Web of Fire Bind-up (21 page)

Sam's chest rose and fell in time with the ventilator. Apart from the blue and green bruising around his eyes, his face was undamaged. He looked as though he was asleep.

‘Did I tell you we've finished the baby's room now? You'd love it, Sam. Dad went and bought a mobile with little teddies on it and we've put up some nice yellow wallpaper all covered in daisies. It's really bright and summery.'

Sally smiled, trying desperately to think of something else to say. But it wasn't easy trying to talk to someone when they couldn't answer you, when you didn't know if they could hear you, didn't know if they were even there any more. She reached into her bag, took out a small pink teddy bear and placed it on the bedside table.

‘You didn't tell me, did you, love?' Sally's smile wavered and her bottom lip began to quiver. ‘Dad says you won it for me, that day at the arcade. But you never told me, did you? And so I never said thank you…' Her voice trailed off as she lifted Sam's hand and held it tightly against her chest. The tears were running down her cheeks now. They dripped off the end of her chin and made tiny damp circles on the pale blue hospital blanket.

‘The thing is,' she said, ‘we just want you to come home, Sam. That's all. We just want you home.'

Sally pulled a tissue from her bag to try to stem the tears and as she did so she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Jack stood beside her and she buried her face in his sleeve.

‘Oh, Jack,' she whispered when her sobs had subsided a little, ‘tell me it will be all right.'

Jack stroked her hair as she wept and looked across at his only son, his gift from heaven that had been so brutally snatched away.

‘Of course it will,' he told her. ‘We'll get him back, you'll see. Remember what you used to say to me? Everything is for the best in the end.'

He tenderly kissed the top of her head, shut his eyes tight and wished more than anything that what he said was true.

But the truth was, he didn't believe it any more.

Skipper dropped through the hatch into the seat next to Sam and the CRB flashed blue as she closed the hole up again.

‘How are you feeling?' she said.

‘I'm fine, thank you,' said Sam. ‘And, I am pleased to inform you, fully trained for water-related disasters.'

‘Explain?' said Skipper.

‘Cockpit-evacuation drill,' said Sam. ‘Did it this morning. If we were to crash into a lake this afternoon, I would coolly unclip my safety harness, flip calmly out of the emergency hatch and swim up to the surface with the speed and grace of a dolphin.'

Skipper smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah, I heard you did pretty well.'

Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘Who told you?'

‘Brindle. He reckons you're a natural.'

‘Brindle said that?'

‘Yeah.' Skipper flicked a switch and the instrument
panel glowed deep red. ‘Textbook evacuation, he called it. Brindle may be a bit of a hard nose, but he's a pretty good judge of character. You must have done really well, Sam.'

Sam blushed. ‘I think it was more to do with the lack of competition actually,' he said.

‘Don't tell me,' said Skipper, ‘let me guess. You didn't have Mump on the team there, did you?'

‘We did,' said Sam. ‘Why, do you know him?'

‘Only by reputation. Apparently he's a promising pilot but as soon as he gets out of his aircraft he turns into an almighty accident just waiting to happen.'

Sam frowned. ‘He can't be that bad, can he?'

‘Don't you believe it. Last week on the infantry course he picked up a drill bomb instead of a hand grenade and threw it onto the practice range. When there was no explosion, the weapons officer climbed out of the trench to have a look. Instead of an unexploded grenade he found a neat little hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. Just had time to dive for cover before the whole ground erupted and the air was filled with flying cookers.'

‘Eh?' said Sam, confused. ‘What do you mean, flying cookers?'

‘The drill bomb had burrowed its way down into the underground kitchens and blown 'em all to bits. Terrible business it was.'

‘Sounds it,' said Sam. ‘Did anyone get killed?'

‘Luckily not,' replied Skipper. ‘Although no thanks to Mump. It just so happened that everyone was changing
shift at the time and the only casualty was a chef who had his teeth knocked out by a ninety-mile-an-hour onion.'

Sam tried not to laugh. ‘That must have been a shock for him,' he said.

‘I'll say. Apparently he has to suck his food up through a straw and gets nightmares about being attacked by vegetables.'

There was a pause.

‘I thought they were supposed to be good for you,' said Sam.

Skipper giggled but then the intercom crackled into life and there was a hiss of static followed by a clear, calm voice from the control tower: ‘Hunter 437, this is control, do you read me?'

Skipper cleared her throat with a final chuckle, clicked her safety harness into place and said: ‘Control, this is Hunter 437 reading you loud and clear.'

‘Hunter 437, you are cleared for take-off. Proceed when ready.'

‘OK, control. Please be advised that pilot training is now under way, so anticipate slight take-off delay, over.'

‘Understood, 437. You have been granted a ten-minute window to complete procedures, over.'

‘Appreciate that, control. Hunter 437 out,' said Skipper. Then she turned to Sam. ‘Ready?'

‘Ready,' Sam replied. He felt a thrill of anticipation run through him like electricity as he looked at the brightly lit control panel. The thought briefly occurred to him that he would soon be flying into action against
Vermian forces, but he pushed it from his mind. He would worry about that later. For the moment, he was determined to enjoy the fact that they were actually going to let him fly this thing.

‘Now what we have here,' Skipper explained, ‘is a dual-control system.'

‘Right,' said Sam, looking at the two identical joysticks and the array of switches and dials in front of him.

‘That means,' continued Skipper, ‘that any time I think you're about to kill us both, I can take over.'

‘And vice versa presumably,' suggested Sam.

Skipper gave him a look. ‘Behave,' she said. ‘Now this –' here she pointed to a red button ‘– is the ignition. Basically it does two jobs: First, it feeds a glucose solution through to the insect's wing muscles in order to supply them with enough power to get us airborne. Then it sends out an electrical impulse which fires them up. Go ahead, try it.'

Sam pressed the button and heard the hum of a pump starting up, the gurgle of liquid and then almost immediately a low whirring sound which made the whole cockpit very gently vibrate. He looked through the curve of the screen and saw the wasp's delicately veined wings begin to describe figure-of-eight patterns in the air, quickly blurring into an indistinguishable grey as the wing speed increased. Sam felt lighter, as if invisible hands were holding him up.

‘Good,' said Skipper, ‘that's very good. Now then. These controls have been designed so that even an idiot can use them, so you really shouldn't have any problems.'

‘Flatterer,' said Sam, peering down at the ground.

‘Oi. Pay attention or I'll activate your ejector seat.'

‘Has it really got one?'

‘It really has.'

Sam imagined himself shooting up into the air at a zillion miles per second. ‘Cool,' he said.

‘Come on, concentrate. Right. Put your left hand on the grip of the lever down by the side of your seat. Found it?'

‘Found it,' said Sam, feeling his hand fit comfortably over the padded handle.

‘All right, good. Don't move it yet though. That's the throttle, which controls the speed of the wings and makes you go faster or slower. At the moment we're just ticking over. Now put your right hand on the joystick.'

Sam's fingers closed around the stick and he touched the red button at the top with his thumb. ‘Has this thing got machine guns?' he asked.

Skipper shook her head. ‘'Fraid not, no. This one's kitted out for Earth missions so they generally leave out stuff like that. Wouldn't do for some old chap to see us scorching across his allotment shooting down horseflies with tracer bullets, would it?'

‘I s'pose not,' said Sam. ‘It'd be fun though. What does the red button do?'

‘It deploys the sting,' said Skipper. She flicked a switch on the instrument panel and a red box appeared
on the screen in front of them. ‘You see that? Well, you get your enemy lined up in there between the front legs and then zap! You bring the sting up and it's all over.'

‘What about the blue one next to it?' asked Sam.

‘Press it and see.'

‘Are you sure?' asked Sam uncertainly. He had visions of a couple of guided missiles flaming off towards the control tower and vaporising it.

‘Trust me,' said Skipper. ‘I know these things.'

Sam pressed the button and at once there was a loud slicing, grinding sound from outside the cockpit. Sam quickly took his thumb off the button again and the noise stopped.

‘What was that?' he asked in alarm.

‘Mandibles,' said Skipper. ‘That was the sound of this little fella grinding his jaws together.' She patted the top of the cockpit. ‘Put that together with the sting and it's Goodbye, Mr Fly. This thing is a killer, believe me.'

‘I know,' said Sam. ‘It nearly killed us yesterday.'

‘What? Oh yes, that.' Skipper gave a half-smile. ‘You know who was flying that other wasp, don't you?'

‘No. Who?'

‘Your friend Mump.'

Sam was amazed. ‘That was Mump who flew straight at us?'

‘Apparently so. I saw the notes from the debriefing this morning. He was reprimanded for reckless flying and causing unnecessary damage to a squadron aircraft.'

‘That seems a bit unfair. Surely he was only defending
the airfield against attack. He didn't know it was us, after all.'

‘Oh, that wasn't what he got reprimanded for,' said Skipper. ‘It was what he did afterwards that got him into trouble.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He buzzed the control tower, did a victory roll over the landing zone and then caught his wing on the top of the perimeter fence while flying upside down. He escaped with just a few cuts and bruises, but the wasp was a write-off.'

Sam grinned. ‘Sounds like Mump. Perhaps I'd better leave out the victory roll today then.'

‘Better had,' said Skipper. ‘Crashing is
so
last year.' She pointed down the airfield towards the perimeter.

‘You see that fence?'

Sam nodded.

‘Well, in a minute I want you to fly up over it and then keep climbing until I say. We'll then head west and fly up over the mountains, OK?'

‘OK…' said Sam nervously. ‘Um, how do I do that then?'

‘Simple,' said Skipper. ‘You just increase your throttle speed like this –' here she pushed the throttle forward and the hum in the cockpit increased ‘– and then move the joystick like… so.' The wasp rose a little way off the ground, travelled forward slightly and then, as Skipper throttled back and returned the joystick to its original position, bumped gently down to earth again.

‘Easy, isn't it?' she said. ‘Now you try.'

Sam's palms were sweating and he rubbed them on the front of his jacket. ‘OK,' he said, ‘here goes.'

He gripped the throttle with his left hand and pushed it forward until the wings began to whine, then pulled back gently on the joystick. He glanced over to his left and saw to his delight that the ground was falling away beneath him. ‘I'm flying,' he shouted excitedly. ‘I'm flying!'

‘Look ahead of you, Sam,' Skipper warned. ‘Not to the side – look ahead.'

Sam looked through the screen and saw that they were rapidly approaching the perimeter fence. He turned quickly to Skipper. ‘What do I do?' he asked.

‘Try pulling back on the stick,' suggested Skipper.

As it now appeared to Sam that they were about to crash into the fence, he did as he'd been told and pulled back hard on the joystick. In an instant the fence disappeared and suddenly the ground was where the sky used to be and Sam was hanging upside down in his seat, feeling the blood rushing to his head.

‘Aaaagh!' he yelled. ‘Skipper, help!'

‘Relax,' said Skipper, calmly adjusting the joystick with two fingers and restoring the horizon to its proper position. They began to climb gently through the wisps of shredded cloud above the airfield.

Sam had turned pale and was breathing heavily. ‘What happened there?' he asked.

‘Well, you might want to use a slightly lighter touch on the joystick next time,' said Skipper. ‘But on the plus
side, that was a really neat little somersault. Victory rolls may yet be within your grasp.'