The Air War sota-8

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She looked into the reticule, seeing Collegium ahead, landmarks that were as familiar to her now as to a native, it almost seemed, but less so in daylight. ‘They didn’t launch,’ she called, against the rush of air. There had been no Collegiate blockade to meet them halfway to the city, but then halfway to the city was not very far at all this time. The Second Army — the Gears — had made its signature steady progress west, and now its goal was in sight. Pingge was looking at it, even then.

  If the Collegiates had attempted such a blockade, they would have been outmanoeuvred. Aarmon had divided his force into three, approaching the city from east, north and south, the latter two to double back west if they met no resistance over the city itself, and thus catch their enemy in the rear. Now it seemed as though all three wings would meet over Collegium, their mind-link allowing them to intermesh effortlessly.

  ‘Light bombing to draw them out,’ Scain murmured Aarmon’s words, and then his own response, ‘Will do, sir,’ before pitching his voice up, ‘Pick a target, Pings. Wake them up-’ and almost immediately, ‘No need! They come!’

  Thirty-Seven

  The Fly-kinden scout attracted some notice by diving out of a clear sky, shrugging off the challenges of sentries, her arms held up to ward of reprisals as she skidded to her feet in the centre of the Collegium camp. By that time enough had seen her Maker’s Own sash, and a few more had recognized her face, so she was allowed to pick herself up and take a quick glance to get her bearings. A moment later her wings were skimming her towards the command tent.

  Amnon was in conference with her chief officer, the Beetle woman Elder Padstock, when the Fly gasped out her report.

  ‘They’re coming!’

  ‘The automotives?’ Padstock beckoned a messenger towards her, about to send orders to ready the artillery. The Collegiates had foreseen such a strike, after the disaster at the trenches.

  ‘Their entire army, Chief!’ the Fly got out, her chest heaving for breath. ‘All of ’em.’

  For a second Amnon watched Padstock freeze, expressionless, and then she was rattling off orders. ‘Tell the mechanics to have all the automotives readied. Pass word round all the officers and sub-officers to assemble, just like for the drills. You,’ and she picked out the exhausted Fly, ‘get me the other chief officers right now.’

  It seemed forever before they gathered, though in truth it was barely minutes: Marteus of the Coldstone Company, the Mynan commander Kymene and Amnon’s lover, Praeda Rakespear. With Padstock and the huge Khanaphir they made up the War Council of Collegium’s army, the first such in its history.

  ‘Report,’ Padstock prompted the grey-faced Fly, and the diminutive woman straightened up, looking soldierly.

  ‘Saw dust at first, Chief. Got my glass out. Looks like all the fighting bits of the Second are coming our way, double time, right now.’ That her mind was fixated on that inexorable advance was very clear. She had been one of the far pickets, a strong-winged flier with a telescope keeping watch for some gambit of the enemy’s. Now, it seemed, the Wasps had eschewed gambits.

  ‘Such speed…’ Praeda said, shaking her head. ‘It couldn’t be, surely? How clearly did you-?’

  ‘Oh, clear,’ the Fly replied belligerently, scowling at the challenge. ‘Believe me, all the dust in the world won’t hide that.’

  ‘What’s their battle order?’ Marteus snapped.

  ‘Saw maybe ten, maybe a dozen of those woodlouse auto-motives leading the charge, what looked like transports backing ’em, and on either wing too — carting infantry, it looked to me. Heavier transports at back.’

  The Collegiate officers exchanged glances.

  ‘That’s what we banked on,’ Praeda observed.

  ‘Then at least something’s going according to plan,’ came Marteus’s mutter.

  Kymene drew herself up, as one of her countrymen began buckling on her breastplate: black with two red arrows, one descending, one ascending, the badge of Myna from before they threw off the Wasps in the last war — We have fallen, we will rise again. ‘We have to advance to meet them in the field, or else fall back,’ she declared, brooking no argument. ‘This,’ and her gesture took in the whole sprawling Collegiate camp outside the tent, ‘cannot be considered a defensive position.’

  ‘We’d not have to retreat far to give our walls over to their artillery,’ Praeda pointed out.

  There was a moment of exchanged looks, mirrored grim expressions. No general wanted to have his hand forced, but the realities were stark.

  ‘The soldiers are mustering, or already mustered. Let’s move them out,’ Marteus concluded. For an Ant going to war there was precious little enthusiasm in his voice.

  ‘You must speak to them,’ Amnon rumbled, as his first contribution. Kymene was already nodding. After all, the two of them were the only ones present who had actually led an army before.

  ‘They go to fight, perhaps to die,’ the Khanaphir First Soldier continued. ‘They look to you as their leaders. They trust you to give them the right orders. You must speak to your people, reassure them. Or I will. I have done this many times before. I have the voice for it.’

  Padstock and Marteus exchanged glances, but Praeda put a hand on Amnon’s arm.

  ‘Do it,’ she agreed.

  The Collegiate army was still mustering, the last soldiers finding their places as their commanders came out to them, treading the steps of a drill they had practised plenty of times over the last tendays. Amnon glanced about, and then jumped up onto the flat back of a transport automotive, with Marteus and Padstock flanking him. To his left were the cohorts of the Coldstone Company, their motto In Our Enemy’s Robes, with many of the older soldiers still wearing souvenirs from past battles with the Empire or the Vekken. To the right was the Maker’s Own Company, whose words were Through the Gate, commemorating the fearless spirit with which Padstock and her fellows had marched out, along with Stenwold Maker, to confront the Second Army at the end of the last war.

  Between them Amnon saw the balance of the Collegiate force. Mostly these were Three-city Alliance fugitives, Mynans reinforced by a handful of Szaren Bee-kinden and grim-faced Ants from Maynes. Kymene was already passing amongst them; not for her the grand oration, but a personal valediction: a hand on the shoulder, confirmation to each that she would be with them. Beside these was a handful of Sarnesh drivers and crew for the automotives they had sent in support.

  Beyond all of the massed military strength of Collegium, the cooks, servants, mechanics, entertainers and all the other baggage that the army had collected watched on, and no doubt each of them was trying to decide: Stay, or flee?

  Praeda climbed up beside Amnon and handed him a speaking horn, for even his voice would not carry to so many ears. He took a deep breath, feeling a great weight fall from him, as though he was back in his proper place for the first time since leaving his city and his station. These were not his people, but they were cousins of a sort, and if this battle to come was not his battle, the addition of Khanaphes to the Empire made the wider conflict his war.

  ‘You have heard the call to battle!’ he said, voice loud into the horn, and louder still as it rolled like thunder over them. ‘The enemy of us all brings his strength against us, and I know full well that each of you feels the worm of fear within you. It is what makes us human. Do not think that I have not felt it, too.’ In truth he did not feel it now, but he could dredge up the sense of it from distant memory.

  ‘At your backs is your city. You have not seen my home of Khanaphes, which styles itself the greatest city of the world. For thousands of years has Khanaphes endured, our stones grown old long before your College was ever built. And yet I say to you: if any city is a wonder of the world, it is Collegium. Was ever there a city more fit to take pride in what it has achieved? Was ever there a city whose people were more capable of steering their destinies than you? Where the Wasps have laboured mightily to imprison the minds and bodies of all who fall under their shadow, so have you laboured to set
yourselves free.

  ‘Hear me, for these things you take for granted: that you may choose your leaders, that you do not go hungry on a poor harvest, that your surgeons and doctors know all wounds and diseases, that your families live each day without fear of tyranny or oppression.’

  He was acutely aware of Praeda standing beside him, and he saw the speaking horn shake as she held it up. He put an arm about her, in front of those thousands, embracing one of their own.

  ‘The Empire will take from you all these things. They know only the chain and the whip and the iron rule of their law which says: Do as you are told, or suffer. Do you ask yourselves why they come? Can you imagine the blow you strike against them simply by being as you are? Can you think how many in the Empire must ask, Why can we not live as they? The Empire comes to rid you of these freedoms, because those same freedoms will unmake the Empire itself, given time.

  ‘But now, you must march. You must take up the pike and the snapbow, the automotive and the leadshot.’ Words that would have been unfamiliar to him not so long ago, and yet he had learned them well. ‘For all that you own, for all the comfort and the freedom that your city has gifted you with, you must fight. For all those that you have left behind, friends, family and lovers, you must fight and you must not yield. You are scholars and tradesmen and merchants made into soldiers. Now you must make yourselves heroes!’

  And on the last word he thrust his sword high. A Khanaphir army would cheer him immediately, but there was a curious pause, a moment where the Collegiate soldiers made up their own minds rather than being blackmailed into a response, and then a few, and more and then all of them roared their approval at him.

  It was all he could do for them, that transplanted fighting spirit. Between that encouragement and their training and the weapons the artificers had crafted for them, they would have to manage.

  Praeda raised the speaking horn to her own lips. ‘Drivers, to your machines and be ready! Automotives move to the wings, infantry muster in order east of the camp ready for the advance!’ She squeezed Amnon’s arm and jumped down from the bed of the transporter, running for the automotive that she would drive for him as he led the charge on the left flank, powering towards the enemy siege train.

  Amnon climbed down more slowly. It was not that he was weary, but the fierce passion that normally filled him in times of war was waning; perhaps he was too far from his home, too far from any battle his people might recognize. All very well to talk of chariots, but still…

  There was a brittle crack, and then a thunderous retort, and he felt the very edge of the heatwave as his automotive — Praeda’s automotive — exploded.

  Amnon stared, unable to put the various pieces of the scene together. The drivers had all rushed to start their machines, spin up their gyroscopes, release their flywheels, fire their engines. Now the two of them either side of her were partly staved in, as though punched by some giant, their sides raked with broken shrapnel, and between them a sort of fiercely burning framework peeling outwards like the petals of a flower. And Amnon bellowed something wordless and rushed towards the flames, arms outstretched, shouting her name, but it was too late, already too late.

  People were shouting at each other, soldiers breaking formation. The few drivers whose machines had yet to start were leaping clear of their seats. Cries for surgeons arose from those struck by pieces of Praeda’s machine.

  Nobody noticed the Wasp woman with the snapbow.

  Rigging an automotive to explode — one that relied on a fuel engine — was simpler than Gesa had thought. After all, the thing was almost a bomb already, save that it relied on its explosions to be controlled. Adding all the additional firepowder she could get hold of, and linking the ignition flame to that and to the fuel tank had fallen within the level of artifice that any Army Intelligence agent was trained to. She only regretted that she had not been able to rig more of them, and that the big Khanaphir himself had not been in the machine when it was started.

  Now she was stretched out to full length atop one of the big transporters that the army would be leaving behind them, sighting along a Collegiate snapbow at their commanding officers, waiting for a clear shot whilst the tenuous discipline of her enemies disintegrated all around her.

  She could feel the sands running out for her. She had decided to fulfil her orders, but that did not mean she could not get out alive as well. She had just killed one of the Collegiate leaders on her list. She would not be able to get them all, but she reckoned that she could make a good enough showing, and then make a stab at escaping too. And wouldn’t Colonel Cherten look sour about that.

  She wanted to take down the Mynan woman, but Kymene was now in the midst of her people, offering no clear shot, so she took the next most dangerous.

  A squeeze of the trigger, and abruptly Marteus the Ant was falling backwards, clean kill or just a wound she could not say. She had never been intended as a markswoman.

  Next target, now: the other Company chief officer, the woman Padstock. Gesa dropped her spent snapbow onto the transporter cab’s roof and took up the other loaded weapon she had left ready. There was a cluster around the downed Marteus, most of them staring about them, but the general panic had obscured the sharp sound of the snapbow.

  She sighted up, heart hammering within but all outward calm… then there was a scrabbling immediately behind her, and she twisted reflexively, raising the weapon.

  Had it not been a Fly-kinden, she would have been able to kill her attacker right then, but the small man was already within the arc of her barrel, elbowing it aside and sweeping something round towards her. She had a glimpse of the knife’s blade, and got a knee in his stomach just as it came in, so that it only raked her side, instead of gutting her. He was not even wearing Company colours, just some ragged little renegade.

  She kicked him hard in the chest, knowing that she had accomplished all she could and that now was her last chance to get clear. The man was shouting loudly and enough people were taking notice.

  She took flight, for already the odd snapbow bolt was heading her way, and there would be enemies in the air, too, at any moment. Her wings cast her over the ridges of tents, through an increasingly busy sky, and then dropped her down amongst the canvas, briefly out of sight. She ducked inside a tent-mouth, pausing to hear the hunt getting nearer. Could she hide here, let them rush past her? No, even the Collegiates were not that incompetent. She backed further in, almost to her knees, and cut a slit down the tent’s back to peer out, seeing that the search was organizing itself dangerously fast.

  She widened the slit, working swiftly yet patiently until she was holding closed a gap she could push her way through. The first chaotic impetus of the hunt was past her, but those coming after were being more methodical. Timing would be everything.

  She took a deep breath, ripped the canvas open and took to the air. Now, only speed would save her.

  The snapbow shot hammered into her from above, a colossal slap to her shoulder that shocked her more than it hurt, the bolt tearing its way in and then out of her, hurtling her from the air. Landing with breath knocked from her, and the wound abruptly a ball of complaining fire, she saw the self-same Fly descend on her, holding her own second snapbow. He had simply flown up and waited, guessing at her best chance of escape.

  He slung the emptied weapon at her as he landed, and she batted it away as an agonizing flurry of her wings hauled her to her feet like a puppet. Then he was on her with his knife, and she stumbled out of reach, hurling her own at him. Even as he flinched back, her hand was open, palm outwards. One last blow for the Empress.

  Someone punched her hard in the back and abruptly she was lying on her side, and it hurt terribly to breathe. The Fly was standing out of reach — as if that could have saved him! — but it seemed that her Art had now deserted her. She had no strength for it any more.

  Someone knelt beside her, rolling her over onto her back so that she gasped in pain, blood spattering out of her mouth. She saw t
he Mynan commander, the woman Kymene, with a snap-bow cradled in one arm.

  Just one sting…

  But all she could do was cough, and the coughing was all blood, and at last she gave up her tenacious hold on life, with the thought, I have done enough of my duty.

  ‘What are you all doing, standing around here?’ Kymene’s high voice cut through the babble of voices as she stormed back through the camp, snapbow in one hand and the blood of the enemy spy on her armour. ‘Infantry, muster to the east of the camp as ordered. Automotives — those that have started take your positions, mechanics to check over any yet to start! Move! The enemy is still coming! You think they will have stopped for this?’

  She found Amnon kneeling by the still-burning wreck of the automotive. By then the surgeons had got all of Praeda that was left from the twisted metal, but no science of Collegium nor mystery of the Inapt could do anything for her.

  ‘Come on,’ Kymene urged more softly, a woman well acquainted with loss. ‘This is no time for grief, Amnon. Not when so many are looking to you. Not when there are Wasps to kill.’

  He straightened up slowly. ‘Is that it, then? Is that all there is?’

  ‘Until my people are free, I will kill every Wasp and Spider and any other kinden that stands between me and my home. If you must grieve, let your enemy grieve with you. If you want vengeance then they now bring you all the opportunity you need. If you would lose yourself, then lose yourself in duty.’

  Amnon glanced around and saw that the armed host of Collegium was finally on the move, assembling in proper battle order east of the camp, ready to advance. The far north-eastern horizon was already dim with the first dust of the Imperial forces.