Frey turned to the others. ‘Harkins. Pinn. Get yourselves airborne. We’ll meet you above the clouds.’
‘Is there gonna be a rumble?’ Pinn asked hopefully, rousing briefly from his hangover. Harkins was already halfway to his aircraft by the time he finished the sentence.
‘Get out of here!’ Frey barked at him. Pinn mumbled something sour under his breath, stuffed his pistol into his belt and headed for the Skylance, oozing resentment at being cheated of a fight.
‘Macarde’s on his way,’ said Frey, as Malvery passed him a box of bullets. ‘Bringing a gang with him.’
‘We’re low on ammo,’ Malvery murmured. ‘Make ’em count.’
‘Don’t waste too many on Crake, then,’ Frey said, loading the lever-action shotgun he’d taken from Droop-Eye. ‘He couldn’t hit the side of a frigate if he was standing next to it.’
‘Right-o, Cap’n,’ said Malvery, giving Crake a generous handful anyway. Crake didn’t rise to the jibe. He looked about ready to keel over from the run.
Frey nodded at Jez. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Jez. New navvie,’ Malvery said with the tone of someone who’d got tired of introducing the same person over and over.
Frey gave her a cursory appraisal. She was small and slight, which was good, because it meant she wouldn’t take up too much space and would hopefully have an equally small appetite. Her hair was tied in a simple ponytail which, along with her unflatteringly practical clothes, suggested a certain efficiency. Her features were petite and appealing but she was rather plain, boyish and very pale. That was also good. An overly attractive woman was fatal on a craft full of men. They were distracting and tended to substitute charm and flirtatiousness for doing any actual work. Besides, Frey would feel obliged to sleep with her, and that never worked out well.
He nodded at Malvery. She’d do.
‘So who’s Macarde, then?’ Jez asked, chambering bullets as she spoke. When they looked at her, she shrugged and said, ‘I just like to know who I’m shooting.’
‘The story, in a nutshell,’ said Malvery. ‘We sold the local crime lord twelve canisters of degraded aerium at cut price rates so we could raise the money to buy three canisters of the real stuff, since we barely had enough to get off the ground ourselves.’
‘Problem is, our contact let us down,’ said Frey, settling into position behind the crates and sighting along his shotgun. ‘His delivery came late, which meant he couldn’t get us the merchandise on time, which meant we were stuck in port just long enough for one of Macarde’s bumble-butt pilots to fly into a wall.’
‘Hence the need for a swift departure,’ said Malvery. ‘Flawless plans like this are our stock-in-trade. Still want to sign on?’
Jez primed her rifle with a satisfying crunch of metal. ‘I was tired of this town anyway.’
The four of them took up position behind the crates, looking out at the approach road to the docks. The promontory was accessed by way of a wide, cobbled thoroughfare that ran between a group of tumbledown warehouses. The dockers who worked there were moving aside as if pushed by a bow wave, driven to cover by the sight of Lawsen Macarde and twenty gun-wielding thugs storming down the street.
‘That’ll be us outnumbered and outgunned, then,’ Malvery murmured. He looked back to where the Skylance and the Firecrow were rising from the ground, aerium engines throbbing as their electromagnets turned refined aerium into ultralight gas to fill their ballast tanks. Separate, prothane-fuelled engines, which powered the thrusters, were warming up with an ascending whine.
‘Where’s Bess, anyway?’ Frey asked Crake.
‘Do I look like I’ve got her in my pocket?’ he replied irritably.
‘Could do with some help right now.’
‘She’ll be cranky if I have to wake her up.’
‘Cranky is how I want her.’
Crake pulled out a small brass whistle that hung on a chain around his neck, and blew it. It made no sound at all. Frey was about to offer a smart comment concerning Crake’s lack of lung power when a bullet smashed into a crate near his head, splintering through the wood. He swore and ducked reflexively.
Crake replaced the whistle, then leaned out of cover and unleashed a wild salvo of pistol fire. His targets yelled and pointed fearfully, then scattered for cover, throwing themselves behind sacks and barrels that were waiting to be loaded into the warehouses.
‘Ha!’ Crake cried in triumph. ‘It seems they don’t doubt my accuracy with a pistol.’
An instant later his hair was blown forward as Pinn’s Skylance tore through the air mere feet above him, machine guns raking the street. Barrels were smashed to matchwood and several men jerked and howled as they were punched with bullets. The Skylance shrieked up the street and then twisted to vertical, arrowing into the clouds and away.
‘Yeah,’ said Frey, deadpan. ‘You’re pretty scary with that thing.’
The dockers had all fled inside by now, leaving the way clear for the combatants. Macarde’s men were at the edge of the landing pad, fifty feet away. Between them was a small, two-man flyer and too much cover for Frey’s liking. The smugglers had been shocked by Pinn’s assault, but they were regrouping swiftly.
Frey and Jez began laying down fire, making them scuttle. One smuggler went down, shot in the leg. Another unwisely took shelter behind a large but empty packing crate. Malvery hefted a double-barrelled shotgun, aimed, and blew a ragged hole through the crate and the man behind it.
‘Silo! How we doing?’ Frey called, but the mechanic couldn’t hear him over the return fire from the smugglers.
‘Darian Frey!’ Macarde called, from his hiding place behind a stack of aircraft tyres. ‘You’re a dead man!’
‘Threats,’ Frey murmured. ‘Honestly, what’s the point?’
‘They’re trying to flank us!’ said Jez. She fired at one of the smugglers, who was scampering from behind a pile of broken hydraulic parts. The bullet cut through the sleeve of his shirt, missing him by a hair. He froze mid-scamper and fled back into hiding.
‘Cheap kind of tactic, if you ask me,’ Crake commented, having recovered sufficient breath for a spot of nervous bravado. He knocked the shells from the drum of his revolver and slotted five new ones in. ‘The kind of sloppy, unoriginal thinking you come to expect from these mid-level smuggler types.’
Jez peered round the side of the crates, looking for the man she’d shot at. Instead she saw another, making his way from cover to cover, attempting to get an angle on them. He disappeared before she could draw a bead on him.
‘Can I get a bit less wit and a bit more keeping your bloody eyes open for these sons of bitches coming round the side?’ she snapped.
‘She’s no shrinking violet, I’ll give her that,’ Frey commented to Malvery.
‘The girl’s gonna fit right in,’ the doctor agreed.
More of Macarde’s gang had moved up and taken shelter behind the two-man flyer. Crake was peppering it with bullets.
‘Ammo!’ Malvery reminded him.
Frey ducked away as a salvo of gunfire blasted chips from the stone floor and splintered the wood of the crates. Malvery answered with his shotgun, loudly enough to discourage any more, then dropped back to reload.
Jez stuck her head out again, concerned that she’d lost sight of the men who were trying to flank them. Despite her warning, her companions were still preoccupied with taking pot-shots at the smugglers approaching from the front.
A flash of movement: there was another one! A third man, edging into position to shoot from the side, where their barricade of crates would be useless.
‘Three of them over here!’ she cried.
‘We’re a little busy at the moment,’ Frey replied patiently.
‘You’ll be busy picking a bullet out of your ear if you don’t—’ she began, but then she got shot.
It was a white blaze of pain, knocking the wind from her and blasting her senses. Like being hit by a piston. The impact threw her backwards, into Crake, w
ho half-caught her as she fell.
‘She’s hit!’ he cried.
‘Already?’ Frey replied. ‘Damn, they usually last longer than that. Malvery, take a look.’
The doctor blasted off two shots to keep the smugglers’ heads down, then knelt next to Jez. Her already unhealthy pallor had whitened a shade further. Dark red blood was soaking through her jacket from her shoulder. ‘Ah, girl, come on,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t be dying or anything.’
‘I’m alright, Doc,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m alright.’
‘Just you stay still.’
‘Haven’t got time to stay still,’ she replied, struggling to her feet, clutching her shoulder. ‘I told you they were coming round the side! Where’s the one who . . . ?’ She trailed off as she caught sight of something behind them, coming down the cargo ramp, and her face went slack. ‘What is that?’
Malvery turned and looked. ‘That? That’s Bess.’
Eight feet tall and five broad, a half-ton armoured monstrosity loomed out of the darkness into the light of the morning. There was nothing about her to identify her as female. Her torso and limbs were slabbed with moulded plates of tarnished metal, with ragged chain mail weave beneath. She stood in a hunch, the humped ridge of her back rising higher than her enormous shoulders. Her face was a circular grille, a criss-cross of thick bars like the gate of a drain. All that could be seen behind it were two sharp glimmers: the creature’s eyes.
Jez caught her breath. A golem. She’d only heard of such things.
A low growl sounded from within the creature, hollow and resonant. Then she came down the ramp, her massive boots pounding the floor as she accelerated. Cries of alarm and dismay rose from the smugglers. She jumped off the side of the ramp and landed with a rattling boom that made the ground tremble. One gloved hand scooped up a barrel that would have herniated the average human, and flung it at a smuggler who was hiding behind a pile of crates. It smashed through the crates and crushed the man behind, burying him under an avalanche of broken wood.
‘Well, she’s cranky, alright,’ said Frey. ‘Good old Bess.’
The golem tore into the smugglers who had been sneaking round the flanks, a roaring tower of fury. Bullets glanced from her armour, leaving only scratches and small dents. One of the smugglers, panicking, made a break from cover. She seized him by the throat with a loud crack and then flung his limp corpse at his companions.
Another man tried to race past her while her back was turned, but she was quicker than her bulk suggested. She lunged after him, grabbing his arm with massive fingers. Bone splintered in the force of her grip. Her victim’s brief shrieks were cut short as she tore the arm from its socket and clubbed him across the face with it, hard enough to knock him dead.
The remainder of Macarde’s men suddenly lost their taste for the fight. They turned tail and ran.
‘What are you doing?’ Macarde screamed at them, from his hiding place near the rear of the conflict. ‘Get your filthy yellow arses back there and shoot that thing!’
Bess swung around and fixed her attention on him, a deep rattling sound coming from her chest. He swallowed hard.
‘Don’t ever come back here, Frey, you hear me?’ he called, backing off a few steps as he did so. ‘You ever come back, you’re dead! You hear me? Dead! I’ll rip out your eyes, Frey!’
His parting shot was barely audible, since he was bolting away as he delivered it. Soon he had disappeared, chasing his men back into the tangled lanes of Scarwater.
‘Well,’ said Frey. ‘That’s that.’
‘She up and ready, Cap’n!’ Silo hollered from the top of the cargo ramp.
‘Exquisite timing, as always,’ Frey replied. ‘Malvery, how’s the new recruit?’
‘I’m okay,’ Jez said. ‘It went right through.’
Malvery looked relieved. ‘So you won’t need anything taking out, then. Just a little disinfectant, a bandage, and you’ll be right.’
Jez gave him an odd look. ‘I suppose so.’
‘She’s a tough little mite, Cap’n,’ Malvery declared with a tinge of pride in his voice, as if her courage was some doing of his.
‘Next time, try not to get shot,’ Frey advised her.
‘I wouldn’t have been shot if you’d bloody listened to me.’
Frey rolled his eyes. ‘Doc, take her to the infirmary.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Jez protested.
‘You just had a bullet put through your shoulder!’ Frey cried.
‘It’ll heal.’
‘Will you two just get on that damn aircraft?’ Frey said. ‘Crake! Bring Bess. We’re leaving ten minutes ago!’
Frey followed Malvery and Jez up the ramp and into the Ketty Jay. Once they were out of sight, Crake stepped gingerly through the wreckage and laid a hand on the golem’s arm. She turned towards him with a quiet rustle of chain mail and leather. He reached up and stroked the side of her face-grille, tenderness in his gaze.
‘Well done, Bess,’ he murmured. ‘That’s my girl.’
Four
A Pilot’s Life—Crake Is Listless—Malvery Prescribes A Drink
There were very few moments in Jandrew Harkins’ life when he could be said to be truly relaxed. Even in his sleep he’d jitter and writhe, tormented by dreams of the wars or, occasionally, dreams of suffocation brought on by Slag, the Ketty Jay’s cat, who had a malicious habit of using his face as a bed.
But here, nestled in the cramped cockpit of a Firecrow with the furnace-roar of prothane thrusters in his ears, here was peace.
It was a calm day in the light of a sharp autumn sun. They were heading north, following the line of the Hookhollow Mountains. The Ketty Jay was above him and half a mile to starboard. Pinn’s Skylance droned alongside. There was nothing else in the sky except a Navy frigate lumbering across the horizon to the west, and a freighter out of Aulenfay, surfacing from the sea of cloud that had submerged all but the highest peaks. To the east it was possible to see the steep wall of the Eastern Plateau, tracing the edge of the Hookhollows. Further south, the cloud was murky with volcanic ash, drifting towards the Blackendraft flats.
He looked up, through the windglass of his cockpit canopy. The sky was a perfect, clear, deep blue. Never ending.
Harkins sighed happily. He checked his gauges, flexed his gloved hand on the control stick and rolled his shoulders. Outside this tight metal womb, the world was strange. People were strange. Men were frighteningly unpredictable and women more so, full of strange insinuations and cloaked hunger. Loud noises made him jump; crowds made him claustrophobic; smart people made him feel stupid.
But the cockpit of a Caybery Firecrow was his sanctuary, and had been for twenty years. No awkwardness or embarrassment could touch him while he was encased in this armour. Nobody laughed at him here. The craft was his mute servant, and he, for once, was master.
He watched the distant Navy frigate for a time, remembering. Once, as a younger man, he’d travelled in craft like that. Waiting for the call to clamber into his Firecrow and burst out into the sky. He remembered with fondness the pilots he’d trained with. He’d never been popular, but he’d been accepted. Part of the team. Those were good days.
But the good days had ended when the Aerium Wars began. Five years fighting the Sammies. Five years when every sortie could be the one you never came back from. Five years of nerve-shredding dogfights, during which he was downed three times. He survived. Many of his friends weren’t so fortunate.
Then there was the peace, although the term was relative. Instead of Sammies the Navy were after the pirates and freebooters who had prospered during the war, running a black market economy. Harkins fought the smugglers in his own lands. The enemy wasn’t so well equipped but they were more desperate, more savage. Turf wars became grudge matches and things got even uglier.
Then, unbelievably, came the Second Aerium War, a mere four years after the first, and Harkins was back fighting alongside the Thacians against the Sammies and their subj
ects. After all they’d done the first time, all the lives that were lost, it was the politicians who let them down. Little had been done to defang the Samarlan threat, and the enemy came back with twice the vigour.
It was a short and dirty conflict. People were demoralised and tired on all sides. By the end—an abrupt and unsatisfying truce that left everyone but the Sammies feeling cheated—Harkins was out of it. He’d had too many near misses, lucked out a little too often, seen death’s face more than any man should have to. He was a trembling shell. They discharged him two weeks before the end of the war, after fourteen years in the service. The meagre pension they gave him was all the Navy could afford after such a ruinous decade.
Those years were the worst years of all.
Harkins had come to realise that the world changed fast these days, and it wasn’t kind to those who weren’t adaptable. He had no skills other than those he’d learned as a fighter pilot, and nobody wanted a pilot without a plane. A bleak, grey time followed, working in factories, doing odd jobs, picking up a pittance. Scraping a living.
It wasn’t Navy life that he missed, with its discipline and structure. It wasn’t the camaraderie—that had soured after enough of his friends had died. It was the loss of the Firecrow that truly ached.
Though he’d flown almost a dozen different Firecrows, with minor variations and improvements as time went on, they were all the same in his mind. The sound of the thrusters, the throb of the aerium engines pumping gas into the ballast tanks, the enclosing, unyielding hardness of the cockpit. The Firecrow had been the setting for all his glories and all his tragedies. It had carried him into the wondrous sky, it had seen him through the most desperate dogfights, and occasionally it had failed him when it had no more to give. Everything truly important that had ever happened in his life, the moments of purest joy and sheer, naked terror, had happened inside a Firecrow.
Then in his darkest hour, there came a light. It was almost enough to make him believe in the Allsoul and the incomprehensible jabber of the Awakeners. Almost, but not quite.
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