Up. She pushed the throttles forward and waggled her wings to test the balance of the engines, then banked upward and started glancing down at the ground, smiling to herself with the familiar exhilaration of flight. And there was nothing more fun than strafing missions. There was the Eboreaux River, the town of Selandrons . . . and the irregular line of the trenches. Not a solid maze of redoubts and communications lines like some sections of the front, just field entrenchments. Enemy artillery sparkled along it and through it—their offensive was getting off to a good start, penetrating the thin defenses and thrusting for the river.
Ground crawled beneath her, like a map itself from six thousand feet. The cold, thin air slapped at her face, making her cheeks tingle. An occasional puff of black followed the squadron as the converted naval quick-firers the Santies had supplied to the Reds opened up, but there were a lot of targets up here today; aircraft were rising from all along the front, swarming up from the front-line airfields by the hundreds. There were planes on either side as far as she could see, black dots against the blue and white of the sky, the drone of engines filling her ears.
Magnificent, she thought. Even better, the fighter squadron assigned to give them top cover was in place.
Ahead, the squadron commander waggled his wings three times and then banked into a dive. At precise ten-second intervals the others followed. Gerta grinned sharklike as she flipped up the cover on the joystick and put her thumb lightly on the firing button.
* * *
“Those aren’t ours,” Gerard said sharply, standing.
No, they aren’t, Jeffrey thought with sharp alarm. The Loyalists and Brigades didn’t use that double-arrowhead formation.
“Get me some reports,” Gerard said sharply to the communications technician.
She—the Union forces had a Women’s Auxiliary now, too—fiddled with the big crackle-finished Santander wireless set that occupied one side of the great car. There weren’t many other sets for the tech to talk to; wireless small enough to get into a land vehicle was a recent development . . . courtesy of Center. Jeffrey kept his eyes on the growing swarm of dots along the western horizon, but he could hear the pattern of dots and dashes through the tech’s headphones. Center translated them for him effortlessly, but he waited until the tech finished scribbling on a pad and handed the result to Gerard.
“Sir. Enemy planes in strength attacking the following positions.”
Gerard took it and flipped through the maps on the table. “Artillery parks and shell storage areas and fuel dumps behind our lines.”
Another series of dots and dashes. “And our airfields. Fortunate that most of our planes are already up.”
Jeffrey whistled, leaning against one of the overhead bars and bracing his binoculars. “I make that over two hundred,” he said. “Fighters . . . and there are two-engined craft as well.”
“The new Von Nelsings we’ve heard about. That puts a stake through the heart of this offensive.”
“I’d say we’ve run right into a rebel offensive,” Jeffrey said.
“Exactly. And I will advance no further into the jaws of a trap. Driver! Pull over!”
The big car nosed over to the side of the road. Several smaller ones full of aides and staff officers drew up around it.
“No clumping!” Gerard ordered sharply. “You, you, you, come here—the rest of you spread out, hundred-yard intervals.” He began to rap out orders.
* * *
A fighter cut through the Land formation, the red-white-and-blue spandrels on its wings marking it as a Freedom Brigades craft. The twin machine guns sparkled, and a series of holes punctured the wing to her right; one bullet spanged off the steel-plate cowling of the engine. Behind Gerta, the Protégé gunner screamed with rage as she wrestled the twin-gun mount around, tracer hammering out in the enemy fighter’s wake. The Von Nelsing next to her dove after it, but the more nimble pursuit plane turned in a beautifully tight circle, far tighter than the twin-engine craft could manage.
However, Gerta thought, and dove.
That cut across the chord of the Brigade’s fighter’s circle; the heavier Von Nelsing dove fast. For a moment the wire circle gunsight behind her windscreen slid just enough ahead of the Santy Mark II. Her thumb stabbed on the button, and the six machine guns ahead of her hammered. Over a hundred rounds struck the little biplane fighter in the second that her burst lasted, ripping it open from nose to tail like a knife through wrapping paper. It staggered in the air, collapsed in the middle, and exploded into flame all in the same instant. The burning debris fluttered groundward in pieces, the dense mass of the engine falling fastest.