Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

Crake nodded.

‘Right, then,’ she said, having arranged herself as best she could. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

She walked down the path towards the landing pad. Crake cast one last glance into the trees, where Cordwain’s body lay, and then followed her.

‘You want to take on the Delirium Trigger?’ shrieked Harkins. Pinn choked on his food, spraying stew across the table and all over Crake’s face. Malvery gleefully pounded Pinn on the back, much harder than was necessary, until his coughing fit subsided.

‘Thanks,’ he snarled at the grinning doctor.

‘Another day, another life saved,’ Malvery replied, returning to his position by the stove, where he was working on an artery-clogging dessert made mostly of sugar. Crake dabbed at his beard with a pocket handkerchief.

‘So?’ prompted Jez. ‘How do you plan to do it?’

Frey surveyed his crew, gathered around the table in the Ketty Jay’s mess hall, and wondered again if he was doing the right thing. His plan had seemed inspired when he came up with it a few hours ago, but now he was faced with the reality of his situation he was much less certain. It was fine to imagine a crack squad of experts carrying out their assigned missions with clinical precision, but it was hardly a well-oiled machine he was dealing with here.

There was Harkins, reduced to a gibbering wreck by the mere mention of the Delirium Trigger. Malvery, lacing the dessert with rum and taking a couple of swigs for himself as he did so. Pinn, too stupid to even swallow his food properly.

Jez and Crake were trustworthy, as far as he could tell, but they’d barely been able to meet each other’s eyes throughout the meal. Something had happened between them at the Winter Ball—perhaps Crake had made an unwelcome move?—and now Jez’s loathing for him was obvious, as was his shame.

That left Silo, silently spooning stew into his mouth, unknowable as always. Silo, who had been Frey’s constant companion for seven years, about whom he knew nothing. Frey had never asked about his past, because he didn’t care. Silo never asked about anything. He was just there. Did he have thoughts like normal men did?

He tried to summon up some warm feelings of camaraderie and couldn’t.

Oh well, damn it all, let’s go for it anyway.

‘We all know we can’t take on the Delirium Trigger in the air,’ he said, to an audible sigh of relief from Harkins. ‘So what we do is we get her on the ground. We lure Dracken into port and when she’s down . . .’ He slapped the table. ‘That’s when we do it.’

Pinn raised a hand. When Pinn raised a hand it was only ever for effect. If he had something to say he usually just blurted it out.

‘Question,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Because she won’t be expecting it.’

Pinn lowered his hand halfway, then raised it again as if struck by a new idea.

‘Yes?’ Frey said wearily.

‘Why don’t we do something else she isn’t expecting?’

‘I liked the running away plan,’ said Harkins. ‘I mean, we’ve been doing pretty good so far with the running away. Maybe we should, you know, keep on doing it. Just an idea, though, I mean, you’re the Cap’n. Only seems to me that, well, if it ain’t broke it doesn’t need fixing. Just my opinion. You’re the Cap’n. Sir.’

The crew fell silent. The only sounds were Malvery quietly stirring the pot and a wet chewing noise coming from the corner of the mess, where Slag was tucking in to a fresh rat. He’d dragged it all the way up from the cargo hold in order to join the crew’s dinner.

Frey looked at the faces turned towards him and felt something unfamiliar, a strange weight to the moment. He realised with a shock that they were waiting for him to persuade them. They wanted to be persuaded. In their eyes, he saw the faintest hint of something he’d never thought to see from them. Something he was only accustomed to seeing in the expressions of beautiful girls just before he left them.

Hope.

Rot and damnation, they’re hoping! They’re hoping I can save them. They’re hoping I know what I’m doing.

And Frey was surprised to realise he felt a little bit good about that.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Dracken’s been catching us up ever since she set out to get us. She was behind us when she got to Quail, she almost had us at the hermitage, and she was even ahead of us at the Winter Ball. She knows that we know about Gallian Thade, and she’ll assume we’ll keep on after him. But what she doesn’t know is that we know about their secret hideout.’

‘We don’t even know what this secret hideout is,’ Jez pointed out.

Pinn looked bewildered. He wasn’t sure who knew what any more.

‘Crake heard Thade and the Duke talking about Trinica and some secret hideout,’ Frey said. ‘They mentioned charts and a device of some kind. Seems to me that if we get those charts and that device, then we can find our way there too.’

Pinn raised his hand. ‘Question.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why?’

‘Because we need proof. We know Duke Grephen arranged Hengar’s murder. We know he’s planning a coup. But we don’t have any way to prove it. If we can prove it, we can shop those bastards to the Archduke.’

‘What good will that do?’ Jez asked. ‘We still blew up the Ace of Skulls.’

‘You think they’re going to care about the trigger-man if they’ve got the mastermind?’ Frey asked. ‘Look, I’m not saying they’ll necessarily forgive, but they might forget. If the Archduke gets his hands on them, he won’t worry about us. We’re small-time. And without Duke Grephen putting up that huge reward, Dracken’s not going to waste her time chasing us either.’

‘You think we can actually get ourselves out of this?’ Malvery rumbled. He was standing behind Frey, at the stove. He’d stopped stirring and was staring at the pot of dessert.

‘Yes!’ Frey said, firmly. ‘We play this right, we can do it.’

The crew were exchanging glances, as if looking for support from each other. Did their companions feel the same? Were they being foolish, to believe that they could win out against all the odds?

‘Whatever’s going on at this hideout is something to do with all of this,’ Frey said. ‘The answers are there, I’m sure of it. There’s a way out. But we need to hang on, we need to go a little deeper first. We need to take the risk. Because I’m not spending the rest of my life on the run, and neither are any of you.’

‘You said we’ll lure Dracken into a port,’ said Jez. ‘How are we gonna do that?’

‘Parley,’ he said. ‘I’ll invite her to talk on neutral turf. Face to face. I’ll pretend I want to cut a deal.’

‘And you think she’ll agree?’

‘She’ll agree.’ Frey was horribly certain of that.

Nobody spoke for a few moments. Slag looked up, puzzled by the pregnant pause in the conversation, then went back to snacking on his rat.

Frey felt the weight of Malvery’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Tell us the rest of the plan, Cap’n.’

Frey stepped off the iron ladder that ran from the mess up to the main passageway of the Ketty Jay. He stopped there for a moment and took a breath. Explaining his plan had been unusually nerve-wracking. For the first time he could remember, he’d actually worried about what his crew thought. There were a few good suggestions, mostly from Jez. Outright shock as he revealed the final part. But they’d liked it. He saw it on their faces.

Well, it was done. Until now he hadn’t really been sure they’d go with it. It was frightening to have it all seem so suddenly real.