Double Eagle by Dan Abnett

to celebrate. Of course they had. First run in a new theatre, and a fine one at that. But Viltry hadn’t felt like celebrating. It had taken a lot to just get them home. The final half-hour, fuel low, belly-light, weapons all but empty. So exposed, so vulnerable. Operations insisted nothing in the enemy’s air force could reach the Littoral and the home-stretch, but Viltry had been sweating so much on the last section, he’d been able to pour moisture out of his flying gloves when he took them off.
    The field had come up, Theda North. Even closing in on the beacon lights, he’d still had the distinct feeling that something was going to come down out of nowhere and kill them hard.
    The field. The outer circuit. Blue flags all round. Power down to minimal, just kissing the edge of stall speed for Greta’s massive airframe.
    Then in over the cross, balancing the Marauder as he brought the vector nozzles around, switching from forward flight to vertical. A squeeze or two of viff, a hunkering, and then down. Intact, alive.
    The rest of Halo came back around them.
    Judd and the boys had already earmarked a tavern near the billets. They got out, loud and full of themselves, scattering flight kit onto the hardpan as they whooped and slapped hands.
    “I’ll join you later,” Viltry told them. “Paperwork.”
    He’d taken the longest shower in the history of the Imperium of Man, standing silent and naked under tepid water in the stinking rockcrete stalls behind dispersal, then changed into a spare uniform suit he’d had the presence of mind to bring in his kitsack. He put on his tan leather coat. His hands were still shaking.
    The crew was already gone. Viltry found a transport that was doing a run down into the centre of town to pick up a Navy crew, and hitched a ride. It dropped him off on a corner where the old temple road met the fish-market.
    There was no one around. Viltry walked north, away from the dark and boarded streets of the town towards the coast. He could smell the sea.
    He had no real idea where his billet was. Someone would know, when he was ready.
    The piers came as a real surprise. He turned a dank street corner and suddenly found himself on a bright and windswept esplanade. Ahead of him, beyond an iron railing, a reinforced seawall and a narrow curb of grey foreshore, was the sea itself. There was no one in sight, except a truck that groaned past. He crossed the wide roadway and came up to the railing. The sea fascinated him. There were no seas on Phantine, not liquid ones anyway. The sun was slipping down, into the lazy, low part of the afternoon, and the sky was yellow. The endless water seemed indolent and slow, hissing in a languid rhythm against the crusty beach. The water was making frothy breakers at the shore, but beyond that, it formed into a sinuous expanse of rolling gunmetal, stretching away to the vague horizon. It reminded him of the Scald.
    Three long piers, their ornate ironwork painted white, marched out from the esplanade over the water. Though faded and rundown, Viltry realised they had once been pleasure palaces. There were shuttered arcades, dance halls, flaking posters advertising weekly match-dances and cordial functions. He was utterly taken with the idea of stepping out on an iron-and-wood bridge that crossed to nowhere, the sea sucking beneath him.
    He walked down the strand a little way until he came to the entrance arch of the nearest pier. A chalkboard had been propped up against the ironwork gate. “Palace Refreshments. Table service, sea views,” it read.
    He liked that. That would do.
    Warily, he walked in under the iron arch and out along the pier. The sound of the sea was much louder now. He could see the surge of it between the boards beneath his feet. It made him dizzy and excited, and those things helped to mask the kernel of fear he was carrying in his heart.
    The cafe was at the end of the pier. Everything else was shut up and derelict. As he approached, he was able