Read Chapter 20: NINE

THE LAST WINTER

The winter of 1917–1918 was not dramatic in the way newspapers preferred.

It was cold, repetitive and hungry.

Machines refused to start before dawn. Oil thickened. Water froze in radiators. Fabric repairs took longer to dry. Men wrapped scarves around faces until everyone resembled a bandit.

Luc discovered that his new status as pilot-mechanic made him useful in ways headquarters had not anticipated.

When a squadron farther north reported repeated power loss at altitude, he flew there, tested two aircraft himself, and traced the problem to carburettor icing worsened by a locally improvised intake modification. When another unit suffered cracked exhaust manifolds, he found mechanics tightening mounting bolts so rigidly that thermal expansion had nowhere to go.

Neither problem involved malice.

Both could kill.

Luc began writing short technical bulletins in plain language.

WHAT THE PILOT FEELS. WHAT THE MECHANIC SHOULD CHECK. WHAT NOT TO "FIX" UNTIL YOU KNOW WHY IT MOVED.

Barrès arranged for copies to circulate.

Perrin read one and complained about Luc's grammar.

"You left school at sixteen," Luc said.

"Exactly. I recognize crimes against education."

Vautrin added notes from the pilot's perspective. Their arguments became part of the documents.

If engine cuts during steep climb but runs normally level, do not immediately blame magneto.

Vautrin added: ALSO CONSIDER NOT CLIMBING LIKE AN IDIOT.

Luc crossed it out.

Someone at headquarters restored it in the printed version.

The bulletins became unexpectedly popular.

Young pilots liked that they did not pretend every unusual sound required genius. Mechanics liked that a decorated captain publicly admitted pilots could cause problems by mishandling machines.

"Our greatest contribution to aviation," Vautrin said, "is insulting both professions equally."

The squadron received SPAD S.XIIIs in increasing numbers. They were faster and more powerful than the earlier VII, but new performance brought new stresses. Luc respected them without trusting them automatically.

"You look disappointed," Vautrin said after his first flight.

"It is a good machine."

"For you that sounds like marriage vows."

"The engine installation is crowded. Access is poor."

"There. Romance restored."

The improved speed changed combat tactics. Vautrin taught his pilots to use energy and altitude rather than turning endlessly with more manoeuvrable opponents. Luc, now flying regularly, felt the difference physically. Speed could become safety if preserved, or a trap if converted into a reckless dive.

He earned his second confirmed victory in February and disliked it less than the first, not because he had become hungry for numbers but because he knew exactly what had happened.

A German two-seater had been directing artillery onto a French battery. Luc and Sorel attacked together. The observer fired back until Sorel forced his aim away. Luc came in from below, fired into the engine, and saw the aircraft glide down on the French side. Both German airmen survived and were captured.

Luc visited them at a field aid post.

The pilot was a schoolteacher from Bavaria with a broken wrist. The observer was barely twenty.

Neither looked like the faceless enemy in newspaper illustrations.

The German pilot noticed Luc's wings.

"You shot us?" he asked in broken French.

"Yes."

He nodded toward the observer. "Good shooting. Not too good."

Luc understood the joke.

"My mechanic adjusted the gun badly."

The German laughed, then winced because laughter hurt his ribs.

That encounter troubled Luc in a quieter way than the sabotage case had. The conspiracy had created moral clarity: hidden murder was wrong. Combat did not offer such clean geometry. The German observer had been helping artillery kill French soldiers. Luc had been right to stop him. The fact that the man liked jokes did not change the military fact, but it changed something else.

Vautrin understood without explanation.

"The first time I saw a German pilot alive after I shot him down," he said, "I was angry at him for being ordinary."

"Why?"

"Because ordinary men make war harder to hate correctly."

They sat in the mess with weak coffee between them.

"Do you hate them?" Luc asked.

"Some. Not because they are German."

Luc thought of Savarin, Roche, Delorme, Cazeneuve. Frenchmen had nearly killed more of their own squadron than some enemy patrols.

"Machines do not care about flags either," he said.

"There is your philosophy again."

In late February, the squadron held a memorial service for Fabre after Claire requested that his corrected service record be read publicly. The official record now stated that his fatal crash resulted from deliberate tampering, not maintenance negligence.

Chardin attended.

It was his first return to the unit.

He stood beside Besson and Perrin beneath a cold blue sky.

After the service, he walked with Luc to the hangar.

"You changed everything," Chardin said, looking at the tamper seals and dual signatures on control work.

"Not everything."

"Enough that what happened to Fabre is harder to repeat."

"Harder is not impossible."

"You always were cheerful?"

"Ask Perrin."

Chardin smiled.

Before leaving, he gave Luc an old spanner.

"Fabre used to steal this from my bench. Said it fit the mirror bracket on his Nieuport. I kept it because I was angry. You should have it."

"Why me?"

"Because you know tools remember nothing. Men have to."

Luc put it in his kit.

That night, rumours spread of a major German offensive coming in the spring.

Pilots discussed new enemy units. Mechanics counted spare engines. Commanders studied roads for possible retreat fields.

The war was preparing another test.

Luc walked the aircraft line before bed.

He touched the cowling of Number Six.

No forged signature waited on the board. No hidden washer sat in the controls. No paid saboteur moved through the dark.

There were only cold metal, stretched wire, linen, petrol, oil, ammunition and men.

Only war.

He had once thought exposing the conspiracy would make the squadron safe.

Now he understood safety differently.

Safety was not the absence of danger.

It was the refusal to add avoidable danger to what men already had no choice but to face.