The Ace of Skulls totkj-4
Page 27
Harkins shuddered at the force of his voice, and fled towards the safety of the Firecrow’s cockpit. A pair of Overlanders raced into the clearing, skidded to a halt and began disgorging armed men. As if that was the signal, the suspicious freighter crew opened up, and the sweltering night was suddenly alive with the snap and whine of gunfire.
Frey and Silo loosed off a few shots and then ran up the ramp, which Ashua was closing. Pinn danced on the spot for a moment, obviously tempted to follow now that he saw his predicament. But he procrastinated too long, and the ramp raised out of his reach, and in the end he fled off towards the trees at the edge of the clearing.
Harkins sprinted for the Firecrow and threw himself up the ladder that led to the cockpit. All his previous joy had faded: he was trapped in a nightmare of fear again. Halfway up, he felt his leg seized, and he was pulled away from the ladder and crashed heavily to the muddy ground. Spluttering, he tried to get up, but a dark figure put a boot in his chest and shoved him back down.
‘You ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ snarled a rough voice. ‘Let’s see what you been up to, huh?’
He struggled wildly, but the man was standing on him and he was pinned. He could hear the sound of the Ketty Jay’s engines powering up; he saw more men rushing in, and Speakers with guns in the lights of the newly arrived Overlanders. Guns cracked as they shot uselessly at the Ketty Jay.
They’ve caught me! he thought, his mind ablaze with panic. They’ve caught me and they’re going to kill me and they’re going to make me pay for whatever the others did and I wasn’t even there!
The only thing in his mind was to get away. No matter what the consequences, no matter what the cost. His terror at being left behind to face the music was worse than his terror of anything else.
‘Quit strugglin’!’ said the man holding him down. Harkins couldn’t even see his face: he was an elemental enemy, an opposing force without character or identity. The man took his boot from Harkins’ chest and leaned down to secure him more thoroughly with his arms. Harkins writhed to one side, pulled his pistol from his belt and jammed it under his attacker’s ribs.
The man froze, eyes wide in horror. Harkins was no less horrified at where he found himself. He had an instant in which to act, and only that.
He pulled the trigger.
He saw the man’s face in the flash of the shot. A folded, weathered face, underlit by the blast. It was there for a fraction of a second and then gone, but it stayed in his mind, burned there like the afterimage of the sun.
He slumped towards Harkins, an avalanche of inert meat. Harkins shoved him aside as he fell, and scrambled out from under him. He heard shouts nearby, but he couldn’t make out the words. The world had closed in around him. Everything had narrowed: he saw as if through a tunnel.
He blundered back to the ladder, his route to safety. The Firecrow’s cockpit had always been his sanctuary, the place where he was the master, where there was no one to mock him or make him feel small. He climbed to it, and opened the windglass canopy, and pulled it shut over him.
Dimly, he was aware of the Ketty Jay rising nearby. The Skylance sat silent and forgotten beyond it. Moving on automatic, he hit switches, pulled levers, strapped himself in. The acrid smell of aerium wafted through the cockpit as the tanks filled. The engine clanked and hummed as it ignited. Bullets pinged off the hull, but the sounds were dulled and he had difficulty connecting them with danger.
That man’s face. He could still see it. The look in his eyes as his life blew out like a candle.
A bullet hit the windglass in front of his face, sending a long crack along it, making him jump. It shocked him back to sense. He looked about himself, and saw men swarming all around, rushing towards the Firecrow with guns firing. They couldn’t harm the Ketty Jay, but a shot in the right place could damage the Firecrow.
He lit the thrusters while he was barely off the ground; he needed to present a moving target. The Firecrow moved sluggishly, not yet light enough for effortless acceleration, but it shifted enough to spoil the aim of the men shooting at him. Harkins hunkered down over the flight stick, banking and climbing slowly as the aerium tanks flooded and the craft lost weight. Bullets pinged off the underside now, and some punched through. But the Firecrow gained altitude fast, and the thrusters pushed harder as they warmed. Harkins pulled out of the clearing in a long ascending curve, circling round the Ketty Jay, which was rising vertically. He saw her thrusters light up, shoving her away over the trees, and he followed her.
The gunfire fell away behind them. Harkins didn’t feel relief. He didn’t feel anything.
That man’s face. .
The explosion caught him completely by surprise. The Firecrow was slammed sideways, swiped by a wave of concussion that sent him into a hard bank, engines screaming. The cockpit shook like it was going to come apart. He’d barely managed to react to the first blast when there was a second, lighting up the sky ahead of him, rattling the windglass. The crack doubled in size, reaching out like a lightning fork.
Anti-aircraft guns.
Blood thumped at his temples. He hit the throttle and blasted forward through the turbulent air. The engines whined, came close to stalling, then kicked in with a blaze. A barrage of detonations pounded him; the noise battered at his mind. Caught in the flashes, he saw the Ketty Jay climbing fast, flying without lights, reaching for the safety of the darkness high above.
Evade. Evade. Evade.
He swung the Firecrow to starboard, climbing as he did so. Evasion patterns came naturally to him. He’d always been hard to hit, slippery in the sky. Shells swatted at his aircraft. The Firecrow shuddered and jerked. Harkins barrel-rolled and banked, g-forces wrenching him around in his seat.
Still the explosions came, near at hand and then far away, immense firecrackers ripping across the night. Harkins flew between them, his hangdog face set, eyes sharp and fixed. He couldn’t see the shells coming, so he couldn’t avoid them if they landed on target. All he could do was keep dodging about, and make sure they didn’t. His body knew what to do.
Evade. Evade. Evade.
But this wasn’t the frantic panic he was used to feeling. This wasn’t hysterical fear. This was cold, sharp-edged, efficient. Death was all around him. He couldn’t control it. He didn’t recoil from it. He just had to negotiate it.
And then, all at once, he was through. The explosions fell away, scattering, random blooms of flame in the distance. They were too high up now, too hard to see, the light of their thrusters pinpricks of blue against the stars. The anti-aircraft gunners had lost their range.
The Ketty Jay was there too. He could just about make it out, not far off, beneath him and to port. So they’d escaped too.
He dropped back so as to see the Ketty Jay’s thrusters. They’d be the beacons he’d follow. They kept climbing until they were high above the earth, and then Frey tacked northeast and they headed back towards the centre of Vardia, out of the Barabac Delta.
Harkins was calm, so very calm as he floated in the dark, cradled by his cockpit amid the warm roar of the Firecrow’s thrusters. Something had changed inside him, in the crucible of the anti-aircraft barrage. He felt it. Perhaps it had been coming for a long time. Perhaps it had begun when he tried to ram a Mane dreadnought in the skies above Sakkan; perhaps when he’d beat Gidley Sleen in a pointless and near-suicidal race in the Rushes, just because he was damned if he’d lose. Or maybe it had begun even further back than that.
Once, he’d been a warrior, until the pressures of war had cracked him. He’d flown with the greatest Navy in the world and he’d fought in battles of such savagery that even the history books shunned them. Death had been at his shoulder every time he flew into combat. But one day, Harkins had turned around and seen him, caught a glimpse of what waited, and his frayed nerves had snapped.
Since then, he’d brushed past death several times. Always unwillingly, sometimes accidentally, but on the Ketty Jay’s crew he’d been hard pressed to avoid it.
And it wasn’t much. Wasn’t much at all.
Harkins stared fixedly into the middle distance, and thought about that.
Twenty-Four
Doubt — Frey Makes a Move — Negotiations — Slag Finds a Thing — Half-Manes
Ashua stuffed her hands into her pockets and walked up the slope to join Malvery. He was sitting on a black crag, bundled up in a voluminous coat. Behind her, the Ketty Jay and Harkins’ Firecrow rested silently among stony hills. They’d left the sun behind in the south, and flown back into winter. An icy wind blew around them, whistling through the rocks.
She climbed up alongside Malvery and sat. He passed her a flask of coffee. She took a swig. It was fifty per cent sugar, and forty per cent alcohol.
‘Cap’n could’ve picked a better spot,’ he grumbled.
She had to agree. Before them the hills petered out into bleak moorland, scarred with dry stone walls and clusters of skeletal trees. The sky was overcast and grey. A few desultory sheep roamed the pastures, and here and there a grim cottage sent up a twist of smoke. There was a village in the far distance with a tiny landing pad.
‘In his defence, he is a bit of a mess,’ she said after a time.
‘That ain’t news,’ said Malvery. He sat back and rolled his shoulders. ‘Still glad you signed on?’
‘Don’t remember signing anything.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She looked into the distance. ‘It’s better than where I was,’ she said.
Malvery gave her a pat on the leg. She shuffled up closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder. He encircled her with his arm. They sat there for a long time like that, gazing out over the land.
She’d never known this comfort, never known male warmth without the expectation of something more. Maddeus, the closest thing she’d ever had to a father, hadn’t been a very tactile man. Affection embarrassed him. She’d been held by lovers, of course, but that wasn’t the same. Malvery reassured her, in a way she hadn’t known she needed. He was trusty and weighty and solid.
‘Is this crew gonna be alright?’ she asked. ‘Crake gone, and now Pinn. Are you sticking around?’
‘Reckon so,’ he said. ‘Depends on the Cap’n, though. Depends what he wants to do with what we found out.’
‘You want to tell the Coalition.’
‘Course I do.’
‘You reckon they’ll believe you?’
He let her go and looked at her in surprise, as if that was the first time he’d thought of that.
‘They think we’re traitors,’ she said. ‘We haven’t any proof. If you were them, what would you do? Launch an assault on the Barabac Delta on the word of a few random pirates? The Awakeners are dug in. Casualties would be huge.’ She pulled her coat tighter around her. ‘More likely they’d just hang us.’
The wind blew around them, mournful and ghostly. Malvery coughed. ‘What they do with the information ain’t my business. They gotta know. That’s all.’
She sighed. Her warning hadn’t penetrated. Malvery had faith in the system, that justice would be done and the truth would out. One way or another he was going to do the right thing. Even if it did no good. Even if it got him dead.
Malvery swigged his coffee. ‘This waiting ain’t solving anything,’ he said. ‘We need a plan.’
‘Give him a bit of time, huh? He just saw the woman he loves suffer a fate worse than death. Don’t tell me that wouldn’t knock you on your arse for a while.’
‘Bigger things than that bloody woman in the world,’ he said, but by his tone she could tell he was chastened and a little ashamed.
‘I’ll go check on him,’ she said. ‘See how he’s doing.’
Malvery just grunted.
She made her way back down to the Ketty Jay. Nearby, she could see Harkins in a hooded coat and heavy gloves, working on patching up his Firecrow. Lost in concentration, he didn’t notice her.
The reassurance she’d sought was already giving way to worry. She felt the crew unravelling, and what would happen to her then? She knew nobody in Vardia. Would she go back to Rabban, pick up the threads of her past, get back in the gangs? No, she was beyond that now, and likely a new generation would have already replaced those of her youth.
Back to Samarla, then? To Shasiith? Not a good option. She knew people there, but was still wanted by the authorities. She could go to Maddeus, if he was still alive, but that would be the worst thing she could do. A betrayal and a defeat all in one. He wanted her gone so she wouldn’t see him deteriorate, poisoned by the drugs in his blood. She wanted to prove that she didn’t need him.
Then there was the issue of the civil war. Now she knew there was the very real possibility that the Awakeners might win. And if they didn’t, there would inevitably be retribution against the Sammies for their part in it, and then all foreigners in the Free Trade Zone would be in deadly peril. So how best to handle this? Where to stand to avoid the fallout?
First thing to do was to talk to the Cap’n. He ought to know his crew. He ought to know what to do and say to keep Malvery on side. Because if the doctor left, there was no way Ashua was staying. Not with Jez and Harkins and Silo. She had no real affection for them.
And if Malvery walked, he might very well walk right into a noose.
She made her way through the craft to Frey’s quarters, one of several blank metal doors to either side of the passageway that ran along the Ketty Jay’s spine. She knocked, and was answered by a bored ‘Yeah?’ from inside.
‘Ashua,’ she said.
Frey slid the door open. He was dishevelled, his eyes weary. He looked her over. Either he hadn’t slept, or he was drunk, or both. Then he stepped out the way, inviting her in.
His quarters were grubby and poky. A sour smell of unwashed male hung in the air. A hammock bulging with luggage hung above an unmade bunk. Lying on the bunk was a creased handbill. At the top was the legend: WANTED FOR PIRACY AND MURDER. LARGE REWARD. Below it was a picture of Frey, young and smiling. It was obviously old, but Ashua wondered why he’d been looking at it at all. What kind of memories did it hold?
She walked past him into the dim metal room, and he closed the door behind her. When he turned back, he noticed the handbill as if for the first time, picked it up quickly and put it aside. ‘Wanna sit?’ he said, indicating the bunk.
She eyed his sheets. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘No.’
He leaned back against the door and crossed his arms. ‘What’s up?’
‘Just came to see if you’re okay, Cap’n,’ she said.
‘The doc send you to make a diagnosis?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Wondering if you needed something, that’s all.’
Frey cleared his throat and looked around the room as if surprised to find himself there. He was dazed and glassy-eyed. Definitely drunk, she thought, though she couldn’t see a bottle anywhere. She was beginning to wonder if it had been a good idea, coming here. Perhaps she’d been over-familiar. She should have left him to himself.
He reached over to a cabinet fixed to the wall and pulled open a drawer. It had a key in it, but it was unlocked. From within he drew out a small glass bottle full of liquid.
Ah. Now it made sense. She felt a slight sinking feeling in her belly.
‘Since when did you take Shine?’ she asked.
‘I like a drop now and then,’ he replied. ‘Haven’t touched it since Samarla, but now. .’ He gave a slow, clownish shrug and a stupid grin. ‘Who gives a shit, right?’
Ashua decided she’d had enough. She thought a bit of sympathy might help him out, even though sympathy was a rare weapon in her arsenal. But she knew that look. She’d seen it on Maddeus’ face, and the faces of the people he surrounded himself with. The placid, empty look of the ch
emical escapist.
The sight of him filled her with disgust. She hadn’t thought him so weak.
‘You know what? I think I’ll leave you to it,’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’
She moved for the door, but he put his arm across in front of her, barring her way. ‘Stay a while,’ he said. ‘Now you mention it, there is something I need.’
And then he had his arm around her waist, and he was leaning in to kiss her. She shoved him away with such force that he fell against the luggage hammock, which snapped under his weight. He fell onto his bunk amid an avalanche of suitcases. After a moment of surprise, he burst out laughing.
‘You’ve got some kick to you!’ he said.
‘Knock it off!’ she snapped at him. She swatted the bottle of Shine from his hand and it smashed on the floor. ‘And you can knock that shit off too! You already lost two of your crew. Pull your damn self together or you won’t have any left!’
She pulled open the door and stormed out. Frey was still laughing hysterically as she left.
She went down to the cargo hold, humiliated and boiling with fury. That arsehole! She always knew he had it in him, that sense of entitlement concerning the opposite sex, that need to obtain women. She’d seen it from the start. But she’d thought he had it under control. She’d come to believe he was better than that.
Should’ve trusted her instincts. People always disappointed her. It was just a matter of time.
There was nobody about in the hold. She burrowed into the blanketed niche between the pipes where she slept and let the fabric curtain close behind her. The pipes gave her no warmth: the Ketty Jay had cooled off quickly from her flight. She lay on her back and stewed for a while. Then she rolled over, dug between the pipes, and pulled out the object that Bargo Ocken had given her. A small brass cube with a press-stud on one face and a light on the other. Her signalling device.
If the crew fell apart, if it all went to shit, it wouldn’t be Ashua they hunted. She’d go free; she’d have the world before her. But she needed money, if she was to be thrown out in the cold. And with what she knew now, she could negotiate a bonus. A big bonus. Something that could set her up for a while, if she played her cards right.