The Ace of Skulls totkj-4

by Chris Wooding

  An atmosphere of dread had begun to pervade the camp in its final days. Not least aboard the Delirium Trigger.

  Pinn had found an unexpected drinking companion in Balomon Crund. The bosun of the Delirium Trigger was a dour and maudlin sort, not much given to conversation, but that was fine. Pinn would much rather talk at someone than to them, anyway. The few times Crund did have something to say, it was always on the same subject. The same woman Frey had been banging on about since Pinn could remember. Damn, it was tiresome listening to people talk about their sweethearts.

  Pinn couldn’t conceive of a relationship with a woman that didn’t involve wanting to sleep with them. He’d even have given Jez a go, before he found out she was some bloody awful horror from beyond infinity. The same couldn’t be said for Crund, though. The way he talked about his Cap’n, Pinn could tell. He was still devoted to her, even after what had happened, and it had left him broken-hearted.

  Trinica had returned from the swamp a changed woman. She looked little different: ghastly white make-up, hair chopped, irises huge as coins and black as the void. But now it was more than a show. She’d become the part she’d played for her crew all these years. At last she was the terrible goddess they wanted.

  Her mere presence in the room was enough to make the skin crawl. Nobody could argue with her: she reduced strong men to whimpering children. Her eyes had always been unnerving, but now nobody could stand her gaze. It bored into a man, stripped him to his core, dragged his secrets into the light.

  There had been talk of mutiny before. Grumblings among the men. The Cap’n wasn’t strong enough. She was sweet on that Frey feller, and it was making her soft. The first thing Trinica had done on her return was summon the head of those prospective mutineers to her cabin. The screams began soon after, and didn’t stop for an hour. Nobody dared go in. They were not screams of pain: they were sounds beyond sanity.

  When she was done, there was no more talk of mutiny.

  Crund did his duties aboard the Delirium Trigger, but he could hardly bear to be there after that. It hurt too much to be around Trinica. She wasn’t the woman he’d known any more. So he escaped at every opportunity, and found Pinn in the bar more often than not, and together they drank to forget lost loves.

  That first night, once they were good and hammered, Crund had charged Pinn with a task, and Pinn had made him a promise. He knew it was something important, except he couldn’t quite remember what it was. Something to do with Frey. Something. .

  Lights began flashing all around, drawing him from his reverie. The electroheliographs on the surrounding aircraft were going crazy. He sat up, excited. That was the signal! The Coalition fleet was in sight!

  Pinn was flying in the vanguard of the convoy, and he had a good view even through the clutter of aircraft surrounding him. Ahead of them, Thesk rose out of the hills beneath the louring clouds. A wide calm river flowed in from the east and then split and forked, dividing the city into three. It was deceptively calm from this distance, but the pilots had all been warned about the anti-aircraft batteries dotted around the city.

  The Coalition fleet were not coming from the city, however. They were coming in from the sides. A pincer movement, designed to catch the enemy in the flanks, where they expected them to be weakest. It would be impossible to rearrange the convoy in time to respond.

  But then, the Awakeners didn’t intend to.

  Pinn saw the fighters first, sleek, sharp Windblades swarming ahead of the bigger craft. The frigates came dipping down through the cloud behind them, vast slow ships of the air, bulky and bristling with cannons. In between were heavy assault craft, thickly armoured and deadly.

  They came, and they kept coming, and when the horizon was dark with aircraft they kept coming still. The convoy, that had seemed so mighty, was dwarfed by its opposition. The entirety of the Coalition Navy, or near enough as made no difference; probably they still had skeleton forces elsewhere. The enemy pilots were highly trained and equipped with the best technology money could buy. The Awakeners were more than three-quarters volunteers.

  But Pinn didn’t care about the odds. That wasn’t the kind of thing heroes worried over.

  The formation started coming apart around him as fighters broke off to intercept the enemy. The plan was simple: stay near the convoy and defend it. Pinn could just about cope with remembering that. As soon as his way was clear, he peeled off to port and made his way out of the crowd and into open air. He’d need a bit of room for the fight.

  Ahead of him, the Windblades were closing in. The Awakener fighters arrowed towards them. Pinn hunched over his flight stick, the cockpit rattling, thrusters roaring as he pushed them to their limits. A smile spread over his chubby face.

  ‘Alright fellers,’ he muttered. ‘Who wants to be the first to feel Uncle Artis’s toecap up their arse?’

  One of the Windblades opened fire early, sending out a burst of tracers. It didn’t get near Pinn, but it was enough to draw his attention.

  ‘Think you just volunteered, mate,’ he said. He angled his craft towards the overenthusiastic pilot, his finger hovering over the trigger.

  The two clouds of fighters rushed towards each other, the gap closing rapidly with every second. Suddenly the air was full of gunfire as everyone let loose at once. Bullets whined and whipped past the cockpit. An aircraft to his right exploded.

  Pinn kept his cool and held his course, waited that extra second, and pressed down on his guns. A trail of bullets scored across the nosecone of his target, shattered the canopy, raked up its back. The Windblade erupted in a ball of smoke and fire.

  The two fronts of fighters met. Suddenly it wasn’t bullets but aircraft lashing past him, engines screaming. Pinn screamed with them, mindless with joy. He banked and swooped, diving in among the enemy. Combat became a muddle, Awakener and Coalition craft all mixed together, dodging and shooting.

  Pinn cackled with glee as he was slammed here and there by g-forces. He took down another Windblade, and another. The enemy barely noticed him in the confusion. His craft was frustratingly sluggish — too much time rotting in the swamp air, probably — but Pinn rose above it. He’d run rings round these losers even if he was flying one of those cannon-fodder junkers. He could fly anything!

  He lost himself in the combat. Time slipped out of his grasp. He was action and reaction, riding adrenaline, hyper-alert. His senses were overcome by the noise of the engines, the flash of explosions, movement everywhere.

  It was only when he heard the first of the anti-aircraft guns that he realised how near they’d got to Thesk. The convoy had been ploughing onward while the fighters scrapped around them; now they were close enough for the city’s weapons to be deployed.

  Pinn jumped in his seat as a freighter near the front of the convoy was ripped in half, belching flame as it fell away in pieces. Shells flew up from below and burst among the Awakener’s heavy craft. The air filled with explosions.

  The attacks were not all from below, either. The Coalition frigates had come within range now, and their guns began to smash into the convoy’s flanks. The convoy fired back, but the distance was too extreme for accuracy, and the Navy had the better of it. Squeezed between the two halves of the fleet, battered by the city’s weapons, the Awakeners began to take heavy losses.

  And still they ploughed onward.

  Deadly projectiles flew in all directions. Pinn climbed to get above the convoy and out of the way. The sight below him was not encouraging. The aircraft on the convoy’s flanks were being torn apart. He saw another of the Awakeners’ big freighters go down. Awakener outflyers battled with the Windblades in the sky all around him, but they were getting decimated.

  Doubt began to nibble at Pinn’s confidence. When were the Awakeners going to hit the button? When would the secret weapon come into play? Was it possible that the rumours were true? Was it possible that it really didn’t work, that this whole thing had been a massive bluff, and the convoy was only slogging onward to its doom?r />
  Then a Windblade shot across his flight path, and he was after it like a dog after a rabbit. It took him back into the thick of the fray. He dodged through the smoke of fresh kills, was showered in shrapnel. Explosions rocked him, setting him shuddering in his seat, pushing his craft this way and that. Two Awakener craft collided off his starboard wing, smashing head-on into each other in the confusion.

  He hung on to the Windblade’s tail as long as he could, but in the end he lost it. He banged the dash in frustration. The Coalition fighter was faster and more manoeuvrable. He wasn’t used to being outclassed by an enemy’s aircraft, and it made him petulant. He looked for another Windblade to destroy, to make himself feel better.

  A detonation nearby rocked him. The Coalition frigates were alarmingly close now. He swung back towards the convoy. The Awakeners had put most of their junk freighters on the edges of the convoy to soak up the damage, but they weren’t well armoured and didn’t last long. It seemed like the whole outer layer of aircraft was ablaze. The convoy was getting shredded.

  Pinn began to feel uneasy about this whole affair. Bad odds he could handle, but no one liked to be on the wrong end of a whipping. They were getting smashed from three sides and were barely even fighting back. He saw a few of the mid-sized craft trying to peel away from the Awakeners, intent on making a run for it. They didn’t believe in the Awakeners’ secret weapon. Maybe Pinn didn’t, either. Maybe he should do what they were doing.

  Bullets lashed through the air before his nose. He rolled and dived to avoid the attack. A couple of bullets punched his fuselage, but it was just a scratch. He levelled out and looked over his shoulder. A Windblade, coming in on his tail. No, three Windblades. The bastards were hunting in packs.

  Alright, he thought. If that’s how you want it. Let’s see you catch me.

  He threw his craft to starboard. And in that instant, something changed.

  It felt like a ghost had passed through him. For the span of a heartbeat, time slowed and everything went silent. There was a huge sense of peace in his breast. His eyes found Lisinda’s picture on his dash, and looked upon her fondly, as if she might be the last thing he ever saw.

  Then the sensation was gone, and even though it was no longer inside him, he imagined he could feel it rippling outwards in a great sphere, with the convoy at its centre. Up into the sky, down towards the ground, spreading to encompass the combatants in the air and the city in the hills. There was nothing to be seen of it with the naked eye, except for its effects. Where it went, pandemonium followed.

  The Azryx device had been activated. And it worked exactly as it was meant to.

  The Windblades went first. They were already travelling at speed when their controls went haywire. One moment they were carving graceful paths through the air, the next they were corkscrewing wildly. In the crowded sky, they collided with one another and with Awakener fighters, or swatted themselves against the flanks of huge freighters.

  Pinn evaded frantically as Windblades flew every which way and blazing pieces of aircraft rained down all around him. He ran a chicane of explosions, then hauled on his flight stick to get up above the carnage before he was taken down. G-forces pulled at him, crushing him into his seat, making his head light. A fighter plunged past his nose close enough that he almost stalled, but he rode it out, and then suddenly there was nothing around him but sky. He levelled out, high above the plane of the battle, and then looked down on the Coalition fleet.

  There were no guns any more. Thesk’s artillery had gone quiet. The Navy frigates dipped towards the earth in eerie, graceful silence as their aerium tanks vented, or ploughed into one another with stately momentum. The fighters, in contrast, were like fireflies, looping crazily, flashing where they exploded. A slow rain of burning metal was falling towards the hills and the city below, in thin fiery streams or colossal blazing chunks.

  Pinn stared down in wonder, the flames reflected in his eyes as he drank in the sight greedily. From on high, the sheer scale of it was magnificent. He felt godlike. He’d never seen such beautiful destruction in all his born days.

  ‘We won,’ he whispered to himself. Then, louder: ‘We won!’

  The Coalition Navy fell into disorder and ruin behind them, and the Awakener convoy ploughed on towards the capital.

  Crake watched from the gallows with tears in his eyes. All around him, soldiers were shouting, and there were cries of despair. But all he felt was terrible, terrible sadness.

  Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of lives. And we couldn’t stop it.

  The wind blew around the crag that the palace stood upon, bringing the sound of distant detonations as Coalition craft smashed into the earth. In the streets surrounding the palace, fires had begun. The battle had been fought to the east of the city, and most of the aircraft fell on the hills, but there had been a few flying overhead when the Azryx device was activated, and others had strayed from the battlefield. He watched as a light passenger craft made a shallow dive into a row of houses. It disappeared from view, and flame bloomed where it hit.

  Rain began to fall. It came quick and heavy, as if someone had turned on a shower. Cold, stinging rain, falling on his face and shoulders, soaking him.

  ‘Drave!’ Malvery screamed in rage. ‘Do you bloody well believe us now?’

  But Drave wasn’t listening to him. He was shouting at the soldiers. ‘To your positions! We have a city to defend!’

  ‘Get me out of these shackles, Drave, you idiot son of a bitch!’ Samandra yelled at him.

  Drave motioned at a soldier, who ran over with the key and freed her. ‘You three!’ he said, motioning towards the Century Knights. ‘With me! Protect the Archduke!’

  Samandra ignored him. She shook off her shackles and ran up to the gallows, where she tugged the noose from around Crake’s neck. He looked at her, shock and bewilderment in his eyes.

  She read his thoughts. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘It ain’t over! You hear? It ain’t over till it’s done!’ And she kissed him, hard enough to hurt.

  ‘Little help for the rest of us?’ Malvery cried in exasperation, struggling to get his head out of his own noose.

  Grudge and Kyne pushed past their guards and hurried to the gallows, where they took the nooses from around the necks of the Ketty Jay’s crew and untied the ropes that bound their hands.

  ‘Century Knights!’ Drave bellowed from the doorway, his face running with rain. ‘Have you forgotten the oaths you swore?’

  Grudge and Kyne looked at one another, then at Samandra. She was still staring into Crake’s eyes, her hands on his cheeks. He saw her face in front of him, but he couldn’t make sense of it all. Everything seemed dull and dreamlike to him. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be. The fall of the Coalition. The end of everything he’d known.

  ‘I gotta go,’ she said to him. ‘Sorry, honey. I gotta go. I swore an oath.’

  ‘Samandra Bree!’ Drave yelled. ‘Are you a Century Knight or aren’t you?’

  She bit her lip. Tears welled, but didn’t fall. ‘I gotta go,’ she said, and she ran. Crake reached for her, from instinct more than reason, but she was gone. By the time he looked around, the four Century Knights were on their way out of the courtyard. The soldiers had poured out with them. Only the crew were left, standing on the gallows, drenched by the hissing rain. None of them knew quite what to do with their newfound freedom.

  ‘Well?’ snapped Silo. ‘Ain’t none of us dead today. Get movin’!’

  Malvery rounded on Ashua, who was standing a little way apart from the group. ‘Her too?’ he said. She flinched slightly at his tone.

  ‘Ain’t the time, Doc. She one of us till the Cap’n says otherwise.’

  Malvery turned to Frey. ‘Cap’n?’

  Frey looked back at him, and his eyes were dead. ‘Right now there’s only one single thing in this world I give a shit about, and she’s waiting on the landing pad.’ He looked up into the grey, oppressive sky, and at the convoy of Awakener craft coming closer.
‘Let’s get out of this damn rain.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Vard Against Vard — The End of the Fairytale — Harkins the Soldier — A Secret Weapon

  By the time they reached the landing pad, the Awakeners were bombing the city.

  Malvery huffed and puffed and cursed when he had the breath to do so. If only he was a younger man; younger and fitter and not so fond of drink. But the city needed him now. His country needed him. He pulled up his belt and staggered on in the wake of the others.

  The landing pad was in chaos. Rain lashed the scene. Aircraft crew ran here and there, sodden grey ghosts in the downpour. Many hadn’t been privy to the news of the Awakeners’ secret weapon, and they had no idea why the Navy had fallen from the sky. Now they swarmed frantically over their aircraft, worrying at maintenance panels or stabbing buttons, unable to understand why the engines wouldn’t start.

  Beyond the high walls that surrounded the landing pad, past a squat tower with wrought-iron balconies and a copper dome, Malvery could see the Awakener fleet spreading over the city like a vast black hand. And he saw the bombs, little pellets of death tumbling from the bellies of the frigates towards the streets below.

  They’re bombing us! he thought in outrage. Bombing their own people!

  The dull crump of distant explosions came to him, and made his blood boil. Vard against Vard. Countryman versus countryman, who so recently had fought side by side against the Sammies. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Not since the Ducal Rebellion had such a thing happened, one hundred and fifty years ago. And yet even as that civil war ended, the seeds were being sown for a new one. For it was the followers of the deposed king who became the first Awakeners, turning his mad scrawlings into prophecy. And that had brought them to this.