Flying the Storm Read Free

increased the throttle. The Iolaire surged forward with its wings folding out for conventional flight. Aiden was pressed into his seat.
    Sevastopol b ay glimmered in the low sun as Aiden and Fredrick accelerated across it, praying they would get away cleanly.
    Fredrick’s voice crackled across the inte rcom once more. “Trouble,” he said.
    Aiden’s stomach dropped. “Aircraft?”
    “Yeah, just one so far. This could get messy, Aiden.”
    “ It’s already pretty bloody messy…just…just warn him off if he comes too close.”
    “You know what these guys are like, Aiden. I’ ll have to shoot him down before he’ll bug out.”
    Aiden did know that, but saying it made it real. He scanned the horizon port and starboard of the cockpit for any other aircraft. None. Through the blue haze he could see the Gilgamesh warship itself, hovering ominously a long way inland. It was an awesome sight: the gigantic aircraft whose presence alone had conquered the Crimea.
    Everybody’d heard of the Gilgamesh , and everybody knew the same few things about it: it was more than a klick from bow to stern, bristled with more guns than was worth thinking about and harboured its own fleet of aircraft. Some said it had flown for decades without refuelling, though exactly how it had was something of a mystery.
    He could understand, however, why its crew had turned to piracy after the Eurasian War, when the superpower that had built it collapsed on itself. The crew had been left with nothing but the Gilgamesh , but someone had seen the profit in it: with a craft like that, they could be gods. Maybe once, they’d been the crew of the glorious flagship of the North Atlantic Union; now they were nothing but an army of renegades and pirates. World-infamous pirates. And Aiden had quite possibly just killed two of them.
    “He’s lining up on us, Aiden,” said Fredrick.
    Aiden groaned. Make that three . “Let him have it then.”
    “Right.” There was a pause before Fredrick opened fire. Aiden felt it through his feet as the heavy gun hammered out its opening salvo, hopefully mostly into the pursuing patrol craft. Then it stopped.
    “You get him?”
    A hesitation. “I did hit him, the gun’s jammed though.” Fredrick sounded remarkably calm.
    “Can’t you un-jam it?”
    “ For fanden , Aiden! Do you never clean this thing?!” Fredrick’s calm had left in a hurry. “ Lort, lort, lort, lort, lort!”
    “What the hell’s jamming it?” Aiden demanded.
    Fredrick yelled back something Aiden didn’t understand.
    “ Say it in English, you son-of-a-bitch!”
    “I said I’ll be damned if I know!” yelled Fredrick. “Don’t fly straight you idiot! Break! Break !”
    “ Alright, alright!” Aiden shouted back as he swung the flight stick to the left, rolling the craft and banking high. A ripple of tracer bullets shot under the Iolaire ’s belly; right where it should have been. He swung the craft back to the right and watched as the orange streaks slapped into the sea ahead, sending up plumes of white spray. 
    He tipped the nose down slightly, hoping that hugging the surface would make the Iolaire harder to hit. He knew his prop wash would be kicking up spray, but manoeuvring at such a height was incredibly dangerous.
    “How do I un-jam this p iece of shit?!” cried Fredrick.
    “The crank handle in front of you , pump it backwards!”
    “It won’t move!”
    “Of course it’ll move! Yank it!”
    “OK!” said Fredrick. “ Lort , why won’t it shoot?!”
    “ What does it say on the HUD?”
    “It doesn’t say anything ! Break, Aiden!”
    Aiden wrenched the Iolaire to starboard, narrowly avoiding another burst of tracer fire. The sea hurtled past, nerve-shreddingly close.
    “On the console, push the reset button!”
    “Which one is that?”
    “The red button that says ‘re set’, you daft prick, push it!”
    “Right.” Fredrick paused. “It’s running a diagnostic. How long will that take?”
    “I don’t know,