‘So what does she want?’ the general demanded. ‘There are no orders here.’ He did not suggest that Vrakir had been sent to spy on him, but that was hardly a wild leap of logic. He should have had this meeting in private, Bergild reckoned, but then General Tynan was a blunt-speaking man who did his best to live his life in the open. The Spider commander, the Aldanrael woman, was close by Tynan’s side, though, and who knew what thoughts were passing behind her calm exterior?
‘There will be orders, General, in due course,’ Vrakir replied stoically. ‘For now, I ask you to accept me as the Empress’s voice here.’
For a moment Tynan looked as though he might argue, and surely everyone there was thinking, This is not how you run an army, but whatever the Empress had written on that paper in Tynan’s hand, it was sufficient.
Then the word came, and Bergild called out, ‘General, orthopters inbound!’ because he was right there and it would save time. Everyone was looking at her instantly — perhaps all the more so in shock at a woman’s voice daring to accost their leader — but she was already in the air and racing for the automotive that carried her machine ready for launch.
Behind her, Tynan was shouting out for everyone to get moving again — no stationary targets for the Collegiate bombs — and for the infantry to spread out as best they could. Everything fell into a well-rehearsed chaos, familiar from every previous day of this march. Bergild, herself, had thoughts only for the sky.
Taki had never flown a bombing run. She understood the necessity of the work, but it was not her work. She was a pilot of Solarno and she took her prey in the air. There was no glory in attacking an enemy that could not fight back. When she had explained that — the one time she had tried, anyway — to the Collegiate pilots, most of them had looked at her as if she was mad.
Beetle-kinden were a practical-minded lot. If they were forced to fight, then most of them would far rather build machines to do it for them, ideally in a way that precluded retaliation. That made Taki think of the Empire, the way it had brought Myna to its knees, with so little danger to its own side, by orthopter and artillery. Collegium would not be taken so readily, but the whole business brought a sour taste to the mouth. Where were those sunlit days in Solarno, when she would joust in the skies against her brothers, air-pirates, free pilots, Princep Exilla dragonfly-riders, and all bound by their common kinship? Here she was now at the cutting edge of Apt warfare and already mourning a lost way of life.
Mantis-kinden would understand, she thought, even as she adjusted her course to head against one of the Farsphex, as the Imperial machines rose out of the great marching host. They wouldn’t understand the machines, but the thoughts behind them. Oh, for an Apt Mantis to teach to fly. . Clouds of the Light Airborne were scattering upwards, wings aflare — not that they would be any real good in the fighting, but they would be out of the way of the bombs. The heavier infantry, the Spiderlands troops, and all the rest still shackled to the earth, they were dispersing as much as they could, losing cohesion and slowing their advance to do so. Well, fine, we’re not exactly here to bomb them to death, just to break their toys and kick over their larder. For there was a multitude of automotives with the Imperial force, though not half as many as when they had come this way the first time. All the important loads that the Empire could not do without had been split up across the army — more good sense from the Wasps — but it meant that any vehicle over a certain size became a target.
And this time they’ll know it. The plan was typical committee-born Collegiate nonsense, and Taki had argued fiercely against it, but it was a good plan nonetheless. Still doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Then the Farsphex was flashing into her sights, already turning aside as she began to shoot, obviously warned by some other Imperial pilot. Taki slung her Esca Magni into as tight a turn as she could, unhappily aware that she had managed it tighter in her time. Her prized craft had taken its share of knocks in the fighting over Collegium a month before and, although the mechanics had done their best, she was going to have to give up on it soon. Sentiment was something she had been indulging in, and could not truly afford. She needed a new orthopter.
The enemy pilot threw the Farsphex into a surprisingly nimble climb, but changed course suddenly, and Taki knew that the Imperial mind — the collected thoughts of its mindlinked pilots — had seen what new game Collegium had brought.
The Stormreaders were quartering the sky, seeking out the Imperial fighting craft and driving them mercilessly, but not one of them heading for the ground. They were making all-out war on the Farsphex, the Spearflights, the rabble of other machines the Empire had mustered, whilst at the same time the rest of Collegium’s air force was hoping for a clear attack on the ground.
They had put a surprising amount of craft in the air, for such a grounded folk. The Collegiates had given Taki orthopters and fixed-wings and heliopters, and most of them were as lumbering and bulky as their owners — flying barrels, flying crates, all wood-hulled and unlovely things that had been drawn from a life of cargo-hauling or flying courier duty, or lugging complaining passengers from city to city in the Lowlands. There were more than two score of them, and most were loaded with bombs where the Stormreaders could only carry a handful. Each had a civilian pilot willing to make the run — no reluctant draftees here by Taki’s insistence — and another man or woman in the hold ready to rain fire and death on the Empire. Some of these craft had hastily fitted mechanisms to release their cargo, whilst others would rely on holes cut into the floor, or shoving bombs out of a side-hatch.
If the Farsphex got through to them — even if the older Spearflights did — then the result would be a massacre, but there were more Collegiate fighter craft in the air than Imperial, by some margin.
The Farsphex she was chasing twisted round and tried to double back, but another Stormreader was already there and arrowing in so sharply that Taki had to slacken her own pursuit or risk running into its bolts. She saw the Farsphex take a spray of hits, tilt a little in the air and then level out. By then she and her newfound wingman were both on its tail, harrying it away from the bombers and daring it to brave their shot.
Below them, the first bombs landed — delivered too hastily, with the rosy fire of their explosions cracking open ahead of the Imperial advance. But there were more where that came from, a great deal more.
Bergild’s mind was full of the voices of her fellows, all of them trying to get past the Stormreaders in order to reach the bombers, and all of them being driven in every direction across the sky by the Collegiate fliers. They were doing their best to assist one another, to stay calm and coordinate their movements, but she could feel the desperation creeping in.
She corkscrewed her Farsphex groundwards, a dangerously steep descent at the best of times, bolts flashing past her from the craft following on her tail. Then another Stormreader was rushing at her, flat and low over the heads of the Second Army, its piercers stuttering. She had to jerk away: it was that or end up with shredded wings and unable to pull out of the dive she had been in. There was one of the clumsy Collegiate bombers in her eye, though, and she had pulled out not so far from it; and so she feigned reaching for height, pulling her nose up, and then letting the Farsphex fall away to the right, towards her target, hoping against hope that her attackers would be fooled just long enough.