The Air War (22 page)

‘Fliers!’ someone shouted, and neither Stenwold nor Kymene were naive enough to think they meant the Mynan machines. Stenwold had his glass out first, quickly finding the circling
dots that were rising from behind the main Wasp force. A moment later he passed it grimly to Kymene. The sleek, brutal lines of the Imperial Spearflights were hard to mistake, and he counted at
least a score of them taking to the air.

‘Get the air defences ready,’ Kymene snapped out, but they both knew the wall engines were designed to keep off an assault by the Light Airborne, not to be pitched against swift and
highflying orthopters.

‘Everyone to arms,’ was her next order, quietly now, to be taken by her scouts and scattered throughout the city. Stenwold saw the Ants of the Maynesh contingent already arrayed
before the gate, awaiting the traditional start of hostilities that the Wasps had already disdained. Another impact smashed into a street behind them, far closer, so that the screams and cries were
clearly audible. So far all the impacts, within and without, had been solid shot, but Stenwold guessed that was only for ranging, just as he supposed that, once the first missile touched near the
wall, all the engines out there would be adopting the same trajectory, both Wasp positions beginning a sustained bombardment by way of some artifice he did not understand.

Edmon’s flier was named the
Pacemark
from the white stripes on the underside of its forewings that flashed pale with each upbeat. It was a solid, barrel-bodied
orthopter, the front wings of light wooden slats interwoven, the rear just silk over a frame, with a cross-sectioned tail for stability. A pair of rotary piercers flanked and disfigured the cockpit
at the fore, cramping the seat and obscuring the view, but they were far more efficient than the old repeating ballistae that many of his comrades still sported.

The ground crew wheeled his machine out, and he was already thanking his luck that he had rewound the engine himself just an hour ago. It was a nervous habit that infuriated the mechanics, but
it meant he had a fully tensioned spring, ready to leap into the air. All about him, across the Robannen Square airfield, other machines of various shapes and designs were being brought into the
light, whilst the handful that had already been out in the open air from patrol were being refuelled or rewound.

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.