Retribution Falls totkj-1

by Chris Wooding

  ‘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 you 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 should 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?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crake. He was shocked to hear such a torrential monologue from Silo.

  ‘The Dakkadians gave up. Stopped fighting long ago, joined their masters. But those of us from Murthia, we never give up. Five hundred year and we never give up.’ There was a fierce pride in his voice. ‘So when the time comes, some of us, we kill our overseer and we run. They come after us, yuh? So we scatter. Into the hills and the forest. And pretty soon, there’s just me. Starved and lost, but I ain’t dead and I ain’t no slave.

  ‘Then I see a craft coming down. Ain’t damaged, but flies like it is. Pilot look like he don’t know a thing. Makes a rough landing, and off I go. That’s my way out. And when I get there, I find the Cap’n inside. Stabbed in the guts. In a bad way.’

  It took Crake a moment to catch on. ‘Wait, you mean our captain? Frey?’

  ‘Frey and the Ketty Jay,’ said Silo.

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Didn’t ask, and he didn’t say,’ Silo replied. ‘Now, there’s plenty food and supplies there on that craft, but I can’t fly. I know craft on the inside, but I never flew one. So I take care of the Cap’n. I get him his drugs and bandages and I get him well. And in the meantime, I eat, get strong.’ He shrugged. ‘When he got better, he said he wasn’t never goin’ back to the people who sent him there. Said he was goin’ to live the life of a freebooter. That was fine by me. He flew us both out, and I been on the Ketty Jay ever since.’

  ‘So you saved his life?’

  ‘S’pose. S’pose he saved mine too. Either way, here I am, yuh? We ain’t never spoken of it since. I fix his craft, he keeps me in shelter. That’s the way it is, and I’m grateful every day I have on board the Ketty Jay. Every day, that’s one more day I ain’t a slave. Lone Murthian wouldn’t last long out here in Vardia. Your people ain’t exactly fond of us since the Aerium Wars.’

  Crake looked over at the fire, where Malvery was holding Frey down and pouring grog into his mouth while the other two cheered. Every time he thought he had Frey figured out, he was bewildered anew.

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘You never asked,’ said Silo. ‘It’s a
fool that speaks when there ain’t no cause to. Too many loudmouths already on this craft.’

  ‘On that we agree,’ said Crake.

  Silo got to his feet and stretched. ‘Well, I done what I can with your lady Bess,’ he said. ‘Gonna catch some sleep.’

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ said Crake. Silo grunted and began to walk off.

  ‘Hey,’ called Crake suddenly, as a new question occurred to him. ‘Why do they call you Silo?’

  ‘The name mama gave me is Silopethkai Auramaktama Faillinana,’ came the reply. For the first time that Crake could remember, he saw the Murthian smile. ‘Think you can remember it?’

  ‘Cap’n.’

  Frey was faintly conscious of someone shaking him. He wished with all his heart that they’d go away.

  ‘Cap’n!’

  There it was again, dragging him upwards from the treacly, grog-soaked depths of sleep. Leave me alone!

  ‘Cap’n!’

  Frey groaned as it became clear they weren’t going to give up. He was aware of a cool breeze and warm sun on his skin, the smell of grass, and the forbidding portents of a dreadful hangover. He opened his eyes, and flinched as the eager sun speared shafts of light directly into his brain. He blocked the light with his hand and turned his head to look at Jez, who was kneeling next to him.

  ‘What?’ he said slowly, making it a threat.

  ‘I’ve figured out the charts,’ she said.

  He levered himself upright and groaned again, mashing his face with his palm. His mouth tasted like something had shat in it and subsequently died there. The embers of the fire were still alive, but the sun was high in a blue sky on an unseasonably warm winter’s day. Malvery snored like a tractor nearby. Pinn was sucking his thumb, his other hand twitching towards his crotch, around which all his dreams revolved.

  ‘Don’t you sleep?’ he said.

  ‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘Sorry if it’s a bad time. You said you wanted to know straight away. You said time is—’

  ‘—of the essence, yes, I remember.’ He deeply regretted those words now. ‘So you know where Trinica’s hideout is?’