The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8)

by Tchaikovsky, Adrian

  Gorenn grabbed her as she pushed forwards, the roasting air like a physical barrier. For a moment she was wrestling with the Dragonfly, then thrusting her away, not to the ground but upwards, as Gorenn’s wings flashed to regain her balance. Then someone else had hold of Straessa, trying to manhandle her away, shouting something meaningless over and over, and the Antspider punched the newcomer in the shoulder, and then had her sword out because she couldn’t just stand there – she had to do something, surely, or who else would?

  The sound the interfering man uttered resolved itself into ‘Straessa!’ and his face into Eujen’s, smoke-smeared, with a livid bruise at one temple. Heedless of her blade he gripped her by her arms. ‘You can’t!’ he was insisting. ‘It’s too late!’

  ‘How can you say that?’ she shrieked at him. ‘Raullo . . . he’s—’

  ‘He’s out, I got him out!’ Eujen insisted. ‘He’s over there, just look!’

  At last he got through to her, but she had almost to wrench her eyes off the hungry blaze, hunting the crowd until she spotted the crumpled form. The artist huddled against a wall on the street’s far side, shoulders shaking, his hands before him, fingers crooked into claws. There was a small figure beside him, barely a grey shadow – the Fly te Mosca, trying to comfort him. There was not comfort enough to be had. Raullo’s entire world was burning, feeding the flames with his history, the sketches he had layered his walls with.

  When Straessa looked away, her detachment were already there at hand, Gerethwy detailing them to start clearing the street. The pumping engine rattled to itself as he directed it – but not at the studio or the taverna or the tenement. The jet of water shot out onto the workshop beside the doomed Wall Taverna, whose shutters were just starting to catch fire. For those buildings already alight, their little engine could do nothing but waste what precious water they had.

  ‘Eujen, help get these people out of here,’ she snapped. ‘Get them off the streets. Get them into the College cellars.’

  She saw the outrage on his face, his eyes taking in her breastplate, her buff coat, all the trappings of her office. Rhetoric welled up inside him, and she wished she had not spoken, but then in an instant his anger was gone.

  ‘I’m deputized, am I?’ he asked, and she barely caught the words.

  ‘Please.’

  But he was already nodding, heading towards Raullo and te Mosca, waving his arms at them, and at everyone, shooing them as though they were sheep.

  Then the next Farsphex barrelled overhead, low enough for its underside to reflect the firelight, and Gorenn had an arrow to her bow, trying to aim even as the flying machine flashed past.

  Someone shouted a warning. It might have been Straessa herself.

  The bomb hit a building on the side of Wallender Street that was as yet untouched, striking its roof off-centre. Beetles knew how to build solidly in stone, but not even Ants would have made their everyday homes proof against bombardment. The sheer impact cracked the house’s facade, and then half the upper storey’s front was sloughing away in a great sheet of bricks, into the street, onto the crowd. A moment later the incendiary itself touched off, gouting a broad sheet of searing orange across the sky overhead, dropping flaming chemical gobbets impartially on everything and everyone below.

  Raullo was standing now, raising his hands after the orthopter as though he had some Art that would call it back, enact vengeance on it. His mouth was open and screaming, his face contorted by grief and rage, even as te Mosca frantically stripped away his burning tunic. His invective, his howling, whatever sound he made, was lost utterly in the chorus of pain and panic on all sides.

  ‘Get these bloody people off the streets!’ Straessa shouted, and it was just as well that her followers were already engaged in just that, because nobody could have heard her.

  Another flying machine dashed overhead, but Straessa saw enough of it: the two wings, the more compact frame. One of ours, thank Providence.

  ‘Pump’s out of water!’ Gerethwy communicated by yelling in her ear. ‘We’re doing nothing here! If there was more wind we’d be dead already!’

  People were starting to move at last, the able doing what they could to support the wounded. The faces all around the Antspider were marked not with hatred, or even with simple shock, but with incomprehension: men and women and children who could not understand what the world had become.

  Taki skipped her refitted Esca Magni through the dark air, straining her eyes for the swift movement that would indicate the Farsphex. Had someone told her a tenday ago that she would enter this battle then she would have been exultant. She was no Moth, but her eyes were far better than any Wasp’s at night. She would have vaulted into the darkness with the intention of picking every single enemy from the sky.

  Now she knew what she knew, now she understood the secret of the Imperial discipline, she recognized that the conflict was going to be horribly uneven the other way. The Sarnesh had proved, in the last war, that a large army could manoeuvre swiftly and quietly in the dark to the fatal surprise of its enemies if it was only linked mind to mind. What one saw, all saw, each man aware of the next in a way that no outsider could appreciate; all at the same pace, nobody stepping on anyone else’s feet, perfect coordination making up for any lack of light. Now the Empire had that weapon, too, and it was deployed over the rooftops of Collegium. There would be no surprising any of them, unless Taki could somehow surprise all of them, and they would always know which way to turn, and where their allies were. They would find her, too, comparing their mental maps, triangulating, hunting her down.

  She had no idea even how many Collegiate orthopters were in the air. The aviators were getting themselves off the ground the moment they could, scattering out across the city in the desperate hope of fending off some of the terror that was raining down.

  She saw a trio of Farsphex pass before her, but their formation broke even as she accelerated towards them, and with a chill she guessed some other enemy had seen her, someone she had not spotted. She let off a brief spray of rotary shot and was already pulling out of her attack, reaching for height. The attacking Farsphex was a brief, blurred presence to her left, already levelling out in response, and she knew, from years of accrued instinct, that there would be at least one more moving in on her. She was hauling left, coming out on a wingtip and almost directly over the Wasp who had just passed her. The original three were long gone, turning into their next bombing run.

  She broke off, scattering in the opposite direction, expecting the enemy to retreat and continue to cover the bombers, but they stayed with her, and she understood. The game had become something more familiar, but no more comforting. The Imperials had changed their tactics, as she knew they would. She was a priority now. She was the target.

  Stripping Collegium of its air defences was a necessary preliminary for taking the city, and the Second Army was marching ever closer. It all made perfect tactical sense, textbook stuff. But, of course, Taki was the air defences, and abruptly it was all a great deal closer to home.

  She spun and danced over Collegium, confident that she was faster and nimbler, but they were working in perfect tandem, driving her between them, taking turns to fix wings for a sudden burst of speed before reverting to orthopter flight when she tried to out-dance them.

  Time for desperate measures. She released a chute, but unevenly, the sudden drag slewing her machine about in the air, moments from flipping end over end in a total loss of control, but then she had stabilized, momentarily flying backwards, cutting the chute free to billow off into the night, then letting the Esca’s wings stabilize her, trigger down and raking the two oncoming Farsphex with her rotaries, close enough for her to see the sparks as her bolts hit home.

  She saw one of the leftmost craft’s porthole windows shatter, the brief image of the pilot flinching away. Then she was passing between them, canted right so that their wingtips did not clash, intent on getting some clear air around her.

  Even as the first
hole was shot through her wing, she was pulling left and up, dragging the Esca into a tight turn as another Farsphex stooped towards her from the clouds. She could imagine the other two arcing back towards her, in their minds the precise and exacting picture of where she was relative to their comrade. She fled flat out, putting as much distance between her and them as possible, the new attacker right behind her, keeping up a steady stream of shot that flashed and glittered about her, whichever way she turned.

  There was a flash of light ahead of her – a pattern of on and off, and then again. Her mind translated the code automatically: Evade! Evade!

  Her stomach lurched horribly, taking a fraction of a second to appreciate just what that meant. She could not go up – that would cut a course right through the scythe of bolts the Farsphex was training on her. Instead she dropped for the streets, skimming roofs and then lower even than that, skittering along a street just above head height, then wrenching the Esca into a broad, burning city square, spinning the little orthopter on its wing in the firelight to see the sequel.

  Two Stormreaders came blazing in at the Farsphex, their line already taking them through the same air that Taki would have been occupying if she had been a second slower in reacting to their signal, and still on a collision course with the Imperial flier, which was shooting right back at them. She registered Mynans – less by the livery than their flying style – and then the Wasp pilot’s nerve broke, or perhaps he had taken too many hits, for he was pulling away.

  Taki was already speeding back, and she saw one of the Mynans’ nose lift, the Stormreader already seeking for height, looking for the inevitable reinforcements. That was Edmon, she was sure. The other . . .

  The other was Franticze, the mad Bee-kinden the Mynans had brought with them, and she had clearly run out of patience with the war as it had been fought to date.

  She never adjusted her line, and Taki shouted inside her cockpit, as if the Bee woman could hear, because Franticze was still ploughing straight for the Farsphex, even as it shuddered under her bolts.

  At the last, the Bee changed her line – not pulling away, but tilting her orthopter so that, instead of tangling wings, she let the beating vanes of the Wasp vessel crack against her undercarriage and shatter.

  There were more coming already, and Taki joined Edmon in raking the skies towards them, but a glance back down gave her more heart than she had known for some days. A second’s glimpse showed the Farsphex lurching from the air, its nose striking a roof, flipping the tail up and over, and then the explosion, the fuel tank cracking, catching, one more fire erupting over Collegium.

  Then Taki was in the thick of it, and so were they all. Farsphex kept knifing out of the darkness, scattering bolts at her, trying to box her in but never getting in each other’s way. She spat and spun, dipping and dancing her Esca through the air, feeling the occasional stutter as a shot connected, bullying her way upwards again despite all they could do to pin her to the ground. She lost sight of the two Mynan pilots, then a moment later Franticze was cutting in front of her, rotaries blazing sparks as their firepowder charges ignited, forcing one of the Wasp pilots off – so impelling all of them to readjust their patterns and their plan. Taki could only hope that, between the darkness and the speed that everything over Collegium was moving, their mindlink would miss a few beats, leaving the individual pilots unable to keep track of who was where and what direction they were going.

  And they were trying to kill her. The gentleman’s war of yesterday was well and truly gone. The Farsphex had new orders, and if abandoning their tight defence would put them at a greater risk, the same would go double for the local aviators.

  At last she won free, spiralling up towards the clouds with the great skirmish still weaving its designs beneath her. The Wasps had brought a lot more to the fight this time, and she had no idea how many Stormreaders were even off the ground. As she reached her apex, poised for a dive, the city beneath her was picked out in flames, new eruptions flashing into life even as she watched. The Wasps were maintaining their bombing even as they fought off the city’s defenders.

  She dropped, arrowing down in a search for targets and for friends. Her keen eyes picked out allies quickly: all over the city, they were fighting alone or in small groups, without reference to each other. Perhaps that was for the best, for it meant the composite enemy mind had to adjust to a dozen separate strategies at once, even if each was a minuscule pinprick.

  She found her target, knowing that some Wasp somewhere would have surely spotted her. As she dived she switched suddenly, tailing a flier that crossed her path, the wings of the Esca straining at this shift in direction. Sparks flew from the enemy fuselage and it lurched in the air, and immediately she was off again, flashing Attack here! in case some other defender was close enough to follow up on her work. Again and again she struck, lightning raids against the larger craft, scattering hits across them, hoping for some narrow strike to hole the fuel tank, or the pilot, and then she was off, skittering across the sky before the enemy formation could close in on her. It was fierce, frustrating work, without a moment for thought, but her little stabs at them were working in other ways, or so she hoped. Each time she made herself a threat, then vanished, she was drawing away their combined concentration, drawing them off her fellows, creating openings.

  Or at least I hope that’s what I’m doing.

  Abruptly she was in the midst of a fierce fight. Some half-dozen Stormreaders were all about her, one of them even punching a few holes in her tail before recognizing the shape of her hull. Edmon was there, and Franticze as well, and she reckoned she spotted Pendry Goswell and Corog Breaker amongst them too. She wheeled with them, and then the Farsphex were all about them, splitting off into pairs to take them on.

  The two flights met like fists. At last there was no dodging away, no escape, and for the moment no reinforcements on either side. The Wasps had greater numbers, two to one, and their cursed linked minds to bring them to bear, but the Collegiates were following Franticze’s lead, and the Bee-kinden’s berserk fury seemed to have infected them all. Taki saw her Stormreader force one of the enemy almost into the rooftops, sticking to it as though she was about to ram, clinging so close that Wasp bolts were tearing impartially into both craft. Pendry Goswell came to her aid, still leading a pair of enemy, but Pendry had taken too many strikes to her engine casing, wings seizing in a sudden choke of gears. Even as she must have been pushing at the cockpit to kick her way out, even as her stilled Stormreader’s forward motion segued into a dive, the pursuing Farsphex’s weapons ripped her open – woman and orthopter both – in a shredding ruin of canvas, brass and blood.

  Taki found a target, the two of them passing one another like lancers, her shots spattering across the Farsphex’s flank and the Imperial’s slamming into her undercarriage, her landing legs springing out in a tangled mess of broken metal. It turned but she was fleeter, even as another enemy orthopter was trying to dive on her. Taki’s sudden rush of speed threw off the new attacker’s aim, and she managed to catch her original target mid-turn, a brief second’s worth of glorious open shooting at its side and belly, a dozen shots punching home, so that the turn became a tilt, the tilt a fall. Even as she was dancing away, enemy bolts ripping the air about her, Franticze descended on the faltering Farsphex Taki had crippled, her rotaries smashing in the cockpit, shattering glass, gutting everything beyond.

  More Farsphex were joining the fray, and more Stormreaders too, though fewer. Taki zigzagged her way through the aerial melee, trying both to find a target and to shake her pursuers at the same time. Nobody was free to relieve her, and she felt as though she would be dragging these two killers after her for the rest of her life – or until her springs lost enough tension that she would have to make a landing, which felt more imminent than she would like.

  All around her the pride of Collegium’s aviation department and the most skilled of the Mynan refugees fought the elite of the Imperial Air Corps, no quarter given. Whir
ling, fleeting glimpses were all she had of the conflict. She had no idea of its overall shape or structure, simply latching from target to target and letting the enemy behind her continue to waste their ammunition. She saw Corog Breaker go down, with no time to see whether the old man managed to jump clear in time. She saw a Farsphex, burning, smash into the dome of the College philosophy department. She saw two Stormreaders attack each other, blinded by the night, strung too high on panic and desperation. Then, at last, the Imperial craft were pulling back, even their discipline left ragged by the night’s attrition. Taki was already flashing for Retreat! Retreat! but she had no idea who saw or followed her. She had a sense of other orders glittering across the sky, trying to call back some who were still chasing the enemy. Her own engine was dangerously loose now, and she would need all the power and control she could muster to get the Esca safely down without its shattered landing legs. She turned for home.

  With morning came the count: they had downed all of seven Farsphex, while Collegiate losses stood at seventeen fallen Stormreaders, twelve pilots dead, one missing. Edmon brought her that last news: Franticze had not retreated. Franticze had hated the Wasps too much for that. She had gone after them as they fled across the sky, refusing to give up the fight, oblivious to the orders that Edmon had tried to give her.

  The long-range patrols trying to track down the supposed enemy base, who were going out less and less frequently, found her at last: the shattered corpse of her Stormreader intermeshed with the bent frame of a Farsphex – and no survivors.

  Twenty-Six

  Whenever Seda dreamt, she was always there: the other, the twin, her sister and her rival. As she wrestled with her own sleeping mind, trying to recapture the ancient techniques that had allowed the Moth-kinden to parse the future through their nightmares, always there was that presence, sometimes near, sometimes far, but always there. Then the clarity of divination would fragment and crack, the stress of two kindred powers too much for such fragile visions to sustain.