Chapter 4Nomad

Coster, Baxter, Pike

Coster found Dutch with the recorder in his hand and D.D. looking over his shoulder.

“Have you got the last one?” he asked.

“The Mirage?” D.D. moved aside. “Come and look.”

Coster had watched the pass from his own cockpit. On the little screen it seemed even shorter. The Mirage came toward the camera, the gun fired, and then the aircraft was behind them. D.D. stopped the recording and moved it back.

“He doesn't slow down,” Coster said.

“No,” Dutch said.

“Not even to get the shot.”

Dutch played it again. Coster leaned closer, waiting for the movement he'd missed the first time. He saw the correction now, immediately before the burst, a twitch of the nose so small the camera barely registered it, and let out a quiet breath.

“That's clean.”

“Is that a musical opinion?” D.D. asked.

“That's a flying opinion.” Coster looked at Dutch. “I've never seen anybody do that.”

“Neither have I.”

Dutch said it the way he said everything, as a fact to be written on a job sheet, and that made it worse somehow. He had looked after Cope's aircraft for two years. He had seen a great many pilots climb down from a great many cockpits pleased with themselves.

D.D. took the recorder while Dutch returned to Ray's Hornet. Jenkins was waiting beneath the wing with a job sheet, and the two of them resumed a discussion about the ammunition feed which sounded as though it had begun before lunch and would outlast dinner. Coster watched them for a moment, then looked back at the frozen image.

“Are you going to put that out?”

“Some of it,” D.D. said. “Not the whole recording. We can't show where we are.”

“Does Ray know?”

“He knows why the cameras are there.”

Coster nodded, although that wasn't quite what he'd meant, and went to find something to eat before the next patrol.

In the passageway he met two sailors carrying a box between them. He stepped aside, then caught the bottom corner when one of them had to change his grip.

“Thanks, sir.” The sailor shifted the box against his hip. “Any idea where they want this?”

“What is it?”

“Pump spares. From Stalwart. Chief said bring them aboard, and the fellow at the transfer point said take them up here.”

Coster looked at the label. “One deck down. I'll show you.”

They introduced themselves on the ladder. One was named Bell; the other had been aboard Stalwart since before the war and knew everyone involved in the transfer except the man who'd sent them the wrong way, about whom he had several theories.

“Our chief says you lot need these more than we do,” Bell said as they set the box down at the workshop. “He'll want the packing case back, though.”

“Tell him we'll try not to lose it.”

“He said you'd say that.”

Coster smiled. At the hatch, Bell looked back.

“You fly with the Wings, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

Coster thought of Cope's bed, then of the gun pass on the recorder.

“He'll be up this afternoon.”

“Good.” Bell hesitated, then seemed to decide Coster was the kind of officer you could say it to. “There's a lot of talk on our mess deck. Somebody heard the Sotoans on the radio after the recon plane went down. Said they were screaming his name before they'd even seen him properly. My mate reckons he can't be hit.”

“Your mate's never seen him land,” said the other sailor. “That's what I'd want to see. How a man like that lands.”

“Same as anybody,” Coster said. “Wheels first.”

They laughed. Bell pushed his cap back.

“Tell him we're glad he's still here,” he said.

At 1629, Baxter could see Deltheim beyond the carrier's bow. He loosened his grip on the stick while control cleared Joker One to land. There was time for food before the debrief, provided nobody wanted to spend half an hour arguing over the patrol report. He had very little to put in it. Water, more water, and Coster asking whether anyone else could hear the rattle in his cockpit.

“It's your seat,” Tasha had told him, an hour ago.

“It's not my seat.”

“It's your seat. You bounce your knee.”

“I do not bounce my knee.”

“You bounce it in the ready room. I can feel it through the floor.”

Coster had gone quiet for long enough that Baxter assumed he was checking. The rattle had not come up again.

Ahead, Ray's Hornet settled toward the deck with its gear and hook down. Baxter checked his spacing and reached for his own landing checklist.

“Cancel the landing!”

He looked up. Four aircraft were coming across the approach, low over the water: two Intruders, two Phantoms. He'd seen them a moment earlier and taken them for traffic around the port.

“Power on! Power! Power! Power!”

Baxter pushed his throttle forward and started to call the escorts. Gunfire crossed his view before he got the words out. The first Intruder broke apart, the second flew into the next burst, and a Phantom came through the wreckage with fire running back from its cockpit. He searched for the fourth aircraft and found it falling.

Ray's Hornet was still on its approach heading, and Baxter could see daylight through the gap between a main wheel and the fuselage. The gear was down. He'd been watching four aircraft fall and hadn't thought to look until now, because nobody would take that shot before cleaning up the aircraft. Only beyond the bow did those wheels begin folding away.

“Main guns, open fire!” Pike ordered.

The guns fired briefly, at nothing that still needed them. Baxter counted the splashes, checked his scope, and counted again.

“Tasha?”

“I'm here.”

“Coster?”

“Here.”

“Did he have his gear down?” Baxter asked.

“Yes,” Coster said.

“For all four?”

“I was watching the wheels. Thought he'd forgotten them.”

Baxter looked from Ray's Hornet to the four patches of wreckage. He'd flown with men who would cheerfully try a gun pass in the middle of a wave-off, given half a chance, but they'd at least have wanted their wheels up. Ray hadn't even turned. He had simply shot down everything in front of him on the way to the deck, as though the attack were an obstruction on the approach path that someone had neglected to clear.

“Christ,” he said. “He was still lined up to land.”

Dealer's channel remained open without a word coming over it.

“New contacts,” Dealer said at last. “Northwest and northeast. Four in each group.”

That gave him something to do. He brought his nose up, found Ray's Hornet ahead and to his left, and passed the first bearing.

“Two attack aircraft, two escorts. Coster, take Tasha northeast. Watch for anything getting through.”

“Joker Four.”

“Joker Three.”

From the bridge net came the helm command: “Come about to port! Brace to roll!”

Endurance's wake began to curve. Baxter watched the bow shift and wished, as he had several times that week, that the damaged screw were something Jenkins could fix with a hammer. The incoming aircraft were going to have very little trouble finding her.

He selected a Phantom. Before the seeker settled, four missile trails opened ahead of him, spreading from Ray's Hornet toward four separate targets.

“Joker One, you've got—” Dealer broke off.

Baxter checked the symbols on his own display. He knew the controls well enough to work them without looking: select, designate, move to the next. By the time the screen confirmed the change, he could make the next selection. Whoever was in that cockpit had done the whole sequence before the first confirmation could have appeared.

His selected target vanished. So did the other three.

“Four down,” Dealer said.

Baxter released the trigger he'd been preparing to press.

“Coster, status?”

“They're splitting. Escorts coming toward us.”

“Keep them off Tasha.”

“I've got her.”

“He's got me,” Tasha agreed, as though someone had suggested otherwise.

He rolled northeast. One Phantom was turning across Ray's nose, the other climbing to get behind it. Baxter chose the climber and began pulling toward a firing position. A burst crossed beneath him; the nearer Intruder tipped over, and the Phantom he was tracking lost a wing just as the tone steadied in his headset.

He let go of the trigger again.

“Attack aircraft turning away,” Tasha reported.

Baxter caught the flash of stores dropping into the water. The remaining Intruder was lightening itself for a turn it never completed.

“Nice maneuvers, Ray,” Tasha said.

“Don't do anything reckless, Rex.” The old name came out before Baxter caught it. He looked ahead, expecting Ray's Hornet to turn back toward them, but it was carrying north in a broad arc.

“Ray,” he corrected. “We've still got the ship to cover.”

Two clicks answered him.

“Four more attack aircraft,” Dealer said. “Behind the northeast group. Low.”

Baxter banked toward the water and found them. He was in a better position this time; they were crossing his nose, still loaded, still committed to the carrier. He took the lead aircraft and waited for the tone.

A flash made him blink. His target broke up, and he moved to the next while Dealer called the kill. That one disappeared too.

“Oh, come on,” Coster said.

Baxter glanced toward him. “Something wrong?”

“No.”

The last two contacts vanished before either of them fired. Baxter kept his turn going until he could see the water behind the group. No aircraft had slipped past. The ship's guns were following falling wreckage.

“Joker Three, you clear?”

“Yes. Checking south.”

“Four?”

“Clear.” After a moment Coster added, “You got anything off?”

“No.”

“Right.”

Baxter looked toward Ray's Hornet. He'd seen good pilots make an engagement look easy, usually while the rest of the flight did enough work to let them. This was something else. He had brought a full load of weapons back from Meriton. At this rate he would be bringing it back again, and the armourers would start asking whether he'd forgotten where the trigger was.

“Additional contact, north-northeast,” Dealer said. “A-6E.”

The intercepted channel carried a pilot calling for his flight. Dealer passed along the call sign, CREMATIO, and Baxter searched beyond Ray's Hornet for him. He found the Intruder low over the water, coming almost head-on.

“Joker One, single attack aircraft ahead.”

The Intruder was still a speck beyond Joker One. Baxter checked the range, expecting a missile launch while he closed enough to identify it by eye. Instead he caught the flicker of Ray's cannon.

“You're too far out,” he said, and was still holding the transmit switch when fire flashed around the Intruder's cockpit. Its nose dropped toward the water.

He checked the range again.

“Dealer, was that guns?”

“Guns. Target destroyed.”

“From there?”

He looked across at Coster, who had turned his helmet toward the falling aircraft. At that distance Baxter would have been pleased to put a burst anywhere on an Intruder, given enough ammunition to walk it in. There'd been one short flicker from Ray's Hornet, then the long, absurd interval it took the rounds to get there, and CREMATIO was going into the sea.

It was the kind of shot people described in bars and nobody believed. Baxter had been there and he wasn't sure he believed it.

“Rex, how the hell did you—” He let go of the switch. Ray's Hornet was already coming back toward them.

“Joker Four. Northeast clear.”

“South clear,” Tasha said.

“Keep looking,” Baxter told them. “Dealer, what's left?”

Six Bears and twelve Tomcats, coming from the east.

Baxter repeated the count to make sure he'd heard it properly. Through the canopy he could already pick out the bombers, their escorts spreading ahead of them. There was enough there to keep all four of Joker occupied, and considerably more than he wanted reaching the carrier.

“Forward attack,” Ray said.

It was the first full sentence Baxter had heard from him in the air, and it was two words long.

“Three and Four, stay together,” Baxter added. “Call anything getting around us.”

He turned with Joker One and opened the throttle. Two Tomcats came down toward them while the rest widened their screen. He picked the left-hand fighter, found its nose turning toward him, and began calculating how long he had before he'd need to break.

Both fighters exploded.

Baxter flew between the falling pieces with his missile still on its rail. Beyond them, a Bear was burning. He reached for another target, but Ray's Hornet was already crossing his sightline, and he held fire rather than send a missile through its path.

“Joker One, clear my nose.”

By the time he'd said it, the second bomber was falling. The third rolled out of formation trailing flame, and the Tomcats turned after Ray's Hornet toward the other group.

“That's the first group gone,” Coster said.

Baxter looked past the smoke for the bomber he must have missed. He hadn't even reached them. Three Bears, with six fighters between them and the attack, and he was still trying to get his nose clear for a shot.

“All three?”

“All three.”

“Coster, Tasha, fighters crossing east. Stay outside them.”

“We see them,” Coster said.

Baxter moved to cover the rear of the attack. He had four escorts ahead of him and six more beyond them, all trying to reach the same aircraft. Several were near enough to fire. He called the closest, then the pair coming in high, keeping his voice level as the tracks began overlapping on his display.

Two clicks came back.

He could see the other bombers through a gap in the fighters. Missile trails reached into their formation before it closed. One Bear pitched down, and the next disappeared behind a spreading cloud of smoke. He waited for the third to emerge, then realized the burning shape below it was the third.

“Bombers destroyed,” Dealer reported. “All six.”

“Any weapons away?” Baxter asked.

“Negative.”

“Already?” The word escaped before Baxter could stop it.

“All six confirmed, Joker Two.”

He looked down at his weapons display, then back through the canopy. He'd expected to make several passes, break for the escorts, come around again while the others pressed the attack. He was still on his first approach, carrying every missile he'd brought, and there wasn't a bomber left.

“I didn't get a shot,” Coster said.

“Neither did I.” Baxter checked the carrier's bearing and made himself turn back toward the fighters. “Stay sharp. We've still got ten Tomcats.”

He'd lost sight of Joker One among them.

“Tasha, where's One?”

“Below you. Slowing.”

He looked down and found it, nose high, with two fighters coming over the top.

“Joker One, two above you.”

The nearer Tomcat rolled toward it. Baxter pulled across to cover, watching the distance shrink until he was certain they would hit. Ray's Hornet reversed beneath the fighter; the Tomcat pulled after it, and its nose kept coming around while the rest of the aircraft fell away from the turn.

“I'm spinning. I can't get—”

Baxter held his own bank and watched for the canopy. The Tomcat went round again, almost level, falling fast. He'd been told the D-model had dealt with that problem. Ray had found it anyway, as though he'd known exactly where in the envelope it was still hiding and had simply led the other man there by the hand.

Nothing came out before it hit the water.

“Joker Two, right!” Coster called.

Baxter rolled away. A fighter passed where his nose had been, then came apart under gunfire. He hadn't even seen Ray's Hornet come through. Ahead, two more Tomcats were converging on its turn; he started to warn them, absurdly, before their wings met.

He pulled clear of the debris and checked his instruments. Too low. He brought the nose up, took a breath, and found Tasha beside Coster.

“Three, Four, status.”

“Fine,” Coster said. “You?”

“Fine. Tasha?”

“I'm all right.”

“Stay with Four.”

“We haven't moved,” she said. “He won't let me. Every time I drift, he drifts with me. It's like flying with a very anxious shadow.”

“I'm being a good wingman,” Coster said.

“You're being a barnacle.”

“Barnacles don't fly.”

“Neither do you, apparently, unless I go first.”

Baxter almost laughed. He'd spent half the engagement asking where everyone was and the other half arriving too late to help, and the two of them had spent it bickering about barnacles. He decided this was very healthy and he would not be mentioning it. There were still fighters on the scope; he chose the nearest that was heading toward Endurance and made himself attend to it.

“Joker Two, engaging southbound.”

“Target destroyed,” Dealer said.

Baxter stared at the empty patch of sky. “The one I just called?”

“Affirmative.”

“All right.” He checked again. “Any others south?”

“Negative. Two remaining, east.”

Coster began to call one of them. A kill confirmation cut across him, followed by another. Baxter looked down at his weapons display and found the same inventory he'd started with.

For a while nobody in Joker said anything.

“Come on man, use your radio!” Dealer said.

Two clicks answered.

Baxter rubbed his thumb along the throttle grip. He ought to have something to say to that, but all he could think of was asking whether Ray had meant to leave them any work. With Tasha on the channel, he wasn't going to ask it.

“Joker, form up,” he said instead. “Let's get aboard.”

On the way back, Coster drew close enough for Baxter to see him look across at the weapons still hanging beneath his wings.

“You too?”

“Yes.”

“Dutch'll be pleased. Less work.”

“Don't tell him that.”

Tasha joined on the other side. Baxter checked her position, then Ray's Hornet farther ahead. Beyond it, Stalwart was moving back toward Endurance, ready to shepherd them through the last of the approach. He could see men at her weapons stations as he passed, and several of them were not looking at their weapons. They were looking up, shading their eyes, following the lead aircraft across the sky.

Control cleared Joker One. Ray continued beyond the landing circuit.

“Joker One, confirm recovery.”

No answer.

Baxter waited, watching for a turn that would bring it back. Instead it kept going until it was outside Stalwart, then began a broad circuit there.

“Ray, have you got a problem?”

Coster came on the channel. “I can't see anything wrong.”

“Neither can I. One, fuel state?”

The reply came after a pause, a number that gave him plenty of time. Baxter checked his own. He could wait too, but Tasha and Coster had been expecting to land, and there was no reason for all four of them to keep circling the ship.

“Joker One,” Pike said. “Your flight is returning. Is there a reason you're staying up?”

Baxter waited through the silence with her.

“Request recovery for Two, Three and Four,” he said at last.

“Approved.”

He took the deck first. By the time the crew had him parked and his engines were winding down, Tasha was coming in behind him. He stayed in the cockpit with his headset on, listening to her landing call and then Coster's. Beyond the edge of the deck, Ray's Hornet was still making its circuit, as patient and as regular as a dog walking the boundary of a yard.

Coster's voice came over the net. “Maybe he likes the view.”

“Four,” Baxter said.

“I know.”

A crewman climbed beside his cockpit and signaled him to disconnect. Baxter held up a hand as control called new contacts.

Three of them, low and fast.

He turned toward Stalwart. The escort's launcher was moving, and farther out he could see Ray's Hornet heading away from the ships. It had begun to turn before control finished the call. Baxter would think about that later, at some length.

“MQ-19s,” control reported.

“Stalwart, engage,” Pike ordered. “All stations, stand by.”

Baxter reached for the throttle before remembering where he was. His engines were stopped, there was a man beside the canopy, and Tasha's aircraft blocked the way back to the catapult.

“Two, you're secured,” the crewman said.

“I know. Give me a moment.”

The first kill confirmation came. He strained to see beyond the escort, caught a flash against the water, and heard the second. Stalwart's launcher stopped moving.

“Third target destroyed.”

“Any launches?” Pike asked.

“Negative, ma'am. No weapons away.”

The crewman looked out toward the escort with him.

“That's all of them?”

“Yes,” Baxter said.

“Good.” He tapped the side of the cockpit. “Can I have the aircraft now?”

Baxter disconnected and passed down the headset. On the deck, Tasha was standing beside her ladder with her helmet under her arm, watching Ray's Hornet come around for its approach. Coster joined them as control cleared it to land. There was a red mark across his cheek where the mask had pressed, and Tasha looked at it, then at him.

“You've got a line.”

“Where?”

She pointed. He rubbed the wrong side. She sighed, reached up and rubbed the right side with her thumb, briskly, as she might have cleaned a smudge off a canopy, and went back to watching the approach. Coster stood very still for a moment afterward and then also watched the approach, with great attention.

Baxter, who had seen a great many young people in a great many lecture halls, looked at the sky.

“How long was he out there?” Coster asked.

“Not long,” Baxter said.

“But he went straight to them.”

“Yes.”

Tasha looked toward Stalwart. “Those are the men you met?”

“Some of them,” Coster said. “Bell. He thinks Ray can't be hit.”

“Can he?”

None of them answered that.

Ray's Hornet came round onto the approach. Out over the water, before it straightened, the helmet turned: to the escort, to the carrier's island, to the three parked Hornets with their canopies up. Baxter had seen it from the air a dozen times by now and had taken it for ordinary care. From the deck it looked like something else.

“He counts us,” Tasha said.

Coster glanced at her. “Bax counts us.”

“Bax counts because it's his job. You can hear him do it. Three, Four, status.” She didn't take her eyes off the approaching aircraft. “Ray counts like he's expecting to come up short.”

Baxter would have liked to tell her she was imagining it. He'd known men like that, though. Not many. A man who'd been the only aircraft to come home, once, and spent the rest of his career flying as if he could make up the difference by never letting it happen again. They counted too.

“Who'd he lose?” Coster asked.

“I don't know,” Baxter said.

“But he lost somebody.”

Tasha answered before he could. “Everybody,” she said. “Look at him.”

Ray's Hornet caught a wire. The deck crew moved in, and Baxter watched several of them stop what they were doing, for just a second, to look at the man climbing down. Then he started toward it. Pike would want him to bring Ray to the bridge, and he would have to decide what to tell her before they got there.

Pike watched the flight deck until all four aircraft were secured.

“Ask Baxter to bring Joker One to me,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Stalwart's captain came on the fleet channel to thank Joker. Pike acknowledged and told him they were proceeding into port. She could hear activity behind his voice, the ordinary business of a ship whose crew had been prepared to fight and now had to put things away again. Somebody near his microphone was cheering, and he didn't tell them to stop.

The harbor pilot was waiting. Endurance moved toward the entrance with Stalwart beside her, slowly enough that Pike could begin picking out people along the waterfront. A tug came out to meet them. Farther in, someone was waving a vehicle toward the berth they had been assigned.

The officer of the deck asked for her confirmation of the approach arrangements. Pike checked them and gave it. There would be fuel, stores, repairs, and questions about how long they could stay. Santos might be able to bring equipment aboard that she hadn't had available for Cope.

Baxter arrived with Ray, both still carrying their helmets. She drew them aside far enough to keep the conversation out of the helm's way.

“Those drones,” she said. “You were well placed to intercept them.”

Ray waited.

“That was fortunate. Was it only fortunate?”

“I had fuel left.”

“So did Baxter. He landed when he was cleared.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What were you waiting for?”

He looked past her toward Stalwart, then back.

“I wanted everyone tied up before I got down.”

“You can't stay airborne every time someone might still be in danger.”

“I could this time.”

Pike glanced at Baxter, who gave her nothing to help with that. She'd read enough of Ray's file to trust his judgment in a fight. It hadn't told her whether he could ever be persuaded that a fight was over, or whether leaving anyone exposed felt to him like leaving them to die.

An odd fear to have survived everything they'd already lost. She looked toward the escort again and found herself counting the men she could see on deck.

“Next time, answer when I ask why you're staying up,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Get something to eat. Both of you.”

“Stalwart is asking whether we still need those pump spares,” the communications officer said.

Pike looked back toward the escort, where men had begun preparing lines.

“We do,” she said. “Tell them we'll return the packing case.”