The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8)

by Tchaikovsky, Adrian

  The cockpit of the Pacemark was open save for a glass-paned baffle to keep the worst of the wind off, so Edmon reached up and hauled himself in, making the undignified struggle look almost smooth with the ease of long experience. Every variant of this design was built too high off the ground for comfort, but none of the airmen wanted to be seen using steps.

  ‘Target is the enemy artillery that is a little over two miles beyond the walls, out towards the Antosine,’ a militia officer was calling out.

  ‘How far?’ called Vorses from the cockpit of his Stonefly, and someone else demanded, ‘What about the artillery that’s actually loosing on the city, then?’

  ‘Two miles out towards the Antosine,’ the officer repeated. ‘Orders are clear and confirmed. Use your piercers and ballistae, inflict what damage you can, then return here for reassignment.’ He had his mouth open still, more orders on the way, but at that moment a flier screamed overhead in a blur of wings, and the west side of the airfield became a fireball, the hangar mouth there wreathed in instant flames, men rushing out, some burning, with others trying to drag them to the ground. A moment later there was a sharp detonation as an open fuel barrel caught and blew.

  ‘Get in the air! Get in the air!’ Edmon roared, hands already reaching for his controls, letting slip the gear train that threw his Pacemark’s wings into life, wrenching the machine vertically into the air and slapping a couple of incautious mechanics to the ground at the same time. He had no opportunity for apologies or regrets. There were Imperial fliers in the skies over Myna, and they were wheeling over all three major airfields. Edmon saw the bright flash of more incendiaries, and imagined the air power of Myna vulnerable on the ground, at the mercy of whatever means the Wasps were using to attack it. The artillery would have to wait.

  Beneath him, in the shadow of his wings, the other Mynan airmen – and women – were scrambling to get their fliers off the ground. Edmon had a moment’s glimpse of the city around him – an amalgam of wheeling streets as he hauled his Pacemark up above rooftop level – distinguishing a scattered constellation of flames from the Spearflights’ incendiaries and tall pillars of dust from the ranging shots of the siege engines. He felt his heart cry out against it: his Myna, his city, his nation. He had lived through the last occupation. He knew there was no way back into slavery that would not break his people.

  He backed his machine’s wings, trying to wait over the field while Vorses and the others got aloft, but the Pacemark would never hover at the best of times, and he felt it slide sideways in the air, forcing him to jerk its nose up and claw for more height. Then a trio of Spearflights were darting across the face of the city towards him, pulling higher as they reached the airfield.

  He wrestled with the controls for a moment, hearing that vicious knocking sound the Pacemark always made when he tried to yank it into a sudden turn. The piercers spun up nicely, Solarnese machinery five years old shaming the Mynan machine they were set into. Even as he found a line that would intercept the Imperial fliers, flames were gouting along an adjacent street, just washing out on to the airfield. They must be dropping grenades, but no grenade ever lifted by man could hold such an incendiary charge.

  He clenched on the trigger, cutting upwards at their bellies as they rattled overhead. The leftmost of the Wasp fliers bucked, wings stilled for a second before thundering into life again, but none of them stopped. Edmon wrenched at the stick savagely, trying to drag the Pacemark round so that he could attack them from behind.

  Fire bloomed across the airfield. He imagined he could feel the wash of heat, high up as he was. He saw Vorses’s Stonefly instantly ablaze, even twenty feet off the ground, its wings shedding fire in a trail of embers, matchwood and crisping silk. Its ascent became a dive, almost graceful, as though Vorses, in the midst of the inferno, had decided to quit his life in the same style that he had lived it. Another orthopter was clipped, the silk of one wing instantly charring and unravelling, tilting all the way over as its pilot fought for control, the burning wingtip gently touching the smouldering grass of the airfield and instantly flying apart, the impact whiplashing up through the machine itself. Edmon could hear a voice, no words but just a sound of horror that nobody had ever had the heart to name. It was his own, he knew. It was his, and he could not stop it.

  Another two fixed-wings had caught the brunt of a second explosion, one of them still lazily taxiing for a take-off that would never come. Others of his countrymen had got into the air by the skin of their teeth, fleeing the fire, desperate for height lest another flight of Imperial machines pass overhead any moment. Then Edmon could spare his comrades no more time. He had somehow brought the Pacemark into a messy line behind a Spearflight, jockeying and nudging to bring the piercers to bear.

  He had flown against the Empire in a few border skirmishes around the end of last year, more posturing than killing. He knew, though – and the understanding sat like lead on his stomach – that the Spearflights were faster and more nimble than his Pacemark and most of the mishmash that was the Mynan air force. After all, what could Myna do, liberated into a callous world so abruptly, and with so little time to prepare for this moment? The Consensus had begged and borrowed, and bought what they could with the little credit the city could raise: securing the cast-offs of Helleron and Sarn and Collegium. Edmon had spent most of his savings on the piercers the Pacemark was armed with. The city could not afford them.

  He saw it then: there had been a little finned bulk clutched to the Spearflight’s belly by stubby legs, and now they flexed open and the missile was falling, wildly at first but then stabilizing, coming down towards the government district where the Consensus was no doubt meeting to shout at one another and demand that something must be done. Even before the flames began erupting, another bulb had slipped into that exacting metal grip, ready for a new target.

  Edmon found his line, feeling himself drawn into place by sheer rage and hatred and desperation, and his piercers hammered back and forth, silvering the air between him and the Wasp with a lancing train of bolts. The Spearflight was more sluggish than he recalled them being, weighed down by the load of death it was carrying, and although its pilot tried to pitch it sideways to avoid his shot, Edmon held his place beautifully, neater than he ever had in training, seeing his bolts flay the enemy orthopter’s hooked tail, and then smash one of the wings to splinters, the Spearflight abruptly falling into a spin, out of control and plummeting.

  He was already hauling back on the stick, forcing the Pacemark into a reluctant climb out of the sights of a notional enemy that turned out to be a real one. He felt a single solid impact somewhere behind him, the robust barrel of his craft’s hull earning its keep, and gyred his orthopter back across the breadth of Myna, avoiding shot and seeking a new target all at the same time, hoping that one of the others would spot his pursuer and put enough pressure on so that Edmon could escape. Bolts zipped past him to the right, and then above, so that he dropped from the climb, veering steeply right and downwards, then pulling up almost immediately, hoping to fool the Wasp into overshooting.

  He glimpsed brief, mad snatches of the sky over Myna, the circling dots of other machines, more trios of Spearflights trailing their fiery cargoes. Some of the machines he spotted must have been Mynan, fighting as he was fighting. He had no idea how many had even made it into the air.

  Another bolt struck, feeling as if it had come from directly behind, but he was casting the Pacemark about randomly enough for only the odd shot to reach him, not any kind of sustained burst. Even so, the Wasp was relentless, refusing to be thrown off. Edmon swung his orthopter back towards the Robannen Square airfield, in the hope of picking up reinforcements there. Even as he did, another Spearflight crossed his view ahead, and he managed to rake a dozen bolts across its hull as he fled onwards, seeing it falter but not quite fall.

  The airfield was now completely ablaze, even the stone seeming to crackle furiously. The only Mynan machines were on the ground and half consumed. Another
bolt clipped him, striking splinters from the rip of the cockpit.

  He threw a lever to fold the Pacemark’s hindwings down along the tail and dropped.

  Follow me, will you, you bastard?

  The wooden forewings were labouring, making heavy work of keeping the machine in the air at all. Abruptly his world was a hot glare, the air about him turned instantly to choking smoke.

  The Spearflights used wood-framed silk for all four wings, that much he knew. Wood burned, but silk practically disintegrated in a flame.

  He dropped, craning back for a second, looking for his enemy.

  There! The Wasp was pulling out already, not so brave now he had an enemy he could not hide behind. Edmon closed his eyes for a second against the smoke, against the thought of burning to death, and pulled back hard, the forewings’ clatter reaching a new strained pitch. He was slow with just two wings, so slow he thought he might fall from the air entirely. Slow enough that the Wasp passed overhead and into his sights despite everything the Imperial pilot could do to try and prevent it.

  Edmon released the Pacemark’s hindwings and felt the sudden leap as his flier regained full use of the air, his piercer strafing across the Spearflight’s belly and tail, punching holes but striking nothing vital. Even so, the game had been turned right round, and now it was the Wasp’s turn to flee across the city, with Edmon in fierce pursuit.

  The Pacemark’s wings and body were smouldering, and it was touch and go whether the rush of wind would fan them or put them out. Then the other Spearflights were diving on him, and he had other worries.

  Bolts skipped and danced all about him, as though he was flying through rain, and he tipped the Pacemark sideways, turning on the point of one wing just ten feet over the rooftops, then slinging the orthopter back towards the gates. The manoeuvre caught some of the Wasps off guard, or perhaps they simply had other priorities, but there were still three jostling behind him as he broke away across the city.

  He felt at least two more impacts, but still the killing scythe of shot never quite found him. Had there been only two of them then he might not have lasted, but they were getting in one another’s way, coming perilously close to clipping each other from the sky in their eagerness to be the one that downed him. His mind was racing, seeing flashes in the corners of his eyes that could only mean more incendiaries falling on his city while he was harried out of the way, unable to defend his people.

  He witnessed the moment that the enemy artillery found the walls.

  He had lost track of the shelling, but abruptly the lone engine had found the range, and a moment later every one of the Empire’s far-off weapons had loosed. As he sent the Pacemark scudding along the line of the wall, there was an appalling series of cracks and flashes, stone-eater acid shells alternating with wall-cracker explosives. The Mynan defences held under the first thundering salvo, but Edmon knew that there were more coming, and the walls were old, still the same stones that had failed to keep the Empire out the first time.

  Three bolts punched splinter-edged holes in his right fore-wing and another clipped his left shoulder, the pain brief and fierce, his teeth clenching. He tried slowing to make them overshoot, but they matched him speed for speed, and they could go slower than he could without stalling and dropping from the sky. Desperately he sent his vessel over the wall, dropping into its shadow for a brief respite, expecting to see the Imperial Light Airborne and ground forces already on the move.

  They were not. They still sat well out of the reach of the Mynan wall engines, letting their machines carry the fight to Myna.

  The shock of no army at the gates left him numb: the utter contempt for it, and all it said about the way the Wasps saw the attack, and his people. Not even worth drawing a sword over. Fury seized him and shook him in its jaws, and he fought the Pacemark round, believing in that moment that sheer anger would overcome aerodynamics to bring him face to face with the Spearflights. They stayed nimbly behind him, though he lost them their line on him, bolts flying wide as he threw his orthopter about the sky.

  Then there was another flying machine cutting across him, not a Wasp craft, nor any he knew from Myna’s airfields. He had a brief glimpse of a small hull, a solitary pair of wings blurring about the hunch of its engine housing, and then one of the pursuing Wasp Spearflights jolted in the air, shuddering under piercer bolts, before coming apart as though someone had magically removed half the screws, as fragments of wing and body became a shattered cloud beneath the pounding.

  The remaining two split up, one following Edmon relentlessly, the other rising to meet this new challenger. The little two-winged flier slid sidelong in the air, deft as a rapier, and the Spearflight that had been so agile behind Edmon now seemed to lumber past it like a fat man.

  Then a scatter of bolts struck about the Pacemark, at least one holing the main hull before bounding from the engine housing to ricochet about inside. Edmon lost a few yards of height without meaning to, his wings stuttering awkwardly before finding their rhythm, and the Spearflight was stooping on him, driving him into the city wall, not letting him get clear.

  For a moment, he and his antagonist were enveloped in fire and stone shards and acrid smoke as they ran the gauntlet of the Imperial artillery’s assault on the wall, cutting through it so fast that the dust scratched Edmon’s goggles, scored his skin raw and blasted the paint from his orthopter’s hull. Then he was out again and skimming the very top of the wall, the lancing silver lines of piercer bolts dancing back and forth as the Spearflight tried to pin him to the stones.

  He saw what was ahead and yanked on the stick, feeling a juddering of new impacts, trusting to the Pacemark’s robust hull to weather it.

  Some Mynan artillerist was awake and ready. As Edmon hauled himself out of the way the wall engine he had nearly flown into had come about and, immediately behind him, the Wasp orthopter flew into a wall of scrapshot, disintegrating instantly and utterly.

  Free for a moment, Edmon turned the Pacemark back over Myna, trying to encompass all that he was seeing. There were isolated fires across the city, some in strategic areas, most others simply strewn randomly by inaccurate or capricious Wasp pilots. The walls and gate were under a solid, continuous pounding, but some of the Imperial siege engines had now started throwing incendiary shells deeper into the city.

  Moments, it’s only been moments since the attack started. We’ve already lost.

  He could feel the Pacemark’s clockwork slowing, too many tight turns meeting damaged gear trains, and he knew he would have to find somewhere to set it down that was not on fire. In that moment he saw the strange orthopter again, coming in ahead and to the right, slowing to match his speed. He caught the brief flash of a heliograph, but had to wait for the message to be repeated before he saw the pilot was signalling a need to land as well.

  But the Wasps . . . He looked around him, but the skies were almost clear. The Wasp pilots had taken their craft back to camp for refuelling, he guessed. The artillery was keeping their work warm for them while they rested.

  He did not want to land. He did not want to face the enormity of what was happening to his city, to find out how many of the faces he had seen only this morning were lost forever. The mechanical demands of the Pacemark were becoming more insistent, however, and he let the orthopter drop lower, heading for whichever airfield seemed the most intact.

  Twelve

  Sartaea te Mosca was someone who could not help but play hostess wherever she ended up. It seemed an odd trait to bring with her from the severe Moth-kinden who had trained her in the ways of a seer, but the Antspider wondered if that was because they had treated her like a servant while she was there. Everyone knew a great deal about the standards of equality and the social hierarchy amongst Beetle-kinden of various cities, or the Wasps of the Empire, or even the Spiders, or so they told themselves. The Moth-kinden, for all they had ruled this quarter of the world some centuries back, were a stubborn mystery, and that was perhaps the one topic that te Mosca wa
s never open about.

  They were at Mummers’s studio again, and Raullo himself was having one of his bad days, meaning that it was past noon and he was still stuffed into the small alcove he slept in, sweating and twitching and turning over fitfully, a shabby curtain serving to partition his little space of despair from the rest of the room and fend off the sun’s encroachment. He had been angling for a big commission, the others knew, working night and day for it, repapering his walls with preliminary sketches and part-colour studies, but his patron had abruptly turned him down, or changed his mind, or even left the city. This last month it had been hard for an artist to make any kind of living. People were clinging to their money, waiting to see which way the future would jump. Besides, there was not as much money in Collegium as there used to be, after all the rebuilding following the last war. Nobody was going hungry, but everyone’s belt was just that little bit tighter these days. Art was a luxury that fewer people could afford, and Raullo was suffering from it.

  It had been a few days since Eujen’s meeting with Jodry Drillen, and he had carried away from it not the humility that had perhaps been intended, but a deep-seated annoyance. Most galling had been the implication – as he perceived it – that his loyalty to his city was suspect. He had composed a long speech on the subject, going into some detail about how rattling sabres in the direction of the Empire – or anybody else – did not constitute loyalty. Eujen’s dedication to finding a future where there would be no need of war with the Empire – now that was loyalty, because it would provide far greater benefits for Collegium in the long term. The Makerist warmongering stance would only create a worsening spiral, a degenerating pattern of mutual hostility that would end . . . where? Where would it end? Eujen had demanded, and nobody had an answer for him. Of course, they had heard the speech twice by then.