distance.
‘Banjacs!’ Berjek snapped and, into the silence that followed, added, ‘Jodry, do you hear…?’
They felt as much as heard the impact, the rumble of it from outside the window, the shudder beneath their feet.
‘They — ah — munitions testing? Over at the College?’ Jodry stammered.
A second blast reached them, more distantly. Berjek was at the window. ‘Jodry,’ he said, his voice abruptly hollow, ‘I see flames.’
Jodry shouldered his way to the window, looking out and seeing a red edge to the night, hearing faint cries, shrieks and a familiar — all too familiar — sound: engines over the city, but in darkness, invisible.
‘No,’ he got out. ‘It’s not dawn yet — only just midnight — I won’t have it!’
But the third booming echo put paid to such illusions, and a moment later he was forcing his bulk out of the room, thundering down the stairs to get out of the mad artificer’s house and go… who knew where?
Behind him the shrill tones of Banjacs Gripshod followed him down the street, ‘Coward! Run, why don’t you! You need me! You need me!’
Straessa — Subordinate Officer Antspider to her troops — was already on the streets with as many of her followers as she could muster in a minute and a half. Thankfully, Chief Officer Marteus had insisted that the members of the Coldstone Company sleep in barracks like soldiers. The others, Maker’s Own and Outwright’s, went home to their own beds like proper Collegiate citizens, but the renegade Ant was used to armies, not civilian militias and, now there was a war on, he expected his followers to act like an army too.
This meant that, in the moments after the first explosion, individual members of the other two Companies were still stumbling out of bed, pulling on their clothes, pausing to see if they had imagined it, trying to find their armour, then ending up in the streets and searching for an officer, an armoury, a purpose. By that time the Coldstone Company, through the intractability of their leader, was already out in force.
But not to fight, of course. They had their snapbows, their pikes and most, like the Antspider, had swords at their hip, but they had nothing that would touch an Imperial orthopter. Their city was at war, the civilian casualties already in their scores and Collegium’s army had not so much as loosed a shot in anger.
‘The airfield. Come on.’ The warehouse that Marteus had co-opted for this division of his Company was sited where they could at least be on hand to assist the aviators. Straessa and her two dozen had got halfway down the street towards their destination when someone called out, ‘It’s not the airstrip, Antspider!’
She skidded to a halt. ‘Then they’ll…’ The explosion had been so near, though, and there was nothing else worth bombing out here. ‘Someone get up above and tell me what’s going on!’ She was still learning the whole leadership business, but it always reassured her to know that Marteus used essentially the same technique of shouting at people until things got done.
One of her Fly-kinden, a tinsmith by trade, sped vertically up past roof level, high enough that Straessa could only find him against the night sky with difficulty. He came down a moment later, looking a little shaken. ‘Redlift Way, chief. Going up like a furnace.’
‘But there’s nothing on Redlift Way,’ someone else objected, and the Fly rounded on him, fists balled at being doubted.
‘Enough! Let’s go,’ the Antspider snapped at them both, and then led by example. Inside her head she was agreeing with the dissenter, though: Redlift’s no use to anyone, just a terrace of houses and that little taverna with the theatre out back. Maybe someone crashed a flier into it. By that time she had a clear sight down an alley whose far end was limned with the fierce light of flames, and there was a radiance even at roof level from up ahead. It’s on fire, it really is. But what…?
There had been a few distant crumps, and the night air was droning with the sound of Farsphex, but even then she could not quite reconcile it all in her mind until another bomb struck where Redlift Way met Spurn Street, wholly within her view. She saw the flat roof of one house implode with the impact, and a moment later all the windows blew out, fragments of the shutters raking the air like grenade shrapnel, and the angry glare of flames was abruptly leering out at every quarter, bright enough for the next Farsphex passing over to be plainly visible against the dark sky.
For a moment she could only stare, even as Gerethwy began calling for someone to summon the firefighters, to fetch a pumping engine. Then she heard the screams start.
She gave no order, for there was no room in her mind for that. She simply started running towards the stricken house, and some of her people were soon with her, whilst others followed Gerethwy’s advice and went to get a pump to turn on the flames.
Pingge let the next bomb fall, concentrating hard on only the science of her new profession. Her current assignment presented her with a range of new challenges, most of them not connected to the night flight. Focus was everything.
As they had neared Collegium, having taken a longer, looped route to come in after dark, she had asked Scain about targets. She’d had a map of Collegium spread across her knees, written and overwritten with prior strikes, but this time nobody had primed her in advance. ‘I mean, I see better in the dark than you, right, but not like a Moth or anything, sir. It’s not going to be precise.’ Through the open bomb-hatch she could see a couple of the other Farsphex. To give the night attack its maximum impact they had increased the size of the flight by half — thirty machines droning their way towards the Beetle city.
‘Don’t worry about precise,’ Scain had called back to her over the noise of the engine. ‘Listen, Aarmon has a detail who’re going to go after specific targets, so that’s not your problem. Ludon has a detail that will attack anything the Collegiates get into the air, if they even do. The rest of you are to let fly anywhere that looks promising.’
‘Promising like how, sir?’ Pingge had asked him.
‘Concentrations of buildings.’
‘Yeah, but Collegium’s a city, right, sir? It’s all concentrations of buildings.’ She had raised the pitch of her voice, thinking that she was not hearing him properly but an uncontrollable yawn mangled the last word. Even after taking a couple of naps, bundled up in a blanket against the encroaching cold, she was still bone weary.
‘Take your Chneuma,’ Scain had ordered promptly. ‘We’re close enough.’
Reluctantly, she had chewed the bitter pill, but Scain would not relent until she had swallowed it. Immediately she had felt warmer, although uncomfortably aware that she couldn’t really be warmer. The drug made her feel as though she could not sit still, as though she should be doing something with her hands.
‘Seriously, though, sir, I mean, concentrations of buildings? Most of it’s just someone’s house or something.’
‘That’s right.’ Glancing back at her, there had been a curious expression on Scain’s face. ‘Shops, businesses, homes, mostly homes. With the Second getting closer, Aarmon says we’re attacking their will to fight. It’s the new plan straight from the top. Which means Rekef Outlander, to my thinking.’ She had never known Scain to rattle on like this, but then that was probably his own Chneuma talking, the double dose the pilots had taken.
‘But sir…’ she had said. ‘I mean, that’s not… not what we do.’
‘We obey orders,’ he had snapped over his shoulder, hunching inwards, and had not countenanced the subject being raised again.
Now over Collegium, she let the bombs fall, lining up the reticule carefully on a row of roofs so that the precious cargo of destruction would not be wasted on an open street or square. The first impact had almost paralysed her, her imagination running briefly out of control. This was not soldier work. She had just destroyed someone’s home. There would be a family, children. The orders had to be wrong. Someone had made a mistake. And, all the while, her hands were working at the reticule, selecting the next target out of the cityscape ahead, so that she had let the second bomb go as thoughtlessly as if it had been a training exercise, even as she still agonized over the first.
And its falling line had been perfect, her aim immaculate.
‘The thing is… the thing is we’re saving lives,’ came Scain’s voice unexpectedly, as she acquired her next target. ‘The Second will be at the gates soon. Breaking the morale of the city will mean fewer of our people die in the attack; fewer of the enemy as well. They just need to be made to understand.’
But Pingge was not listening, merely walking a delicate tightrope in her mind. The worst thing was not the horror and empathy she felt, the trap of knowing that there were actual people below, whom she was hurting and killing. The real difficulty was the opposite: because she was so high up, and so detached, and how easy it was to
