The Sea-kinden were in that vessel, she saw. There was no mistaking their colossal armoured forms leaping down onto the wall – warriors from a world where falling was seldom something to be feared. At least one misjudged and dropped from the walls like a rockslide, but the rest were already fighting, shrugging off snapbow bolts and stingshot and carving joyously through the Wasps. Rosander’s pale-plated form shone out at their head.
And we’re in. Taki slung her machine through a cloud of Light Airborne, rotaries blazing to scatter them, catching a brief, messy glimpse of one luckless man torn apart by the barrage.
The Imperial air counter-assault was getting more determined – she reckoned they’d put everything they had into the air by now, pulled back anything that might have otherwise been bedevilling the locals. The airships were coming under fierce assault, and one was listing badly as it tried to get to the ground, the cells within its canopy venting gas through holes large enough for Taki to see even at this distance. There had been a suggestion that they simply drop the relief force where the local uprising had made its stand, but it was plain that the Imperials were not going to let these lumbering dirigibles get that far.
Another airship had coasted over the wall and was descending onto the rubble with absurd care, even while the Farsphex strafed it, disgorging Mynan soldiers who were willing to jump the last few feet because they had been waiting for this moment for too long. Stenwold Maker would be down there, too, probably holding on to the rail and staring out at the battle to come. The Wasps would not be slow with their response.
‘Gannic!’ the Red Watch man was yelling. ‘Gannic! Where are you?’ Even though the halfbreed engineer was virtually in front of him. ‘Halfways bastard, what were you doing?’ The man’s face was purple with anger, eyes crammed full of suspicion.
‘Sleeping, sir. What’s happening?’
‘The Lowlanders have got here,’ snapped Red Watch. ‘We move now. I’ve got the garrison mobilized already, you sluggard. We’re taking our special cargo up to the enemy right now.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Red Watch was already storming off, leaving Gannic to stumble in his wake. ‘We’re moving in the artillery. We can sling this stuff up onto the top level, let it crack open and obliterate the whole pack of them. If the artillery doesn’t manage to get there, then you’ll take squads in, carry the stuff, plant it and set it to explode.’
And get out. You forgot to say, ‘Get out,’ Gannic thought, but did not say.
Red Watch seemed to have overheard even the thought, because he rounded furiously on the silent Gannic. ‘This mission is top priority, orders from the Empress herself,’ he snarled. ‘I didn’t want to have to rely on you. You’re not one of us.’ It was not clear whether he meant the Watch or the Wasp race as a whole, or some other more arcane qualification. ‘Understand, though: this must succeed. Nothing can go wrong. There can be no deviation. We are here to execute a city, in the Empress’s name. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Gannic got out.
‘And if that means you have to stand over these things with a hammer and hit them until they blow, you’ll do it.’
‘Sir, you can’t just . . . after Szar last time, there are failsafes. They have to be—’
‘Whatever they have to be, you do it. You make sure it’s done.’ Red Watch waved away the technical details, the hours of careful thought put in by Gannic’s fellow engineers.
Then Red Watch was off to intimidate some of the garrison officers. ‘Get moving! Get moving up the tiers. We need to stop the locals getting out. I want all of your snipers out on the streets. I want that relief force slowed down to a crawl. Get me your Sentinels and put them in the Lowlanders’ way. Anything to give us more time!’
‘Sir!’ Gannic got as close to tugging on the man’s sleeve as he dared.
‘What is it?’
‘Sir, you said up . . . you said the Mynans are . . . they’re on the top tier of the city.’
‘That’s where we’ve got them penned,’ Red Watch acknowledged.
Oh . . . ‘Sir, this gas is heavier than air. Once it’s done its work on the Mynans, it’ll . . . come back down, to us.’
‘It’s gas. Don’t be ridiculous,’ Red Watch pronounced firmly, and strode off.
Oh, no, no no, don’t say he knows that little about artifice. Gannic glanced around at the mustered force of the Myna garrison, marching to the orders of their Empress, and not one of them understanding what was about to happen. He felt like waving his hands in the air and shouting, You’re all going to die! You’re heading straight to your deaths!
And he would be the one who would kill them, along with all the Mynans, a city-full of Mynans crammed together in that part of the city they naively believed that they had won back. They had not been bombed, nor had the Airborne dropped in to break them up and scatter them, and they had not asked why. They did not know that the Empress had a purpose even for their defiance. A terrible, terrible purpose.
He could walk away, he realized. He felt the fulcrum moment of his life, the point when he could say ‘no’ – even just to himself – and walk away, and not be the man who murdered an entire city.
But the Red Watch man would hunt him down, or the Empress would send some other to do it, or the Rekef or . . . And Gannic was a creature of the Empire. Where else could he go?
But as soon as the canisters are in the air, I’m running.
The air was still being contested, the Stormreaders tilting and stooping, outnumbered by the Imperial craft. The majority of the Wasp pilots were operating in old Spearflights, though – yesterday’s machines no match for today’s. Each time Stenwold looked up, there seemed to be fewer of them.
He had tasked the pilots with getting the word through to the Mynan enclave that help was coming, but there was no way of knowing if they had succeeded. The ground forces, their airships abandoned behind them, were just forcing their way onwards through the city, scouting ahead as best they could and trying not to stop for anything.
The Empire was plainly committed to foiling them in that last objective. Light Airborne had begun dropping on them soon after they started off, squads of Wasps finding rooftops or empty storeys to shoot from, fleeing when they were challenged, but always coming back for more.
The attackers’ response to this was simply not to let this tactic delay them at all, moving through the war-ravaged streets of Myna as swiftly as they could, so that by the time the Wasps had set up their ambush, their enemies were already passing on. If the Imperial troops had been a regular field army, then this would have become an exercise in accumulating casualties. The Mynan garrison was larger than most, but it lacked the same keen edge of battlefield veterans. The attackers’ speed and simple determination to press ahead caught the Wasp garrison off guard and out of position. The airborne squads were picked off in the air as they tried to get in place, or sometimes found that the fleetest of their enemies had already staked out their hiding places.