The Air War
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To all those people. They know who they are.
The last war against the Wasp-kinden ended in a draw. The demise of the Emperor, ostensibly at the hands of the Mantis Tisamon, forced a recall of the Imperial armies, and the
Empress Seda has since been occupied in retaking provinces of her empire from the various traitor governors who sprang up in the wake of her brother’s death.
Collegium has fallen out with its erstwhile allies in the Spiderlands, but Stenwold Maker has secret, new allies beneath the waves, having established tentative diplomatic links with the
Sea-kinden, a civilization that most of his people are not even aware of.
Seda and her Empire have not been idle, though. The traitor governors are defeated now, and the Imperial engineers, men such as the aviator Varsec, have been devising new ways of making war.
Seda herself has other needs. The unnatural death of her brother rendered her Inapt and gave her access to a magic fuelled by blood, and she has forced even more power out of the shadowy Masters of
Khanaphes since conquering that ancient city.
The time has come for her and her Empire to look outwards to the wider world once again.
In Collegium
Assemblers and City Leaders
Jodry Drillen
, Speaker for the Assembly
Stenwold Maker
, War Master
Corog Breaker
, Master Armsman
Marteus
, chief officer, Coldstone Company
Elder Padstock
, chief officer, Maker’s Own
Janos Outwright
, chief officer, Outwright’s Pike and Shot
Helmess Broiler
, Assembler, alleged Imperial sympathizer
Students of the College and Associates
Straessa
(‘the Antspider’), duellist
Eujen Leadswell
, agitator
Gerethwy
, Woodlouse scholar
Averic
, Wasp-kinden scholar
Sartaea te Mosca
, teacher of Inapt studies
Raullo Mummers
, artist
Castre Gorenn
, Dragonfly exile
Imperial Embassy
Aagen
, ambassador
Honory Bellowern
, Aagen’s adviser
Also in the City
Te Schola Taki-Amre
(‘Taki’), pilot
Banjacs Gripshod
, master artificer
Berjek Gripshod
, historian and diplomat
Praeda Rakespear
, artificer and diplomat
Amnon
, former First Soldier of Khanaphes
Willem Reader
, artificer
Bola Stormall
, artificer
Arvi
, Jodry Drillen’s secretary
In the Empire
Imperial Court
Seda I
, Empress
Brugan
, Rekef general
Harvang
, Rekef colonel
Vecter
, Rekef colonel
Gjegevey
, Woodlouse adviser
Esmail/Ostrec
, agent
Lien
, general of Engineers
Knowles Bellowern
, Consortium magnate
Second Army (‘The Gears’)
General Tynan
Colonel Mittoc
, Engineers
Colonel Cherten
, Army Intelligence
Imperial Air Corps
Varsec
, colonel of Engineers
Aarmon
, captain, pilot
Scain
, pilot
Nishaana
, pilot
Eighth Army
General Roder
Colonel Ferric
, Engineers
Fly-kinden from the Factories
Pingge
Kiin
Gizmer
Elsewhere
In Solarno
Laszlo
, agent of Stenwold Maker
Lissart
(‘te Liss’), agent
Te Riel
, agent
‘Painful’ Breighl
, agent
Garvan
, Imperial Army Intelligence
In Myna
Kymene
, Mynan leader
Edmon
, pilot
Franticze
, Szaren pilot
Aldanrael
Mycella of the Aldanrael
, Lady-Martial
Jadis of the Melisandyr
, officer of the camp
Morkaris
, mercenary adjutant
Iron Glove
Dariandrephos
(‘Drephos’), the Colonel-Auxillian, master artificer
Totho
, artificer
Part One
The Calm
One
Nobody built cities with aviators in mind, and that was a cursed shame, in Taki’s opinion. That those cities had generally been planned before flying machines had been
thought of was a poor excuse. She had taken her
Esca Magni
over to Princep Salma to have a nosy around, seeing a great blank grid of streets where the buildings themselves were still nothing
but plots or foundations. A glorious opportunity, she had thought, to get the place properly designed for flight, but no, they had all sorts of ideas about how the place should look, and had set
aside one dirty field on the outskirts for any luckless pilots who happened to come calling.
Backward thinking, that’s the problem
, she told herself. Now Solarno, her beautiful city beside the Exalsee, had at least made a game try at adapting itself to aviation. There were
a dozen private airfields, and the city itself was set into a rolling hillside so that all a flier had to do to get airborne was simply pitch off the edge. The houses immediately beneath such
jump-off points were always up for sale, she recalled. She couldn’t imagine why.
She had flown into a lot of cities in her time, especially after the Wasp Empire’s crawling tide of conquest had encompassed her home, driving her thence all the way along the western
coast to Collegium. This, however, was a new experience for her, and her heart caught in her mouth at the sheer daring of it.
But she lived for daring. What else was a pilot for, after all?
The
Esca Magni
was handling beautifully today. The new clockwork was as smooth as butter, measuring out its prodigious stored power with an unprecedented ease and response. It broke her
heart to admit it, but her previous machine, the nimble and much-mourned
Esca Volenti
, could not have matched her new
Magni
for speed, distance or agility in the air. If there was a
machine to challenge her in any contest, she had yet to find it, though the Collegium artificers were constantly nipping at her heels to provide one.
The thought still caught in her like a hook: recalling her poor faithful
Volenti
’s brutal fate. It had been during the retaking of Solarno, her band of mercenaries and air-pirates
against the Empire’s new-fledged air force. She had duelled their best pilot – dragon-fighting, they called it around the Exalsee, after the fierce aerial battles the Dragonfly-kinden
loved. He had been very good and, although she would not acknowledge him as her better, he had met her and met her, time and again, even though his black-and-yellow striped Spearflight had not been
equal to her
Volenti.
And at the last, with her machine torn and mauled and its rotary piercers jammed, she had taken advantage of his fixation on her, and baited him in too close, leaping from the cockpit before
their two fliers crashed and tangled, removing herself from the fight. She had watched, her own wings ablur, as the conjoined machines tumbled and fell – and felt as though she had killed her
best friend.
The
Esca Magni
was some consolation after that. The original design had sprung from the best of Collegium artifice and her own unparalleled understanding of the simple business of flying,
and never had there been a more demanding mistress for the artificers than te Schola Taki-Amre, known as Taki to her friends. Even a month ago, she had still been making minute changes to perfect
the new flier’s handling. The
Esca Magni
, as originally built, had surpassed the
Volenti
by a small but measurable degree – and there had been a great deal of measuring,
for the Collegium Beetles were fond of that.
Then had come the new clockwork – or the ‘New Clockwork’, to reflect the reverent way that the artificers talked about it. It involved some mad innovation in metallurgy from
somewhere across the sea, some Spiderlands place or other, and it was not exactly common but there was a steady supply of the improved spring steel seeping into Collegium. An artificer called
Gainer had begun using it for some boat he was working on, and shortly afterwards one of Taki’s mechanic disciples had brought it to her attention.
The level of precision required to take full advantage of the New Clockwork was formidable, but at around the same time, and apparently from the same source, Collegium began to see machine parts
crafted to a frightening exactness, perfect in every tooth no matter how small. The resulting engines were lighter, smaller and considerably more powerful than anything
anyone
had seen
before, and Taki had kicked an awful lot of shins in the College – and got up the noses of a great many ground-bound Beetle-kinden – before she secured a supply for the flying machines.
Thankfully, by then, she had her supporters: her students and a ragbag of Collegiates who shared her passion for the air.