The craft lurched right again, the flight harness slicing into my shoulders. I heard a sound a little like rain, assuming the cloud was a hammer. It pattered against the hull. First above, then to my left. But, besides a storm gathering to the far west, I saw no clouds during our descent.

My finger stabbed the vox-comm.

‘Flight Sergeant Plient? What’s happening?’

‘Sorry, sir. Trouble out here. I’m pulling away. We have another squad inbound. There will be no–’

He cut out as the craft swung left, my stomach heaving as we spiralled into a corkscrew. I could not tell up from down, and with the screen blank I had no sense of the world beyond the cargo hold, which was beginning to feel like a jet-propelled sarcophagus.

‘Flight Sergeant Plient, can you restore the viewer?’

‘Yes, sir, but you do not–’

‘Do it, sergeant. That’s an order.’

It was my inaugural command: turn on the pict screen. Not the most inspiring first order an officer ever made, but I was not an officer, and my meagre authority was borrowed from Planetary Governor Zanwich, the most powerful man in Subsector Yossarian and my official patron. Yet he was no military commander, and, strictly speaking, the men and women of the Aeronautica Imperialis were not required to follow his or my orders.

Plient did not immediately respond, instead sending the lighter into another sudden turn. But momentarily the pict screen flashed into life, presenting the majestic image of a Lightning fighter. It surged towards our foe, wings swept forward like the pinions of an Imperial eagle. My heart swelled as its auto-cannons thundered the God-Emperor’s wrath, whilst wing-mounted lascannons blazed with His glorious light.

Then it exploded.

For a moment I could not see the cause. There had been no telltale missile or energy discharge. But the perpetrator soared into view, its shadow eclipsing the flaming wreckage. There was no grace in its flight, the craft reminiscent of a rocket-propelled fist with crude wings welded to its flanks. Its myriad exhausts belched black smoke that stained the sky, whilst the weapons studded along its wings vomited a torrent of bullets. I recalled the sound I had heard before, the hammer of rain on the hull. I now knew the source.

The view abruptly shifted from the wreckage-strewn sky to rapidly approaching swampland, as Plient dived, our aircraft hurtling groundward. The blur of orange and brown rapidly condensed into rust-coloured water and twisted vines. Bullets pattered against the rear hull, and the land grew bigger. Closer.

‘Plient! What the hell are you doing?!’

‘Sorry, sir. Situation has deteriorated. Stand by.’

The swamp was seconds away.