‘Now what?’ Pinn asked.
‘Now we surrender,’ said Malvery.
‘We what?’ cried Pinn.
The doctor’s grin spread beneath his thick white moustache. Pinn grinned back as he caught on. Crake was appalled to find that he was the only one who seemed nervous at the prospect of imminent death.
‘I don’t think they’re in the mood to take us alive, anyway,’ said Malvery. ‘Everyone, get behind Bess. She’s our cover.’
‘Hey, wait a—’ Crake began, but they’d already crowded behind the golem, using her bulk as a shield. Bess hunkered down and spread herself out as much as possible. Malvery and Pinn crouched, peering out from either side, their guns ready. Crake, still carrying Dracken’s strange compass in his hands, slid in next to them. He listened to the quiet ticks and coos coming from Bess’s chest.
‘How much ammo do we have?’ Malvery asked.
‘I got . . . um . . . twelve, thirteen bullets?’ Pinn replied.
‘I’m on about the same. Crake?’
Crake gave Pinn his revolver and a handful of bullets. ‘You take them. I wouldn’t hit anything anyway.’
‘Right-o,’ said the doctor, aiming his gun. ‘Pick your targets.’
The men of the Delirium Trigger had swelled in number now. Some held back, studying the situation, while others angrily demanded action. One or two even tried to run up the gantry, but were held back by their companions. A chancy, long-range shot spanged off Bess’s shoulder.
‘Look at ’em,’ Pinn crowed. ‘Bunch of pussies.’
Directed by the bosun, the crew commandeered crowbars from dock workers and started jimmying nearby bits of machinery. The militia had caught up now - beige uniforms milled in the crowd - but having assessed the situation they seemed happy enough to let the men of the Delirium Trigger handle it. Presumably they’d claim the credit afterwards. It was easier than risking any of their own.
‘What are they doing out there?’ Malvery murmured to himself.
Crake peered out, took one look and went back into hiding. ‘They’re making a shield.’
He was right. Moments later, ten men started to advance up the gantry, holding before them a large sheet of iron pulled from the side of a crane. They crept forward nervously but with purpose, their guns bristling out around the side of the shield.
‘Hmm,’ said Malvery.
‘What?’ said Pinn. ‘Soon as they get close enough, we send Crake’s girl out to get ’em. She’ll squash ’em into paste.’
‘Ain’t quite that easy,’ said the doctor, nodding towards the hangar deck. ‘Look.’
Pinn looked. Five men had taken position at the edge of the deck, and were lying on their bellies, aiming long-barrelled rifles at them.
‘Sharpshooters,’ said Malvery. ‘If Bess moves, we lose our cover, and they kill us.’ As if to punctuate his statement, a bullet ricocheted off Bess, inches from his face. He drew back a little way.
‘Bugger,’ said Pinn. ‘Why do we never come up with plans like that?’
‘We did,’ said Malvery. ‘That’s how we ended up here.’
The men of the Delirium Trigger crept steadily closer. The narrow angle along the gantry made it impossible to get a good shot at any of them. Malvery tried an experimental salvo with his pistol, but it only rattled their shield. They stopped for a moment, then continued.
Crake was sweating and muttering to himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He wanted to be sick but there was nothing in his stomach: he’d been too nervous to eat before they set out on this mission.
The shield, having crossed much of the gantry, stopped. The men hunkered down behind it, becoming invisible. There was an agonising sense of calm before the inevitable storm.
‘Well,’ said Malvery to Pinn. ‘I’d say it was nice knowing you, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘You know.’
‘Likewise, you whiskery old fart,’ Pinn smiled, mistaking genuine distaste for comradely affection. Then the men of the Delirium Trigger popped up out of hiding with their guns blazing, and all thought was lost in the chaos.
The assault was terrifying. They fired until their guns were empty, then ducked down to reload while the men behind them continued the barrage. Bess groaned and howled as she was peppered with bullets. They smacked into her at close range, blasting holes in the chain mail and leather at her joints, chipping her metal faceplate. She swatted at the air as if plagued by bees, cries of distress coming from deep inside her.
Crake had his hands over his ears, yelling over the tumult, a blunt shout of fear and rage and sorrow. The sound of leaden death was bad enough: the sound of Bess’s pain was worse.
Malvery managed to point his pistol around the side of Bess’s flank and fire off a shot or two, but it did no good. They crammed in behind the golem as best they could, but bullets were flying everywhere and they dared not break cover. Bess was being driven back by the cumulative impacts of the bullets, which punched at her armour, cutting into the softer parts of her. She stumbled backward, roaring now. The others stumbled back with her. Crake saw a spray of blood torn from Pinn’s leg: he went down, his pistols falling from his hands, clutching at his thigh.
And suddenly he knew what was behind a dying man’s eyes. He knew what the crewman on the Delirium Trigger had known, the one that Pinn had shot. He knew what it felt like to run out of time, leaving a life incomplete, and so much still to do.
There was blinding light, and the bellow of engines. And machine guns, ear-splitting machine guns smashing through the cool night air of the hangar. The men on the gantry were cut to bloodied shreds, jerking as they were pierced, thrown limply over the railings, plunging to the floor of the hangar.
Crake blinked and stared, stunned by his reprieve. But there was no mistake. Hanging in the air, scuffed and scratched and beautiful, was the Ketty Jay. And sitting at the controls was Jez.
Malvery guffawed with laughter, waving one arm above his head. Jez waved back, through the cockpit window. Pinn, rolling on the ground and shrieking, was largely forgotten.
Harkins sat in the autocannon cupola, and he opened up on the hangar deck as Jez rotated the Ketty Jay into position. The shots were pitched to scare rather than hit anyone, but they caused sufficient panic to keep the sharpshooters busy. The cargo ramp at the rear of the craft was gaping open, and Silo was standing at the top of it, holding on to a rung, beckoning them.
Jez’s control of the craft was clumsy: she backed up too hard, and swung the lip of the cargo ramp into the gantry rail with a crunch. Metal twisted and screeched, but she managed to stabilise the Ketty Jay again, and now there was an escape route, a ramp leading into the maw of the cargo hold.
Crake was standing as if in a dream, bewildered by all the noise and motion. Bess scooped him up in both arms as if he was a child, holding him close. Then she thumped forward, leaped onto the ramp, and carried him into the cargo hold.
Behind him there was scrambling, voices, men shouting things he didn’t understand. The muffled sound of autocannon fire from above; the whine of prothane thrusters on standby; the blessed safety of walls all around him.
Then the hydraulics kicked in, and the cargo ramp began to close. Malvery was shouting ‘Jez! Get us out of here!’ Pinn was wailing. The whole world swung as the craft moved. There was a wrench of metal from outside as the Ketty Jay tore off part of the gantry rail.
Acceleration.
It took some time before the fog of panic cleared and Crake’s senses returned. He realised that Bess had put him down on the floor, and was squatting next to him. He could see the glimmers of light inside her faceplate, like distant stars. Malvery was telling Pinn to shut up.
‘I’m bleeding out, Doc! I’m going cold!’
‘It’s just a flesh wound, you damn pansy. Stop whining.’
‘If I don’t make it through . . . you have to tell Lisinda . . .’
‘Oh, her. Sure. I’ll tell your sweetheart you died a hero. Come on, hobble your arse to my surgery, I’ll give yo
u a couple of stitches. We’ll have you fixed by the time we pick up the Cap’n.’
There was movement, and the umber-skinned, narrow face of the Murthian loomed into Crake’s view.
‘You alright?’ he asked.
Crake swallowed and nodded.
Silo looked up at Bess. ‘She’s a fine thing,’ he said. Then he picked up the compass that was lying next to Crake. The compass he’d taken from Dracken’s cabin. Silo weighed it in his hand thoughtfully, then gave Crake a look of approval, stood up and walked away.
Bess was making echoing coos in her chest. Crake sat up and ran his hand along the metal plating of her arm. It was scored with burn marks and dents.
‘I’m sorry, Bess,’ he murmured. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Bess cooed again and nuzzled him, bumping the cold iron of her faceplate against his cheek.
Twenty-Six
A Well-Earned Break - Silo Lends A Hand - The Captain Is Woken - From Bad To Worse
Frey celebrated his victory in the traditional manner, and was roaring drunk by dawn.
They reclaimed the Firecrow and the Skylance from their hiding place outside Rabban, then flew for three hours, changing course several times until they were thoroughly sure that any attempts at pursuit would be hopeless. After that they began to search for a place to put down. Frey found a hillside clearing amid the vast moon-silvered landscape of the Vardenwood. There they sallied out, built a campfire, and Frey proceeded to get hammered on cheap grog.
It had been a long, long time since he felt this good.
He looked around at the laughing faces of the men who drank with him: Malvery, Pinn, even Harkins, who had loosened up and joined them after a little bullying. Jez was in her quarters, keeping to herself as usual, deciphering the charts they’d stolen from Dracken’s cabin. Crake and Silo were nearby, tending to the damage that Bess had suffered. Nobody wanted to sleep. They were all either too fired up or, in Crake’s case, too anxious. He was fretting about his precious golem.
But Frey couldn’t worry about Crake for the moment. Right now, he was basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. His plan had worked. His crew had triumphed against all the odds. Despite that cold bitch’s condescending words, her cruel pity, he’d screwed her over like a master. He imagined her face when she got back to find her crew in disarray and her precious charts missing. He imagined how she’d smoulder when she heard of the heroic last-minute rescue in the Ketty Jay. He imagined her rage when she realised how badly she’d misjudged him.
You thought you knew me, he gloated. You said I was predictable. Bet you didn’t predict that.
And the best thing was that none of his people had got hurt. Well, except for Crake’s little pet and the scratch on Pinn’s leg, but that didn’t really count. All in all, it was a brilliant operation.
If this was what success tasted like, he wanted more of it.
The bottle of grog came round to him and he swigged from it deeply. Malvery was telling some ribald story about a high-class whore he used to treat back when he was a big-city doctor. Pinn was already in stitches, long before the punchline. Harkins spluttered and grinned, showing his browned teeth. Their faces glowed warmly, flushed in the firelight and the colours of the breaking dawn. Frey felt a surge of alcohol-fuelled affection for them all. He was proud of them. He was proud of himself.
It hadn’t been an easy thing, to entrust Jez with the ignition code to the Ketty Jay. The code was set during the manufacture of the aircraft, and because it relied on various complex mechanisms it couldn’t ever be changed without lengthy and expensive engineering procedures. Jez would forever have the power to activate and fly the Ketty Jay. Even now, Frey had to fight the suspicion that Jez might be creeping towards the cockpit, intending to punch in the numbers and run off with his aircraft before anyone could stop her.
It’s done now, he thought. Live with it.
It had been absolutely necessary for the completion of his plan that someone else fly the Ketty Jay. Jez had assured him she could, having grown up flying many types of aircraft. But he’d still found himself unable to give away the code at first. Like marriage, it felt like sacrificing too much of himself to a stranger.
In the end, he’d convinced himself by making an analogy to Rake. He found that most things in life could be related to cards, if only you thought hard enough.
In Rake, it was possible to play too carefully. If you waited and waited for the perfect hand, then the obligatory minimum bets each round would gradually whittle you down. You’d run out of time and money waiting for an opportunity that never came. Sooner or later, you had to take a risk.
So he’d bet on Jez, and thankfully he’d won big. She was an odd fish, but he liked her, and he knew she was competent. He even had to admit to a slight sense of relief at the sharing of the secret code, although he wasn’t exactly sure why. It felt like he’d let out the pressure a little.
Malvery reached the punchline of his story, and they howled with laughter. Frey hadn’t been paying attention, but he laughed anyway, caught up in the swell. He passed on the bottle, and Malvery gulped from it. Later, Frey would think of other things: the task they still had ahead of them, the bitter sting that came from seeing Trinica’s face again. But for now, drinking with his men, he was happy, and that was enough.
Crake was anything but happy. Their narrow escape hadn’t invigorated him with a sense of triumph, but depressed him instead. He was acutely aware that they’d only made it out because Jez had arrived early. She’d been forced to take off sooner than planned, driven back to the Ketty Jay by far superior numbers, and had then headed directly to their pick-up point at the hangar. Once there, she’d spotted the disturbance inside and realised there was trouble. Their estimation of the length of the operation had been off: they’d allowed themselves far too much time.
In the end, they got lucky.
Rather to his surprise, Silo had emerged from the engine room to help him patch up Bess. The Murthian was a silent, solid presence around the Ketty Jay, but because he rarely offered an opinion and never socialised, Crake had unconsciously begun to ignore him, as if he was one of the servants back home. He suspected that Silo was simply curious, and saw an opportunity to get a closer look at the golem, to work out what made her tick. Whatever his motives, Crake was glad of the help and the quiet company. Between them, they pulled out bullets, stitched up leather, and soldered her wounds.
Though the damage was all superficial, Crake was wracked with guilt. He’d allowed Bess to be used as an object. What if they had dynamite? What if they had a really big cannon? Could she have stood up to that? For that matter, what would actually happen to her if she was destroyed?
Bess was a shell, inhabited by a presence. That was as much as Crake knew. A vacant suit of armour, a skin surrounding nothing. Where did the presence truly exist? What exactly was in there? Did it occupy the skin of the suit, or was it somewhere inside? Those glittering eyes in the emptiness - did they mean something?
He didn’t know. He didn’t even truly know how he’d made her. Bess was an accident and a mystery.
‘Does it hurt her?’ Silo asked suddenly, rubbing his finger across a bullet hole in her knee. His deep, molten voice was heavily inflected. Doors eet hoort hair?
‘I don’t know,’ said Crake. ‘I think so. In a way.’
The Murthian stared at him, waiting for more.
‘She was . . . upset,’ he said awkwardly. ‘When they were shooting her. So I think she feels it.’
Silo nodded to himself and returned his attention to his work. Bess was sitting quietly, not moving. She was asleep, he guessed. Or at least, he called it sleep. In these periods of catatonia, she was simply absent. There were no glittering lights inside. She was an empty suit. Where the presence had gone, or if it had really gone anywhere at all, he couldn’t have said.
The silence between them returned, but Crake felt a pressure to say something now that Silo had. It seemed momentous that the Murthian sh
ould be out here alongside him, asking him an un-prompted question. He began to feel more and more uncomfortable. The rising chorus of birds from the trees all around seemed unnaturally loud.
‘The captain seems in good cheer,’ he said at length.
Silo only grunted.
‘How do you and he know each other?’
Silo stopped and looked up at him. For a few seconds, Silo regarded him in the pale dawn light, his eyes unreadable. Then he went back to his task.
Crake gave up. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps Silo really didn’t want to talk.
‘I escaped from a factory,’ Silo told him suddenly. Arr scorrpt fram a fack-truh. He kept working as he talked. ‘Seven year back. Built aircraft there for the Samarlans. My people are slaves down there. Bet you know that, yuh?’