Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

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.

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 high 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.