Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Scuto just passed between them, barely sparing them a glance. He vaulted up into the engineer’s cab at the back of the Pride and then came straight out again with a Wasp’s sting searing over his shoulder. His assailant cut down at him, but the shortsword clanged off his breastplate, and then Scuto seized him, hugged him close, a dozen hooked spines tearing into the twisting soldier, scratching his armour. Che found that she wanted to stop clear of the action, not for fear of the Empire, but for fear of Tisamon and his daughter, lest their deadly skills should not discriminate. She forced herself on, and her sword lodged itself in the back of the man Scuto wrestled with.

She felt it scrape against his mail and then plunge into his flesh. It was a shock that went right through her. Her first life’s blood truly shed. It was a horrible feeling, a knowledge for the worse.

And she had no time, no time to adjust. Scuto was already hurling the body away, leaping back up into the cab and holding a prickly hand out for her.

Inside, as the killing went on without, they stared.

It was the face of the lightning engine, and neither of them had ever seen anything like it. The central panel was blurry glass, and behind it there were coiled pillars that sparked and danced and glowed like lit glass themselves. Either side were dials and levers, pull-chains and toggles, and it all meant so little to her. She could see from his face that it meant even less to Scuto.

‘I wish we had Totho here now,’ she said sadly. ‘When I did my mechanics, this sort of thing was just being thought of. I know only the. . the basics.’

‘Good,’ Scuto said. With a brutal movement he brought the butt of his crossbow down onto the glass, but it barely chipped. ‘Founder’s mark!’ he spat. ‘Must be a foot thick. Can’t even trust grenades on that. You reckon you can overcharge this thing?’

Che looked over the instruments, in the familiar situation of being their best expert on a subject she knew little enough about. ‘Let’s try,’ she said. ‘Let’s just try.’

Scuto risked a look out across the engine field. ‘Try fast,’ he advised. The Wasp wedge had fallen. A pair of survivors was running, and Balkus was already slotting a new magazine into place atop his nailbow to loose at them. Stenwold glanced around, seeing a mess of dead men. Here were Wasps, fallen in close order, attacked from all sides, bodies one atop another. There lay one of Scuto’s Beetle-kinden with his face charred, and beyond was a dead Fly, blank eyes fixed upwards.

Everyone’s eyes were looking upwards in the next moment, as energy bolts started to fall around them. The next wave was here already, swooping down on them with extended, fiery hands, and lances levelled. Balkus loosed smoothly, sending bolt after miniature bolt ripping into them, spinning the flying men off balance, punching them right out of the sky.

‘Cover!’ Stenwold shouted, as one of his Ant-kinden fell trying to reload his crossbow. Sperra was already in the shadow of the lesser engine, frantically turning the winch of her own weapon.

There was a flurry of motion above even as Stenwold cast himself behind the uncertain shelter of an earth mound. He then dared to look, and saw that the entire sky had become a battleground. The Wasp squad was wheeling and passing against some of Achaeos’s people. The Dragonfly flashed through the melee’s centre, a better flier than any of the others, turning even as she flew to slice an arrow through the air that caught an unsuspecting Wasp in the back. The male Mantis-kinden caught an enemy by the belt and carved his claw into the man, two brief moves and then releasing the limp body. Then a bolt caught him in the side and he dropped. He hit the earth still living, but a Wasp had dropped with him, driving his sword into him before the stricken Mantis could recover from the fall. Stenwold shot the victor in the chest as he made to get back into the air.

Someone was shouting a warning but he could not catch the words. A moment later he did not need to. From the side of the Wasps’ camp the clashing of gears told him everything before the monstrous shape of the automotive came into view. It was a squat, armoured thing, an ugly, riveted box with a front like a sentinel’s helm and narrow slits to look onto the outside world. Its four legs arched up like a spider’s and moved it in sudden jerky steps that covered a great deal of ground. There were two great crossbows mounted beneath its blunt nose that were loosing even as it appeared, and on its back a mounted ballista — but it was more than that. Stenwold threw himself down again even as the jagged outline became clear. There was a shield bolted to the weapon to protect the crewman but he had spotted the great wooden magazine beyond it. A repeating ballista, a truly modern weapon. Seconds later began the harsh clack-clack-clack of it as it flung its bolts one after another.

It would soon smash them to pieces, he realized. They had to destroy the thing before it got into its stride.

Within his first two steps from cover his courage left him. He saw the Beetle sentinel cut down by the crossbows at the engine’s fore, collapsing back in a chaos of armour with twin spines jutting through the metal plate over his chest. One of the Tharn Fly-kinden tried to dart overhead, but the ballista winched round smoothly, and the bolt hit her so hard that for a moment she was dead still in the air as the missle passed straight through her, and then she dropped.

The automotive lumbered on, gathering pace. There were other Wasps ranked behind it, another squad at least. Stenwold took a grenade out, wondering how thick this machine’s armour was but knowing there was only one way to find out.

He lit the fuse and counted — a ballista bolt flew past him as he did — and then threw, and he had the range perfect for once. The grenade struck, and as it struck it exploded. For a moment there was fire and nothing else in his view, and then the automotive was there again, rocking back on its spindly legs. The front had been dented by the impact, and at least one of the crossbows below it was ruined, trailing its bow arm uselessly, but after a second the monstrous thing was forging ahead once more.

‘Destroy it!’ he shouted impotently, with no means of doing so.

There was fighting behind the automotive now, for two or three of the Moth contingent had dropped there. Stenwold saw the Grasshopper with the two knives making bloody work, leaping and dancing and scattering bodies aside. The ballista wheeled back to face the machine’s stern, showing Stenwold the back of the bowman’s armoured chair.

‘Now! Go now!’ he shouted, and ran for the advancing automotive without knowing if anyone was following him.

Achaeos slashed once more at the man he was fighting, his long dagger striking sparks off armour, then he was in the air again, spiralling away. Two or three bolts of energy passed him, and he glanced back to see the Wasp soldier barrelling after him, hand extended and face furious. Achaeos threw himself into a loop that left the Wasp spinning in the air and stabbed out as soon as he was in arm’s reach, jabbing the man in the leg. As the Wasp turned to follow him one of Achaeos’s fellows sped past and hooked the man around the neck, clinging on grimly as Achaeos looped back and put his blade in twice, three times, until the Wasp dropped out of the sky. He and his comrade then flew their separate ways across the battlefield.

Achaeos’s warriors were split up now, each acting on his or her own. That was the way they worked, in both raids and warfare. Nobody realized that the Moths ever went to war, but it was midnight skirmishes like this that brought out the warrior in them. He sheathed his dagger, shrugged his bow from over his shoulder and loosened the drawstring holding his quiver closed.