Ascent by Jed Mercurio by Ascent (com v4.0)

more MiGs were battling a Sabre pair. Glinka looked down and saw Sabres converging on his leader. It was a simple move to tilt in their direction and open fire but instead he turned away and kept on climbing.
    Yefgenii was alone and vulnerable. A pair of Sabres had seen him and were swooping in behind. He jerked his aircraft into a sharp evasive turn and in doing so he spotted Skomorokhov turning in from the edge of the battle. “Sko! Get the fuckers off me! Sko!”
    Skomorokhov watched Yefgenii’s MiG curve along the horizon. Two Sabres were banking round behind him. Cloud matted the sky and the land. Against white, the aircraft stood out in isolation. Their dance was the only living thing in creation. They were cut off from the world.
    The leading Sabre opened fire on Yefgenii. “Sko!”
    Skomorokhov tilted away. He watched over his shoulder. His heart was pounding. Sweat chilled on his skin. To desert a comrade was unthinkable but so was losing his place at the top of the mountain.
    Yefgenii pulled round. Tracers were flashing past his cockpit. He saw a Sabre climbing onto Glinka’s tail. “Glinka, check six!”
    Glinka snapped his MiG into a turn. The move was so sudden and violent that the airflow ripped away. Yefgenii glimpsed Glinka’s wings glinting in the sun. They were tilting up to the vertical. For a split second the MiG hung in perfect stillness on its side. Then the wings shuddered and it stalled. Glinka plunged straight down and struck one of the Sabre pair that was closing on Yefgenii. The Sabre’s wing sheared clean off. It spun away and on the second or third rotation its fuel tank ruptured. Glinka’s MiG divided into a thousand nuggets and Yefgenii could even imagine them tinkling as they sprinkled into the air.
    Someone shouted “Taran!” It might’ve been Skomorokhov but Yefgenii couldn’t be sure. Taran, the ramming maneuver — on any other day he’d’ve laughed at the suggestion. The zveno was scattered and disorganized and Yefgenii ordered them to run for home.
    “Taran!” Skomorokhov repeated in the crew hut. He wore a strange expression as if he found the whole thing hilarious. His heart was still drumming from his betrayal. He hated himself for it but wasn’t glad that Yefgenii had survived. He felt he’d learned that his competitive drive knew no moral limit and that this was a thing to be proud of.
    Kiriya turned to Yefgenii. “Yeremin?”
    “It wasn’t a ramming maneuver, sir. It was a fuck-up. I’d call it a midair collision.”
    In his office Kiriya considered his report to Moscow. The officials there would know nothing of the sortie apart from his dispatch. His account would enter the records. It would become history; it would become the truth.
    With one act, Glinka’s life would be defined, and it was up to Kiriya to choose the definition. He began to write. Cornered by the Americans, Glinka committed the supreme self-sacrifice, the ramming maneuver. He took one with him rather than surrender. This was the stuff of comic books. Kiriya was recommending Glinka for a posthumous Order of Lenin. He’d be remembered as a great hero and a great pilot.
    As winter approached, the flying days became shorter, but it wasn’t long before Yefgenii overtook Skomorokhov. The news came down from the tower. Skomorokhov nodded. He felt the other men’s eyes on him. He was deposed from his royal status and now he knew they’d all see him the same way he saw himself — as tubby and balding.
    As Yefgenii returned to base, frost glistened on the edges of his canopy. Sweat chilled under his suit. When he took off his mask, his breath condensed into a small cloud. He had more kills than any pilot in the 221st. He was a Hero of the Soviet Union, had won the Order of Lenin and only Pepelyaev and Sutyagin had more jet kills in the entire VVS.
    Kiriya would often seek him out in public places so that the ground crews could see them talking together, the boss and the spectacular young hero, in