Laquell returned to Rimfire and Larice took her place in the rotation as the war on Amedeo continued at its brutal pace. The flyers at Rimfire found themselves under ever more pressure as the attacks over the Breakers increased in frequency and the cities of the Ice were hit by more and more bomber waves. The Apostles flew a dozen intercepts in three days, splashing sixty-eight craft between them.
As expected, Quint took the highest tally. Larice was a hair’s breadth behind him.
Nothing more was said of the night Larice brought Laquell to the Aquilian, yet it festered like a splinter of rotten wood beneath her skin. In the short period between flights she checked the Operations logs for any mention of Laquell, and was gratified to see his kill count climb steadily.
Eight days passed before she saw him again, amid a furious intercept in the skies ten kilometres north of Coriana. A huge wave of bombers and fighter escorts, two hundred and ten aircraft in total, appeared without warning over the snow-lashed Breakers, and the Lightnings and Thunderbolts based at Rimfire had only moments to scramble.
Less than three-quarters of the planes managed to get airborne before the first bombs hit, flattening the makeshift runways and obliterating what little infrastructure there was. The Imperial aircraft immediately tangled with the bombers’ escort planes, a mix of Razors, Talons and Hell Blades, and a furious engagement began.
The Thunderbolts danced with the escorts while the faster Lightnings powered through the low-flying formations to target the slow movers above. Like wolves in the fold, the Lightnings savaged the packs of bombers, sending twenty to the ice in palls of smoke and fire, before the Archenemy escorts could break from the fight below to come to their aid.
The Thunderbolts followed them up, but before the two groups of fighters locked horns, another forty enemy fighters screamed down from the north. Operations at Coriana screamed a warning to the pilots, unable to believe that so many bats had simply popped into existence on their auspex.
The arrival of so many enemy aircraft forced the flyers from Rimfire to disengage.
And with their base now a volcanic crater in the ice, they turned south for Coriana.
Larice yanked the stick hard right, viffing down and barely avoiding a drifting stream of cannon fire from a diving Hell Talon. The pilot had misjudged his deflection, and she rolled back and deployed her air brakes, coming in around behind the bat as it slashed through the formation. She pushed out the throttle, lining up her shot, when she heard the shrill warning tone of a weapons lock.
‘Five, break left!’ shouted Leena Sharto.
Her target forgotten, Larice pulled left and down, driving the engine to full military power and weaving in and out of the morass of duelling planes. A Razor flashed in front of her, a Navy bird in hot pursuit, and she squeezed off a short burst of las. The pilot’s canopy disintegrated in a shower of diamond splinters as it spun away.
Larice didn’t watch it die. She twisted left and right, trying to locate her pursuer. It was still locked on to her, but she couldn’t see it. An eye-wateringly bright blizzard of las-fire flashed over her and she threw her aircraft down, finally catching the blaze of light from the enemy guns.
Larice flew like a flock of Killers were on her tail, jinking and viffing through the air like an aerial acrobat. Her pursuer stayed with her, but there were few who understood how a Thunderbolt danced as well as Larice Asche, and it couldn’t match her turns.
‘You’re fixated,’ she said, grunting as a high-g turn drove the breath from her. ‘And that’s gotten you killed.’
She hauled back on the stick and flexed her plane through a screaming hammerhead turn, pulling vertical before rolling her tail section over and aiming her aircraft straight down. It was a risky manoeuvre, bleeding speed and leaving her hanging in the air. The Razor was right below her, lining up its shot, but Larice fired first.
Her quads banged and thumped, and the Razor split open in a storming burst of debris. Larice dropped through the flaming wreckage, her canopy awash with fire and the fuselage thumping with impacts. Nothing flashed red and she pulled out of her dive, coming level and increasing speed in case any other enemy craft were waiting to pounce.
None were, and she rolled back into the fight. The sky was thick with bats, swarming, razor-winged darts that flew aggressively and protected the slower bombers with the tenacity of a mother grox defending her offspring.
They outnumbered the Imperial aircraft, but that advantage wasn’t counting for much. Larice knew the Archenemy were careless with their craft, preferring overwhelming numbers to skill and talent in the air. With every passing minute, the bombers were getting closer to Coriana, but their numbers were thinning as they went. The Apostles and sixty other planes were dancing with them at low altitude, screaming over the ice and outlying industrial complexes surrounding the city.
Larice saw a stretched V of aircraft taking the low-level approach to Coriana and thumbed the vox.
‘This is Five, seven plus heavy bombers with escort going in low over the refineries.’
‘I see them, Five.’ Seekan.
‘Take the lead, Five. I’m right behind you.’ Suhr.
‘Lead us in, Larice,’ said a familiar voice and she smiled as she recognised the laconic tones.
She smiled. ‘Good to have you on board, Laquell.’
‘I’ve got Schaw and Ysor from Indigo with me,’ voxed Laquell. ‘On your left wing.’
Larice looked over, seeing Laquell’s trio of fighters, and pushed her stick forwards and surged power to the afterburners.
‘Five on lead,’ said Larice, switching to quads.
‘Bear in mind that we’re flying over incredibly volatile structures,’ advised Seekan as though informing them of light cloud cover. ‘Short, controlled bursts only.’
‘Diving in now,’ said Larice. ‘Stoop and sting those escorts!’
Almost as soon as she’d armed her guns, the two groups of aircraft were tangled up in a madly spinning, close-range dogfight. Larice rolled hard left, catching sight of a Razor’s tail section, and followed it down.
Every move the Razor made, Larice was with him, the planes spinning around the sky like insects in a bizarre mating ritual. The plane spun right, but Larice was waiting for it. It flashed across her gunsight and she pulled the cannon trigger.
‘Got you,’ she hissed as bright laser bolts tore into the enemy plane’s fuselage and ripped the darting craft in two. The plane spewed smoke and flames, tumbling downwards, and Larice caught a glimpse of the blood-splattered pilot as he struggled weakly with his doomed aircraft.
She rolled out of her attack, turning back into the fight. Aircraft swooped and dived around her, and she watched Seekan saw the tail off a Tormentor with a precise burst of las-fire. Owen Thule peppered a Hell Blade with his quads and lit up a Razor seconds later as he viffed over the wreckage and stood his plane on its wing to shred a spinning Hell Talon.
A diving Razor slotted itself in on his six and gunfire punched holes in his right wing.
‘Eight, break right!’ yelled Larice as her threat board lit up. She slammed the stick right and feathered the engines as a white rocket contrail speared past her canopy.
Red metal suddenly filled her vision and she swore, pushing the plane down and left as the belly of a Hell Blade screamed over her canopy, so close she felt she could reach out and touch it. Its jetwash threw her around for a moment until she was able to bring herself level again and come back on Owen Thule. She breathed deeply, amazed at how close the near miss had been.
‘He’s stuck to my six!’ shouted Thule.
‘I’m on him,’ shouted Laquell, spinning his Thunderbolt into a rolling S to come in on the bat’s five. His deflection was perfect and the bat flew straight into his storm of shells, blowing apart as its engine detonated.