Right.

Her first target had not even seen her, simply an unwary pilot who still thought he was the predator and not the prey. Just as the Wasp jockeyed his orthopter into position for a shot at one of her colleagues, Taki let her rotary spin and simply ripped the underside of his vessel out from under him. He lurched in the air, dropping sideways with engines still running, so that she realized that one of her shots must have reached the pilot himself. Beneath the whir of her own engines and the concussive bang of the rotating piercer his descent towards the city was silent.

All around, her attacking fleet of fliers had split off to tackle the Wasps in individual duel. In the moment’s grace before she found her next target, Taki saw the iron-clad bulk of the Creev’s Nameless Warrior clip one of the Wasp fliers in passing, suffering barely a shudder but sending the smaller enemy ship spinning. Meanwhile Niamedh’s Executrix lanced through a scatter of circling ships with rotaries blazing.

There were men in the air as well, for the Wasps had sent up some of the light airborne to support their airships. That was a tactical mistake, Taki knew. Men and machines did not go well against each other, pitching small and agile targets against swift hulls that were proof against their little weapons. She was glad of it: the more soldiers despatched impotently into the sky left fewer that could do real damage on the ground.

She flung the Esca straight through a crowd of them, scattering Wasp soldiers left and right, but then a shadow swept over her and, craning back she spotted a gap, a hole in their formation that the others were still reeling away from. Just then a second shape passed her, and she recognized the sleek lines of a hunting dragonfly, a creature that was born to take live prey in the air. A red and gold banner fluttered alongside the arrow-straight length of its tail, and she caught a glimpse of its rider, one of Drevane Sae’s people, turning back to loose an arrow even as the beast clutched a victim to itself.

Taki sent the Esca Volenti across the sky, leaving the plume of a failing Wasp flier to fall behind her. It was as if her mind was split in two. One part continued to grip the controls and sent her darting through the cluttered skies, hunting targets, striking at Wasp pilots and evading their reprisals, and all the time trying to find a clear path towards the Starnest in order to bring the giant dirigible down. But there was another part of her that had gone numb, for she had never seen aerial war conducted on this scale. It seemed unthinkable.

Te Frenna’s elegant Gadaway lay shredded across a forty-foot extent of the city, unrecognizable now, the fate of its pilot unknown. A downed Wasp craft had rammed the 500-year-old Celenza gallery, which was now in flames, only one of a dozen fires across the city. The fighters on the ground were in constant danger from a sporadic rain of broken machines, dead men and crippled insects. This was a horror surely never meant to be inflicted on her poor home.

The Esca turned on her wingtip, and she found another Wasp vessel cutting through the air before her. Its twinned repeating ballistas were already loosing, and she saw a Solarnese fixed-wing abruptly shudder in the air as the bolts struck. It was Scobraan’s heavy Mayfly Prolonged and Taki realized that her friend was making his own run at the Starnest now, either tired of waiting or spotting some chance she had overlooked. She unleashed the fury of her rotary on the Wasp, seeing her enemy falter, then dive and dart away to try and escape her, abandoning its prey. She swung into line behind it, matching swoop for swoop, unhurried and cool-headed, whilst her stomach sank in worry over the fate of Scobraan as he dived in towards the gigantic airship.

One of her bolts struck the enemy engine, and she saw the smoke start to billow. The Wasp began to lose height as quickly as he could, and then she saw the pilot kick the cockpit open and throw himself over one side, wings unfurling to catch him. She broke off immediately, and just then the Esca took three solid strikes from behind, two piercing the canvas of the craft’s wings, and a third slamming into the fuselage two feet behind her. Taki dived low, almost clipping the tumbling ship she had just dispatched, but a quick glance back showed that her pursuer was still with her, its ballistas ratcheting out bolts with mechanical precision. She hauled the Esca up into the sky, as steeply as she dared, knowing that she was thereby making a target of herself. Another bolt nipped past her, causing her to flinch.

Taki released her first chute, cutting it free entirely and sending the Esca wide. The Wasp was too close behind her, and the silk of the chute was in his wings before he could avoid it, snarling them, stopping them, and turning him from a flying machine into just another weight to plummet into Solarno.

She looked desperately around for Scobraan and spotted the Mayfly as just a small shape against the grey wall of the Starnest’s airbag. She sent the Esca scudding across to help him. Airships were notoriously difficult to bring down and, unless the Wasps were notably bad at their craft, it would take a thousand little bolts to pierce that bag enough to make the ship lose even a foot of height. The material would simply contract about each tiny puncture, every needle-wound nearly sealed almost in the moment of its making.

Scobraan’s Mayfly hurled itself straight at a Wasp orthopter, breaking the nerve of the pilot, who let his machine drop away rather than clash head-to-head with the big, armoured fixed-wing. Scobraan brought his craft as close as he dared to the Starnest’s fabric, until it seemed to Taki that he was skimming across it, that he should be leaving ripples in his wake.

Flame gouted from the Mayfly’s aft, indicating the firethrowers that Scobraan was so proud of, for what punctures could not do to damage an airbag fire would invariably accomplish, shrivelling the material to nothing. Taki felt her heart leap for joy at the sight.

But the Starnest remained untouched, no more than a long soot-mark to tell of Scobraan’s passage. Some new material, she reflected numbly, some stuff that would not burn. It seemed the Wasp artificers had outmanoeuvred them.

Then there was a Wasp pursuing Scobraan, darting around the Starnest’s bulk to fall in line behind him. Taki saw the Mayfly break off quickly, trusting to its armour to shrug off the shot of the nimbler craft, but then the Wasp opened up with its paired rotaries – pillaged Solarnese weaponry – and the Mayfly jerked in the air, losing height.

Taki was already diving to intervene, sending the Esca in as fast as her wings could beat, but the Wasp kept his line perfect, sending bolt after bolt punching into the Mayfly’s frame as Scobraan tried to throw him off. Then abruptly Scobraan was not trying any more, and the Mayfly Prolonged was simply dipping, nose-heavy, towards the ground.

Axrad, Taki realized. The Wasp fliers were all painted alike but she recognized the way he moved in the air, his unique style and skill.

She slung the Esca towards him. It was time to conclude their business.