The Air War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Sentinels,’ Stenwold reminded her, citing the name that had come in Laszlo’s earlier note of warning delivered by the captain of a merchantman. Where Laszlo had got to was just one more worry for Stenwold right now. ‘And, armour them how we will, they are not a match for the Imperial vehicles. With the exception of the six Sarnesh automotives, not one of them was even built for war. Bolting some plates and a repeating ballista on won’t get us very far.’ The aid from Sarn had been an unexpected bonus: a half-dozen boxy, serviceable war automotives – lumbering tracked machines boasting turret-mounted nailbows and paired smallshotters to the fore. They were not Sentinels, but they were considerably more warlike than any of the makeshift contraptions that Collegium was intending to field. Stenwold sighed heavily. ‘I have asked some experts to join us,’ he told them. ‘They’re waiting outside. They’ve put together some idea of how we might win this fight.’

  Jodry was too weary for surprise. ‘Well, send them in then. Let’s hear it.’

  They were two more Beetle-kinden: a tall austerely handsome woman in a Master’s robes; and man head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the room, vastly broad across the chest, wearing a Company soldier’s buff coat that must have been made from two garments of the regular size.

  ‘Mistress Praeda Rakespear of the College faculty of artifice,’ Stenwold introduced them, ‘and Amnon, former First Soldier of Khanaphes.’

  There was a reflective pause from around the table, especially from Jodry, who plainly had not received any forewarning, but then Marteus spoke up: ‘Is this a joke? I know this man. He’s a good fighter, but his city doesn’t even have automotives.’

  ‘Chief Officer Marteus,’ Praeda snapped, even as Stenwold opened his mouth, ‘I would point out that Collegium has no history of fighting wars with automotives either. However, for hundreds of years the Khanaphir have taken chariots to war.’

  ‘Chariots?’ Marteus demanded.

  ‘Masters,’ Amnon rumbled, speaking softly and yet quietening the room. ‘It seems to me that your city is about to be attacked by enemies wielding new weapons that you have not faced before, and have no ready defence against. This I can understand.’ That reminder that his own city had suffered from the Empire, dragged roughly into the modern age when Wasp leadshotters knocked down its walls, caught their attention. ‘It is true your people have many wonderful inventions that mine lack. Every day there seems some new device to lighten the burden of life. However, Praeda has shown me these automotives of yours, and I understand they involve no beasts to fall to arrow or spear, that they are armoured so as to be more durable than our creations of wood but, still, a war with automotives is like a war with chariots, it seems to me. You have prepared your fleet of machines, and the Wasps already have these Sentinels the War Master has spoken of, together with many more vehicles, for the moving of their soldiers and supplies. What use will they put them to, however? What use will you make of yours?’

  Marteus shifted restlessly, still less than convinced, and Jodry’s expression was doubtful as well, but nobody spoke.

  ‘Chariots – automotives – are in themselves only suited to one thing: attack. They cannot hold, they cannot defend. They must keep moving always to be effective, or they are no more than one more leadshotter, moved swiftly into place. Their strength is in their motion, and in attack.’

  ‘That is convenient given that the Empire will be attacking us,’ Marteus pointed out acidly.

  ‘They will not be,’ Amnon corrected him patiently, and a look passed between him and Praeda. She set out a long scroll and made some quick marks with a reservoir pen.

  ‘Collegium here,’ she noted. ‘Second Army’s line of approach from the north-east. Now, where is the attack?’

  The others leant forward, and Jodry made a vague gesture towards the curved line that was Collegium’s wall.

  ‘You haven’t been listening to Master Maker, or to me for that matter,’ Kymene spoke up, barely glancing at the sketch. ‘These automotives did not bring my city’s walls down. They were used to break up our positions inside the city only.’

  Jodry exchanged a glance with Marteus. ‘The artillery.’

  ‘These farshotters, or whatever they’re calling them,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Amnon?’

  ‘The Empire will not be attacking. The Empire will be defending,’ the Khanaphir explained. ‘They need to bring their weapons into range, and then they need to prevent any harm befalling them. It is just as it was with my city. For this they must rely on the sort of makeshift fortification your people say they used around your forest Felyal. They will use their chariots – these automotives – to counter-attack your force, but if you can strike at their leadshotter weapons, you strip them of their chiefest advantage. Now do you see?’

  This time Marteus was silent, and everyone else was nodding appreciatively.

  ‘So,’ Amnon continued, satisfied. ‘The novice chariot commander orders his vehicles straight for the enemy, against their shields. The Empire is yet a novice, so this is most likely what it will do. The wise charioteer brings his forces to the enemy’s flanks, even encircling to his rear, using his speed to the fullest, allowing him to strike at his enemy’s weakest point. I have seen maps of the land you are most likely to fight on – it is hilly, but flat enough to give you room to move – the path the enemy will attack along means nothing, for you have all the land you need to manoeuvre. You understand?’

  After that the discussion became more technical, and Stenwold sat back and watched as the former First Soldier, whose introduction to modern artifice was only a few years old, now tutored those who had lived with it all their lives. This was a part of the war that Stenwold felt himself well rid of. Perhaps in his younger days he would have thrown himself into the planning of it. Now he felt just like the Khanaphir; time and progress moving at a pace that he could not keep up with. He could not do it all. He had to trust to people like Amnon, Marteus and Taki each to hold up their own corner of the war.

  Afterwards, he let them drift away, Jodry, Kymene and the others. Night was drawing in. Already the Great Ear would be primed, the airmen and women waiting for the call, their machines wound and ready. Stenwold the historian had a great sense of history, not momentous but merely inexorable. Could we ever actually defeat the Empire? Should we have mobilized the Lowlands and struck at them while they dealt with their own internal problems, the ink on our treaty still wet? And then what? By the time we finished fighting them all the way across the Empire, what would we create? How many of those freed subject cities would be at each other’s throats, and blaming us. Or would we take the Empire’s place, forcing them to accept our grand enlightenment down the barrel of a snapbow?

  Where is it going to end?

  Someone cleared their throat, and he looked up to see Praeda hovering in the doorway.

  ‘Master Maker, I told Berjek I’d pass on a message for him. As a favour, really.’

  ‘It’s about his brother?’ Stenwold divined. The problem of Banjacs Gripshod had not gone away, but just now nobody cared enough to grasp the nettle. ‘Jodry went to speak to him a while back, I know.’

  ‘He wants to speak to you, Berjek said,’ Praeda told him. ‘Specifically to you. I’m sorry, Stenwold, but Berjek . . . I just said I’d ask. Now I’ve asked. That’s all.’

  ‘If I should somehow ever find a moment spare then perhaps I’ll go and see him,’ Stenwold told her, ‘although I can’t honestly think what he might have to say to me.’

  ‘Here they come!’ Scain relayed the news for Pingge’s benefit, and a moment later their Farsphex fell sideways in the air, breaking formation smoothly even as the Imperial machines broadened their net, ready to take on the Collegiate fliers as they came in. They were still miles from the Beetle city, and the enemy’s ability to home in on their attacks was being hotly debated by the engineers back home. Meanwhile intelligence from the spies in Collegium was drying up – either the Beetles were keeping a better watch or they were
simply keeping more secrets from each other.

  Pingge stared out into the night through her open hatch, watching for the telltale ghosts of movement that would resolve into those vicious, nimble two-winged orthopters the Collegiates built. Before her was the ballista she had recently been saddled with, and if any target presented itself in the small arc of their vessel’s left flank that she could actually shoot at, then possibly she might get off a bolt at it. There was a rack of the explosive-tipped ammunition within arm’s reach, and it terrified her. One spark, from a stray piercer bolt striking the hull of the Farsphex, say, and they might all go up. For the marginal advantage it gave, the risks seemed ridiculous. The Beetles always seemed to be gaining ground technologically, though, and the Engineering Corps was just as keen to load their vaunted new pilots with every new toy they could devise. One day we won’t get off the ground, for all the advantages they’ve given us.

  They pitched violently, and she heard Scain curse. A scattering of bolts sprayed them, punching through the outer hull, but none of them making it through the second inner skin that protected the pilot, the bombardier, the engine and the fuel tank. Just so long as they don’t hit the wings or just shoot me directly through this stupid open doorway I’ve got here. Then she nearly swallowed her tongue because a Collegiate flier had blurred past, in her sights for a fraction of a second, but gone before she could react, leaving her pointlessly swinging the ballista after it.

  She could not remember when she had last slept properly. There was a part of her mind insisting that she should be dropping dead from exhaustion by now. The Chneuma was a merciless mistress, though, goading her on as though it had a handful of hot pokers lodged inside her. The Wasps took far more of the stuff than their Fly-kinden subordinates, too. She didn’t want to think about how Scain would be feeling.

  They lurched in the air again, and she had a sense that they were pulling further off from the fray. Looking out into a chessboard of cloud and moonlight, she caught sight of orthopters driving at one another, looping and turning, but they were some distance away. Are they off course, or are we?

  ‘Hey, sir, what’s up?’

  Scain was silently concentrating on flying, pulling them ever further away. Pingge risked putting her head and shoulders out, the wings a thunder above her. There were other machines close by, but not fighting. All of them were simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the conflict.

  And ahead lay geography that had practically written itself on to the back of her eyes: the coast, the harbour . . . Collegium.

  ‘Sir?’ she tried again.

  ‘Nishaan’s holding them,’ Scain rattled back, tensely. ‘We’re giving the city all we’ve got before they realize we’re mostly past them.’

  Pingge reflected drily that the Wasp woman named Nishaana had mysteriously lost the feminine ending of her name since she had made sergeant. ‘New targets, sir?’

  ‘Use your discretion. Industry and residential,’ Scain reported to her. ‘Attacking their means and their will to fight. You know the drill.’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’

  One of the Collegiate pilots had said to Taki, ‘I even dream about flying now,’ and her immediate thought had been, I always dreamt of flying, every night – it’s just that those used to be good dreams. All of her life all she had ever wanted was to fly. All her other ambitions – the respect of her aviator peers, her victories in dragon-fights over the Exalsee, her status within the city – remained secondary and inextricably bound up with that one thought. Now she wanted to spend a tenday on the ground, not to touch the control stick of the Esca Magni, not to view the world through the glass of her cockpit, not to have her heartbeat fall into step with the beating of her orthopter’s wings.

  The Great Ear had sounded off early that night, and strongly, and she had already been trying to calculate the enemy force incoming even as her Art wings dropped her into place in her pilot’s seat. All about her, the other pilots of her airfield, and her shift, were scrambling for their machines. Around half of them were veterans like Edmon, the other half with only a flight or two to their name, and at least two for whom this would be the acid test, their first combat.

  Taki had always thought of herself as young; fighting in the air was a young woman’s game, after all. Reflexes decayed like everything else, and eventually experience could no longer offset the loss. She still wondered why Corog Breaker had not been killed yet. The old Master Armsman had a warrior’s heart, but she could measure his years in the handling of his machine, that extra second’s lapse in time before he reacted. His glider wings had saved his life twice now.

  Looking at the new pilots sent to her by the College, she felt old now, as if the gap between her days and Breaker’s was slender compared to what separated her from the tyros. Not just raw time, of course, but distance measured in that compressed and saw-edged period she spent in the air, pitting her skills against the enemy and betting her life on it every time. It was a bastard of a way to grow old, but she was beginning to feel it was the only way that she ever would.

  The drone of her own craft’s Ear increased suddenly, and she spotted the enemy formation as moonbeams darted across them. She held off signalling until she saw them breaking up, splitting off from the pack in readiness, and then sent terse flashes of light towards the fliers on her left and right, the coded orders now coming as naturally as speech. Left climb, separate off, attack. Right with me, follow, guard. She had to hope that they had understood her, as she was beginning her attack run even then.

  If only I could slow this moment down. For of course she was flying into a chaos of vessels, bringing a wave-front of disorder that seemed to scatter the enemy ahead of her. There must be a point where the onrush of the Collegiate Stormreaders impacting into the widening Farsphex formation was like a stone shattering glass. Beautiful, it must be beautiful to witness, if only I could. But, being the stone, she had no such luxury.

  She went after three targets, one after the other, loosing a brief burst of shot and then away, imagining the other Wasp pilots out of position – moving in to deflect an attack that was only a feint. Yes, yes, they were in each other’s minds, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t fool them all with an elegant enough deception, and they were still bound by the limits of speed and momentum and mechanical tolerance. Out of position was out of position, and all their mindlink would do was make them fully understand that they had got it wrong.

  Now. She had her target, chasing and chasing, and the Farsphex fleeing before her, with a tyro clinging to her back-right quarter, gamely following each twist and turn, and one of the better Collegiate pilots – you know, that boy with the long hair and the smile – guarding from behind and above, waiting ready to fend off the inevitable counterstrike by the Imperials.

  And yet she seemed to have out-skipped them for the moment, the reprisal never coming, as she nipped and nipped away at the enemy, and the Farsphex flinging itself about the sky to keep her off it, and it was almost like old times, in a duel over the Exalsee. As her hands threw the Esca Magni after her opponent, her mind could step back, admiring the nimbleness of the larger craft in the air, reaching for that brotherhood of flier against flier that she had lived on and thrived on.

  She was alive and awake and fierce, and knew joy, because she had forgotten Collegium, the lives at stake, the fires and the fear. That was what she missed most from the old days. Back then she had nobody else she need care about. She never cared about her own life, and nobody else’s was at stake.

  She realized that the pilot watching the skies above wasn’t that boy with the long hair, because he’d been killed three nights ago, a Wasp pilot’s bolt piercing his cockpit even as he tried to cut in front of Taki for a killing shot. She had seen a flash of darkness as his blood sprayed the inside of the glass.

  She also realized that she was wide of where she reckoned the main fight must be, and that nobody was coming to save her elusive target. Further
realizations followed.

  She flashed, Break off, break off, to both sides, and then, fumbling with the toggle, Retreat, retreat, even before she had wheeled back and scanned a sky that was far too empty. What she could see of the enemy were scattered all over, and so few. Where were the reinforcements that always swooped in to save their fellows? Unless they were above the clouds, there were none to be seen.

  No, no no. And she slung her Esca past the nearest Collegiate flight, flashing, Retreat, retreat! and knowing they must think her mad.

  There was no code for ‘Gather other pilots’, and to spell it out would be too awkward and take too long. She plotted a course that might pass within sight of a few more, but that would see her turned back towards Collegium, in the vain hope she might do some good. Then she was forcing every inch of tension from her engine, flitting through the sky with the ground below a darkened blur.

  The streets of Collegium were rushing below them sooner than Pingge had anticipated, lightless now, with even the windows blacked out, as if a single visible candle or lantern would call down a fiery oblivion on the incautious. And not too far from the truth. She settled herself by the reticule, glanced into its lens, looked again out of the gaping hatch beside her.

  ‘What the piss is that?’

  She had a good look at it, in the moment before it opened up on them, for the Farsphex were coming in low to give the bombardiers the best run. Sitting on the roof of a building they were passing was something like a ballista with a big circular magazine positioned behind the arms, set within a frame of steam-pistons that were abruptly thudding into life. Pingge couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration of the device, and the only shame was that it was pointing at them.

  Pull up, but the words died in her throat as the thing loosed, the magazine ratcheting round at a rate of knots, and the air was instantly full of big ten-foot bolts, falling upwards towards the Farsphex in a killing rain, then lighting the night sky with their explosions, a thunder and a roar all around them. Scain cursed and fought the controls, pitching violently right so that Pinggie slammed into the wall and almost ended up dangling out of the hatch.