The Air War (71 page)

A moment later she was pelting towards the transports herself, aware that she had left her escape surely too late. Even as she thought it, though, one of the rugged wheeled vehicles slewed to an
untidy halt next to her, its open back crammed with her soldiers. She saw a young Beetle-kinden girl pedalling the mounted ballista around to face the enemy, while Gerethwy had his mechanized
snapbow resting on the back rail.

She leapt up, caught at an outstretched hand and was hauled in, even as the driver kicked the vehicle into motion again, wrestling with the gearings until they were grinding away satisfactorily
once more. She heard Gerethwy’s weapon discharge with a hammering
snap-snap-snap
. She had already opened her mouth to tell him to stop, that there was no point wasting ammunition at
this range, when the first of the enemy automotives had ploughed alongside them, clattering past on its nest of pistoning legs, in pursuit of one of the other transports.

Her mouth remained open.

Gerethwy trained his weapon on it, the snapbow bolts ricocheting hopelessly, without a chance of penetrating those thick armour plates. A moment later, the ballista loosed, the explosive bolt
leaping the narrow gap between the vehicles, to bloom and burst against the side of the enemy, knocking it off course a little but leaving only a soot mark and a shallow scar.

‘Down!’ someone called out, and then their own automotive rocked, veering dangerously towards the enemy machine beside them with its port wheels off the ground. Behind, receding,
ascended the plume of a near-miss, and beyond that another of the implacable enemy, getting up speed again.

‘Incredible!’ Gerethwy shouted. ‘Look how fast they accelerate! We couldn’t get up speed in twice that time!’ He shook his head, the student artificer in him
clearly taken by the things, however deadly they were. ‘Still, I’ll wager we’re faster on the flat—’

There was the sound of thunder from ahead and to their right, and they saw one of the other transports abruptly flip sideways, its rear axle and wheels disintegrating as it was caught by a low
shot from one of the pursuing enemy, and Gerethwy shut up, long face ashen. There had been bodies flung up in that moment, human ragdoll shapes revolving in the dust. Fellow soldiers, comrades,
people they knew.

The ballista was shooting again, loosing bolts back at the machines in their wake, every distraction or deviation winning them a few seconds’ grace.
If they did not have to stop to
shoot, we’d be done for
, Straessa realized. But Gerethwy had been right: now they had got up to speed they were pulling away, the two transports. Although a few more geysers of dust and
dirt fountained up nearby, the enemy was falling behind.

All they had won here was their lives. They had lost the earthmovers, lost the chance of preparing their ground properly, lost a third of their force or more.

And we have seen the enemy.
It was an uncertain blessing at best.

A small hand touched her arm, and she looked down to see Sartaea te Mosca. There was blood on the Fly’s fingers, and Straessa was surprised to find it was her own, from a shallow line cut
into her forearm by some errant shard of metal or broken stone.

‘Tell me something comforting,’ she said to the Fly, sitting down and letting the little woman smear a stinging ointment on the wound. But Sartaea te Mosca had nothing to say.

The woman who called herself Gesa – who had for most of her life borne the name Garvan and dressed like a Wasp-kinden man, but who was currently painted and disguised as
a halfbreed Beetle woman – was nothing if not a creature of dutiful field-craft. She had been given the means by which to leave messages for her superiors, and by which to receive orders. She
was not to be simply a maverick agent working on her own recognizance.

This she now regretted.

It had been imperative that she entered Collegium as a refugee carrying nothing to mark her as a spy. Once in the city, however, she had been able to buy or steal parts, working to a plan that
she had memorized. A little dirigible, its airbag no larger than a human head, was easy enough to arrange, and it seemed almost half the army around her was composed of students and engineers and
idle tinkerers. She had assembled her toy within plain sight.

That night she had crept to the camp’s perimeter and taken a turn as sentry. The Collegiates were not entirely lax in their security, and indeed their sentries, volunteers mostly, were
more diligent and keen than would be the bored, resentful Imperial regulars pressed into such a tedious job. However, they looked only outwards, and were more than happy to be relieved by another.
Gesa knew that the Collegiate camp was watched by Spider-kinden agents of the Aldanrael, who had kept pace with the Beetle force’s advance. Now she simply sat with her lantern on the ground
beside her, and moved her foot in front of it, just a nervous habit to any watcher within camp; but to the dark-adjusted eyes out there, it provided a simple code of bright and dark that told them
to expect a message.

At the third repetition, she’d had to hope that the spies had noticed her, for certainly no answering signal would be risked. As she had chosen a camp boundary with the breeze at her back,
she had simply let the tiny, dark-ballooned dirigible drift away, her crabbed reports tucked into its little basket.

Two days later, and she had received her orders in response. She had watched the little trench-digging force return in a great hurry, and depleted, all the eyes of the camp watching them. A few
hours after that, the camp still reeling from the news of the Imperial automotives, a further body was picked up by the Collegiate scouts. It was one of those who was believed left dead back at the
trenchworks, so the assumption was that the man had managed to stagger and crawl back towards his home camp, dying just out of sight of it. Any medical examination would give the lie to that, and
Gesa reckoned that very soon someone would be asking why a dead man had been dragged out and left so prominently within a mile of the camp. It was good odds that someone else – perhaps
Kymene, the Mynan general, who seemed one of the sharper blades around when it came to mistrusting people – would guess that some manner of message was intended.

By that time, Gesa had already taken her turn carrying the body, and found the folded message hidden in the dead man’s boot. By the time anyone started asking difficult questions, there
would be no evidence left for them to find.

It had all gone off very smoothly indeed, and she had experienced a flush of pride at being part of Army Intelligence, which had taken the time to devise dozens of such stratagems while the
Rekef just bickered and carried out purges and suffered from internal unrest.

Then she had read the orders.

She had reported to them earlier on the structure and the leadership of the Collegium camp, stating that they were divided irregularly, Maker’s Own Company into larger units, the Coldstone
into smaller, various hangers-on such as the Mynans operating each to their own; that they had no clear chain of command, with decisions being made by a council consisting of the Mynan leader, the
big Khanaphir, the two Company chief officers, and whoever they chose to invite along; that their infantry was well armed, armoured and supplied, but that their automotives looked hastily converted
for war. She had made plain, in her report, that she was well placed for a variety of mischief within the camp, as well as providing further reports when possible. There was no other Imperial agent
within the camp that she was aware of. She had made of herself a prized asset.

And they had thrown it all away. Here then was her order, and it was a kill list of majestic proportions, nothing more sophisticated than the thug’s work that her compatriots were tasked
with back inside the city. Amongst all the ingenuity they could have set her to, this was the result. All the names she had mentioned were echoed back to her, mocking.
Kill them. Kill them
all.

She was just one woman, and not a trained assassin. Yet here were the orders: kill Kymene, kill Amnon, kill Marteus, kill Elder Padstock, and a half-dozen other names along with them, work
enough for a whole team of specialists. Suicide for a single spy.

And that was exactly what these orders were, she realized. They were a death sentence pronounced on her, and finally she understood.

Her service, her beloved Army Intelligence, had overstepped the mark. By virtue of its efficiency, by the way its successes showed up others’ past failures, it had come under the red and
angry eye of the Rekef, and this was punishment for her and for who could know how many others. Orders that could not be carried out, inviting disobedience or outright failure. Elimination,
therefore, of those Intelligence agents who had shown themselves capable servants of the Empire.
I’ve been sold
, she thought numbly.
After all my work, just sold down the road, cast
off.
Cherten, she realized, must be a Rekef man after all, one of many, surely, ensconced within Intelligence ranks. Despite the stakes, despite the battle to come, the Rekef had not changed at
all since the last war. It was more concerned with infighting than with the Empire’s success.

For a moment the mad thought gripped her – to run, head for Capitas, expose the whole shabby plot to . . . But there was nobody to whom she could go, and Capitas was the haunt of General
Brugan, whose vengeful hand lay all over these orders.

She could ignore the commands. She could pretend she had never received them. Unless there
was
another agent, who had seen her take them. Now that the breath of the Rekef was on the back
of her neck, she suspected everyone and everything.

Or she could obey, take at least a bite out of that kill list, and surely die in return, unknown and despised by friend and enemy alike.

She crumpled up the orders, then found a fire to consign them to, but she could not burn them out of her mind.

General Brugan had slept well last night, for the first time in months, in fact. The Empress had called him to her bed, but their lovemaking had been markedly different. He
could almost persuade himself that all those memories, the nights of terror and helpless desire, had been just a nightmare. Seda had behaved as the demure Imperial wife that befitted a
general’s station, anxious to please, demure and needful.

He had not gloated, nor mistreated her. What need to, when she was telling him that he had won?

With Vecter and Harvang, and Harvang’s man Ostrec, and all the other willing tools who had flocked to Brugan’s banner, it had been a simple piece of Rekef machination to isolate the
Empress. Her favourites had been arrested, men such as Gjegevey now peopling the cells below the palace and waiting for Brugan to decide how best to dispose of them. Palace staff and higher-ranking
functionaries of dubious loyalty had been redeployed, or sometimes just made to disappear. A silent coup had taken place, for the good of the Empire. Seda, who had momentarily escaped from the role
that Brugan – and history – had intended for her, was now back in her place.

And the rest of it – the blood, the nights, the queasy, squeamish terror of it all – he could forget. He could write it off as an aberration, the pressure of office overwhelming the
woman’s mind for a moment, but now put right. Even on his way to meet with Harvang and the others, with a half-dozen men at his back, Brugan paused a moment and shook his head, feeling
unsettled.

All done with
, he promised himself.
All dealt with. It’s over.

And, of course, with the resumption of the world’s ways came the chance to deal with other irritations that had crept up on him while he had been distracted. It was true that the last war
had torn some holes in the cloak the Rekef cast over the Empire and beyond, what with Brugan and his two rivals struggling against one another for control. Now it was time to stitch them closed
again, to draw down the impenetrable Rekef veil of fear and secrecy, and to cut off whatever might try to crawl through the gaps. Such as Army Intelligence: those upstarts, the second sons, who had
always been little more than a mouthpiece for the Rekef’s views, hands to undertake the tasks the Rekef disdained, and a source of convenient placements for Rekef agents. They had got above
themselves. Without a stern Rekef eye on them, they had begun to imagine that they could actually
do the Rekef’s job.

Brugan knew his proper priorities. The Empire must be protected from its enemies from without, of course – a task that was usually pursued proactively – but more importantly the
Empire must be protected from internal strife. The status quo must be defended, and Army Intelligence had begun to make ripples. If they had simply been the clowns they were supposed to be, then no
harm would have been done, but they had committed the cardinal error of succeeding, and too many people had been left wondering about the Rekef’s power and influence, and questioning the
stranglehold it maintained on the Empire. Something had needed to be done, but thankfully there was a longtime Rekef man heading up Intelligence for the Second Army. As soon as Solarno was taken
and General Tynan’s people took over the westward push, Brugan could ensure that Intelligence had its teeth pulled, firmly and fatally.

‘General.’

He acknowledged the salute of the soldier, one of the palace staff. ‘Report.’

‘Message from Colonel Harvang, sir.’

I’m on my way to meet the fat fool now
, Brugan reflected.
What is it that can’t wait?

‘He says to tell you, sir, the orders have gone to General Roder and the Eighth.’

Brugan stopped, staring at the man. ‘Orders to the Eighth from Harvang? What orders?’

‘Forgive me, sir, I don’t know.’ Receiving the full attention of the general of the Rekef was plainly more than the man was comfortable with.

What is Harvang playing at?
The unexpected always put Brugan on the defensive, if only because there should be no room for it in a spymaster’s life. He waved the messenger away
irritably, and doubled his pace. The possibility that, now the Rekef was firmly holding the reins again, there might be some challenge from the ranks had already occurred to him, and Harvang was
certainly the leading contender, especially as he and his little catamite had done so much of the work in putting Seda in her place.
But I had looked for more time to consolidate than this.
Brugan ran a quick mental inventory of assets within the palace – those who were loyal, those who were for hire – and by his reckoning Harvang possessed nowhere near the support the man
would have needed to strike now. Besides, Vecter would never back him, just as Harvang would never back Vecter: a rivalry that Brugan had always encouraged.
So this is perhaps his first ranging
shot, to see how I will react. And if it’s more, well . . .
The men in formation behind him were a mere formality, of course, but a Rekef general’s orders would suffice to have them
kill a mere Rekef colonel, of that he was sure.