Chapter 9Retaking of Theve

Baxter, Venn

Coster was telling Cruz about the fourth Eagle for what Baxter estimated was the third time that day. Everson put down his coffee.

“Four parachutes?”

“That's what I said.”

“I thought Webb was the only one.”

“All four,” Tasha said. “Bax asked him to spare them.”

“And he did,” Baxter said.

Kate, seated beside Cruz, hadn't interrupted. She had heard it at Snider's Top, from Coster, at length. Nguyen was in the doorway, losing an argument with the fastening on his flight bag.

“Webb must be thrilled,” he said.

“Better than the alternative,” Coster said.

“Depends how much explaining he has to do.”

Baxter held out his hand. Nguyen surrendered the bag, and Baxter freed the strap folded under the fastening and gave it back. It was the most useful thing he'd done since breakfast.

“Your lead coming?” Cruz asked.

“Jenkins has him.”

“Does Jenkins know we've got enough aircraft now to cover our own lead?” Everson said. “Somebody ought to tell Ray.”

Kate looked at him. “He got the MiG off me. You can stop complaining about it.”

“I'm not complaining about the MiG.”

“Then what?”

Everson turned his cup a quarter turn on the table. “He's watching you.”

There was a short silence. Coster, who had been about to begin the fourth Eagle again, closed his mouth.

“He watches everyone,” Tasha said.

“He watches you lot when Professor tells him to,” Everson said. “Nobody has to tell him to watch her.”

Kate put her cup down.

“He's watching Queen,” she said, “because he's decided Queen can't look after itself. He did it at White Valley. He did it at Snider's Top, when he came rolling back down the runway to save us from our own tankers.” She said it with perfect, reasonable calm, and Baxter watched Cruz close his eyes. “It's not personal, Chester. It's a professional opinion. It's a wrong professional opinion, and I intend to correct it, but it isn't personal.”

There was a pause.

“Right,” said Everson. “Yes. That's definitely what it is.”

“Chester,” Cruz said.

“I'm agreeing with her.”

“You're agreeing with her loudly.”

“I'm only saying where he's looking. If he's coming through our fight, somebody needs to call it. That's all.”

“That's all I want too,” Cruz said, more mildly. “We need to know where he's going.”

“I've told him,” Baxter said.

“Has he answered?”

“Sometimes.”

Coster made a small movement with his thumb, two presses of an imaginary transmit switch. Nguyen laughed, then stopped when Kate reached for the briefing folder.

“We'll settle the boundaries before takeoff,” she said. “If he comes across mine, I'll tell him.”

“I'd like to hear what he says back,” Everson said.

“So would I.”

She said it lightly, and opened the folder, and did not look toward the door. Baxter noticed that because everyone else in Queen did. Cruz had made room for her papers without being asked. Nguyen had put his bag where she wouldn't have to step over it. Queen had always arranged themselves around her, so naturally that Baxter had stopped seeing it. He saw it now because someone from outside Queen had started doing it too, and doing it from a mile away at four hundred knots.

A pilot from Dauntless appeared in the doorway with a target map twice the size of theirs.

“Is this the Long Shot briefing?”

“Not yet,” Kate said. “Come in.”

“There's another eight behind me.”

Coster looked at the chairs. “We'd better move.”

Lieutenant Mara Venn stood beside the landing-craft chart while Pike took them through the air plan. She commanded the second LCAC and would coordinate all eight on the approach, and she had the look of someone who had already rehearsed every way the night could go wrong and resented having to sit through other people discovering them. When a Harrier pilot asked how much room she needed between craft, she came forward and moved two of the markers herself.

“Enough that the man behind can turn if I have to stop,” she said. “Don't treat the drawing as a promise. We'll have spray, darkness and people trying to kill us.”

“Which craft carries the command element?” Baxter asked.

“Mine. Every crew has the same route and rally points. If Two can't talk, One takes over.”

He wrote that beside the recovery channel. Venn went back to the wall, leaving Pike the map of Theve.

The city was still occupied. They were to clear the landing lanes and get the force ashore. The Harriers would suppress the heavy shore positions while Queen and Joker covered against aircraft coming for the boats. Once the air threats were contained, Baxter and Coster would work the smaller batteries on Joker's side, and Tasha would stay above them, watching the approach and calling anything they missed in the cloud.

Kate asked about the eastern air cover. Cruz asked where exactly Queen's area met Joker's, and looked down the row at Ray when Pike drew the line. Pike answered both, then took questions from the Harrier leads about the guns above the waterfront.

Ray had come in during the first part and sat beside Baxter. He was reading the landing chart, not the target sheet.

“If they have to come off,” he said, “what's the withdrawal plan?”

It was the longest sentence Baxter had heard him volunteer in a briefing. Venn turned and looked at him properly.

“Turn seaward. Same lanes if they're clear, alternate route south if they aren't. We haven't got another eight boats waiting to collect them.”

“Who calls it?” Baxter asked.

“I do,” Pike said. “Venn handles the craft once the order is given. You'll cover them all the way out.”

Ray put the chart down and nodded, as though that had been the only question on the sheet.

The Harrier pilot beside Coster asked whether the landing force wanted more time on the holding line. Venn said she'd rather wait in open water than arrive at a beach with guns still working. They settled the last boundaries, and Pike sent them to their aircraft.

On the way out, Baxter stopped beside Venn.

“Professor. Joker Two. I'll be on your channel.”

“I know who you are.”

“Then you know I ask questions.”

“Ask them before we get shot at.”

“I'll try.”

Theve came up through the cloud as a line of lights broken by long dark stretches along the waterfront. Baxter had flown this approach before the war, on a clear evening, with nothing more urgent on his mind than dinner. He could find the river mouth without the display. The cranes and warehouses were where he remembered them; the pattern of lit and unlit windows wasn't.

Below him the craft drew white wakes across black water. He counted four, lost one under a scrap of cloud, and found three more beyond it. Dealer had all eight on the net.

“Two, approaching holding line,” Venn said. “Air, how's the shore?”

“Working it,” the Harrier lead said. “Don't come in yet.”

A flash went up inland, then another farther along the coast. Baxter's first battery was still firing. He began turning toward it when Coster called low aircraft from the east.

“Can't pick them out against the water. Dealer, give me that bearing again—”

“Below the cloud,” Tasha said. “Left of the outer craft.”

“Thanks, Three.”

“You'd have found them.”

“Eventually,” Coster said.

Baxter looked down and found the Mirages, dark against darker water, low and fast and pointed at the boats. He had begun to select the nearer one when Ray's Hornet crossed beneath him.

“One, two low. They're going for the boats.”

The first Mirage came apart under gunfire. The second broke away from the landing lane, and Baxter followed its turn just long enough to see another burst catch it. Ray climbed through the space between the two falling trails and went on toward the next pair, without, so far as Baxter could see, any interval at all between one decision and the next.

“Three, stay with Four. I'll take the battery.”

“I've got her,” Coster said.

“He means I've got him,” Tasha said.

Baxter left them to settle it and turned onto the shore target. It was easy to find now that it was firing; the muzzle flashes showed through dark trees above the waterfront. He released, pulled away and looked back. The battery stopped. Dealer confirmed it while Coster called his own run farther south.

“Four, attacking the guns beside the road.”

“Keep off the crane line,” Tasha said. “Something's firing from there.”

“I see it. Thank you.”

“You didn't see it.”

“I see it now.”

Another Mirage appeared beyond Queen, angling for the lanes. Cruz called it. Kate rolled to cover him, and Dealer announced it destroyed before either of them had finished the turn. Baxter caught a glimpse of the grey Hornet going away beneath the wreckage. It had come across a mile of sky to get there. Ray could have taken three other aircraft closer to hand, and had taken that one.

“Joker One,” Kate said. “That's on our side.”

Two clicks answered her.

“Call before you cross.”

Ray's Hornet turned back over the water. Its cannon flashed at an aircraft Baxter had barely separated from the cloud. He made himself watch Coster's attack instead of following Ray through another kill. Following Ray was becoming a habit, and an expensive one.

“Battery hit,” Coster said. “That other gun's still up.”

Baxter came around toward the cranes. He had the position now, but the firing stopped before he reached his run. Ray's aircraft went between the waterfront and the cloud base with its gun running into the emplacement, so low that Baxter lost it against the dark warehouses until it came out the far side.

“Shore threat destroyed,” Dealer reported.

“Two, holding line,” Venn said. “Can we proceed?”

Pike cleared them in. The wakes straightened toward the city.

Baxter looked at his own weapons, then at Ray's wings as the Hornet passed above him. Ray had fired nothing but the cannon since they'd arrived. Not at the Mirages, not at the shore gun, where a missile would have let him stand off. Jenkins must have loaded enough ammunition to make the armourers weep. Baxter found his next target and tried, without much hope, to leave him something to do.

Venn had the city ahead of her, the other seven craft on her display, and a sergeant at the cockpit door asking whether she could tell his people they were nearly there.

“They can see it,” she said.

“They'd like to hear it from someone who knows.”

“We're nearly there. Tell them to keep sitting down.”

He went back into the troop compartment. Her navigator pointed out One's wake ahead, then the lights along the waterfront. The near artillery had stopped. Farther inland she could still see flashes where the aircraft were working.

“Two, all craft maintaining,” she reported.

An aircraft burst into flame ahead of them, low over the landing lane. The debris struck the water far enough off that she didn't need to turn. A grey Hornet went through above the fire and on toward the city, and the shape of it against the burning wreck stayed on her eyes a moment after it had gone.

The sergeant was back.

“Was that ours?”

“The one still flying.”

“The Wings?”

“Go and sit down.”

He grinned at her before he went. The navigator was grinning too. Venn kept her eyes on One's wake. She had been on the receiving end of a great deal of air cover in four months, and most of it had been somewhere else when she needed it. She had no intention of getting used to this.

“Craft Two. Left. Now.”

It was a quiet voice, and it didn't say why. Nothing was firing at her. The lane to the left was clear, the lane ahead was clear, and the waterfront was dark and silent. Venn would think about that afterward, for longer than she liked. She took the turn anyway, because of the way he'd said now, calling it as the craft slewed out of line. The navigator grabbed the edge of his console. Spray covered the window.

Then, and only then, she heard the shell.

The water rose where they had been heading: a white column, high and close enough to blot out the city, collapsing into the place where her craft would have been if she had asked a single question.

“Two turning,” she reported. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “Incoming fire. That wasn't a shore battery.”

The navigator was staring at her.

“How did he—”

“Watch One,” Venn said.

Baxter had been looking for the gun that fired. The nearest batteries were silent. He searched the waterfront, then farther inland, and found a white flash well beyond the line on his chart that marked the limit of the battleship's reach.

“Dealer, source is beyond the expected range.”

“Confirming.”

“Confirm it quickly,” Venn said. “Are we continuing?”

Another impact lifted the water beside the approach. The craft were close to shore now, close enough for Baxter to see the empty landing lane between them and the docks. No ramp had gone down.

Pike ordered them out.

“All landing craft, withdraw. Venn, turn them seaward. All aircraft, cover the return.”

Venn began calling the turns. One went first, then Two. Three had to slow while Four crossed ahead of it, and Five held its course a little longer to leave room behind.

“Craft Five, right,” Ray said. “Keep going right.”

“Five turning.”

Baxter looked inland. Through a break in the cloud he could see the land battleship beyond the last buildings, moving across the marsh on its immense tracks like a piece of the city that had decided to leave. The long guns were turning toward the water. Ray's Hornet had gone inland while the boats began their withdrawal. It was close enough to the upper hull that Baxter could see its bank against the armour, and absurdly small beside it.

“One, don't attack the ship. We've got to cover the craft.”

A missile left Ray's aircraft and struck beside one of the great barrels. The gun stopped turning. Its neighbour traversed a little farther, then stopped too, when a second missile hit the mounting beneath it.

Baxter waited for the explosion that would mean something. Smoke drifted across the upperworks. The battleship kept moving, and after a while the first gun began to shift again.

“Main guns temporarily silent,” Dealer said.

Then Baxter understood what he had been looking at all night. The missiles had stayed under Ray's wings through the Mirages, the attacker on Queen's side and the shore gun. Every aircraft had been a cannon kill. Ray had taken the emplacement among the cranes with a gun pass when a missile would have kept him out of its reach.

He had brought the missiles here. He had brought them all the way here, before the briefing had told anyone this gun could reach the boats. He had asked what the withdrawal plan was.

“Coster,” Baxter said. “He's kept his whole load for the guns.”

“For this?”

Baxter looked at the battleship, and then at the craft turning beneath him.

“That's what it's for. Three, give me the boats.”

Tasha gave them to him in order, quickly and cleanly. One and Two were going seaward with Six behind them. Three was still slowed by Four, Five had room now to finish its turn, and Seven and Eight were coming round outside the group. She didn't apologize for any of it or ask whether she'd got it right. She simply counted.

“Three, keep south until Four's clear,” Baxter told Venn. “Don't bring them together.”

“Copy. Three, you heard him.”

A gun on the battleship began following that patch of water. Ray's Hornet banked until its canopy faced the turret, as if he wanted to see down the barrel, then changed its line.

“Craft Four. More left.”

Four answered. Baxter watched it swing away from Three's path, leaving both boats room to accelerate. The gun kept moving toward them.

Ray launched again. The barrel stopped short of its new bearing.

“Three and Four clear of each other,” Tasha said.

Eight craft, all still moving. Baxter had enough to do checking their paths without asking how Ray had known, hours ago and miles away, that he would need those missiles. He would ask later. He suspected he wouldn't get an answer, and he was beginning to suspect that was because he wouldn't believe it.

The next attackers came low from the west. Queen called the first group. Kate sent Nguyen toward the craft while Cruz covered her turn, and she was still rolling out when the attacker nearest her exploded. Ray's Hornet came through the smoke from the direction of the battleship. It had crossed the whole of the withdrawal to be there.

“Joker One, stay on the guns,” Kate said. “We have these.”

Baxter had heard her give a great many instructions over the radio. She said this one too sharply, the way she'd have said it to a new wingman who'd crossed her line without calling, and then left a fraction of silence after it, as though she had heard herself and didn't know which part of it she meant.

There was no answer. The second attacker rolled away from the boats, came across Ray's nose, and went down trailing flame. Only then did the Hornet turn back inland.

“Queen One, west clear,” Dealer said.

“Queen copies,” Kate said, and nothing else.

Baxter looked back toward the marsh. The battleship's undamaged weapons were still tracking the lanes. The heavy guns had recovered from the first hits, but the craft had made distance while they were stopped.

“Five, hold your turn,” Ray said. “Two, go south of One.”

Venn passed it to the lead craft. Baxter watched a gun traverse toward the gap between One and Two. From where he was he couldn't tell which boat the barrel would stop on. Ray was farther inland, banking toward the upperworks again.

“One, he's moving the guns,” Coster said.

“I see it.”

Another missile struck the mounting. Smoke hid the barrel, and Dealer called the pause while Baxter found Eight, the outermost craft, still turning away from the coast.

Tasha called Seven clear of its neighbour and began giving Eight's position. A single Frogfoot came round from the west behind her, late, after the rest of its group had died.

“Three, break left!” Coster called.

Baxter turned toward her. “Tasha, with Four. Don't come inland.”

She broke as the Frogfoot's nose came up. Dealer caught an enemy transmission and passed the call sign, CUSTOS. Baxter already had it selected. It was closer to Tasha than he wanted anything to be. He reached for the trigger as she cleared his line.

Gunfire crossed behind her. The Frogfoot came apart before the tone had steadied in Baxter's headset.

There had been no second pass. No turning to see what CUSTOS might do, the way there had been with the Hornet at White Valley. Ray had come out of the smoke over the battleship, killed it and gone back, all in the time it had taken Baxter to begin pressing a trigger. Whatever had kept him circling RAIA, he didn't spend it where Joker or Queen were in reach.

“Three?” Baxter asked.

“Clear. No hit.”

“Tasha.” That was Coster, not on the flight call. “You all right?”

“I said. No hit.”

“Right. Good.” He said it far too fast, and then, after a moment, in an entirely different voice: “Four, with her.”

Baxter, who had spent twenty years watching students think nobody could hear them, said nothing at all.

Ray's Hornet passed above them and turned inland again. Baxter followed it with his eyes long enough to see the next missile leave, then went back to the boats. Tasha was flying beside Coster, keeping Eight in view while she gave its bearing to Venn.

“Two, all craft moving seaward,” Venn said. “No damage reported.”

“Keep them moving,” Pike said. “Don't stop for anything left ashore.”

A voice from one of the craft asked whether that meant they were leaving Theve.

“It means you're bringing your people home,” Pike said. “Confirm your route.”

The pilot confirmed it. Baxter found the battleship's guns again. They were moving, but slowly; Ray's last hit had bought another stretch of water. The ship itself looked scarcely touched. Its tracks carried it on through the marsh, and another barrel lifted toward the coast.

“Craft Eight, continue your turn,” Ray said.

“Eight continuing.”

The barrel reached its bearing. Ray's aircraft banked away from it with its cannon flashing at a smaller weapons station that had opened up on him, and the heavy gun stopped again in the smoke of another missile. Eight's wake curved farther out to sea.

“Eight clear,” Tasha said. “He has room.”

The next shot landed behind the boats.

Venn checked the reports herself. One intact. Three, Four and Five had no injuries, no damage and all troops aboard. Six and Seven answered while she was checking her own compartment, and the sergeant came forward to tell her everybody was where she'd left them, though several had questions about the return trip.

“Tell them it's the same one,” she said. “Backwards.”

Eight answered last; its navigator had been changing channels.

“All eight accounted for,” Venn reported. “No casualties. Continuing to the recovery point.”

The crewman at the helm looked back toward Theve. They had almost had the shore under the bow. He'd been able to see a road between the warehouses, clear enough to picture bringing the craft up beside it.

“Next time,” he said.

Venn checked the water ahead. Then, because nobody was watching her, she looked up.

Two fighters were going seaward. A third held its place between the craft and the city, and stayed there while the guns went on firing. She could no longer make out the emblem, and didn't need to. She'd tell her own people tomorrow that it was the Wings of Theve. She would not tell them that he'd turned her before the shell was fired, because she couldn't explain it, and she had no intention of becoming one of those people who told stories about him.

“Watch One,” she said, and the helmsman turned forward.

Baxter waited for Eight's report before he counted his own. Queen answered four aircraft, no damage. The Harrier leads accounted for all nine. Tasha and Coster were beside him with enough fuel for the return. Ray was still farther in, outside the departing craft.

Baxter didn't ask why. He was learning which questions were for the radio.

“One, boats are clear. Three and Four returning with me.”

Two clicks. He gave Dealer their recovery bearing and let the nose come up toward the cloud.

The guns fired again as Theve dropped behind him. He checked the impacts against the craft positions. None came close. Another enemy aircraft came out after the retreat and then wasn't on the scope any more; Dealer confirmed the kill a moment later, in the tone of a man reading the weather.

Ray's Hornet joined them after the last boat crossed the range line.

Baxter looked across at it. The wings were lighter now, and there was a dark stain behind the cannon port that he could see whenever Ray came close enough. He held his own aircraft steady until Tasha and Coster were in place and then called the formation set.

Pike acknowledged. On the craft channel Venn was telling someone that all eight would need their own recovery slots and that she wasn't interested in combining loads to save time.

Coster asked whether the Harriers had heard her tell the man not to rearrange her boats. One of their pilots said they'd heard every word and were frightened of her.

“Good,” Tasha said.

Baxter was glad they were talking. He had the city behind him, the flight beside him, and a target map he'd have to unfold again at the debrief and explain to people who hadn't seen any of it.

Cope had a radio beside his bed. He turned it down when Baxter came in, though there was nothing left on the channel but recovery calls and requests for fuel.

“How many?”

“Eight craft. Seventeen aircraft. Everybody back.”

“I heard that part.”

“That's the part worth hearing twice.”

Cope moved the cards along the shelf to make room for Baxter's helmet. “They didn't land.”

“No.”

“The guns?”

“Reached farther than the map said. We were almost at the waterfront when they opened up.”

Cope looked at the radio, then at Baxter.

“I heard him calling the turns.”

“He was watching the barrels.”

“From over the water?”

“He went inland. Near enough to put missiles into the mountings.”

“And that worked?”

“For a while each time. A gun would start moving again and he'd hit the next one. He kept the boats out from under them in between.”

Cope asked where Ray had been and how the craft had turned. Baxter spread the landing chart on the blanket, clear of Cope's leg, and showed him Three and Four, the gap between One and Two, and Eight turning late on the outside.

“He hadn't used a missile until then. Every aircraft with the gun. Shore guns too.”

“Keeping them for that.”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No.”

Cope held the chart flat with his good hand. “Did you ask?”

“Not in the middle of it.”

“And at the briefing?”

Baxter thought about the one question Ray had asked at the briefing. “He wanted to know the withdrawal plan.”

Cope looked at him for a while. He had flown with a great many pilots and had a reputation, among people who knew him rather than the posters, for being hard to impress.

“Before anyone knew they'd need one,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Huh,” said Cope, and let the chart go.

There was a knock at the frame. D.D. came in with his tablet, saw the map and asked whether he was interrupting.

“Come in,” Cope said. “Professor's explaining why I haven't got my city back.”

D.D. sat at the foot of the bed, careful of the dressing. He had the first footage. Baxter watched Venn's turn on the little screen, the water lifting where the craft had been, and then the view swinging inland toward the gun. The battleship filled the frame. The Hornet went straight at it.

“Can we use this?” D.D. asked.

“Pike will have to clear it.”

“I mean the withdrawal.”

“It's what happened.”

“I know. They were waiting to hear we'd landed.”

Cope looked at the frame D.D. had stopped on. A landing craft was turning across the bottom of it, whole, its wake bright on black water.

“Tell them the boats came back,” he said.

“All eight,” Baxter said. “And tell them why we couldn't stay.”

D.D. ran the recording forward until the last craft was clear, then watched it a second time before he set the tablet down.

Ray came to the doorway while they were still talking. His flight suit was clean and his hair was damp. He asked whether Cope wanted visitors, and Cope told him he was collecting them.

“Professor says you stopped the guns.”

“For a while.”

“Long enough, apparently.”

Ray glanced at the chart on the blanket. D.D. picked up the tablet to give him room to sit.

The dog had come in at his heels. It sat beside Ray's chair and, after a moment, put its chin on his knee and left it there. Baxter watched Ray's hand lift from the arm of the chair and hover, and come down at last, very lightly, as though the dog might mind. It didn't. It shut its eyes.

“I'm putting something out about the craft,” D.D. told him. “The withdrawal. People need to hear what happened.”

Ray nodded.

“It isn't what they were hoping for.”

“No.”

“I'll give them the turn, though. The boats.” D.D. turned the tablet in his hands. “People love that part. They write in about it. I had a letter last week from a girl in Anderson who wants to be a pilot. She says you can tell from the footage how much he loves it up there. The Wings. That it's the only place he's ever really happy.” He smiled a little. “I didn't have the heart to tell her it's a camera bolted to a fuselage.”

Ray had gone very still. Baxter saw it only because he was sitting at the right angle: not a flinch, nothing so large, just a stopping, the way a man stops on a staircase when he isn't sure the next step is there.

“Tell her to learn to land first,” Cope said. “Everything else is showing off.”

D.D. laughed and said he would. Ray's hands, Baxter noticed, had found each other in his lap and were holding on.

Cope folded the chart and handed it back to Baxter. “We'll have to go again.”

“We'll be back,” Ray said.

He said it the way Baxter might have said the sun would come up: not a promise, just a fact he was passing on. D.D. looked up.

“Can I use that?”

Ray considered him, then nodded.

“With the eight boats,” Baxter said.

“With the eight boats,” D.D. agreed.

“Kate came down this afternoon,” Cope said. “Before the briefing. Sat where you're sitting and told me off for an hour for being in bed.”

Ray went still.

“How is she?” he said.

Baxter had flown beside him for nearly a month. In all that time he could not remember Ray asking a question that wasn't about an aircraft, a boat, or a fuel state. He watched Cope hear it too. Cope looked at Ray for a long moment, the way he looked at a hand of cards he hadn't expected to be dealt, and then over Ray's head at Baxter, and Baxter understood that he wasn't the only one in the room who knew.

“Tired,” Cope said, more gently than Baxter had ever heard him say anything. “Cross with me. Didn't like the guns tonight, I should think. She'll be all right.”

Ray nodded as though that were the only news anyone could have given him, and it was enough, and he would make it last.

Cope reached for the cards and asked Baxter to leave him his chair. Baxter took his helmet and made room for Ray. D.D. went out beside him, already scrolling back to the place where the last craft turned for home.