Chapter Text
August 24, 1942.
New Guinea, Port Moresby, "7th Mile" airfield.
Oscar was against it. Against the war, against cruelty, against violence. And he wasn't ashamed of it. Wasn't ashamed of choosing to service planes instead of piloting them. He was a pacifist.
He was raised that way – to reject violent death and mass murder. Since childhood, he was taught that any conflict could be resolved with words, and that taking active measures was only justified when your own health was at stake.
And Oscar fully agreed. Oscar didn't provoke, but he didn't tolerate disrespect either. When he was drafted and someone asked with contemptuous condescension, "So, kid, going to fly? Or clean latrines in the infantry?", he simply replied that he understood mechanical insides and wouldn't mind being sent to aviation technician school.
He chose the lesser of two evils – he didn't kill, but made sure the killing happened properly and without technical glitches. He could have actually gone to clean latrines, chop potatoes, or scrub floors, then no one would suffer even indirectly from his hands. But alongside his peaceful convictions sat, for a long time, the thought of defense. Defending the Motherland, civilians, his family, even though they were far from the front lines. And he was torn between two fires, arriving at the only possible and, in his opinion, correct decision – he didn't kill, but made sure the killing happened properly and without technical glitches.
He felt like a hypocrite trying to sit on two chairs. His ideals couldn't align at all, only clashing and pricking against each other, causing a contradiction inside that drained the last drops of his sanity – did he have the right to sit here, far from direct skirmishes, only patching holes, while guys just like him died in droves out there? Shouldn't he join them?
And at the same time – was there any point to military action, to all these numerous deaths? Were they justified? Was Japan's absurd desire to build a great Asian empire worth such suffering? Australia was a victim of aggression, Australia was forced to defend itself. So, maybe Oscar should participate after all? And the thought inevitably followed – he would have to kill. He wasn't ready for that. Didn't want to be the cause of someone else's death.
And the main question arose – why? Why did Japan decide to occupy the Pacific? Why commit mass murder? What for? For the sake of an idea of imaginary greatness? What was the point? Sometimes Oscar felt like the only sane person in the world.
He adjusted the rolled-up sleeves of his camouflage coveralls, tugged at the rag tucked into his pocket, spotted with oil and dirt, and put hands on hips, drawing the humid, stuffy air of the jungle, still smelling of the evening rain, into his lungs. It was surprisingly quiet – no alarm, no echo of planes cutting through the sky. In two years, Oscar had learned that silence never promised anything good, and he had learned not to be happy about it. He had learned many things in those two years.
The olive Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk – a fighter-bomber – basked in the scant reddish light, showing off its roundel painted on the fuselage, just behind the cockpit – a blue circle with a white center. Senior Private Oscar Piastri picked up a kerosene lamp from the mud and began walking around it, sinking his army boots ankle-deep into the slush, searching the wings and fuselage for dents, cracks, marks from bullets and shrapnel.
There were more and more American Kittyhawks – after the fall of Singapore, where Britain's main military base was located, the only country capable of quickly providing many fighters to Australia, Britain’s dominion, became the USA, supplying planes under lend-lease. Kittyhawks were simple and maintainable, which saved precious time in field conditions.
Oscar found no visible damage and stepped from the ground onto the painted part of the wing to avoid slipping. He sat in the cockpit, started the engine, and listened. No knocking, no whistling. The plane was like new. Then he emerged from behind the trees, which tops were draped with camouflage nets, onto the liquefied takeoff and landing strip of compacted clay and coral chips, and looked diagonally towards the airbase. A mosquito buzzed in front of his nose, attracted by the light; his hand shot up reflexively. Mosquitoes were hated at the front almost as much as the Japs.
In two years, Oscar had learned that getting attached to people was pointless. You send out your plane with a pilot, with whom you've formed some kind of friendly relationship, and you have no idea if he'll return. Yesterday, for example. Yesterday he was working with Bowen as usual, whose Kittyhawk he had been servicing for a month. He took off to cover supplies for the third time that day and didn't return. Oscar kept his distance – a safe one, he thought. When Bowen didn't return, he realized that distance wasn't enough to stop feeling like shit. That without his stupid jokes, Oscar would feel bleak, but Oscar would get used to it – he had long learned to get used to things.
He didn't yet know whose Kittyhawk he was assigned to this time, but he hoped it would be an uncommunicative, experienced, and silent pilot who wouldn't make attempts on Oscar's inner world or waste time with an abundance of jokes that Oscar would unsuccessfully try to ignore. And who would last longer than a month.
Finally, small reddish lights flickered in the distance – red is less visible from the air than white – and elongated shadows appeared. The silence began to dissipate, footsteps approached, muffled by the squelching of the stale air. It wasn't yet three in the morning, but the mechanics were already heading to work, talking quietly and yawning. Staff Sergeant – Kevin Davis, ten years older than Oscar – stopped in front of him, the features of his face devilishly sharpened by the red light of the kerosene lamp shining from below.
"Sir," Oscar said hoarsely, clearing his throat, and nodded respectfully.
"First as always?" asked without surprise and, waving a hand at the nod, walked around him, plunging deeper into the thicket.
David and Bruce Ryan – privates, complete rookies – alternately extended their hands for a handshake; Oscar wiped his palm on his rag again. This 'excessive, ostentatious cleanliness' as his comrades put it, drew a couple of identical smirks on their identical faces, which Piastri ignored.
He threw a last glance across the field – impenetrable darkness, dotted here and there with small scarlet eyes – and trudged after the guys.
"Bowen..." Oscar's immediate superior, Kevin Davis, hesitated, "is unlikely to be able to return. No one saw him land, and even if he did land, it's very likely he landed on occupied territory; if on ours – I'm afraid survival in the jungle is impossible."
"I checked the engine," Piastri replied as soon as Davis finished. The other gave him a questioning look, but Oscar could hardly explain that everyone already understood everything perfectly and that his obvious conclusions were anything but comforting, so he had to silently move deeper into the thicket, stepping past the plane's wing. A few steps later, in the semi-darkness, illuminating tree roots, he came across a tarp sheltering 200-liter barrels of gasoline sitting on wooden pallets. He picked up the outlet hose of the pump from the ground and started dragging it towards the plane, stumbling over roots and cursing under his breath.
Oscar used to get irritated quickly when someone died. Now it was burned out inside – by the war, the deaths, the bombings, the alarms, the sleepless nights. September 3rd would mark exactly three years since the war started. Officially.
Officially, on that day, Australia declared war on Germany, but in reality, the first clash on his home territory only happened two years later, on November 19, 1941 – an Australian cruiser vanished without a trace off the coast of Western Australia after a battle with a German raider. Both ships sank. Only a rare few survived.
But the real war didn't come from the Germans, but from the north. In the form of the Japanese Empire.
On December 9 of that same year, two days after the Japanese attack on the Americans at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese began bombing the Australian island of Nauru. Japan's target was the local radio station. Two days later, after dropping fifty-one bombs, the target was destroyed. The island was cut off from the rest of the world. The civilian population was left untouched.
Oscar climbed onto the left wing, felt for the outline of the metal fuel cap on its upper surface in the darkness, and shoved the refueling nozzle into the filler neck. David climbed up after him to hold the hose and monitor the tank's fill level.
"You're gloomy today," he muttered after Oscar headed back to the barrels without responding to his casual teasing – all of them tried to survive the daily losses, all of them coped with them differently.
"And you're too talkative," Oscar tossed over his shoulder without turning, followed by a loud clicking sound. He disappeared into the jungle under the quiet buzzing of a plane flying overhead. The night patrol was returning.
Oscar had only recently stopped getting irritated; he saw no point in it. And was it 'irritation'? He was scared. Panically, sickeningly scared during the first bombings. That was right after finishing his accelerated retraining – no real school, just a month and a half to learn the guts of aviation – in the summer of 1940. He was assigned to southeast England.
After the fall of France, Germany had one remaining active enemy in the west – Britain. Since the German navy was greatly inferior to the English, Germany hoped to win the war in the air. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, being British dominions, feared that England would fall like France, which would mean they would be left against two Axis powers simultaneously.
"Protect the Motherland, or she won't protect us" – read the newspaper headlines.
Australia committed to training pilots in exchange for the latest fighters and technology – not suspecting that a year and a half later they would turn to the USA.
Oscar reached the tarp, hung the lamp, and started pumping. Downstroke, upstroke. He stared at the foamy fire extinguishers standing nearby, utterly useless if the gasoline ignited.
He hated remembering. Hated going back to the past, because it still hurt, still rang with the unceasing alarm bells and explosions in his ears. But memories never asked if he wanted them or not. They intrusively forced their way into his head – precise down to the colors, smells, and sensations – and sent a disgusting numbness through his body, squeezing his chest in a vice.
He was sent to Kent, where the famous 'fighter station' Biggin Hill was located – British, Australians, Canadians mixed into a single structure of the Royal Air Force. The morning after Oscar's arrival, a 250-kilogram bomb hit the local operations room. He still remembered waking up on the floor in complete daze – the blast wave had thrown him out of bed. He remembered his barracks neighbor was less lucky; a shard of window glass hit him right in the stomach, blood flowing in a thick, dark red stream. They couldn't save him. That was Oscar's first encounter with the force of war – with death. Two people died then.
And from then on, the raids didn't stop – morning, noon, evening, night. He felt firsthand how the Luftwaffe – the German Air Force – undermined the army's morale, denying them sleep, food, and life. Though what kind of life can there be in war? Oscar lost sleep, appetite, and sanity from fear. He lost meaning. He still clearly remembered the continuous, drawn-out, ear-splitting wail of the alarm, remembered his knees trembling and limbs shaking – at first – remembered the whistle of falling bombs that followed. And he would never forget August 30, 1940.
Two waves of bombers, escorted by fighters. Workshops, barracks, fuel storage, and residential buildings around the base were destroyed. Oscar and the other mechanics, technicians, electricians hid in the forest around the airfield, taking cover among tree roots. The ground trembled, shook violently just like Oscar himself, showering him with its debris like blood. Thirty-nine people died that day. The base was reduced to ruins. Explosions deafened, rose into the sky as smoke, destroyed everything with fire. Everything that had been built, and everything that was still inside Oscar. That was Oscar. Blind faith in all things bright and good.
"Full!" came David's voice, muffled by the tree trunks. Piastri stopped the steady up-down motion and looked into the barrel. Very little gas left. Smooth tilts of his body from right to left slightly eased his aching back. "Oscar! Oscar!" suddenly came frantic shouts, creating an unpleasant itch in his stomach, forcing him to immediately snatch the lamp and rush headlong towards the plane. A couple of moments felt like an eternity.
"What..." and he didn't have time to ask the question before he saw in the faint red light David's startled eyes, the size of two coins, and frowned.
"There..." Ryan began quietly, pointing a finger towards the Kittyhawk's nose. But it was too dark, too far.
A step, another, one more, rounding the wing, and a trembling unease rose inside him, growing beside the broad, noticeably tense back of Kevin. Bruce, standing to Kevin's right, also seemed tense – shoulders raised, a rag clenched in his fist. Oscar instantly crossed the distance of a couple of meters, driven by the feeling of approaching trouble. Were the Japanese approaching the city? Had they landed somewhere else? What? What else could have happened? Maybe Bowen had returned?
The first thing he saw was Mark Webber's face, bathed in a sharp burgundy glow. He didn't seem agitated, which made Oscar breathe a sigh of relief – if the commander of the 75th Squadron was calm, then whatever happened was definitely survivable. A short nod, which the commander returned.
Then Oscar glanced to the right. Understanding came immediately – a woman. Large eyes of an undeterminable color looked at him cautiously, as if expecting a setup or a blow. Short hair, curling at the ends, reached her earlobes. The presence of a flying helmet in her hands, and the dark blue flight suit, the kind pilots wore, slung over her shoulders, led him to a thought he immediately disliked, coiling up inside like one of the venomous snakes.
"This is Sergeant Margaret May Mackintosh," Mark Webber stated, his expression unchanged. As if he was talking about the weather – on a war front, especially in aviation, weather was discussed often. "The new pilot for this Kittyhawk," he jerked his head towards the plane's nose.
Oscar wasn't against women. In his twenty-five years, twenty-three of which were peaceful, he had spent enough time in their company, finding it quite pleasant.
Oscar was against women in war. War conditions are dangerous, and women are weak, vulnerable creatures in need of protection. Not only he thought so; every nation that had entered the war thought so, not allowing them to the front lines but letting them do accessible work in the rear.
From newspaper reports, he knew that in March 1941, the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force was even created, aimed at freeing up male servicemen for the front, allowing women to perform technical tasks in the rear. They worked as aircraft mechanics, radio operators, weather forecasters, photographers, airfield controllers, armament technicians, cooks, nurses, drivers. Only in Australia, never at the front lines, and certainly not in New Guinea. The danger of capture and rape was too great; they simply weren't trusted, it was believed they would crack immediately. What did Oscar think about that? That their desire to help was commendable. What did he think about women piloting? That it was impossible. And the girl standing opposite could hardly be called a woman.
"Ma'am," Kevin smiled politely at Margaret May Mackintosh, then looked seriously at the Lieutenant. "Since when does aviation recruit women?"
Shorter than most, smaller than even the slimmest pilots, therefore physically weaker. Kittyhawks were stiff in control – how did she plan to compensate for that?
"Since they started ferrying planes from the US to the front line in four days instead of the usual five to seven," Webber replied dully. "See that Kittyhawk over there?"
A long arm shot up, pointing into the distance, his palm disappearing into the night darkness. Oscar could only make out a cluster of many red lights in the distance – a sure sign that it was true. That the girl had really covered thirteen thousand kilometers over the Pacific Ocean, hadn't fallen asleep from exhaustion, hadn't run into Japanese Zeros, hadn't been shot at by Japanese submarines off the coast. Disbelief – that's what flared up in him. So brightly it blinded him and threatened to spill out as contempt.
Her face took on a tired look. Almost disappointed. Her gaze slid past the men who weren't hiding their appraising looks, her upper lip curling almost imperceptibly.
"Okay, ferrying, I can still understand that," Kevin continued, "but combat missions..?"
"In the USSR, there have been three women's aviation regiments since '41," she spoke for the first time – her vowels flowing in quiet, but clear, pure chimes.
"We're not in the USSR," Davis shot back immediately.
She nodded, her eyes brushing over Oscar and Bruce, smiled, and said quietly:
"If people were more eager to join aviation than repair crews, there wouldn't be a need."
It was as if she meant they were cowards. That pilots were heroes, and those who ensured their planes were airworthy didn't matter.
"And who would fix your plane?" Piastri asked flatly, meeting her gaze. She frowned and was about to retort when the Lieutenant cut off their pointless banter.
"We haven't started recruiting women into aviation," his voice sounded colorless. "We made an exception this once."
An exception? Right. The daughter of some influential man, who hadn't seen war and was driven by its romance, wanted a share of heroic glory.
"Due to what? Don't get me wrong, sir, we fully trust the command's decisions. It's just... Unusual."
Kevin Davis was thirty-five; before the war, he had been married twice. Both unions ended in divorce. He was wrapped in prejudices about women like tree trunks were wrapped in vines.
"Due to the fact that she shot down a Zero in a training aircraft."
"What?! Just like John Archer?!" Bruce exclaimed in surprise, immediately shrinking under Kevin's stern gaze. Mark Webber just nodded; Margaret Mackintosh shrugged nonchalantly. Neither saw fit to elaborate and, citing that it was still too early for pilots, left, leaving squelching echoes of their steps behind.
They stood there, stupidly watching the receding red glow, and only found their voices when it had finally dissolved completely into the thick darkness.
"Bowen was part of the 75th Squadron since its redeployment here. And they replaced him with an arrogant girl because she supposedly shot down a Zero," Oscar summarized incredulously and, turning around, bumped into David.
"What if she really did shoot it down?" he asked, following him back to the barrels.
"What's so hard about that? John Archer's feat is well-known, especially in aviation. She knew what to do. She just repeated it," Oscar waved him off, already realizing that any future camaraderie wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen. Because she was a woman. Self-satisfied and pompous. And because she wouldn't last long here anyway.
Her words about pilots being more important than technicians had pricked his aching sense of self-worth. And, probably, his sense of guilt.