And the Wasp pilot still tracked her — not following the same course but always returning to her, and this time her madness was not enough and, as she burst back out into the sky, he took his place right behind her as though he had booked it in advance.
She felt she knew this opponent, recognizing and admiring his style even as she did her best to string out her remaining seconds. Her enemy was a pilot she had sparred with before, the veteran of many raids just as she was. She tried her old trick of releasing her winding chute, the silk cloth abruptly billowing away behind her, but the enemy was not so incautious and had kept just enough distance to swing aside, and the lightning sideways twitch she had tried simultaneously somehow just brought her back under his rotaries.
Another scatter of hits, the metal shuddering around her, nothing vital yet, but the next shot could spear the cogs of the engine, or the wing mounts. Or her.
Then he was taking off, rising up and abandoning her, and she wondered wildly if there was some mercy to be given her even now, but then she saw that the Wasp himself had come under attack.
She put the Esca into the tightest turn she could manage, hearing a chorus of new creaks and complaints from the abused hull. The Farsphex was rising and dodging, a Stormreader trying to stay with the Wasp but never quite regaining its line of attack.
She recognized the Collegiate craft from the way it flew. It was Corog’s ship, unmistakably. She powered in, trying to catch up with them. Too late, too late: in committing himself to the attack, Corog had narrowed all the possible places in the sky that he could occupy down to one desperate, perfect line, the absolute optimum of vectors that would bring him to gut the enemy craft and destroy it. With a lurch of her heart, Taki realized that, even so, it would not be enough. The Imperial machine danced far more nimbly than any craft that size should be able to, so Corog Breaker’s attack went wide, and then the other Farsphex, brought there by an unheard summons, clipped off Corog’s tail with a scything trail of rotary bolts.
For a moment the Stormreader still maintained its course, still trying to bring its weapons around to its target. Then it slid sideways in the air, the wings wrestling with an element suddenly no longer their friend.
He was spinning. She flung herself closer, looking for the glider wings, imagining the stubborn old man still fighting with the controls. She watched him all the way down to the abrupt, concussive impact with Collegium’s streets.
Scain pulled up and away, looking for another target. His monologue rattled on, passing Pingge by with his one-sided commentary on the battle.
‘Won’t stand and fight… Arlvec requests permission to bomb.. denied. Orders are to…’ Then a grunt through gritted teeth as he tracked down one of the Collegiate craft to shoot at: a few moments of his silence and the hammering of the rotaries, as he tried to keep the bolts on target, and the expected lurch of the craft around them both as he broke off on another course once he lost the trail.
‘Going to try and… may be grouping up west of centre… Arlvec requests permission… denied. Just focus on the job in hand
…’ A whole many-handed conversation relayed through his automatic muttering.
Then ‘Aarmon!’ and they were abruptly dropping from their high vantage and cutting through the sky. Pingge held on to the ballista as their course changed yet again, almost falling from the air, but caught abruptly by a beat of the Farsphex’s four wings, then arrowing straight over the rooftops. And all the while Scain’s words still came to her: ‘I’m coming, I’m coming, almost there, just stave the bastard off. Aarmon…’
She clawed her way to where she could see over his shoulder, but the wheeling, whirling view meant nothing to her, and then suddenly there was a Stormreader there, in ferocious pursuit of another Farsphex. Aarmon.
Kiin, she thought, clinging to the wall. Be safe, Kiin. For once she could see all the pilot’s art laid bare, Scain’s hands jockeying the machine into place, matching the Stormreader turn for turn, precisely because it was trying to match Aarmon’s own aerobatics, and Aarmon and Scain were linked in perfect tandem, the one telling the other where he would lead their mutual enemy.
And Scain clutched at the trigger, coming in from a little above the Stormreader’s line, and clipped its tail off entirely, and Aarmon flew free and unharmed. Pingge grinned fiercely at the sight, but Scain was still reciting.
‘See her? No sign of her… I know, the one that’s not a Stormreader at all… like a ghost, that one… keep an eye out
… Arlvec requests permission to commence bombing. Draven seconds it… Sir, if we begin on their city, they have to take notice and engage…’
Then there was a pause, a silence she could detect despite the sound of the engines and the rotary piercers, as Scain tried to pin down another fleeting enemy. She realized that not a single voice was speaking within that shared mindscape, that everyone was now waiting to see what Aarmon would say.
And then Scain was muttering in a different tone, ‘No, no, no, come on, no, man, no, we have our orders, come on Aarmon, we don’t need to, we don’t,’ and Pingge realized with shock that these were his own thoughts, unbroadcast and unlinked, the private contents of his head that his traitorous mouth was still churning out.
He slung the Farsphex about for a few mad seconds of chase, loosing a brief salvo of bolts, but his heart was not in it. He was waiting, and so was she, aware that she might soon have more work to do than she could handle, if Aarmon gave the order.
‘Do it,’ Scain spat. ‘Arlvec and Droven and all of your wings, begin work on the ground. Everyone else be ready for the Collegiates to step in and try to stop it.’
The maniple to their left held firm, pikes levelled at the onrushing Spider-kinden skirmishers, and the square’s snapbows on that side turning easily to track them, picking off just a scattering of them, but enough that the Spiders faltered, and then lost more of their number as they slowed. Then another square beyond started shooting into the Spiderlands troops as well, whereupon they broke entirely and fled back behind the Wasp lines.
Straessa saw the square on the right crumple like paper. In amidst a swirl of lightly armoured Spider-kinden had come a solid core of Scorpions, heavily mailed and brandishing great-swords and halberds, and led by a rake-thin Spider in dark plate wielding a huge two-handed axe. The snapbow shot flayed away the first rush of Spiders, but by then the Scorpions were up to charging speed, pelting faster than anything so heavily armoured should have been able to. They lost a half-dozen coming in, mostly to the brief stutter of a nailbow, and then the axe of their Spider-kinden leader smashed down two pikes, the man hurling himself shoulder-first into the teeth of his enemies, not to kill but to break up their order just enough. After that, the Scorpions were on them, hacking and smashing at every foe that came in front of their blades. The square disintegrated, and the Antspider saw nobody escape the carnage, not from any grand courage in holding to the last man, but because they were not given a chance.
The Collegiate square in the second rank was already trying to move into position, pikes levelled while suffering the attentions of the Light Airborne’s bolts and stings. The Scorpions reformed, from bloody butchery to battle order at a shout from their Spider master, and then they were pressing further — Straessa could barely believe it — throwing themselves in the way of the Collegiate reinforcements.
And, of course, the Wasp formation in front of them was advancing now at a run, rushing into the hole punched in the Beetle lines. Straessa supposed the same game must now be being played all the way down the front, with the cohesion of the Collegiate army as the stake.