On the seventh day the Imperials came back and nobody was ready for them. The majority of the Collegium pilots were on the ground by then, and most of them asleep. A mere skeleton flight of a half-dozen machines was actually in the air when a fresh score of enemy were spotted coursing towards the city at top speed.
Taki was shocked into sudden fighting wakefulness by a College functionary standing in the dormitory doorway and ringing a heavy bell over and over, just as though they were all late for class. She tried to kick into the air by instinct, became fouled in her blanket and crashed to the floor. From all around there were demands to know what was going on, loud enough to quite eclipse the answer.
Some of them heard, though. She saw young Pendry Goswell’s face turn abruptly ashen, then she was pushing past the bell-ringer, rushing from the room. Franticze, the Mynan’s Bee-kinden fanatic, was hot on her heels. Then the warning got through to everyone else at once, and they were all pushing for the door. Taki unlatched one of the high windows, bolting out into the open, her wings slinging her towards the neighbouring airfield, hoping that the news had reached the ground crews, and that they were already wheeling the Stormreaders out for take-off.
As she landed, dropping untidily into the open cockpit of the Esca Magni, she looked up and the sight was terrible, already advanced far beyond her fears. There was smoke rising, at least three separate columns of it, and that wheeling, glittering gnat spinning from the sky was surely a damaged Stormreader plummeting to earth. Over the centre of the city a vast airship, a big merchantman freighting supplies in from the Ant cities to the west, was beginning to fall, its airbag ripped open by persistent rotary volleys, a graceful tumble ever accelerating as it vented its gas, the earth reaching for it. It looked as though the doomed vessel would come down somewhere near the Amphiophos.
All around Taki there were pilots stumbling and struggling for their seats, the mechanics throwing themselves clear as the wings were freed to start beating. She dragged her cockpit closed and unleashed the engine, the New Clockwork spring instantly placing all of its power at her fingertips, so that the first tremendous clap of the Esca ’s wings got her clear of the ground, then she was arrowing away, circling upwards, clawing for height.
She spotted the first neat formation of the enemy, a dozen of their Farsphex cutting a lean curve away from a boiling cloud of smoke, obviously intending to arc back again as tightly as possible and continue work. Twelve to one were not the best odds, but Taki was already committing herself, trusting that her skill would have found refuge in some part of her mind that was not ragged with sleep deprivation.
Before she got in range of them, she was no longer alone. To one side she recognized Franticze, because the mad Bee flew with a fierce attacking fury like nobody else, disdaining all suggestion of formation or order. The Collegiate Stormreader on Taki’s left was probably Elser Hardwick, a middle-aged clockwork-maker who had shown a surprising aptitude for flight; and beyond and behind her was surely Taxus, the Tarkesh halfbreed and supposed renegade. Taki was less happy about that, as she had deliberately been keeping the man off any important duties because she didn’t entirely trust him. But that meant he was far more fit for active duty than anyone else, and it seemed he had decided to prove himself, whether she wanted him to or not.
All this passed through her mind, in the few fleeting seconds before her rotary piercers opened up. The Imperials had already spotted them — they were seemingly impossible to surprise — and their precise formation broke and parted, individual Farsphex seeming to dart off to solitary freedom before all coming back together, aiming to combine again against the attacking Collegiate craft.
The Wasps were less successful this time, but the reason was hardly to the defenders’ credit. A simple failure of cohesion proved to be the Stormreaders’ greatest asset. Taki and Hardwick followed the pattern they had drilled with, picking out one enemy and following, with Hardwick hanging back a little to watch for the return of the other Farsphex. Franticze, however, had ideas of her own: bolting through the expanding ring of enemy across the city, skimming the rooftops and off after some other target altogether. Taxus, meanwhile, very nearly got himself shot down by Taki herself, throwing his vessel in front of her, within a hand’s span of fouling her attack run. She was close enough to catch a glimpse of the halfbreed gesticulating at her angrily as though she was the one doing it wrong.
Her piercers hammered, the stick juddering in her hands with the transmitted force of it. The Farsphex under her sights twisted and turned, shrugging off the shot, odd sparks and flashes showing where she had hit. She was almost there, though. She had the sense again, and very strongly, that the enemy were simply not quite so skilled as pilots, that their larger machines were less nimble in the air. This should not be so difficult…
She caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye: Hardwick signalling frantically. The others were on her already. A moment later the Beetle pilot peeled off to engage, her weapons glittering the air with bolts.
Just a second more… but the Farsphex she was trying to bring down was throwing itself all over the sky, the pilot seeming to have eyes in the back of his head as she tried to predict him, to trick him into cutting across the stream of her bolts. The first enemy shot holed her wing, another striking the engine casing, making her Esca shudder. She had already lost sight of Hardwick.
Taxus came back then, trying to draw the enemy away from her, his status as ally changing instantly from dubious to invaluable. Her own target was flying low, almost below the rooftops, taking a straight line down the Pathian Way at an unwise speed, heading straight for the …
Refining vats.
The Farsphex had fixed its wings, less agile but faster, outpacing her, and the shots from the however-many enemy still on her were starting to fall like sleet all around her. This single-minded pursuit was making her a target in turn. To her left, two craft spiralled away: Taxus forcing a Wasp from the pack by physically blocking him, matching the Imperial’s twists and turns, neither of them getting a shot in. In that glimpse she saw more fliers coming in, without any notion of whose they were.
She had the triggers down still, at an unconscionable cost of ammunition, but she had only this chance to bring the enemy down. She almost felt, rather than saw, her shots impact about the enemy tail, tattering and shredding it, but all without denting the Farsphex’s handling. A bolt impacted somewhere behind her, piercing the Esca ’s casing, canting her entire world to the left as something gave way in one wing.
Too late, too late.
She actually saw the bombs fall, and then her world was smoke and flame, the fuel vats going up like bonfires, gouting thirty feet up as she frantically clawed for height, praying that the silk of her wings would not catch, because that would And then she was amongst the enemy. Gaining height had lost her forward momentum, and the Farsphex were all about her without warning, one pulling sharply right to avoid a collision. She had a view of the gaping hatch in its underbelly — was that someone she saw there, crouching at a machine and staring back? Then she had fought her way high enough to find herself in the thick of it.