Daughters of the Night Sky

“But they aren’t you,” she said. “I have all the tactical skills Sofia imparted to me, I can confer with others, but I need you to help me with the women. I can manage battles and strategy, but I can do nothing for morale. Sofia had the gift—she could manage both—but I know I don’t have her way with people. Can you help me with that?”

I nodded and lifted my tea, clinking cups with Oksana. “Whatever you need, Major. One condition, though.”

“And what might that be?”

“I assume you’re flying your own plane. You have to take me on as your navigator.”

“I’ll give you your own plane,” Oksana said without a moment’s hesitation. “You’ve earned it a dozen times over. Though most of the women here have as well.”

“No. If I’m to help you out on the ground, we have to learn to work together. I don’t think there’s any better way for you and me to get to know one another than in the air.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I do better in the air.”

“You know, I don’t think we’re very different. I’ve always felt better in my own skin up in the air.”

“I miss her, Katya,” Oksana said, her eyes scanning the room, as though searching for listening ears.

“And I miss Taisiya. I always will. She was my dearest friend.”

“Tomorrow night,” she said. “We’ll head up together. I don’t expect that I’ll be able to teach you much, and that’s a relief.” She looked at the women around us, now chewing their celebratory meal in silence, then leaned in close to me. “Now do your job. What can we do to make this seem more like a celebration and less like a funeral? We’ve had plenty of those.”

I handed her my empty cup and took the battered violin case from the corner of the mess hall where I’d stowed it. Though I hadn’t played in months, the chin rest molded to my face like a lover’s caress, and the bow felt as familiar in my fingers as taking Vanya’s hand in mine. After three notes the eyes of the room were all on me. Cheerful, choppy notes made for dancing. A few girls recognized the tune and began to sing. One pulled out a harmonica to accompany me, but there was no piano. No Sofia to play it for us.

The tunes were happy, the party enlivened as Oksana had commanded, but for the voices silenced, our music would never be quite as rich.

Oksana had dubbed our new craft Snowdrop for the sweet little white wildflowers with deep-blue stripes in the center. We painted a chain of the flowers about the cockpits just as Taisiya and I had done. We’d added a slogan on each side: Revenge for Taisiya on one and Revenge for Sofia on the other. Daisy now belonged to someone else, and I thought it was just as well. I didn’t want to fly her with another pilot.

The October air had fangs like January as Oksana aimed the plane to the west. Most of my flying hours had been spent in a state of semiwakefulness, eyes opening and closing like a camera that never quite focused properly. After weeks with better sleep than I had known in two years, I felt as though the scenery soaring past was almost in too-sharp detail.

“Five minutes out,” Oksana called over the interphone. I looked around in the weak light to locate a landmark and found my bearings. Oksana deftly maneuvered the plane as though this were her hundredth sortie as pilot and not one of her first.

The first mark that night was a munitions tent, which I spotted with ease, despite the shadow of night. I took my flare in hand.

“You’re on course. Five… three… marked!”

Oksana whistled into the German camp on the stalled engine, deployed the bomb squarely on the marked target, and pulled up to a higher elevation as the engine roared back to life and we maneuvered to return. The rat-a-tat of antiaircraft guns sounded seconds after we made our target, the searchlights now running, hunting frantically for the offending invaders.

Oksana circled back over the camp instead of taking an evasive course back to base.

“What are you doing?” I asked over the interphone. I would have called a course correction to her, but she knew she was well off course. There was nothing inadvertent about her actions.

“We have another bomb. I’m going to use it.”

“Got it,” I said. “There’s a convoy of trucks to the north of the camp. Good a target as any.”

She headed northwest, narrowly evading the searchlights’ blinding ribbons of death. She banked left, dove low, on course to drop her payload on a row of German trucks.

“Pull up,” I called over the interphone. “You’re at least twenty meters below the threshold.”

Ignoring my warning, she deployed the second bomb before she climbed to a safe altitude. I could feel the heat of the blast bounce the plane upward as the bomb made contact with the ground below. The trucks lay in ruins, their fuel tanks making smaller explosions as they ignited. Oksana deftly pulled us up and whipped back onto course for our own camp.