The Air War sota-8 Read online

  She saw figures moving out on the field. Abruptly there were fires out there: bright white chemical flares in a triangle, illuminating some hurriedly retreating Wasp-kinden, throwing their shadows in long strips of night reaching all the way to the field’s edge. She caught a glimpse of Axrad, his face given a fishlike pallor by the light. His expression was fixed, fatalistic.

  The approaching flier was closer, but something was wrong, and Taki seized on the anomaly quickly. That triangle was a landing spot, but fixed-wing craft could not land on a point like that, not reliably. They could not manage that last-minute arresting of their momentum, that second’s hovering which would allow them to drop neatly to the ground.

  Her eyes — better than the Wasps’ at night — caught a glimpse of the machine as it made a pass, plotting its descent, the long, low turning circle that she would have expected, but then abruptly it was upon them, dropping out of its turn sharply enough to make Taki catch her breath.

  She had been wrong, she realized with annoyance more than anything else. An orthopter, not a fixed-wing. The sound of the propellers had gone, and there was a moment’s silent glide before its wings were backing, thrashing at the air, tilting the whole machine back and fighting to hold its place, before dropping slightly off the mark, a few yards to Taki’s side of the triangle.

  Immediately the ground crew rushed forward to douse the lights, but she had a good chance to study the machine before they did.

  Farsphex, Axrad had said. Bigger than the little air-duelling craft she knew, perhaps enough to carry two at a pinch, but with sleek, elegant lines for all that, its wings folded at an angle, back along the curved sweep of its body and tail. But there were the two props, whose drone she was sure she had heard, where the wings met the body and, now she looked, the styling of the hull was not quite an orthopter’s, concessions being made to other design imperatives…

  Instead of the cockpit glass hinging up, a hatch popped in the flier’s side and the pilot scrambled out. Two other Wasps were coming to meet him, striding across the field in a way that suggested this clandestine exercise was over. She expected voices, but not a word was exchanged.

  Taki stared at that flying machine once again, trying to appreciate what she had been brought here to see, trying to reconcile what she had heard with what she now saw.

  But of course. She started with the revelation, understanding coming to her at last. Perhaps it was not quite enough to justify Axrad’s manner, but still… the technical challenge alone was remarkable, but what could the Wasps hope to do with it?

  Then they spotted Axrad. One of the ground crew challenged him, and the sound was all the more shocking because of the utter silence of the men up to that point. Taki saw the crippled pilot step forward.

  ‘Lieutenant Axrad,’ he threw back, ‘Aviation Corps.’

  The two men who had gone over to the flier were storming towards him now, and Taki saw that they were also dressed as pilots. One of them growled something, but too low for her to hear what.

  Time to go. But she stayed, nonetheless, watching.

  For a moment Axrad was angrily dismissing them, pulling rank, facing them down, but then their eyes, both sets, both at once, were turned on Taki.

  She could not understand how she had been detected. The two of them had not even been glancing around them.

  Abruptly they were moving, and Axrad tried to get in their way, stumbling forward into their path, hands reaching out for them — to grab or to sting, she would never know. She saw a fierce flash of gold, fire leaping from one of their hands, and Axrad was down the next moment, just a crumpled dark heap.

  In the next moment she was standing on the ridge of the fence, wings springing from her shoulders. She had a brief glimpse of the flying machine — of its pilot, his goggles turned her way, silent but with a palm directed at her.

  She kicked into the air and flew, and knew for sure that they were behind her.

  She was faster and smaller, and their night vision was not the equal of hers, but if she had needed to head for any of the usual airfields, she was sure they would have caught her. She spotted three of them in pursuit, but she had the feeling that the city was bristling with other eyes, that there were hordes of them converging on every likely spot. She concentrated on sheer speed, zipping across the city with no clear destination: just putting distance between her and them, then doubling back, reading the web of streets with a navigator’s eye, just as she would if she were piloting over the city, and getting her bearings by long-honed instinct.

  There had been not a shout when they took off after her, not an alarm bell or warning cry.

  She found the Esca and dropped straight onto it, throwing open the cockpit and almost falling into her seat. One lever disengaged the wing safeties, nudging gear trains in so that their teeth meshed. Another A sting blast crackled from the roof beside her craft, a long-range shot. She thought, They’ve found me, but she felt a horrible certainty that whoever was shooting at her was not one of the men from the airstrip, but some new enemy, brought down on her by.. what?

  No time to ponder that. She threw another lever and all that stored power in her Esca ’s springs slammed the gears into motion, slapping the wings down, throwing the entire craft vertically up in the air. Then the oscillators were hammering with their comforting rhythm and the wings were ablur on either side of her, thrusting the flying machine forward between the buildings of Capitas and the stars.

  It had been a short visit, she reflected, but instructive, and she had made sufficient impression that she guessed the locals did not want her to leave. She slung the Esca sideways in the air until her compass read south, and decided to play dodge over a swathe of the South-Empire, to lose any other machines, before turning east for Collegium and what these days counted as home.

  Two

  Laszlo’s family had once performed a series of services for Stenwold Maker, ending in an arrangement which was continuing to this day and which had resulted in a number of technical advances in Collegium, including the feted New Clockwork. Having shared some remarkable adventures with Maker, and after his family hung up the trappings of their previous profession to become respectable merchants and members of Collegiate society, Laszlo had presented himself to Stenwold again, saying, Make use of me.

  It was not patriotism that had driven him, for he had no strong attachments to anything aside from family. It was not a nose for profit either; his instincts in that direction had been telling him to run in the other direction. He and Stenwold Maker had gone through a great deal together, though: privation, fear and wonder that neither would forget. Laszlo was young, and a chancer by nature, not one to settle for the quiet life. Becoming an agent of Collegium when rumours of war were hanging heavy over every city in the Lowlands seemed a good way to keep his hand in, and Solarno a better place than most.

  The early morning sun had set fire to the waters of the Exalsee, fierce as summer even on a spring day, so that the half-dozen ships out there were mere silhouettes, cruising in towards Solarno docks as they took in sail and prepared to weigh anchor. A few flying machines droned overhead: a decent-sized fixed-wing bringing in small-packet cargo, a smallish airship for heavier freight and a little spotter heliopter, off to pry into someone else’s business, no doubt.

  As Laszlo watched, a new shape skittered across the sky, tracing a long arc out over the water and then banking into a ridiculously sharp turn that sent it scudding back over the city. The sun painted it a deep metallic red, even at this distance, its body resembling a hook balanced between two blurred wings. One of the famous Firebugs, Solarno’s new pride and joy.

  Laszlo kicked off into the air himself, out of the window of his garret lodgings, down the tiered slope of the city towards the waterfront, lazily tacking to avoid other Fly-kinden or the occasional Dragonfly. It was a few hours after dawn, and the city was still sluggish, for sleeping late was a Solarnese tradition.

  There was a cool breeze coming off the lake, and
Laszlo leant into it, changing his course abruptly to hang out over the Exalsee and enjoy it, dipping almost low enough to reach down and trail his fingers in the water. Out further from the shoreline there were aquatic denizens that would have made him regret that, but they would never come so close to the city. The water was clear and inviting enough that he almost decided on an impromptu dip; only the reaction of the others, if he turned up drenched from head to foot, dissuaded him. Ridicule was a game they played constantly with one another here and he had no wish to hand out any free ammunition.

  He changed bearings with a thought, angling back towards the land just as the Firebug had done. Even as he did so he spotted another three of the new fliers cutting across the sky, heading out over the lake in formation. Perhaps they were off pirate-hunting, or keeping an eye on one of the other city-states, but Laszlo suspected that it was all about nothing but showing off. That was another long-held Solarnese tradition.

  He was still going at a fair rate as he nipped in through the open frontage of the Taverna te Remi, fast enough that he needed a tight circuit of the common room to burn off speed before he could drop down into his seat, as theatrical a piece of self-promotion as any native Solarnese could wish. The other three were already there, which was good because being the last to turn up was worth extra points. It showed that you didn’t need to work at the job; that you already had everything under control.

  After the war, having taken advantage of the Empire’s commitments elsewhere to reclaim its pawned freedom, Solarno had been left in an odd position. For those very few families deeply involved in the city’s governance, this was mostly important because of the unbalancing effect it had on Solarno’s party system, with the formerly dominant Crystal Standard becoming almost an irrelevance, whilst the once-marginal Path of Jade — and several other minor parties — had gained a great deal of influence. To everyone else, and to anyone with a grain of common sense, the liberation of the city had set a clock in motion. How long now until the Empire took its revenge?

  Solarno was unique in its position. The Exalsee was not the Lowlands, for those cities had been forced into an uneasy union by the war, and had come out the stronger for it, ready to lock shields the moment the Empire even glanced their way. Although fighters from several Exalsee cities had assisted in the liberation — in the air and on the ground — there was no such unity to be found here. Exalsee rivalries ran deep, and any brief alliances were affairs of convenience only. Solarno was one city standing alone, on the southern border of the most powerful Apt state the world had ever known.

  But the Solarnese were proud, and they were inventive. Unlike many of the cities the Empire had preyed on, they were every bit as technically adept as the Wasps and the Lowlanders, and perhaps more so. Specifically, faced with the aerial predation of hostile Dragonfly-kinden neighbours, they had pushed the science of aeronautics much further than had either Capitas or Collegium.

  The old system of a rabble of individual pilots — skilled but disorganized — that had served to defeat the Imperial air force in the liberation had been seen as insufficient, and in a rare moment of cooperation the two current leading parties and over half the local Spider-kinden Aristoi families had thrown a great deal of money at Solarno’s artificers, refining their techniques to produce a standing civic-defence force of flying machines. Three Crystal Standard leaders had been indicted for collaborating with the Wasps, and the grounds of their confiscated mansions — which just happened to neighbour one another — had been converted into the city’s first municipal hangar. Solarnese pilots were now vying for the privilege of serving their city — not just a family or faction — by flying a Firebug. Solarno had turned to face the Empire with open defiance: Touch us if you dare.

  The Empire itself had reasserted control of its various rebel provinces now, and everyone could feel the eyes of the Empress roving the map, looking for her next meal. Solarno’s fierce little show was to demonstrate just how indigestible it had become.

  The war was in abeyance, so the tools of statesmanship were the telescope, the bribe, the secret identity and the coded missive. Every key city near the Imperial borders was the rightful prey of the spymaster just now, and every nation scattered its agents there, putting out trembling feelers for the first move of the enemy. Helleron, Myna, Seldis — all of them hotbeds of espionage after their own fashion. And, of course, Solarno.

  In Helleron the spies bribed magnates and hired criminals, and crept through slums. In Myna they played constant dodging games with the paranoia of the locals. Seldis had been a hotbed of Spider family politics since long before the war. Solarno, though, had gorgeous views of the lake, and a hundred eateries, theatres and fine wine. Spies must go where they were sent, but where they wanted to be posted was Solarno. Laszlo reckoned he had been well rewarded for saving the life of Stenwold Maker, Collegium’s greatest statesman.

  Spies came to Solarno to keep an eye on the government infighting, or to wheedle secrets from its artificers, but most of all they came to spy on other spies and, soon enough, their solid tradecraft was corrupted by the slower pace and higher standard of life there. Confronted with a city in which a day spent creeping about the backstreets was a day wasted, a fragile detente had slowly formed. Hence the Taverna te Remi, which was where the spies went to watch the other spies, sitting across tables from one another, asking veiled questions, playing games of chance and skill, trading information and favours, making deals.

  It was not as simple as that, of course, and there were certainly deep-cover agents in the city, especially from the Spider Aristoi houses, but if one of the te Remi regulars failed to show, it was a sure sign that they were up to something, and that in itself was valuable information. So it was that, this morning, Laszlo could cast his eyes across the taverna’s common room, note who was present, who absent, who was sitting with whom, and have material enough to compose a decent report for Stenwold Maker before being served his first drink.

  He waved an airy hand towards the taverner and beamed across the table at his fellows, almost daily companions for the last couple of months. Agents all, enemies and rivals, but friends of the moment. As a former pirate, Laszlo was well used to making the most of acquaintances before chance should set them at daggers drawn again.

  Taking up at least a third of the table was Breaghl the halfbreed, who claimed to be a freelancer willing to spy for anyone’s coin. He had Fly-kinden blood bulked out awkwardly by Solarnese Beetle heritage, and amongst themselves the others guessed that he was securely in the pay of the Chasme merchants, here to keep tabs on Solarnese innovation and steal any of it that was not securely nailed down. He had the locals’ sand-coloured skin but his features were lumpy and irregular, his hair receding without grace. He was half again the size of any of his companions — although still smaller than the average Solarnese — as well as a strong drinker, a weak gambler and a man who apparently made cowardice a matter of principle. He had let slip that the Fly in his parentage had been his mother and, reflecting on the eye-watering image of his birth, the others had taken to calling him ‘Painful’.

  Te Riel was neat, and looked weak and bookish when he wanted to, but Laszlo knew that inside his crisp and reserved clothes the man was solidly built enough. His manner was smooth and he was a Fly in early middle years, a seniority that he routinely tried to capitalize on. He insisted that he was an intelligencer for hire, but peculiarities of accent had led the others to conclude he was almost certainly Imperial. Laszlo considered him a prime rival, albeit not over anything so professional as espionage.

  The woman, and object of their rivalry, called herself te Liss, or sometimes just Liss, and Laszlo thought that he was probably in love with her. At least, it stabbed him somewhere close to the heart whenever she smiled at te Riel. In truth, all three of them were a little besotted with her, professional agents or not. She had a heart-shaped face with sly eyes and a constant air of mockery, and her hair was an explosion of red curls that Laszlo had neve
r seen on a Fly before. She wore dark colours that marked her out against the usual local white, and professed to be a mercenary out of the Spiderlands, but the three men were quite sure she was in the pocket of one of the local parties, if they could only agree on which one.

  Laszlo himself had also claimed neutrality, but te Liss had told him, one stolen evening when he had her to himself, that they all knew he was an agent for the Aristoi, and that he should stop trying to hide it.

  ‘Beginning to wonder if your mistress had called you up,’ te Riel observed, apparently oblivious to Laszlo’s aerobatic entrance. ‘Hung over?’

  ‘Perhaps he was out all night watching over the Firebug hangars,’ Liss suggested. ‘One of us should be getting on with some work here, after all. For myself, I can’t be bothered, honestly.’ It was bad form, amongst the agents of the Exalsee, to be seen to be working.

  ‘As though that’s worth the effort,’ Breighl grunted. ‘After all, they’ll practically guide you around during the day, they’re so proud of the place.’ It was true. The Solarnese were not shy about showing off their new toys — after all, there was no point in having a deterrent if the other side remained ignorant of it.

  Liss cocked her head to one side, eyes twinkling. ‘I did come into possession of a little roster: flights in, flights out, day and night. Cost me dear, too.’

  ‘Hardly, given that you work for them,’ Breighl remarked sourly.

  ‘Me? Why would you think such a thing?’ Her smile disarmed him, as it always did. Of the three of them, the halfbreed was the unhappiest, for he was as smitten with her as the rest and yet knew he had no chance with her.

  ‘Who do I owe, I wonder? Who do I want to owe me?’ te Liss’s eyes roved about the table. ‘Dice for it, perhaps? Or will the Empire stump up some coin to keep me off the streets?’ She raised her eyebrows at te Riel.