The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8)

by Tchaikovsky, Adrian

  Except that its other friend, the one she had originally marked, was already returning to the fray, its line on her imperfect but enough to put her off her attack, the flashing hail of its bolts forcing her to abandon her own assault and pull away. Craning over her shoulder, peering past the sleek flank of her machine, she saw the three of them regroup into formation, not coming after her but seeking out their ground targets.

  She swore. It was a display of coordination such as she had never seen, not in Solarno nor here, certainly not amongst Imperial pilots. She was struck painfully by the way they handled their machines: not superlative skill but a purely workmanlike ability, such as any Apt artisan or footsoldier could have learned, save that they worked together so well that Corog Breaker would weep to see it.

  Taki cut a wide arc over the city, trying to take stock of the fluid situation. The field she had lifted off from was unbombed, and she saw that the Mynans – their red-painted Stormreaders identifiable even at this distance – were sallying out over the city. Some of the Collegiate machines were still circling, waiting to stave off the next bombing run, whilst others were heading across the rooftops, not looking to engage but finding other vulnerable points to defend. Somebody had slapped some sense of tactics into them: someone equipped with a heliograph and a good grasp of the flash-codes had disseminated some useful orders.

  Taki threw the Esca across the city. She had lost the trio that had been sparring with her, but she saw another flight moving over Collegium’s centre, and for a moment she feared that they were going to drop their explosive cargo over the domes and spires of the Amphiophos. A moment’s reconsideration showed her that they were moving in on one of the other fields – their targets purely practical, with no thought for symbolism. Not yet. Six against one, but she gave the Esca its head, the fastest thing in the skies as far as she was concerned, climbing as she approached them so that she could make a perfect dive on them. They would see her too late, and probably the one she was stooping on would never see her at all. Except they did – they all did.

  Just like before, they were scattering. Her target kept its wings fixed and used all the speed it had, not quite outpacing her even then, but she was only able to clip it a few times before its comrades were on her, transformed from swift fixed-wings to dancing orthopters in a moment. For a moment she seemed to be surrounded by their shot as she dodged and sidestepped in the sky, five of them fighting for the privilege of bringing her down, and surely they would touch wingtips at any moment, slap each other out of the sky in their eagerness.

  She was worried now. She had not felt like this since . . . She had never felt like this before, not while in the seat of a good orthopter. She lived for flight. Even facing down Axrad over Solarno, she had not felt like this. This was all wrong: enemy fliers who came from nowhere, flying with such coordination. Breaker had been right about what would win an aerial war, but neither had guessed that the Empire had been so far ahead of them.

  She bared her teeth. I am better than all of you! The Esca could do things that even the Stormreaders could not, let alone these big Farsphex machines. If she fought the controls with sufficient dogged determination and contrived to ignore the insistent demands of aeronautics for just a moment, backing her wings so that their joints squealed, she could even fly backwards.

  It was an innovative theory, at the speed she was going, but she felt only confidence as she rammed the stick backwards and disengaged the wing gearing for a second – the vanes beating at ten times the usual speed, for a few crazed seconds, as their gears meshed with nothing – before trying to back them.

  The manoeuvre was a qualified success. She dropped like a stone for a moment, seemingly having no control whatsoever, and the Farsphex pack must have assumed that she had been hit, abandoning her immediately to go in pursuit of their next target. A moment later she had her wings working – forwards still and not backwards at all, and almost went through someone’s roof as she struggled to regain the sky, coming up behind them and catching the trailing Farsphex with a solid handful of bolts that at least made it judder in the air.

  Then she was not alone. Left and right there were Storm-readers with red-painted wings. They attacked as individuals, and she joined them by instinct, not even thinking it through. That saved them, she decided later. The air discipline of the Wasps was such that their flight would have outmatched an attack by a rigid formation, but Taki and her flanking allies each had different ideas as to what they were going to do, three entirely uncoordinated strikes by skilled pilots in top-class fighting orthopters.

  They still failed to bring one down. The Farsphex were away again, splitting up and fixing their wings for extra speed if they were pursued. They refused to engage or to fight the aerial duels that Taki had been dreaming of ever since Solarno. Those not pursued were already wheeling back to come to the aid of their comrades. Taki could almost taste the frustration of the Mynans as they did everything they could to latch onto their enemy, only to be driven off again and again.

  Then the Farsphex flight was abruptly coming together – all of them, flocking from every quarter of the city to rise in a dark column of machines, massing over the very centre of Collegium.

  To strike where? But there was nothing in their disposition that hinted at their target. Taki skated her Esca across the face of their rising formation, pulling her orthopter round in as tight a turn as she could, because they were about to break and she wanted them in front of her and not behind. In mid-wheel she did her best to locate the other Collegiate fliers, flashing a quick signal for Form on me! and hoping that somebody would see it. She had company even before she had finished her turn, a full half-dozen Stormreaders converging on her, cutting a wider arc in the air so as to match her when she drove back at the Imperials. She noted four Mynans – Edmon and three others she couldn’t name. Keeping pace were two of Collegium’s own, and she knew them, from the way they flew, as the Goswell girl and the Fly-kinden, Haldri. It hardly counted as overwhelming odds, but the other local machines were scattered all about the sky, some hanging back to defend the airfields still, others just adrift over the city, losing the thread of the fight, lost over their own home.

  The Imperial formation broke up, as she knew it would, and abruptly they were all moving as one, like fish shoaling, heading for the College district.

  Attack. It was a pitiful signal to be sending, but she had already decided that, whatever the Wasps were after, she was committed to opposing it. She let the Esca race ahead, knowing that the others were still with her, left and right. She wanted to say a great deal more, to explain that the Farsphex pack would split once she attacked, some turning to meet her while the others pressed on with their mission. The Collegiate flash-codes were a language of few words, though. She had to trust that they would predict the future as well as she did.

  She had the trigger pressed even before she was in range, seeing their pattern shift into carefully orchestrated chaos, orthopters peeling off and swinging back towards her from above and from either side. At least half their force was casting itself lightly over the College now, turning in unison to find their target.

  Taki swore and dived after them, still shooting, trusting to her swift flying, to the Esca’s nimbleness against the larger machines. A scatter of bolts sprayed past her, leaving a single finger’s-width hole in one wing. Around and behind her, the handful of Stormreaders engaged, fearless by necessity.

  She was closing now, watching the craft ahead of her, seeing how their attack run forced them to become predictable, killable, if just for a moment. But then, so did hers as she tunnel-visioned in on them, desperate for a kill that might make them break off. Even as the silvery trail of her shot swept in towards a flier in the midst of their formation, piercer bolts were abruptly hammering into her fuselage, the physical impact rocking her, knocking the Esca’s tail sideways, spoiling her aim and making her entire orthopter slew in the air. She cursed, wrestling to get back on target, close now, closer th
an she had wanted. She actually saw the first bombs drop.

  Then another bolt cracked into the engine mounting behind her, the next shattered a pane of her cockpit window, skinning a line of pain down her shoulder as it vanished into her seat. She threw the Esca sideways instinctively, the city beneath her opening up in flames as the bombs struck. She had left it too long, made herself too much of a target. She was going to die.

  But she lived. The Esca suffered a riddled wing, silk parting, wood slats fracturing as the bolts tore into it, but the expected lethal shock never came. Her machine dropped involuntarily towards the flames before she could catch it, and the Farsphex that had been after her coursed overhead, banking in the air to dodge the incoming shot of one of the Mynans, who was slinging his Stormreader through the air like a madman to keep another two Imperial machines off his tail.

  The Esca regained its hold on the air, and she saw the sky above her turned into a madness of wheeling, duelling orthopters. Instantly she was dragging back on the stick, fighting upwards to take her place there but, even as she did, she knew she was too late.

  One of the Mynans lost a wing suddenly, the Stormreader coming apart as a Farsphex ripped into it from an unexpected angle. The next second, the stricken machine was whirling past Taki, spinning like a top with its one wing still beating. Taki was shooting by then, setting up a stream of bolts and then trying to find a target to bring it to bear on. Their bombing run had been disrupted now, but the Wasps had decided to make a fight of it at last, bolstering their impeccably coordination with two-to-one odds.

  She had a direct line on one of the enemy and, just for a moment, gave it a solid couple of seconds of shot and saw it lurch in the air, shuddering. The bombs that had been cascading from its undercarriage, as regular as ants from a hill, abruptly stopped though the machine flew on. Then she was dancing and dodging through the air as a couple of the enemy came for her, keeping out of the way of their aim but unable to fight back. She saw Edmon’s Stormreader spiralling upwards, chasing one of the enemy even as another tried to bring him down. In the next instant, Pendry Goswell was scudding past them, scoring a couple of strikes as she did, but she was lurching in the air, her machine already damaged, the beat of her wings erratic. A moment later they simply stopped, some vital piece of clockwork slipping its train, and Taki watched her helpless and achingly graceful arc as her stalled machine fell into its final dive.

  Then, and all together, the Imperial machines were on the run – or at least they were evading pursuit, taking off with wings fixed and heading east. We’ve driven them away! Taki exalted, but almost immediately she guessed that the Empire was simply heading to refuel. So where are they going? If they had built a nest so close to the city, then these attacks could be an hourly occurrence.

  She sent the Esca after them without even thinking about it, and when she glanced around she saw three Stormreaders joining her in the pursuit, two with Mynan colours and one of the more ambitious local pilots, looking like Corog Breaker himself by the way he flew.

  Behind them, smoke rose from a handful of points across Collegium, and Taki felt that she was escaping a report on the damage, as much as chasing the enemy. What did we lose? What people, what machines? And if the Mynans hadn’t been so paranoid as to have their machines standing by at all hours, how much more might we have lost? It was not that the Mynans had known what was going to happen, of course. It was just that, this once, their particular breed of fearful, vengeful craziness had turned out to be entirely justified.

  The chase went on for barely fifteen minutes, the Imperials pulling ahead noticeably, forcing Taki to admire the design that allowed them to switch from fixed to mobile wings – and so fluidly! She had seen it, or half-seen it, in Capitas but she had underestimated the applications of the idea.

  But, still, they must have a base around here somewhere. Where’s the Wasps’ nest, eh? But the distance between hunters and prey only increased, and the Collegiate orthopters were beginning to tire, springs losing their strength, wings working with less of a will.

  The last glimpse Taki had of the Farsphex that day showed them still heading solidly eastwards, with no suggestion at all that they were about to land.

  Twenty-One

  Taki had asked Corog Breaker to call all the pilots together as soon as they were back on the ground. They had met hurriedly, almost conspiratorially, before any of the great and the good of Collegium could presume to interfere.

  We are the elite of the air, Taki told herself. Scanning their faces, some looking determined, some stunned, she hoped that they felt the same way.

  The Mynans still clustered together, but the distance between them and the others had decreased. They had shared something now, and it was the Collegiate fliers who had drawn closer to the mindset of their guests. They took a roll-call of their losses. Thyses, one of the Mynans, was dead. Collegium had lost three, although Pendry Goswell was miraculously still among the living, the first of them to have to rely on the new glider chutes that had been developed for those whose Art did not permit them to fly.

  By that time they had some representatives of the ground crew with them, listening in, and a couple of academics from the aviation department, including Willem Reader, who had furnished Collegium’s orthopter model with half of its name. Technically, Corog Breaker was in charge, but he deferred to Taki without her having to ask. The man was all pomp and shouting during peacetime, but now the Empire had somehow managed to attack his city, he was purely business.

  They made their plans: Taki proposed and, with a minimum of discussion, they approved. There was no suggestion of consulting the Assembly or any higher authority. In a city so bound by bureaucracy and hierarchy, this independence told Taki that they understood. The Assembly wasn’t there; they won’t understand. Only us. Only we are fit to helm the course of the air war.

  Well, us and the Wasps, obviously. An unhappy thought, and she would have to talk with the better aeronautical minds about just what the Wasps had achieved in their aviation technology, and in their military practice, to pull off the attack that had just happened.

  By the time a messenger had come from the Amphiophos demanding that she attend some council of war, the pilots had already held their own Assembly, passed their own motions and set their own destiny.

  The council of war was remarkably restrained, although Taki guessed that it would become larger and more burdened with pointless opinions as time went on. For now she was faced only with Stenwold himself and the leaders of the three Merchant Companies: the Beetle-kinden Janos Outwright and Elder Padstock, and Marteus the Tarkesh renegade.

  ‘What did we lose?’ she asked, before Stenwold could start interrogating her.

  ‘The Teremy Square airfield was hit hard,’ Stenwold told her. ‘We lost eight Stormreaders on the ground there, four elsewhere. You and yours managed to keep them from inflicting crippling damage on our air capability, anyway.’

  ‘So what was the big bang?’ Taki asked him. ‘Just before they took off, they hit something near the College hard.’

  ‘Factories,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Four of them along Read Road were gutted pretty much entirely. They’re still going through the rubble, but all they’re finding are bodies.’

  Taki frowned, and then a sudden fear gripped her. ‘The Stormreader factories?’

  Stenwold managed a wan smile. ‘It’s strange how things work out, sometimes. If this attack had come just a tenday ago, then we’d have lost most of our ability to replenish our airforce. As it was, three of the factories were being converted to work on automotives. My project. The Stormreader facilities had been moved to the Coalway workshops, on the other side of the College. From a certain point of view, we were very lucky. Their spies are just a little out of date.’

  ‘We need more machines, as many as we can put in the air,’ Taki told him. ‘Seriously – their army’s still a good way down the coast from here, but somewhere they’ve got an airfield. How they managed that, I have
no idea, but we need scouting patrols and, at the same time, we need a strong flight on the airfields ready to fly the moment they come back. That could be tomorrow, Master Maker. That could be later today.’

  ‘I’m putting a proposal before the Assembly today,’ Stenwold stated. ‘I suspect that it will pass, in light of the attack. I don’t think it would pass any other way, certainly.’ He looked tired, maybe sick. ‘Every workshop and factory in the city must be ready to help the war effort, from the big mercantile concerns to little family-run machine shops. It’s not just your orthopters, and it’s not my automotives, either. We need more snapbows, piercer bolts, spare parts, tools, artillery ammunition, explosives . . . We’ve seen now how fast the Empire can move, so we need to get ourselves up to the same speed. You’ll have your fliers, and you’ll be run off your feet training people how to use them, too. We’ll have a call for volunteers across the city, and I hope that people will look at the smoke rising from Read Road and realize that it’s now fight or fall.’

  You’re not before the Assembly now, Maker, thought Taki, because rhetoric always annoyed her. ‘And if you don’t get your volunteers?’ she asked.

  ‘Then I go back to the Assembly with an alternative motion,’ he replied grimly.

  Helleron had been a joke. The Eighth Army had marched in from what had recently been Three-city Alliance land, leaving behind it the shattered walls of Myna and Szar, and a battle still raging at Maynes, where elements of the Fifth had been moved in to free Roder for his advance. The Ants of Maynes were no more technologically accomplished than their allies, Roder knew, but they were certainly more stubborn. There was talk of razing the city entirely, by way of a lesson, deporting the whole population to remote corners of the Empire as slaves. It had never been done before, to even the most rebellious of cities, but times were changing. The Slave Corps had seen all the advances that real soldiers were making to the Empire’s prosperity, Roder thought sourly, and were trying to introduce an innovation or two of their own.