immediately name. There were far too many Spearflights ahead to worry about the odds now, but they had the same difficulties in communication that Edmon himself did. He saw flashes between them, officers trying to convey a response to a situation that had already changed.
Here we go, and he had chosen a target and kicked the Pacemark for every ounce of speed the ailing orthopter could give him. As the rotaries burst into life, he bellowed something wordless and primal, full of the death of his city.
His target skipped in the air under the battering it received, nose turning for the ground as the hammer of his bolts smashed its engine through the wooden hull. Then he was in their midst and, although many were trying to turn to follow his line, they were in each other’s way, and could not shoot for fear of hitting one another. All around him the other pilots were following his suicidal lead. Franticze smashed the port wings of one Spearflight to matchwood and was needling another even before she had cut into their formation. The Wanderer had taken a higher line, the lean, light flier missing with its single piercer but diving into the Wasp flock from above, bringing confusion in his wake. The Cranefly… Edmon was watching when it happened, just a moment’s flick of his eyes left and the image of the angular Mynan vessel steering left just when a Wasp pilot made a mirror decision, the two craft striking shoulder to shoulder, wheeling about each other like dance partners, wings stilled and broken, then dropping, still spinning, from the air.
Then he had more to worry about, clearing the Wasp pack and forcing the Pacemark into a complaining turn that was tighter than anything it had tried before, feeling every joint and bolt of its protest. Piercer shot sleeted past him like foul weather, a handful of impacts shunting him sideways in the air and nearly losing him control over the machine entirely. He let his rotaries blaze away, scything back through the air that the Wasps had taken, impossible to take aim at this speed, but he saw at least one Spearflight clipped by his shot, rattled, if not brought down.
Franticze’s Tserinet leapt up past him, absurdly close. There were Wasps on her tail, but her squat and ugly- looking flier moved through the air like a hunting insect, as though the woman’s sheer murderous passion could override aerodynamics. He saw another Spearflight take the full brunt of her rotaries from below, knocked from the sky just soon enough for Franticze to skip through the space it had been occupying.
He flashed the code for Retreat! without knowing who might be able to see it. He had spotted Spearflights breaking off from the pack, and there could only be one destination for them.
The Sweet Fire would be out past the western wall already, and a cargo fixed-wing could give a combat orthopter a run for its money on the straight, but there were already Imperial fliers harrying its escape, not an organized assault but — just as Edmon’s sally had been — a pack of individual pilots who had spotted the opportunity. Edmon sent the Pacemark back after them, not even knowing if he could catch up.
Had the Sweet Fire ’s pilot taken a straight line then he and his pursuers would be out of Edmon’s reach, but the man was unused to other pilots trying to kill him, and was twisting left and right to try and evade pursuit, giving the Spearflights the chance to outstrip him and come at him from the front and both sides.
Edmon had no idea how many Spearflights were in his own personal retinue, or whether any of his fellows had broken off with him. The Mynan pilots who had gone with the Sweet Fire were taking the enemy away in ones and twos, duelling savagely in the air, with no quarter given, airman against airman to the death.
Edmon felt some shocks against his hull, but only a handful — once again he had avoided the full force of some enemy’s hail of bolts, but for how much longer? If he turned to shake the pursuer off, then he would not be able to help Kymene.
He screamed again as he dived on the Wasps circling the Sweet Fire, trigger down and rotaries blazing. Most of them saw him coming, scattering before him, which bought more time for the fixed-wing than if he had actually taken one down. He kept to no sane line, made no plans, simply slinging the Pacemark around so sharply that he felt the wires of the wings strain to breaking point. Stray shots were still finding him, but he was making no serious attempt to attack, merely shooting blind and diving again and again, looping the Sweet Fire like an erratic satellite and throwing the Wasps off at every turn. His weapons ran out of ammunition on the third pass, but that no longer seemed to matter. He did not let it dictate his tactics.
Then one of the enemy had his line at last, and the impact almost took him down on its own, skewing his flight so that he was side-on to the ground, then falling upside down before he could complete the roll and get his craft under control again. The Spearflight was well and truly with him, though, and now the Pacemark was not handling at all well, abruptly incapable of the aerobatics that had saved it until now.
He tried to find a Wasp to ram, but the sky seemed mockingly clear of them, save for the pilot diligently trying to kill him.
A moment later he realized that this meant he had won. There was him, and the Sweet Fire, and the lone Spearflight that had not been stripped from the pursuit by his distractions or by the actions of other pilots.
He was just deciding that this represented a satisfactory end to his life, when Franticze came from out of the sun and chewed the tail off his enemy, sending the Spearflight tumbling away. The Bee then followed it down, trying to kill the pilot when he bailed out to trust his Art wings, but that was how deeply she hated the Wasps, and Edmon could hardly blame her just then.
Sixteen
Laszlo slipped into the backroom of the naval surgeon’s house, after leaving a bag of bread, dried fruit and a little jerky on the old Bee-kinden’s table — all that he had managed to scrape together in a day’s foraging. At first he had paid the man in silver, but the city had been locked in stalemate for five days now, with no traffic coming in by land or sea. Food was worth more than coin. The Spiders held the docks and those streets nearest the water. The Wasps held the high ground, the mansions of the wealthy. Both sides seemed to be waiting for the other to make a move.
Lissart drew back as he entered, clutching the blanket close to her, on her face the same expression as every other time he had come in to see her, after she recovered consciousness. It was the tense, desperate look of a woman under a death sentence.
‘Don’t,’ he said weakly. His day had been sufficiently frustrating, scuffling and shoving and stealing to put bread on the table. He didn’t need this. ‘You’re looking stronger.’
Again that flinch, and he saw guilt there. He supposed she was probably looking at matters in a saner and more logical way than he was. He had left her alone so far, so as not to put more strain on her wound, which the surgeon had confirmed had come close to killing her. The old man knew his trade, though, and, even if she would not be running or flying anywhere in the immediate future, she was at least on the right side of the grave.
‘Let’s talk,’ he said, and that was something more like she was expecting.
She almost relaxed at the prospect of a good old interrogation. Probably she expected him to get his knife out, right about now.
‘Lissart, is it?’ he pressed.
She nodded.
‘I’m Laszlo. Well, all right, you knew that, but I really am. I didn’t think I needed a joke name for this business. Nobody told me. Please smile at that. I’m not expecting a belly laugh, for obvious reasons.’
‘What do you want?’ Her voice was like a faint echo of the tones he remembered.
‘Good question. You work for the Empire?’
‘I think I’m freelance just now.’ The smile, when it came, was infinitesimal, but he returned it in strength.
‘I was for the Lowlands,’ he said. ‘Probably still am, assuming I can get out of this mess.’
‘What’s going on out there?’ She struggled to prop herself on her elbows.
‘Everyone’s waiting for the Spiders and the Empire to tear each other’s throats out, but nothing of the sort’s happening.’
‘The Solarnese aren’t fighting?’
‘Fighting which? If it’d been just the Empire, sure, but with the Spider navy clogging the bay, and Satrapy soldiers on every street corner from here to the Venodor? Oh, a bunch of Solarnese pilots had a crack at the airships, but they weren’t working together, and the Empire shot them down, after a bit of a dance. The Cortas
