The concerted sound of the Wasp second rank discharging their bows sounded like a great clap of hands, and bolts went whistling past her even as she heard it. The man next to her took one in the
eye, a woman in the third rank took one straight through the chest, past breastplate and coat without slowing much. A Mantis-kinden pikeman cursed and dropped with red spreading across his thigh.
The call went out for stretchers before Straessa even needed to order it.
She could name all three of the casualties, two of whom were now beyond anything the surgeons could do for them. Yet in her mind was the thought,
Is that it?
and on her lips, ‘And
loose!’ All the while, her eyes kept watching the bludgeoning that her little force – and all the other little bands of Merchant Company soldiers – were inflicting across the
front lines of the enemy.
‘I reckon it’s one in three down, for them.’ Gerethwy didn’t trust his mechanized bow at this range, so instead he kept his glass on them, unflinching even when a passing
bolt plucked at the sleeve of his buff coat.
‘And loose! What’s going on?’ Straessa lowered her own weapon, hands automatically palming a bolt from the box at her waist and slipping it into the breach; then cranking the
air battery to charge it, the mechanism smooth and easy as if it was new oiled from the workshops. Even as she asked that question she understood. Wasp infantry was the army’s mailed fist,
used for breaking the enemy lines by main force, and in close quarters. They were stacked shoulder to shoulder, in contrast to the looser spread of the Collegiates, so that the incoming shot could
barely miss them. And the Collegiates had three snapbows per four men, while the Empire had just one.
Sod me
, the Antspider thought, slightly awed,
we’re winning.
Then someone shouted, ‘Fliers coming in,’ and she saw that the Wasp Light Airborne was back to support the infantry. There were a great many of them, a cloud of flying men arching
overhead, but this tactic had not worked against the Ants at the Battle of the Rails, and the Collegiates were ready for it. Straessa directed her people to worry about the Imperial infantry, who
were plainly realizing that their only hope was a solid charge to get into spear-range. The Collegiate squares behind the front line, mostly unbloodied so far, would be training their snapbows on
the incoming Airborne and, though the fliers had the same weapons, shooting on the wing was a challenge for a Fly-kinden marksman, let alone a regular Wasp soldier. And snapbows were quite accurate
enough to pick off fast-moving targets.
Straessa saw the Wasp infantry form up to advance – so few of them now compared to just moments ago – but the constant volleys of shot got the better of them, and soon they were
pulling back and then disintegrating completely, individual soldiers making their getaway at the best sprint they could manage. For a moment she thought they had broken, but then she saw another
unit of them marching in, the runners simply getting out of their way. No doubt these newcomers would have learned some hard lessons from the last minute of fighting, and it was plain that, if
allowed to close, their tighter ranks and superior numbers would crush the Collegiate lines.
‘And loose!’ again and again. No need to tell her soldiers to aim for the invitingly large target that the new formation presented, so that the Wasps were bleeding from the moment
they were within range. Despite the distance, they were already running, but still keeping almost shoulder to shoulder, shackled by their out-of-date training. It was a race, then, to see whether
simple attrition would turn them aside and snap the spine of their charge before they could arrive. Seeing so many men coming on so fast, Straessa felt her mouth go dry. If they struck, her little
band would become like leaves in a storm. The pikemen had their weapons levelled, some straight ahead, others tilted at angles upwards against the Airborne. Bolts were slanting down at them now
from the skies above, the Airborne trying to break their firing pattern, but the attention of the squares behind was keeping the bulk of the enemy off the front line.
‘Sub! In from the side, Sub!’ someone called, and she looked about wildly, until she saw what was meant. From either side of the big Wasp formation, a stream of swifter figures was
cascading, no battle order to them, just a swift, loose mob outstripping their allies in their haste to get at the Beetle lines.
‘Spider-kinden to our left,’ Gerethwy identified calmly. ‘And that’s, hm, Scorpions to the right.’
Straessa’s square was positioned dead centre of the maniples now facing the Wasp unit’s charge, so the newcomers were not her problem just yet. If they overwhelmed the Collegiates
further down the line, she would know about it quickly enough, but she could do nothing to help or hinder, and she had to trust in her fellows. ‘Eyes front! And loose!’ Her voice was
beginning to give out.
Still the Great Ear had not sounded. In truth, the specifics of Corog’s instructions were a distant memory now. Taki guessed that the pitched fighting had taken only
minutes so far, but if some scholar could measure sheer
living
, the fear and the fury of it, then lifetimes had been burned.
She dodged about in the air, ramming the stick rapidly through three positions to throw off an enemy, before backing her wings so that the Farsphex went slashing past her. A brief glance about
her revealed the ongoing chaos that the battle had become. The Collegiate centre, the idea of holding the enemy to one place, had become impossible almost immediately once the rest of the enemy had
come in from north and south. The defenders were abruptly so outnumbered that they surrendered any say over what the enemy might or might not do, or where they might go. Taki guessed that, had the
Empire wished to bomb Collegium flat, then she and her fellows could do little even to slow them down.
The Empire didn’t want that. The Empire wanted her blood. That great wheeling host of the Imperial air force had new orders, and they were trying to wipe the skies clean of their
opponents.
Taki had given up active attack once the new Wasp machines arrived. Since then she had been concentrating on staying alive, leading any number of enemy on a dance around the city’s
rooftops, being passed from hand to hand as they tried to bring their linked minds to bear on her, never being where they calculated but taking shots at any target that presented itself and moving
on. If she had committed herself to the fray, narrowed her possibilities down to those few with offensive potential, they would have second-guessed her and killed her in short order, but she was
flying like a madwoman and they could not catch her.
They had not caught her
yet
, anyway. Her dead fellows back in Solarno would scoff if she had told them that this crazed evasion was her finest hour as a pilot, but she knew it to be
true.
A brief breath of clear sky and she tried to take stock, half-expecting to find the sky possessed only by the enemy and herself. The sight brought her a swell of hopeless pride, though, for the
Collegiate pilots and Mynan airmen were still fighting. Outnumbered and out-coordinated, they still remembered their training and their orders. Just as she was, they were refusing to engage, even
the fighting-mad Mynans recognizing the suicidal odds. The Collegiate defence had no cohesion, no pattern or plan, nothing to it but smoke and the swift particles of the Stormreaders as they
scattered across the sky. Oh, they were losing – had lost the battle even as it began – but the enemy did not want the sky, and it did not want the city either. It wanted
them
,
and now they were running the Wasp pilots ragged in their attempted pursuit.
And it could not last. Even as she watched, she saw another Collegiate machine downed, caught by crossed piercer shot, crumpling and twisting in the air and then falling helplessly away. The
Wasps were good, and all the Collegiate pilots were buying for themselves was some few more minutes of time.
And still the Ear – that signal to throw in the fight and down their orthopters – did not sound.
Abruptly a hail of shot strafed along the side of the
Esca Magni
, and Taki slung her craft sideways, cursing herself for the momentary distraction. The enemy kept on her tightly, odd
bolts still impacting even as she threw her machine through a series of baffling manoeuvres; down and left, edge on to the roofs, then backing madly, then down a broad street almost at head height,
then turning on a wingtip down a sidestreet, only hopping above the roofs to miss an archway that would have stripped her wings clean off.
And the Wasp pilot still tracked her – not following the same course but always returning to her, and this time her madness was not enough and, as she burst back out into the sky, he took
his place right behind her as though he had booked it in advance.
She felt she knew this opponent, recognizing and admiring his style even as she did her best to string out her remaining seconds. Her enemy was a pilot she had sparred with before, the veteran
of many raids just as she was. She tried her old trick of releasing her winding chute, the silk cloth abruptly billowing away behind her, but the enemy was not so incautious and had kept just
enough distance to swing aside, and the lightning sideways twitch she had tried simultaneously somehow just brought her back under his rotaries.
Another scatter of hits, the metal shuddering around her, nothing vital yet, but the next shot could spear the cogs of the engine, or the wing mounts. Or her.
Then he was taking off, rising up and abandoning her, and she wondered wildly if there was some mercy to be given her even now, but then she saw that the Wasp himself had come under attack.
She put the
Esca
into the tightest turn she could manage, hearing a chorus of new creaks and complaints from the abused hull. The Farsphex was rising and dodging, a Stormreader trying to
stay with the Wasp but never quite regaining its line of attack.
She recognized the Collegiate craft from the way it flew. It was Corog’s ship, unmistakably. She powered in, trying to catch up with them. Too late, too late: in committing himself to the
attack, Corog had narrowed all the possible places in the sky that he could occupy down to one desperate, perfect line, the absolute optimum of vectors that would bring him to gut the enemy craft
and destroy it. With a lurch of her heart, Taki realized that, even so, it would not be enough. The Imperial machine danced far more nimbly than any craft that size should be able to, so Corog
Breaker’s attack went wide, and then the other Farsphex, brought there by an unheard summons, clipped off Corog’s tail with a scything trail of rotary bolts.
For a moment the Stormreader still maintained its course, still trying to bring its weapons around to its target. Then it slid sideways in the air, the wings wrestling with an element suddenly
no longer their friend.
He was spinning. She flung herself closer, looking for the glider wings, imagining the stubborn old man still fighting with the controls. She watched him all the way down to the abrupt,
concussive impact with Collegium’s streets.
Scain pulled up and away, looking for another target. His monologue rattled on, passing Pingge by with his one-sided commentary on the battle.
‘Won’t stand and fight . . . Arlvec requests permission to bomb . . . denied. Orders are to . . .’ Then a grunt through gritted teeth as he tracked down one of the Collegiate
craft to shoot at: a few moments of his silence and the hammering of the rotaries, as he tried to keep the bolts on target, and the expected lurch of the craft around them both as he broke off on
another course once he lost the trail.
‘Going to try and . . . may be grouping up west of centre . . . Arlvec requests permission . . . denied. Just focus on the job in hand . . .’ A whole many-handed conversation relayed
through his automatic muttering.
Then ‘Aarmon!’ and they were abruptly dropping from their high vantage and cutting through the sky. Pingge held on to the ballista as their course changed yet again, almost falling
from the air, but caught abruptly by a beat of the Farsphex’s four wings, then arrowing straight over the rooftops. And all the while Scain’s words still came to her: ‘I’m
coming, I’m coming, almost there, just stave the bastard off. Aarmon . . .’
She clawed her way to where she could see over his shoulder, but the wheeling, whirling view meant nothing to her, and then suddenly there was a Stormreader there, in ferocious pursuit of
another Farsphex. Aarmon.
Kiin
, she thought, clinging to the wall.
Be safe, Kiin.
For once she could see all the pilot’s art laid bare, Scain’s hands jockeying the machine into place, matching
the Stormreader turn for turn, precisely because it was trying to match Aarmon’s own aerobatics, and Aarmon and Scain were linked in perfect tandem, the one telling the other where he would
lead their mutual enemy.
And Scain clutched at the trigger, coming in from a little above the Stormreader’s line, and clipped its tail off entirely, and Aarmon flew free and unharmed. Pingge grinned fiercely at
the sight, but Scain was still reciting.
‘See her? No sign of her . . . I know, the one that’s not a Stormreader at all . . . like a ghost, that one . . . keep an eye out . . . Arlvec requests permission to commence
bombing. Draven seconds it . . . Sir, if we begin on their city, they
have
to take notice and engage . . .’
Then there was a pause, a silence she could detect despite the sound of the engines and the rotary piercers, as Scain tried to pin down another fleeting enemy. She realized that not a single
voice was speaking within that shared mindscape, that everyone was now waiting to see what Aarmon would say.
And then Scain was muttering in a different tone, ‘No, no, no, come on, no, man, no, we have our orders, come on Aarmon, we don’t need to, we don’t,’ and Pingge realized
with shock that these were his own thoughts, unbroadcast and unlinked, the private contents of his head that his traitorous mouth was still churning out.