came.
Taki guided her battered Esca through a slow, spiralling descent — in truth the absolute best the machine was capable of just then, while watching the other Collegiate pilots still aloft follow her down. She had, she confessed to herself, no idea what had just happened, and no leap of inspiration could conquer the gap. Apt as she was, it seemed to her as though some great sorcerer of old had waved a hand, invoking an untold power simply to rid the sky of the enemy, leaving herself and her fellows intact.
Only later would she learn that Banjacs’s machine had not worked as intended, that the grand obliteration had never come, that even a genius’s calculations could harbour errors. Later scholars would suggest that, to fulfil his dream, ten times the charge of raw lightning energy would have been needed, and its backwash would have flash-cooked every living thing in Collegium. As it was, although the Stormreaders that had flown through that particular storm would need refitting, countless small components slightly deformed or melted as the lightning had leapt about them on its way to repatriation with the sky above, they had all landed safely, their pilots shocked and shaky, but alive.
For the Farsphex, however, the residual sparks of that same discharge had, within a varying number of seconds, coursed through the fuel tank and turned all that volatile and devastatingly efficient mineral oil into an instantly detonating bomb.
The Collegiate pilots, those who had reached the ground before then, and those only just now touching down, looked up into a sky that they had won, and around them at a city their path to victory had scarred almost beyond recognition. Even then the messengers were being sent out from Stenwold Maker and Jodry Drillen to tell them their work was not yet done, that the College artificers were waiting for them to complete emergency modifications to the Stormreaders, that the war was still going on.
She had given the order to run once they seemed to have put an acceptable distance between them and the front line — that chaotic tangle of men and vehicles that had given Straessa’s maniple the chance to win clear. There were other maniples that had failed to break free, or whose officers had decided on some misguided stand, and she understood she was abandoning them. There was no right answer.
Shortly after she had allowed her people to break formation and just flee, one of the transport automotives rumbled up, the driver vaguely recognizable from amongst the ranks of the camp artificers.
‘Get in!’ the man said, his face a mask of dust covering goggles and a face scarf.
‘Where are you headed?’ Straessa demanded. Throughout the mass of retreating Collegiate soldiers, she could see other vehicles performing the same service.
She had a horrible feeling that the driver was about to take them back to the fighting, but he just gestured towards the city, and home.
Straessa did not even need to give the order. By the time she had hauled her aching body on board, most of her maniple were already there, and the nearest stragglers from other units were heading over as well. The driver kept his eye on the churning dust that must be the Imperial forces on the march again. The sky to the east was dark with the Airborne, beginning to range out over the fleeing Beetles to pick them off.
Oh I’m not going to enjoy learning about this in history classes, thought Straessa, because humour had always before been her armour against the world. The following thought was even less funny: I don’t think Collegium’s going to be writing the histories.
When the transport was full, with soldiers hanging off the sides, the driver wrenched it about and headed for the camp at best speed. There were no orders, Straessa understood. Everyone who could was trying to assist with the retreat, to preserve some vestige of armed strength for… nobody seemed to be sure for what.
She was the highest-ranking officer on the automotive, which was to say the only one.
‘What the blazes is this?’ their driver demanded. Ahead of them was a block of soldiers that seemed to be forming up, as though they had arrived late and somehow contrived to overlook what was happening all around them. The sheer idiocy of it offended their driver enough for him to grind the transport to a halt and begin shouting at them.
‘What are you doing? Get moving, you fools. They’re right behind us!’
There were a fair number of them, Straessa saw — a few hundred at least — and although they were as dust-smothered as everything else she saw that they were mostly all of a piece. These were Mynans, standing in a close block, shoulder to shoulder just as though the snapbow had never been invented, falling back on what they knew.
Someone was approaching the automotive, and Straessa blinked to recognize the Mynan leader, Kymene. The woman looked exhausted, her right arm bandaged up and a sword in her left hand, but a mad fire burned in her eyes.
‘We attack!’ she snapped. ‘What else is there?’
The driver just gaped at her, but Straessa leant past him. ‘Commander, we’ve lost! We have to get back behind our walls before they catch us in the open.’
‘They’re not trying to catch us in the open, and your walls will not save you,’ Kymene declared flatly. She pointed out towards the enemy ‘They’ve halted, Sub-officer.’
Straessa stood, frowning, then stepped on the back of the driver’s seat. The trailing mass of fugitive soldiers was still being harried by the Airborne but, now that she looked, the main body of the Imperial army did seem to be holding their ground.
‘Well that’s…’ she began uncertainly. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means their artillery is in range of the city,’ Kymene informe her. ‘There is no other reason for them to stop.’
‘But they’re…’ She could just about make out what might be Collegium over to the west, although the dust made that uncertain. ‘You can’t… Seriously?’ And then came the unwelcome knowledge that, of course, Kymene had been through all this before.
‘If we do not act now, the city is lost,’ Kymene said, and it was plain that she had no intention of finding herself in this position again, one way or the other. ‘We will break into the enemy camp and destroy their engines, just as the automotives were supposed to do. It is the only way. Or else, if you decide to run, just keep running. There’s no point stopping once you reach Collegium.’
Coward, was her unspoken implication, just as Straessa’s mind was screaming, Madwoman. But it stung, that accusation. It stung beyond any veneer of common sense or tactical consideration. And the woman was right, as well, as far as Straessa could weigh the odds.
‘Sub?’ asked one of her people, or perhaps one of those from another maniple.
‘I resign my commission,’ said the Antspider, only realizing afterwards that she’d said it aloud. A lot of people were staring at her.
‘I’m staying,’ she called out, pitching her voice to carry. ‘I’m giving no orders. Your choice.’ With that inspiring speech, she slung herself over the side of the automotive and went to stand by the Mynans.
Perhaps a little under half made the same choice, forming themselves into makeshift, patchwork maniples. Their entire armed strength was just a mote before the great storm that the Empire was bringing.
Punch our way in. Destroy artillery. Get out. Oh, yes, can see all of that happening. Straessa was beginning to hope that Chief Officer Marteus really was dead, because otherwise she was going to kill him for promoting her.
‘Let’s go,’ ordered Kymene, and a moment later the Mynans were moving off: black and red armour and peaked helms, blue-grey faces set in expressions that spoke of being driven to the wall one too many times. After an awkward pause, the rallied Company soldiers followed suit. Straessa shouted at them to spread out, to make themselves more difficult targets, but she barely had the voice for it, nor the heart.
Then there was a buzzing, a murmuring sound that swelled behind them, familiar to them but new to the battlefield, and a moment later the orthopters were racing overhead, wings ablur. The soldiers began to scatter immediately, fearing the worst, but Kymene just stood and stared upwards. Then her sword was pointing high in triumph.
‘They’re ours!’ she cried, to those already with her, and to the others who were still streaming past. ‘Collegium to me!’
Amnon hauled himself to his knees, wiping blood from his mouth.
We gave them a chase, though, didn’t we?
His surviving automotives had simply not slowed, but rushed like maddened animals back and forth, a mobile
