Adrian Tchaikovsky - War Master's Gate

Another flying machine passed overhead, this one even slower than the Spearflights: an antiquated four-winged orthopter with a broad, flat hull. It thundered low over the trees, spewing so much smoke that Tynan wondered if it had already been hit. This would be one of the machines found by his Spider-kinden allies, who had no air force of their own save for mercenary aviators. Like the Spearflights, the ragbag of machines the Spiders had come up with were doing nothing but delaying the inevitable.

An army under attack which cannot fight back is a miserable thing, and being on the sharp end of a technology gap for once was a bitter reversal. The soldiers of the Second were finding their morale eroded day by day. So far there had been no desertions, unless those had been covered up as deaths, but Tynan was expecting them. Even as this attack started he had been going through his sergeants’ assessments of their subordinates’ will to endure. There was plenty of angry talk amongst the rank and file, and Tynan could not blame them. They had done their duty, and this was none of their fault.

A bomb landed close to the glade in which he had been working, and he edged further under the cover of the trees — as though that would help should the Collegiates strike lucky. Across their widely separated camps, all his soldiers would be crouching under whatever defences they could find or dig out, and hoping that today was not their final day.

‘General!’ he heard, and he called out his location — a necessary risk, since the army still needed to communicate with itself. He, above all, must be findable, despite the threat of assassination that the Beetles had not quite got round to resorting to yet. The messenger, half-running and half-flying, skidded to a halt before him. ‘General, the supply flight’s incoming.’

Tynan went cold, because his run of bad days had just got much worse. The Second Army was being supplied via the new Spider-kinden holdings in Tark and Kes, but the Spiders refused to use sea-power since their fleet had somehow been turned back from Collegium before. With that approach barred, and short of building a rail line from scratch, the only way to get sufficient food and materials to the beleaguered Second was by airship.

They had staggered the deliveries and mostly made them at night, playing a lethal guessing game with the Collegiates. The enemy knew full well that their orthopters would easily destroy the slow-moving airships, because neither Tynan’s own fliers nor any escort the Spiders could put together had any chance of stopping them.

He stood there helplessly, a general without a plan, without any means of communicating with his army. ‘Our machines-?’

‘They’re all moving to screen the airships, sir,’ the messenger confirmed.

But that won’t be enough. Now the Collegiates have smelt blood, they won’t rest until they bring the ships down.

‘Tell them. .’ His mind worked wildly. ‘Get the fastest Fly-kinden we have — ours or the Spiders’ — get them up to those airships. They need to put down now, I don’t care how far off. We need those supplies safely on the ground. That way we can salvage something.’ It was a wretched sort of a plan, but he had been forced to spin it from nothing,

The messenger was off without even offering a salute, well aware of the urgency of his job.

‘I want a detachment ready to get to the landing site!’ Tynan snapped at the officers around him, very nearly saying crash site . ‘Automotives, haulers, plenty of men ready to carry loads. Start moving now.’ And all the while, in the back of his mind, Too late, too late.

‘Get me. .’ But what he really wanted to say was, Get me somewhere I can see what’s going on . He might exercise only a pitiful influence on the conflict, but it was his responsibility to watch it happening.

Quickly he made his way through the forest to the nearest tower: one of the makeshift wooden constructions engineered from sections of the travelling fort his men had brought with them, rising barely above tree level and dressed with deadwood to make it less of a visible target. He let his wings drag him up there despite the weight of his armour, though he felt every one of his nigh-on fifty years as he reached the top. The Fly-kinden lookout saluted briskly, making room as half of Tynan’s bodyguards made their laborious way up as well.

‘Send word to the — the Spider colonel,’ he ordered the Fly. He had almost referred to the woman by name, which always disconcerted his soldiers. ‘Have her get ready any automotives she can. Tell her we’re going to retrieve what we can from the airships.’

The Fly was off instantly, wings ablur.

Tynan looked out: the airships were plainly visible as little round shapes in the sky, approaching fast with a following wind and growing larger even as he watched. How much more obvious must they be to the Collegiate pilots whose eyes were trained to scan the sky, and everything in it?

Overhead, the aerial battle was moving away, heading east now towards the approaching supply ships. At least we get spared a pummelling , Tynan considered grimly. Suddenly the enemy had better things to do than scatter bombs randomly in the hope of killing Wasp soldiers.

Perhaps, after this, I can talk Mycella into sending our supplies by sea, although I suppose sea-ships would be just as vulnerable as airships. Mycella of the Aldanrael was rightly the joint commander of the Collegium campaign. Labelling her as a colonel had been the best way to keep Tynan’s own people in line, though, for they had been trained rigorously to observe a rigid command structure: general to colonel to major in command, captains and lieutenants in the middle, sergeants and regular solders to fight and work and complain. An army had only one general. Two heads could not govern the same body, every Wasp knew.

Tynan knew better now, He had been initially surprised at how easy the Spider Arista was to work with. Then he had got to know her better, and to understand that she had been stripped of a great deal of her pomp and pride as a result of the failed armada attack on Collegium. After that, he had come to know her altogether too well by most standards. No doubt his intelligence officer, Colonel Cherten, had sent a few interesting reports back home, but no reprimand had come back to Tynan yet.

Still, amongst the Wasps she was a colonel and he supposed that it was a high honour: unprecedented for a woman, a non-Wasp and not even an Imperial citizen. He also suspected that she privately found this obsession with assigning ranks and titles deeply amusing.

The circular silhouettes presented by the airships against the sky began lengthening as they turned. Perhaps they had some broadsides of artillery ready to deal out, but in truth the Collegiate Stormreaders would be able to skip aside from anything the lumbering dirigibles might throw at them. Impatiently, Tynan flicked out his telescope and tried to make sense of what was going on.

Spying on an air battle was harder than the engineers made out. Tynan’s circle of view wheeled constantly across the sky, catching the little insect shapes of the orthopters as they spun and danced against each other, the new way to fight a war that he was excluded from. The best he could gather was that his own side was putting up a spirited defence of their airships. His shaky viewpoint managed brief images of the Spearflights and the Spiders’ motley collection of fliers throwing themselves against the nimble Stormreaders, clashing with them, loosing their weapons, executing turns that were too wide, too slow. He caught sight of one Spearflight in the very moment of its dissolution, falling away to the summons of the distant ground.