The Air War

Twenty

‘You must do something to control your Mynans,’ Jodry said, around a mouthful of honeybread. Although most of his face was engaged in eating, his eyebrows contrived to glare at Stenwold meaningfully.

‘They’re not my Mynans.’ Stenwold had no appetite, as he stood by the window of Jodry’s office and stared out at the city, trying desperately to calculate rates of advance. He had received a message by ship from Laszlo, at last, which meant that he could at least assure the man’s extended family of rogues and pirates that he was still alive. The contents of the message more than offset the relief, though, for General Tynan’s Second and his Spider allies were practically tearing up the coast towards Collegium.

At the same time, he had received word that the Eighth Army, which had taken Myna, was already past Helleron, meaning all chance of stoppering the bottle on the Empire was already gone while the Assembly debated and the Merchant Companies recruited. The Sarnesh had sent ambassadors to Collegium, but not to debate. Malkan’s Folly was manned and ready for the Empire, with a Sarnesh army already mustering in the city to mount an attack as soon as the Eighth got bogged down in besieging the fortress. The Sarnesh had told the Assembly, somewhat patronizingly, that this was a soldier’s war, and real soldiers would deal with it.

And then there were the Mynans…

‘Well, you brought them here,’ Jodry pointed out.

‘Speak to Kymene.’

‘ You speak to her. She scares the sandals off me,’ Jodry muttered. ‘Looks at me like she’s trying to work out what possible good I am. Murderer’s eyes, that one.’

‘Her city’s back under the black and gold,’ Stenwold pointed out, somewhat testily. ‘It’s not a situation to inspire levity.’

‘But if she wants to work with us to liberate the place, she has to work with us, and so do that rabble of pilots you pulled in, and all their soldiers who’ve turned up at our gates. Little Mistress Aviator’s been training our fliers to work together: formations, tactics, all that sort of thing. She seems to think that’s all very important. Now your Mynans are on the scene and, yes, they have more flying experience than our lads and lasses, what with all that scrapping about on the border over the last year, but they won’t do what they’re told, and Mistress Taki, for reasons of her own, won’t tell them either, and our own pilots are frankly scared of being in the air with them because nobody knows what they’ll do next. And while we’re trying to train them to work alongside our people, they’re trying to wing off to hunt Wasps that, frankly, aren’t even here yet. Either they’re flying off without orders or authorization, or they’re bullying our ground crew into keeping their personal Stormreaders wound and ready, as if the Empire’s already at the gates.’

‘Jodry, if you’d seen Myna, you wouldn’t want to be caught unprepared either, believe me.’

‘Oh, I know, but then you don’t have to listen to Corog Breaker moaning about how it’s impossible to get them even to march in step.’

‘Why would they…? What’s Corog Breaker got to do with it?’ Stenwold pictured the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum. ‘He’s a pilot?’

‘Well actually he is a pilot, thankfully, but mostly he’s a disciplinarian,’ Jodry said primly. ‘And he’s trying to make your Mynans part of a team.’

‘They’re not-’

‘They are. I’m making them yours. You’re now official liaison with the Mynan exiles. I, as Speaker, command this. There, it’s done.’

Stenwold looked at him as mutinously, no doubt, as the Mynan pilots were even now looking at Corog Breaker. The man’s logic was faultless, however. ‘Do you have any idea how much else I have to do?’ he complained, somewhat wretchedly. ‘The committees, the engagements, the planning? I’d forgotten how this city runs its wars on bureaucracy.’

‘Yes, I know,’ the Speaker’s calm slipped a little, ‘Stenwold the martyr. You’ll never know the problems of yours that I’ve solved without your ever hearing of them, because you were in Myna or off mooning over that Sea-kinden woman of yours. But now you’re the War Master, whether you like it or not. During peacetime I could keep you on a long leash because you’d done good work for the city, sterling work, and you’d earned the right to thumb your nose at our committees and our paperwork. Now it’s war again, and you yourself proposed the vote, and you will not simply stride about in a breastplate and leave all the organization to me. I need you, and Collegium needs you. And that means at all hours…’ Jodry’s words ground to a halt, for Stenwold was no longer listening to him. ‘What?’

‘Quiet,’ Stenwold told him, already at the window and throwing the shutters open.

Jodry goggled at him. ‘Stenwold, what-?’

‘You hear it?’

‘I don’t…’ Jodry lapsed into silence, and the two men waited. In the air was a distant, ever-increasing drone. ‘They’re training in the Stormreaders…?’

‘Clockwork engines don’t sound like that,’ Stenwold said quietly, as the sound built — still far off but not as far as it had been a moment ago. The buzz of engines on the air: many engines.

A moment later and Stenwold was bolting from the room, the door slamming open as he shouldered into it, leaving Jodry staring after him, his mouth working soundlessly.

‘Advance! Advance! Forward! Form shooting lines, two… no.. ’ Chief Officer Marteus swore under his breath, holding on to his calm by the slenderest of threads. ‘Two lines, one shooting over the other. You — Fly-kinden — get to the front. What’s the point of you standing there when the Beetle kneeling in front of you’s still taller?’

The shooting line had dissolved into chaos, and Marteus felt that same anger rising in him that had seem him leave Tark so ignominiously, years before. It had served him well enough when the Vekken had come to Coldstone Street, or when the Wasps’ Light Airborne were jumping the walls, but training his new recruits was rubbing his temper raw, and any moment now he was going to explode in a wholly unprofessional manner.

‘Back to where you were!’ he snapped at them, seeing the motley squad of a score and ten new-minted soldiers stumble and jostle their way across the square. People were watching, he was well aware, lolling out of windows to chuckle — people who didn’t have the guts to enlist themselves, but were content simply to criticize and laugh.

‘Now, forward! At the trot, come on!’ This time they managed it, and stopped approximately when he ordered. ‘Shooting line, loose!’ he bellowed hoarsely, hearing the ragged chorus of retorts from their snapbows — charged but not loaded. ‘Now charge, and loose again!’

That was hoping for too much. Half of them managed a decent turn of speed with the weapons, even miming slotting the bolt in. The others were still fumbling as the first half were shooting. ‘No!’ Marteus roared. ‘No! Stop!’ His voice was failing. Ant-kinden did not have to shout at one another. The old days of service in his home city were suddenly an unexpected source of nostalgia. ‘You shoot as one. Individual shots kill individual soldiers. Shoot together and you stop their advance dead. Ask the Sarnesh — it’s what smashed their line at the Battle of the Rails, and it’s what stopped the Jaspers dead at Malkan’s Folly, eh? Back to where you were.’

They ran through the exercise again, got to the same point, half the squad out of position, some fumbling, some shooting. Marteus’s voice cracked under the force of his invective and he turned away to take a swig from his waterskin. His ears rang to shouting, however, and for a moment he thought it was still his, or perhaps some private drill officer within his own head.

But no: a woman’s voice. He lowered the skin, looking round. One of his recruits had plainly endured as much as she could take, too. She was stalking along the line, bellowing in a high, clear voice at the others, correcting their stance, lining them up. ‘Come on, you maggots!’ he heard her shouting. ‘You’re embarrassing your city! That’s it! Bows level and straight — that means you too, Lucco, no enemy down near your feet — ready to loose…?’ And by this time she had realized what she was saying, and that Marteus was staring at her.

She was a lean, spare woman, some Spider halfbreed sort, and she did not back down before his stare, but simply adopted a stave-straight soldier’s stance. ‘Chief Officer,’ she said and, in those non-committal words he reckoned she’d learned more of soldiering than half the men he’d served with in the Vekken siege.

‘You think you can give orders better than I can?’ he demanded.

‘No, Chief, but I think I can listen better than these.’

Halfbreeds, thought Marteus, but the Coldstone Company had never been choosy and, besides, only around half his recruits were Beetle-kinden. Someone was shaming Collegium, but it wasn’t these, who at least had taken up the snapbow or the pike to defend their surrogate home. ‘Go ahead,’ he told the woman, ‘show me.’

She nodded, surprised and abruptly nervous, but turned back to her fellows. ‘Loose!’ she ordered, and the bows snapped dutifully. ‘Recharge — that’s it, wind steady and you’ll not fumble it. Gerethwy, Barstall, hold your shot — you too, Master Maldredge. When you see three in four up and pointed — now — loose!’ She risked a glance at Marteus, but his face remained as impassive as only an Ant’s could be. ‘Ready to receive a charge!’ she hazarded, and the half-dozen Inapt they had with them — Mantis-kinden mostly — were shouldering forwards. ‘No, not round — cut between like we practised — and why aren’t you recharging your bows? — and — loose! Pikes at the ready!’

She turned, still in the midst of the tableau she had created, the pikemen in the second and third ranks bracing their weapons, whilst the rows of snapbowmen were recharging now without being told, raggedly but not so far out of step with one another.

‘Your name?’ Marteus demanded. He heard one of the other recruits snigger — a tall grey-skinned creature of some lanky kinden he had never seen before.

‘Straessa, Chief Officer — called the Antspider,’ the halfbreed reported, reverting to her blank soldier’s demeanour.

And she knows all their names, Marteus thought. Another knack that Ant-kinden never needed to learn. ‘Right. Subordinate Officer Antspider.’ He made the decision quickly, the words rushing out before he could regret them. ‘You drill your friends here another dozen times, then break.’ Does this mean I need more subordinates? Probably. Does that mean I need rank badges, like the Empire has? Almost certainly. Ant-kinden needed no rank badges, of course. Everyone knew who everyone else was.

‘Right, back to where we were!’ the new Subordinate Officer ordered, and cuffed the tall man as he passed. ‘No bloody smirking, Gerethwy, this is war…’

She stopped speaking, the certainty in her voice draining away. ‘Chief…?’

‘What is it?’

‘Are they ours?’

She was looking upwards, and Marteus — and everyone else — followed her gaze.

Black shapes were passing over the city against the insistent drone of engines, low enough that they could see the flickering wings of orthopters. No strange sight perhaps, given how hard the aviators were training, but these flew in formation, and they were many.

‘Clear the square!’ Marteus shouted, and he heard his new junior officer seconding him. ‘Make for the College.’ There was no great rationale in that, save that he could think of nothing else to suggest.

‘Wheel left!’ Corog Breaker shouted. ‘Fly straight. Wheel right — keep that distance! You’re moving apart.’

He had a better voice for it than Marteus ever did, honed by bellowing across classrooms and foundries and tavernas. The Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum was now teaching discipline to airmen rather than fencing to students.

His class consisted of a score of men and women, some of the local Beetle-kinden — new recruits and the graduates of Taki’s aviation classes — and the others a motley pick of the Mynan newcomers. He had them jogging about the airfield at a fair pace, making formations, manoeuvring on foot, trying to instil into them a basic understanding of working together. The task was frustrating and slow, but if there was one thing that Breaker was good for, it was shouting at length.

‘Back into formation!’ he yelled, but two or three of the Mynans had just broken off, running about the field and obviously taking the piss, he reckoned, by miming an attack on some of the grounded aircraft. ‘Form up!’ he shouted. ‘Everyone, ranks before me! What do you think you’re doing?’

The ‘ranks’ his class formed were split, the Mynans clumped together at one end, and a noticeable gap between them and the Collegiate fliers, who were mostly considerably younger and somewhat scared of them. Corog Breaker was older and scared of nothing, however, and he stomped up to them, glowering.

‘Why aren’t we in the air, Master Breaker,’ demanded one of them — Edmon, he thought. They always used his title, since he insisted on it, but they gave it a decidedly derisive spin.

‘Because in the air you can’t hear me shouting at you,’ Breaker snapped back.

‘We want to fight Wasps.’ This was Franticze, the stocky Bee-kinden woman and his worst discipline problem. ‘This is a waste of time.’

‘You think we’d let you fight the Wasps, alongside our pilots?’ Breaker demanded. It was his best card, when working with them, and he saw them scowl and shuffle, saw the sudden fear in their eyes that they might be excluded, cast aside. ‘If you can’t work with us, then you’re liabilities, and no Stormreaders for you,’ he informed them sharply.

‘Flying in combat, it is not like this,’ Edmon said quietly, with an almost guilty look at the Collegiate pilots, their youth and uncertainty.

‘Well, in the future it will be,’ Breaker told him. ‘Discipline in the air, just like discipline on the ground. Armies are built on it. Ask the Ant-kinden.’

‘I never saw an Ant pilot worth a curse,’ Franticze muttered, but a brief gesture from Edmon silenced her.

‘Try it again. Follow Pendry Goswell here: turn when she turns, keep your distance, show me you can do it,’ Breaker invited, gesturing for a solid Beetle girl, one of Collegium’s better fliers, to take the lead. As the airmen moved off, he retreated to lean against a grounded orthopter.

‘Don’t say it,’ he growled from the corner of his mouth.

‘They’re right.’ Taki was sitting atop the machine. Her Esca had come in an hour before and she was watching the ground crew finish winding the motor. ‘Air combat’s too fast.’

‘They’re going to end up shooting our people down, or the other way around. They way they fly, nobody knows where they’ll go.’

‘How do you think they got out of Myna…?’ Taki lifted her head abruptly, frowning. ‘Corog…?’

There were some startled cries from the Collegiate students. The Mynans had broken formation and were pounding across the field, shouting at one another. Breaker saw Franticze take to the air, a flash of her wings dropping her neatly into the Stormreader that she had reserved. The others were grappling their way into other machines, all those that they had chosen for themselves — against his orders — and fought off all comers for, now painted with the double red darts of Myna.

‘What…?’ Breaker began, but some of the Mynans were already starting up their motors, shouting at the ground crew to get clear, wings folding out and lifting up with the first motion of the clockwork. ‘Stop that! What do you think you’re…?’

But then the sound impinged on him, the drone of engines from on high. He turned to Taki, but she was already across the field and scrambling into the seat of her Esca Magni.

With a deep buzz of wings and fire, fixed-wing fliers began to pass overhead, a flight of a half-dozen immediately above, but there were others elsewhere over the city. From somewhere close by there was a flash, a boom immediately afterwards, as the ground shook. A moment later smoke was rising.

‘Get my machine ready to take off! Now!’ Breaker shouted. ‘Get in the air!’ He waved madly to the students, relieved to see that half of them at least were already following the Mynans’ lead, orders or not.

The Esca Magni leapt into the air, Taki bringing the machine off the ground lopsidedly in her haste, desperate to gain the air before..

Myna all over again. She registered the explosion without really seeing or hearing it, some consensus of the senses simply informing her. Where was that? That was the field over Luker Street ways. Of course the Empire would try for the same targets: strip Collegium of its air defences: destroy the Beetle orthopters on the ground, and who could defy them? And all the while the question kept hammering away in the back of her mind: Where did the piss-cursed bastards come from? How had the Empire infiltrated a force of fliers within strike of the city, and nobody knew of it?

She watched as the enemy machines banked ahead of her, almost following the line of the street below as they sought their target. They were not the familiar Spearflights, she registered. These were fixed-wing fliers, and almost twice the size of the Imperial orthopters she was used to. Not strange to her, though, because…

For a moment, as she rammed the Esca into a higher gear to close with them, she was back in Capitas — her one and only visit there — watching Axrad die.

Farsphex, the name came to her. The new machines that Axrad had been so insistent that she saw. So what did she recall about the Farsphex?

She recalled that it wasn’t a fixed-wing at all.

She saw it then, as she raced in towards them, eating up the sky between her and the enemy. A pair of Stormreaders was coming in from her left quarter with the same intention — some training patrol returning to the city to find it attacked in their absence. They had the right line of approach, diving from on high, practically out of the sun, but the Imperials saw them nonetheless, their close formation breaking apart into a scatter of separate machines, and abruptly those rigid wings were kicked into a blur, instantly gaining that essential agility in the air that a fixed-wing flier could never aspire to.

Taki picked her target, taking a course that would bring her between the fleeing Farsphex and its comrades, separating it out in preparation for a quick kill. She tried a rapid look left and right, to see how her allies were disposed, catching a glimpse of a scatter of ascending machines from the airfield she had just quit: The Mynans defending the field, letting the others launch. She saw more enemy, too. She reckoned two flights of probably more than half a dozen, and the smoke from the far side of the city told of a third at least.

Then she was yanking the stick over to the right, registering the glitter of rotary bolts sleeting past her, turning the Esca almost on a wingtip. The Farsphex she had gone after had simply run for it — no attempt to double back or engage — but two of its comrades were right on top of her. They had underestimated how nimble her little machine was, and for a moment the three of them shared an uncomfortably small patch of sky as she bolted back between them. Then she had negotiated another turn, feeling every stay and bolt of the Esca thrum with it, and she was behind them, opening up with her rotaries, scoring a few desultory hits as her target — the leftmost — slid sideways in the air out of her sights. The other Wasp craft lifted away, seeking height, but Taki knew she had time to pin its friend down before it could come back for her Except that its other friend, the one she had originally marked, was already returning to the fray, its line on her imperfect but enough to put her off her attack, the flashing hail of its bolts forcing her to abandon her own assault and pull away. Craning over her shoulder, peering past the sleek flank of her machine, she saw the three of them regroup into formation, not coming after her but seeking out their ground targets.

She swore. It was a display of coordination such as she had never seen, not in Solarno nor here, certainly not amongst Imperial pilots. She was struck painfully by the way they handled their machines: not superlative skill but a purely workmanlike ability, such as any Apt artisan or footsoldier could have learned, save that they worked together so well that Corog Breaker would weep to see it.

Taki cut a wide arc over the city, trying to take stock of the fluid situation. The field she had lifted off from was unbombed, and she saw that the Mynans — their red-painted Stormreaders identifiable even at this distance — were sallying out over the city. Some of the Collegiate machines were still circling, waiting to stave off the next bombing run, whilst others were heading across the rooftops, not looking to engage but finding other vulnerable points to defend. Somebody had slapped some sense of tactics into them: someone equipped with a heliograph and a good grasp of the flash-codes had disseminated some useful orders.

Taki threw the Esca across the city. She had lost the trio that had been sparring with her, but she saw another flight moving over Collegium’s centre, and for a moment she feared that they were going to drop their explosive cargo over the domes and spires of the Amphiophos. A moment’s reconsideration showed her that they were moving in on one of the other fields — their targets purely practical, with no thought for symbolism. Not yet. Six against one, but she gave the Esca its head, the fastest thing in the skies as far as she was concerned, climbing as she approached them so that she could make a perfect dive on them. They would see her too late, and probably the one she was stooping on would never see her at all. Except they did — they all did.

Just like before, they were scattering. Her target kept its wings fixed and used all the speed it had, not quite outpacing her even then, but she was only able to clip it a few times before its comrades were on her, transformed from swift fixed-wings to dancing orthopters in a moment. For a moment she seemed to be surrounded by their shot as she dodged and sidestepped in the sky, five of them fighting for the privilege of bringing her down, and surely they would touch wingtips at any moment, slap each other out of the sky in their eagerness.

She was worried now. She had not felt like this since… She had never felt like this before, not while in the seat of a good orthopter. She lived for flight. Even facing down Axrad over Solarno, she had not felt like this. This was all wrong: enemy fliers who came from nowhere, flying with such coordination. Breaker had been right about what would win an aerial war, but neither had guessed that the Empire had been so far ahead of them.

She bared her teeth. I am better than all of you! The Esca could do things that even the Stormreaders could not, let alone these big Farsphex machines. If she fought the controls with sufficient dogged determination and contrived to ignore the insistent demands of aeronautics for just a moment, backing her wings so that their joints squealed, she could even fly backwards.

It was an innovative theory, at the speed she was going, but she felt only confidence as she rammed the stick backwards and disengaged the wing gearing for a second — the vanes beating at ten times the usual speed, for a few crazed seconds, as their gears meshed with nothing — before trying to back them.

The manoeuvre was a qualified success. She dropped like a stone for a moment, seemingly having no control whatsoever, and the Farsphex pack must have assumed that she had been hit, abandoning her immediately to go in pursuit of their next target. A moment later she had her wings working — forwards still and not backwards at all, and almost went through someone’s roof as she struggled to regain the sky, coming up behind them and catching the trailing Farsphex with a solid handful of bolts that at least made it judder in the air.

Then she was not alone. Left and right there were Storm-readers with red-painted wings. They attacked as individuals, and she joined them by instinct, not even thinking it through. That saved them, she decided later. The air discipline of the Wasps was such that their flight would have outmatched an attack by a rigid formation, but Taki and her flanking allies each had different ideas as to what they were going to do, three entirely uncoordinated strikes by skilled pilots in top-class fighting orthopters.

They still failed to bring one down. The Farsphex were away again, splitting up and fixing their wings for extra speed if they were pursued. They refused to engage or to fight the aerial duels that Taki had been dreaming of ever since Solarno. Those not pursued were already wheeling back to come to the aid of their comrades. Taki could almost taste the frustration of the Mynans as they did everything they could to latch onto their enemy, only to be driven off again and again.

Then the Farsphex flight was abruptly coming together — all of them, flocking from every quarter of the city to rise in a dark column of machines, massing over the very centre of Collegium.

To strike where? But there was nothing in their disposition that hinted at their target. Taki skated her Esca across the face of their rising formation, pulling her orthopter round in as tight a turn as she could, because they were about to break and she wanted them in front of her and not behind. In mid-wheel she did her best to locate the other Collegiate fliers, flashing a quick signal for Form on me! and hoping that somebody would see it. She had company even before she had finished her turn, a full half-dozen Stormreaders converging on her, cutting a wider arc in the air so as to match her when she drove back at the Imperials. She noted four Mynans — Edmon and three others she couldn’t name. Keeping pace were two of Collegium’s own, and she knew them, from the way they flew, as the Goswell girl and the Fly-kinden, Haldri. It hardly counted as overwhelming odds, but the other local machines were scattered all about the sky, some hanging back to defend the airfields still, others just adrift over the city, losing the thread of the fight, lost over their own home.

The Imperial formation broke up, as she knew it would, and abruptly they were all moving as one, like fish shoaling, heading for the College district.

Attack. It was a pitiful signal to be sending, but she had already decided that, whatever the Wasps were after, she was committed to opposing it. She let the Esca race ahead, knowing that the others were still with her, left and right. She wanted to say a great deal more, to explain that the Farsphex pack would split once she attacked, some turning to meet her while the others pressed on with their mission. The Collegiate flash-codes were a language of few words, though. She had to trust that they would predict the future as well as she did.

She had the trigger pressed even before she was in range, seeing their pattern shift into carefully orchestrated chaos, orthopters peeling off and swinging back towards her from above and from either side. At least half their force was casting itself lightly over the College now, turning in unison to find their target.

Taki swore and dived after them, still shooting, trusting to her swift flying, to the Esca ’s nimbleness against the larger machines. A scatter of bolts sprayed past her, leaving a single finger’s-width hole in one wing. Around and behind her, the handful of Stormreaders engaged, fearless by necessity.

She was closing now, watching the craft ahead of her, seeing how their attack run forced them to become predictable, killable, if just for a moment. But then, so did hers as she tunnel-visioned in on them, desperate for a kill that might make them break off. Even as the silvery trail of her shot swept in towards a flier in the midst of their formation, piercer bolts were abruptly hammering into her fuselage, the physical impact rocking her, knocking the Esca ’s tail sideways, spoiling her aim and making her entire orthopter slew in the air. She cursed, wrestling to get back on target, close now, closer than she had wanted. She actually saw the first bombs drop.

Then another bolt cracked into the engine mounting behind her, the next shattered a pane of her cockpit window, skinning a line of pain down her shoulder as it vanished into her seat. She threw the Esca sideways instinctively, the city beneath her opening up in flames as the bombs struck. She had left it too long, made herself too much of a target. She was going to die.

But she lived. The Esca suffered a riddled wing, silk parting, wood slats fracturing as the bolts tore into it, but the expected lethal shock never came. Her machine dropped involuntarily towards the flames before she could catch it, and the Farsphex that had been after her coursed overhead, banking in the air to dodge the incoming shot of one of the Mynans, who was slinging his Stormreader through the air like a madman to keep another two Imperial machines off his tail.

The Esca regained its hold on the air, and she saw the sky above her turned into a madness of wheeling, duelling orthopters. Instantly she was dragging back on the stick, fighting upwards to take her place there but, even as she did, she knew she was too late.

One of the Mynans lost a wing suddenly, the Stormreader coming apart as a Farsphex ripped into it from an unexpected angle. The next second, the stricken machine was whirling past Taki, spinning like a top with its one wing still beating. Taki was shooting by then, setting up a stream of bolts and then trying to find a target to bring it to bear on. Their bombing run had been disrupted now, but the Wasps had decided to make a fight of it at last, bolstering their impeccably coordination with two-to-one odds.

She had a direct line on one of the enemy and, just for a moment, gave it a solid couple of seconds of shot and saw it lurch in the air, shuddering. The bombs that had been cascading from its undercarriage, as regular as ants from a hill, abruptly stopped though the machine flew on. Then she was dancing and dodging through the air as a couple of the enemy came for her, keeping out of the way of their aim but unable to fight back. She saw Edmon’s Stormreader spiralling upwards, chasing one of the enemy even as another tried to bring him down. In the next instant, Pendry Goswell was scudding past them, scoring a couple of strikes as she did, but she was lurching in the air, her machine already damaged, the beat of her wings erratic. A moment later they simply stopped, some vital piece of clockwork slipping its train, and Taki watched her helpless and achingly graceful arc as her stalled machine fell into its final dive.

Then, and all together, the Imperial machines were on the run — or at least they were evading pursuit, taking off with wings fixed and heading east. We’ve driven them away! Taki exalted, but almost immediately she guessed that the Empire was simply heading to refuel. So where are they going? If they had built a nest so close to the city, then these attacks could be an hourly occurrence.

She sent the Esca after them without even thinking about it, and when she glanced around she saw three Stormreaders joining her in the pursuit, two with Mynan colours and one of the more ambitious local pilots, looking like Corog Breaker himself by the way he flew.

Behind them, smoke rose from a handful of points across Collegium, and Taki felt that she was escaping a report on the damage, as much as chasing the enemy. What did we lose? What people, what machines? And if the Mynans hadn’t been so paranoid as to have their machines standing by at all hours, how much more might we have lost? It was not that the Mynans had known what was going to happen, of course. It was just that, this once, their particular breed of fearful, vengeful craziness had turned out to be entirely justified.

The chase went on for barely fifteen minutes, the Imperials pulling ahead noticeably, forcing Taki to admire the design that allowed them to switch from fixed to mobile wings — and so fluidly! She had seen it, or half-seen it, in Capitas but she had underestimated the applications of the idea.

But, still, they must have a base around here somewhere. Where’s the Wasps’ nest, eh? But the distance between hunters and prey only increased, and the Collegiate orthopters were beginning to tire, springs losing their strength, wings working with less of a will.

The last glimpse Taki had of the Farsphex that day showed them still heading solidly eastwards, with no suggestion at all that they were about to land.