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.I wish he'dfind one, this business is dangerous enough when you're trying.Dawn was breaking, rising out of the fire and the thunder.Shadow chased darkness down the hugescored slopes of the mountains, still streaked with old drifts.Rock glowed, salmon-pink; she could see aplume of snow trailing feather-pale from a white peak.Below clusters of young trees marked the manorsthe Draka had built, and fields of wheat showed a tender, tentative green.A new landscape, scarcelyolder than herself.There had been much work done here in the last generation, she thought; it took Draka to organize andplan on such a scale.Terraces like broad steps on the hillsides, walled with stones carted from the fields;canals; orchards and vineyards pruned and black and dusted with green uncoiling buds.All of itsomehow raw and new, against this bleakness made by four thousand years of peasant axes and hungrygoats.Well, only a matter of time, she mused.Already the Conservancy Directorate was drawing a mat ofGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlyoung forest across the upper slopes; in another hundred years these foothills would be as lush as naturepermitted, and her grandchildren might come here to hunt tiger and mouflon.The scene about her was also Draka work, but less sightly.Kars was strategic, a meeting of routesthrough the mountains of eastern Turkey, close to the prewar Russian border.The conquest back in1916-1917 had been a matter of foot infantry and mule trains and supply drops by dirigibles.CastleTarleton had enough problems guarding six thousand miles of northern frontier without transportationworries; even before the Great War was over a million laborers had been rounded up to push throughrailways and roads and airship yards.So when the buildup for the German war began there was transport enough; just barely, with carefulplanning.The air base around her sprawled to the horizon on the south and west, and work teams werestill gnawing at scrub and gravel.Others toiled around the clock to maintain the roads pounded byendless streams of motor-transport; the air was thick with rock dust and the oily smell of the low-gradedistillate the steam trucks burned.Barracks, warehouses, workshops, and hangars sprawled, all built ofasbestos-cement panels bolted to prefabricated steel frames: modular, efficient, and ugly.On a nearbyslope the skeletal mantis shape of an electrodetector tower whirled tirelessly.Johanna flicked the cigarette butt over the edge of the roof and drank the last lukewarm mouthful ofcoffee."Like living in a bloody construction site," she muttered, turning to the stairwell.The bulletin board in the ready room held nothing new: final briefing at 0750, wheels-up half an hourlater, a routine kill-anything-that-moved sweep north of the mountains to make sure the Fritz air kept itshead down.Merarch Anders was going over the maps one more time as she passed through, raising hishead to nod at her, his face a patchwork of scars from twenty years of antiaircraft fire and half a dozenforced landings.She waved in response, straightening a little under the cool blue eyes.Anders was the"old man" in truth, forty-two, ancient for a fighter pilot.He had been abagbuster in the Great War, flyingone of the pursuit biplanes that ended the reign of the dirigibles.And even in middle age the fastest manshe had ever sparred with.The canteen was filling with her fellow Draka.The food was good; that was one of the advantages of theAir Corps.The ground forces had a motto: "join the Army and live like a serf," but a pilot could fly out tofight and return to clean beds, showers, and cooked food.This time she took only a roll and some fruitbefore heading out to the field; combat tension affected everybody a different way, and with her ittightened the gut and killed her appetite, also any capacity for small talk.The planes of her lochos were having a final check-over in their sandbagged revetments, sloping pitsalong either side of an accessway that led out into the main runway for this section.Technicians werechecking the systems, pumps chugged as the fuel tanks filled, armorers coaxed in belts of 25mm cannonshells for the five-barrel nose battery.Her ground crew paused to smile and wave as Johanna settled herself on the edge of the revetment andsat cross-legged, watching.On excellent advice, her father's among others, she had gone out of her wayto learn their names and take an interest in their conditions.They were serfs, except for the teamcommander; not Janissaries, unarmed auxiliaries owned by the War Directorate, but privileged and highlytrained.Their work would be checked by the inspectors, of course, but there was a world of differencebetween the best and just-good-enough.She sighed as she watched them work on her aircraft.Even earthbound, with the access panels open,the Eagle was a beautiful sight: as beautiful as a dolphin or a blooded horse, enough to make your breathcatch when it swam in its natural element above the earth.It was a midwing monoplane, the slenderGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlfuselage just big enough for pilot, fuel, and the five cannon, slung between two huge H-form 24 cylinderAtlantis Peregrine turbocharged engines in sleek cowlings.Twice the power of a single-engine fighter andfor less than twice the weight: not quite as agile in a dogfight, but better armored and more heavily armed,andmuch faster&Like most pilots, she had personalized her machine: a Cupid's bow mouth below the nose, lined withshark's teeth, and a name in cursive script: "Lover's Bite." There were five swastikas stenciled below thebubble canopy, the marks of her victories.Johanna's mouth quirked.Flying was& flying was like making love after a pipeful of the bestrum-soaked Arusha Crownganja; she had always had a talent for it, and the Eagle was a sweet ship.And somewhat to her surprise, she had turned out to be an excellent fighter pilot; she had the vision andthe reflexes, and most important of all the nerve to close in,very close, right down to 100 meters, whilethe enemy wings filled the windscreen and your guns hammered bits of metal loose to bounce off thecanopy&And frankly, I could do without it, she thought.There were worse ways to spend the war: sweating inthe lurching steel coffin of a personnel carrier, or clawing your hands into the dirt and praying under amortar barrage but dead was dead, and she had not the slightest desire to die.Nor to spin in trapped ina burning plane, or&She shrugged off the thought.War was the heritage of her people and her caste; it was just that shewould have preferred to be lucky.Peacetime duty for her military service, then, hmmm, yes, Capetownfor her degree [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]