Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Air War

I resign my commission, Straessa decided, effective immediately.

Then the Sentinel rocked under a handful of impacts, lurching forwards a few yards, then spinning furiously on the spot to face this new challenge. From behind it, and cutting bloodily through the Wasp lines, a dozen automotives were on the move, the vanguard of the miscellany that Collegium had used for its strike at the enemy artillery.

Does that mean we won? was her first mad thought. But she could see only that dozen or so and, even as she watched, one of the machines at the rear simply exploded, and she saw that there were another handful of Sentinels in hot pursuit.

Oh. But then she saw what the automotives were actually doing — for the line of their charge cut between the Collegiate forces and the bulk of the Wasp army, ploughing into the enemy infantry with brutal abandon, forcing the lines apart.

‘Retreat!’ Straessa shouted, then she blew the signal on her whistle for all she was worth. After that, she took her own advice, first killing a final Spider skirmisher who was too keen for his own good and then turning to run, keeping pace with her maniple because she was still responsible for them. All around her, the Collegiates were doing the same — some retreating in better order, some simply dropping their weapons and fleeing.

The lead automotive struck the Sentinel at a narrow angle, rocking it back on its legs and rebounding onto a path that churned through the Imperial infantry. The Airborne were already returning to the fray, shooting at the automotives that were causing such havoc to their lines.

They’re going to destroy the machine! Stenwold thought, ripping his little snapbow from inside his tunic — the beautiful, vast and yet fragile machine that Banjacs and the artificers had been so frantically tuning, which was even now poised to wipe the skies clear of Collegium’s enemies. And now the Rekef had arrived to smash it.

He loosed desperately, because there were almost a dozen of the attackers, and the great vulnerable machine was all around them. There was no way that he could stop them all.

But they were not here for the machine, it seemed. Imperial intelligence extended just so far, informed as it was by Spider agents who were almost entirely Inapt. They began shooting hurriedly, almost wildly, but at the people.

A bolt passed across Stenwold’s scalp and he reeled back, but his own quick shot had taken one of the men down, and he was already loosing the second before the tight knot of enemy could break apart.

He saw Banjacs take a bolt in the chest and jerk backwards, a tangle of elbows and knees, blood abruptly appearing bold across his white robes. Almost as valuable as the machine itself was its creator.

The Imperials were not soldiers, and their skill at arms had played second to their intelligence training. After taking the two Company soldiers at the door, they had expected to face only Maker and a handful of scholars. They forgot, or never appreciated, that there were few College men or women who were complete strangers to the Prowess Forum, and that Collegium had been through two sieges over in the last few years.

A heavy workman’s hammer, thrown with remarkable skill, took one man full in the face. Another of the artificers had brought a sword, and rushed to meet the attackers blade to blade.

Then the burn-scarred man spotted Averic.

‘You little bastard!’ he shouted, seeing before him, in the flesh, that fatal miscalculation that had spoiled their operation. What went through the man’s mind then, viewing this pure-blooded Wasp-kinden of good family who had inexplicably betrayed all the generations of Empire, was written in ugly lines over the Beetle spy’s face. Immediately, he charged the youth, without thought for any aim beyond killing him.

Stenwold was trying to get to Banjacs, but a swordsman was suddenly upon him, a lean Beetle with a knife in his offhand and enough rough skill to force Stenwold on the defensive, driving him further away from his allies.

Behind Stenwold’s opponent, the Collegiate swordsman was being forced back by his own adversary, before tripping over the body of another artificer who had fallen to a snapbow bolt. His enemy reared above him, sword drawn back, and then Eujen appeared beside him, face fixed in a horrified expression, and rammed a blade through the spy’s ribs.

Stenwold pushed forwards again, realizing, after the initial surprise, that he was the better duellist — perhaps the best swordsman in the room for all that it said about the rest of them. ‘Leadswell! Get to Banjacs!’ he yelled. The Beetle boy looked at him briefly, and went sprinting over to the old inventor’s motionless form.

Averic’s wings had carried him up to a gantry, and the burn-scarred man stood below him, raging up at him. ‘You traitor! You coward filth! Can’t even fight? A shame to your own people, curse you!’ Abandoning his comrades to the fight, he found a shaking stairway leading up and took it three steps at a time, only to find the Wasp already balanced on the rail, ready to glide down.

Banjacs was plainly gone beyond anything that Eujen could do for him. The old man’s ragged form was so thin that it seemed he had died long before, dried out and desiccated until only this husk remained. And yet, as Eujen knelt beside him, those piercing eyes flew open, and the old man took a hacking breath that sprayed more blood over his robes.

‘My machine!’ he whispered, reaching out for it as if trying to encompass the entire radiant edifice with a clutch of a single hand. ‘Take me — take me…’ And, with the last dregs of a Beetle’s bloodyminded endurance, he began lurching across the floor on hands and elbows, a slick red slug’s trail behind him and his legs limp and useless.

Eujen caught his rasping plea, ‘Help me make it work. ’

A snapbow in his hand, a second man came at Stenwold, shouting for his fellow to get clear. The weapons were not meant for such close quarters, and the War Master ducked away from a blow to lash his blade at the barrel, knocking it up and away. Then the snapbowman was down, sitting with hands smeared red as they pressed at a stomach wound, and one of the two Company soldiers huddled in the doorway was fumblingly trying to reload her bow even though her breastplate had a puncture hole above her left breast.

And the burn-scarred man looked back towards his people and must have seen almost none of them left now, and that this desperate gambit had failed. ‘Traitor,’ he repeated, almost a whisper. His expression revealed bitter bewilderment, at why this Wasp had turned so far from his people, and why the boy would not now even finish the job. Looking into Averic’s eyes, perhaps he sought some grand answer, some hint of a greater plan, something to justify the waste and the failure.

‘I’m sorry,’ Averic said, and those two words plainly showed the burned man how Collegium had taken him, body and mind, and corroded all the hard edge of the Empire.

The Beetle spy rushed him, surely without any great hope of achieving anything, because by that time he had nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish. Instead of simply flitting out of reach, Averic’s hands came up by instinct and, even as the Wasp kicked back from the railing, his Art flashed and seared, and what fell from the balcony was just a singed corpse.

The swordsman artificer — the only one of the three still living — dropped his blade with a harsh clang. In the doorway, the soldier leant back with a groan, pulling weakly at the straps of her breastplate until Stenwold hurried over to help her.

And, before the lambent majesty of the machine, Eujen propped Banjacs up, the old man’s ashen face borrowing a radiance from the great assembly of glass above him. There were no words, but a trembling thrust of the inventor’s hands picked out a bronze lever from amidst the chaos of dials and wheels, and Eujen hoisted him higher until he could seize on it.