The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8)

by Tchaikovsky, Adrian

  Casualties had been moderate, the Aldanrael forces bearing the brunt of it as they contained the Mantis offensive. Tynan recorded a formal vote of thanks to their Spider allies.

  Regarding two errant Fly-kinden, nobody had the time to spare a thought.

  Looking over the Felyal, with the old burn scars of his last visit still plainly visible and the fresh wounds of the night attack in his mind, Tynan gave his orders.

  ‘Burn every home, kill everyone who resists, take prisoner everyone who doesn’t. Wherever they make their stand, make it a wasteland of ash. Set the Sentinels on them. Bring explosives, firethrowers, everything we have. They’ve shown us how they won’t learn. Leave nothing behind us that will ever again dare raise a hand against the Empire.’

  Twenty-Five

  ‘Well now, about time,’ Banjacs Gripshod ground out through gritted teeth. ‘I wondered which of you lazy, self-obssessed midgets would finally dare speak to me.’

  He had been bearded in his own bedchamber, where house arrest had confined him because the Company men guarding him did not dare let him loose at the machinery that took up so much of his home. The sight of him was not encouraging: skinny, ancient and unwashed, he glowered out at Jodry Drillen as if imprisoned between his fierce eyebrows and wild beard.

  ‘If we can spare the pleasantries—’ Jodry began, then stopped. ‘Midget?’

  ‘Intellectual midget,’ Banjacs spat. ‘I always knew you’d never amount to anything, Drillen, and now you’re the man who does the Assembly’s dirty work, eh?’

  ‘I am the Speaker,’ Jodry said, wounded pride replacing his usual composure.

  ‘Who’d vote for you?’ the old man demanded.

  ‘You know I’m the Speaker, Banjacs, and this sort of behaviour isn’t helping your case.’

  ‘Case?’ As if Banjacs had never heard the word before.

  ‘You murdered Reyna Pullard,’ Jodry reminded him hotly.

  ‘She was a spy!’ the old artificer hissed.

  ‘She was my spy, spying on you because you were doing something that might endanger the city. Did you think all those materials and parts you were buying didn’t raise a few eyebrows?’

  ‘Jodry,’ a new voice came from outside the room, ‘this isn’t achieving anything.’

  Jodry sagged massively. ‘Right, well,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘I have been asked to at least give you a hearing.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that large of you,’ Banjacs snarled. ‘So you drag your carcass over here past midnight because speaking to me’s plainly at the top of your list. Who interceded anyway? Who still cares? Why should I deign to speak with you?’

  ‘Banjacs, be quiet.’ Another old Beetle man emerged from Jodry’s prodigious shadow. He was at least a decade Banjacs’s junior, but there was a certain resemblance in their faces, had Banjacs only been clean shaven. His presence chastened the older man instantly, the artificer having the grace to look a little shamefaced.

  ‘Berjek,’ he noted.

  ‘Banjacs,’ said Berjek Gripshod, his brother. ‘Believe me when I say that Master Drillen has very long list these days. However, he has granted me a favour and come to speak with you. Don’t waste the time.’

  Jodry looked about for a chair, and slumped into it with a creak. ‘Right, then, here I am,’ he announced. ‘The city’s fallen down about my ears, the Empire’s fliers are expected with the dawn, there’s an army that’s probably got as far as the Felyal and is now headed right here. What else, Banjacs? What am I supposed to do with you? I’m told you want to help.’

  Apparently this was the wrong thing to say. ‘Help?’ Banjacs cursed. ‘I won’t waste my time with whatever wretched plan you have, Drillen. You should be helping me! Give me command of the city’s defences, let me complete my machine, and you’ll never worry about anything again, believe me!’

  ‘I fear that may be true,’ Jodry managed to keep a level tone. ‘As for your machine, well—’

  ‘Did you truly think I didn’t see it coming?’ Banjacs almost shouted over him, his sudden vehemence rocking Jodry backwards in the chair. ‘From the moment that Lial Morless showed us what was possible, this day has been coming . . . has been inevitable! But nobody thought it through! Nobody looked ahead! Only me, me! You’ll give me what I want, Drillen, because there’s nobody else. Only I can save the city, but it’s men like you, cowardly men without vision, who stand in my way!’ He had his hands extended, as though trying to strangle Jodry at a distance.

  ‘Banjacs!’ Berjek snapped and, into the silence that followed, added, ‘Jodry, do you hear . . . ?’

  They felt as much as heard the impact, the rumble of it from outside the window, the shudder beneath their feet.

  ‘They – ah – munitions testing? Over at the College?’ Jodry stammered.

  A second blast reached them, more distantly. Berjek was at the window. ‘Jodry,’ he said, his voice abruptly hollow, ‘I see flames.’

  Jodry shouldered his way to the window, looking out and seeing a red edge to the night, hearing faint cries, shrieks and a familiar – all too familiar – sound: engines over the city, but in darkness, invisible.

  ‘No,’ he got out. ‘It’s not dawn yet – only just midnight – I won’t have it!’

  But the third booming echo put paid to such illusions, and a moment later he was forcing his bulk out of the room, thundering down the stairs to get out of the mad artificer’s house and go . . . who knew where?

  Behind him the shrill tones of Banjacs Gripshod followed him down the street, ‘Coward! Run, why don’t you! You need me! You need me!’

  Straessa – Subordinate Officer Antspider to her troops – was already on the streets with as many of her followers as she could muster in a minute and a half. Thankfully, Chief Officer Marteus had insisted that the members of the Coldstone Company sleep in barracks like soldiers. The others, Maker’s Own and Outwright’s, went home to their own beds like proper Collegiate citizens, but the renegade Ant was used to armies, not civilian militias and, now there was a war on, he expected his followers to act like an army too.

  This meant that, in the moments after the first explosion, individual members of the other two Companies were still stumbling out of bed, pulling on their clothes, pausing to see if they had imagined it, trying to find their armour, then ending up in the streets and searching for an officer, an armoury, a purpose. By that time the Coldstone Company, through the intractability of their leader, was already out in force.

  But not to fight, of course. They had their snapbows, their pikes and most, like the Antspider, had swords at their hip, but they had nothing that would touch an Imperial orthopter. Their city was at war, the civilian casualties already in their scores and Collegium’s army had not so much as loosed a shot in anger.

  ‘The airfield. Come on.’ The warehouse that Marteus had co-opted for this division of his Company was sited where they could at least be on hand to assist the aviators. Straessa and her two dozen had got halfway down the street towards their destination when someone called out, ‘It’s not the airstrip, Antspider!’

  She skidded to a halt. ‘Then they’ll . . .’ The explosion had been so near, though, and there was nothing else worth bombing out here. ‘Someone get up above and tell me what’s going on!’ She was still learning the whole leadership business, but it always reassured her to know that Marteus used essentially the same technique of shouting at people until things got done.

  One of her Fly-kinden, a tinsmith by trade, sped vertically up past roof level, high enough that Straessa could only find him against the night sky with difficulty. He came down a moment later, looking a little shaken. ‘Redlift Way, chief. Going up like a furnace.’

  ‘But there’s nothing on Redlift Way,’ someone else objected, and the Fly rounded on him, fists balled at being doubted.

  ‘Enough! Let’s go,’ the Antspider snapped at them both, and then led by example. Inside her head she was agreeing with the dissenter, though: Redlift’s no use to anyone, j
ust a terrace of houses and that little taverna with the theatre out back. Maybe someone crashed a flier into it. By that time she had a clear sight down an alley whose far end was limned with the fierce light of flames, and there was a radiance even at roof level from up ahead. It’s on fire, it really is. But what . . . ?

  There had been a few distant crumps, and the night air was droning with the sound of Farsphex, but even then she could not quite reconcile it all in her mind until another bomb struck where Redlift Way met Spurn Street, wholly within her view. She saw the flat roof of one house implode with the impact, and a moment later all the windows blew out, fragments of the shutters raking the air like grenade shrapnel, and the angry glare of flames was abruptly leering out at every quarter, bright enough for the next Farsphex passing over to be plainly visible against the dark sky.

  For a moment she could only stare, even as Gerethwy began calling for someone to summon the firefighters, to fetch a pumping engine. Then she heard the screams start.

  She gave no order, for there was no room in her mind for that. She simply started running towards the stricken house, and some of her people were soon with her, whilst others followed Gerethwy’s advice and went to get a pump to turn on the flames.

  Pingge let the next bomb fall, concentrating hard on only the science of her new profession. Her current assignment presented her with a range of new challenges, most of them not connected to the night flight. Focus was everything.

  As they had neared Collegium, having taken a longer, looped route to come in after dark, she had asked Scain about targets. She’d had a map of Collegium spread across her knees, written and overwritten with prior strikes, but this time nobody had primed her in advance. ‘I mean, I see better in the dark than you, right, but not like a Moth or anything, sir. It’s not going to be precise.’ Through the open bomb-hatch she could see a couple of the other Farsphex. To give the night attack its maximum impact they had increased the size of the flight by half – thirty machines droning their way towards the Beetle city.

  ‘Don’t worry about precise,’ Scain had called back to her over the noise of the engine. ‘Listen, Aarmon has a detail who’re going to go after specific targets, so that’s not your problem. Ludon has a detail that will attack anything the Collegiates get into the air, if they even do. The rest of you are to let fly anywhere that looks promising.’

  ‘Promising like how, sir?’ Pingge had asked him.

  ‘Concentrations of buildings.’

  ‘Yeah, but Collegium’s a city, right, sir? It’s all concentrations of buildings.’ She had raised the pitch of her voice, thinking that she was not hearing him properly but an uncontrollable yawn mangled the last word. Even after taking a couple of naps, bundled up in a blanket against the encroaching cold, she was still bone weary.

  ‘Take your Chneuma,’ Scain had ordered promptly. ‘We’re close enough.’

  Reluctantly, she had chewed the bitter pill, but Scain would not relent until she had swallowed it. Immediately she had felt warmer, although uncomfortably aware that she couldn’t really be warmer. The drug made her feel as though she could not sit still, as though she should be doing something with her hands.

  ‘Seriously, though, sir, I mean, concentrations of buildings? Most of it’s just someone’s house or something.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Glancing back at her, there had been a curious expression on Scain’s face. ‘Shops, businesses, homes, mostly homes. With the Second getting closer, Aarmon says we’re attacking their will to fight. It’s the new plan straight from the top. Which means Rekef Outlander, to my thinking.’ She had never known Scain to rattle on like this, but then that was probably his own Chneuma talking, the double dose the pilots had taken.

  ‘But sir . . .’ she had said. ‘I mean, that’s not . . . not what we do.’

  ‘We obey orders,’ he had snapped over his shoulder, hunching inwards, and had not countenanced the subject being raised again.

  Now over Collegium, she let the bombs fall, lining up the reticule carefully on a row of roofs so that the precious cargo of destruction would not be wasted on an open street or square. The first impact had almost paralysed her, her imagination running briefly out of control. This was not soldier work. She had just destroyed someone’s home. There would be a family, children. The orders had to be wrong. Someone had made a mistake. And, all the while, her hands were working at the reticule, selecting the next target out of the cityscape ahead, so that she had let the second bomb go as thoughtlessly as if it had been a training exercise, even as she still agonized over the first.

  And its falling line had been perfect, her aim immaculate.

  ‘The thing is . . . the thing is we’re saving lives,’ came Scain’s voice unexpectedly, as she acquired her next target. ‘The Second will be at the gates soon. Breaking the morale of the city will mean fewer of our people die in the attack; fewer of the enemy as well. They just need to be made to understand.’

  But Pingge was not listening, merely walking a delicate tightrope in her mind. The worst thing was not the horror and empathy she felt, the trap of knowing that there were actual people below, whom she was hurting and killing. The real difficulty was the opposite: because she was so high up, and so detached, and how easy it was to measure everything against her technical performance, the clinical gauge of accuracy and effect. How easy it would be to assess each explosion on how well she had placed it, how grand the result: Look, that was a big one – must have been a workshop or a brewery, plenty for the incendiary to work on! In just the same way, she imagined, a Rekef interrogator would go about his work, and see the agonies of his subject as merely the proper dues of his craft.

  So she concentrated only on the mechanisms and the movements, the calm exercise of her skill, and desperately hoped that the after-effects of the Chneuma would not bring her dreams.

  Castre Gorenn dropped from the sky almost into the midst of the Antspider’s detachment, nearly getting herself spitted on a pike. The Dragonfly-kinden had turned up at Collegium’s gates claiming to be the Commonweal Retaliatory Force, and demanding to sign up with the city’s defenders. Marteus had assigned her to the Antspider because Straessa was, to quote, ‘Sub-officer in charge of freaks’. Since then Gorenn had refused to use Collegiate weapons or tactics, roving about with her longbow behind the formations of pike and shot. Only her speed and accuracy with the weapon had given the Antspider any hope that this woman would be useful at all.

  Now, however, she was proving her worth, if only because Straessa had few Fly-kinden to call on for quick scouting and messaging, and Gorenn could fly as fast and see as well as they could.

  ‘Whole street gone up that way,’ the Dragonfly reported. ‘Thropters just gone overhead, probably coming back soon.’

  ‘Which street?’ the Antspider demanded.

  ‘A street. The one over there. Five streets between us and it.’ Because to Castre Gorenn the idea of naming streets – of having a city that was big enough to need it – was wholly new. There were no Flies about, though, and Straessa was trying to sort out her mental map of the city even as she and her followers began to run, the pattering of their boots eclipsed as Gerethwy got the pumping engine under way, clack-clacking on its four clockwork legs.

  We’re on Fen Way, now crossing Parthell, next is Worry Lane, then the Broads, then . . . but the Antspider’s mind was already racing ahead, because these were familiar names, not so far from the College. She could name tavernas and chop houses, a music hall she had been to, closer and closer to . . .

  She doubled her speed abruptly, heedless of the heft of her Company-issue breastplate, leaving the rest of them behind in a clatter of pikes and snapbows. ‘Gerethwy!’ she was shouting, as though only he mattered, but he was busy guiding the pumping engine, and surely they’d need the pumping engine . . .

  She burst on to Wallender Street, skidding on the uneven paving, a blast of heat striking her as though it were a fist. No, no, no – there was the Wall Taverna, tongu
es of flame roaring from the sockets of its windows, that brightly coloured awning she knew so well already nothing more than floating, embering scraps of cloth, and the chairs and tables like bright skeletons within the crackling interior. That was the tenement next to it, four storeys converted to five, where all the Fly-kinden had lived: the factory workers and the rail-side workers and the musicians who had practised late evenings out on the roof. And now the same little people were frantically darting in and out with whatever possessions they could salvage, or being driven back by the fire and the smoke.

  Castre Gorenn was already touching down next to her, a bow in her hand as though she could fight any of this. Her long, golden face was cast in ruby by the leaping flames.

  There, beyond the tenement, blazing like a pyre, was Raullo Mummers’s studio, and the apartments above it, all leaping with gorging fire, the artist’s circular window blazing forth like a raging eye. The Antspider tried to yell some order, at who she knew not, but all that came out was a choked sob as she rushed forward, heedless of the heat. Elsewhere in the city, other bombs were falling, and not so far away, but she barely registered them.

  The street was clogged with people, hurt and frightened, panicking about those they could not find, milling and screaming and shouting at each other. Straessa passed from face to face, grabbing out to spin people so that the fire could light up their features, shouldering her way through the crowd. She was trying to shout out names, but nothing coherent would emerge. Then she stood before the building itself, and the fire shouted right back at her, roaring and consuming, gutting everything down to the bare stone. The Empire’s incendiaries burned as no natural fire could have done.

  Can there be anyone inside there? She braced herself, but there couldn’t, of course. It was impossible. Nothing could have lived and yet, and yet—