Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

‘This is a parley, Trinica. Neutral ground. Sharka guarantees our safety,’ he grinned at her. ‘Can’t get me here,’ he added, rather childishly.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But I can get your craft.’

‘You don’t even know where she is.’

‘Certainly I do,’ she replied. ‘You’re berthed in the Southwest Labourer’s Quarter. Of course you registered under a false name, but I had every dock master in the city keeping an eye out for a Wickfield Ironclad-class cargo-combat hybrid. There aren’t many around with the Ketty Jay’s specifications, and I do know that craft quite well. I listened to you talk about her enough.’

Frey was unperturbed. Trinica noted his lack of reaction.

‘Obviously, you guessed I’d do something like this,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. How many men do you have, Frey? Five? Six? Can you afford to keep that many?’ She looked around the room; he bored her now. ‘I sent twenty.’

Twenty, thought Frey, keeping his face carefully neutral, the way he’d learned to at the card table. Oh, shit.

‘What if I did the same?’ he said. ‘What if my men are on your craft, right now?’

Trinica rolled her eyes. ‘Please, Darian. You never could bluff well. You’re too much the coward: you always give in first.’

She sighed and looked down at him, as if pitying a dumb animal. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You’re predictable. That’s why I almost caught you at the hermitage. Once Thade told me about you and his daughter I realised that was the first place you’d go. You always did think with the wrong organ.’

Frey didn’t reply. She had him there.

‘You want to know why I’m a good captain and you’re not? Because you don’t trust your people. I’ve earned my men’s respect and they’ve earned mine. But you? You can’t keep a crew, Darian. You go through navigators like whores.’

Frey kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t argue. There was nothing to say.

‘And because I know you, I know you’d never trust anyone with your aircraft,’ she continued, walking past him towards the door. ‘The Ketty Jay is your life. You’d rather die than give the ignition codes to someone who might fly off with her. That means your crew are outnumbered, outgunned, and trapped, defending an aircraft that’s nothing more than an armoured tomb.’ She cocked her head. ‘Perhaps you were thinking of some clever flanking manoeuvre. Perhaps you’re going to bring in reinforcements behind my men. Whatever you try, it makes no difference. You just don’t have the numbers.’

Frey’s shoulders slumped. Twenty men. How long could Jez, Silo and Harkins hold out against twenty men? Everything had relied on timing, but it was only now he truly realised how desperate the situation was. The plan had sounded so fine coming out of his mouth. But he was the only one not risking his life here.

Trinica saw how it hit him like a hammer. She touched his shoulder in false sympathy and leaned down to whisper in his ear, her lips brushing his lobe. ‘By now they’ll be dead, and my men will have filled the Ketty Jay with so much dynamite, the explosion will be heard in Yortland.’

She opened the door and looked back at him. ‘This will be the second time your crew died because of your hang-ups, Darian. Let’s see how far and fast you run without your aircraft.’

Then she was gone, leaving the door open behind her. Frey sat at the table, looking down at the mess of cards before him, feeling pummelled and raw and slashed to ribbons. She’d taken him apart with nothing more than words.

That woman. That bloody woman.

Crake ran hard. His lungs were burning in his chest and his head felt light, but his legs were tireless, filled with strength lent by adrenaline. Bess lumbered ahead, Malvery and Pinn hot on her heels. Bullets scored the air around them.

But they were only delaying the inevitable. There was nowhere left to go.

The hangar deck was crowded with cranes, portable fuel tanks and piled cargo. Massive cogs rose out of the floor, part of a mechanism that clamped aircraft in their berths and prevented heavy freighters from drifting. In the distance, elevated platforms for spotlights and a narrow controller’s tower rose almost to the roof of the hangar.

They used these obstacles as cover, darting past and around them, blocking the aim of the Delirium Trigger’s crew. Nobody attempted to stop them with Bess leading the way. Dock workers fled for cover, frightened by the wild gunplay of their pursuers.

The mouth of the hangar opened out to the night and the electric lights of the city. But the hangar deck was forty feet up, and there was no way down. The militia had spread out to block all the stairways. They were trapped, but still they ran, eking every last moment out of their liberty and their lives. There was nothing else left to do.

Bess slowed as they passed another pile of cargo waiting to be loaded onto a frigate. She picked up a crate and lobbed it effortlessly towards their pursuers. They scattered and scrambled away as it smashed apart in their midst. Crake and the others raced past her, and she took up position at the rear. A rifle shot bounced off her armoured back, spinning away with a high whine, as she turned to follow them.

Why did I come here? Crake thought. It was the same question he’d been asking himself all night. Why did I agree to do this? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He flayed himself with his own terror as he ran, cursing his idiocy. He could have just refused. He could have stayed out of this and left at any time. But he’d allowed himself to be roped into Frey’s plan, driven by self-loathing and his captain’s insidious charm. Back in Yortland, he’d been ready to throw it all in and leave Frey to his fate. Yet somehow, he found himself agreeing to join the Ketty Jay’s crew.

He’d made an error. He’d momentarily forgotten that time in the dingy back room of a bar, when Lawsen Macarde held a pistol to his head and told Frey to give up the ignition codes to the Ketty Jay. He’d forgotten the look on Frey’s face, those cold, uncaring eyes, like doll’s eyes. He’d allowed himself to believe—again—that Frey was his friend.

And because of that, he was going to die.

They dodged around machinery and vaulted over fuel pipes, rushing through the oily metal world of the hangar. Dark iron surrounded them; dim lights glowed; everything was covered with a thin patina of grime. They could expect no quarter here. This wasn’t a place for sympathy, but for the unforgiving industry of the new world. Crake had grown up on country estates, surrounded by trees, and had rarely ever seen the factories which had made his family rich. Now a grim fatalism swept over him. It seemed a terrible place to live a life, and a worse one to end it in.

The deck narrowed as they reached the mouth of the hangar, splitting into long walkways that led to spotlight stations and observation platforms. To their left and right, half-submerged below the elevated deck, were freighters and passenger liners, colossal in their shabby majesty. There were people lining the rail, watching their plight with interest, safely remote.

‘Up here!’ cried Malvery, and they were funnelled onto a gantry that projected out to the mouth of the hangar. It was wide enough for three abreast, but at the end there was nothing but a small observation platform. After that, there was only the fatal plunge to the ground.

It didn’t matter. They ran until the gantry ran out, and there they stopped.

The crew of the Delirium Trigger slowed, seeing their quarry was trapped. They gathered at the end of the gantry, where there was cover. Between them and the men of the Ketty Jay was a long, open stretch. They’d be easy targets there, and they still feared the golem enough to respect its power.