The Air War (61 page)

Looking at the new pilots sent to her by the College, she felt old now, as if the gap between her days and Breaker’s was slender compared to what separated her from the tyros. Not just raw
time, of course, but distance measured in that compressed and saw-edged period she spent in the air, pitting her skills against the enemy and betting her life on it every time. It was a bastard of
a way to grow old, but she was beginning to feel it was the only way that she ever would.

The drone of her own craft’s Ear increased suddenly, and she spotted the enemy formation as moonbeams darted across them. She held off signalling until she saw them breaking up, splitting
off from the pack in readiness, and then sent terse flashes of light towards the fliers on her left and right, the coded orders now coming as naturally as speech.
Left climb, separate off,
attack. Right with me, follow, guard.
She had to hope that they had understood her, as she was beginning her attack run even then.

If only I could slow this moment down
. For of course she was flying into a chaos of vessels, bringing a wave-front of disorder that seemed to scatter the enemy ahead of her. There must be
a point where the onrush of the Collegiate Stormreaders impacting into the widening Farsphex formation was like a stone shattering glass.
Beautiful, it must be beautiful to witness, if only I
could.
But, being the stone, she had no such luxury.

She went after three targets, one after the other, loosing a brief burst of shot and then away, imagining the other Wasp pilots out of position – moving in to deflect an attack that was
only a feint. Yes, yes, they were in each other’s minds, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t fool them
all
with an elegant enough deception, and they were still bound by
the limits of speed and momentum and mechanical tolerance. Out of position was out of position, and all their mindlink would do was make them fully understand that they had got it wrong.

Now
. She had her target, chasing and chasing, and the Farsphex fleeing before her, with a tyro clinging to her back-right quarter, gamely following each twist and turn, and one of the
better Collegiate pilots – you know, that boy with the long hair and the smile – guarding from behind and above, waiting ready to fend off the inevitable counterstrike by the
Imperials.

And yet she seemed to have out-skipped them for the moment, the reprisal never coming, as she nipped and nipped away at the enemy, and the Farsphex flinging itself about the sky to keep her off
it, and it was almost like old times, in a duel over the Exalsee. As her hands threw the
Esca Magni
after her opponent, her mind could step back, admiring the nimbleness of the larger craft
in the air, reaching for that brotherhood of flier against flier that she had lived on and thrived on.

She was alive and awake and fierce, and knew joy, because she had forgotten Collegium, the lives at stake, the fires and the fear.
That
was what she missed most from the old days. Back
then she had nobody else she need care about. She never cared about her own life, and nobody else’s was at stake.

She realized that the pilot watching the skies above
wasn’t
that boy with the long hair, because he’d been killed three nights ago, a Wasp pilot’s bolt piercing his
cockpit even as he tried to cut in front of Taki for a killing shot. She had seen a flash of darkness as his blood sprayed the inside of the glass.

She also realized that she was wide of where she reckoned the main fight must be, and that nobody was coming to save her elusive target. Further realizations followed.

She flashed,
Break off, break off
, to both sides, and then, fumbling with the toggle,
Retreat, retreat
, even before she had wheeled back and scanned a sky that was far too empty.
What she could see of the enemy were scattered all over, and so few. Where were the reinforcements that always swooped in to save their fellows? Unless they were above the clouds, there were none
to be seen.

No, no no.
And she slung her
Esca
past the nearest Collegiate flight, flashing,
Retreat, retreat!
and knowing they must think her mad.

There was no code for ‘Gather other pilots’, and to spell it out would be too awkward and take too long. She plotted a course that might pass within sight of a few more, but that
would see her turned back towards Collegium, in the vain hope she might do some good. Then she was forcing every inch of tension from her engine, flitting through the sky with the ground below a
darkened blur.

The streets of Collegium were rushing below them sooner than Pingge had anticipated, lightless now, with even the windows blacked out, as if a single visible candle or lantern
would call down a fiery oblivion on the incautious.
And not too far from the truth.
She settled herself by the reticule, glanced into its lens, looked again out of the gaping hatch beside
her.

‘What the piss is
that
?’

She had a good look at it, in the moment before it opened up on them, for the Farsphex were coming in low to give the bombardiers the best run. Sitting on the roof of a building they were
passing was something like a ballista with a big circular magazine positioned behind the arms, set within a frame of steam-pistons that were abruptly thudding into life. Pingge couldn’t have
asked for a better demonstration of the device, and the only shame was that it was pointing at
them.

Pull up
, but the words died in her throat as the thing loosed, the magazine ratcheting round at a rate of knots, and the air was instantly full of big ten-foot bolts, falling upwards
towards the Farsphex in a killing rain, then lighting the night sky with their explosions, a thunder and a roar all around them. Scain cursed and fought the controls, pitching violently right so
that Pinggie slammed into the wall and almost ended up dangling out of the hatch.

‘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.