Night Witches Part 9

*Same again!' Zoya sings, as I throttle forward and off we go . . . a black bird-machine heading back to war.

Halfway to the target on our second sortie the sky splits open and sharp splinters of rain spike down. Aura said it would be clear!

I hate spring rain because it's thick with sticky tree spores drifting from the Mora.s.s. When I was little Zoya used to tell me if you didn't wash the spores off straight away they'd root in your skin and grow into a forest. She also told me if you kissed a boy with thick eyebrows you'd give birth to furry rablets, but I spotted her doing that once and no rablets appeared, so I learned not to believe everything she said. Come to think of it, Yeldon has quite thick eyebrows . . . but now is not the time to think of kissing, or I'll be right back on the subject of Reef Starzak, that half-hidden smile on his lips, and his soft message a" i think of you all the time.

I flick a switch that sets the wipers swiping across the low windshield at the front of the c.o.c.kpit. They can't keep up with the downpour. They sweep, I peek, then water pelts again. I feel it running down my neck and spine and pooling round my boots.

I want to ask Zoya what she meant about my family being from Sorrowdale, but daren't. Not when I'm on my way to bomb the place again. Not when my parents have always said I was born and bred in Sea-Ways.

All night we fly. All night we bomb, until dawn comes teasing the skyline, then we strip, dump our sodden gear and collapse into our bunks, too wired to sleep, to tired to talk. Come evening we're ready to go and pound the enemy again.

Just as before, Lida and Petra lead our formation. They reach the target, drop bombs and veer away. Everything's looking good for Henke and Rill's run-in until a sudden blade of light stabs the sky. A search lamp! Steen Verdessica would just love the religious poetics of this a" bringing light to the unbelievers.

Nothing poetic about what happens next.

Like a lightning bolt, I think a" Don't look at the light, but there's no way to warn Henke and Rill, caught in the lamp's beam.

Rill's Storm seems to skid in mid-air. It tips over and begins to spin. Rill must be blinded, Henke too. Unconnected, they can't tell which way is up quickly enough. They'll have no chance to come out of the stall in time.

Zoya shrieks, *Rain a" break formation! Abort the mission!'

Her words mean nothing to me. I'm pushing the Storm to its maximum airspeed, urging it on, willing the seconds to stretch so I can somehow break through normal laws of time and motion to catch my friends before they find the ground.

I start to shake. The plane shakes too, worse than normal engine shudders. I see nails working loose from wooden panels. Screws untwisting. Fabric unst.i.tching. Light burns on my face from the search lamp. In this strange dance of slowed-down moments I feel as if I can count the photons spreading out in a wave of dazzle. The plane's not the only thing unravelling. I feel this tremendous pressure pushing from the inside outwards until it seems as if I'm unpeeling like fruit skin. Some strange power sings, Let me out! Let me burst free! I clamp it down, struggling, almost literally, to hold myself together. I am normal, normal, normal.

Below us Henke and Rill are turning, diving, falling . . . hitting a Sorrowdale house a" bam. Time zooms back to normal. Their Storm blooms into a hideous flower of orange fire that rain quickly batters into foul black smoke.

My voice is loud but rough from the ash in the air. *We're close enough to the target, Zoya, release the bombs!'

*They're shooting at us!'

*I know! Release the bombs!'

*I can't, the wires are jammed!'

*Then fly the plane for me!'

Thank G.o.d a" or Fenlon a" for dual controls. While Zoya pilots the Storm I strip off my bulky flying gloves and heave myself half out of the c.o.c.kpit to find that the bomb-release wires are totally twisted. Only one thing for it. Before I can talk myself out of such madness I'm climbing on to the lower left wing. The Storm tilts. I grab a wooden strut for support. It creaks . . . but stays firm. Zoya gets control; I get my balance. The search lamp swings round towards us.

*Don't look at the lights!' I call.

*Don't fall!' Zoya screams.

I think . . . If you don't know you can't do something, maybe you can. With my eyes closed I feel for the bomb wires. They're taut and strong. I yank them hard. Nothing doing. If only I had a knife, like the one Reef used in the Mora.s.s. That's too bad a" I don't, and these bombs have to come off now. I pour all my anger into my hands. Wires cut, blood wells out, but they . . . almost . . . nearly . . . yes a" snap! A wire-end whips past my head, cutting the fabric of my flying cap. One by one the bomb cylinders fall.

*Pull up!' I call. *We need height!'

*Get in the c.o.c.kpit!'

*More height!'

I hang on tight, drinking in the back flow from the propellers, then hoist myself into the pilot's seat once more. Our bombs land and burst and the search lamp goes dark for ever. How's that for poetics, Steen Verdessica!

We get away. We live. For now.

Marina Furey comes squelching across the sodden bioground of the airstrip, holding a lo-glo lamp that casts a weak circle of light around her. Her uniform is sodden and her hair is plastered to her scalp. An allergy to spring spores has made her eyes sore and her nose turn red.

*Power down!' she shouts hoa.r.s.ely. *That's enough for one night.'

The ground crew come slogging over to see what's going on. I can't bear watching while they're told the news. Henke and Rill a" dead. I can't believe that's all there is to it. One mistake and you're gone for ever.

*With all due respect . . .' says Lida.

*Yes, keep it respectful,' Furey warns.

*Sorry, but . . . what are we supposed to do? Let the Crux get away with it? That was Henke and Rill who went down. We can't just grab towels, dry off and go back to bed for the day as if nothing's happened! We could manage several more sorties a" really pummel the murderers to pieces.'

Furey shakes her head, scattering drops of water. *Aura says that's it for the night.'

*Aura's wrong.'

I slap my hand over my mouth as soon as the words come out. Oh G.o.d-who-doesn't-exist, how could I even think such a thing, let alone say it out loud, in front of Marina Furey of all people?

Quickly Zoya jumps to my defence. *She means, Aura doesn't have a complete picture, since none of us could connect at the time. Right, Pip?'

I'm wanting to die and thinking, I am a weed sprouting, I will get yanked out . . .

*S-something like that.'

Furey folds her arms and glares at me. That's enough to wilt a grown man, let alone this weed.

*If you've got something meaningful to say, Rain Aranoza, I'm willing to hear it.'

I hear Papi's words in my mind a" Don't look at the lights a" and I remember the silent swoop of corvils in the forest.

*I think . . . and we can check with Aura, obviously . . . but I think I know how we can surprise them again . . .'

It's not a genius plan, just a cheeky one. We set off with only two Storms in the next sortie. If my idea doesn't work, then . . . then Papi can turn up to my funeral saying, *Told you she couldn't tell ground from sky' and Mama can cry for the rest of her life, saying, *She wasn't good enough.'

Lida's face is grim as she gets back into her Storm.

*We'll call this plane Revenge from now on,' she says.

In the orange circle of an outdoor light I see Mossie checking bomb wires before catching a quick kiss from Petra, hopefully not the last one ever.

*What'll we call our plane?' asks Zoya. *Shall I ask everybody?'

Call it Anger, I think in secret. *Call it whatever you like,' I answer aloud.

Lida insists on flying as head of our mini formation. Just as before, the first Storm has the element of surprise. Petra releases a lovely sprinkling of bombs that land on a herd of traptions gathered in Sorrowdale's suburbs. Anti-aircraft fire flares up, then silence. They're listening for the next bomber. They won't hear me and Zoya. Some way from Sorrowdale I cut the Storm's engines, with the only sound being the sweep of wind on our wings.

Lower, lower, lower we glide, like a corvil scouting for meat. The white cross of a Crux flag flutters from an old G.o.d-house tower as we pa.s.s over. I could almost leap from the plane and land on a rooftop. There are trees in the town, real ones, that shouldn't be growing so far from the forest. Some are bomb-splintered stumps, others are tall, black silhouettes. We slice their leaves and make the branches shiver. When our latest batch of bombs fall I've barely time to flood the engine with fuel and climb to safety.

Do I hear Crux cursing the smoke-choked sky as they run from the flames?

*Witches!' they spit at us as we rise. *Night witches!'

We fly, we glide, we bomb, until Umbra slumps below the horizon, stained with plumes of black ash. My last view of Sorrowdale is of a few Crux survivors retreating over roads and fields. The town is ours again a" what's left of it.

Back at Loren I land our Storm but don't let the propeller blades swing still. Now it's light the real bombers are being towed from hangars to fly missions away from the Mora.s.s. I'd like to see them do what we've done! I sense Zoya shivering in the seat behind me, from cold or shock or both. Stiff-legged and pale-faced, the rest of the squadron are gathering near the hangar. Reef stands tall amongst them, eyes only for me.

I can't speak to him yet. There's something needs to be done.

*Zoya?'

*Pip?'

*You OK?'

She pauses. *I think so. That was scary.'

*I know, only . . . there's one more sortie we have to fly.'

*There is? Did you get ac-reqs from Aura already?'

I shake my head. *We'll need a spade.'

Zoya stares at me. *Shouldn't we wait for orders?'

I shrug. *No keypads in a Storm . . . we can't connect.'

*We could ask Furey.'

*Night's over. Furey won't let us leave now.'

Her mouth drops open. *Go without permission?'

*For Henke. For Rill. We can't just leave them there.'

*But . . .'

*If no one's told us not to go, it hasn't been forbidden. You don't have to come. Stay here with everyone else.'

Zoya scowls. *You're my cousin a" you're family. I won't let you go alone. My father said . . . your papi said to keep an eye on you.'

*If we're going, we go now . . .' Before habits of logic, reason and normal obedience kick in.

I suppose because Storms have been buzzing around all night, no one really registers our engine noise until we're already b.u.mping along the runway and our wheels are off the ground. What can they do? Shout at us? Yes a" violently. Shoot at us? No a" thankfully.

I force the Storm up into the brightening sky and back towards Sorrowdale. It's outrageous, I know. So is dying young, when you should be playing music, or studying for school, or hanging out with friends, or just being alive.

I don't really need Zoya to navigate, not with this nagging, dragging need pulling me back to the bomb-zone, but I'm hugely relieved she's with me, even if she blisters my ears with worries a" Have I gone completely disconnected . . . Do I realise how much trouble we'll be in when we get back . . .

The Storm cuts through streaks of black smoke to circle the town. It looks like the Crux aren't the only invaders a" forest plants are rampant in the ruins. Sorrowdale used to be civilised. Now rambling bushes of thorn-vines curl round ugly mounds of bomb-mangled traptions, and trees send out spores with every sway of their branches. It's oddly wonderful to see a once winter-bound forest spread out for a spring revival, even if it's not at all normal for trees and plants to grow in towns.

I pick a field and we land with no more than the usual jolts. The early spring biofood crops have been slashed then burned by Crux soldiers. I taxi over the stubble to where new woods will shade the plane a little. The propeller blades slowly stop.

Silence. I close my eyes and smell the air a" ashes, explosives, death and defeat. And something else.

Expectations.

*There's no one left,' I say. No one alive, at any rate.

A breeze rustles the broken crop stalks. I've a crazy urge to bury my hands in the soil to feel if new life is sprouting from forest spores. When I look down at my palms I see faint red marks from where the bomb wires cut my skin to ribbons last night. The gashes are almost completely healed, despite the fact I never thought to spray medicine on them. Has Zoya noticed? She's just looking shocked we're even here.

Any other day, any other place, the morning light might seem cheerful. Now the sun is a great eye watching us as step by step we cross the burned field to town. Where are the foodlanders who once tended these crops? Where are the trucks that once hummed down these streets? That school there, where are the children and their screens? Who last shut that yard gate, tended that withering bioweave, played with that deflated ball?

Zoya whispers, *They were all evacuated, weren't they? Our people, I mean a" they did get out of town before Crux came?'

*They all got away safely,' I whisper back as Aura isn't here to answer, and who knows a" it might be true.

We walk on, round rubble, bomb craters and Crux corpses, one careful footstep at a time. I wish Sorrowdale didn't have this faint feeling of familiar about it.

Zoya's got her scarf pulled up over her face against the stink of death and burnings.

*Our bombs did all this?' she asks in a hoa.r.s.e voice. *You couldn't tell from up in the air. If I was a scientist I'd figure out a weapon that could just pick off the enemy all nice and neat without this . . . this mess. My father's always saying it would be a much more logical way to win a war. It's what all his research is about. Everybody would be so much better off, don't you agree?'

She peers at me like a Scrutiner.

*Sure. These corpses are disgusting.'

I suppose if I were Steen right now I'd be scanning mottled faces, looking for people I knew.

I ask, *Do you reckon Steen Verdessica has any family or friends in the war?'

*Who cares?' replies Zoya. *If he does they'll all be dead soon, or prisoners like him.'

*I wonder if they know he's alive?'

*What's it matter? He'll be executed as soon as he's stopped being useful for the squadron, if he even is any more. I don't know why they let him hang around. Anyway, why are we even discussing him? Shouldn't we be looking for something to dig with?'

That's true. We've got friends of our own to seek out. First I ask, oh-so-casually, *So what's that you said about my family living in Sorrowdale once?'

*It's true. I heard my father talking about it with some Scrutiner man who came round, a while back. It was just after the Eclipse. You were still a baby.'

*I never knew. Where . . . where do you think we lived?'

Zoya stands on a door in the middle of a street, hands on her hips. *Take your pick a" they're all ruined now.'