Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

‘Here we go,’ said Jez, as she saw him coming. Silo grunted, and levered another barrel of sand into place.

‘There’s twenty of ’em!’ Harkins reported in a quiet shriek. ‘I mean, give or take a couple, but twenty’s near enough! What are we supposed to do against twenty? Or even nearly twenty. Ten would be too many! What’s he expect us to do? I don’t like this. Not one measly rotting bit!’

Jez studied him, worried. He was even more strung out than usual. The Firecrow and Skylance were not even in the city: they’d been stashed at a rendezvous point far away. Without his craft, he was a snail out of its shell.

‘We do what the Cap’n told us to do,’ she said calmly.

‘But we didn’t know there’d be twenty! That’s almost half the crew!’

‘I suppose Dracken doesn’t want to leave anything to chance,’ said Jez. She exchanged a glance with Silo, who headed up the cargo ramp and into the Ketty Jay.

Harkins watched him go, then turned to Jez with a slightly manic sheen in his eyes. ‘Here, that’s an idea! Why don’t we just go inside, close up the cargo hold and lock it? They’d never get in then.’

‘You don’t think they’ve thought of that? They’ll have explosives. Either that, or someone who knows how to crack open and rewire a keypad.’ She motioned towards the small rectangle of buttons nested in the nearby landing strut, used to close and open the cargo ramp from the outside.

The belly lights of the Ketty Jay went out, plunging them into twilight. The barely adequate glow of the lamp-posts gave a soft, eerie cast to the near-empty dock. Silo emerged carrying an armful of guns and ammo.

Jez gave Harkins a reassuring pat on the arm. He looked ready to bolt. ‘Twenty men here means twenty less for the others to deal with,’ she said. ‘The Cap’n said Dracken would be coming for us. We’re ready for it. We just have to hold out, that’s all.’

‘Oh, just that!’ Harkins moaned with hysterical sarcasm. But then Silo grabbed his hand and slapped a pistol into his palm, and the glare the Murthian gave him was enough to shut him up.

Malvery and Pinn rejoined Crake, who was waiting at a safe remove from the Delirium Trigger with a worried frown on his brow. Together, they watched Bess being loaded on. The arm of the crane was chained to the four corners of one great palette, on which were secured dozens of crates. It lifted the palette onto the deck of the Delirium Trigger. From there, Dracken’s crew carried the crates to a winch which lowered them through an opening into the cargo hold. Dockers were not allowed aboard. Dracken was wise to the dangers of infiltration that way.

‘I don’t like this,’ Crake said to himself, for the tenth time.

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Malvery, looking at his pocket watch.

‘And if she’s not,’ said Pinn, ‘you can always build a new girlfriend.’

Malvery clipped him around the head. Pinn swore loudly.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Malvery said again.

Pinn fidgeted and adjusted his genitals inside his trousers. He was dressed in dock worker’s overalls, as were his companions, with his regular clothes beneath them. It would be necessary to change in a hurry later. Until then, exertion and multiple layers had left him sweltering. ‘When can we get on with it? My pods are dripping.’

The others ignored him. He smoked a roll-up resentfully as they observed the activity aboard. The palette, once empty, was lifted off the Delirium Trigger by the crane and returned to the elevated hangar deck, where more crates were loaded on.

‘Right-o,’ said Malvery. ‘Let’s head down there. Crake, keep your mouth shut. Nobody’s gonna believe you’re a docker with that accent. Pinn . . . just keep your mouth shut.’

Pinn made a face and spat on the ground.

‘Now, the Cap’n wants this to go like clockwork,’ Malvery said. ‘We all know there’s bugger all chance of that, so let’s just try not to get ourselves killed, and we’ll all be having a drink and a laugh about this by dawn.’

They made their way back across the busy dock, weaving between piles of chests and netting and screeching machinery. Huge cogs turned; cage-lifts rattled up and down from the lower hangar decks. Cranes swung overhead, and shouts echoed round the iron girders of the roof, where squadrons of pigeons roosted and shat. A massive freighter was easing in on the far side of the hangar, its aerium tanks keeping it weightless, nudging into place with its gas-jets.

Posing as dock workers, the three imposters were invisible in the chaos. They picked some cargo from a stack of netted crates and barrels that were being loaded onto the Delirium Trigger, and made their way towards the huge palette that was chained to the crane arm. The cargo had been piled high on the palette by now. They carried their loads on and went around to the far side of the palette, where they couldn’t be seen by the workers on the dock. There, they began unlashing a group of crates, rearranging them to make a space.

Another docker rounded the corner, carrying a heavy-looking chest. Malvery, Pinn and Crake did their best to look focused and industrious. The docker—a grizzled, burly man with salt-and-pepper hair—watched them in puzzlement for a moment, then decided that whatever they were doing wasn’t interesting enough to comment on. He put down the chest, secured it with some netting and left.

Once they’d dug out a space, they checked the coast was clear and crammed in. Then they stacked their own crates in front of it, sealing themselves inside.

Their timing was perfect. No sooner had they hushed each other to silence than a steam-whistle blew. They heard the footsteps of dock workers beyond their hiding place, evacuating the palette, and then, with a lurch, it began to lift.

Malvery had to steady the unsecured crates in front of them, for fear of being buried; but the crane moved slowly and the palette was heavy enough to be stable. Though the crates made slight and distressing shifts, nothing moved far enough to fall. Tucked in their little corner, they felt themselves transported across the gap between the hangar deck and the deck of the Delirium Trigger.

Crake found himself thinking that this must be how a mouse felt. Hiding in the dark, at the mercy of the world, frightened by every unknown sound. Spit and blood, he hated this. He didn’t have it in him to be a stowaway. He was too afraid of getting caught.

But Bess was aboard. He was committed now. He’d committed her.

Why did you do it? Why did you agree to this?

He agreed to it because he was ashamed. Because since their encounter with the man from the Shacklemore Agency, he couldn’t look Jez in the eye. Absurdly, he felt he owed her something. He felt he owed the crew. He needed to atone, to make amends for being such a despicable, vile monster. To apologise for his presence among them. To make himself worthy.

Anyway, it was too late to turn back now.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Malvery said. ‘Do it.’

Crake drew out his small brass whistle. He put it to his lips and blew. It made no sound at all.

‘That’s it?’ asked Pinn, bemused.

‘That’s it,’ said Crake.

‘So now what happens?’

‘Bess has just woken up to find that she’s in a box,’ Crake replied. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in the Delirium Trigger’s cargo hold right now.’

By the time the palette bumped down onto the deck, the howling and smashing had begun.

‘I suppose you know I’m innocent, don’t you?’ Frey asked.

Trinica was pouring two glasses of whisky from the drinks cabinet. She looked back at him: a moon-white face partially eclipsed by the black slope of her shoulder.

‘You’re not innocent, Frey. You killed those people. It doesn’t matter if you were set up or not.’