The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8)

by Tchaikovsky, Adrian

  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 the 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.

  With a great roar, he leapt for the next automotive to grumble past, swinging himself up beside its artillerist and the smallshotter mounted there.

  The Esca Magni kicked into the air, that first beat of the orthopter’s wings hammering at the ground, throwing the craft straight up, clawing itself away from the yawning pull of the ground. All around Taki, and below her, the rest of Collegium’s air power was launching, their Stormreaders ungainly and impossible for that first moment, before transforming into things native to the sky.

  She gave the Esca its head, let it find its path over the city, her eyes fixed on the eastern sky. The bright sunlight seemed alien to her after so many battles in darkness. Glancing left, she saw a flight of Mynan machines painted in their black and red, whilst a long string of Collegiate pilots trailed off on her far side. She spotted Corog’s machine powering ahead, the tip of a great broad arrow that was slowly forming behind him.

  Contact! came the flash from one of the locals, and a moment later Taki revised her picture of the sky, for the enemy were far closer than the had anticipated, already diving out of the sun on their first attack run. She cursed herself for falling into useless patterns, for today’s fight would owe precious little to any of their previous engagements.

  Her lamps stuttered and glowed as she tried to shove a mass of orders into the minds of her fellows, in a pitiful echoing of the interplay of thought amongst the enemy. On me; attack full forwards; break off; circle back; drawn them w
ith us. Knowing, even as she made the attempt, that they would lose the thread of the message before getting halfway through it. In the end she just sent Follow my lead! three times, as she made her run.

  Piercer bolts flashed and danced about her, the closest Farsphex spotting her – probably they even knew her by now, by her smaller, fleeter craft and her flying style. She jinked left, trusting to the skill of her fellows to adjust, opening up with her own rotaries and scoring a handful of glancing strikes before she and her opponent were past one another, just flashing blurs gleaming in the sun. Her enemy would have to deal with her allies, she with his.

  She abandoned her line immediately, because the sky before her was being cut into pieces by shot from both sides. Instead she drove upwards, straight at one of the enemy, forcing him aside because she was feeling madder than he – then she slung the Esca right. She found the flank of a Farsphex before her just as she imagined she would, bobbing up ten feet to avoid the bolt the Fly-kinden bombardier loosed at her, then unleashing everything her weapons had to give.

  She drew a line of punctures across the top of the enemy’s hull before tracking into its open side-hatch. Then she was close enough to discern the red ruin she had just made of the bombardier, a man of her own kinden torn apart by weapons meant to destroy machines. She pulled up hurriedly, sick in her stomach and desperately trying to unsee what she had just witnessed.

  But it’s war. What did I think would happen? The thought did nothing to erase that bloody image.

  Then bolts were falling on her like the patter of rain, and reflexes kicked sentiment aside and slung her, almost upside down, looping out of the way of the oncoming enemy and aside from his friend, who was trying to pinion her – and she was past the two of them, knowing that neither had the angle to get on her tail. Already she was looking for a new target.

  Scain swore as the Farsphex rattled about, bouncing Pingge away from the ballista, forcing her to climb uphill towards it one moment, fall past it the next. She was only glad that she was not being ordered to bomb anything right then. The way her aim was being shaken about, the good people of Collegium wouldn’t know which was was up.

  That thought stuck in her throat, suddenly not funny. Then Scain was cursing again, muttering reports from the other pilots, requests for assistance, attempts to bring their formation together and destroy the enemy. For a moment a Stormreader flashed past the open hatch and she dragged the ballista about, but the target was gone as soon as she had registered it.

  Then they were in an abruptly deserted sky, coasting over the silent and seemingly empty city as if this was a dream, and they the only thing in it. Scain was still muttering, and she caught fragments of his constant stream of consciousness: ‘. . . massing over the centre . . .’ ‘refusing to engage . . .’ ‘Aarmon scores a hit . . .’ ‘Tarsic’s down . . .’ ‘why are they all . . . ?’ The pilots were all on extra rations of Chneuma to make up for having had almost no sleep since the night’s bombing raid.

  There was a rattle, and three points of sky opened up in the hull beside Pingge, making her scream more with shock than with fear. Instantly Scain was hauling the machine into a tight turn, and she expected more damage, the enemy right behind them, but it seemed the Collegiate flier had fled as soon as Scain reacted. A moment later – peering down the narrow neck of the craft and over Scain’s shoulder – she saw the sky full of duelling monsters. The entire strength of both sides, practically every orthopter Collegium and the Second Army could muster, was now engaged in a deadly, graceful sparring, vicious and brutal for the men and women within the cockpits, and yet, seeing it from her detached perspective, as they plunged towards it, it seemed a dance where everyone knew the steps, a beautiful interweaving such as the darting shuttles of the looms back in her factory could never have managed.

  Scain roared something wordless, and she felt the hammering of the rotaries through the metal floor beneath her. Past his head, in that great populated skyscape, a Stormreader shuddered and lurched, twisting desperately to be rid of him, but he followed its evasions like a Rekef man scenting treason, and abruptly the target’s two wings were not beating – were shredding apart under the ferocity of his attack – and then Scain was breaking off and letting his victim make the long fall alone.

  A single bolt struck somewhere behind, near the tail, and Scain was already slinging the Farsphex sideways hard enough to make every rivet groan. Another Collegiate machine flashed by, already clutching at the air for an equally tight turn, and Scain thrust their flier forward to put distance between them and their enemy, whilst in his mind he had already summoned help.

  Pingge knew she should now be crouching behind her ballista, waiting for that absurd chance that would allow her a shot, but she could not tear her eyes away. Everywhere she looked, the aviators were coming towards the final engagement of their pure and private war, trying to kill each other with every scrap of skill and mechanical genius their respective sides possessed. Stormreaders whirled away with shattered hulls, dead hands still resting on the stick, Farsphex trailed smoke from burning engines or broke up as the convolutions of their pilots and the damage they had taken passed some critical tolerance. It was terrible, it was awe-inspiring. She could not look away.

  A fierce flash of flame showed an orthopter consumed, flaming and dropping, either a Stormreader struck by a lucky bolt from a bombardier’s ballista, or a Farsphex taken by an even luckier strike from the roof-mounted repeaters the Collegiates were using. Watching the disintegrating, burning thing whirl towards the city below, Pingge could not even tell whether it had been friend or foe.

  Thirty-Eight

  Standing east of the Collegiate camp, guessing that behind her most of the non-combatants were making their escape already, Straessa recognized a bad idea when she saw it. The last of her people was falling into position, and it seemed the explosion that had killed Praeda Rakespear was still echoing in her ears. She had not even been able to discover if her chief officer was dead or alive.

  There was a tug at her sleeve and she glanced down to see Sartaea te Mosca, who should have been with the surgeons. The Fly woman, friend and hostess and occasional lecturer in Inapt studies, looked desperately grave, out of all proportion to her size.

  ‘Keep safe, now.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Straessa said. ‘No promises.’

  The hoped-for smile flickered ghostlike over te Mosca’s face, then faded. ‘There will be stretcher teams following behind the lines, so get your wounded sent back immediately, if you can. Just call out “Stretcher” and, if they hear, they’ll come, no matter what.’

  ‘Where did you find them?’ Straessa demanded. ‘You’ve learned how to magic people out of thin air, now? Wish you’d taught that in class.’

  ‘Oh, volunteers,’ the Fly said casually. ‘From the camp, you know: artificers, cooks, prostitutes, whoever we had. I was surprised, really. So many of them wanted to help. It’s their Collegium, too, after all.’

  Straessa made to reply, but then three clear, shrilling blasts reached her, and she reached for her own whistle, relaying the order even before her mind had decoded it. Advance. Ah, right. She squeezed te Mosca’s hand, and then the Fly was half-slipping, half-flying away, back to the camp where the surgeons were already preparing themselves for the butchery to come.

  Her maniple knew the sign, and for a moment she thought that they would not go with her, would just watch her march off on her own and then quietly slip away. Then they were falling into step, remembering their training in fits and starts. The majority had their snapbows, but about a third – the Inapt or the plain bad shots – had pikes upright and ready. In the second rank, Gerethwy had the considerable weight of his mechanized snapbow shouldered.

  To their left and right, other maniples of the Coldstone were making a similar advance, doing their best to keep up with the swiftest of their neighbours – a piecemeal uniformity of movement being achieved by army-wide committee, in true Collegiate fashion. U
nlike the traditional shield line that Ant-kinden had been so keen on, right up to the invention of the snapbow, each square was loose-knit, and there were gaps between the formations, because to be tight-packed and unable to move would be suicide in this war.

  They were the front line – the anvil, as Straessa had said – and that image was foremost in her mind as she led her men out, with a snapbow slung at her side and her rapier at her belt. Ahead was only dust, and then, even as she looked there were shapes smashing their way out of it: the enemy automotives.

  She remembered how fast they were, from the trench-works, but here, from on foot, they seemed a good deal faster.

  ‘Ready to disperse!’ she yelled out, watching their approach and trying to calculate trajectory. They really are coming in very fast now.

  This was the Collegiate plan, on facing with the Sentinel automotives: plain avoidance and a stark admission that they had nothing to stop them. On the other hand, there were only around twelve of the machines with the Second, and there was simply a limit to the damage a handful of such monsters could do to an entire army.

  The phrase is ‘acceptable losses’.

  Straessa braced herself, then a moment later she realized that her maniple was to be spared. The unit to her left was breaking, though, the formation disintegrating into fleeing individuals in an undignified muddle as the Sentinel bore down on them, so that, when the armoured machine thundered through, only a luckless pikeman was caught by its charge, abruptly a broken corpse hurled high by the impact. Snapbow bolts rattled uselessly against the machine’s metal hide, and she saw some manner of return shot cut down two more soldiers before it was on its way again, rushing into the heart of the Collegiate army, desperate to get its jaws into something more substantial.

  They were still advancing, dispersed units reforming and hurrying to catch up, because the enemy airborne and infantry would be following right behind. Straessa risked a look right and left. Towards the trailing edge of the right flank, one maniple had somehow got it completely wrong, spread too late or not at all. She saw a trail of ragged corpses, a gaping hole in their already patchwork line, stretcher-bearers rushing to separate the dead from those who might yet be saved.