The Air War

Thirty-Six

The tent of Chief Officer Marteus looked spartan, with merely a bedroll slung in one corner and a wooden stand for the man’s armour. No map table, for he held his plans in his head, and sharing them with others was not something he was good at. No chair even: he would sit on the floor with his soldiers. Only the fact that he had a tent to himself showed any indication of rank.

Straessa had been called in without warning at first light, and she was not sure whether she had done something wrong. Certainly there had been a fair amount of larking around amongst her troops, which she had hoped was good for morale, or some similar military virtue, for she was not the right officer to quell it.

‘Subordinate Officer the Antspider,’ Marteus acknowledged her with a nod. The renegade Tarkesh Ant was in full uniform: breastplate and buff coat, even the lobster-tail helm dangling from one hand as though he would don it any moment and charge off to war alone.

‘Chief Officer Marteus.’ Straessa could not say that she liked this man overmuch: he was distant and unsociable, as most Ants were in the company of other kinden. Her respect for him, though, had only grown, for he was so much more the born warrior and logistician than the Collegium locals.

‘We’ll engage the enemy tomorrow, most likely,’ he told her. ‘They’re keeping a steady progress and, if they chose, they could hit us before dawn, or earlier. They made a fierce pace from Tark to the Felyal. We don’t know precisely what time they could manage, if they pushed.’

‘I understand, Chief.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Battle order, Sub. Bitter as it is to have to spell it out for you, but there’s none of you who could work it out for yourself or take it from my mind. It’s a simple plan, though. Just keep repeating it to yourself until it sinks in.’ He was overdoing the gruff, and that made Straessa nervous. ‘The automotives are going to form our wings, flying out left and right to assault the enemy in the flanks. Some will carry light artillery, others just troops. They will do their best not to engage the enemy automotives, for reasons you’ll understand full well.’

‘Yes, Chief.’

‘Their objective is the enemy siege train, specifically anything that looks like a giant leadshotter. That’s the word from the Mynans for what took their walls down. From what they say, the Second won’t need to get that much closer to Collegium’s walls in order to deploy them. As for our centre, you’re it.’

Straessa digested all this, standing very still, her face carefully calm, while she played it out in her mind against the backdrop of the desperate retreat from the entrenching works. The more she thought calmly about it, the more her insides churned and twisted, until her mouth came out with, ‘Hammer and anvil, Chief?’ She did her best to make the words sound casual, because that was how she preferred to think of herself, but the tremor emerged despite her best efforts.

‘As you say, Sub.’

‘Chief.’ I have fifty comrades who will follow me, and most of them are friends. ‘I can’t help noticing,’ fighting with each word to keep her voice level, hands clenched into tight fists, ‘that their hammer is likely to be their automotives, Chief, And our a-anvil is going to be us, Chief, flesh and blood.’ And she snapped her mouth shut because to say more than that would be to invite a sundering of her composure.

Marteus nodded briskly. ‘That’s the plan. You’re not to engage their machines, just get out of the way of them if you can, but there will be infantry and airborne coming right after them. They can’t take ground with just automotives. Their soldiers you will engage, and hold them off with pike and shot.’

‘And their… their automotives, Chief?’ Outside the tent she could hear singing, some of her people, no doubt, some filthy Fly taverna chant.

‘I’ve told you, don’t engage.’

But what about when they engage us? She tried to prompt him with her eyes but he was all business, having none of it.

‘Go instruct your troops, Sub.’

She just stared at him, and for a moment almost wanted to laugh. It had, she discovered, all been some dreadful mistake. She was not a soldier, after all. She was just a student with delusions of martial prowess — and what set of ridiculous circumstances had conspired to put her here, eh? Where was the department head now, so that she could apply to switch courses?

But Marteus’s level gaze had not wavered, and he was plainly expecting her to go and spread the word.

‘Chief, I don’t think you know what you’re… What do you think it’s going to be like when I tell them — my soldiers, my people — that we’re to be where the metal meets? That we’re standing at the sharp end?’

His expression — or lack of same — did not alter. ‘I know what it’s like, Sub. Now get a move on. I’ve got plenty more of you to see.’

‘Tonight you’ll understand everything,’ said Stenwold. He had kept the two students, Eujen Leadswell and the Wasp Averic, under watch all morning, without them showing any sign of suspicious behaviour. In the afternoon he had sent for them, and he was now heading for Banjacs Gripshod’s machine-gutted house, ready for the last act of the drama. Last night they had seen an inexplicable failure or betrayal, as the city was laid bare before the knives of its enemies. Tonight, though..

Tonight will go down in history, Stenwold thought unhappily. One way or another, and the ‘everything’ that the boys would understand might leave an altogether more bitter taste. If they see the reasons behind the sacrifices we have made then, if they understand nothing else, they will understand some of how difficult it is to lead. Let Leadswell choke on that.

The citizens of Collegium they saw out on the streets were picking their way through the city as though already living in hostile territory. Stenwold had spent the morning with Jodry, pointlessly going over and over each part of the plan, sending unnecessary orders to confirm to every well-briefed individual what he or she already knew. And each of them knew only their own small part, of course. The grand design remained invisible to anyone but Jodry and himself. Everyone in the city must guess that something was going on, just as the Empire must, but Jodry and Stenwold had kept their secret safe.

Stenwold thought back to his last look at the Speaker before he set out: the man had been haggard, that great weight of flesh hanging from him like chains, eyes red from drink and tears and lack of sleep. Marching swiftly through Collegium’s streets, Stenwold felt a sudden rush of affection for the man. These were hard times to be Collegium’s Speaker, all responsibility and no reward, but Jodry had risen to the challenge far better than Stenwold might have expected.

It all comes down, tonight. To win a war in one bold stroke, is that not the tactician’s dream? I’ll wager no war-leader ever foresaw the battle that we have planned.

‘Here,’ he snapped back at his two charges, nodding to the two Merchant Company soldiers on the door. They scowled narrowly at Eujen and Averic, but stepped aside to let them all through.

Once inside, Stenwold passed through the entrance hall that was one of the few untouched rooms in Banjacs’s house, pushing on until he came to the vast chamber that housed the machine, the mad artificer’s ultimate weapon. There were three of the College artificers there, along with Banjacs — the most that Stenwold and Jodry had felt they could trust without hestitation — and they were all hard at work on the machine when he entered.

He had expected that, for Banjacs’s life’s work was a delicate beast, and they would have no opportunity for a proper testing before they used it. The lightning batteries in the cellars beneath them would take tendays to recharge, according to Banjacs’s notes. That was why Stenwold and Jodry had taken the decision they had. That was why so much of Collegium had been laid out as bait for the Farsphex bombs.

Now Banjacs and the artificers tinkered and adjusted, calibrating the machine, testing each individual component of it because they could not test the whole. The three College Masters clambered over the brass and bronze and glass, toolbags slung over their shoulders as if they were just tramp artificers hired in for a construction project. Meanwhile the inventor himself was half-hidden within the works of his machine, metal panels hauled off and discarded on the floor around him. The air in the tall chamber crackled and snapped with errant flecks of power, and from every side there came a hissing and a humming as various parts of the colossal device were powered up for testing. Only when Stenwold called his name a second time did Banjacs push himself backwards out of the monstrous mechanical innards to sit up and glower at him.

‘What?’

‘How is progress, Banjacs?’

‘It will be ready, yes. You doubt me, Maker? I’ll show you all just how ready I am once night comes. My life’s work, and you come looking to find me wanting now?’ When Stenwold indicated the feverish artificers, Banjacs scowled furiously at him. ‘Go away. We must tune. We must adjust. Had you not imprisoned me then perhaps we might have time to sit about drinking wine like Master the Speaker but, as it is, we must work. We must be perfect. You have no comprehension of the delicacy of my creation.’ Beneath wild eyebrows his eyes bored into Stenwold. ‘All of Collegium shall know my name,’ he said, apparently not as a part of the conversation but just an externalized thought.

‘Master Maker,’ came Eujen Leadswell’s hushed voice, ‘what is going on? This is Banjacs Gripshod.’

‘So it is.’ Stenwold glanced back at him. ‘You see, Master Gripshod, how your fame is already spreading.’ The humour welled up in lieu of bleaker emotions, tainted by Stenwold’s assessment of Banjacs’s character and sanity. What frail things we put our faith in.

The Wasp, Averic, was staring at Banjacs, perhaps not recognizing the name.

‘Master Maker, you said we’d understand. I don’t.’

‘Tell them what your creation is for, Master Gripshod,’ Stenwold suggested.

Banjacs grinning was worse than Banjacs glowering. ‘With this, boy, I control the lightning — the greatest engine of its kind the world has ever seen. When active, it shall throw its force straight upwards, charging the very skies over the city. Everything above us will face utter destruction.’

Eujen’s expression was familiar to Stenwold, because he himself had worn it when this idea had first been revealed to him. If he had not had artificers go over the plans, he would not have believed it for a moment. He could see the student putting the pieces together steadily, and soon the boy would come to understand the chaos of the previous night, even if Stenwold suspected he would never condone it.

Banjacs was already nodding: the old artificer had fully understood the absence of Stormreaders the previous night, without ever having to be told, and had accepted the decision automatically. After all, it would give his machine a more suitable testing ground. ‘When the machines of our enemies have fully gathered over us, we shall annihilate them in a moment.’

Something was dawning on Eujen’s face, his mouth opening but the words slow to emerge, but even as he began, ‘Master Maker,’ in a strangled tone, Banjacs interrupted, hushing him.

‘Stop! That sound is wrong! Cease work, you morons!’ the old man bellowed at some of the College’s most eminent artificers. ‘What… what is making that sound?’ He cast about, as though trying to sniff out the noise.

Stenwold could hear it too, something entirely discordant. Not now! Don’t let the bastard machine go wrong now… It was a great buzzing drone and, in the midst of all this artifice gone mad, it seemed curiously familiar.

‘Master Maker,’ said Eujen, his face frozen, all condemnation vanished from it. ‘It’s the Ear.’

Stenwold blinked, his mind taking a moment to catch up on what the boy was saying. The Ear was sounding. The Great Ear, their warning mechanism, was calling out the city’s pain, as it had during so many nights before. But outside, the sky was light, the sun still high over the west.

The enemy were coming. The enemy were coming now.

‘Banjacs!’ Stenwold bellowed. ‘Get it working — all of it. Get it ready to loose!’

Banjacs goggled at him, hands describing the mess, the missing panels, all the little tasks the artificers were still engaged in.

‘Just work!’ Stenwold almost screamed at him. They were coming, all of them, the air-storm that he had called down upon his people, and he was not ready. The Empire had out-thought him, in the end. In his mind he was calculating time and action, plans, orders… ‘Messenger!’

As if from nowhere, a Fly-kinden in Company sash dropped down beside him, a snapbow seeming over large in his hands.

‘Listen carefully: I need this taken to every airfield word for word.’ Stenwold felt out of breath, his heart painful in his chest. ‘Tell them this: they are to engage the enemy…’

The Beetle-kinden man with the burn scar, Army Intelligence’s senior man in Collegium, had spent that day counting up the cost of the night’s work. That matters had not gone according to plan was an understatement. The modest number of agents under his command had accounted for a mere handful of targets. Some teams had been cut down. Others had found their subjects too well defended.

The aggrieved feeling hung heavy on him that he was labouring under someone else’s errors, but he himself had felt that the Wasp boy was securely under the Imperial colours, as had Garvan, his superior. After all, Averic was a Wasp and of good family, and there was a natural order to the world that the burned man had learned long ago. Wasps were the Empire. That the boy might have spat in the face of his proud heritage, rejected his own and betrayed his people to Collegium was repugnant to the Beetle with the burn scar. The irony was lost on him.

He still had a small but respectable team working with him, thanks to the prudence that Army Intelligence instilled in its people. Instead of Rekef men raised in a climate of fear and terrified of the consequences of failure, most of his people had simply weighed up the odds and not chanced carrying out attacks. That meant they were still on hand for the night to come.

He had been waiting for contact from the Spider agents in the city, an uncertain prospect, but a lean Fly-kinden man had found them in the early evening in the working man’s taverna they were holed up in. The building was missing most of a wall, and all the windows had been smashed, but the landlord was still serving.

They adjourned to an enclosed backroom, after slinging the landlord a few coins. The burned man expected the Fly to waste time and mince words, weaving a web of allusions and hints, as seemed the Spider way, but instead the report was brutally direct.

‘Things have changed. You have a new priority target.’

The Beetle bristled. ‘You’re not in a position to dictate that.’

‘What if we told you that we’d overlooked something until now. Earlier, we’d report that to your general. Now there’s no time and we’re reporting it to you.’

The burned man sat back, considering. ‘What is it?’

‘There was a man — he’s on your list, but far down it — who’s an artificer. There had been some official interest in him recently, but there was a murder; we thought it was just internal Collegiate business carrying on despite the war, you know.’ The Fly shrugged. ‘We now think it’s not that. We think they’ve played us.’

‘Why? Our orders are to kill Stenwold Maker above all others-’

‘Good. Fine. He’s there now with this man, Banjacs Gripshod. So’s your Wasp boy. You need to get out your knives and get moving.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘We don’t know,’ the Fly hissed, ‘but the patterns are all wrong. It’s something important, and it’s at Gripshod’s place it’s happening. It’s…’ The difficulty of explaining screwed the little man’s face up. ‘We have our methods. We look for patterns, feel for the connections between people. But patterns can be deceptive — look at them from a different vantage, you might see something entirely other. That’s what’s happened here. It wasn’t about the murder after all. It’s all about the war. Whatever they’re doing there in that house is vital, and you need to stop it. I swear on my mistress’s honour you do.’

The burn-scarred man stared at him levelly. He had memorized all sorts of places in the city, the dwellings of potential victims amongst them. Part of him was already working out which streets to lead his people down to so as get to Banjacs Gripshod’s place as soon as possible. ‘And you’ll help, will you?’

The Fly spread his hands. ‘That is not a part of our mystery,’ he said, with a tired smile. ‘Besides, surely you won’t need us?’

She was gone when Laszlo returned, her sleeping roll disordered, her few personal possessions just smaller absences about her larger one. None of the surgeons or nurses could tell him just when she had slipped out, and he could not know whether she had been feigning her injury, or fooling herself, or whether she had simply been that desperate to be rid of him.

Lissart had vanished, abandoned him after all they had been through. Laszlo could only stare in utter disbelief, and then argue with everyone around him because there were few enough casualties yet for the doctors that surely one of them must have noticed a badly wounded Fly or not-quite-Fly woman pack up her things and leave.

But none of them had. Her tradecraft had been her pass in the end. She was gone.

He wasted a great deal of time then, by dashing about the outside of the tent, making sudden rushes in this direction, then in that, as if he would find her just a few paces away, pausing for breath and clutching her wound, waiting for him. First, though, before all that furious, undirected, futile action, he just stood and hurt. Laszlo the pirate, grinning factor for the Tidenfree crew, a girl in every port so long as he had the coin, and he was hurting for her, for his lost te Liss. He had never felt such a tearing before. In its wake, he felt that he would never quite see the world in the same way.

After all that, all the futile battering at the windowpanes of fate, he returned to where she had slept and there found her message.

It was tucked into her discarded bedroll, and anyone could have found it, but nobody else would have understood.

She is here. I can’t stay.

She is painted brown and disguised as a Beetle soldier-woman.

Look for me in another place.

Laszlo felt his heart leap at that last line. We’ll meet again. I’ll find her or she’ll find me. And then the first two lines took on meaning and his eyes widened.

She could mean only one thing: the Wasp agent who had dealt Lissart such a wound in the first place, she was here in the camp.

He glanced about him. There were Beetle women everywhere, of course there were. But he had already seen the Wasp spy — seen her come after Lissart to finish her off. He calmed himself, unhinged his memories, sorting through them for that night that was surely engraved on his mind.

A moment later and he was outside the infirmary tent and peering about him, from face to face. There was a spy in the camp, up to unknowable mischief, and only he could find her.

In her fragmentary and barely remembered dream she was in the air, in a storm, the high winds battering at the framework of the Esca Volenti until every part of the loyal machine seemed on the point of coming away from every other. In the midst of wrestling with controls that were suddenly unresponsive in her grip, she was yanked from sleep, shaken into abrupt and uncomprehending wakefulness, unsure of where she was or why.

‘Taki! Mistress Taki!’ someone was shouting. Mistress? But of course, that was how the Collegiates talked, not knowing any better, and what was that dreadful noise?

She sat bolt upright, slapping away the Beetle girl who had woken her. The Ear! ‘How long did you let me sleep?’

In a moment she was out of her bunk, standing barefoot on the cold floor, in just her shift. She felt leadenly tired, disoriented, as though she had gone to bed only a moment before.

‘Mistress Taki, they’re coming!’ The girl — Taki could not recall her real name but identified her as ‘Still-too-fat-to-be-a-pilot’, one of the newer recruits — was a study in wide-eyed panic.

Taki cursed, dragging on her canvas overalls and snagging her chitin and leather helm from the floor. ‘You should have woken me an hour ago at least,’ she snapped, storming up out of the underground barracks into the common room… and stopping.

Broad, glorious daylight sang through the high windows.

‘Right,’ she said, to nobody in particular. A score of pilots were looking at her expectantly, most of their field’s complement.

‘Where’s Corog? Master Breaker, I mean. Where’s everyone else?’ she demanded, striving to clear her head.

‘Out on the field with their machines,’ someone told her, and another put in, ‘The Mynans want to take off, but we’ve no orders.. ’

‘ Orders? ’ Taki demanded. ‘Just go, morons! Get into the air!’ And she herself led the charge, wings skimming her up and out to the airfield, darting for the open cockpit of the Esca Magni. She saw the rest of the pilots all around, some arguing with ground crew, others already in their machines, wings warming up slowly. Edmon gave her a nod, before bringing his hatch down.

‘Hold! Nobody take to the air!’ Corog Breaker was rushing across the field, waving his arms like a man trying to catch a departing airship. ‘I’ll have the hide off anyone that dares fly!’

Edmon rammed his hatch up again, staring at the old man with disgust. ‘No,’ he shouted back, ‘this time we fly. This time we fight the Wasps, even if your people won’t. Who’s with me, eh?’

There was a lot of shouting then from Mynans and Collegiates both, and Edmon had clearly carried the vote.

‘You just listen to me!’ Corog Breaker still had a fine old voice, when he needed to use it. ‘Yes, we fight! But you listen here, special orders from Stenwold Maker. Nobody gets aloft until they’ve heard them.’

Edmon scowled belligerently, but waited.

‘Just listen, because you have to get this right,’ Corog urged them all. ‘We’re not bearding them beyond the walls this time. We let them come to us.’ As the murmur of discontent started up again he raised his arms to quieten them. ‘Oh, we fight. When they come over the city, we hold them, but it’s more than that. We need to concentrate them, as much as we can. Engage, take the bastards down if you can, but bring all of them over the city’s heart.’ He glanced back at the scroll he was clutching, breath catching from the run, trying himself to assimilate the instructions. ‘Now listen,’ he continued. ‘The Ear is going to sound again, you understand. You have to listen for it. During the fight, the Ear will sound, and that’s your signal.’

‘Signal for what, Corog?’ Taki asked him.

The old Master Armsman’s expression was openly baffled. ‘Get out of the sky. Land as soon as you can, on roofs, in the street, crash if you have to. Just get out of the sky. You have to hold them, keep them off the city, until the artificers and Stenwold Maker reckon we’ve got our best shot. Then you down your machines as soon as the Ear sounds, and…’

‘And what?’ Taki pressed.

‘If you’re still in the sky right then, you’ll find out the hard way,’ was all that he would say. ‘Now get in your fliers. If your regular machine’s with the artificers for the ground-attack refit, get yourself in a spare one. If there’s none left, cheer us on.’ A proportion of the Stormreaders were being modified following some new requirement from Stenwold Maker or the Speaker or someone: some were still in the workshop being fitted out.

Corog crumpled the scroll and glanced at his own machine. ‘We have a little time now, because we’re letting them come to us. Make sure your machines are fully wound and ready. Nobody heads off half-sprung. Know this: best guess says that they’ll come all together, everything they can put in the air. Ready yourselves for that, as best you can.’

The Ear continued its melancholy drone, and they took to their machines more soberly now — the entire remaining might that Collegium could put in the air. Taki looked around her, thinking about just how many Farsphex the Empire might have to throw at them, and how difficult engaging them for even a short time was going to be without suffering heavy losses. Around her, although she might forget names, she knew every face, as familiar as her old flying comrades from Solarno, most of whom had died in the last war while retaking her city from the Empire. But Solarno now sat under Imperial and Spider colours again, and so what had been the point?

She was acutely conscious that this would probably be the last sight she had of many of these people: Mynan airmen, Collegiate student aviators, volunteer academics, merchant pilots turned to war, artificers and tradesmen retrained in the city’s time of desperate need. It might equally be their last sight of her.

She was scared, and the sudden fear mingled with the old excitement that an aerial duel had always inspired in her. I may die, but at least I live first, and show me a better death.

And, out over the rugged land that separated Collegium from the Second Army, the Farsphex were closing.

General Tynan had listened to every word that Aarmon and Cherten had to say, sitting there with Mycella of the Aldanrael at his right hand, his trusted adviser. With his eyes half-closed, he had heard them both out, taken in every scrap of evidence or supposition, leaping to no conclusions but setting out the facts in his head with the same patient care that had guided his career as an officer.

‘You think it’s a trap,’ he had remarked to Aarmon.

‘I think they have husbanded all their strength for tonight, to destroy as many of us as they can, sir. I think they know they must cripple our airpower, for their own to have a chance against your army tomorrow,’ the pilot had confirmed.

‘And you, Colonel?’

‘I think we have our orders, sir,’ had come Cherten’s response, ‘and both my spies and those of the Spiders are reporting that they are simply running out of working machines to put in the air — conserving their strength for the siege.’

‘The nature of the trap, Major?’

‘New technology or reinforcements for the air,’ Aarmon had guessed. ‘Better orthopters, perhaps, or Sarnesh machines or pilots to counter our… advantage.’ For the mindlink was still not a matter to be openly spoken of. ‘Their pilots are as good as ours, sir. Their machines are, too. If they could ambush us with twice the number, say, or three times, they could crush our largest raiding party, perhaps stop even one Farsphex escaping.’

Tynan had blinked. ‘And if it was more than just a raiding party? You know the Colonel wants a massed bombing raid.’

‘Depends on their strength, sir, but, even if they outnumber us, we have the advantage. We fight together in the air.’

For a long time, Tynan had stared at the straight-backed pilot standing to attention before him, and then Mycella had leant in and whispered something to him. Aarmon had felt Colonel Cherten’s instant disapproval and frustration — that there were counsels he was being excluded from — but Tynan had simply listened, his eyes flicking up briefly to Aarmon.

Mycella’s last words had been loud enough for them all to hear: ‘After all, we know about traps, my people.’

And Tynan had looked Aarmon in the eye and said, ‘How soon can you be airborne, all of you?’

In the echo of Aarmon’s answer, he had then turned to Cherten. ‘Double our speed towards Collegium. Their army’s out there and they think they have a day at least until we clash. That’s a lie. We clash today. Abandon the baggage and support here, and move out our soldiers, automotives and the siege train right now. We’re going to war.’

Under great protest, Nishaana had been left behind with just four orthopters, a token force to defend the army. If the Collegiates did choose to attack Tynan on the march, even as the Imperial fliers struck their city, then the Second would have to scatter, protect its machines as well as they could, and have one of Nishaana’s people make best speed for Collegium to call the fliers back. Aarmon reckoned that the Collegiates were desperate enough to try it, but Cherten had been dismissive.

Pingge knew Aarmon’s thoughts, relayed through Scain’s murmuring them even as they came to him. Whether or not the Collegiates had reinforcements or some new device, the Wasp aviators knew that Collegiate air power would be the greatest threat to any besieging force, and Collegiate control of the sky would make taking the city near-impossible. War had changed in so few years, but they, the Air Corps and their Collegiate rivals, were at the cutting edge, the masters of the storm.

Their orders were to destroy the enemy air power. Bombing the city was secondary and, for greater speed in the air, they carried a reduced load of explosives, enough for a few hard passes should the chance arise.

‘Nearing,’ Scain said, loud enough for her to know it was meant for her ears.

Carefully she set to loading and spanning the little ballista they had bolted onto her hatch. A sudden buffet of air sent her lurching her forwards, an explosive-tipped bolt tumbling out into the night. The chain was taut about her ankle, catching her before she needed her wings. Many of the pilots had wanted to forgo the chains, but back in Capitas the engineers had ensured that the stigmatizing protocol was adhered to, and Colonel Cherten proved to be their brother in diligence in the Second Army’s camp. For herself, Pingge had felt the benefit of it more than once, when being jolted and rattled about in the heat of an aerial battle. For all her Art, if she had been flung from the Farsphex, she could never have regained her place.

She looked into the reticule, seeing Collegium ahead, landmarks that were as familiar to her now as to a native, it almost seemed, but less so in daylight. ‘They didn’t launch,’ she called, against the rush of air. There had been no Collegiate blockade to meet them halfway to the city, but then halfway to the city was not very far at all this time. The Second Army — the Gears — had made its signature steady progress west, and now its goal was in sight. Pingge was looking at it, even then.

If the Collegiates had attempted such a blockade, they would have been outmanoeuvred. Aarmon had divided his force into three, approaching the city from east, north and south, the latter two to double back west if they met no resistance over the city itself, and thus catch their enemy in the rear. Now it seemed as though all three wings would meet over Collegium, their mind-link allowing them to intermesh effortlessly.

‘Light bombing to draw them out,’ Scain murmured Aarmon’s words, and then his own response, ‘Will do, sir,’ before pitching his voice up, ‘Pick a target, Pings. Wake them up-’ and almost immediately, ‘No need! They come!’