Chris Wooding: The Ace of Skulls

Captain Darian Frey was accustomed to long odds; his whole life, he’d been an outside chance. Lacking the ability to win in a fair fight, he survived instead by guile and the illogical optimism favoured by gamblers and drunks, which made the riskiest of plans seem like a good idea at the time.

That was how he found himself flying through the heart of a thunderstorm, on the trail of a target he couldn’t even see.

The Ketty Jay shuddered and bucked, shoved this way and that by crosswinds as Frey wrestled with the flight stick. Bulkheads groaned, fixtures rattled, thrusters clawed the air. Tatters of cloud flapped at the windglass like angry black ghosts.

Frey bullied the Ketty Jay onward, teeth gritted. Lightning flickered somewhere, a dull flare muted by the intervening murk, briefly illuminating the darkened cockpit. Frey winced in anticipation of the thunder, and cringed when it hit. His ears were still ringing when he felt his stomach plunge and the Ketty Jay was sucked down into an air pocket.

Ordinarily, he’d have left this kind of flying to Jez. She had uncanny night vision and a way of reading the wind that was nothing short of eerie. But that was before. These days, he didn’t trust her to fly at all.

‘Will you just give it up ?’ he yelled at the storm in exasperation, as he hauled back on the flight stick hard enough to pop a shoulder joint.

As if at his command, the cloud flurried away and the Ketty Jay broke out into clear sky. The last light of dusk painted the night soft and bloody. A full moon shone down on a mountainous world of looming thunderheads, piled masses sliding past, borne on an invisible current.

Frey eased off on the flight stick and listened suspiciously as the thrusters settled back to their usual tone. The peace had come so suddenly that he suspected it was a trick.

When no immediate disaster occurred, he slumped back in his seat and allowed himself to relax for a moment. These last few hours had been hard on his nerves. He knew he shouldn’t be out in the open, but he needed the respite.

His eyes roamed the massive shelves and canyons of cloud, looking for a sign of their target. As expected, he found none. They’d be hiding deep in the storm, riding it as far as it would take them. Lightning lit up a distant cloud; a crackling grumble rolled across the sky.

He searched for Pinn and Harkins, but he couldn’t see them either. ‘You fellers alright up there?’ he asked.

‘Bored,’ said Pinn immediately, the pilot’s voice transmitted to Frey’s ear via his silver earcuff. ‘Haven’t you found it yet?’

‘I. . er. . actually I like it up here,’ said Harkins timidly. ‘It’s. . er. . well, it’s sort of nice. Quiet.’

‘ Quiet ?’ Pinn scoffed.

‘I’m just saying. . I mean, why shouldn’t I-’

Frey pulled off the earcuff before they could get to bickering, cutting the connection to his outflyers. ‘Jez. What can you hear? Jez?’

When there was no reply, he leaned round to look over his shoulder. The only other occupant of the cockpit was his navigator, sitting at her station in shadow. A small woman in shapeless overalls, black hair tied back from her face. She was staring at a set of charts on the metal desk in front of her, but she wasn’t seeing them.

‘ Jez! ’ he snapped.

Her head jerked up and she fixed her gaze on him. Moonlight reflected from wide pupils, discs of bright white like the eyes of a night predator. Wolf’s eyes. Frey felt an icy chill pass through him. Ever since Samarla, just being around her made him uneasy. She’d changed. Sometimes he dreaded being alone with her in the cockpit.

‘Can you hear it?’ he asked her, keeping his voice firm.

She looked at him blankly. He ran out of patience. ‘The freighter, Jez! What’s wrong with you?’

Realisation crossed her face, and she looked momentarily ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, Cap’n, I. .’ She shook her head, waved it away. ‘Hang on a moment.’ She closed her eyes and listened. ‘We’re close now, but we’ve drifted. Drop to nine thousand, heading oh-fifteen. They’re about twenty kloms from us.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I can hear the engines,’ she said. ‘Cargo freighter and. . five or six outflyers running escort. They shouldn’t be flying through this kind of chop with craft that small but. .’ She shrugged.

‘But they’re Awakeners,’ Frey finished for her. She managed a wan smile at that. A joke among the crew: the Awakeners were crazy. You had to be, with a maniac for a messiah.

Jez rapidly checked her calculations. ‘We’ll be over the wetlands in a couple of minutes,’ she said. ‘Time to make our move.’

‘I need you here on this, Jez,’ he told her. ‘Concentrate.’

She gave him a look that he couldn’t read, then a resolute nod. He hoped his reminder would be enough to keep her mind on the job.

She could hear the engines. At twenty kloms, in a storm, over the bellow of the Ketty Jay ’s thrusters. She’d always had good ears, but this was something else.

What else do you hear when you go away like that? Frey thought. What’s happened to you, Jez? What are you listening to?

‘Doc!’ he shouted over his shoulder, through the open door of the cockpit. ‘We’re getting close! Stay sharp!’

‘Right-o!’ Malvery called. He was up in the autocannon cupola, a blister on the Ketty Jay ’s humped back, set above the main passageway which ran along her spine. Probably keeping himself warm with a bottle of rum. The doc reckoned his aim got better when he was drunk, but Frey had never known him to shoot sober, so he had nothing to compare it with.

Frey vented a little of the ultralight aerium gas from the ballast tanks to bring the altitude down. An anvil-shaped thunderhead loomed over him. He steered the Ketty Jay towards it and let it consume them.

Back in the dark, Frey felt the tension take hold of him again. His fingers flexed nervously on the flight stick. All he could see ahead was his own face reflected in the windglass, underlit by the glow of the dash gauges. Black hair, a stubbled jaw, handsome features that he counted as his only blessing of birth. Frey was not a man unfamiliar with his own reflection, but tonight it surprised him. He looked lean and hard. Haunted.

You can do this , he told himself. One freighter and a few shabby outflyers. Not even professional pilots. And rich pickings when we’re done.

He’d coughed up a lot of money for the information, buying from a reputable whispermonger who told him the target’s route and cargo. This time, he was determined there would be no surprises. He was doing things right these days. No more shady tips or jobs that seemed too good to be true. No more corner-cutting, no more screw-ups.

And he had reason to be confident. The last two operations had gone like clockwork. It didn’t matter that they were simple takes, small vessels with minimum escort caught sneaking through the volcanic passes over the Hookhollows. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been carrying much, and most of what Frey stole he’d used to buy the information for this run. What mattered was how they’d executed their plans. His crew had been disciplined, efficient, and despite their bitching they’d worked as a team.

Encouraged by that, he’d decided it was time to step up to bigger prey.

The Awakeners had been stormriding ever since the civil war became official and the Archduke declared open season on their aircraft. For most freebooters, it took great persistence and a healthy dose of luck to catch a freighter in the winter storm channels over Vardia. But most freebooters didn’t have a half-daemon navigator on their side.