There was the thumping of autocannon fire as Malvery, in the gunner’s cupola, began unleashing lead at all and sundry. Frey fed a little more into the prothane engines and the Ketty Jay responded, surging upwards. She was surprisingly light for such a big craft, but Frey was long used to the way she handled. Nobody knew her like he did.
Harkins and Pinn had the Swordwings occupied, chasing them around the sky, leaving the way clear for him. He hunched forward in his seat, frowning intently at his target. Jez and Crake stood behind him, hanging on as best they could as the Ketty Jay rocked and swayed.
The freighter swam higher, thrusters pushing as hard as they were able, but she was a lumbering thing and she couldn’t get a steep enough angle without tearing herself apart under her own weight. Frey would only get one chance, but one chance was all he needed. The aerium tanks on a craft like this were an enormous target. Though there was nothing on the outer skin to indicate their location, Frey knew his aircraft. It would be hard to miss.
Just graze the tanks with your guns, he reminded himself. Holed tanks would vent aerium gas, and the steady loss of lift would force the pilot to either land the craft or have her drop out of the sky. A landing might be a bit violent in this kind of terrain, but Frey didn’t much care as long as the cargo was intact. The prothane tanks - the dangerous part - were well armoured and buried deep within the craft. It would take a really bad landing to make them go up.
The Ace of Skulls swelled in his view, growing larger as he approached. In attempting to escape she’d exposed her belly. He zeroed in on the spot just under her stubby, finlike wings.
Closer . . . closer . . .
He squeezed the trigger on his flight stick. The Ketty Jay’s front-mounted machine guns clattered, punching a pattern of holes across the freighter’s side.
And the Ace of Skulls exploded.
The windglass of the cockpit filled with a terrible bloom of fire, lighting up Frey’s astonished face for a split second. Then the impact hit them.
The detonation was ear-shattering. A concussion wave swamped the Ketty Jay, making her roll sharply and sending Jez and Crake slamming into the navigator’s station. Frey wrestled with the controls, yanking on the flight stick with one hand, hitting switches with the other. The engines groaned and stuttered, but Frey had flown this craft for more than a decade and he knew her inside out. Teeth gritted, he gentled her through the chaos, and in seconds they were level again.
Frey looked out of the cockpit. He felt sick and faint. An oily black cloud of smoke, blistering with red and white flame, roiled in the air. The Ace of Skulls’ enormous bow was plummeting into the pass far below; her tail assembly crashed against the side of a mountain and broke into pieces. A cloud of lesser debris spun lazily away, thrown out by the colossal force of the explosion.
And in among the debris, charred, limp things fell towards the earth. Some of them were still almost whole.
Bodies. Dozens of bodies.
Harkins stared at the slow cascade of wreckage as it tumbled from the sky. He wasn’t sure he’d exactly grasped the full implications of what had just happened, but he knew this was bad. This was very, very bad. And not just because they’d screwed up yet another attempt at sky piracy.
Then, suddenly, the Swordwing he’d been chasing broke left and dived. Harkins’ attention switched back to his target.
He’s running! Harkins thought. A glance told him that the second Swordwing was doing the same, spearing up towards the clouds. Pinn was hot on its tail, spraying tracer fire. Smoke trailed from one of its wings.
Harkins threw the Firecrow into a dive. Whatever had just happened, Harkins was certain of one thing. They were in trouble.
But only if someone lived to tell about it.
The Swordwing was dropping hard, towards the layer of mist that had hidden the Ketty Jay. Harkins rattled off a short burst from his guns, but he was still too far away. He opened the Firecrow’s throttle and screamed after the Swordwing as it was swallowed up by the mist.
Oh no, he fretted to himself. I don’t want to go in there, I really don’t!
But it was too late for second thoughts. The mist closed over him, greying his vision. The Swordwing was a dark smudge ahead. It had pulled level, skimming through the upper layers of mist where visibility was just the right side of suicidal. Harkins tried to close the distance, but they were evenly matched on speed.
Sweat began to trickle down the deep folds of his unshaven cheeks. They were going too fast, they were going way too fast. This pilot was a maniac! Was he trying to get himself killed?
Harkins pressed down on his guns, hoping for a lucky hit. The tracer fire blazed away into the gloom.
A mountain loomed out of the mist to starboard, an unending slope of snowy rock fading into view. The Swordwing swung in recklessly close to it, hugging the mountainside. The shockwave of its passage threw up clouds of loose snow, whipping them into Harkins’ path. The pilot was trying to blind him further. But the tactic was ineffective: the powdery snow dispersed too fast, and did nothing to slow him. Harkins angled himself on an intercept trajectory and closed in on his target.
The mountainside ended without warning, and the Swordwing made a dangerously sharp turn, almost clipping the corner. Harkins followed out of reflex. The only safe place in this murk was where his target had already been.
An outcrop of black stone came at him like a thrown fist.
His reactions responded in place of conscious thought. He shoved the flight stick forward and the Firecrow dived, skimming under the jutting stone with barely a foot to spare. It thundered over him for a terrifying instant and was gone.
He pulled away from the mountainside, gibbering. That was too close, too close, too close! His legs had begun to tremble. This was insane! Insane! Who did that pilot think he was, anyway? Why was he putting Harkins through such torment?
But there it was: the Swordwing. Still visible through the bubble of windglass on the Firecrow’s snout. It was heading down, further into the dull blankness, a ghostly blur.
Harkins followed. Afraid as he was, he was also afraid to face the consequences of giving up. He couldn’t take Frey’s wrath if he let the Swordwing go. Death in the cockpit was one thing, but confrontation was quite another. Confrontation was a special kind of hell for Harkins, and he’d do just about anything to avoid it.
Dense, threatening shadows came into view on either side of them: mountains, pressing in close. Harkins bit his lip to stop his teeth chattering. The Firecrow’s engines cocooned him in warm sound, but he was acutely aware of how fragile this metal shell would be if it hit something at a hundred knots. He’d seen Firecrows shatter like eggs, some of them with his friends inside.
But that never happened to me! he told himself, firming his will, and he pushed harder on the throttle.
The mountains slid closer on either side, pushing together, and he realised they were heading into a defile. Then, suddenly, the Swordwing slowed. Harkins bore down on it. The blur took on form and shape, growing before him. He pressed down his guns just as the Swordwing went into a steep climb, and the tracers fell astern as it shot upwards and disappeared into the haze.
At that moment, Harkins realised what his opponent was doing. Panic clutched at him. He yanked back on the flight stick, hauling on the throttle and stamping the pedal that opened the flaps for emergency braking. The Firecrow’s blunt nose came up; the craft squealed in protest. Harkins felt a weight like a giant’s hand shoving him down into his seat.
A wall of grim stone filled his vision. Massive, immovable, racing towards him. The end of the defile. He screamed as the Firecrow clawed at the air, scrabbling to climb. Blood pounded in his thighs and feet. His vision dimmed and narrowed as he began to brown out.
You’re not gonna faint . . . you’re not gonna faint . . .
Then everything tilted, vertical became horizontal, and the wall that had been in front of him was rushing beneath his wings. He let off on the stick, blood thump
ing back into his head, and the Firecrow shot out of the defile and upwards. There were a few seconds of nothing but grey, then he burst out of the mist and into the clear air.
Stillness.
As if in a trance, he cut back the throttle and gently brought the Firecrow to a hover, letting it float in the air, resting on the buoyancy of its aerium tanks. A dozen kloms away, visible between the peaks, the Ketty Jay hung listlessly, waiting for his return. He looked down into the sea of mist, but his quarry was long gone.
His hands were quivering uncontrollably. He held one up before him and stared as it shook.
Seven
An Argument - Crake Accuses - What The Cat Thinks Of Jez - Frey Has A Dream
The eastern edge of the Hookhollows was full of hiding places. Secret valleys, sheltered ledges. There were folds in the crumpled landscape big enough to conceal a small fleet of aircraft. Freebooters treasured these bolt holes, and when they found a good one they guarded its location jealously.
Nightfall found the Ketty Jay and her outflyers in one of Frey’s favourite spots, a long tunnel-like cave he usually employed when he was running from something bigger than he was. It was wider than it was high, a slot in the plateau wall that ran far back into the mountainside. A tight fit for a craft the size of the Ketty Jay, but Frey had brought them in without a scratch. Now the Ketty Jay hunkered in the dark, its dim underbelly lights reflected by the shallow stream that ran along the floor of the cave. There was no sound but for a rhythmic dripping and the relentless chuckle of the water.
Inside the Ketty Jay, things were not so calm.
‘What in the name of the Allsoul’s veiny bollocks were you aiming at, you shit-wit?’ Pinn demanded of his captain, who punched him in response.
Slag, the Ketty Jay’s cat, watched the ensuing scuffle with feline disinterest from his vantage point atop a cabinet. The whole crew had gathered in the mess, crowding into one small room, and the comical jostle to separate Pinn and Frey involved a lot of bashing into things and knocking chairs over. The mess was a cheerless place, comprising a fixed central table, a set of metal cabinets for utensils and a compact stove, where Slag warmed himself when Silo chased him out of the engine room.
Slag was an ancient warrior, a grizzled slab of muscle held together by scar tissue and a hostile disposition. Frey had brought him on board as a kitten the day after he took ownership of the Ketty Jay, fourteen years ago. Slag had never known anything beyond the Ketty Jay, and never been tempted to find out. His life’s purpose was here, as the nemesis of the monstrous rats that bred in the air ducts and pipeways. For more than a decade the battle had been fought, generations of sharp-toothed rodents versus their indestructible antagonist. He’d seen off the best of them - their generals, their leaders - and hunted their mothers until they were near-extinct. But they always came back, and Slag was always waiting for them.
‘Will you two stop acting like a pair of idiots?’ Jez cried, as Malvery and Silo pulled Pinn from their captain. Pinn, red-faced with anger, assured Malvery he was calm so the doctor would release him, then made the obligatory second lunge at Frey. Malvery was ready for it, and punched him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
‘What’d you do that for?’ Pinn rasped weakly, wide-eyed with the injustice of it all.
‘Fun,’ replied Malvery, with a broad grin. ‘Now calm down before I club your stupid block off. You ain’t helping.’
Frey shook Silo off with a baleful glare and dusted himself down. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve got that out of the way, can I say something, nice and slow so everyone gets it? It - wasn’t - my - fault!
‘You did blow up the freighter, though,’ Crake pointed out.
‘If you knew anything about aircraft you’d know they always put the prothane tanks as deep inside as possible, well armoured. Otherwise people like us might be able to hit them and blow the whole thing to smithereens.’
‘The way you did,’ Crake persisted, out of malice. He hadn’t forgotten Frey’s behaviour when Lawsen Macarde had a gun to his head.
‘But I didn’t!’ Frey cried. ‘Machine guns couldn’t have penetrated deep enough to even get to the prothane tanks. Silo, tell them.’
The Murthian folded his arms. ‘Could happen, Cap’n. But it’s one in a million.’
‘See? It could happen!’ Pinn crowed, having recovered his breath.
‘But it’s one in a million!’ Frey said through gritted teeth. ‘About the same chance as you shutting up for five minutes so I can think.’
Slag unfurled from his spot on top of the cabinet and dropped down to the countertop with a thump. He thought little, if at all, of the other beings with whom he shared the craft, but he was feeling unaccountably piqued that nobody was paying any attention to him amid this puzzling furore. Harkins, who had been keeping his head down anyway, cringed into the corner as he caught sight of the cat. Slag gave him a stare of utter loathing, then leaped to the table so he could get into the middle of things.
‘The question isn’t whose fault it is—’ Jez began.
‘Not mine, that’s for sure!’ Frey interjected.
Jez gave him a look and continued. ‘It’s not whose fault it is. The question is whether we’re going to get blamed for it.’
‘Well, thanks to Harkins being a bloody great chicken, we probably will,’ Pinn said sullenly.
‘That guy was a good pilot!’ Harkins protested. ‘He was a . . . he was a fantastic pilot! Well, fantastic, or he had a death wish or something. What kind of idiot flies full throttle through mountain passes in the mist? The . . . the crazy kind, that’s what kind! And I’m a good pilot, but I’m not some crazy idiot! You said minimum escort, someone said minimum escort! No one said anything about . . . about four Swordwings and one of them being a pilot like that! What’s a pilot like that doing flying escort to some grubby old freighter?’
‘I’d have caught him,’ said Pinn. ‘I caught the one I was chasing.’
‘Well, yours was probably shit,’ Harkins muttered.
Jez was pacing around the mess as the pilots argued, head bowed thoughtfully. As she drew close to Slag, he arched his back and hissed at her. Something about this human bothered him. He didn’t understand why, only that he felt threatened whenever she was around, and that made him angry. He hated Harkins for being weak, but he was afraid of Jez.
‘What’s got into him?’ Crake wondered.
‘Ugly sack of mange,’ sneered Pinn. ‘It’s finally lost its tiny little mind.’
‘Hey!’ said Frey, defensive. ‘No bitching about the cat.’ He put out his hand to stroke Slag, and quickly withdrew it as Slag took a swipe at him.
‘Why not? Bloody thing’s only fit to use as a duster anyway. Wring its neck, stick a broom handle up it’s—’
‘Shut up about the cat!’ Jez said, surprising them into quiet. For such a little thing she’d proved herself unusually feisty, and she commanded respect far out of proportion to her physical size. ‘We’ve got more important things to deal with.’
She walked in a slow circle around the mess, stepping between them as she spoke. ‘We caught them by surprise. Even if that Swordwing got away - he might have crashed in the mist - then he’d have barely had time to work out what was going on before he ran. Harkins was on his tail almost immediately. He’d have had other things on his mind.’
‘You don’t think he could identify us?’ Frey said.
‘I doubt it,’ Jez replied. ‘There are no decals on the craft that identify us as the Ketty Jay, and we’re not exactly famous, are we? So, what do they have? Maybe he saw an Wickfield Ironclad accompanied by a Firecrow and a Skylance. You’d have to be pretty dedicated to hunt us down on the basis of that.’
‘Quail won’t say a word,’ said Frey, warming to her optimism. ‘Though it’s probably best if our paths never cross again. Just to be safe, let’s stay out of Marklin’s Reach. Silo, put it on our list of no-go ports. Scarwater, too.’
‘Aren’t that man
y ports left to go to,’ Malvery grumbled.
‘Well, now there are two fewer.’ He looked around the room. ‘Alright, are we done here? Good. Let’s keep our heads down, forget this ever happened, and it’s business as usual.’ He began to leave, but was stopped by a soft voice.
‘Am I the only one who remembers there were people on that freighter?’ Crake said.
Frey turned around to look over his shoulder at the daemonist.
‘That thing was hauling passengers,’ Crake said. ‘Not cargo.’
Frey’s eyes were cold. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said, and clambered up the ladder to the exit hatch.
The crew dispersed after that, some still arguing between themselves. Slag remained in the middle of the table in the empty mess, feeling neglected. After a swift and resentful bout of self-grooming with his tongue, he resolved to make Harkins suffer tonight by creeping into his quarters and going to sleep on his face.