Novambar 1895 A.D. The Lovoshire Parallel:
The fringe of the Wraithwaste
About five miles into the Waste, hundreds of feet above the brown forest, Gorgonettes, Horogazis, and the Horogazis’ escort of KE-122s dived, wrangled, and spat fire and daemons at each other. The Gorgonettes were small, light monoplanes made of wood and fabric. The Horogazis were deceitfully slippy three-man bombers, constructed almost entirely of metal, as were the KE-122s, which were the lizards’ devastatingly maneuverable improvements on the ubiquitous KE-111s. The 122s carried only one man, and their resulting speediness more than made up for their lack of a rear gunner. They had been appearing in greater and greater numbers for a year now, mostly doing the “dead man’s duty” of guarding bombers on missions into enemy territory, but recently swooping in on Ferupian air bases in tightly controlled wedges of eighteen that were impossible to stop. When Crispin had heard what they did to the temp-base of 75 Squadron, ten miles to the south, his blood ran with ice and he longed vainly for a metal airplane. It was simply impossible for a Gorgonette to match a KE’s speed and twistiness.
But thankfully, right now the Kirekuni fighters were so badly outnumbered that it was impossible for them to protect both themselves and the Horogazis. Rain darkened the winter afternoon. Flying conditions were terrible. The KEs’ tracer fire spat thunderously as it arced orange through the wet. In response, the Gorgonettes loosed silent hails of screamers. Seven Kirekunis had already torn craters in the dense brown forest below. In the rain, instead of spreading, the crash fires had only burned blackened patches in the forest.
Crispin jinked Princess Anuei out of the path of an arc of tracer fire. Wind and rain whipped past the cockpit shell; his hands were numb with cold; the daemon engine roared as he let out the whipcord and pulled back the stick, gaining height and simultaneously circling, keeping that KE-122 in his sights. The pilot was already busy trying to avoid Eakin, one of Crispin’s men. Crispin dived, opening up Princess Anuei’s screamer ports, and jewels streamed out in an arc.
The Kirekunis had been trying for the Pye Collins screamer factory. But it was not anywhere near here. For once, 80 Squadron had managed an intercept right. Screamer and munitions factories were all built underground, like old Wraith villages, and the roads that led to them were deliberately meandering and concealed under the trees, too narrow for trucks, barely navigable by jeeps; dead pines and spruces packed together so closely that they formed perfect cover. All the same, the Kirekunis succeeded entirely too often in strafing the factories. Nothing was worse by QAF standards than letting a screamer factory be fire-strafed; but it happened all the time. And the factories were not dispensable. Nor were their resident trickster women. These women came in two sorts: those who had once been independent, who were employed in producing screamers; and the “munitions women” recruited specifically by the military to do the mindless work of capturing mote-sized daemons for aircraft and mobile-unit fuel. All were the objects of much speculation and idealization on the part of the pilots whose job it was to defend them. The flowers of Ferupian womanhood, Festhre said, and composed an extempore poem in couplets. Crispin had laughed to himself—he was probably the only pilot ever to have met a trickster woman, although the encounter had lasted only a few minutes and finished with death. Then, he had not thought much of their morals. And Orpaan’s daemon-handling skills had been far superior to theirs. But they were essential to the war effort. Their activities kept the QAF in business. Their very existence was a secret from everyone from whom it was practicable to keep it secret. A single destroyed screamer factory meant ten or fifteen air bases without ammo.
However, this time nothing except a few trees had been burned. Crispin grinned as he swooped at another 122, pouring screamers out of Princess Anuei’s ports. Just before he must have collided with her, he pulled back on the stick and shot straight through the center of the dogfight, out into empty air. Cruising, he had the satisfaction of watching his kill stall and plunge: the screamers which had found footholds on its wings and fuselage had clawed their way into the cockpit and eaten the Kirekuni’s guts out. It was an ugly, but surprisingly unmessy, way of downing the enemy, And it left the wrecks intact. Right now, the Waste was a tangle of broken trees and broken airplanes. The metal from the wrecks would later be salvaged, but almost all of it would be shipped away to manufacture equipment for the infantry. The QAF was the vital element of the war effort the most often shortchanged on metal. But at times like this, Crispin thought they could keep going with only wooden planes forever.
Not a single Kirekuni was still airborne. Instead of a buzzing hornet swarm, a flock of painted birds circled serenely in the rain. They were three crews today: Crispin’s, his friend Butch’s, and that of Flight Captain Vichuisse. Crispin, flying patrol with his men, had spotted the Kirekuni strike force, so high that they were almost lost in the cloud cover. He had sent Eakin to fetch backup from Fostercy, and Butch and Vichuisse had arrived in time for all three crews to intercept the Kirekunis over the Wraithwaste before they reached Pye Collins. Victory lifted his heart like a balloon.
He waggled his wings, signaling his men. Far off through the gloom, Butch and Vichuisse were doing the same thing. With the precision of good ballroom dancers, the swarm of kites came apart into three separate wedges. Eighty Squadron was not the mess that popular opinion had it. At least not today; their problem was that they were erratic. But Vichuisse had not managed to cause any disasters this time. Crispin led his crew down to see the wreckage of the forest. It was difficult to make out through the rain, but nothing human seemed to be moving. The bright-colored screamer imps, oblivious to the shimmer of Waste daemons pressing close around them, were brawling over the flesh of the Kirekuni airmen.
Higher up, Vichuisse peeled his crew off toward home. Crispin quickly led his men up to follow. When Vichuisse pulled out, you pulled out—a necessity of the hierarchy which had contributed a good deal to 80 Squadron’s reputation as a band of shirkers.
A show of independence would have been even more dangerous for Crispin, who owed Vichuisse his whole life, than for the others. The three crews strung out over the Waste, flying slowly to conserve their daemons’ energy. The din of Princess Anuei’s engine slackened. Crispin flexed his stiff fingers and squinted through the rain-slicked windshield. He allowed himself a brief surge of pride as he saw that none of his five crewmen was too badly shot up. But Butch had lost one man. He thought it was Francke—a new, talented young pilot. Surprising that he had gone down. Vichuisse had lost two. But Vichuisse always lost men. A transfer to his crew was unofficially known as the death sentence.
If only Crispin did not owe so much to him! He was conscious of his indebtedness every waking moment, except perhaps during battle, when exhilaration blotted out the tangled web of obligations and friendships that he had to follow through if he was ever to find his way to any sort of future.
If only! He knew he could do a far better job of commanding this squadron than any arrogant northern squire! So could Butch. So could Keinze, or Redmanhey. So could even Festhre, probably.
Crispin smiled at the thought of his friends. The twilight roared around his Gorgonette. He signaled his crew that it was time to watch out for the flares that would go up to mark the runway when the ground crew at Fostercy heard the mission returning.
Triumphant. For once.
But no matter how many Kirekunis they, and the rest of the squadron, and the pilots of all the other squadrons in the Lovoshire Parallel and the Thrazen and the Galashire and the Weschess and the Salzeim and the Lynche and the Teilsche and the Sudeland Parallels, brought down, it was not enough. It was never enough. Are we winning? Are we losing? Nobody knew which to think. Patriotic phrases were on everyone’s lips, and nobody dared to voice their secret guesses that with captains like Vichuisse all over the Raw, one could not possibly win any glory, let alone one’s pension, let alone a war.
Fostercy Base lay in the arm of a low, scrub-covered hill about ten miles behind the front lines. When you went to the latrines at night you could see the screamers going up at the horizon: tiny, bright-colored shooting stars. But the distance silenced them. And during the daylight hours, the wind carried away the sound of gunfire. If a skirmish was in progress at the front, the clamor reached such a pitch that when the wind dropped for a second, a man standing in the open could hear a noise like a far-off earthquake. At such times motorbikes and jeeps could be seen in the distance, bouncing over the plain from the front lines to the command posts near Shadowtown. During skirmishes, almost all of 80 Squadron was in the air, providing assistance to the beleaguered infantry at the front. That was when being in a defensive unit was no longer a relatively cushy assignment. You landed, handed in your report to Vichuisse if you were a lieutenant, fell into your bunk, got shaken awake a few hours later, scrambled into your flight suit, and were in the air again before you’d rubbed the sand out of your eyes.
But clashes at the front occurred no more often than once a month. The rest of the time it was only when they were airborne that the pilots of Fostercy saw anything of the war. It was nearly always quiet on base: most of the pilots were constantly worn-out from the daemon handler’s curse of weariness, and spent all their meager downtime either sleeping or eating. Right now, Festhre’s, Redmanhey’s, and Keinze’s crews, the other half of the squadron, were either asleep or out on patrol. The men who had just returned pressed tightly around the fire that roared in the center of the mess, scooping up soup with the biscuits that constituted the greater part of their diet. Even indoors, it was too cold to take off their flight jackets, and the wet leather steamed, reeking. The firelight splashed up the rough plank walls. Carrie, the lurcher dog, moaned softly in her place by the embers. Crispin rolled his shoulders, wincing as pain stabbed through his muscles.
When he first arrived in 80 Squadron as a lowly rigger, he had thought the pilots’ habitual silence, in contrast to the riggers’ loquacity, weirdly primitive. Here were the hunters, huddling together about the campfire after returning from the kill. They meditated; and outside, the hunting beasts were rubbed down and fed by the tribe’s inferior members. But that fancy was misleading. There was a hierarchy, of course—but there was no initiative on anyone’s part, not even Vichuisse’s. Everything was done by the book and on orders. The system might have served to preclude resentment between pilots and ground crews, lieutenants and regulars. But living on his wits in Valestock and in the Wraithwaste had rendered Crispin unable to accept anything on face value: and very shortly after his arrival in 80 Squadron, keeping his eyes and ears open, he had realized that there was resentment—plenty of it. It was just kept under wraps, and confined, in its most corrosive manifestations, to the lieutenants—the only men, apart from Vichuisse’s own crew, who had direct contact with the captain.
Crispin had not dreamed when he first arrived at Pilkinson’s Air Base II that before long, he would become a lieutenant, and come to hate Vichuisse worse than any of them.
But everything was temporary. If two and a half years in the military had taught him a lesson, it was that nothing lasted.
The wind crept in through the cracks in the walls of the mess, and the men shrugged their collars up around their necks. Crispin glanced sideways at Butch, who was shoveling soup intently into his mouth. He had not spoken since they landed. His long, thin, serious face was pale orange in the firelight. Most people let the weakness apparent in that face blind them to the real Butch Keynes, who was a mercurial man capable of destructive anger and self-destructive misery, too goodhearted ever to be truly ambitious. It was Butch who had taught Crispin to read and write, after Vichuisse convinced him he ought to be literate. Education—and social class, which in the QAF almost always came hand in hand—were the hallmarks of a ranking officer. And Crispin was not going to be the odd one out. Millsy had been wrong, after all.
He nudged Butch. “Sorry you lost Francke. He had promise.”
Butch stopped eating and turned burning eyes on Crispin. “He did. And do you want to know the worst thing? It wasn’t his fault. He was slicing through ‘em.”
“What happened then?” Crispin shifted a bit closer on the bench so that the regulars wouldn’t hear. “Tangled with his own screamers?”
“It was the Kirekuni.” Butch spat the word out as if it tasted bad. Crispin knew instantly who he meant; not any of the Kirekunis whom they had shot down today, but the Kirekuni who served on Butch’s own crew.
“What’d he do? Turn tail? Francke try to cover him?”
“No, he bloody well scored an own goal! It was right after we engaged them. Francke had his sights on this Horogazi. Showering him with screamers. Then the Kirekuni gets into the mix. He’s about twenty feet off Francke’s starboard wing, aiming to cross above him, cutting it real close, and he misjudges his margin. Fuckin’ pathetic. And Francke sees they’re gonna clash. So he has to lose height.” Butch balanced his bowl on his knee and shoved an imaginary stick forward. “But things are crazy up there. And one of Vichuisse’s boys is coming up right under the Horogazi, and Francke doesn’t want to hit him. And first his propellers tap the Horogazi’s undercarriage, and then he tangles with her.”
Crispin grimaced. “What a way to go. At least he took the Horogazi down with him.”
“She was screamer-infested already. And what makes it sick is that I saw it happen, and the Queen-damned Kirekuni got off scot-free. Made two kills after that. Totaling three for the afternoon,” Butch said spitefully.
“Where is he anyway?” Crispin glanced around. The men were beginning to drift out of the mess. “Gone to earth?”
“Naw. See, he’s got to learn—I dunno what!” Butch shook his head in frustration. “Stupid lizard always manages to save his own skin, even when he fucks the rest of us up! But after this long, we can’t fairly suspect him of—of not being on our side. What’s his kill tally? Ninety-something? Could be over a hundred. Kirekunis. How does he do it, Cris? He’s been here as long as I have.” Butch thumped his chest. Now that their men were gone he was speaking more loudly. “Three years. Same week I arrived from flight training, he arrived from Chressamo, and Vichuisse assigned him to my crew the same day. Worst piece of luck I’ve ever had!”
Crispin pulled a sympathetic face. He felt sorry for Butch, who, in addition to having to contend with a Kirekuni on his crew, had no feeling for what things looked like from the viewpoint of a regular: like most lieutenants, he had received his commission immediately on being posted to the front as a result of his background. He was the third son of a Dewisson Domain squire, one of that class for whom the army had been an honored profession even before there was a war. He had probably known he was going to be in the military before he was old enough to talk, Crispin thought, finishing his soup, and wondered, not for the first time, how it had been to grow up under that shadow, hoping and praying that the conflict would end before the time came for him to take part in it.
Then again, maybe Butch had hoped the opposite. He was that kind of man. It was the reason Crispin admired him.
“Not one of my boys from those days left except him! Queen damn it! He fucks up again and again, and what do you know? He turns up at the end of every battle like a bad penny. And it was always an accident, and no one can prove it wasn’t. Much more of this, and I’ll have to consider an own goal.”
Crispin swallowed the last of his biscuit. “No, no, don’t do that” He reached inside his flight jacket, pulled out a chocolate bar, and offered half to Butch, who stuffed it into his mouth as fiercely as if it had been a piece of the Kirekuni’s flesh, barely bothering to pick off the colored wrapping. “He’s just a coward, see. No backbone. You know how strictly disciplined the lizards are—well, I think discipline is all that holds them together. He doesn’t understand that as one of us, he has a responsibility to himself, and to the Queen, to be brave. If one of our boys fucked up the way he does, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself—but Ash doesn’t get it, he doesn’t hold himself responsible. You can’t fault him for what he is. Just hope his luck turns on him, that’s all.”
“What gets me going,” Butch said broodingly, “is that I have to let him off every time. Just because of what you said. If I were to start passing out punishments for plain old cowardice, I’d have to flog every man in my crew.”
“They’ll give him a razzing though, don’t you worry. Francke was popular.” Crispin turned to watch the last of the men leave. Their shoulders were slumped. Two had their arms around each other. Crispin’s own crew had not come out of the battle as cleanly as he had thought; young Jack Harrowman was in the sick bay with a screamer wound to the shoulder. It was Harrowman’s closest friend, Fergus Dupont, who was being supported by his comrade.
“If I know them, they will.”
“They do often enough anyway. It’s not like it has any effect. No.” Butch turned to Crispin with a sudden, wicked grin. “I’ve taken some steps. Told him to report what really happened to Vichuisse. Not his version—my version. Made him repeat it after me until he knew it by heart.”
“Good going,” Crispin said, and forced himself to smile. Sometimes Butch’s way of dealing with his men disgusted him. “It’s about time Vee got an idea what really goes down around here.”
“Especially what with all the strange noises we’ve been hearing lately. Promotion city, huh?” Butch shook his head. “If you ask me, he’s getting a tad bit too big for his boots.”
“They’ve been tight on him since day one, if you ask me,” Crispin said with feeling.
Butch shifted in the warmth of the dying fire and rubbed Carrie’s stomach with his foot. She whined in her sleep and rolled onto her back. Butch laughed, stretched, and peeled off his flight jacket. “Indeed! Any more choccy hidden about you, Cris?”
Silently, Crispin took out his second bar and broke it without removing the wrapper.
Half an hour later the fire went out. Crispin kissed Butch farewell outside the mess hall. This ritual had developed from the early days of their friendship into a superstitious touchstone, a charm for staying alive. Nights like this, when the moon hung wide and bright as a grin in the sky, were the lizards’ favorite sort. Neither of them mentioned the possibility that they would later be wakened, or killed in their beds, by an attack. Watching Butch’s back recede into the dark, Crispin felt a swell of affection for him. He put the last piece of chocolate into his mouth. Licking his fingers, he wandered around the corner of the mess, intending to stop by the regulars’ barracks and see whether any of his men were awake.
The buildings lay low and dark in the moonlight. Not a sliver of light showed anywhere. Barracks and hangars alike were constructed out of knotty, poor-quality Wraithwaste-pine lumber, so there ought to have been thousands of chinks, but every building was painstakingly lightproofed inside with black canvas. The rain had stopped; the wind carried wetness on its back. Rounding the northeast corner of the mess hall, Crispin halted. Two figures were standing by the door next to the northwest corner of the building. The shorter pushed close against the taller, who was flattened against the wall. The thought that it was a lovers’ tryst leapt into Crispin’s mind. He was turning to retreat when he recognized Flight Captain Anthony Vichuisse’s furious voice.
At this end of the mess hall, Vichuisse lived in lordly isolation: his quarters were not accessible from inside the mess, and his windows commanded a view of the empty Raw. Standing outside his front door, he was lambasting someone, not bothering to keep his voice down. A hissing, chinking sound punctuated his words: the cat-o’-nine-tails slapping against his thigh. Crispin sidled away. But he had been seen.
“Kateralbin!” He heard the unmistakable note of pleasure that entered Vichuisse’s voice every time he spoke to Crispin. “Sneaking about at night? Still in an aggressive state of mind? Why don’t you come and have a word with our friend here?”
Reluctantly Crispin went forward. Vichuisse stood back, hands on his hips. The moonlight cast his shadow in a bulky puddle around his feet. “Or are you here to join in the fun? Mmm?”
The Kirekuni stood with his back to the wall, his long, pale, ratlike tail lashing around his ankles.
“No—sir,” Crispin said, his eyes on the Kirekuni. “I was just going to see if my men were still awake. Sir. I wanted to congratulate them on the job they did today. They handled the intercept marvelously. I thought.”
“It’s what they’re trained for, Kateralbin.”
“I was going to stop by sick bay, too, sir. Jack Harrowman is in with a shoulder.”
“I know that,” Vichuisse said. “I make it my business to stop by sick bay myself. So that my lieutenants don’t have to.” At the captain’s voice, Crispin turned sharply to look at him. The moonlight blackened the sockets of the little, deep-set eyes. “Kateralbin, you tend to assume altogether too much responsibility for your own good,” Vichuisse said gently.
“Any responsibility I have is your gift, sir.”
“Tch, tch, tch! The past is the past!” Vichuisse clapped Crispin’s shoulder, all fizzy good humor. “I suppose Lieutenant Keynes told you the story, mmm? The story of our little lizard friend’s cowardice this afternoon?”
Crispin winced. The Kirekuni was anything but little. He was the tallest man in the squadron—taller even, by an inch, than Crispin. Somehow that made his silence in the face of the insult much worse.
“I know what chums you and Keynes are,” Vichuisse said with vile innuendo.
“Yes, he told me about it, sir.”
“I’ve been giving Ash a talking-to. But you’ll agree that in a case like this—where a pilot’s misjudgment caused the death of another pilot, a member of his own crew, no less—a talking-to is insufficient.” Vichuisse swung the cat-o’-nine-tails against his palm. Only Vichuisse, Crispin thought with a surge of disproportionate anger, would indulge in a flogging by moonlight! Couldn’t he have waited until tomorrow? And yet such bizarre acts were completely in character for the captain. There had been the time some money was stolen from his rooms, when Vichuisse made every man on the base turn out and stand on parade in the snow, in their underwear, while he personally searched their lockers.
The Kirekuni remained motionless.
“Yes, sir?” Crispin controlled his voice.
“Should you like to taste what responsibility really is, Kateralbin?” Vichuisse said, smirking.
Crispin and the Kirekuni stood face-to-face on the western side of the mess hall. Crispin had led him around the corner to ensure that Vichuisse would not be able to spy—there were no windows on that side, and what with the wind, unless the captain were actually to come outside, he would not be able to see or hear a thing. And to come outside would have been beneath Vichuisse’s dignity—as well as proof that he did not trust Crispin to carry out his orders.
The thing is that he does trust me, Crispin thought. If there’s a single one of us lieutenants he trusts, it’s me. That’s why he made me a lieutenant.
But hard on the heels of conscience’s prickings came a thrill at the thought of depriving Vichuisse of one of his unfair victories over his men.
The Kirekuni was standing at ease, probably waiting to be ordered to unbutton his flight suit. In the moonlight his skin was as white as bone, his hair—slightly longer than the regulation buzz cut—sleek as the fur of a black cat.
Crispin jerked his chin in the direction of the regulars’ barracks. “Dismissed, Ash.” Then, when the Kirekuni did not move: “I said, you can go now.”
“Ten of the best!” Ash’s voice betrayed his astonishment. “Wasn’t that what Vee said?”
“You don’t get it, do you!” Crispin shifted the cat-o’-nine-tails to his left hand. “Go to bed! And if you don’t have nightmares about what happened to Francke, I swear you’re not human.”
“You can’t do this,” Ash objected.
“You want a flogging?”
“I want one more than I want to be obliged to you.”
“No payback involved.” Crispin waved the cat-o’-nine-tails in the direction of the barracks. “Move.”
Ash tilted his head and screwed up his face, as if he were trying to see right into Crispin. A thread of discomfort colored Crispin’s determination. He did not know the Kirekuni; Ash was not in his crew, so there was no reason for them ever to speak. Besides, the last thing Crispin wanted was to be seen associating with the other outsider of the squadron. But it wasn’t merely the racial stigma that made Crispin avoid him so assiduously. It was the way Ash looked at him. Whenever they were in the same room, Ash’s gaze followed him, picking him out from the others. Of course, everyone had done that at first; even when he was just a rigger they had stared. But then they got used to him. New men soon learned that certain slurs which would have been perfectly acceptable anywhere else were not allowed in 80 Squadron: Crispin’s crew saw to that. But the hungry way the Kirekuni looked at Crispin had not changed in two and a half years.
“Where did you get your last name, Ash?” Crispin said suddenly, without meaning to. “How would they say it in Okimako?”
Ash shrugged. “My mother gave it to me.”
Disappointment washed through Crispin.
“And her mother gave it to her, and her mother... ” Ash took a step forward, as if trying to see into Crispin’s face. “You’re not jerking me around, are you? You’re not.”
“No.”
“Akila. It’s a very common name in Kirekune. Very old.”
Crispin laughed. “And Mickey? That’s not Kirekuni either!” Ash had a given name when he came, Butch had said once, some funny-sounding lizard thing but we took care of that quick enough... He took care of it himself, really... Declared one day that from now on he was going to be called Mickey, so we couldn’t take the mickey out of him anymore. The boys laughed, of course—they thought it was rich... “How would they say that in Okimako?” He gave the word the lilt that had come in her voice whenever she said her name, or her mother’s. “Miki?”
It took him completely by surprise when the Kirekuni flinched. Ash laughed, shook his head, and almost staggered against the wall. “Damn you, Lieutenant,” he said, chuckling. “Mind if I smoke?”
“You’re not on parade.”
Ash extracted a cigarette case from a pocket of his jacket, then struck a lucifer dexterously with his tail, keeping both hands cupped around the cigarette. Crispin watched in unwilling fascination. It was a marvelous trick—made you wonder why all human beings had not been born with tails. When the Kirekuni got his cigarette burning, Crispin said without thinking, “Got another?”
“No problem,” and Ash went through the whole routine again before Crispin could retract his words. But when the lit cigarette was in his fingers he felt a touch of panic. Now he would have to stay here until they had finished smoking. Their relations had been temporarily transformed from those of regular and lieutenant, to those of two pilots having a cigarette together after a harrowing evening. Ash must have felt the shift in the hierarchy, too. He leaned against the wall, the cigarette drooping from his fingers. “So Lieutenant, what do you think of this war?”
“Blessed Queen! What a question.”
“Do you know what I think? It’s a bloody farce.”
“That’s not a particularly original opinion.”
“The freeze on negotiations is just stupid. If you’d had the opportunity to compare both sides, like I have, you’d know what I mean.” Ash put his head back and looked at the sky. It was empty except for the bombers’ moon. “We’re going to be completely overwhelmed in ten years. Twenty at the most.”
“Don’t tell the captain that.”
“Oh, I’d never dare!” Ash grinned and shuddered with exaggerated fear. It was unmistakably a fag gesture. “The only one I’d ever say it to is you!”
“Can’t see why.” Crispin exhaled smoke. “You don’t know me.”
“But I do know you, Lieutenant” Ash fixed him with that steady, dark gaze. “You just don’t know me.”
“You’re taking liberties, Pilot. Watch it. And if I were you, I’d go to bed as soon as you’ve finished that. Your crew is on dawn patrol duty, if I remember right.”
Ash gazed down at the cigarette in his hand. “I’ve never needed much sleep . Do you know why I give so much thought to the war?”
Crispin laughed. “Are you implying the rest of us daydream about Shadow girls while we’re shooting down Kirekunis?”
“You’d be surprised how many do. No. It’s because I’m not a fatalist. You lot are fatalists through and through. Say what you will, a century of defeats hasn’t left the Ferupian spirit unharmed. I’d say every man in this squadron, apart from a few slackers, is prepared to lay down his life for the Queen. Assumes he will lay it down. I’m not like that. I think about how things are going to end.”
“This isn’t the infantry. One has to want to be a pilot. Maybe in Kirekune it’s different.”
“Just one of many things that’s different. I never wanted to fly. Oh, sure, I got used to it. I even got to like it. But, Lieutenant, I admit it, I’m a coward at heart.”
“No shit!” Crispin laughed. He took a drag of his cigarette and scrutinized the Kirekuni through the cloud of smoke.
Every trace of humor was gone from the pale face.
“You’re the first man I’ve ever heard admit that,” Crispin said slowly.
“I don’t want to die! That’s why I sometimes get spitting furious at the Queen and all her generals, whoever’s responsible for making the negotiations break down, for keeping this war going on and on and on. I’m never going to get pensioned off; did you know that? I’m a traitor. They can’t discharge me to wander freely around the Queen’s country. And what’s my chances of surviving another fifteen years at the rate I’m going? I hate it, but I’m going to lay my life down for Ferupe, too!”
“I’ve never thought much of the idea of dying either,” Crispin said abruptly, surprising himself.
“But you aren’t a coward, Lieutenant.”
Crispin sucked the last drag from his cigarette and threw it to the mud. “You wanted me to give you ten of the best, didn’t you?” he said with disgust.
The Kirekuni grimaced. Then, with motions so fast that Crispin flinched back, he took out and lit another cigarette. “Oh, yes, Lieutenant!” ‘The self-mocking laughter was back in his voice. “I’d have just loved it! You still can if you want!”
“In the name of the Queen,” Crispin said, and turned on his heel. He hesitated. Ash leaned against the wall, long limbs indolently askew, enjoying his cigarette with obviously exaggerated pleasure. “Tell me one more thing, Ash: did you mean to kill Francke?”
Ash’s face twisted, and he spat on the ground. “Significant! I’d be more justified in suspecting you of offing Fischer in the heat of battle! You’d never have got to be a lieutenant if your lieutenant hadn’t been shot down, would you?” He mimicked Crispin’s tone. “Did you mean to kill him? I’ve been a pilot three times as long as you have! It happens to everyone.”
“Not as often as it happens to you.”
“You want to know the real reason I fuck up? It’s the crap design of your damned Gorgonettes.”
“What?” Crispin said.
“You’re tall, too! You’ve got to have some idea of what it’s like to crouch in that cockpit for hours at a time without being able to straighten your neck or your legs. Tends to make you antsy, doesn’t it? Might even skew your judgment, having to look down through that thick windshield at an angle. That’s one thing. And for another, I’m left-handed.” Ash shook his left hand in the air. Stupidly, Crispin looked at it. “Nearly all Kirekunis are, the way nearly all Ferupians are right-handed. No, it never occurred to me, either, until I had to try and fly a plane with the controls reversed. I’m getting better at it. But still, the whipcord is so sensitive, and if you’ve been doing everything that requires delicacy with your good hand for twenty-one years, it’s going to cause a few problems when you’ve suddenly got to exert microcontrol—and keep a two-ton daemon in check—with your worse hand. Just one tiny little unintentional spasm means a deviation of several degrees, or several dozen mph, when you’re in the air. You’re a pilot. You know what I’m talking about.”
Crispin found his voice. “Why don’t you get them to refurbish a KE for you? Or at least install the cockpit in a Gorgonette.”
“For me? I’m a traitor, Lieutenant. Come on. If I even asked I’d be daemonsmeat.”
Crispin shook his head. “Wouldn’t want your problems, Ash.” He turned away. “Take my advice. Get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir,” Ash said mockingly behind him.
Crispin gritted his teeth and moved into the darkness.
Any thought of stopping in on his crew was long gone. As he opened the door to the officers’ quarters, lifting it a little so that it didn’t creak, he whispered: “Left-handed! Who would have thought it!”
It was a little warmer after he closed the door. A brazier of daemons burned at the far end of the room, between the bunks. The brazier was completely hooded, or else it would have lit the room bright as day; as it was, a thin line of white glowed on the floor around the hood. The room smelled of musk and unwashed bodies. As the most junior lieutenant, Crispin had the bunk closest to the ceiling. He laid Vichuisse’s cat-o’-nine-tails on the lockers at the other end of the room. Standing by the brazier, he stripped and pulled on his pajamas, then climbed the ladder past Festhre’s and Butch’s sleeping forms. The sheetbag was icy. Forcing himself not to shiver, he thought:
Rae wasn’t left-handed—
But she was brought up in Ferupe. Most likely when the culties taught her to write, she had to use her right hand. That would’ve taken care of it.
He hadn’t thought of her in months. But she had been on his mind, consciously or unconsciously, most of the evening.
It’s that damn lizard reminded me, he thought with sudden anger. Got to avoid him in future. Got more important things to think about than the past. I was only a kid then. Must avoid—him in future—must remember to avoid...
And sleep closed over him, the dreamless sleep of pure exhaustion to which all those who handle daemons succumb, and just as he was sinking he realized something that almost made him come awake again, something which talking to Mickey Ash had brought to the forefront of his mind.
He did not want to die.
Dying just didn’t fit in with his plans to reap more honor and glory than any other pilot in 80 Squadron’s history, and eventually be promoted to flight captain, from which position he would be pensioned off at the ripe age of thirty-five, when he would be able to lead a comfortable life in Kingsburg. Money and a military title would force society to accept him as it had not accepted the poor circus boy. He had vague plans to become part-owner of a real theater, a theater that staged classy dramas and operas for nobility in masks, to buy his way into a whole string of operations...
Yet death was a probability, not a possibility. How did he dare to plan for the future?
He could not die. He would not.
“Can’t lose your nerve now, boy,” he mumbled. “Gotta fly tomorrow.”
He wrinkled his nose, turned over on his side, and slept. The crackling of flames which he had heard so clearly a moment ago stopped.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds...
—W. B. Yeats