‘Then what went wrong, Taki?’ came his measured response.
‘What went wrong is that the Stormreaders can only carry a handful of underpowered explosives, and lining them up for the strike is painstaking fiddly work when you’re being shot at. They may not have many Farsphex, but they know their business! When we were doing the same favour for them, not so long ago, they still got plenty of bombs on the ground — you know why?’
‘Because they have a second crew member doing the aiming, Taki,’ Willem broke in. ‘And because the Empire built them with that in mind, and a cursed good job they did of it. Stormreaders are built to fight in the air. I can’t make you good against the ground. We’d need a whole different type of orthopter — and you’d need to give me the time to work out the design. I won’t say I haven’t looked into it, but even if I’d started work straight after they left last time, we’d barely have a prototype when the Second arrive again. And as for reverse-engineering the Farsphex. . we have a handful of their crashed vessels whole enough to study, and nobody around here seems to realize just how complex the things are — let alone their fuel, which we don’t have, and which the chemical artifice department can’t even guess at. Taki. .’
She had been ready to shout at him for failing her, but she saw from his face that he had already spent nights and days trying to overcome mountains, and that nobody was more aware of the stakes than he was.
‘I’m sorry, Willem,’ she said. ‘What can you give me?’
‘There’s a big consignment of the new steel just shipped in, and I can get another dozen or so Stormreaders fitted with replacement springs. About half your strike force, by then.’
She was shaking her head. ‘No point having half our machines that can stay over the enemy for a day at a time, if we’re still out of bombs in three passes.’
‘I know, I know, but it’s better than nothing. It’s something.’ Neither of them bothered to raise the obvious fact that, the closer the enemy came, the less important the simple staying power of the Stormreaders would prove. ‘A lot of the city’s resources are going elsewhere. They’ve new artillery on the walls, for example. . and if it does come down to a siege, it shouldn’t just be you standing between victory and defeat.’
‘Let them keep telling themselves that,’ Taki grumbled. ‘I don’t trust fancy new untested artillery, and those Wasp big leadshotters already have two cities to their tally is what I hear.’ She waved over at one of the ground crew. ‘Get them all re-tensioned, right away. Training flights in two hours!’
‘You push yourself too hard,’ Reader said softly.
‘Me? I’m a Fly, Willem. We just keep buzzing.’ She was aware that her grin was too bright and cheerful, to the point of cracking about the edges. ‘Maker’s Draft has given me three score Collegiates who think they can fly an orthopter. By the end of today I reckon at least a score of them will be wearing the sashes of the Merchant Companies and praying never to leave the ground again. The rest perhaps I can use.’ But they’ll never have a chance to get good at it, was another unspoken but shared thought. ‘How’s the family?’ An awkward digression. Taki had lived in a world of feuding pilots most of her life and the small talk of other people baffled her. Only after coming to Collegium had she started to care about the earth-bound masses: men such as Willem Reader or Stenwold Maker. Only after running foul of the Empire had she started to appreciate the bigger issues and what they meant to the individuals around her.
‘Jen’s grumbling that they want to use her library as a hospital, if the worst comes to the worst. I swear she’d let the Empire in through the gates if they showed a thorough knowledge of indexing. Little Jen has been learning emergency drill at school, She always used to draw me pictures of orthopters, but now, when she does, they’re fighting. Everything’s gone mad.’ He said it matter-of-factly, but there was a world of weariness there.
I’m not the only one pushing myself too hard, Taki decided. ‘Come on, Willem, you don’t need to oversee all this personally.’
‘Better than the committees.’ He shrugged. ‘Which reminds me, the War Master wants a report from both of us. Now there’s a man, I swear, who never sleeps.’
Outside Collegium’s walls, another grand project was under way. The approach to the city was a broad and shallow slope of land that the river had ground out with its meanderings over thousands of years, the cliffs on either side dipping down gently towards the sea. This was the bowl that held Collegium, and it had been a coastal resort for the Moth-kinden once, but was now a seat of trade, rich farming and comfort for the Beetles. Defence had never been something the city had been sited for, and recent years had seen too many enemies simply come walking up to the city’s gates. Now a great force of men and machines and animals was working on both sides of the river, and the rail line, to complicate the Second Army’s last few hundred yards of advance.
Straessa was well aware that a battery of cartographers, architects, engineers and mathematicians had been up for nights working out the perfectly calibrated defence against the marching feet of the Wasps. Taking into account the arcs of the city’s artillery, the strengths of the wall and the natural lie of the land, they had set out a complex maze of artificial topography to trip and slow, funnel and compress; to force the hand of the Imperial general and make his soldiers victims of Collegium’s wall engines. The theory was all there and, as a student of the College, she could probably have done some of those calculations herself.
Standing with a spade in her hand, overlooking the toiling soldiers of the Coldstone Company working alongside the machines of a dozen professionals who had made moving earth their business, it all looked like a colossal mess to her. She could not shake off the feeling that this entire grandiose venture was simply to give the city’s massed soldiery something to do.
‘Water!’ came a shout, and she turned gratefully. A draught beetle was dragging out what had been a fire engine until recently, but had now been pressed into service to quench the thirst of Collegium’s defenders.
‘Gorenn, get cups and buckets down the line,’ she called, and a Dragonfly woman took off from a nearby mound of earth, glad to be out of it, and started to organize a bucket chain.
I should probably tell everyone how well they’re doing, but for all I know we’re going to have to shift everything ten feet to the left or something. Plans on paper were all very well, but putting them into action on the ground was another matter.
‘Officer Antspider!’ Another demand for her attention, but at least it gave her an excuse not to start shovelling again. All the privilege of rank had not stopped her underlings shaming her into doing her bit.
She had not recognized the voice but, turning, she knew the man. ‘Gerethwy!’ she cried, delighted. If her voice wavered very slightly over the last syllable of his name, well, he had changed somewhat since losing half a hand to an exploding snapbow. He had always been freakishly tall — long-limbed, long-faced, with that stooped hunch that all Woodlouse-kinden apparently had. Now his cheeks were hollow, and his grey skin seemed to show something beyond just his kinden’s natural hue.
‘Reporting for duty,’ he told her, striding over the uneven ground. ‘If you’ll have me.’
‘Te Mosca let you go, did she?’
‘I need to do something.’ And he was saying more than he used to, as well. Single words, nods and wry expressions had always seemed enough before. Now all those unspoken words were leaking out. ‘What in the pits is this?’ His eyes raked over all that grand effort of earth-moving.
‘Second-to-last line of defence against the Wasps,’ she told him. ‘Get the ground all rucked up so that they can’t just march over it without getting in the way of our artillery, and pack a load of the soil up against our walls to shield us from theirs.’