Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Air War

What the blazes is Maker playing at? But it was looking as though she would never find out. Chance and skill and mechanical superiority were eroding around her, moment to moment. The Wasps only needed to get lucky the once.

Abruptly another Stormreader shot across her nose, engaged in furious evasive flight — one of the Mynans from the colours. Something snapped in Taki then, the Exalsee warrior-pilot in her suddenly shouldering aside the cautious air-tactician she had become.

Curse the lot of them, she swore, and wrenched the Esca sideways after the Farsphex that was on the Mynan’s tail.

She knew she had no time and that she was laying herself open, that the orthopter in her sights would have been warned — was already taking evasive action and drawing her into a line that would see her cut up by her pursuers’ shot. Stupid. Hopeless. And she dragged all the power she could out of the Esca ’s springs and leapt forwards, her twinned rotaries blazing bolts, and the cockpit of the Farsphex exploded in broken glass and wood fragments, and the vessel dived purposefully for the earth with the pilot’s dead weight against the controls.

There’s one for Corog. Then she was flinging herself madly through the air, higher and higher, because the pursuing Wasps were on her, and fighting mad now, their comrade dying in their very minds. Oh, I went and poked your nest, did I? Well, see how you like it!

She darted higher, the city spread out like a model beneath her, smouldering where the bombs had struck. She had a brief impression of the battle about her: dozens of circling Farsphex, but so few of Collegium’s own. Had the Empire devastated the Collegiate numbers so thoroughly while she was not paying attention?

She tried to dive back down, and for a handful of seconds was engaged in a mad spiralling battle for control with one of the chasing Farsphex. Levelling out for a moment, she saw a couple of Stormreaders, not fighting but dropping — plunging recklessly down into the streets, heedless of the enemy or the bombs or…

What’s that noise?

It had been sounding for some time, she realized. It was familiar, though she had not heard it from quite this perspective, competing with the rush and clatter of an aerial fight while she was over the city itself. It was the Great Ear.

For a moment she could not think why anyone would be sounding the Ear now, when the enemy had so very plainly already arrived. Then she remembered.

Oh, no, no, no! Because that was the signal, the get-out-of-the-pissing-air signal, which meant Maker or whoever was ready to make something terrible happen.

Still cursing to herself, she rammed her Esca towards the ground, because if she was to die, let it be in the air, yes — but let it also be a pilot’s death. Whatever Maker had in mind, whatever the artificers of the College had cooked up, she did not want to know. Most particularly she did not want to find out in person.

A staccato rattle of impacts into her undercarriage made her pull the stick back by instinct, heading up again — the second Farsphex had second-guessed her and was trying to drive her into the aim of the first, but most crucially he was driving her away from the ground. How long had the Ear been sounding? How long did she have left? She tried to slip sideways, to lose them just long enough to cut down below the rooftops, but she had gone too high and they were wise to her piloting now, and they would not let her go, would not let her down.

A panicking glance showed her no hope of reprieve. The bulk of the Collegiate machines were down — or downed — and those still in the air were sharing her plight: unable to get out of the fighting without leaving it the hard way.

Frightened as she had not felt for a long time, she threw the Esca across the sky, never quite getting free of her pursuers, never quite able to push through the scythe of their shot to land — even to crash. And all around her there were more of the enemy, and they all knew exactly where she was.

Straessa lunged again, spearing a lean Spider — old enough to be her father — in the shoulder, her point piercing between the plates of his chitin mail. Around her, the bulk of her soldiers had resorted to their swords, with a few opportunists behind her still taking potshots with their bows, almost directly into the face of the enemy. The other maniples around them were also locked into the fighting, or else had fled, running back towards the camp and what scant salvation could be found there. Every so often — so incongruous she would have laughed — she heard someone sound the whistle for retreat, but the input of tacticians into this battle had come and gone. It was not even a matter of selling their lives dearly. The flesh wanted to live, and could not be made to understand that this was no longer an option. So they fought, and shed the blood of their enemies just to buy mere minutes more for themselves.

Overhead, the Light Airborne were a constant curse, shooting or diving about the battlefield, but they seemed most concerned about chasing after the runners: whole fistfuls of the black and gold stooping on the backs of fleeing Collegiate soldiers with sword and sting.

Then the Imperial infantry came. They struck over to Straessa’s right first, shouldering through the skirmishers and smashing into the already battered maniples with their close order and their years of experience; the Collegiate line simply cracked and fell apart, individual maniples disintegrating within moments of their charge, dying or fleeing. The Wasp soldiers, already bloodied in the initial exchange, were now recapturing their honour, solid, disciplined men in good armour going about their trade.

Straessa risked a glance behind her, because her maniple had now been stripped of a third of its numbers by the skirmishers, and a personal retreat was looking like a good idea, The soldiers behind her, the reserves and the rear squares, had lost formation, most of them milling, some running. She had never much liked trying to rush through a crowd.

‘Sub!’ someone yelled — possibly a soldier from another maniple calling a different officer altogether, but the cry drew her attention and her heart, already a battered thing, lost what little hope remained in it.

The Imperial infantry had not rushed her people yet, but only because there was a Sentinel on its way and they did not want to end up underneath it.

‘Anyone got a grenade?’ she shouted, fending off a sword blow, and then the enormous, armour-plated machine surged forwards, absurdly fast for such a weighty thing, and essentially obliterated the maniple to Straessa’s left, the force of its impact throwing a few boneless bodies high, crushing far more, and the survivors fell almost instantly as the Sentinel loosed a spray of snapbow shot around it.

Behind it, the Imperial infantry were abruptly in motion, closing the distance.

The Sentinel turned, legs moving in a careful little dance, until its great blind prow was facing Straessa, that covered eye boring into her — specifically her and nobody else, or so it seemed. Then the eye opened, the metal cover sliding up to reveal the gaping barrel of its leadshotter.

One of her people did have a grenade, and also the good sense to wait until that moment before hurling it, the hatched metal sphere arcing overhead towards that gaping hole. The missile was off the mark, though, striking the armour and rebounding, exploding pointlessly in the air. With a desperate war-cry the Dragonfly Castre Gorenn leapt into the air, loosing a final arrow that vanished, without trace or effect, into that gaping eye, her ancient Commonweal skills utterly surpassed by modern artifice, but the silver flecks of snapbow bolts were rebounding from the vehicle’s metal hide to no greater effect.