Double Eagle Read Free Page B

experience we can get. Enothis will be tough as nails. Our ground forces are in hard retreat from Sek’s legions. It’ll come down to a bloody air war, mark my words. Request denied. Your Navy transport leaves orbit tomorrow at 06.00.”
    Viltry looked up at the graven image of the God-Emperor, hard-shadowed in the sluggishly rising sun. It looked disapproving, scowling at his timid soul, fully aware of the cowardice in his heart.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, out loud.
    A woman in a long black coat, coming late to the service, looked round at him. He shrugged, bashful, and held the chapel door open for her.
    Light, and a chorus of triumph dedicated to the Golden Throne of Earth, washed out on them both. She hurried in.
    He followed her, and closed the heavy door behind him.
     
    Over the Makanites, 07.11
    This one was good. Daring. Young, most likely, desperate to live. Weren’t they all?
    The dive was magnificent, foolhardy. Flight Warrior Khrel Kas Obarkon, chieftain of the fifth echelon, which was of the Anarch, and so sworn to he that is Sek, decided he would like more of this boy’s kind in his echelon come the showdown. The boy flew, as they say, by the claws. Such a scream dive. Obarkon didn’t know the runty little enemy pulsejets could achieve that.
    It seemed almost a waste to slay him.
    Wound tight in his grav-armour, auto-pumps and cardio-centrifuges compensating his circulation, Obarkon committed his Hell Razor steeper still, adjusting the trim, slicing down through the air like a knife at point eight of mach. His cockpit was dark save for the winking lights of his instruments, which reflected off the black, patent-leather gauntlets encasing his hands. The stooping Wolfcub was a bright orange pip on his auspex display.
    How was it surviving? Pilot skill or luck? The young had little of the former and, sometimes, barrels of the latter. The dive was testing the enemy plane right to the limits of its airframe. A single degree deeper and the descent would strip the wings away at the cabane or blow out the inductive motor.
    Behind the matt-black glass visor of his full-head helmet, Obarkon smiled. His face, so seldom seen, was a grizzled tissue of fibre and poly-weave reinforcements. His eyes were augmetics, linked directly to the war-plane’s gunsights by spinal plugs.
    At three hundred metres, the Wolfcub pulled out, dragging a long, aching turn up and away to avoid the ragged peaks, its jet engine spitting and foundering.
    Another surprise. Another admirable display of skill. Or luck.
    Obarkon tilted his stick and nudged the reactive thrusters, pulling out of the dive non-ballistically, mocking the laboured struggles of the smaller plane. It had been locked in his gunsight for two minutes now. The target finder was chiming over and over again.
    Attention…
    Target found.
    Target found.
    Target found.
    Why hadn’t he killed it?
    I want to see what you’ve got, Obarkon thought.
    The Wolfcub veered around a peak-top, letting the cross of its shadow flicker across the sunlit snow, then tipped its wings hard to steer around another crag. Obarkon kept his Hell Razor almost level to execute a following path, ripping through the air like a heat-hungry missile. The Wolfcub was still in his crosshairs.
    Suddenly, around the next peak, it disappeared. Obarkon frowned and swung about, assuming the boy had finally misadventured and flown into a cliff wall. For the first time in nearly three minutes, the target finder bleeped lock lost… lock lost… lock lost…
    No, not dead. There he was. The little wretch. He’d somehow flick-rolled the Wolfcub around the promontory and swung back the way he’d come, gunning low on full thrust.
    Obarkon lifted his shiny black-clad hands off the stick and clapped. Very fine indeed.
    A warning note sounded and Obarkon snapped it off with a curse. He was down to reserve now, almost at the critical fuel threshold. That meant he had no more than two minutes left before he had to turn