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    Skybound
    Skybound
    Skybound
    Ebook56 pages57 minutes

    Skybound

    By Aleksandr Voinov

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    About this ebook

    Love soars.
    Germany, 1945. The Third Reich is on its knees as Allied forces bomb Berlin to break the last resistance. Yet on an airfield near Berlin, the battle is far from over for a young mechanic, Felix, who’s attached to a squadron of fighter pilots. He’s especially attached to fighter ace Baldur Vogt, a man he admires and secretly loves. But there’s no room for love at the end of the world, never mind in Nazi Germany. 
    When Baldur narrowly cheats death, Felix pulls him from his plane, and the pilot makes his riskiest move yet. He takes a few days’ leave to recover, and he takes Felix with him. Away from the pressures of the airfield, their bond deepens, and Baldur shows Felix the kind of brotherhood he’d only ever dreamed of before. 
    But there’s no escaping the war, and when they return, Baldur joins the fray again in the skies over Berlin. As the Allies close in on the airfield where Felix waits for his lover, Baldur must face the truth that he is no longer the only one in mortal danger. 

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisher44 Raccoons
    Release dateSep 11, 2016
    ISBN9781536569780
    Skybound

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      Book preview

      Skybound - Aleksandr Voinov

      Skybound

      By Aleksandr Voinov

      About Skybound

      Love soars.

      Germany, 1945. The Third Reich is on its knees as Allied forces bomb Berlin to break the last resistance. Yet on an airfield near Berlin, the battle is far from over for a young mechanic, Felix, who’s attached to a squadron of fighter pilots. He’s especially attached to fighter ace Baldur Vogt, a man he admires and secretly loves. But there’s no room for love at the end of the world, never mind in Nazi Germany.

      When Baldur narrowly cheats death, Felix pulls him from his plane, and the pilot makes his riskiest move yet. He takes a few days’ leave to recover, and he takes Felix with him. Away from the pressures of the airfield, their bond deepens, and Baldur shows Felix the kind of brotherhood he’d only ever dreamed of before.

      But there’s no escaping the war, and when they return, Baldur joins the fray again in the skies over Berlin. As the Allies close in on the airfield where Felix waits for his lover, Baldur must face the truth that he is no longer the only one in mortal danger.

      To my padawan Peter.

      Glossary

      Ami, Amis: Slang for American, Americans (Yank, Yanks)

      Experte, Experten: Luftwaffe slang, ace, aces

      Geschwader: Wing

      Gruppe: Group

      Jagdgeschwader: Fighter wing

      Katschmarek: Luftwaffe slang, wingman

      Kneipe: Pub

      Leutnant: Lieutenant

      Luftwaffe: German Air Force

      Rotte: Pair of two aircraft; consists of Rottenführer (pair leader) and Rottenflieger (pair flyer)

      Schwarm: Literally swarm. Group of four machines, part of a Staffel

      Schwarzer Mann, Schwarze Männer: Literally black man, black men. Air force mechanics, called that because of their black coveralls

      Staffel: Squadron (9–12 aircraft)

      Staffelkameraden: Squadron comrades

      Stuka: Short for Sturzkampfbomber, dive bomber

      Wehrmacht: German Army

      When he comes down again, his plane is steaming like a war horse. It is cold up there, despite the heat of battle. We all rush to him. Few others’ hearts are racing like mine, I expect. Mine is rattling like a badly maintained engine. The harsh tack-tack sound is hollow and sad and more dangerous than empty ammunition boxes in the middle of a dogfight.

      The others are landing, too, steel eagles rolling over the tarmac; I don’t have time to count them. I’m normally counting the empty spaces. The absences. But I never count them in his Staffel. Nobody else exists to me when he lands. Everything stops existing when he takes off, as if he takes it all with him when he goes up there, to places I’ll never see again. That vast open non-place of emptiness that becomes significant only when his comrades are there, too, and of course the enemy fighters guarding the bombers bound for Berlin.

      I freeze outside the small crowd greeting him as he pushes out of the cockpit—now the only animated part of the steel bird—briefly separating from it to drink, eat, rest while I care for the shell he leaves behind. Even from here I can see this was a bad fight. There’s a hole low in the cockpit window, the very end point of a line of them along the nose of the Messerschmitt Bf 109. I don’t expect to find a single bullet in the boxes when we open them up, but there might be a bullet meant for the pilot inside the cockpit.

      He all but vanishes in the welcoming crowd, which is our signal. Like my other black-clad brethren, I’m there foremost for the plane, to fix what can be fixed, clean up what needs to be cleaned, to reload and refuel.

      We push the plane to the side of the tarmac where we Schwarzen Männer, the black men, work, lately in grim silence. We know the birds need to fly—there are few enough of them as it is, and while we dawdle, Berlin is burning, just as Hamburg has burned. This Jagdgeschwader is hunting bombers, downing them before they reach the city, if our pilots are lucky.

      I used to count the absences when they landed.

      There is a lot of work. They fight by day. They fight by night. We repair and reload whenever they come back. Once they receive word that bombers are en route, they jump out of their

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