Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘New blood is always welcome here,’ laughed Salwa as his hideous claw-guards loped affectionately around him. ‘Especially when we don’t have to pay a slave trader’s head price.’

Omar rose up from Boulous’s corpse, pointing his scimitar towards the murderous cur. ‘Face me , Salwa! Set your half-sized beyrogs to one side and face me like a man, alone.’

‘That would be a hard thing to do, guardsman,’ said Salwa.

‘Your steel against mine — show me what the guard’s newly appointed grand marshal is good for!’

‘Ah, Omar Barir. How little you know me. It would be a hard thing for me to truly face you as a man, for deep inside I am not. Do you really not know your Shadisa …?’

‘Shut your mouth about Shadisa. You killed her, you dog. I saw you washing away her blood down the drains of your filthy lair!’

‘The blood of a womb mage’s sorcery — a changeling virus as the female parts of my body were twisted into new forms or fell away. Shadisa was my old name — as much a slave name as the Ibn you once sported. Salwa is the new name the Sect of Razat has blessed me with. An identity created and circulated by the sect, associated with dark deeds before the female “victim” received the sect’s blessing and assumed his mantle.’

‘No!’ shouted Omar. Salwa will say anything, any lie, to save himself from my scimitar’s edge. ‘You are lying! You murdered her!’

‘Ah, my proud, vain little Omar. You are still a slave, a prisoner to the way of thinking you were raised with. I let the old Shadisa pass away, so a new one could rise up and take her place as a power in society — not an adornment.’ Salwa shrugged. ‘The Sect of Razat doesn’t sacrifice women, it frees them . We are the half of Cassarabia that has been forgotten and overlooked and abused. You should appreciate us, Omar, you should applaud the Sect of Razat, for we are the first true slave revolt that the empire has experienced in over a thousand years.’

Omar dropped his scimitar to the floor. The words had to be false, but he had reached out, grasping for the spark of Shadisa that had once fired his love — and there was something there, deep, hidden within Salwa, now that he knew what to search for. An image of the girl his heart had once quickened for, faint and indistinct — the twisted reflection of a chromosome.

Salwa laughed again, a little more gently this time. ‘I asked you to join us, Omar. Become part of the Imperial Aerial Squadron. You of all men know what it is like to have been chattel. The half of the empire that is untapped is about to be freed, and then we will be unstoppable.’ Salwa pointed to the cloud of bat-like creatures circling under the vault of the flesh library. ‘You should have brought a woman here with you, Omar, or one of the sect, and then the creatures would not have sounded an alert. For you and your friends, all the guardians of the old order — the secret police and the guardsmen — you have been outmanoeuvred by mere women. How does that feel, last son of Barir?’

Squatting on the floor by Boulous’s corpse, Omar could find no words, no boasts. Only tears dropping down through the metal grille into the tanks below. Now it made a terrible, sickening sense. No wonder he hadn’t been able to sense Shadisa in the palace until she was right under his nose. She had already begun the treatments to change into this thing, this monster. Sacrificing all that she was, and for what? Shadisa, his beautiful golden-haired Shadisa, remade as this horrific, ugly, power-hungry creature — as much of a traitor as the grand vizier. Of course, the grand vizier is another one of them too.

‘Kill her,’ Farris Uddin shouted from below. ‘In the name of the heavens, Cadet Barir, you must kill that abomination.’

Omar barely even felt the paws of the claw-guards, their talons retracted, as they grabbed him and dragged him away.

I am dead. You have murdered me, and you didn’t even require a scimitar to do it.

By the time Jack returned to the bridge of the Iron Partridge with all the calculations of their gas cells’ tensile strength, the three enemy vessels in the pathfinder squadron were already manoeuvring for advantage against the RAN airship.

Jericho was standing at the fore of the bridge with his personal telescope extended, shouting commands back to the signaller on the pipes station to relay across the ship. ‘Master gunner to run out our thirty-twos and have all quarter gunners starboard and port on short-fuse readiness, master bombardier to stand ready. Helioscope, flash the guardsmen talon wings to support on our forward quarter, I don’t want their draks getting raked in our crossfire.’

‘H-station reports flash from their forward vessel. Shall we flash the squadron some of the enemy codes we used to gain access to their city?’ asked the signaller.

‘Time to fly under our true colours,’ said Jericho. ‘We’ll leave the skulduggery to our State Protection Board friends. Flash the squadron this in Jackelian open signal: We are happy to accept your surrender. Please advise.’

A minute later the enemy responded, the signaller reporting the reply. ‘Enemy captain’s suggestion involves the use of our seats of ease, sir,’ he said, referring to the circular room where the ship’s officers exercised their bowels.

‘Jolly good, that’s all the usual formalities dispensed with. Lieutenant McGillivray, sound general-quarters. All hands make ready to give and receive fire.’

Jack moved forward and the captain noticed the young sailor in the reflection of the viewing port. ‘Their three pathfinder commanders are going for glory, Mister Keats. See now, they’re launching packets from their boat bays, no doubt headed back to the main fleet with word of our presence. All three of their vessels are coming for our throat.’

Jack looked out: three airships visibly growing larger, silhouetted against the moonlit sky with their running lamps burning, a little triangle-shaped constellation cutting through the night. They’ll be on us soon enough.

‘They’re fast studies, m’boy. We call that formation the tricorn hat, the best disposition for a squadron of three against a single enemy. Now — m’gas cell envelopes …’

‘Mister Shaftcrank and I believe the cells will hold, sir.’

‘ Believe? ’

‘Our specifications were incomplete, captain,’ said Jack. ‘We had to extrapolate their pressure potential from the other properties that were on record.’

‘Well then, you and the steamman strike me as bright sorts. Double or quits it is to be, quite literally. Across to the pipes station with you. Tell the yeoman of the cells to increase the pressure per square inch of our celgas spheres by a factor of two.’

Jack hesitated. You expect him to listen to me?

‘You’re acting master cardsharp now,’ said Jericho. ‘A warrant sky officer. I couldn’t issue a battlefield commission for Mister Shaftcrank; the First Skylord is a terrible stickler about allied nationals and promotions. I’ve already entered your temporary field commission in the ship’s log. If the ship were running under full automation, you’d be of equal rank to the first lieutenant. No hesitation, now. The yeoman of the cells will listen to you and take your commands, or damn his eyes, I’ll want to know why.’

Jack sprinted back to the communications station. The ship’s weight was about to lighten, but his own had already increased. Picking up the speaking tube to the gassing stations, Jack gave the order to the increasingly incredulous sounding yeoman of the cells at the other end.

‘We’ll be running the cells fit to burst!’ the man spluttered over the fizzing line.