“Balls to the wall, Jer,” he said.
They walked the throttles forward. The Morgana leveled off and sped to meet the diving Typhon. Farley saw it now, a distant wedge framed in the ragged strip of canyon sky.
“It’s gonna hit us high, Joe,” said Broben.
Farley shook his head, remembering the simulations the Typhon had run in its hangar bay. You figured out what the Luftwaffe pilots learned, didn’t you? Farley thought at the oncoming shape.
The Typhon plunged below the level of the bomber, then shot up with a suddenness that would have killed a human pilot.
Farley held steady. We’ve got one gun up front and we can’t get out of the way. That’s what you know.
The Typhon leveled off and came straight at them, wings raked back and level.
You can come in faster and hit harder and veer off closer than a Messerschmitt can, Farley thought, and thumbed his mike. “Pilot to belly gunner,” he said, and heard the measured calm of barrage flying in his voice. “On my signal.”
The Typhon was two miles off and growing in the windshield.
Farley took a deep breath. Held it. And all we can do up front is shoot and pray, he thought. That’s what you’re counting on, isn’t it?
Farley made out the bulge of weapon pod beneath the Typhon’s right wing.
Broben was pressing back in his seat as if he wanted to crawl over the back.
But you went up against a different bomber in your little game. That’s what I’m banking on.
The black core of the pod sparked white.
Farley cut the wheel hard right and hauled it back as he mashed the right rudder to full. The twenty-ton bomber groaned its shuddering length and cut a quarter-turn snap roll to the right, broad wings going knife-edge vertical.
“Now,” said Farley. He was already giving opposite aileron as the nose came down into the hard evasive right no bomber in Creation should have made. Broben heard rivets pop. The crew were pressed against the hull like clothes in a spinning washer.
No one saw the depleted-uranium shell tear past the belly of the bomber at five times the speed of sound. No one saw the Typhon roll to its right and veer in the opposite direction, both aircraft passing belly to belly like jousting gods.
No one but Martin. Curled in the ball turret like some creature waiting to be born, massive fissure walls rushing past him in a dizzying streak on either side, twin guns aimed straight ahead, grips in his hands familiar as the stitches on a baseball. Feeling the old worn leather of the medicine bag against his chest and thinking of his grandfather’s words about Wakínyan Tanka the Thunderbird when he was a child. And praying to whatever gods there were that he would not let his crewmates down.
The world turned ninety degrees as the bomber snap-rolled right. In his ears his captain’s voice said Now, and as Martin pressed the firing button something shot along the bomber’s length so close and fast it left a hole behind it in the air. Martin rotated after it, chasing vapor, shooting ghosts, and just as the guns rolled perpendicular to the belly of the bomber standing on its right wing, the entire Typhon filled his world, a prehistoric shark streaking by a minnow, itself planed right and veering, mottled belly nearly raking bomber belly. And Martin’s guns still fired pulverizing rounds the size of grease pencils that stitched along the exposed length of living weapon, that ripped divots of metal and flesh and tore through the elegant engineering of the thing’s insides—
—and past.
The Flying Fortress peeling off and arcing down into the chasm.
Martin panting. Staring at an empty space. Medicine bag rising and falling underneath his thermal suit. Twin barrels hot and cutting through the empty air.
The nose dropped down and Farley kicked the aileron left and gave her hard left rudder and pushed forward on the yoke, the bomber falling sideways out across the canyon in a massive peel-out. He righted her and brought the rudder to neutral and kept her diving to pick up speed as she headed toward the western cliff wall half a mile away.
“Pilot to belly gunner, report.”
Farley brought her around in a broad and gentle curve, losing height but gaining speed. He still had a thousand feet to spare.
“Belly gunner, report,” Farley repeated. “What’s the story, Martin?”
Everybody heard the belly gunner breathing in their headphones. Then:
“Up and in, captain.”
Farley exhaled. “Nice pitch, chief.”
“Nice call, sir.”
“Tail gunner to pilot,” came Francis’ adolescent voice. “That thing’s at six o’clock low and headed away down the canyon. It’s pretty low. I think it’s kind of busted up.”
The sudden cheering over the headphones made Farley wince. “Roger that,” he said. “We did some fancy dancing there. Everybody report in. Wen, give me a status check.”
He glanced at Broben. The copilot was staring at him in total disbelief.
“What?” demanded Farley. He glanced at the air speed indicator and leveled off.
“ ‘What?’ ” Broben looked around: You believe this guy? “You can’t do what you just did, is what.”
Farley shrugged. “I hear bumblebees can’t fly,” he said.
Jogging south along the sunlit crater floor, Wennda suddenly paused. Sten slowed and looked back questioningly. Wennda frowned and held a hand up.
A faint drone grew in the distance.
Sten looked around the bare and sunlit ground. No shadows and no cover.
“We have to find cover,” Sten said. “We’re too exposed here.”
“It’s not the Typhon.”
Sten frowned. “It’s not?”
“Not unless it grew radial engines,” Wennda said. And smiled.
“Grew what?” asked Sten.
Wennda wiped her eyes and pointed north. Five miles away the Fata Morgana flew out from between the northern fissure walls, morning sunlight glinting from her cockpit windows, and began to trace the crater’s rim, and began to climb.
I’m with you, Joe.
She kissed her fingers and patted her heart, and turned to start the great work of shaping her new world.
FORTY
“Sixteen five,” called Broben.
The gyros were out, the azimuth indicator rolled, the compass spun, and every indicator was topped out except for altitude. Wen had said the ship would come through better this time out, and Farley had no choice but to believe him.
“Sixteen five, roger,” Farley said. He looked from the crazed instrument panel to the violent colors traced with frozen lightning in the air three miles away. His eyes hurt with the colors’ throbbing and he looked away. Below, the vast bowl of crater curved up to the notched rim wall.
“Speed two two five.”
“Two two five, roger.” Farley looked at Broben. “You ready?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Farley smirked. “Pilot to crew,” he said. “We’ve got no reason to think that going back will be any different than getting here was, so get ready. Someone’ll probably want to give Yone a hand.” He paused a moment, thinking how to put what he wanted to say. Finally he just said, “If anybody wants to pray or do their lucky dance, now’s the time. I’ll see you on the other side.”