The primary target was the main landing pad, where the greatest number of smaller craft were clustered. It was obliterated in a cataclysm of fire. The other, more temporary landing pads that floated on the marsh were also struck. Those that weren’t destroyed outright began to list as their aerium tanks were holed, sending dozens of craft sliding into the sucking bog beneath.
Two of the nearest pirate frigates, anchored close to one another, were smashed with explosive shells. One of them split along its keel in a smoky red bloom, and sank to the ground in two halves. There were enough unpunctured aerium tanks to make the descent slow and terrible, like a ship being pulled to the bottom of the sea.
After the initial assault there was a pause to reload, and the Navy fighters came racing out of the cover of the fleet. Harkins saw the sleek Windblades shoot past him like darts, heading to meet the fighters rising from Retribution Falls. He gritted his teeth. He wanted, more than anything, to stay concealed behind the flanks of the enormous frigates. This wasn’t his fight, after all: the pirates weren’t his enemies.
But the heavy guns of the pirate craft would start up soon, blasting at the fleet, and a tiny craft like his would be dashed to pieces in the shellfire.
The safest thing to do was attack.
He heard Pinn whoop in his ear, and cursed him for his absurd courage. He could already picture that moron racing ahead of the pack, desperate for the first kill, heedless of the danger. He was the kind that would evade death for ever, simply because he didn’t realise it was there. The fearless always survived. It was one of the great unfairnesses of life, in Harkins’ opinion.
Well, he was damned if he’d let Pinn mock him for being the last one into the battle. The thought of that chubby-cheeked face screwed up in laughter made his blood boil. He hit the throttle and plunged out of the flotilla, pursuing the Navy Windblades into the fray.
The pirate fighters were a motley of different models from different workshops, representing the last thirty years of aviation technology. They came on like a cloud of flies, without discipline or any hint of a formation. The Navy fighters were tighter, punching towards them like an arrow. Harkins slipped in near the back.
The Firecrow’s engines roared, encompassing him in sound. The craft shook and trembled. Through the windglass bubble on its nose, Harkins could see the vile colours of the marsh blurring beneath him. Two Windblades hung on his wings, their pilots wearing identical Navy-grey helmets, their attention focused on the attack. Harkins swallowed and hunched forward, his finger hovering over the trigger.
The two sides met as the Navy frigates released another salvo, pounding the town of Retribution Falls, pulverising those pirate craft which were too slow to react to the surprise attack. Suddenly the world was full of explosions and machine guns, and Harkins yelled in fear as he opened up on the enemy.
The Windblades spread out, spiralling and rolling as they approached. Harkins jinked left to avoid a lashing of tracer fire, picked his target and sent a long burst back towards them. He aimed where he thought the craft was going, rather than where it was, and his guess was accurate. The pilot flew right through the deadly hail of gunfire. The windglass of the cockpit shattered and the pilot jerked as he was shot through with bullets. The craft tipped into a long, lazy dive towards destruction.
The pirates and Navy fighters broke upon each other like waves onto rocks, spuming in all directions as they scattered. The battle became a mass of individual dogfights.
Harkins threw the Firecrow into a steep climb, raking his guns across the underside of an old Westingley Scout. It corkscrewed out of control and slammed into the tail of another pirate craft as he soared upward. Something thundered past his wing, missing a collision by less than a metre. Dizzy with fear-driven adrenaline, he paid it no mind. He levelled out, letting the G-force off a bit before coming around and on to the tail of a rickety Cloudskimmer.
Pinn screamed with joy in his ear. Harkins gave a scream of a different kind, and pressed down on his guns.
‘Time to go,’ said Frey, as the first scattered volleys of return fire from the pirate frigates came smashing into the Navy fleet. He vented aerium and dropped the Ketty Jay down beneath the keels of the larger aircraft, then hit the thrusters and sped towards the town.
The pirate frigates had begun to wake up now, shedding their anchor-chains and gliding into action, their gun-crews finally in position. Frey had hung back to hide as best he could among the heavy craft, but like Harkins, he knew it would be suicide to stay once the big guns got going. Besides, he’d done his job. He’d led them here. That was enough to earn his pardon, assuming they intended to give it to him.
Now he had a purpose of his own, and it didn’t involve getting tangled up in a squabble between the Navy and Orkmund’s pirate gang.
Retribution Falls was a mess. Whole areas were flattened as the dwellings, never built for strength, fell apart from the concussion of a single shell. As he watched, one of the platforms at the far end of the town tipped and fell, its gridwork of scaffolding blasted away on one side. Buildings crumbled into landslides of brick, sweeping people with them as they went. Bodies were mangled and ground to bits as an entire district collapsed into the marsh.
Frey heard Malvery start up on the autocannon, blasting away at a pirate fighter as it screamed overhead. He ignored it, steered away from the main conflict and angled the Ketty Jay towards the platform he wanted. The quality of architecture there was the highest in the town, and Frey was pleased to see it had suffered only superficial damage.
That was good, since he planned to land there.
‘You sure you want to do this, Cap’n?’ Jez asked doubtfully, peering through the windglass. Large sections of Retribution Falls had been wrecked. Plumes of smoke billowed from their ruins. ‘There’s no telling how long it’ll be before someone shells the shit out of that platform, too.’
Frey was anything but sure. ‘They’re concentrating fire on the pirate frigates now,’ he said, mostly to convince himself. ‘The town itself isn’t a threat.’ Malvery cheered in triumph from the cupola. Frey assumed he’d made a hit.
‘Your call, Cap’n,’ she said. ‘But we can get out of this now if we want to.’
‘I hear you, Jez,’ he said. But he was committed in his heart now. He couldn’t turn back.
At least this time he’d consulted his crew. He’d outlined his plan and asked them if they wanted to be part of it. Nobody was being forced; nobody was being duped. He wasn’t going to order anyone into this.
Some were reluctant. Some thought it would be better to cut their losses. They weren’t keen on the risk. But in the end, all of them agreed. Because they trusted him. Because he was their captain.
Frey took the Ketty Jay closer to the platform. Jez leaned over his shoulder and pointed. ‘There’s the square.’
‘Malvery!’ he yelled. ‘Get out of the cupola and get ready!’
Jez picked up her rifle from beneath the navigator’s station as Frey brought the Ketty Jay down in the square. Those few people who were nearby went running as she came in to land, hard and heavy because Frey was too nervous to be careful. She bumped down with a jolt that made Jez stagger.
Frey sat there for a moment. Overhead, shells exploded and pirate fighters weaved through the sky. He should just take off again. He didn’t have to do this. Maybe this was just history repeating, another all-or-nothing hand of Rake that might win him everything or lose it all, when he should have just laid down his cards and walked away with what he had.
You’ve got a craft, a crew, and the whole world to explore. Nobody’s your master. Now that’s not so bad, is it? If you’re lucky, the Coalition will pardon you when all this is done. Drave may be a mean bastard but he doesn’t seem like a liar. You’ll be free.
Whether Drave would honour his word or not was a moot point. He wasn’t sticking around to see. As soon as he’d done what he came here to do, he planned to run. The Navy would be tied up here for a while. Let them pa
rdon him in his absence.
But first, there was the small matter of fifty thousand ducats. Fifty thousand ducats that had been promised him by the brass-eyed whispermonger Quail. Fifty thousand ducats that he felt he’d damn well earned by now.
This was their chance to be rich. To leave the rogue’s life behind and allow themselves a bit of comfort. Equal shares for them all, because everyone had done their part.
He looked out of the cockpit at the barricade surrounding Orkmund’s stronghold. The square they’d landed in lay right in front of it. A few days ago, they’d stood here to hear the great pirate speak. Somewhere inside that building was a red chest with a silver wolf clasp that he’d first seen being loaded onto the Moment of Silence when he visited Amalicia Thade at the Awakener hermitage.
The thought of Amalicia surprised him. From the moment he left the hermitage, he’d completely forgotten about her. To suddenly encounter her in his memory was a jolt, like rediscovering a discarded trinket that he thought was lost for ever.
‘Are we going?’ Jez asked.
‘We’re going,’ said Frey. He got out of his chair and ran down the corridor to the steps that led to the cargo hold, where the rest of the crew were assembled, armed to the teeth.
In the few moments before the cargo ramp opened, he belatedly remembered that Gallian Thade had been killed at Mortengrace. That meant Amalicia was free from the hermitage where she’d been imprisoned. Free, and unbearably rich.
Damn it, I should have just married her when I had the chance, he thought.
Then he remembered that Trinica Dracken had also been the daughter of an enormously rich businessman, and he’d been only moments from making himself a part of that inheritance. He swore under his breath.
Damn it, I should have married her, too!
By the time they went rushing down the cargo ramp and out into Retribution Falls, Frey was quite eager to shoot someone.
Thirty-Seven
Treasure Hunt—Harkins Gets Into Trouble—Orkmund Again
Pirates and whores ran in panic across the square, heads covered against the thundering concussions and the threat of falling rubble. Their aircraft had been destroyed on the landing pad, cutting off any hope of escape. Now they were helpless witnesses as the Navy pummelled the pirate frigates overhead and fighters wheeled and spat bullets. They fled for what shelter they could and hoped that fate would be merciful.
Frey led his crew down the cargo ramp, cutlass swinging against his leg, pistols raised. The stink of the marsh hit them as they came out into the open air and took up positions around the Ketty Jay. He’d been expecting some resistance from the locals, but he found himself pleasantly disappointed. The freebooters who were passing through the square couldn’t have cared less why they were landing their craft here. As long as they weren’t wearing Navy colours, they could do what they liked. The sight of Bess coming down the ramp deterred any thought of further enquiry.
Frey glanced at the Navy fleet, visible in the distance, a few kloms away. They were spreading out defensively as the pirate craft increased their assault. Half the pirate army’s larger craft were destroyed, but the others were giving as good as they got. Frey saw a Navy frigate slip into a groaning descent, its flanks aflame.
As far as he was concerned, both sides could blow themselves to pieces. He had little love for either. As long as some Navy craft survived to tell the tale and exonerate him, that was fine.
‘Alright, let’s go!’ he cried. Silo closed up the cargo ramp and they hurried towards their target with the Murthian covering their backs.
There was a barricade surrounding Orkmund’s squat, grey stronghold. The watchtowers surmounting the mass of crossed girders and spikes were empty, but the gate was still closed. It was an enormous slab of metal on rollers, heavy enough to need three men to move it and presumably secured on the other side.
‘Bess! Open that gate!’ Frey called.
The golem stamped past him. She dug her massive fingers into the metal and wrenched. The gate shrieked in protest as a bolt on the inside resisted, but Bess’s strength was inexorable, and it slowly gave way.
Frey could see one or two men who had stopped at the edge of the square and were staring. Clearly, they were puzzled to see several men who looked like pirates breaking in to the pirate captain’s stronghold. Malvery raised his shotgun and sighted at one of them; Silo took aim at the other.
‘Keep moving, lads. This doesn’t concern you.’
They decided that it didn’t concern them after all. There was a loud snap of metal and the gate rolled out of the way with a screech.
‘Nice work, Bess,’ said Frey. Crake patted her on the arm as they sallied inside.
Orkmund’s stronghold wasn’t large—certainly not the size of somewhere like Mortengrace—but it was secure. The grey, mould-streaked walls were thick, and the windows were small and deeply set. Too small to climb through.
Once inside the barricade they were faced with a squat, three-storey building with two projecting wings on either side, making a three-sided square. The entrance was set between the wings, at the far end of the square.
Frey led them to the nearest wall, at the tip of one of the wings. He pressed himself against it and looked around the corner. He was sweating with the tension. At any moment he expected to be shot at by an unseen foe or obliterated by a shell from above. But the stronghold was quiet, and the sounds of destruction had retreated temporarily into the distance.
‘I don’t see anyone, Cap’n,’ Malvery said at his shoulder.
Frey didn’t like the idea of rushing up to the entrance. There were too many windows facing inward on either side. Anyone up there with a gun could pick off attackers with ease.
‘We’ll make our own way in,’ he said. He turned to Bess. Her eyes glimmered behind her face-grille. ‘Can you get through this wall?’
Bess could.
There was a pirate standing in the doorway of the room on the other side. The sight of the hulking figure crashing through the wall in a cloud of dust and rubble scared him witless. As with anything that scared him, his first reaction was to shoot it. Bess pushed her way through the debris as bullets ricocheted from her armoured torso. She tore a chunk of stone from the wall and flung it at her attacker. It hit him in the forehead hard enough to take his head off. The remains of the pirate staggered a few steps before tipping over.
‘Damn good shot!’ Malvery exclaimed, climbing through the hole in the wall.
Frey climbed in after him. ‘Our treasure’s in this building somewhere, ’ he said. ‘Let’s get looking.’
Pinn yowled and whooped like an over-excited monkey as he dodged between swaying trails of tracer fire. The Skylance screamed happily along with him, obedient to his every command, banking and rolling through the chaos of a packed sky. Pinn was fling the fight of his life and the Skylance was in the best shape she’d ever been, with her tanks full of the finest prothane and aerium, courtesy of the Coalition Navy. Together, nothing could touch them.
It was almost too easy. The pirates never saw him coming. Their eyes were all on the Navy Windblades; they considered Pinn’s Skylance as one of their own. The last thing they expected was a fellow pirate to turn against them. Those few seconds of confusion were usually all it took.
He glanced down at the ferrotype of Lisinda that swung on a chain from his dash, and grinned fiercely. ‘You should see me now!’ he cried. ‘Sweetness, you should see me now!’
This was what his world might have been like, day after day, if only those Sammies hadn’t pulled out of the Second Aerium War just as he was about to join in. This was living.
His machine guns rattled as he drew a line of puncture-marks across the flank of a pirate corvette. He darted away before anyone could see who had done it. The corvette—a medium-sized attack craft with two sets of wings and a fearsome battery of guns—was too busy dealing with Windblades to pay him any mind.
‘Pinn!’ Harkins squealed in his ear, at a pitch h
igh enough to make him wince. ‘Pinn, where are you? There’s three of them on me!’
Pinn scanned the melee frantically, but he could find no sign of Harkins amid the swooping tangle of fighters that surrounded him. Belatedly he remembered that Frey had instructed them to look out for each other. The object was survival, not kill-count.
‘I can’t see you!’
‘Pinn! Bloody help me!’ Harkins yelled.
‘I can’t help you if I can’t see you!’ Pinn yelled back. Then, in a rare and remarkable moment, he had an idea. ‘Climb up! Climb out of the pack! I’ll find you up there!’
He pulled the Skylance into a steep climb, making his way free of the main mass of combat. The higher they got, the fewer aircraft would be in their way to complicate things.
‘Pinn! They’re right on my tail!’
‘I’m coming, you noisy chickenshit! Hold on!’
He spotted the approach of tracers from his port side and rolled the Skylance a moment before a blast of machine-gun fire ripped past the belly of the craft. A quick glance told him that it had come from a Windblade.
‘I’m on your side!’ he yelled. He could feel a strange tiredness settling into his bones, and remembered the daemonic earpiece. Every whoop and comment he made was sucking a little more energy out of him, and now he’d begun to notice it. He nearly cursed, but at the last moment remembered to keep his mouth shut.
The Windblade had realised its mistake, and was peeling away to search for fresh targets. Pinn craned around in his seat to look for Harkins, and spotted him a klom away, shooting skyward at an angle close to vertical. Three aircraft chased him, sending weaving lines of tracer fire ahead of them.
Pinn hit the throttle and the Skylance responded. He streaked across the dull sky, the battle beneath him and the mists above, his eyes fixed on the steadily ascending quartet of aircraft. Harkins was jinking and twisting as best he could, but the sheer volume of gunfire made it unlikely he could evade them long enough to make it to cover.
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