Back in the hangar, Che had already returned to the Cleaver, familiarizing herself with the controls. She heard Nero climb in behind her.
‘We’re going as soon as Taki’s taken off,’ she told him.
‘Right you are.’ He stood behind her, holding on to the back of her seat. ‘Roomy, this, but you can’t see a thing,’ he decided, and she heard the hatch rattle again as he opened it for a better view.
Out on the field, the Esca’s two wings began working their way up to a blur, and then the flying machine’s legs left the ground and slowly folded in, taking off on the vertical. Axrad’s heavier machine prowled stubbornly along the airstrip before slowly lifting into the air with great beats of its own four-wing arrangement. Then they were both aloft, spiralling about one another, gaining height: for a moment the sole point of concentration for everyone watching below.
Even when the Cleaver’s engines started up, there was a moment before anyone could distinguish the new sound from the two fliers receding above. Then the barrel-bodied fixed-wing was already moving, dragged forwards by its propellers and advancing slowly on the open hangar mouth. It was an unlovely thing in motion but it was solidly built, shouldering aside a smaller vessel that obstructed it in its hunt for the sky. Che felt it lurch and kick as she wrestled with the controls. It was taking all her strength just to keep the craft on a straight line.
I hope it’s livelier than this when it gets into the air.
‘Che!’ Nero called down to her. ‘Trouble!’
The Wasps had noticed them, at last, or perhaps they had simply begun loosing their stings on the bystanding mechanics. Che saw several of the Solarnese go down. A moment later the Cleaver’s hull thrummed under scorching impacts.
This is a wooden flier, Che reflected, with an engine that burns combustible fuel. She needed to get into the air immediately, where the swift passage of the Cleaver would hopefully put out any burning on the exterior.
A moment later she was sprawling on the floor beside the pilot’s chair, rubbing at her eyes and coughing at the smoke, whilst the narrow view-slit had acquired a charred new edge. She smelt burning wood behind her, and heard Nero clattering down from the hatch to stamp out whatever smouldering had started. The Cleaver was listing noticeably to the left, as she flung herself back into the seat, hauling at the sticks. By now the Wasps were concentrating their attacks, and the whole front of the Cleaver shook alarmingly. She heard wood splinter with the force of the combined assault and knew that, however solid her vessel looked, it was just like a wooden eggshell if they could apply enough pressure.
She threw the engine into a faster gear, and felt the cumbersome fixed-wing surge forward. At the same time the attacks fell off, becoming fewer and fewer, and she assumed that the Wasps must be throwing themselves out of the way. She peered cautiously through the damaged slot, hoping that she was still on course.
To her astonishment the Wasps were all dead. She caught a glimpse of their scattered bodies, a good dozen of them at least, before they vanished beneath her view. There was only one man standing there, a gaunt silhouette against the lights of the landing field. As the Cleaver advanced on him, he boldly waited until the last moment before ducking under its wing, and it was then that their eyes met for just a brief moment.
Cesta, the assassin.
Could Tisamon have done that? Che wondered. Killed so many, so swiftly? She imagined those little throwing blades flicking out in twos and threes, the Wasps falling before they even realized they were being attacked.
Thank you, Cesta, she thought, and then she was fully out in the open air, and she sent the much-abused fixed-wing over the airfield, putting everything she could crank into the engine, feeling the wheels lift from the earth just a moment before the Cleaver overran the edge of the field, teetering over the city of Solarno below, and then it flew.
Axrad broke away from the spiral, casting his flier over the city in a long, broad arc that gave Taki plenty of time to see that he had begun the fight.
Honour amongst Wasps, whatever next? She threw the nimbler Esca away from him, flitting back above the airfield, noticing the ponderous bulk of the Cleaver at last get airborne.
Good, she thought. Now I fight. She thumbed the lever that uncovered the rotating piercer and then danced across the sky, looking for Axrad.
He was above her already, swinging in from the sun, just as a good pilot should. She knew that he would do so and the Esca danced aside from the glittering lance of his repeating ballistae, and then ascended straight up without warning, as poised in flight as any insect, so that Axrad swept right past her, pulling furiously out of his dive even as he did. She put the Esca through three turns, spinning in the air, and shot at him, the piercer clunking over and over, sending its long bolts past his cockpit. But he was better than that, for he dropped his orthopter almost to street level, so that she had to stop shooting for fear of killing some innocent citizen. He then fell out of sight altogether, hidden momentarily by the roofs of Solarno, and no doubt terrifying anyone who happened to be passing beneath.
Taki soared overhead, searching for him, and without warning his flier flurried up out of the city, repeater firing as fast as it could reload itself. A bolt tore a narrow hole in her wing before she rolled the Esca out of the way, and then they were chasing over the rooftops, him directly behind her, and Taki always keeping out of the line of his ballistae.
She then saw that they did not have the sky to themselves. There were at least a dozen other vessels, of differing loyalties, flying above Solarno in this dawning light. Dragon-fighting! The phrase had reached Solarno from the people of Princep Exilla, who enacted the same kind of duels astride their insect mounts, but it was among the pilots of Solarno that the practice had found its true home.
And amongst the Wasps, too, because Axrad was proving very, very good.
In a moment the city was gone from beneath them, and Taki was skittering across the dawn-reddened expanse of the Exalsee. Can’t get too far from Che, she realized, and threw in one of her special tricks. It would normally be impossible in anything other than a heliopter, except that of course the Esca Volenti was special, endowed as it was with its little beating halteres that gave it more control and balance than any other man-made thing around that inland sea. With a single flip of her wings the Esca was simply facing the other way, for a moment speeding impossibly backwards, away from the city, until the wings wrestled the orthopter to a momentarily stuttering halt and then plunged, back towards Axrad.
She held down the trigger, watching the piercer bolts flash towards him, striking sparks wherever they struck. His orthopter faltered in the air and seemed to drop, and then she had passed over it, and a craning look backwards showed her that he was gaining height again, holed but not damaged, swinging in behind her doggedly.
She was enjoying herself now. Her city was being invaded, and her friends were fleeing it and needed her help and guidance, but it had been a long time since anyone had given her a run as good as this.