938 following Tennessee’s delayed repeal of prohibition five years after the laws were lifted nationally, and in the Realtime United States, production of whiskey would again be banned between 1942 through to the end of the war. Under such circumstances, it was unlikely in the extreme that the pair could’ve secured some local stock, so smuggling some back from the 21st century was the most obvious explanation for its presence.
“And then…” Davies stated with the careful manner of someone quite drunk “…I pulled a ‘high yo-yo’, got back onto that camel jockey’s tail, and fired a pair of Sidewinders right up the sonuvabitch’s ass!” The Texan was acting out the aerial manoeuvres of the recounted dogfight with his hands in the fashion of drunk, bragging pilots the world over as the glass of spirits in his right fist wavered this way and that and threatened to spill spectacularly.
“Incredible…!” Trumbull exclaimed, the statement carrying the utmost apparent sincerity, as he had absolutely no clue what a ‘High Yo-Yo’, ‘Camel Jockey’ or ‘Sidewinder’ were. He was of course far too much of a gentleman to let on, so he humoured the American pilot all the same and listened intently.
“There y’are, Max…!” Eileen Donelson smiled as he entered and raised her own glass in recognition of his arrival. “Can I buy y’ a drink? Only the best…” Thorne could tell she was also a little drunk – he could always when she was drunk – and truth be told everyone in the room had consumed a little too much alcohol while celebrating their second victory in as many days against their enemy.
“I’ll pass for the moment, thanks Eileen, though I’ll definitely take you up on the offer later…”
He turned his attention to Trumbull as he neared the group, standing as they were by
the crackling warmth of the fireplace. With a subtle nod of his head, Thorne drew the pilot aside
“What I would like to do right now is finish that conversation we were having earlier before we were rudely interrupted by the air raid…” There was a pause during which the RAF pilot simply nodded slowly in agreement, never once breaking eye contact. “What do you say, Alec?” Thorne asked finally, his voice filled with serious intent. “You with us…? You willing to be part of whatever it takes to get this job done…?”
“I’m in if you’ll have me…” The squadron leader answered without reservation. “I would be truly honoured to be part of all this and have the opportunity to make a contribution.” There was another pause, during which no one at all spoke. Instead, Thorne gave a single , silent nod and the pact between the two men was sealed.
“You’d better come with me then…” The Australian stated simply. “We’ve some business to attend to.”
“We do…?” Trumbull inquired, bemused by that remark and in a decidedly party-like mood himself when all was said and done, having downed enough of the whisky to ensure he was on a par with the rest of them in terms of intoxication. “What business might that be?”
“We’re gonna take a little trip,” Thorne said quickly, throwing a nod toward the door and moving that way himself.
“You’re not thinking of taking him through a jump while he’s half-pissed are you?” Alpert asked, mildly mortified as all of the others present realised what Thorne was up to.
“Can you think of a better way to go through it…?” Thorne replied pointedly, remembering his own experience of the day before quite clearly and almost shuddering at the thought.
“Cruel bastard…!” Davies grinned maliciously, only vaguely miffed that Thorne was taking away his new-found and seemingly attentive audience. As predicted, a reasonable amount of alcohol had replaced his reflective mood with more characteristic bravado.
“You want to see ‘cruel’…?” Thorne shot back quickly, unable to resist a sarcastic reply when Davies was involved. “Dig out a pair of laptops and fire up Modern Warfare Two, and I’ll show you cruel!”
“My ass…!” Davies retorted softly, but he made no indication he was interested in taking Thorne up on his challenge at multiplayer gaming.
“‘A trip’…?” Trumbull asked slowly at the same time, barely managing to place his half-filled glass on a table as Thorne guided him past it by the arm. “Where are we off to…?”
“Tomorrow,” Thorne answered glibly as they reached the door.
“Good luck, ‘Jimmy’!” Eileen Donelson muttered with a grimace of her own as the door closed behind them
Another twenty minutes and the still-bewildered squadron leader was being strapped into the rear seat of the F-35E once more, having been provided with an ill-fitting G-suit similar to the one Thorne was wearing.
“Have you ever been seasick?” The Australian asked as he secured the confused man’s harness.
“Seasick? No, I don’t suffer from that problem generally. Look, what’s–?”
“Good,” Thorne snapped, cutting him off. “You’re not likely to chuck everywhere if the flight gets a little rough, are you?”
“Certainly not…!” Trumbull replied with mild indignance after a pause, during which he managed to work out what the man meant by the term ‘chuck’. “A gentleman never drinks to such an excess!”
“Yeah, well you’d better not!” Thorne warned, feigning irritation in an attempt to conceal amusement and a building nervousness of his own regarding what they were about to do. “You barf in this cockpit and you’ll be cleaning it up yourself! God help you if you get any on me!”
A few moments later Thorne was also strapped into his own seat and engaged in running the Lightning through its start-up sequence.
“Look here...” Trumbull began, beginning to feel annoyed at being purposefully left in the dark. “What exactly is going on? What’re you up to?”
“Don’t get shitty,” Thorne grinned as he secured his flight helmet and the cockpit canopy began to close. “I won’t lead you astray.”
“You play things too bloody close to the chest sometimes, Max,” Trumbull observed with irritation, the fact that he’d uncharacteristically used a mild profanity not lost on an amused Thorne. The two men were fast becoming natural friends, but there was still a great deal Trumbull didn’t know about this enigmatic man from the future.
“So Jack Davies sometimes tells me...” Thorne quipped lightly as he kicked the engine over and a rumbling whine began to build behind them that quickly rose to a fully-fledged roar.
“Jack Davies likes telling me things too, but I don’t understand many of them…!” Trumbull offered in return with a wry smile, showing just a glimpse of a capacity for dry wit that he rarely displayed in public. “What are we doing?”
Thorne dismissed his question with another. “Are you really sure you want to help us here? You have to be certain…”
“Of course I’m certain!” Trumbull frowned, thinking the question silly. “All this futuristic stuff is like some kind of Jules Verne novel…and I’ll be getting a real shot at Jerry into the bargain! You couldn’t drag me away!”
“Okay then…that makes this trip necessary.”
As the cockpit lowered on them and sealed, Thorne released the wheel brakes and began to taxi the F-35E off its allocated hardstand and straight out onto the runway that lay directly adjacent, waiting just long enough to be reassured by the radar operator on duty that the sky ahead was clear before jamming the throttle forward. As there was no need for a short take off, he let the aircraft have its head and allowed it to build up plenty of speed before easing back gently on the stick. With no weapons and carrying only a partial fuel, the F-35E was quite lightly loaded, and as a result it practically launched into the sky without any need for afterburner. Within moments, Thorne was turning to the south-west, cruising out over the Pentland Firth at an altitude of 5,000 metres and continuing to climb.
“Commander Donelson is quite a beautiful woman,” Trumbull observed over the intercom after a long period of silence, trying to make a little conversation rather than resigning himself to sit pointlessly quiet in the rear cockpit with nothing to do.
“She’s certainly that,” Thorne agreed vaguely, concentrating more on his instruments and controls.
“She and Captain Davies seem awfully friendly…are they ‘going steady’? Is that what the Americans call it?”
“Eileen and Jack…?” Thorne scoffed, Trumbull momentarily obtaining his almost undivided attention with that one, and the RAF pilot noted how quickly and definitively the Australian returned his answer. “Christ, no…! They’re just old drinking buddies from way back. Within a week of meeting up at Hindsight, they discovered a similar passion for Jack Daniels and we haven’t been able to get a sensible word out of either of them since.”
“Hmm…that would explain the incoherence of Jack’s conversation earlier…” Trumbull mused, making another attempt at humour that was ignored. “She is an enchanting lady though…” he soldiered on, trying to get a reaction of some kind out of a distracted Thorne. “I’d consider courting her myself, were I a few years older… or she a few younger…”
“I’d be interested to see how she reacted to being ‘courted’,” Thorne said with a broad grin, finding that concept amusing and totally incongruous with his image of Eileen.
“She speaks very highly of you.”
“Well…she never was all that bright…” Thorne dismissed the statement, the rapport already growing between the two men ensuring Trumbull understood what he really meant. The remark was no slight on Eileen Donelson at all: it was instead a defence mechanism a humble man might use rather than risk the possibility of a compliment. Thorne let his answer go at that and went back to fiddling with the dials and readouts on his instrument panels, although the statement sounded as if there might be more to add.
Trumbull craned his neck to one side around the pilo
t’s seat in an effort to see what Thorne was doing. He could see the Australian punching information into buttons on the upper face of a strange, cantaloupe-sized apparatus mounted on a swinging arm attached to the cockpit canopy. Grey-coloured and with a scalloped surface much like that of an enlarged ‘Mills Bomb’ grenade, it appeared to have some kind of a tiny, rectangular readout on its top face.
“What are you doing? What’s that thing you’re fiddling with?”
“This, my dear fellow, is a Temporal Displacement Unit.” Thorne informed, punching in the last piece of data and pushing the throttle forward to almost full power as the aircraft levelled out at fifteen thousand metres on automatic pilot. “I’m just entering a new destination time.” It took a moment or so for that information to sink in, and as Trumbull began to make a protest Thorne added “Hold on!” and pressed the large, flashing green button on the TDU beside him.
It seemed to Trumbull that his whole world was suddenly turned inside out. Everything within the cockpit became a brilliant blue-white, and even with the aid of the helmet’s darkened visor that he hurriedly snapped down over his face, the brightness still hurt his eyes. His insides felt numb and strange, and a desire to retch indeed coursed through him, although he resisted it. His head began to spin and he could feel and hear a roaring in his ears as his blood pressure rose dramatically.
Clenching his teeth against the suddenly hostile environment, he screwed his eyes tightly shut as his hands clawed reflexively at the legs of his flight suit. A moment or so later, just when it seemed he could take no more, there was the sound of a tremendous thunderclap in his ears and the sickness and roaring sensation vanished. He gingerly opened his watering eyes and was presented only with the normal green glow of the instruments and the night sky around them.
England Expects (Empires Lost) Page 24