Chris Wooding: The Ace of Skulls

They aimed their rifles and let fly. Bullets sparked off the creature’s armour. It flinched, bellowed, then came stamping onward with a roar. The foremost of the Sentinels broke cover and ran. Seeing him falter, others followed, backing away in fear. One man, full of the zeal of the faithful, stepped bravely out into the centre of the corridor.

‘Stand your ground!’ he cried. ‘For the Allsoul!’ And he fired his rifle at point-blank range through a gap in the creature’s face-grille, right between its eyes.

He hit nothing. There was a series of sharp, metallic echoes as the bullet ricocheted about inside the monster’s body. The Sentinel had only an instant to wonder how an empty armoured suit was storming an Awakener freighter, before he was backhanded into the wall with the force of a steam train. The other Sentinels lost all taste for the fight then, and they fled shrieking. The monster thundered off in pursuit.

When the coast was clear, Frey and his crew stepped into the passageway, revolvers and shotguns in their hands. They followed warily in the monster’s wake, pausing only for the captain to examine the spread-eagled form of the dead man, who was still embedded in the wall in the midst of an artistic splatter-pattern. He was wearing a startled expression, as if surprised to find that he was a corpse.

‘Good ol’ Bess,’ Frey said approvingly.

‘She ain’t subtle, but she gets the job done,’ Malvery agreed.

Grayther Crake, the Ketty Jay ’s daemonist and the man behind the monster, felt vaguely sick. Bess’s rampages never failed to distress him. It wasn’t the sheer ferocity with which she maimed and crushed her opponents. It was because she took such childish glee in the carnage.

The whole crew was here, with the exception of Harkins, who was even more useless with a gun than Crake was. Leading the way was the Cap’n, sporting a daemon-thralled cutlass and a surplus of charm to hide his many and varied flaws. Next to him was Malvery, a man of great size and enormous mirth, with a ring of white hair and round, green-lensed glasses perched on his wide nose. Silo, the Ketty Jay ’s Murthian first mate, walked alongside. Bringing up the rear was Jez. Jez, half Mane and getting more so every day, in Crake’s opinion.

There was a jostling at his elbow, and Pinn pushed past him down the corridor. Oh yes, he’d forgotten Pinn. He had warm feelings for the rest of the crew, even the cowardly Harkins, but Pinn he didn’t like at all. Crake was a man who valued intelligence, and Pinn was only slightly more intelligent than yeast.

‘Are you coming?’ Pinn asked impatiently, eager to shoot something.

‘After you,’ said Crake, barely concealing his disdain.

Pinn went off up the passageway. Behind him, the man embedded in the wall peeled away and slumped into the corridor. Crake focused all his concentration on keeping his supper where it was meant to be.

He found Ashua at his shoulder, the ginger-haired, tattooed girl from the slums and most recent addition to the crew. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You know Awakeners. They’re pushovers.’

‘Unless they’ve got Imperators on board,’ Crake said.

‘On a craft like this? Doubt it,’ she said. She gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘Besides, that’s what we’ve got you here for, isn’t it?’

Crake laughed nervously and stepped over the dead man, doing his best not to look.

They caught up to the others just as they were preparing to burst into a room off the passageway. The door was shut, and Frey and Malvery had taken position on either side. Bess was around the corner, terrorising those Sentinels who hadn’t run far enough the first time.

Frey gave the nod to the doctor, who pulled the sliding metal door open. Screams of fright came from within. Frey peered inside, then relaxed and waved to the others. Silo, Ashua and Jez covered the passageway while Frey, Pinn and Malvery went in. Once Crake had judged it was safe, he followed.

It was a small assembly chamber, with benches arranged in rows and screwed into the floor, facing a low platform. Huddled against one wall were a group of Awakeners. They were mostly women and old men, wearing the beige cassocks of Speakers, the Awakeners’ rank-and-file preachers. Each of them had the Cipher tattooed on their forehead.

‘Calm down,’ Frey was saying, as he checked between the benches. ‘No one’s getting hurt. We’re just after your stuff.’ He had one hand held up reassuringly, while the other pointed a pistol at them. It was a rather contradictory message, in Crake’s opinion.

‘We don’t have anything!’ protested one young woman. ‘We’re Speakers. We only spread the word of the Allsoul.’

‘Really?’ Frey cocked his head. ‘Word has it you lot have been transporting all your relics and valuables from your hermitages to a hidden base on the coast, ’cause you’re afraid the Archduke will get hold of them. You wouldn’t have any on board, would you?’

The group stayed quiet. Frey and Malvery slipped between the benches and approached them.

‘Listen,’ said Malvery, in a friendly fashion. ‘We’re gonna ransack the place anyway. Save us some time, eh?’

‘Those relics are the property of the Allsoul!’ snapped one old man, bald and wrinkled like a turtle.

Frey grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the crowd. ‘And you just volunteered to tell me where they are.’

‘I’ll never tell!’ he declared shrilly.

Malvery cranked his lever-action shotgun and pressed it to the side of the old man’s head.

‘Follow the corridor! Third door on the left!’

‘Thanks,’ said Frey, giving him a slap on the shoulder. He turned to Pinn. ‘Keep an eye on ’em. We’ll go get the loot.’

Pinn looked appalled. ‘Why me?’

‘Because you’re who I asked. Just do it. Can’t have them running about all over the place.’

Pinn cursed and kicked one of the benches, then went very quiet, bit his lip and tried to pretend he hadn’t almost broken his toe. Frey and Malvery headed off out the door. Crake moved to follow them.

‘You!’ said the old man suddenly. Crake realised that the Speaker was pointing at him. ‘Are you responsible for that thing out there?’

If only you knew how responsible , thought Crake. But the old man’s tone inspired defiance and a quiet anger. He turned calmly to face his accuser. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’

The crowd muttered in horror. The old man sneered. ‘I thought so. None of these others had the look. How do you live with yourself, daemonist? What bargains have you made with the unnatural?’

‘Your own Imperators are daemons,’ Crake said. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Lies, perpetrated by daemonists like you,’ said the Speaker, waving a gnarled hand to brush the words aside. ‘You’ve always despised and feared the Awakeners.’

‘You have hanged quite a lot of us,’ Crake pointed out. Then he grinned nastily, and his gold tooth glinted in the faint glow of the emergency lights. ‘Unfortunately for you, you missed one.’

Pinn listened to the distant gunfire with a resentful scowl on his face. The others were all out there having fun while he was stuck with guard duty. On top of that, his toe hurt like buggery. It was all so bloody unfair.

He leaned against the wall of the assembly chamber, shotgun cradled in his arms. The Speakers watched him fearfully, huddled together like sheep. He glared at them, blaming them for the whole woeful situation.

One of them, a man in his sixties who still had a full head of blond hair, cleared his throat. ‘We’re not men of violence, friend,’ he ventured.

‘Well, maybe you should learn,’ said Pinn. ‘Stop people like us robbing you.’