War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘No problems, I’m sure, Captain?’

  She jumped. The man was right behind her and she was unused to being surprised.

  ‘Captain Vrakir,’ she addressed him coldly, ‘what’s the meaning of this? Is this . . . reek supposed to keep the Collegiates away?’

  ‘It’s a necessary precaution, that’s all. More than that, you—’

  ‘Don’t need to know,’ she finished for him, and had the pleasure of seeing his lips tighten in annoyance. ‘This plan of yours . . .?’

  He held a finger up. ‘Is not to be spoken of. You, Major Oski and his slave have been circumspect so far, and tomorrow – almost today, now – all will become clear to everyone, most especially to the Empress’s enemies. But don’t abandon your discretion. There could be Collegiate spies listening even now.’

  The engineers, who had most surely been eavesdropping, resumed their foul task with exaggerated dedication.

  Vrakir moved very close, but Bergild would not give ground before him. She found she regretted that when he spoke virtually into her ear, ‘You have seen, though. You know what we will do to them.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone knows what will happen once that surprise gets here,’ she replied, fighting down her instinct to squirm away from him. ‘Not you, and not Captain Nistic either. And you’ve seen him. He’s mad.’

  ‘A little savage, perhaps,’ Vrakir allowed, and she could almost mime his next words, they were so predictable: ‘but these are savage times. Believe me, Captain Nistic is devoted to the Empire. He and his fellows have waited a long time to bring their particular talents to bear.’

  At last she stepped back, because that red badge of his, pressing almost against her shoulder, felt as though it might burn or bite her at any moment.

  Then the alarm came instantly into her mind: Captain – enemy orthopters. She kicked off immediately and was halfway into her craft’s side-hatch, about to wriggle down the crawlspace for the cockpit, when she heard; Three – no, four only. Not stopping and keeping well north of us, and she decided, Scouts.

  Not overflying the army, Captain. Pursue?

  She had a mental image of their direction now, as though revealed on a map. ‘They’ve found your new toy, Vrakir,’ she told the man, who had caught up with her. ‘The Collegiates know it’s there, somehow. Four orthopters are off to look at it right now.’

  For a moment his face froze, as if left unattended at the front of his head, while thoughts meshed behind it. ‘The escort can fend off four,’ he decided.

  She nodded, ‘But your secret’s out.’

  ‘How much longer was it ever going to stay a secret?’ he pointed out. Whatever his source of inspiration, which seemed to recite the Empress’s plans seemingly without his knowing them before he spoke, it had obviously found him a new groove to run in. ‘Let them see. Let them run back to their city with the news. And you – every one of our pilots, whether Farsphex, Spearflight or even the Spider rabble – you’re to get into the air once you hear those orthopters heading back home. You’re to go and meet our airship and defend it from all comers.’

  ‘The army . . .’ she said uncertainly, because the Second was so much more vulnerable now, as it gathered itself to take the ground between here and Collegium’s walls.

  ‘Not your concern,’ Vrakir told her flatly. ‘And you!’ He rounded on the engineers. ‘Double pace! I want all the machines fully slopped over with this filth before then! Or I’ll have every tenth man on crossed pikes, by the Empress’s own word!’

  They woke her close on dawn, and every other sleeping pilot too, banging on the door of the airfield barracks as if they were trying to beat it down.

  Taki leapt awake, kicking into the air with wings a-blur, and with no clear sense of who she was or what was going on. Must be an emergency – Exalsee pilots never get up at this hour. But of course she was a long way from the Exalsee – from what in retrospect had been a comfortable and pampered life. Now Collegium was her surrogate city, and it was at war.

  And, with that thought, the urgency of the banging and kicking and shouting jolted her alert. One of the Beetle pilots had opened the door by then, and another couple of her aviators almost fell into the room.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Taki shouted at them. ‘We’re all awake, so tell me what the picture is.’

  ‘Chief,’ one of them acknowledged her. She had not really earned the Company title, but everyone seemed to take her for the Chief Officer of pilots these days. ‘The Ear went off a couple of hours ago now. It’s picked up more Farsphex on their way.’

  ‘A couple of hours?’ Taki demanded instantly. ‘Why wasn’t I—’

  ‘Chief, they said we should let you sleep,’ the other put in.

  Bloody Maker sticking his nose in. ‘What’s the situation?’

  ‘They reckoned four or six, from the Ear – not enough to tip the balance – so four of us went out to take a look. The Wasps’ve got something mad coming our way – an airship, more than sixty yards long, bow to stern – and . . .’ His language apparently failed him, but the other pilot took it up.

  ‘The whole hull’s covered with bomb-hatches or something – hundreds of them,’ she put in. ‘And the Farsphex were flying escort. It’s coming close, Chief. By now maybe they could spot it from the walls with a telescope, it’s that big.’

  Taki frowned. This makes no sense. But then it would take a heavy airship some time to reach Collegium from the Empire, and maybe this plan had made sense when the thing set off. Or maybe . . .

  ‘Let me see it,’ she decided. ‘Get me a glass and . . . wait.’ She had slept in her tunic, and it was the work of a moment to struggle into her stained, rank-smelling flying leathers. Ah for the Exalsee, where we had servants for everything. ‘Everyone else, get dressed and to your machines!’ she directed. ‘I reckon we’ve just had some work handed to us.’

  She was on the wall within minutes and, from the stir amongst the lookouts there, she guessed that the aerial behemoth had already been spotted. The chill, grey half-light from the east served to silhouette it: still too far to make out any details even through a glass, but its size was undeniable, and . . .

  ‘Will you look at that,’ Taki murmured, because there was definite movement from the Second. She was not so much interested to see that the might of the Imperial army and its Spider allies had actually drawn itself up into a conveniently bombable battle order. What had caught her eye were the enemy fliers. Even as she watched, she could see them lifting off in ones and twos, both the Farsphex that she had come to respect, and what remained of the rest, the outdated and the makeshift. They were all of them reaching for the air, and heading not towards Collegium but away. Heading for the same approaching airship.

  That’s how you’re playing it, is it? But still she did not understand. Even with a handful of extra Farsphex, the Empire did not have enough fighting craft to keep that airship intact and aloft. But it looked as though they were going to try.

  Maybe if they care enough about the cursed thing, we’ll be able to pin them down at last – clear the entire sky of them. She had a great deal of respect for the Farsphex pilots, at least, who had made the very best of a bad job in complicating the bombing of the Second, but it would serve Taki well if the Empire’s tenuous grasp on the sky was finally prised off. If the Wasps were committing themselves to defending this monstrosity, then this might be the opportunity they were waiting for.

  ‘Every Stormreader that’s ready to fly, get a pilot to it quickly, and let’s get into the air,’ she decided. Too big a target, too good an opportunity to pass up. And still the whole business nagged at her. So what do they hope to achieve? Are they really so desperate, or such fools?

  At the very prow of his airship’s gondola, Captain Nistic stood waiting. His moment was near at hand. His fellows, those who shared his mystery, were scattered about the deck, each concentrating on his own private preparation, letting their minds fall into that requisite void.

  Be
low their feet, in the dark hold: their massed soldiers.

  The sky about the airship was criss-crossed with orthopters, their scant escort reinforced with the air power of the Second – or what it could muster. Nistic did not care. Oh, surely it was part of the plan, to focus the minds of the Collegiates, but it meant nothing to him.

  He took a deep breath. Awake, now.

  Some of the troops below were awake already, because his anticipation had been bleeding out into their minds since before dawn. Ahead, the sky was only just shaking off its shroud of darkness, the fateful day cresting over Collegium. If he leant forwards, he could see the Second Army just beginning to move: not as individual soldiers but a composite mass.

  His warriors were stirring themselves below, rousing drowsily from their slumber, then springing to alertness. And with their wakefulness he felt their rage.

  Such rage: he thrilled to it. He shared it. He heard gasps and sharp grunts as his fellows were caught up in it, like loops in the same chain when the anchor is dropped.

  My soldiers! he projected his thoughts down. Your time is come! Rejoice, for all that you wish for shall be yours!

  There was a call from one of the aircrew – he was pointing, and Nistic knew this meant the Collegiate fliers were on their way.

  Tell me what you wish for! he exhorted his followers, and their words came back to him like swelling, angry tide.

  Killkillkillkillkillkillkillkill . . .

  He held fast to the rail, because his troops would enter the battle soon and, unless he kept a tight grip, he would be tempted to join them, swept up in their murder-lust. They knew nothing but anger and battle, and he stirred them further, he roused them, he reached into their minds and stoked the fires until the whole airship was heaving with their savagery.

  See, the enemy comes! And he lent them his eyes, aware that the furthest out of the Imperial machines were already clawing for height, desperate to defend the airship just as they had been ordered.

  But we need no defending. My soldiers! My faithful! The time has come to kill!

  And from below, from all around, doubling and redoubling, it echoed back from the minds of his fellows: Killkillkillkillkill kill . . .

  They were Apt, Nistic and his fellows, but the mystery of their calling had not changed since the old days. They were among the last remaining, but they had no doubt that this day was what everything had been leading up to. Today they would vindicate their ancestors. Today the ancient traditions of the Hornet-kinden – which the more civilized Wasp folk had long abandoned – would change the world.

  He tilted back his head and screamed out his joy and rage, but the sound was almost lost amidst the roar from below.

  Taki slid her Esca Magni into a smooth curve that took her up against the flank of a passing Farsphex. As expected, the Imperial craft pulled aside, coursing across the great canvas of the airship’s balloon and leading her away. But she lazily broke away and crested the rounded summit of the dirigible, as if to loose a bomb, and sure enough the enemy came back, unable to lead her off on a chase, forced to put itself in harm’s way to protect this lumbering offence to aeronautics. She hauled sharply on the stick, stopping her wings dead for a second despite her gear trains’ complaints, switching from flying machine to hurtling dead weight for an eye blink, until she set one wing beating to sling her about. Flying backwards, both wings fighting with gravity and her own thwarted momentum, she let loose at the returning Farsphex with a full burst from her rotaries, catching it about the cockpit and wings. It jinked sideways with impressive agility, but she moved along with it, making minute, unconscious adjustments to the stick. A moment later, one of the Farsphex’s wings was simply gone, and it was fast parting company with the sky. Taki pulled away, no need to see the end result.

  A Spearflight tried to get in her way, with desperate courage, and she chewed its tail off, effortlessly twitching aside from its own shot. Then somehow a pair of Farsphex had joined together to hunt her, and she led them off down the length of the balloon, putting a few bolts in for good measure. If she’d come loaded with bombs she would have dropped one right then, to see if it would take hold on the envelope, but Collegium used its bigger, slower orthopters for bombing work these days, and a good half of the Stormreader pilots had followed her lead in refusing the extra weight.

  She dropped out into the vast and busy sky ahead of the airship, and immediately a quartet of Stormreaders were onto her pursuers. With deft practice she reversed her direction again – something this current rebuild of the Esca was very suited for, for some reason – and took a more careful look at the airship itself. It was still wallowing through the air at its sedate pace, as though heedless of the air-duelling that went on all around it. She could see the gondola’s upper deck passing almost close enough for the crew to loose a sting at her – a handful of airmen crouched low for cover, and some weirdly dressed Wasps standing near the front.

  What’s that noise?

  Over the wind, over the clatter of her wings, reaching her as a tremor in her bones more than through her ears: a deep, pulsating thunder.

  From the airship?

  No engine, though. Nothing she had ever heard before, except . . . fear. It struck fear into her, at a base and childish level. She had to fight herself to keep the Esca level for a second. What? There’s nothing. There’s nothing. Only . . .

  A heliopter looking like something put together by a clumsy child tried to challenge her with a repeating ballista, barely fitter for the air than the airship itself, and she sliced off its rotors almost contemptuously. Please, we were building better than that machine on the Exalsee thirty years back.

  She let the Esca circle the stern of the airship, and a Stormreader rose up and crossed her path, signalling furiously with its lamp. She tried to decipher the message, but the pilot was hammering the shutters so fast that whatever signals were intended just ran together and got lost. That insistent vibration was still assaulting her insides, an unreasoning unease encroaching on her despite all rational thought, and she dropped down to see where the Stormreader had come from, to see what it had seen.

  She swung a wide course about the belly of the airship.

  The hatches had opened, all of them.

  But they’re two miles short of the city. Are they going to bomb their own army now? A mad thought: what if they had all somehow misunderstood? What if this was a friendly airship under attack from the Empire, and she was supposed to be protecting it? She had gone short on sleep recently, but it hardly seemed possible that she could get it that wrong . . .

  The sound was so much louder now.

  Another Farsphex flashed by, under pursuit, but she let it go, drawing further away from the airship’s port-riddled underside. And they couldn’t have got more hatches there if they’d tried. Looks like the whole hull’s been attacked by giant woodworm . . .

  Oh.

  Oh, mother help me.

  There was a head pushing out of one of the holes. It was triangular, dominated by two oval eyes and a set of saw-edged mandibles. Segmented antennae sprang forward as soon as they were free, and then it had forced its hunching thorax clear of the hole and began flexing its wings.

  She was bringing the Esca back in the tightest turn she could manage, so she could draw a line on the thing and kill it before it could drag that curved black and yellow abdomen from its resting place. But by then there were heads pushing out from every hole across the breadth of the airship’s underside: tens of them, hundreds of them, emerging in a second hatching and tasting the air. Tasting the enemy.

  Each was not so much smaller than the Esca – from its serrated jaws to the barbed sting on its tail. When they stirred their wings into life together, the thunderous buzz rattled every part of Taki and her orthopter, and spoke terror to her in a language she had obviously been born with, all unknowing.

  She had her line, and her piercers raked across the airship’s hull, and a handful of the host just exploded into wet shards
of chitin and wing fragments at the touch of her bolts. But then they were airborne. They were coming for her.

  Nistic’s body jerked with exaltation as his soldiers took wing and filled the air, mad with rage, desperate to drive their stings into the enemy that was all around them. The scent that the Imperial vessels had been daubed with reeked with sheer incitement, the concentrated musk of alarm and retribution that the hornets themselves would respond to in the wild. Perhaps it would keep the Empire’s orthopters safe, perhaps not. It only helped lash the swarm into a berserk frenzy.

  Killkillkillkillkillkillkill . . .

  ‘Kill!’ Nistic screamed, and all of his fellows screamed in unison: no mindlink here, but their Art made them part of the swarm and that was as good – indeed was better.

  He took a hand from the rail – the other was white-knuckled in its efforts to keep him still on deck – and drew his blade. The old ways knew: a price must be paid to buy the service of the swarm, a price and a reward. In Nistic’s mind the host’s hundreds raged, waiting only for him to become a true part of them.

  At last he let go of the rail, hanging suspended between the deck beneath his feet and the murder-storm of the swarm’s collective mind. One hand found where his corselet of chitin scales left off, and he wrenched it up to expose the hollow beneath his ribs.

  The swarm was strong and mad, but he would give it direction. For as long as it raged, it would share some fragment of his human mind, and fall upon the enemies of the Empire in blood and fury.

  He poised his knife, letting its point hover over his flesh like a stinger.

  With a great shout he drove it home, and let his mind fly free.