Offensive Patrol

Winthrop awoke before two in the morning. He hauled out the bucket stowed under his cot and was sick into it. With his changes, keeping down food and drink was difficult. His alarm clock was set to sound in five minutes. In the dark, outlines of objects were almost clear. Things seemed to glow with a deeper black. In the air, he was gifted with apprehensions and insights. Like a bat's, his inner ears sensed other creatures in the sky.

Sitting on the cot, he pulled on his Sidcot and boots. He didn't allow himself funk. This would be his first night patrol since ... Since the first time.

Not quite a night bird, he needed a few hours' sleep. The vampires were downstairs, carousing. The other vampires? He was stricken with a shivering spasm. The queasiness in his stomach told him he was still warm. The sharpness in his mouth told him how close he was to living death. He couldn't afford to worry about such things. He must focus on duty and retribution.

Suiting up was automatic. He buttoned and strapped himself together, then stumped downstairs, joints thickened by protective gear. On the ground, he felt swaddled and stuffy. In the air, he was agile as his Camel. The cold cut through a dozen layers.

'Hullo,' said Bertie. War was a continuous rag to him. Those who went west had just popped out for a smoke and would be back in a minute. 'Wrapped up warm?'

'You've fixed up your Sidcot like Ball,' Ginger commented.

Winthrop had instinctively come into the mess through the low doorway and steadied himself by gripping Ball's hand-holds.

The boots made him clumsy. Suited-up pilots often fell over like clots. People were always saying he did things like Albert Ball: flying, shooting, crawling, fighting.

The pilots for tonight's jaunt were already in flying kit. Allard had a few veterans of the old Condor Squadron, but most, like Winthrop, were from the new intake. Mainly, they were American vampires, purposeful as blades, solitary as cats.

'Cheerio, old thing,' Bertie said as Winthrop left the mess. 'See you at dawn.'

Winthrop nodded ambiguous reply. He had no time to pretend each patrol didn't potentially end in true death. He made no arrangements beyond each flight.

Allard liked to have the patrol line up as if for inspection, and go over the particulars once more. Winthrop fell in by Dandridge, a Yank new to the war but skilled in predation. The elder had passed among the warm for centuries, stalking in the cities of the living. Others of the intake - the cowboy Severin, the insatiable Brandberg, the idealist Knight - were old, turned before the 1880s. Mr Croft reasoned that those who lived through ages of persecution must have the instinct to kill and survive. There was friction between these elder aces and Cundall's contemporaries. No arguments, just mutual distaste.

Winthrop, not a vampire, was apart from both factions. From Allard, he understood Croft approved of him. He had flown patrols with elders. They were better suited to daylight excursions than sensitive-skinned new-borns.

Allard appeared in front of his men, emerging swiftly from shadow.

'The objective of this patrol has been changed,' Allard said. Behind him stood Caleb Croft, greyness a gloomy gleam in velvet black. 'Tonight, we visit the Chateau du Malinbois.'

Icy calm radiated from Winthrop's heart. He must not let himself be excited or afraid. He had known this would come.

'Or, as it is now known to the German High Command, Schloss Adler.'

The intake had been briefed on Malinbois. Winthrop's report on his flight with Courtney was the only authoritative intelligence on the shape-shifters of JG1. While Winthrop was in hospital, Richthofen's bat-staffel had been glimpsed frequently from the ground, hunting spotters and scouts, killing balloonists, buzzing the lines. Only Winthrop had encountered the creatures in the air and lived to make a report.

Allard continued: 'Richthofen's brood have made it impossible to gather intelligence on the nocturnal movements of the German army. Vast numbers of men and much materiel are reinforcing their lines, to prepare for their push. This activity is being conducted by night. In this sector, no single aircraft has managed to return with information. We have no more balloons to put up or trained observers to put in them. It is vital the reign of JG1 be broken. To this end, we shall set out to engage the German fliers and prove they are not invincible.'

Suddenly, out of nowhere, observing the stricken expressions of even the oldest of the old, Allard laughed. It was not a reassuring laugh, but a sinister chuckle that grew to a maddened and maddening howl. Again, Winthrop noted that, for a comparative new-born, Allard was among the strangest of the strange.

The pilots dashed for their waiting aircraft. Winthrop was in his seat before the echoes of Allard's laughter died.

Condor Squadron had been equipped with new Camels. Tricky birds to tame, but on a par with any machine the Boche could put in the air.

Allard favoured a barbed arrow formation: taking the tip position himself, ranks falling back above and below and to both sides. Winthrop kept steady immediately above and behind the flight commander, with the high man, Dandridge, immediately above and behind him.

Without fuel, the shape-shifted Boche were not vulnerable to the most common killing shot of aerial combat. They could not go down in flames. But they were still vampires: silver in the head or the heart should do the trick. Every other bullet in the drums of the Camel's twin Vickers guns was silver. A twenty- second burst of fire cost a hundred guineas. Both sides were reduced to recovering silver from the amputated limbs or smashed corpses of casualties.

Winthrop carved crosses into the tips of all his bullets, silver or lead. Nothing to do with the supposed allergy of vampires to crucifixes, it ensured the bullets fragmented on impact, bursting inside a wound. In the course of a dozen daytime patrols over the last week, he had qualified as an ace, shooting down six of the enemy. He was happiest with the ones who had gone down in flames. He had a taste for the fray and Albert Ball's instinct for it. Now, he wanted to fight by night. He wanted to add a Richthofen to his bag. Then, perhaps. Ball would be assuaged.

His stomach spasmed again. He'd learned to live with the stitches of pain, not to let them show. Kate had tried to tell him his course was dangerous. He would make things right with Kate when it was all over. No, he would make things right with Kate if it was all over. No, he could not think of Kate, or Catriona, or Beauregard. Only the moment, only now.

He gripped the stick and kept level. The pain-burst faded. The night sky was alive. Without turning in his cockpit, he knew where the other Camels were. A picture of the arrowhead stayed in his mind.

Down below, a column of vehicles advanced along a road, feeding men and materiel to the Boche lines. He ignored it. This was not an observation flight. This was an offensive patrol, a hunting party.

A tiny noise. A lone Hun on the ground fired a futile shot upwards, at the Camels. Winthrop's thumbs almost depressed firing buttons. Albert Ball told him to be a cool hand. Ball sat on one shoulder, Kate on the other. Not a comfortable arrangement.

The patrol flew the course Winthrop had flown with Courtney. Up ahead was the newly named Schloss Adler. This was where the Bloody Red Baron lived.

Reports were in from the lines. JG1 were out of their nest tonight, towards Amiens, attacking a row of patched-up balloons suitable only for hauling aloft Guy Fawkes dummies. They'd return frustrated to find a fight waiting for them. No one had ever attacked the shape-shifters before. That was a tiny advantage, a surprise.

Before he saw them, he sensed them. His ears thrilled. A silent formation returning to the castle. They flew like bats, gliding between wing-flaps, riding unmapped currents.

Allard saw the Boche too. He raised his hand. The arrowhead expanded. The Camels let distance grow between them, but kept in formation.

Remember, short bursts. Accurate fire, not hosepipe spray.

His mind stripped down, surplus thought and feeling done away with. He was a new person, unencumbered. A purpose behind Vickers guns.

They saw the Camels.

Allard was close to the flank of the enemy formation. He fired first. Silver flashes appeared in the wings of one of the creatures. The horribly human scream was louder than an elephant's bellowing. The injured monster fell out of formation. His wings were torn but bullets passed through. He'd have to be hit in the torso or head to be seriously damaged.

Winthrop watched the flier tumble, wings like an umbrella reversed by a sudden wind. He recovered and cruised downwards. Severin was on the wounded vampire's tail, whooping and firing like Broncho Billy. The elder had a killing thirst and was ignoring tactics. When his guns were empty, his enemy would recover and come for him.

The formations passed through each other. Winthrop smelled the shape-shifters' musk and felt the cold rush of their wings. Wheeling in the air, he tried to draw a bead on a black shape darting past. He nearly fired, but managed not to waste precious bullets.

The Boche weren't firing either. They would have used up most of their firepower on the dummy balloons. It was often the habit of fliers to get rid of the extra weight of ammunition by emptying guns into enemy trenches on the way home.

A wing filled his whole field of vision and he squeezed the firing-buttons. White flashes seared his eyes as his guns discharged. The wing was gone and he let up the pressure on the buttons.

The burst, only a few seconds' worth, jarred his ears. On instinct, he fired again, moments before another wing passed in front of his prop. This time, the shape-shifter flapped into his burst, and was twisted, screeching, in the air. A row of holes appeared in a curtain of wings. He was sure he had sunk a few into the furry barrel of the flier's body.

He tasted blood in his mouth. His own, mingled with Ball's and Kate's. His teeth were coral razors. This was as near to the vampire condition as he wished to come.

Another burst. Another miss. The bat-creature executed a perfect Immelmann and swooped towards the slice of moon. Dandridge was on his tail, firing scientific bursts. The Boche came out of his turn and spread wings wide. Dandridge had hit him. Red gobbets dripped in black fur.

With a sinking motion, the shape-shifter got beneath Dandridge's climb and latched like a lamprey on to the underside of the Camel, wings wrapping upwards, tail lashing. The Camel's frame buckled and its engine stalled. The prop sliced into the Boche's face but jammed.

Winthrop was appalled.

The Camel came apart. Dandridge's upper plane ripped off and disappeared like a kite in a storm. The shape-shifter detached from the aircraft. Dandridge's crushed wreck plunged, wind shrieking in the wires. As he went down, Dandridge emptied his guns.

The creature that had killed Dandridge struggled to stay aloft. He had taken many hits and the propeller slice was severe. His wings were ragged and torn. Ribbons of dark blood flew from wounds.

Was this the Red Baron?

Winthrop had the mutilated monster in his sights. He fired, pouring out silver and lead. He swooped down and over the creature, briefly worried that he might latch on to his Camel, repeating the manoeuvre that had defeated Dandridge.

His blood thrilled. There would be a reckoning. Turning for another pass, he saw Allard diving on the same prey. The monster struggled upwards to meet Allard. With what seemed a single shot, Allard put a lump of silver into the monster's skull. Instantly dead, the flier dwindled to human size, weighted by heavy guns, and fell towards black ground.

The creatures could be beaten.

His victory stolen, Winthrop wheeled, searching. He was at the heart of the dog-fight. Shape-shifters and Camels whirled around, firing guns, tearing wings. There was an explosion as a Camel (Rutledge's, Winthrop thought) burst into a fireball. An expanding ball of hot air hit his wings and forced him back.

Down below was the castle. And above was an immense dark shape that laid a shadow on the land.

Rutledge had not been killed by one of JG1. There was Archie all around. The Schloss Adler was defended by gun emplacements. Archie exploded below Winthrop, a carpet of fire in the night. Smoke smeared the lenses of his goggles and stung his eyes.

A bat came at him, and he turned the Camel's nose away. Detaching one hand from the stick, he wrenched off his blinded goggles, unmasking his face to the icy dash of open air.

Looking up, he realised a Zeppelin hung over the castle like a mammoth balloon, floating in thin atmosphere above the operational ceiling of any heavier-than-air machine. Only real monsters lived in those altitudes, where the cold froze blood in veins and made woolly flight suits into crackling ice chain-mail.

Allard signalled withdrawal. The shape-shifters were landing on their tower, retreating within stone walls.

Winthrop had been cheated of his kill. Perhaps the Red Baron was truly dead. Allard's kill. Angered beyond thought, Winthrop approached the Schloss Adler. A shape-shifter on the landing platform was shrugging his flying shape, bending to wriggle into the castle.

Winthrop fired a burst to get range. He heard his shots whine off stone. Half-way between human shape and bat form, the flier turned, attention caught by the fire, pointed ears swivelling. Winthrop's next burst caught him in the chest, bearing him backwards against the castle wall. Scarlet gouts blurted through thinning fur. A perfect heart-shot.

A seventh score. One that counted. One of the monsters.

No, it would not count officially. Winthrop, the killing urge briefly satisfied, realised he had gone against Allard's orders to withdraw. His victory would never be confirmed. Besides, what he had done was strafe a foe on the ground, not meet him in the air. The pitch was not level.

Still, the kill counted in his system. One of the monsters was gone.

It had been only seconds. He slid easily back into formation, behind and above Allard.

There were others. Brandberg, Lockwood, Knight, Lacey.

They sped away. There was still archie but it was ineffectually distant. The shape-shifters were out of the air. The airship was too high to bring guns to bear.

Fourteen had approached the castle. Five were returning.

Winthrop had seen Dandridge and Rutledge killed and known Severin would lose his match. Now, he realised he had for a half- instant glimpsed one of the shape-shifters with a human rag in his mouth, shaking his head as blood-trails whipped. That had been another of the pilots.

The rest had been killed without his even noticing. Nine men exchanged for two monsters. The dog-fight couldn't have lasted more than two or three minutes.

The five Camels flew away from the rising sun. Spreading dawn fell heavily on Winthrop, like a blanket, sapping his energy, cooling his blood. They crossed the lines.