“And anyone with a SAM could shoot them down,” Talbot said, bluntly.
“Not many of those on Mars,” Harriet said. “I’m more worried about the orbital defense platforms.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got that all worked out,” said Orlova with a grin. “Ever do any flying, Lieutenant?”
Talbot shrugged, and said, “On Ragnarok, with an atmosphere a hundred times thicker. I’m guessing the principle is basically the same.”
“Let the autopilot do most of the work,” Orlova replied, “and I’ll run interference for you. Relax, it’ll work.”
She walked over to the far side of the dome and reached down for a hidden hatch, pulling away a piece of floor tiling to expose a shaft heading down into darkness, lit only by a few dimly glowing spotlights at the bottom. Without waiting, she started to climb down, waving for the others to follow.
“How the hell did you know about this?” Harriet asked.
“I told you my father was stationed here; that was when I was about five. I spent ages wandering around these tunnels. Not much else for a kid to do on a base like this. We were here for about a year, long enough to know the layout of the place.” She smiled, then said, “I even went up a couple of times, whenever one of the pilots showed a little mercy to my father.”
After a few dozen rungs, she was out into empty space, a huge, dug-out hangar space with half a dozen shapes hidden under red tarpaulins, covered in dust. Orlova eagerly slid down the last few steps and raced over to the nearest, pulling the sheet clear and exposing the craft beneath, a long, thin cylinder with stubby wings attached, a cable connected to a socket underneath.
“Still working,” she said, reaching up into the cockpit and tapping a series of controls. “I’ve got preflight running. Ready to launch in five minutes.” As she raced over to the next craft and repeated the procedure, Talbot looked over the craft with a frown on his face, shaking his head.
“I’ve only got a light aircraft license, and I’m not an aeronautical engineer, but aren’t these wings rather on the small side?”
“You’ll see when we get out to the surface. Harriet, you’re with me. Talbot and the Commandant over there. Strap yourselves in and get ready for the ride of your life.”
Moving back into the first cockpit, Orlova strapped herself in as Harriet clambered in behind her, looking around at the instruments with an air of bafflement.
“Don’t worry, I can handle everything from here. Most of these are single-seat, but they did a couple of trainers. At one point the plan was to put together a few squadrons of these.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“After a few years they realized that there wasn’t going to be any fighting down on the surface, not unless everything had gone so badly wrong that the war was lost anyway. So they shut down the program and threw it into mothballs. Someone comes around every month or so to check that everything’s working, but they’ve been doing it for so long that I suspect the brass has forgotten about it. It
'
s a Martian Space Service project anyway, nothing to do with the Triplanetary Fleet. With a bit of luck, we’ll catch them by surprise. You ready?”
“I guess so.”
“Good,” she said. “This is going to be fun.” After a quick glance back to make sure that the other fighter was ready, she threw a trio of switches and the hatch at the far end of the hangar opened, the atmosphere leaking quickly away. Tapping another button, the fighter began to taxi down to the start of the runway, edging left and right as she tested the controls, attempting to get the feel of the craft.
“What about the wings?” Harriet asked.
“Ah, that’s one of the special parts of the design. Watch.” Orlova threw a switch, and on either side of the fighter, the wings began to extend, racing out more than a hundred feet, support struts clicking into place. A series of lights flashed from red to amber to green, and she smiled. “They built them to be hidden away, small, if needed.”
“Doesn’t that affect their strength?”
“We get hit by something, we’re dead anyway. No armor. This craft was built like the early landers – weight was at an absolute premium. Don’t bang the floor.”
“I thought this was a fighter?”
“She’s got great performance.” Pulling out a headset and strapping it on, she said, “Talbot, do you read me?”
“Yeah, my wings are extending now. Your work?”
“I’ve set up a slave system on some of your controls. Autopilot’s programming for the Ragnarok Embassy right now; with a little luck we should come down just outside. One quick dash for the airlock and we’ll be fine. Give them a call and arrange for a welcoming party once we get into the air.”
“Will do.”
She rested her hands on the controls, left hand on the throttle, right hand on the joystick, the computer managing the rest of the systems. Despite everything that was happening, she was enjoying this – the nearest she’d been to real flying for years.
“You’ve done this a lot, have you, Maggie?” Harriet asked.
“Atmospheric flying?” she replied. “Several hundred hours.”
“That’s good.”
As the plane built up speed, the nose beginning to pull up, she added, “In simulation. Hang on!”
Biting the thin atmosphere, the engine powering up to full, the plane slowly began to lift off the ground, plenty of runway still remaining. With a loud, grinding noise, the landing gear retracted into the main body of the fighter, and the wings swept into position for maximum lift, the
internal systems pulling the structure tighter, making micro-adjustments to make the fighter as aerodynamic as possible.
“All good, we have cleared the runway, height a hundred feet.” She reached up for a switch, and said, “Going for level flight.”
“Can’t we go higher?”
Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “Where’s the fun in that! These craft were designed to go low, and besides, I want as much attention as possible.” She gestured up ahead, and said, “I’m heading for the Tharsis Strip. There’s enough traffic there that no-one’s going to shoot us down, far too many questions to answer. It’s about a hundred miles, maybe a little over an hour if we’re lucky.”
“Skyborne,” Talbot’s voice echoed over the speaker. “Only just had enough runway.”
“Don’t worry, as long as you made it, that’s
good
enough. Maintain your altitude and follow me.”
“Look down there,” Harriet said, pointing over her left side. Orlova looked down and saw one of the truck convoys in the desert, the vehicles stopped and spacesuited figures climbing out.
“That’s a bit of bad luck. I’d hoped to dodge them, at least for a while. Never mind.”
“What can they do?”
“I don’t know what the current defense preparedness level is, but it’ll take time to get the planetary defenses set up for this. They’re designed to point out, not in.”
With a sigh, Melissa said, “Then we shouldn’t have any real problems.”
Looking down at a monitor, Orlova replied, “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Problem?”
“I’m getting readings of something lifting from the base. They must have managed to get past the security overrides on the other fighters.” Shaking her head, she replied, “Which means that they must have had some pilots with them. Damn it, I should have known this would happen.”
“We’ve got a head start, haven’t we?”
“Yes, but there are two of us in this fighter, and the rest are built for one. These things are light enough that even that little weight makes a real difference to our performance.” She turned to look behind her, spotting a trio of faint dots rising to the sky. “Thank God the load-out on these things was never completed.”
“It wasn’t?”
“They never got funding for the air-to-air missiles.”
“Then what are they armed with?”
“Well, there are laser targeters to simulate all sorts of damage profiles for exercises and flight tests, but the brass insisted that something get loaded on them…”
“So what? Railguns, plasma cannons?”
Turning back to face her passenger, Orlova said, “Machine guns. The specs for which were dug out of an old history text. Thrown together in four evenings, as I recall. I helped Dad put the bits together.”
“This is absurd. I’m flying over Mars in a plane that would have fit just fine in the Hitler War.”
“Actually, it’s a little primitive for that. We were improvising.” She threw a few switches, then said, “I’m going to have to go to manual. The on-board systems aren’t really up to dogfighting. Make sure your parachute straps are secure.”
“Maggie, we’re only wearing light suits.”
“Then we’d better hope we don’t need the parachutes. Hold on, this is going to get bumpy.” Pulling down the microphone on her headset, she said, “Talbot, I’m going to take the rear and try and keep our new friends off our backs. Head right for the Embassy, and don’t look back. Clear?”
“Hold on, I’m….”
“You will do no such thing!” Orlova snapped. “I know this atmosphere, I know this plane, and you know neither. Get to safety. I can handle this. That’s an order.”
“Roger,” he reluctantly said. “See you on the deck.”
“Good. Orlova out.”
While she settled into manual control, Orlova looked back at the pursuing pilots, glancing down at their progress on the rudimentary sensor display. Lots of quick maneuvers, sloppy piloting, not making the most of their advantage, though they would still catch up to her in a few moments. Rookies, at a guess, perhaps making too much use of their automated systems. That was something she could exploit.
With a smile, she pulled the nose up, gaining altitude, watching as they struggled to follow. Her controls began to soften, the power fade away as the fighter pulled out of the thin pressure envelope in which it could safely operate. Two of them gave up the attempt, staying down on the deck, while the other managed to gain
some
height. While he wallowed through the air, she banked around in a wide arc, swooping down towards him and tapping a control on her joystick, sending fire spitting in his direction.
The machine gun was at least automatically aimed, and a salvo of bullets smashed into her opponent’s wing, sending him wheeling down to the surface as the on-board computer attempted to salvage the situation into a controllable crash, with less than a thousand feet to play with.
His wingmates were coming up fast, and bullets flew past the cockpit, missing only narrowly, a little out of range. On instinct alone, she dived down for the ground, Harriet gasping as she pulled out of the descent with only a few dozen feet to go, close enough to make out every detail of the surface. She could only see one of the fighters ahead, and she ranged in towards it.
“Behind us, Maggie!” Harriet said. “Five o’clock!”
“Too many old movies…,” Orlova muttered as she hurled the fighter into a series of evasive maneuvers, glancing up at the power register. As with everything else on this prototype, the flying time had never been sufficient, the bugs in the system not worked out, and the stresses of combat were beginning to take their toll. For a split second, she had a chance shot at one of the other fighters, and she took full advantage of it; the pilot was close enough to the ground that he could get into a glide path down as her bullets tore into his engine housing.
Before she could properly check, a salvo ripped through the air above her, sending a series of red lights flashing on her controls as she threw switches in an attempt to mitigate the damage.
“What is it?”
“Sensors, damn it. Look around for the bastard.”
Orlova’s eyes ranged the sky as she wove an intricate pattern of evasive maneuvers, trying not to stay straight and level for more than a few seconds, heedless of the damage to her power reserve, which was getting worryingly near the red line.
“Got him, seven o’clock,” Harriet said. “Heading our way.”
A portion of Orlova’s mind was impressed at the journalist’s calm, but a bigger part was focusing on the task at hand, pulling around until the enemy fighter was visible head, still diving right for her. He was dodging back and forth as well, trying to deny her a shot; he was learning the rules of the game quickly enough, but it was still taking too long. The race had one simple goal, to get in that first, critical shot.
By less than a second, Orlova won, and her target began its slow descent to the surface, black gashes running down the side of the ship, oxygen outgassing from the sides. Dipping her wings, she turned back towards her original goal, the Ragnarok Embassy a hundred and twenty miles distant.
“Great work, Maggie! That was amazing! I can’t wait to write this one up!”
“The job isn’t finished,” Orlova replied, trimming for maximum fuel economy. “I pushed her too damn hard in that dogfight.” The power indicator began to flash red, and she continued, “We’ll never make the Embassy; I’m just going to have to hope that we can get far enough away from that convoy.”
“You mean it was all for nothing?”
“We’re still alive, and we’re free. Look around for a settlement, I need to bring her down.”
“There’s nothing on the map.”
With a smile, Orlova replied, “This part of the surface has lots of illegal ice mines. Find me one, and we can work out the details when we get onto the deck.”
“Ice mines?” Harriet said, shaking her head. “Never mind. One more article, I guess. I don’t see anything at the moment.”
“Look closely, they’ll be camouflaged from orbital observation, though we ought to have more luck down here.”
Gently, carefully, Orlova nursed the
plane
into a long, slow glide path, turning the engines down as low as she dared. They might have another twenty minutes in the air before she had to ditch into the desert, though unless they could get undercover quickly, the inevitable outcome was going to be capture. At least Talbot and the Commandant had managed to get away; with any luck, they ought to be touching down in a matter of minutes.
The moments ticked on, guiding the fighter becoming more of a struggle by the second, Orlova taking more and more of the work back on herself to try and eke out her power,
thriftier than the automated systems
. Finally, just as she was about to start looking for the most sheltered spot she could to go down, Harriet tapped her on the shoulder.