Retribution Falls totkj-1

by Chris Wooding

  ‘It’s in the cargo hold!’

  ‘What’s in the cargo hold?’

  But nobody could answer that. Those inside the hold had fled in terror when the iron-and-leather monstrosity burst out of its crate and began rampaging through the shadowy aisles. Barrels were flung this way and that. Guns fired, but to no avail. The air had filled with splinters as the intruder smashed through crates of provisions and trade goods. It was dark down there, and the looming thing terrified the crewmen.

  Those on the deck above, operating the winch, had peered fearfully through the hatch into the cargo hold at the first signs of a disturbance. The light from the hangar barely penetrated to the floor of the hold. They scrambled back as they caught a glimpse of something huge lunging across their narrow field of view. It was only then that one of them thought to raise the winch.

  In the confusion that ensued, nobody noticed three strangers, now dressed in the dirty motley of crewmembers, making their way belowdecks.

  Those who had managed to escape from the cargo hold had slammed the bulkhead door behind them and locked it shut, trapping the monster inside. But the monster didn’t like being trapped. It was pounding on the inside of the door, hard enough to buckle eight inches of metal. Enraged bellows came from behind.

  ‘Get your fat stenching carcasses over here!’ the burly, dirt-streaked bosun yelled. The men he was yelling at had come to investigate the sound, and were now backing away as they saw what was happening. They reluctantly returned at his command. ‘Weapons ready, all of you! You will defend your craft!’

  A rotary cannon on a tripod was being hastily erected in the passageway in front of the door. The bosun knelt down next to the crewman who was assembling the cannon. ‘When that thing comes through the door, give it everything you’ve got!’

  Malvery, Crake and Pinn skirted the chaos as best they could, and for a time they were unmolested. The Delirium Trigger was only half-crewed, and almost all of them were occupied with the diversion Bess was creating. They did their best to avoid meeting anyone, and when they were seen it was usually at a distance, or by somebody who was already hurrying elsewhere. They managed to penetrate some way into the aircraft before they came up against a crewmember who got a good look at them, and recognised them as imposters.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, before Malvery grabbed his head and smashed his skull against the wall of the passageway. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

  ‘Not big on talking your way out of things, are you?’ Crake observed, as they dragged the unfortunate crewman into a side room.

  ‘My way’s quicker,’ he said, adjusting his round green glasses. ‘No danger of misunderstanding.’

  The side room was a galley, empty now, its stoves cold. Crake shut the door while Malvery ran some water into a tin cup. The crewman—a young, slack-jawed deckhand—began to groan and stir. Malvery threw the water in his face. His eyes opened and slowly focused on Pinn, who was standing over him, pointing a pistol at his nose.

  Malvery squatted down next to the prisoner and tapped him on the head with the base of the tin cup, making him wince. ‘Captain’s cabin,’ he said. ‘Where?’

  They left the deckhand bound and gagged in a cupboard of the galley. Pinn was for shooting him, but Crake wouldn’t allow it. Pinn’s argument that he was ‘just a deckhand, no one would miss him’ carried little weight.

  The captain’s cabin was locked, of course, but Crake had come prepared. Given the time and the materials, it was a simple trick for him to produce a daemonic skeleton key. He slipped it into the lock and concentrated, forming a mental chord in the silence of his mind, awakening the daemon thralled to the key. His fingers became numb as it sucked the strength from him. Though small, it was hungry, and beyond the power of any but a trained daemonist to handle.

  The daemon extended invisible tendrils of influence, feeling out the lock, caressing the levers and tumblers. Then the key turned sharply, and the door was open.

  Malvery patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good job, mate,’ he grinned. Crake felt oddly warmed by that. Then he heard the distant pounding echoing through the Delirium Trigger, and he remembered Bess.

  ‘Let’s get this done,’ he said, and they went inside.

  Dracken’s cabin was spotlessly clean, but the combination of brass, iron and dark wood gave it a heavy and oppressive feel. A bookshelf took up one wall, a mix of literature, biography and navigational manuals interspersed with shiny copper ornaments. Some of the titles were in Samarlan script, Crake noticed. He spotted The Singer and the Songbird and On the Domination of Our Sphere, two great works by the Samarlan masters. He found himself taken by an unexpected admiration for a pirate who would—or even could—read that kind of material.

  Pinn and Malvery had gone straight to the desk on the far side of the cabin, which sat next to a sloping window of reinforced windglass. The light from the hangar spilled onto neatly arranged charts and a valuable turtleshell writing set. Crake had a sudden picture of Dracken looking thoughtfully out of that window at a sea of clouds as her craft flew high in the sky.

  Pinn pawed through the charts, scattering them about and ruining Crake’s moment of reverie. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Malvery’s eye had fallen on a long, thin chest on a shelf near the desk. It was padlocked. ‘Crake!’ he said, and the daemonist came over with his skeleton key. The lock was trickier than the one that secured the cabin door, but in the end, it couldn’t stand up to the key.

  It was full of rolled-up charts. Atop them was what seemed to be a large compass. Malvery passed the compass to Crake, then began scanning through the charts with Pinn. Crake listened to the booming coming from the depths of the Delirium Trigger as he studied Malvery’s discovery.

  Keep pounding, Bess, he thought. As long as I hear you, I know you’re all right.

  The compass was so big that Crake could barely hold it in one hand. It was also, on closer examination, not a compass at all. It had no North-South-West-East markings, and it had four needles instead of one, all of equal length and numbered. Additionally, there were eight tiny sets of digits, set in pairs, with each digit on a rotating cylinder to allow it to count from zero to nine. These set pairs were also numbered one to four, presumably to correspond with the needles. The needles were all pointing in the same direction, no matter which way he turned it, and the numbers were all at zero.

  ‘I think we found ’em!’ Malvery said. He scooped up all the charts from the chest and shoved them inside his threadbare jersey, then looked at Crake. ‘Is that the device you were after?’

  ‘I believe it is.’

  Crake had little doubt that what he held was the mysterious device Thade had mentioned. The strangeness of the compass, and the fact that it had been placed in the same chest as the charts, was enough for him.

  ‘We should—’ he began, but then he saw a movement in the doorway, and there was the loud report of a gun.

  Malvery had seen it too: one of the crew, a black-haired, scruffy man, drawn by the sound of voices and the sight of the captain’s door left open. On seeing the intruders, the crewman hastily pulled his gun and fired. The doctor ducked aside, fast enough so that the bullet only grazed his shoulder.

  Another gun fired, an instant after the first. Pinn’s. The crewman gaped, and a bright swell of blood soaked out from his chest into his shirt. He staggered back and slid down the wall of the passageway outside, disbelief in his eyes.

  ‘We got what we came for,’ said Malvery, his voice flat. ‘Time to go.’

  The crewman lay in the passageway, gasping for air. Pinn and Malvery passed without looking at him, pausing only to steal his pistol. Crake edged by as if he was contagious, horrified and fascinated. The crewman’s eyes followed his, rolling in their sockets with an awful, empty interest.

  Crake found himself pinned by that gaze. It was the look of a man unprepared, shocked to find himself at the gates of death so swiftly and unexpectedly. There was bewilderment in that look. The dying man was
crushed by the knowledge that, unlike every other desperate moment in his life, there was no second chance, no way that wit or strength could pull him clear. It filled Crake with terror.

  Now Crake knew why Malvery and Pinn hadn’t looked.

  He was trembling as he followed his companions up the corridor. After a moment, he remembered Bess. He put the whistle to his lips, the whistle tuned to a frequency that only she could hear, and he blew. It was a note different from the one he used to wake her up and put her to sleep. This one was a signal.

  Time to come back, Bess.

  ‘Any moment now, boys!’ the bosun yelled, as the bulkhead door screeched and lurched forward on its hinges. It was possible to see glimpses of movement through the gap at the top of the door, where the eight-inch steel had bent forward under the assault of the creature in the cargo hold. Enough to see that there was something massive behind, something as fearsome as its roaring suggested.

  The crew braced themselves, aiming their revolvers and lever-action shotguns. The man operating the tripod-mounted rotary cannon flexed his trigger finger, wiped sweat from his brow and sighted. The door had given up the struggle now. Each blow could be the one that brought them face to face with the thing in the hold.

  Doubt was on their faces. All their guns seemed suddenly pitiful. Only discipline kept them in place, crowded in the dim passageway.

  The door buckled inwards, its upper hinge coming away completely. One more blow. One more.

  But the final blow didn’t come. And still it didn’t come. And, after a time, it seemed it wasn’t going to.

  The men let out their pent-up breath, unsure what this new turn of events might mean. Each had been resigned to their fate. Had they been reprieved? They didn’t dare to hope.

  Some of them began to whisper. What had happened? Why had it stopped? Where had the thing in the hold gone?

  From beyond the ruined door, there was only silence.

  Twenty-Four

  Dynamite—Jez Hears A Call—A Swift Retreat—The Cards Are On The Table

  ‘To your left! Harkins, to your left!’

  Harkins waved his pistol in the vague direction of the enemy and fired three wild shots before cringing back into the cover of the barrels. The shadowy figure he was aiming for ran behind a parked fighter craft and disappeared from sight.

  ‘Nice shooting,’ Jez murmured sarcastically under her breath, then resumed scanning the dock for signs of movement. She flinched as three bullets pocked the barrels in front of her, searching her out. But the barrels were full of sand, and they were as good as a wall.

  They’d put the Ketty Jay down close to a corner of the elevated landing pad, so as to give themselves only two sides to defend when Dracken’s men came for them. The barricades gave them good cover, and the largely empty dock meant that Dracken’s men had a lot of open space to deal with. But they had twenty men out there, and on Jez’s side there were only three. Two, if you didn’t count Harkins, and he wasn’t really worth counting. She checked her pocket watch and cursed.

  They couldn’t hold out. Not against these odds.

  Silo was crouched behind a barricade to her right, sighting along a rifle. He fired twice at something Jez couldn’t see. An answering salvo chipped the wood inches from his face.

  There was one unforeseen disadvantage to their choice of position. Being close to the edge of the landing pad meant that they were near the lamp-posts that delineated it for the benefit of aerial traffic. Their attackers, on the other hand, had crossed the pad and were shooting from its centre, where it was darkest. The landing-pad staff—who would use spotlights to pick out places for craft to land—had fled when the battle began, presumably to rouse the militia.

  Jez wasn’t hopeful. She doubted help would come through these broken alleys soon enough. Besides, being arrested by the militia was as sure a death sentence as Dracken’s men were. They’d be recognised as fugitives and hung.

  Privately, Jez wondered if she’d survive that.

  Don’t worry about that now. Deal with the things you can deal with.

  ‘Silo!’ she hissed. ‘The lights!’ She thumbed at the lamp-posts.

  Silo got the message. He sat with his back to the barrels and shot out the nearest lamp-post. Jez took out another. In short order, they’d destroyed all the lamp-posts nearby, and the Ketty Jay sat in a darkness equal to that of their attackers.

  But the distraction had let Dracken’s men sneak closer. Even in a quiet dock like this, there were hiding places. The need to fuel and restock aircraft meant there was always some kind of clutter, whether it be an idle tractor for pulling cargo, small corrugated sheds for storage, or a trailer full of empty prothane barrels waiting to be taken away.

  There was movement everywhere. A shot could come from any angle. Sooner or later, something was going to get through.

  Harkins was whimpering nearby. Silo told him to shut up. She looked at her pocket watch again. Rot and damnation, this was bad. They hadn’t expected twenty. Ten they could have held off. Maybe.

  Something skittered across the landing pad, a bright fizz in the gloom. It took Jez only a moment to realise what it was. Dynamite.

  ‘Down!’ she cried, and then the stick exploded with a concussion hard enough to clap the air against her ears. The barrels murmured and rattled under the assault, but the throw had fallen short. Dracken’s men weren’t close enough to get it over the barricades. But it wouldn’t be long before they were.

  She looked back at the Ketty Jay, rising above them like a mountain. The cargo ramp was open, beckoning them in. She thought about what Harkins had suggested when he first saw Dracken’s men coming. How long could they hold out inside? How much damage would a stick of dynamite do to the Ketty Jay?

  Of course, Dracken’s men might have more dynamite. And a lot of sticks of dynamite could do a lot of damage.

  She raised her head and looked out over the barrels, but was driven down again by a salvo of bullets, coming from all sides. Panic fluttered in her belly. They’d keep her pinned, creeping nearer and nearer until they could fling dynamite over the barricade. There were too many to hold back.

  And then, almost unnoticed, she felt the change. It was becoming more natural now, a slight push through an invisible membrane: the tiniest resistance, then a parting. Sliding into elsewhere, easy as thought.

  The world altered. The dark was still dark, but it didn’t obscure her vision any more. She sensed them now: eighteen men, two women. Their thoughts were a hiss, like the rushing of the waves along the coast.

  Panic swelled and consumed her. She was out of control. Her senses had sharpened to an impossible degree. She smelled them out there. She heard their footsteps. And in the distance, far beyond the range of physical hearing, she heard something else. A cacophony of cries. The engines of a dreadful craft. And its crew, calling her. Calling in one wordless, discordant chorus.

  Come with us. Come to the Wrack.

  She recoiled from them, trying to focus her thoughts on anything other than the beckoning of that nightmarish crew. But instead of snapping out of that strange state, her mind veered away and fixed on something else. She felt herself sucked in, as she had been in Yortland watching predators stalking snow-hogs. But this time it was no animal she joined with: it was a man.

  She felt his tension, the sweat of him, the thrill of the moment. Comfort and satisfaction at being on the winning side. He knew they had the advantage. Don’t slip up, though, you old dog. Plenty of graves full of the overconfident (pleased with that line, use it on the boys). Seems like they’re keeping their heads down, now. That dynamite scared ’em good.

  Need to get closer. Get a good shot on ’em then. Cap’n (respect awe protectiveness admiration) would love it if you bagged one for her. Come on. Just over there.

  Run for it!

  Suddenly Jez was moving, rising, sighting down her rifle. She was in him and she was herself, two places at once. She knew where he was; she saw through his eyes; she felt
his legs pumping as they carried him.

  Her finger squeezed the trigger, and she shot him through the head at forty metres in the dark.

  His thoughts stopped. All sense of him was gone. He was blanked, leaving only a hole. And Jez was thrust back into herself, her senses all her own again, curled in a foetal ball behind her barricade as she tried to understand what had just happened to her.

  What am I? What am I becoming?

  But she knew what she was becoming. She was becoming one of them. One of the nightmare crew. One of the creatures that lived in the wastes behind the impenetrable cloud-wall of the Wrack.

  I have to run, she told herself, as a fresh volley of gunfire was unleashed. Bullets ricocheted off the side of the Ketty Jay. Another stick of dynamite fell close enough to knock over some of the barrels at the end of a barricade.

  ‘We can’t hold out no more!’ screeched Harkins.

  No, she thought grimly. We can’t.

  The deck of the Delirium Trigger was all but deserted. Most of the skeleton crew were in the guts of the aircraft, anxiously listening to the silence coming from the cargo hold. Others had gone to summon the militia. In the face of such alarm, nobody was loading cargo or swabbing the decks. When Malvery, Pinn and Crake emerged from the captain’s cabin with their plunder, there were no crew to stop them.

  They raced across to the winch, now unmanned. A loaded palette was dangling over the cavernous hatch that led to the cargo hold. Pinn flustered around the controls for a few moments before finding something that he assumed would lower the winch. As it turned out, he was right. There was a loud screech and the palette began to rattle downwards.

  Crake scanned the craft nervously. A crowd of dock workers had gathered around the Delirium Trigger on the hangar deck, but nobody dared cross the gangplank. They’d heard men talking about a monster aboard. Now they followed the activity of the newcomers with keen interest, assuming them to be crew.