She thought of her beloved, sainted Alexsey who was flying wing a year ago for Boris Levnovich his friend and commander. Together they had taken on seventeen Germans back when the situation in Stalingrad was hopeless. The Huns had their troops advancing southward down the eastern bank of the Volga north of the city. Shot up and without ammo the two of them had to crash land their wrecked LaGGs but between them they had claimed nine of the invaders. Her Alexsey walked away from his crash in order to die another day. Lilya needed the physical strength to do just that right now, as her Yak's flight controls got incrementally heavier with the airplane's decrease in airspeed.
Young, sweet, polite, inexperienced Yev who either didn't remember that his plane while marginally slower also had a much lower wing load and was significantly more maneuverable than the much heavier all metal German fighters... Or he had been too badly shot up to make a turn following her starboard turn. He reacted by pulling his little fighter up into a steep high angle climb, bleeding airspeed. In flames Yev stalled his craft winging over very hard to port and falling, spinning into the Steppe below.
Lilya saw his canopy come flying off of and something... Was it Yev or a part of the crippled craft... Something jump or fall out of... Or fly off of his burning plane. She didn't see a 'chute open but at the time she was consumed with fighting the stick. Concerned with just keeping her own crippled plane level and separated from the ground. She might have just missed it opening. He might have survived, although perversely that might not be the best available outcome for a true believer like Yev.
She was keeping her plane in the air, but the situation was rapidly deteriorating. With the power pulled back to keep the craft from shaking itself apart the controls were impossibly heavy. She was trading altitude for airspeed to produce enough lift to stay in the air, but that was not a sustainable plan. Half of her starboard wing was shredded she could not guess at what airspeed she would stall, spin and die. If the Hun had hit her left wing instead of her right she would already have been dead. Altitude being lost precipitously she was already too low to jump. She would have to find a survivable place to crash land.
In this huge autonomous prison called a nation woefully incompetent officers like the one who killed young Valeria... Having her bodily lifted into the cockpit when a child could see she was too ill to fly. Those officers were promoted to Major and reassigned to a cushy Wing or Group staff position. Lilya supposed that if you killed a sufficient number of your own pilots you would be sent to Moscow to serve on the General Staff.
Those who were killed in action were given the appropriate posthumous medals, five for 'Order of the Soviet Union,' twenty-five for 'Hero of the Soviet Union,' and received glowing eulogies disguised as informational pieces in the press. Those who were shot down over enemy held territory while performing their patriotic duty and then somehow managed to survive and to escape capture were vilified upon their return, suspected of being spies and traitors.
If they evaded capture and made it back to their base, they did so only to find themselves grounded, their duties restricted while they were investigated as being potential German agents. Those unluckily enough to fall into enemy hands caused their families to be the ones scrutinized by the NKVD. Either way their names, or the names of their loved ones were added to the not-so-secret list of those destined to disappear in the next purge, just as her own father had disappeared a dozen years earlier.
Lilya was losing altitude, and with every meter lost was another chance to survive was lost. But what was survival anyway, all of those close to her were already dead. Mariya that she flew with in the 9th Guards. Sweet young Mariya whom she hunted with and killed with and then privately afterward sought to affirm life with. Through love to affirm the simple existence of their lives in the constant shadow of the angel of death with.
Mariya, her second lover who helped her survive Raisa's death, Mariya who had lost her lover as well Major Dimitri Nikolayevich Usmanov, 'Order of the Soviet Union.' Mariya drowning her sorrows not in the homemade vodka the technicians made but in the natural juices Lilya made. Mariya kissing her auburn pubes, pulling her thick outer labia the left and then the right into her mouth, nibbling on them. Mariya kissing her entrance, and her smaller inner folds.
Sucking on the apex of those smaller inner folds and causing her pearl beneath to stand proud. Washing Lilya's center of pleasurable feelings with her warm saliva, tickling it with her skillful tongue. Lilya reciprocating, diving into the ambrosia of Mariya's sex. Duplicating her ministrations, nibbling and suckling her labia, kissing and then projecting her tongue into her depths. Suctioning her bud while penetrating her with three fingers.
Lilya had loved the warmth of Mariya's body and the warmth of Alexsey's, but both of their bodies were currently cold and dead as were Raisa's and Katya's. She hoped but dared not believe Yev's body still produced warmth. She remembered the prayer young Yevghenney said when she spoke of her lost loves. "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu," he taught it to her when Alexsey died, "Adonai Ehad."
Lilya's dead lover, handsome young Captain Alexsey Frovovitch Solomatin, at least he had been spared such ignominy as an uncertain demise. Alexey having thirty-nine aerial victories to his credit before dying in aerial combat over their very own aerodrome fighting three "Messers" back in May. He was given the honorarium of 'Hero of the Soviet Union.' Her beloved Alexsey who had been promoted to command of the 73rd Guards Squadron when his friend and commander Boris Mikhailovich Solynet died just over a year ago.
Boris... Lilya had not actually known Boris in-person. Boris who having nineteen victories was posthumously awarded the 'Order of the Soviet Union' after he was killed just about the same time that Lilya arrived in Volzhskly to join the 9th Guards. Boris who Lilya knew better than many whom she had actually met from Alexsey's poetic recounting of their shared adventures. If she died would Boris die a second time with her. With her parents Alexsey and Yevgehnny gone, with Maryia, Raisa and Katya dead who would even know that she, Lilya had ever lived.
