Blood of the Mantis

Over them the bloated length of the Starnest hung like a great deformed moon, and still there were soldiers descending from it, like seeds drifting in the wind. In their squads they fell on the city, and wherever they landed they took control, killing any citizens who were under arms out on the streets, loudly proclaiming their curfew and then setting off to bring ever-greater sections of the city of Solarno under imperial rule. Despite their orders, and the mindlinked men who tried to coordinate them, they were Wasp-kinden soldiers still. With the city of Solarno now helpless against them, they broke down doors, they looted and raped. They put the brand of the Empire on yet another lesser people, and believed only that their ability to do so was all the right they needed.

At the airfield Taki and her charges arrived at the hangar just before the Wasps did. Even as the aviatrix went rushing for the safety of the Esca Volenti, they were dropping onto the airfield beyond, their ready-drawn swords glittering in the hangar lamps.

The three fugitives were not the only ones to seek sanctuary here. There were at least a dozen mechanics caught out by the airborne invasion, several others who were most likely pilots on the same mission as Taki, and some who were simply ordinary people of Solarno who had hoped that the elevated field might prove safer than the city below.

There was at least a score of Wasps spiralling down outside. Taki paused, with the cockpit of the Esca half open, biting her lip.

Che called out to her. ‘Where do we go now?’

The Fly glanced back at them, and Che realized that, in the rush of relief at seeing her machine undamaged, Taki had almost forgotten about the people she was escorting to safety. The Fly boosted herself up onto the Esca’s hull and turned to look at the dozen other flying machines sheltering under the hangar’s roof.

‘That one!’ she pointed, and Che saw a squat, barrel-bodied machine, a four-vaned orthopter that could only be a cargo-hauler. It looked sturdier than the Stormcry had been, but also slower and surely destined for the same sorry fate.

‘Isn’t there something fleeter?’ Che demanded.

‘Just get in it!’ Taki ordered her. The first crackle of a Wasp sting sounded outside. The engineers and pilots, and whoever else was armed, had formed up on either side of the hangar door. Several of them had crossbows, and Che saw Taki reach into the Esca’s cockpit and come out with a little double-strung bow of her own. Nero had already unslung and tensioned his bow, and now hopped up onto the hood of a half-dismantled fixed-wing, so as to get a clear shot at the enemy. Che noticed him wince with the effort.

She hurried over to the heavy orthopter, on which the inspiring name Cleaver was painted in square, solid letters. It was fashioned of wood bound with iron hoops, just like a barrel, and it was bigger than she had first thought. The craft looked altogether too heavy to get off the ground. Doggedly she hauled herself up the metal rungs bolted into the side, and began to fumble at the catches.

The Wasps were trying to force their way into the hangar but they had not expected the resistance and the first volley of bolts had cut four of them down. An enterprising pilot had even brought his craft’s rotary piercer about and got a volley of bolts off into the Wasps as they began to muster. In response the soldiers tried a sudden charge, hands blazing. Che saw at least two of the defenders fall back, seared with smoking wounds. There followed a brief moment of close-combat fighting, short-swords against knives and the curved Solarnese blades, and then the Wasps had taken to the air again, repelled. A ragged cheer went up from the hangar’s defenders but, even as their cries still echoed, there were more Wasps gathering outside, the survivors of the first assault and now a dozen more. Che was grimly certain that an alert had already gone down into the city itself, as the Wasps would want to subdue the airfields most of all.

She had the round hatch open at last, and squeezed herself through, dropping abruptly into more space than she had expected. The Cleaver looked so heavy from outside, but it was almost entirely hollow, a dedicated freighter. A single wooden chair, looking like it had come from someone’s house, had been nailed into place behind the navigation stick, and Che saw that her only visibility would be the strips of sky viewed through two slots cut into the orthopter’s nose. She was no seasoned pilot but she had surely flown more elegant machines than this in her time.

And unarmed again. Taki doesn’t trust me to survive an air fight. Not that the Cleaver could have managed that anyway. It must move through the air like… Like a Beetle, I suppose.