Chapter 5Purple Magic Takes Flight

Baxter, Kate

Kate found them in the ready room before the briefing, with Coster trying to persuade Baxter to describe the second Phantom again.

“I wasn't looking at the second Phantom,” Baxter said. “I was looking for the first one.”

“That was the second one.”

“Then I wasn't looking at the first.”

“How did Deltheim go?” Kate asked.

Coster looked up. “We're here.”

“So's Stalwart. Cruz heard the last bit on the net.” She pulled out a chair beside Baxter. “How many?”

“I don't know the final count.”

“Between you three.”

“None,” Coster said.

Kate looked at Baxter, waiting for him to correct it. Everson, coming in behind her, stopped with his hand on the back of a chair.

“None?”

“None,” Baxter said.

“Well, if he's taking everything you line up—”

“He isn't,” Baxter said. “I couldn't line them up fast enough.”

Everson sat down. Kate hadn't taken her eyes off Baxter.

“You didn't fire?”

“I kept trying to. He got the first four before I'd finished the wave-off.”

“With missiles?”

“Guns,” Coster said. “Wheels down. Hook down. Still lined up for the deck.”

Kate leaned back. Baxter had meant to give her a proper account, with bearings and the order in which the attackers had appeared. It was difficult to begin one when the first thing he could say about it sounded like a story Cope would tell after losing at cards, and Cope's stories had always had the decency to be untrue.

“And the drones?” she asked.

“He stayed up after we landed. Found them before they could launch.”

“Why did he stay up?”

“He said he wanted everyone tied up.”

Kate considered that, then looked toward the doorway. Ray had come in with his helmet and was waiting while Nguyen moved a bag off a chair. He thanked him quietly and sat at the end of the row.

“That him?” Everson asked.

“Yes.”

Cruz came in behind Ray and laid a hand on Everson's shoulder as he passed. “Let the man sit down.”

“I wasn't doing anything.”

“Good. Carry on.”

Baxter opened the briefing folder. Across the room, Tasha had taken the seat beside Ray and was showing him something on the map. He leaned closer to look, giving her a small nod when she pointed toward the coast. Kate watched for another moment before turning her own map the right way up.

It was only later that Baxter noticed what he'd seen. Everyone who came into that room looked at Kate at some point; it was what happened to the person Queen arranged itself around. Nguyen had moved the bag partly so she could reach the coffee. Everson looked at her before he spoke, and Cruz after. Ray had looked at the map, at Tasha's finger, at Pike's empty chair and at the clock. He had not once looked at the end of the second row.

It was the kind of thing you only noticed about someone who was working at it.

Pike caught Santos outside the infirmary while the pilots were getting ready.

“How much do you see of Joker One?” she asked.

“When you send him to me.”

“I'd like you to see more.”

“Has something happened?”

“He wouldn't land at Deltheim. Stayed outside the escort until the drones arrived.”

“Then I'm glad he stayed outside the escort.”

“So am I. I asked him why. He wanted everyone safe before he came down.”

Santos waited.

“I told him that wasn't always going to be possible,” Pike said. “He told me it was possible that time.”

“That sounds like a pilot.”

“It does. I've also seen him stop in a passageway to let someone past, then watch until they've gone round the corner. As though he needs to know they've got there.”

“Do you want me to examine him?”

“I want someone to ask how he's managing all this. Someone who doesn't need him back in an aircraft before he's finished answering.”

“Send him down between sorties,” Santos said. “And give him time to stay.”

White Valley called while they were still on the way inland. Baxter heard the base controller between Dealer's reports, asking for cover on the southern approach and explaining why the Eagles weren't up yet. There was debris across the runway. They were shifting it as fast as they could.

He found the base beyond a shoulder of snow-covered rock, hangars and dispersal areas tucked along the valley floor. A road ran beside the river. Men were moving vehicles off the runway, small enough at that distance that he could only distinguish them when they crossed the white patches at its edge.

“Joker, take the valley,” he said. “Queen, can you cover the aircraft coming over the eastern ridge?”

“Queen copies,” Kate said. “Two, with me. Three and Four, watch the next group.”

Coster came on Joker's channel. “Teach. Did he say Purple Magic?”

“The Eagles.”

“Yes, but did he say Purple Magic?”

“Four, check your south.”

“Checking. There's a band called Purple Magic.”

“I'm familiar with them.”

“You've heard them?”

“You've played the same record in the ready room every day since I've known you.”

“That's them.”

“He plays track four twice,” Tasha said. “Every time. He thinks nobody notices.”

“Track four is the best one.”

“Track four is the slow one.”

“It's not slow, it's—” Coster stopped. “Checking south.”

“Then let's make sure they've still got a runway to leave by,” Baxter said.

The first helicopters were following the river toward the base. Baxter dropped his nose, picked the nearest and called it. He had a clear view of the Hind lifting over a bend, its weapons pointing down the road, and was preparing to fire when a line of spray rose from the water beyond it.

The helicopter broke up. He pulled a little to the right to take the next, but it had already dropped out of view behind the ridge. A flash marked where it had gone.

“Tasha, stay above the river,” he said. “Don't follow One down.”

“I'm with you.”

Coster was on her other side. Below them, Ray's Hornet appeared briefly against the water, so low its exhaust raised a smear of spray, and disappeared around the next bend. Dealer began calling helicopter kills while Baxter looked ahead for one he could still reach.

“Queen Two, engaging lead attack aircraft,” Cruz reported.

“Joker Two, next helicopter,” Baxter said.

“Target destroyed,” Dealer answered.

Baxter closed his mouth. On Queen's channel, Cruz called his own kill. A burning A-6 came down beyond the ridge, and Kate sent Everson toward the aircraft behind it.

He turned back toward the base. The vehicles on the runway were still moving. He could cover them, at least, and watch the mouth of the valley while the others dealt with the attackers. It took a deliberate effort to stop searching for something to shoot.

“Joker, valley clear,” Dealer said.

Ray's Hornet climbed out of it ahead of them. It did not come back toward Joker. It went east, toward the ridge, toward Queen.

“Queen, two more attack aircraft coming east,” Baxter called. “We'll take the northern pair.”

He selected the nearer of Joker's two targets. It was an Intruder, turning toward the base with a Mirage above it, and there was another group following far enough behind for him to distinguish the escorts from the strike aircraft.

“Coster, watch that Mirage.”

“Got it.”

Baxter heard the missile warning at almost the same moment he saw the Mirage turn. He began to break, checked where Tasha was, and found she was already coming with him. Dealer called the fighter destroyed before they completed the turn.

“Was that the one?” Coster asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Right. Next one's—”

Another confirmation interrupted him.

“Never mind.”

Below, both Intruders were falling. Baxter rolled level and looked toward Ray. His Hornet was already sliding back east, leaving Joker's sky clean behind it and going to sit on the edge of Queen's. Kate and Cruz were working their pair together. He could hear her keeping Everson off Cruz's firing line, then sending Nguyen after an attacker that had turned away.

The attacker came apart before Nguyen reached it.

“Joker One, Queen One,” she called when they were clear. “Confirm you're staying north of our line.”

Two clicks came back.

“I need a confirmation.”

“He's north,” Baxter said. “I've got him.”

“Professor, I can see him. I'm asking him.”

Baxter waited. So did Kate. Ray's Hornet passed beneath the next group of attackers, and Dealer started another string of kill reports.

Baxter had taught navigation for long enough that he couldn't stop himself drawing the plot. He drew it now, in the margin of his attention, the way he'd once drawn it on a whiteboard for students who swore the answer was obvious. Every kill Ray had made since the valley lay along a single line. At one end of it was whatever had been coming. At the other end, every time, was Queen One.

Not Queen. Queen One.

He looked at the line for a while, and then he put it away, because he had no idea what to do with it.

“Queen One,” Kate said at last. “We'll hold the east.”

Coster switched to Joker's channel. “That's what I meant.”

“About what?”

“Deltheim. You start saying something and by the time you've finished—”

“Four, check above you.”

“Checking.”

There was another Mirage coming down out of the cloud. Baxter began to point it out, then saw a missile reach it.

Coster didn't say anything. Baxter was grateful.

The runway was clear, but Purple Magic Two had engine trouble. The base controller asked them to hold a little longer. Baxter checked fuel, checked the flight, and asked Dealer for the next bearing.

For a few minutes there wasn't one.

“Coster,” he said, “which one plays the drums?”

“Keyes. Two.”

“The one with the engine problem?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe the rhythm's off.”

Tasha laughed before Coster could answer.

“I've waited four months for something better than that from you,” he said.

“You've been playing that record for longer.”

“They won the Federation show. Battle of the bands. You can't tell me that's not good.”

“I haven't said anything about the record.”

“Sounds like you want to.”

“I'd listen to it,” Tasha said. “Properly. The whole thing, start to finish. Not just track four through the wall.”

There was a short silence on the channel.

“It's not really a lending record,” Coster said.

“I didn't ask to borrow it.”

“I could play it. For you. If you wanted. In the ready room. Or wherever. Wherever there's a player.”

“The ready room has a player.”

“Right. Yes. So that's where.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow's fine. Tomorrow's good.” A pause. “It's better loud.”

“Everything's better loud,” Tasha said, as though this were well known.

Baxter smiled inside his mask and looked very carefully at the runway. An Eagle was moving at its far end, another following it out of dispersal. He watched the lead aircraft straighten, its exhaust brightening against the grey ground. He thought about the number of times he had watched two students in the third row argue about whether a navigation problem was hard, and the way they always seemed to end up arguing about it at the same table in the library, and the way neither of them had ever, to his knowledge, noticed.

“Purple Magic, rolling,” the controller said.

“Four,” Baxter said. “Look down.”

“I am.”

The Eagles lifted off one after another. Coster counted them under his breath, transmitting by accident or because he'd forgotten anybody else was listening. Baxter let him finish.

“Endurance flights, Purple Magic One. Garnett. Where do you need us?”

“Purple Magic, Joker Four,” Coster said immediately. “Noise. I—good to hear you.”

“Good to be up, Noise.”

“Your record. We've got it aboard.”

There was a short pause.

“Good,” Garnett said. “I'd hate to think we'd made it for nobody.”

Baxter heard Bird laugh. Coster tried again, got as far as the Federation show, and stopped when Dealer called bombers from the north.

Two Blackjacks. Baxter looked toward the mountains and found the contacts high beyond the base, their speed shortening the distance while he watched. The Eagles were still climbing. He brought Joker around and reached for the throttle.

“Purple Magic, we'll go north. Queen, cover the base.”

“Queen copies.”

“Joker One, where are you?”

Tasha answered. “Ahead. Left of the peak.”

He found Ray's Hornet a long way out from the valley. Baxter hadn't seen him leave the formation. He must have started north while the Eagles were getting airborne, perhaps before they had even begun their takeoff rolls, as though he had known the bombers were coming before the bombers did.

“Purple Magic One, engaging bombers,” Garnett said.

A flash showed against the cloud beyond Ray's aircraft. Baxter watched pieces spread out from the first Blackjack, still carrying its forward speed. The other tried to turn; a missile trail crossed beneath it, and fire opened along the fuselage.

Baxter looked at the distance he still had to cover.

“Dealer. Both?”

“Both bombers destroyed.”

“They only just got here.”

“Confirmed, Joker Two.”

Garnett came back on the channel. “Who got them?”

“Joker One,” Baxter said.

“The Wings?”

Coster answered that. “Yes.”

The silence that followed had a particular quality. Baxter had heard it before, in auditoriums, after someone had shown a slide that changed the shape of the problem. The Eagles had given them enough aircraft to divide the work properly. Their first assignment had lasted less time than it took Garnett to announce it.

“Well,” Bird said eventually, on what he presumably thought was his own channel. “Bloody hell.”

“There's more coming up the valley,” Dealer said. “Su-25s.”

“Purple Magic, stay over the base,” Baxter told them. “Joker has the attackers.”

He checked Tasha, then Coster, and turned south. Coster had recovered enough to ask Garnett which version of the album they'd recorded first. Baxter told him to keep the channel clear until they were through this group.

“Afterward,” Garnett said. “Ask me afterward.”

Coster's acknowledgment sounded almost cheerful. Baxter selected a Frogfoot and prepared, once again, to watch it disappear before he could fire.

It did. He moved to the aircraft behind it and found that one trailing fire too. A third contact turned away from the valley; Baxter followed it far enough to see a missile reach it, then checked the ground for anything that had slipped through.

“Joker's attackers destroyed,” Dealer reported.

“Four?” Baxter asked.

“Still haven't fired.”

“I meant, are you clear?”

“Yes. That too.”

The enemy Hornet came from the east while Joker were coming back together. Baxter saw the airframe before he could make out its markings and checked all four Joker positions on the display. Tasha was beside him, Coster beyond her, Ray farther north. This aircraft's IFF was hostile.

“Dealer, single Hornet east. Confirm bandit.”

“Confirmed. Enemy fighter.”

A voice came over the intercepted channel. RAIA. He was asking for the Wings.

Baxter passed the bearing. Ray's Hornet turned toward it, and he brought his own aircraft around to cover, keeping enough separation to stay out of the engagement.

The enemy pilot was good. His first turn put the sun behind him and forced Baxter to look away before he found the dark Hornet again. It was coming across Ray's nose at an angle that ought to have left very little time for a shot.

Gunfire caught its left wing. A small piece came away, spinning brightly, and RAIA rolled out of the pass without losing the aircraft.

Baxter expected the missile then. He was already watching for the launch. Instead the two Hornets separated, turned, and met again above the ridge.

Something had changed in the way Ray was flying. Baxter couldn't have put it in a report. All morning the lead Hornet had moved like a pencil drawing straight lines between where it was and where something needed to die. Now it rolled wider than it needed to. It let RAIA have a turn and then took it back. It went up into the sun as though it wanted to see whether the other man would follow.

The next burst took something off the right wing.

“Joker One, he's hit,” Baxter said.

Two clicks.

“I can see that,” Everson said on Queen's channel.

“Stay with me,” Kate told him.

The dark Hornet was still flying. It turned toward the valley, losing height, and Baxter watched Ray's aircraft pass through a position from which he could have put another burst into its fuselage. No gunfire came. He went past, came around, and let RAIA begin another turn.

“Ray,” Baxter said. “Finish it.”

For the first time that morning he didn't expect an acknowledgment. He had seen three chances to finish it already.

A missile left Ray's aircraft. RAIA broke toward the river and released flares. Baxter followed the turn with his eyes, waiting to see whether the missile would take the decoy, and only then noticed where Ray's nose was pointing.

The dark Hornet crossed it. A burst carried through the cockpit and into the fuselage; the aircraft came down hard against the slope beyond the river.

Baxter kept watching for a parachute. There wasn't one.

“Enemy fighter destroyed,” Dealer said.

Coster asked whether the north was clear. Tasha answered him. Kate called Queen back together, all four aircraft, checking each voice in turn.

Baxter found Ray's Hornet climbing toward them. It was flying straight again, very straight, very level, as tidy as a student on his first solo who had just been caught doing something he shouldn't. He could have asked about the first pass, the second, why there'd needed to be a third. He didn't want the answer on the common channel, and wasn't sure he wanted Ray to know he'd asked himself the question yet.

“Joker, form up,” he said.

The four MiGs reached Queen from the eastern side before the flights had finished regrouping.

“Queen, break,” Kate called. “Two, right. Three, with me.”

Baxter turned toward them. One MiG passed close to Kate, another followed Cruz out toward the ridge, and he lost the other two among the turns. Dealer identified them as Lux Lunae, the 160th. Baxter remembered the bridge and the aircraft that had come through it after Cope. These were different machines, different pilots. He checked Tasha's position anyway.

“Three and Four, stay together. Don't come through Queen.”

“Got her,” Coster said.

Kate had a missile off at one of the MiGs. Baxter saw it hit and began looking for the aircraft that had passed her. The third contact was behind her now, closing while she turned to check her wingmen.

“Queen One—” he began.

“K—Kate, break right.”

Ray's voice cut across him. Kate broke; gunfire went through the space she'd left, and the MiG that had fired it came apart behind her. Baxter caught a glimpse of Ray's Hornet passing beneath the wreckage, already turning away.

He had been well to the north when the MiGs arrived. Baxter had seen him there. He had no idea how Ray had crossed that much sky in that little time, and he was not sure Ray had been entirely in control of the decision to do it.

“Queen One, clear,” Kate said. Her voice was perfectly level, a fraction too level. “Two, status.”

“Clear. He's off me.”

Another enemy contact vanished. Baxter pulled above the fight and found the last MiG heading east. A missile reached it before it got to the ridge. This time the canopy went, followed by a dark speck that opened into a parachute against the snow.

“Pilot out,” Tasha reported.

Baxter marked the position. “Dealer, pass that to the base.”

The controller acknowledged and called the remaining airspace clear. Queen answered in order. Joker followed, Tasha steady, Coster sounding as though he'd only just remembered he was supposed to speak.

Then Kate came back.

“Joker One. Kate?”

Baxter waited. He'd heard the stumble, but hadn't known whether it was a word caught in Ray's throat or a moment of interference.

“Fewer syllables,” Ray said.

“Than Queen One?”

“Yes.”

“Use the call sign.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Baxter looked toward her aircraft. Kate was reforming Queen, Cruz taking his place beside her. She hadn't made anything more of it. There had been very little time to give the warning, and Ray had given it in time; Baxter could tell himself that without difficulty.

He couldn't quite forget the beginning of her name. It had not sounded like a man reaching for the quickest word. It had sounded like a man who had said it before, many times, and had been trying very hard not to say it again. It had sounded, in fact, the way Baxter's father had said his mother's name across a room for forty years, without wanting anything, only to hear it. Baxter had a word for that. He didn't care for it, because it made no sense at all for a man who had been aboard a week and had never met her, and he put it away with the plot and the line and Queen One at the end of it.

Coster was waiting by the helicopter when Purple Magic came aboard. Baxter had suggested the ready room, but Coster had said he'd only be a minute and gone down to the flight deck before anybody could stop him. By the time Baxter and Tasha joined him, Queen were there as well.

Garnett came out first, carrying a bag and trying to hear the sailor directing him away from the rotor wash. Keyes followed, then Bird and Wilson. Coster started forward, stopped while a deckhand waved a tractor past, and started again.

“Noise,” he said. “Joker Four. We spoke.”

Garnett held out his hand. “We did.”

“I've got your records.”

“So you said.”

“All of them.”

“That's more than I've got,” Bird said.

Tasha laughed. Coster glanced back, and it was Tasha he glanced back at, not Baxter or Queen; then he caught Baxter smiling and turned away again before anybody could say anything helpful.

Kate laughed as well, a short, surprised laugh, as if Bird had caught her off guard. Across the deck, beside his Hornet, Ray turned at the sound the way a man turns at his own name in a crowded room. For a moment he simply stood there with one hand flat against the fuselage, looking at her. Then he turned back to Dutch and the clipboard, carefully, and didn't look again. Baxter had seen men flinch from gunfire with less in their faces.

“Come on,” he told the visitors. “I'll show you where you're going.”

“You know where we're going?” Keyes asked.

“Inside. Start with that.”

They followed him toward the island, Bird asking what they'd done to deserve a landing on a carrier and Coster already telling him which song he'd played most.

“Track four,” Tasha called after them. “He'll say it isn't, but it's track four.”

“It's not slow!”

Tasha hurried after them. Nguyen joined her, and soon all four Queen pilots were moving in the same direction except Kate, who had stopped beside Baxter.

“Where's your lead?” she asked.

“Still with his aircraft, last I saw.”

“I thanked him after we landed.”

“What did he say?”

“That I'd have seen the MiG.”

Baxter looked at her.

“I wouldn't,” she said. “Not in time.”

“You broke quickly.”

“Yes. Apparently he knew I would.” She rested her helmet against her hip. “He looked at me when I said it. Once. The way you'd look at an aircraft after a hard landing, to see whether everything was still attached. And then he didn't look at me again. He talked to my left shoulder for the rest of it, and then he said ‘ma'am' and went back to Dutch.”

From beyond the hatch came Coster's voice, rising over Bird's as they argued about a recording.

“I've never met him, Professor,” Kate said. “I'd know. I'd remember someone who flies like that.”

“I believe you.”

“Then why does he fly as if he's met me?”

Baxter had no answer to that, and some instinct told him that the line he'd drawn in his head over the valley was not something to hand her on a flight deck.

“What's he like?” Kate asked.

Baxter could tell her what he was qualified to fly, that he checked where Tasha was, that he'd stayed outside Stalwart until the drones came. He could tell her about the pieces taken off RAIA's wings, but she had seen those herself.

“I've known him a few days,” he said.

“You've flown with him.”

“I thought that would help.”

Kate considered him for a moment, then nodded toward the hatch. “Let's rescue the band.”

They found Coster leading the visitors to D.D., who had been expecting an officer from White Valley and appeared briefly confused by the number of people arriving with him.

“Show them,” Coster said.

“Show them what?”

“The recordings.”

D.D. looked at Baxter. He nodded.

“Flight footage,” D.D. told Garnett. “It stays in here.”

“We've just been in the flight,” Garnett said.

“You haven't seen this angle.”

Dutch had brought the recorder down, and stayed beside the table while D.D. found the first Deltheim pass. Coster leaned over his shoulder. Tasha leaned over Coster's. On the screen, four attackers crossed the landing approach; the camera shuddered with the cannon, and the carrier's bow came through below them.

Keyes bent closer.

“Landing configuration?”

“Yes,” Baxter said.

Garnett asked to see it again. Bird, who had been talking almost continuously since he came aboard, put his bag down and folded his arms.

D.D. played the northern interception from White Valley next. The Blackjacks appeared ahead of the camera, grew briefly larger, and came apart. Wilson asked how much of the recording had been cut.

“Nothing between those two points,” Dutch said.

Garnett looked across at Baxter.

“We'd barely got our noses up.”

“I know.”

“I thought there must have been another flight farther north.”

“So did I, for a moment.”

Bird turned to Coster. “You fly with that every day?”

“So far.”

“And you were excited to meet us?”

Coster smiled. “He hasn't made a record.”

“Track four,” Tasha said, to nobody, and Coster elbowed her without looking and she elbowed him back, and neither of them seemed to register that they had done it.

That got the band talking again. Keyes wanted to know where the cameras were mounted, Dutch wanted him to stop touching the recorder, and Garnett had begun asking Coster which version of the album he'd meant on the radio. Baxter moved aside to let Kate see the screen. She watched the bomber interception a second time without speaking, and then asked D.D., in a perfectly ordinary voice, whether he had the MiGs.

D.D. found them. The camera showed sky, snow, a Hornet that was Kate's own in the upper corner, turning; a MiG sliding in behind it; and then the gun, and the MiG gone, and the camera swinging away so fast that the frame smeared. She watched it once. She didn't ask to see it again.

D.D. was reaching for the next recording when the telephone rang. He answered, listened, then passed it to Baxter.

“The XO. She wants to know where Joker One is.”

Ray reported to Pike with his flight suit still fastened to the throat. She asked whether he'd eaten, and he said yes; whether the aircraft needed anything, and he said Jenkins had it in hand.

“I'm arranging for you to see Santos between sorties,” she said.

He glanced toward the infirmary hatch farther down the passageway.

“Cope?”

“This is for you.”

“I'm fit to fly.”

“I have your clearance. I also have a flight roster that depends rather heavily on keeping you fit to fly.”

He waited.

“We're asking a great deal of you,” Pike said. “I'd like to know you've got what you need. The doctor can help with that, provided you give her time.”

“How much time?”

“As much as she asks for.”

He looked toward the hatch again, then nodded.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Tomorrow morning. Get some sleep first.”

He left her to finish the roster. From the ready room, she could hear several unfamiliar voices and Coster trying to talk over all of them, and then, quite clearly, a record starting, and Tasha's voice saying, “No, from the beginning,” and the needle being lifted and put down again.