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  Quint didn’t answer, but she didn’t expect him to. Instead, he rolled and pulled his plane in a steep turn to the north. He was heading out over the frozen surface of the ocean. Larice followed automatically, matching Quint’s turn and keeping tight to his wing.

  “What’s up, Seven?” she asked.

  “Getting a vector from Operations,” said Quint. “There’s an intercept going on. Indigo Flight from the 235th. They need some help.”

  “Where?”

  “Fifty kilometres over the ocean ice, a thousand metres off the deck.”

  “Auspex?”

  “Yes, light them up,” voxed Quint.

  Larice did so, but all she got was a hissing wash of backscatter from the mountains. The tech-seers had blessed her auspex before takeoff, but it looked like it was still sluggish from its time inactive. She cursed, heightening the gain, and immediately saw the engagement. It looked like a bad one. Four Navy machines, with at least nine bats swarming them.

  “Got them?”

  “Yeah, nine of them,” said Larice. “You sure you want to tangle with that many?”

  “There’s two of us,” clarified Quint. “And we are Apostles. They should be asking that question.”

  “Good point.”

  “Afterburners,” said Quint. “Hit it.”

  Larice flipped up the guard on the afterburner trigger, and braced herself for the enormous power of the Thunderbolt’s turbofan in her back. She eased the stick forward, just enough down angle to take them into the upper reaches of the fight.

  “Grip,” she said, and thumbed the trigger.

  A sucking machine breath. A booming roar of jets. A monstrous hand pressed her hard against her seat. The airframe shuddered and the few clouds blurred as the plane leapt forwards like an unleashed colt. The sense of speed was intoxicating. She held the stick, keeping her body braced in the grip position as she felt the blood being forced from her extremities. She held course, feeling the plane straining at her control.

  “Incoming contacts, twelve thousand metres,” said Quint. “Cut burners and go subsonic.”

  Larice cut the afterburners and immediately felt the blood return to her hands and feet with a painful prickling sensation. She glanced at the auspex, taking in the shape of the fight in a second. The four Navy flyers were in a dirty scrap, using all their skill to dance out of weapons locks and converging streams of las fire.

  “Hell Blades,” said Larice, recognising the enemy flyers’ flight profile. She felt a tremor of excitement. Fast-moving, highly manoeuvrable fighters that could easily match a Thunderbolt in a vector dance, Hell Blades were a far more fearsome prospect than Tormentors.

  The vox crackled in her helmet, the voice of a controller in Operations.

  “Apostle Flight, be advised we have nine hostiles north on your location,” said the controller. “Speed and flight pattern indicates—”

  “Hell Blades, yeah we know,” snapped Larice. “Way to keep up, Ops.”

  Even with the planes of the 235th, they were outnumbered two to one, but Quint was right. They were Apostles, the best flyers in the Navy. She flew with the ace of aces, and her own Thunderbolt boasted no shortage of kill markings on its cream-coloured nose. She checked her dials, noting her fuel and armament status. Aerial combat manoeuvres burned fuel at a terrifying rate, but there was enough in the tank for this one fight.

  With Quint at her side, Larice was confident they’d turn the bats into dark smudges of wreckage on the sea ice. With relative closing speeds in excess of a thousand kph, the gap between the two forces was shrinking rapidly. It was going to get real ugly, real quick.

  There! Nine lean darts with tapered wings like the fins on a seeker missile. The sky filled with light as the bats opened up. The Navy birds, painted a brusque camo-green, were twisting and diving with desperate turns and rolls, using every trick in the book to shake their pursuers. In an evenly matched fight, that might work, but not against so many bats.

  One Thunderbolt exploded as a flurry of shots from a darting enemy fighter found its engines and blew it apart.

  “Indigo Flight, Apostles inbound,” said Quint, and it was the only warning anyone got.

  Larice and Quint slashed down into the fight, coming in high and fast. She slipped in behind a Hell Blade taking his sweet time in lining up a shot. Too confident of the kill, the enemy pilot was making the first and last mistake most rookies made.

  She squeezed her trigger and the bat flew into her streaming las bolts, coming apart in a seething fireball. She slipped sideways and barrelled past the dead Hell Blade’s wingman as Quint tore up the fuselage of another bat.

  A wing flashed past her canopy and Larice yanked the stick right. She rolled, pushing out the throttle and inverting. She deployed the air brakes and viffed onto the tail of the aircraft that had nearly hit her. A crimson Hell Blade, its tapered nose spiralling as it slid back and forth through the air.

  “Too easy” she said, sending a hail of quad fire into its tail section. The wounded Hell Blade shuddered as though invisible hammers pounded its engine until it ruptured in a spewing blaze of fire.

  “Five, break, break!” ordered Quint.

  Larice sidestepped, viffing up to let the enemy fire paint the air beneath her. A Hell Blade had broken from attacking the Navy flyers and turned into her.

  “He’s good,” she said, dancing through the air in a dazzling series of rolls, banks and vectored slips. He stuck with her, firing bursts of las as he tried to anticipate her next move. She put her plane into a shallow climb, and slammed the throttle back as the air brakes flared. She was risking a stall, but her manoeuvre worked and the bat zipped past her port wing. She took a snap shot, jinking sideways and ripping her fire along its wing and hull.

  Its wing snapped off and it rolled uncontrollably, spinning down towards the ice and leaving a plume of black smoke in its wake.

  Five on five, suddenly the odds were evened.

  Or they would have been if Quint hadn’t already splashed another two bats.

  Two more Navy birds were down, and Larice didn’t see any chutes. Not that the odds of survival punching out over the ocean ice were much better than going down in flames. She’d hit the silk once before and it wasn’t an experience she cared to repeat.

  A las-round smacked her Thunderbolt. She jinked low, rolling to bring her guns back on target. She had a fraction of a second to act. Her quads barked, and booming thunder spat from her craft. The deflection was bad and her shots went over the bat. Correction, another burst. This time the bat blew apart in a shredding flicker of mauve and crimson.

  She turned hard, pushing the envelope in the race to get behind the last bats. She grunted as heavy g-forces pressed on her, despite the grip position supposed to make it easier to bear. The rubber of her mask flattened against her face, and she tasted the metallic quality of her air mix.

  She rolled and pulled hard, feathering her air brakes and flattening out as she caught a flash of a Hell Blade’s vector flare.

  “Got you,” she hissed, unleashing a brilliant salvo. The Hell Blade blew apart, its engine exploding as her bolts blasted it from the air. Her guns coughed dry, the battery drained, and she switched back to her quads.

  “Apostle, break, break!” shouted a voice she didn’t recognise.

  Larice hauled on the stick and threw out her tail rudder, twisting her plane into a tight loop. A blitz of tracers flew past her port side, a single shell kissing the rear quarter of her canopy and crazing the toughened glass.

  She snapped left and right, hunting the bat that had her. “On your seven,” said the voice.

  “I see it,” she said, pulling into the Hell Blade’s turn and opening out the throttle as she viffed in a jagged sidestep. The bat matched her turn, pushing her outwards, and she knew there was more than likely another aircraft waiting to take the kill shot. Instead of playing that game, she threw her plane around, using the vectors to pull a near one-eighty and reverse her thrust. The press
ure pulled the cracks in the canopy wider.

  The pursuing Hell Blade filled her canopy and she mashed the trigger, feeling the percussive recoil from the heavy autocannons mounted in the nose. The Hell Blade viffed up over her burst. It had her and there was nothing she could do.

  A camo-green shape zipped over her canopy, quad cannons blazing.

  The bat ripped in two. Black smoke and a blooming fireball blew outwards. Larice threw her Thunderbolt into a screamingly tight turn and inverted to take the brunt of the explosion on her underside. Air was driven from her lungs, and her vision greyed at the force of the turn. Her fuselage lurched, and hammering blows of metal on metal thudded along its length as debris from the Hell Blade struck her bird.

  Warning lights and buzzers filled the canopy. She flipped over, restoring level flight.

  Larice loosened the throttle. Her breathing eased and she screwed her eyes shut for a second to throw off the greyness lurking at the edge of her vision. She tasted blood and pulled off her mask, spitting into the foot well.

  A dark shape appeared off her starboard wing. She looked up to see the last surviving Navy flyer of Indigo Flight.

  “You okay there?” said the pilot. “Your bird’s pretty banged up.”

  “Yeah,” she said, though the stick felt sluggish and unresponsive in her hand. It galled her that she’d needed an assist, but it had been a hell of a move coming in over her to take out that bat. Only a pilot supremely sure of himself would try something that risky.

  One wrong move from either pilot would have seen them both splashed.

  Quint pulled in on her port wing, the ivory of his aircraft untouched and pristine.

  “Indigo Flight, identify,” said Quint.

  “Flight Lieutenant Erzyn Laquell, 235th Naval Attack Wing,” said the pilot with a thumbs-up. “You’re the Apostles. It’s an honour to fly with you.”

  “You’re not flying with us,” said Quint. “You just happen to be sharing my sky.”

  “Of course I am,” returned Laquell. “I’ll be sure to tell my pilots to steer clear next time one of your high and mighty Apostles needs an assist.”

  Though a glossy black visor and rubber air-mix mask covered Laquell’s face, she just knew he was grinning a cocksure grin.

  “Keep talking like that and I’ll make sure you never fly again,” promised Quint.

  Before Laquell could answer, a flurry of winking lights appeared on the auspex and Larice blinked away moisture to be sure she was seeing what it was telling her correctly.

  “Seven, are you getting this?”

  “Affirmative.”

  The auspex was a mass of returns. From their speed and height they were clearly fighters. They weren’t squawking on any Imperial frequency, and that made them bad news. Razors most likely. Or more Hell Blades.

  “Ten more bats,” she said. “High and coming in fast. Too many to fight.”

  “Agreed,” answered Quint. His plane dipped below her wing before coming level once more. He chopped his hand down towards the belly of her Thunderbolt.

  “Five, you’re leaking fluid,” he said. “Check your fuel status.”

  Larice scanned her gauges, watching with dismay as the numbers unspooled like an altimeter in a power dive. She tapped the dial with her finger, but the numbers kept going.

  “Frig it! I’m losing fuel fast. Must’ve taken a hit to the feed lines.”

  “Do you have enough to return to Coriana?”

  “Negative, Seven,” said Larice. The airfield where the 101st were stationed was way beyond her range now. “At the speed I’m losing fuel, I’ll be lucky to get down in one piece, let alone back to Coriana. I’ll need an alternate.”

  “I’ll get your wounded bird down,” said Laquell, doing a passable job at keeping the smugness from his tone. “Rimfire is only a hundred and ten kilometres east.”

  Rimfire was the designation for the airbase set up to face the Archenemy’s newly opened flank. It was a rush job, hardened hangars cut into the ice and honeycomb landing strips laid out on the Ice by Munitorum pioneers. Its tower facilities were mobile command vehicles and its auspex coverage came from airborne surveyor craft originally designed to hunt for ground minerals. Flyers based at Coriana joked that the pilots based at Rimfire were either too dumb or too reckless to be based anywhere else.

  “Will you make it that far?” asked Quint. “That’s a valuable piece of machinery you’re flying and we need all the aircraft we have.”

  “Thanks for your concern,” replied Larice. “I’ll be flying on fumes and the Emperor’s mercy by then, but, yeah, I think I can make it.”

  “Then head for Rimfire. I’ll see you back at Coriana if you live. Seven out.”

  Quint’s plane peeled off, leaving a slick of vapour-white fumes in his wake. His plane surged back towards the Breakers and within seconds it was lost to sight.

  “Friendly sort, isn’t he?” said Laquell.

  “He’s earned the right to choose his friends with care,” said Larice.

  “I guess he has.”

  “Okay, Laquell. Lead on,” said Larice. “In case you hadn’t noticed I’m losing fuel.”

  “Sure thing. Make your bearing one-six-five and start climbing.”

  “I know how to extend,” she snapped, pulling around and aiming her Thunderbolt towards Rimfire. She pulled her stick back, putting her plane into a fuel-efficient climb. When her tanks ran dry she’d be able to glide some of the way in if she had enough altitude.

  “Just trying to help,” said Laquell. “Listen, you know my name, but what do I call you?”

  “Apostle Five,” said Larice.

  “Yeah, I got that, but what’s your real name? You know, what your friends call you?”

  “Asche,” she sighed. “Call me Larice Asche.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Larice Asche,” said Laquell. “Follow my wing and I’ll get you down in one piece. I promise.”

  Laquell was as good as his word, and they crossed the Breakers high and with a favourable tailwind that gifted Larice a thousand metres of altitude. There was a nasty squall of ice crystals swelling out over the ocean Ke, a skin-shredding storm of frozen blades that would do no end of damage to an aircraft, but the luck of the Emperor was with them and it blew west before reaching the mountains.

  Though she tried to keep her flight smooth and level, Larice watched her fuel reserves dwindle like she was in the midst of the most furious engagement imaginable, viffing, pulling high-g turns, escape climbs and power dives. The shear Quint had mentioned clawed up from the wind-sculpted cliffs, buffeting her plane as though an invisible leash tethered to her fuselage was being pulled and tugged.

  Then they were over, and the landscape fell away from them, tumbling to the flatlands of Amedeo, bleak tundra of browns and muted greens. It wasn’t the most welcoming world, but then what she’d seen of Enothis had been mostly desert and swamp, so at least it offered a different view from the canopy.

  Located in the trailing arc of the crusade to liberate the Sabbat Worlds, Amedeo had been largely ignored by both the Imperium and the Archenemy, but then the forces of Magister Innokenti had fallen on Herodor. Though the tactical significance of Herodor was, at best, debatable, the soldiers’ rumour mill had it that Innokenti himself had descended to that world’s surface.

  And that made Amedeo important. Perfectly positioned to allow a flanking thrust to hamstring the Imperial defence, the planners of the crusade were swift to recognise the danger to Herodor. Naval wings and Guard regiments were deployed with unaccustomed swiftness, alongside, so the rumour-spinners went on to claim, a detachment of Adeptus Astartes.

  Larice had seen nothing of any Space Marines, but Amedeo was a big theatre of operations, and entire campaigns were being fought out of sight of the aerial duellists.

  Her fuel warning light, which had been hypnotically blinking throughout the crossing of the Breakers, now assumed a more constant aspect. Her engines flamed out and the rpms of her twin turbo
fans spiralled south.

  “I’m dry,” she voxed to Laquell. “I’m flying fourteen tonnes of scrap metal unless we’re close to Rimfire.”

  “Yeah, we’re not far,” replied Laquell, his voice calm and reassuring. “Switch on your transponder and key it to this frequency or else the base defences will tag you as hostile and shoot you down.”

  A data squirt appeared on her slate and she keyed in the corresponding frequency, thumbing the activation switch. An answering light appeared on her tactical plot, thirty kilometres out. Rimfire. But was it close enough? Her altimeter was unwinding fast, and she did a quick mental calculation. It was just within reach.

  “Stay on my wing,” said Laquell. “Keep the nose up and fly steady.”

  Larice nodded to herself, holding the stick tight and trying to keep any unnecessary movement from her path. Every second she spent in the air was a few hundred metres closer to safety.

  “You’re doing great, Larice. That’s it, steady and smooth. Gradually ease around to two-seven-seven.”

  “I don’t have time for manoeuvre,” she said.

  “I know, but there’s some crazy thermals that come up from the southern rift plains. They’ll give you some extra lift. Trust me, I’ve used them before when I’m coming back with a tank of vapour.”

  Larice adjusted her course, the stick feeling leaden in her grip and the plane responding like she imagined a tank would manoeuvre. They came down through a light dusting of clouds, and there it was, a down and dirty collection of air-defence vehicles, ad hoc runways, quick-fire launch racks and fuel bowsers clustered around a random scattering of landing mats strewn across the ice.

  Rimfire was around three kilometres away, but at the rate she was shedding height it might as well have been three thousand. She wasn’t going to make it.

  “I’m short,” she said. “I don’t have enough—”

  A slamming wind hoisted her higher, the spiralling tunnel of warm air Laquell had promised her. Her descent slowed and she saw it might be enough. Her Thunderbolt could transition to vertical landing, but without fuel that wasn’t going to be possible.