Chris Wooding: Retribution Falls

The Ketty Jay had barely cleared the tops of the nearest buildings before Frey kicked the throttle to maximum and the prothane thrusters opened up with a roar. He was thrown back in his seat as they accelerated, their landing struts scraping the roof of an inn, tearing off slates as they powered out of the shadow of the frigate. Frey gritted his teeth as the colossal craft bore down on them from above.

The deck of the frigate plummeted past their stern with a bellow of displaced air, raging with smoke and flame, and collapsed into the square with the force of a landslide. The Ketty Jay carried Frey and his crew away as Orkmund’s stronghold was obliterated, and the great scaffolded platform cracked in half.

For once, Frey was glad that he couldn’t see behind his craft. The appalling destruction in their wake was left to his imagination. A stab of grief surprised him—not for the dead, but for Silo, whom he’d dumped into Malvery’s care as if he was luggage. He forced himself to be cold. He had a responsibility to the others. Time to wallow in remorse after he’d got them safe.

He vented aerium to curb the Ketty Jay’s excessive lift and took her around the rim of the sinkhole, skirting the Navy fleet and avoiding the worst of the fighting. Pinn and Harkins fell into position behind him. To starboard, he had a view of the whole battle. Retribution Falls was a ruin, a half-submerged junkyard. The stern ends of broken pirate craft jutted out of the brackish, rancid water, leaking flaming slicks of fuel. Smoke choked the scene. From within came rapid flashes of guns and the sound of explosions.

The Navy had blocked off one route into Retribution Falls, but there were evidently other ways out, and the pirates took them. The defence of the town had been abandoned and the pirates were retreating, melting into the mist overhead, vanishing into gullies and canyons. The Navy had taken losses, but the surprise attack had kept them light.

Frey flew the Ketty Jay behind the Navy fleet, who were still looking in towards the town and not out towards the rim. If anyone noticed the three insignificant aircraft sneaking past, then perhaps they recognised them for who they were and held their fire. In any case, the Ketty Jay passed unmolested into the canyon that led out of the sinkhole and away from the battle. The rocky slopes of the Hookhollows closed around them, blocking out the sight of Retribution Falls. Soon they’d left the pirate town behind, and all was quiet again.

Malvery and Crake carried Silo into the tiny infirmary and laid him on the surgical table. The Murthian was unconscious, his breathing shallow and rapid. His eyes moved restlessly behind their lids. The air smelled of oil and blood, and the floor moved with the tilting of the Ketty Jay as she flew.

Crake’s hands were covered in gore. He felt somehow that he should have been sickened by that, but he was too intent on the moment to allow himself weakness. He remembered the Silo that had helped him patch up Bess after the gunfight at Rabban, the one who had talked and joked with him on that grassy hillside. They were no longer strangers to each other. Crake would do whatever he had to.

Malvery ripped open Silo’s shirt, exposing the wound. A ragged hole had been punched through one slab-like pectoral. Rich blood welled out of it in awful quantity. He swore under his breath.

‘He’s bleeding inside,’ said Malvery. ‘I can’t do anything.’

‘You’ve got to!’ Crake protested. ‘Open him up. Stop the bleeding!’

‘I can’t,’ Malvery said. He adjusted his round green glasses and tugged anxiously at the end of his white moustache. ‘I just can’t.’

He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of medicinal alcohol. He’d unstoppered it and brought it to his lips before Crake snatched it from him and slammed it angrily down on the operating table.

‘You’re the only one who can do this, Malvery!’ he snapped. ‘Forget what happened to your friend. You’re a surgeon! Do your damn job!’

‘I’m not a surgeon any more,’ Malvery replied, staring at the man on the operating table in front of him. Blood pumped up from the bullet wound and spilled down Silo’s chest in grotesque washes of red. Crake clapped his hands ineffectually over the wound, then began looking around for something better to staunch the flow.

He understood Malvery’s pain, but he’d no time for sympathy while Silo lay dying. If only Crake had been a better daemonist, he might have used the Art to heal the Murthian. But he didn’t have the equipment, so he couldn’t do anything. Silo’s only chance was Malvery, and the doctor was paralysed.

‘Spit and blood, you’re just going to stand by and watch?’ Crake cried.

‘What do you want from me?’ Malvery bellowed. ‘A miracle? He’s dying! I can’t stop that!’

‘You can try!’ Crake shouted back with equal ferocity. Malvery was shocked at the force in Crake’s usually quiet tone. ‘This isn’t like the last time. He’s going to die anyway. Nobody will blame you if you fail, I’ll make sure of that. But I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when the captain finds out you didn’t even try.’

Just then, the Ketty Jay yawed to port, making him stumble; he had to put out a hand on the operating table to steady himself. The bottle of alcohol tipped from the table, but Crake caught it before it fell. Malvery’s eyes went to it.

‘Give me the bottle,’ he said.

Crake just glared at him.

‘I’ll need a swig to steady my hand!’ Malvery insisted.

‘Your hand’s plenty steady, Doc. Do it. Earn your place.’

‘Me?’ Malvery roared. ‘You’ve been barely four months aboard, you arrogant shit!’

‘Yes. And I saved you all at Tarlock Cove. Bess saved you from Kedmund Drave. I uncovered Grephen’s plans at Scorchwood Heights, and we’d never have taken the charts from Dracken without Bess. We’ve done our part. Pinn and Harkins fly, Jez navigates, Silo keeps the craft running. What do you do that one of us couldn’t? Fire a shotgun? Work the autocannon occasionally? You’re a surgeon who doesn’t operate, Malvery! You’re dead weight!’

Malvery’s face twisted in anger. He lunged across the table to grab him, but Crake was too fast, and pulled himself out of the way.

‘Then prove me wrong!’ he cried. ‘Cut him open! Stop the bleeding and save his life!’

Malvery’s huge fists bunched and unbunched. His face was red with rage. For a moment, Crake though he really would attack; but then he turned away, and stamped over to the wooden cabinet that was fixed to the wall. He pulled it open and drew out a scalpel. The surgical instruments were the only clean things in the grimy room. Malvery came back to the table and stared at Crake.

‘I’ll cut him, damn it,’ he snarled. ‘And you’re staying to help.’

Crake rolled up his sleeves. ‘Tell me what to do.’

Frey sat in the pilot’s seat, staring out at the fog. His air filter still hung round his neck, though more than an hour had passed since they crossed the lava river and its noxious fumes. Jez read out directions and co-ordinates from the navigator’s station behind him, and he followed them automatically. Once in a while she consulted the compass and warned of some distant mine that the Navy minesweepers had failed to catch, but it was always too far away to be a threat.

Frey barely paid attention to the job at hand. This was the fourth time he’d flown along this route, and it had lost its fear for him now. He trusted Jez. Harkins and Pinn were following his lights through the murk. As for the Navy, they could find their own way out.

He was thinking of Silo. The black spectre of loss hovered over him. It wasn’t only the thought that Silo himself might die—Frey had already been surprised by the depth of feeling he had for the taciturn foreigner—but the idea that one of his crew would be lost. With each new peril they survived, he’d thought of them more and more as one indivisible whole. Whereas he’d often dreamed in the past of ditching his crew and flying off alone, now he couldn’t stand the thought of it. They’d become a miniature society, the denizens of the Ketty Jay, and they needed one another to survive. Somehow they’d achieved a balance that satisfied them all, and when they were in balance they’d been able to achieve extraordinary things. Frey feared losing any of them now, in case that balance would be upset. He feared a return to the way things were.