The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8)

by Tchaikovsky, Adrian

  ‘Gain height! Gain height!’ She knew Scain was not talking to her, but recently his internal conferences with Aarmon and the others had become external ones, the increased Chneuma dose cracking the barriers between the spoken and what was merely thought. Pingge clung on, the reticule forgotten, and hoped and hoped, feeling the craft rock and shudder with each near-miss. From her viewpoint through the hatch she saw a sudden bonfire in the sky, the blazing shape of a Farsphex leaping out from the blackness for a second before the fuel tank erupted, the rear half of the stricken machine almost disintegrating, leaving the guttering cockpit and wings to plummet.

  ‘Get to work!’ Scain snapped, and this time he really was addressing her. They had a little height now, but still low enough for Pingge to pick her targets from the distorted, onrushing view the reticule gave her of the city ahead. There seemed to be quite a few of those repeating ballistae about, the bolts bursting in the air suddenly – crack-boom! – at isolated intervals, without pattern or warning.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the reticule, trusting to Scain, blinding herself to the dangerous skies. From then on the work was grim and mechanical – spot a target, line up the reticule, release the bomb, all within the few seconds she had between seeing the image and it passing below them. There was never time to look back at the fire in their wake.

  Bolts rattled across their hull, one punching a hole within a foot of her, coming in through the open hatch. The Collegiates had put some fresh orthopters in the air. She scrambled for her own little ballista, but Scain snapped at her to leave it alone.

  ‘Just get your job done,’ he told her. He sounded sick. For the next few passes, he was throwing their vessel jaggedly about so as to lose whatever was tracking them, or to give Aarmon or one of the others the chance to cut in. She lost her target over and over, and was on the point of shouting at him to hold a level course when she thought that through and decided she would rather he threw them all across the Collegiate sky, after all, and she’d just have to make do.

  The minimal air resistance – pilots no doubt woken in a panic, hurling themselves desperately into the sky, in their ones and twos, against an overwhelming force – soon passed, leaving her to get on with her job. That would have been fine, except Scain was talking again.

  ‘It’s vile,’ he muttered, and she had no idea whether he was talking to her or not. But then: ‘When we fly against their machines, that’s war. What’s this?’ And she realized she was hearing his side of a mental conversation with the other pilots.

  ‘I know,’ he said, and ‘I know that, too. They say we’re saving lives for the Second, that we’re crushing their will to fight. Is that true? Have we seen any evidence that they’re losing will, as opposed to machines and pilots and civilian lives?’ And: ‘I know! But what are we, if this is all we’re for?’ His voice sounded raw, shouting without realizing he was making a sound.

  ‘I want it to end,’ he told whoever was on the receiving end of this. He suddenly sounded so lost that Pingge wanted to reach out to him, but she thought that, if he knew he had been heard, he would kill her.

  Then they were under attack again, and Scain cut them loose, reaching for height as the city diminished below them. She guessed that the Collegiate attackers that had tried to bottle them up beyond the city’s walls had finally realized their error and come back with a vengeance. Then the Farsphex were regrouping, turning to head for the Second Army camp, wherever that had crept to by tonight.

  We can’t go on like this.

  The words were Taki’s, and the end of her mumbled report to Stenwold before shunning the grey light of dawn for her bed. The sentiments could have been anyone’s of a certain level of seniority within Collegium – those who sat on the right committees and could piece together all the disparate facts.

  The foundries of Collegium were still constructing Stormreaders as swiftly as they could, although only as a result of of fresh shipments of raw materials from unexpected quarters – the first ever Vekken trading cog had turned up with a hold full of metal ingots, and the Tidenfree had arrived with superior alloys supposedly from across the sea but in reality from beneath it. Still, the pilots that were putting out in those craft were younger and less experienced each time – if the average age of a flying combatant had been plotted by some scholar on a graph, the downward curve would be steep – which meant that the investment in each orthopter was correspondingly riskier. The rooftop artillery was another drain on resources, and had struck down only two enemies, and those in the first salvo. Stenwold had to hope that the simple existence of such a defence might at least complicate matters for the Wasp pilots, putting them off their aim and resulting in fewer bombs dropped, or in bombs dropped less accurately. But of course ‘less accurately’ meant little consolation to the family whose home was destroyed by a bomb falling wide.

  And the Second Army was near. The ground forces – Coldstone Company and Maker’s Own and all the automotives the city had been able to furnish – were marching out any day now, as ready as they would ever be, and another drain on the city, in materiel and in lives.

  If the Empire get its artillery set up within range of the walls, then we’re done for. And, competing with that, If the Empire wears down our air defences, then we’re done for, too.

  So why am I here?

  Ahead of Stenwold rose the imposing edifice of Banjacs Gripshod’s townhouse, and it was impossible to know from the facade that the artificer’s killing machine had eaten away so much of its innards.

  He was here because Praeda had asked him, but, more than that, he was here because there was no need for him anywhere else, which was a bitter realization. Matters had advanced sufficiently that there was no more need for the grand plan. He had sat on his last committee, he knew, and the work was now in the hands of the specialists: Corog Breaker, Taki, Marteus, Kymene, even Amnon. Statesmen such as Stenwold and Jodry Drillen had spoken their piece and taken their final opportunity to adjust the rudder of history. The future would judge them, but their decisions had finally acquired sufficient momentum to break free of the earth and fly, and there would be no calling one word of it back.

  The most galling moment had been when he had requested – practically insisted – that he be allowed to accompany the Merchant Companies as they marched out, and Marteus had politely told him that he was ‘needed’ in Collegium. He just didn’t want me underfoot, questioning his orders, complicating matters. And Marteus had been right, of course, which was worse.

  So he had come here instead, to the home and prison of the madman Banjacs Gripshod, seemingly the one duty left to him.

  The man looked even older than Stenwold had imagined: rake-thin, wild-haired and bearded. If the War Master did not know better, he might have imagined that Banjacs had been starved and deprived of all civilized niceties until a minute before Stenwold set eyes on him. When he recognized Stenwold he leapt from his desk and lunged forward so fast that Stenwold instinctively plucked his little snapbow from inside his tunic.

  ‘At last!’ Banjacs exclaimed. ‘I knew you’d come! Of all the people in this city, Maker, you have to understand me.’

  Those were depressingly familiar words to hear. Having once been an outspoken maverick in the Assembly, Stenwold had attracted a variety of lunatics over the years, each of them counting on his sympathy just because the same people had laughed at them both. Sadly, in almost every case, they were genuinely laughable.

  Stenwold almost turned to go, bitterly aware of the sidelong looks from the two of Outwright’s men who had drawn the short straw to guard the door. One thought stopped him for, just once amongst those other deluded babblers, he had turned away an excitable conspiracy-finder only to have the man end up dead at the hands of a very real conspiracy. A flicker of memory tugged at his conscience, and he sighed.

  ‘Master Gripshod, let’s make this quick.’

  He followed the man back into his room, noting that although Banjacs was being kept under house
arrest, there was no comfort involved. The room was bare of ornament, the furniture unkempt and old: only a bed, a desk, a chair, a few shelves of books. Pale outlines on the walls suggested that it had once been a more congenial place. Apparently, Banjacs had been steadily selling off the family chattels for decades.

  ‘You,’ the old man was muttering. ‘Of all of them – you look ahead. I look ahead, you see. I saw it all, just like you did – but before you were born even! How’d you like that, then, Maker? Before you were ever born I saw where we’d come to!’ Without warning he was jabbing an accusing finger at Stenwold. ‘Oh, you’re the War Master, but I was there first and I warned them.’

  ‘Before I was . . . ?’ Stenwold was already regretting not leaving immediately. ‘You saw what, Master Gripshod? What did you warn them about?’

  ‘Why, this.’ Banjacs’s hands embraced some all-encompassing whole. ‘What I see from my window every night: the city on fire, death from the air. This.’

  Ah well, just lunacy after all. ‘You foresaw the Wasp Empire’s attack before I was born? Of course you did.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, Maker! The Wasps? Who cares about the Wasps? It could have been anyone, you hear me? But I knew from the start that it would come to this. I stood there at Clifftops, barely more than a boy and already with my College accredits. I saw Morless’s Mayfly over the city, do you understand? And what I could never understand was why nobody else grasped it. Once you have that then it will lead to this.’

  ‘Hold on, slow down.’ Stenwold looked the wild old man in the eyes and was about to take advantage of the ensuing pause to dismiss him utterly, when something lodged in his head. ‘Clifftops? Morless?’ Names from the history books, but Banjacs was old, and a trip back in time of sixty years would leave him about the age that he claimed, and . . .

  Every student knew that Lial Morless had piloted the first heavier-than-air flying machine in the world, right here in Collegium. Stenwold crossed wordlessly to the window and stared out. Down the street was a house with buckled walls, the upper storey having half-tumbled into the street, courtesy of the Empire’s Farsphex.

  ‘Master Gripshod,’ he began, and then, ‘Banjacs, if I may, tell me what you mean.’

  ‘We were never meant to fly,’ Banjacs told him softly, unexpectedly close by his shoulder. ‘We were never creatures of the air. We still aren’t. The airships were bad enough, but at least they’re slow. The orthopters and the like, I knew they would bring this on us – it could have been Ants or Wasps or Bees or even our own people, but once the tools were in the world . . . Death from the skies, Maker, it was always going to happen. Since the day I saw Morless fly, I’ve been trying to find a way . . .’

  ‘A way to what?’ Stenwold rounded on him. Impossible, was the thought in his mind. Just a madman. But these were mad times.

  ‘To defend ourselves. Defend our city. My machine . . .’

  ‘You’ve shown us what your machine can do, and it was nothing to do with defending the city,’ Stenwold pointed out.

  ‘Listen! That was just a discharge from the lightning batteries, a side effect. But it needs to be finished. It’s not ready. All those years, and I wasn’t ready . . .’

  Those last words finally struck home, for Stenwold had thought just the same when the Wasps had brought war against them the first time.

  ‘Look at my machine,’ Banjacs went on. ‘See it for what it is. Let me complete it, Maker. I am so close.’

  Impossible, came the familiar old refrain, but Stenwold found it hard to discern what might be impossible these days.

  Thirty

  There was some attempt at cheering, but Collegium had no grand tradition of military send-offs, nor did Beetle-kinden have any great belief that dying in battle was in some way better than dying in bed. The proud martial heritage of Ants and Mantids was lost on them. They marched to war with the same pragmatism with which they did everything.

  Maker’s Own Company was already assembled into divisions of two hundred each, Collegium’s finest of all kinden moving off along the Pathian Way to reassemble outside the city. Ahead of them, the bulk of the automotives were on the move, deploying left and right of the roadway beyond the walls. Some had been armoured and mounted with weapons for the mechanized attack that was planned, whilst others were little better than livestock carriers to take Collegium’s soldiers to the fray.

  The Coldstone Company was still assembling, ordering itself by best guess and rough democracy into the smaller fifty-man maniples that Marteus favoured. As sub-officer, the Antspider had one of these to look after, and she marched up and down in front of her soldiers, barking orders at people and pointing with her sword as though she was a lordly Arista and not just a halfbreed given temporary rank. The dignity was feigned, but she felt that running about and shouting was not fitting for her current station.

  Her soldiers were all nervous, their mood on a knife-edge between anticipation and fear. All around them, watching every stumble and jogged elbow, were the crowds, a great mass of Collegium’s citizens, yet quiet, eerily quiet. Straessa watched the men and women of Coldstone Company bid farewell to their families and friends before each finding their place: here was gathered a host of wives and husbands, parents and children, all of whom had lived through the last war. This should have been nothing new to them. Many would remember sending these same soldiers off to fight at Malkan’s Folly with the Sarnesh, whilst others had stayed at home to hold off this same Imperial army two years before. Now, though, they watched in near-silence, as though draining every last moment from the sight, sucking it dry of memory.

  It is because they thought they’d won last time, but here the Empire is, indefatiguable and insatiable. Where will it end?

  A new train of automotives ground past, their engines shockingly loud in contrast, the subdued crowd eddying back to give them space. The Antspider caught a glimpse of that absurdly big Khanaphir who suddenly seemed to be in charge of the mechanized assault, standing up to survey the city he was leaving, whilst a woman she knew as Mistress Rakespear of the artifice faculty did the driving. In the next vehicle was a youngish woman with the blue-grey skin of Myna, whom Straessa knew must be their leader-in-exile, Kymene. There was a sizeable contingent of Mynan soldiers who would be fighting alongside the Merchant Companies, eager to get their teeth into their hated enemy.

  ‘All present and correct, Sub,’ the report came to her, dragging her back to the matter in hand. Gerethwy was standing forward from the others. ‘We can march out as soon as the Maker’s Own are through the gates.’

  ‘Stand ready,’ the Antspider confirmed, officer to subordinate. Then she met his eyes directly. Written there for her eyes to translate was the thought, We are utter fools, aren’t we? and she nodded slowly. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ she enquired, for, carried sloping over his shoulder, was something larger and more complex than a snapbow.

  ‘Foundry-pattern mechanized snapbow,’ Gerethwy reported proudly. ‘Every squad gets one of these, or else a nailbow, or something like it.’

  ‘How come you get to carry it?’ she asked, mock-jealous. Their banter cut at some part of her – so like and yet not like the old days that seemed years ago now, but she clung to it.

  ‘I showed them my accredits as an artificer, didn’t I?’ the Woodlouse-kinden told her proudly.

  ‘You brought your accredits to a war?’

  He shrugged with one shoulder, keeping the fearsome-looking weapon steady. ‘That’s why I have this lovely toy, Sub.’

  ‘Straessa,’ someone interrupted.

  She had been expecting the voice, but something lurched inside her when she heard it. She turned to find them: Eujen and Averic, come at last to see her off.

  For all the destruction that had happened and the combat that was due, fighting for calm just then proved the hardest part of all. She wanted to run to them, to embarrass herself in front of her squad by venting the feelings that were boiling up inside her. She wanted to quit
the army and simply stay here with Eujen, as if that would be any safer for either of them.

  Instead she regarded them with affected coolness and a slight smile, her weight cocked on one hip, her arms folded. ‘Made it, then?’ she observed, and her voice remained steady. ‘Purple’s a good colour for you,’ she added, for they both now wore the sashes of Eujen’s Student Company.

  ‘It was the only colour we could get in bulk,’ he replied, doing his best to match her reserve, and not quite managing it. ‘Straessa . . .’

  ‘How’d you like my soldiers, eh?’ Her smile was fragile and brave.

  Eujen just stared at her, and in his eyes was the time, ticking down. It looked as though the whole of the Coldstone Company had milled itself into place now, she reckoned. And still I can’t find the words. Averic was no help, not even meeting her eyes.

  There sounded the tramp of marching feet, altogether too regular for anything under her command, and the Mynan exiles began to pass through: grim, determined men and women, professional in their red and black helms and breastplates. Seeing them, Straessa almost despaired. And we’ve got shopkeepers and tailors and artificers’ apprentices. Dress them in buff coats, it doesn’t make them soldiers.

  Us. It doesn’t make us soldiers.

  She turned back to Eujen, abruptly fearing that he would be gone, and caught his arm that was held half-out towards her. The casual pose was beginning to hurt, deep inside, but at the same time she could not make herself abandon it.

  ‘Straessa . . .’ he began again.

  ‘Gerethwy brought his accredits, can you believe that?’ she remarked brightly, inwardly appalled at the trite nonsense she was uttering.

  Eujen swallowed, and she felt the moment fray and snap, the weight of an army about to march pulling her away from him. Then someone blundered into them both, making Averic start back, hands momentarily raised, and Raullo Mummers, disenfranchised artist, was hugging them both, tears streaming down his face. ‘You hear me? You look after yourself. No more funerals,’ he mumbled. ‘Come back, come back, that’s all.’ He was reeling drunk, as he had been for much of the time since his studio burned, hugging Eujen fiercely enough to force the breath out of him.