The Ace of Skulls totkj-4

by Chris Wooding

  The ramp touched down. Some of the soldiers had already seen it and were hurrying that way, but they came skidding to a halt and then backed off, their guns ready. Stumbling out of the aircraft was a small, blackened figure, a charred scarecrow that limped onto the deck.

  Crake stared, unable to believe his eyes.

  ‘No!’ Frey cried, his voice bubbling with blood. He spat and hauled in a breath. ‘Nobody shoot!’ he yelled with as much volume as he could manage.

  ‘Put them guns down!’ Samandra shouted, with considerably more.

  The soldiers didn’t put their guns down, but they didn’t fire either. They fell back, moving aside for the stranger. Some of them scrambled to get away. Crake could feel the fear emanating from her even at this distance. Not like the focused power of the Imperators, just the instinctive terror caused by the presence of a daemon.

  Onward she came, looking to her left and right, staring curiously at the people around her as if she wasn’t quite sure what they were all doing there. As she advanced, pieces fell from her, great burned scabs peeling away from her face and limbs, leaving her moist and raw beneath. She walked hunched over, like a wounded animal, and as more of her flaked away Crake saw more of what lay beneath.

  A gaunt body in ragged overalls. Sallow skin, stretched taut like parchment over her bones. Teeth long and pointed. Fingernails like talons. Eyes a mix of yellow and red. A ghoul of the skies. A Mane.

  Jez, and yet not Jez. Not any more.

  Then the soldiers cried out and cringed down, and even Samandra stepped back and swore under her breath. As the wreck of a nearby Awakener frigate dipped out of sight, a great black prow broke through the smoke with a bellow of engines. A colossal mass of dirty metal and spikes and rivets, ploughing towards them through a hole in the convoy, ignoring the explosions all around it. Thick chains trailed in its wake like great tendrils, dangling behind and beneath it. The sight of it oppressed them, robbed their courage, nailed them to the spot.

  A Mane Dreadnought. And it was coming right for them.

  At the sight of it, Jez began staggering forward faster, heading towards the aft end of the Delirium Trigger’s deck. She’d found strength from somewhere; her limp hampered her less. She let out a screech as she went, something inhuman, which cut through the air and froze Crake’s blood.

  She’s turned. She’s really turned at last.

  As if she’d heard his thoughts, she stumbled to a halt, and turned her head and stared right at him. She looked from him to the Cap’n and back again. And horrible though it was, her face softened a little, and for a moment Crake saw in her the old Jez he’d known. His friend and companion. The woman he’d shared his darkest secret with.

  He raised an arm in farewell. She just gazed at him, her head tilted slightly to the side. But though she gave him no more sign than that, he thought he read a farewell in her eyes all the same.

  Then she turned and sprinted across the deck. The soldiers cowered as the dreadnought swooped across the Delirium Trigger, its keel roaring by mere metres overhead. A foul-smelling wind whipped around them, stinking of oil and decay. Crake saw a nightmarish blur of faces gathered at the gunwale, and heard the howling and shrieking of the Manes as they pawed the air with sharp-fingered hands. Then the chains that dragged behind the dreadnought smashed into the deck, lashing across the Delirium Trigger’s back like whips, ploughing her with furrows. Jez sprang, and for a moment was lost within the forest of whirling chains; then the dreadnought was past, flying away into the sky, and Jez was clinging on to one of them. Crake watched in awe as she climbed, scampering up the links towards the Manes above, who reached down with long scrawny arms to help her on board.

  She was lost to sight behind another frigate, and the dreadnought carried her away.

  ‘Can someone explain what exactly happened just then?’ asked Celerity, her eyes wide.

  ‘She’s gone to be with her people,’ said Crake, sadly.

  The explosion that tore through the Delirium Trigger knocked them all off their feet. Crake fell beneath Frey; the Cap’n screamed with the pain of the impact. Quickly Crake pulled him up, no time for sympathy, dragging him towards the Ketty Jay. The Delirium Trigger was beginning to list. A hit in the aerium tanks from the anti-aircraft guns. She wouldn’t be in the air much longer. If the Azryx device didn’t take her out, her impact with the ground would.

  The soldiers were running for the Ketty Jay with a kind of controlled panic. Samandra ran ahead of them into the craft, while Kyne took Frey’s other arm and helped to haul him across the deck. The Cap’n was dazed with pain, eyes swimming in and out of focus. Behind them came Crund, carrying his mistress.

  Another blast shook the deck as they were hurrying up the cargo ramp. Crake stumbled into a hydraulic strut, but he kept his feet this time. On into the hold they went, where the soldiers were securing themselves to anything they could grab. He saw Grissom in there, Bess too, but he didn’t have time to stop.

  ‘Shut that ramp!’ he called over his shoulder at Celerity, who was the last one inside. The Ketty Jay was tilting with the Delirium Trigger, locked to the deck by its magnetic skids. Anything not tied down had started to slide across the hold.

  They found Samandra in the cockpit, in the pilot’s seat, frantically hitting buttons. ‘What’s the damn ignition code?’ she cried.

  Frey pushed Crake and Kyne off him, stumbled to the pilot’s seat and hauled her out of it. ‘Nobody flies the Ketty Jay but me,’ he snarled through bloody lips. Then he lowered himself into the seat, punched in the code and hit the controls to flood the aerium tanks. The Ketty Jay began lifting up on her struts, metal groaning and creaking. Frey disengaged the magnetic skids, and she floated free.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, and he hit the thrusters.

  Crake wasn’t hanging on. He tripped out through the door of the cockpit and sprawled full-length into the corridor. Samandra called after him, but Crake didn’t answer. Instead, he got to his feet and clambered up the ladder to the cupola. The Azryx device was going to blow at any moment. He didn’t want to be hit by something and never see it coming. He was compelled to look, as if by looking he could somehow avoid it.

  At the top, he clambered into the gunner’s seat amid the acrid debris of empty rum bottles and the musty smell of Malvery. The violence outside was staggering, the detonations without end. The whole sky was exploding; tracer bullets stitched the air. As they pulled away from the Awakener convoy, he could see Samarlan frigates being ripped apart, their weak armour no match for the city’s guns. The Ketty Jay was battered, shaken this way and that.

  He looked out in terror. How could anything survive this? How could they possibly live through it?

  Because of the frigates. Because they’re shooting at the big craft. Not at us.

  He clung to that thought.

  A flash caught his eye. The Delirium Trigger was shrinking behind them, diminishing amidst the pandemonium, but as he looked he saw an arc of strange lightning flash across its surface. A jagged streak shot out and hit another frigate nearby, crawling along its surface. Crake flinched as the frigate exploded, tearing itself apart from nose to stern.

  Now there was more lightning coming from the Delirium Trigger, questing fingers reaching out, crackling over its body and jumping to other craft, catching passing fighters and obliterating them. The Awakeners’ flagship began to pull away, its pilot having seen the danger. As its long, ungainly shape began to turn in the air, lightning jumped from the Delirium Trigger, striking it once, twice, and then with a sustained burst that crawled and writhed up its flank. Explosions ripped along the craft, unzipping it from stern to bow, and then it broke apart in the centre and went toppling earthward like two blazing halves of a snapped stick.

  The Lord High Cryptographer was on that! Crake thought. Then he crushed himself down in his seat as the lightning became more frantic and the dark shape of the Delirium Trigger disappeared inside a sparkling, crawling cocoon.

  Go faster,
Cap’n! Faster!

  A blue sphere of rolling lightning swelled out from the Delirium Trigger. It expanded fast, sending out arcs in all directions as it went, writhing tentacles of destruction. Anything on its edge was annihilated and then swallowed. Frigates, two dozen or more, disappeared in flame. The entire Awakener convoy was consumed, and then the Samarlan frigates that surrounded it. The ball of energy grew and grew until it filled Crake’s sight, reflected in his terrified eyes, and it seemed they could never outpace it, and it would engulf them as it had all the rest.

  But then it slowed, and receded, diminishing as the Ketty Jay carried him away. Finally, there was only a hole in the grey sky where the Awakener convoy had been. Where the Delirium Trigger and the Azryx device and the Lord High Cryptographer had existed a moment before, now there was only air. The Awakener high command were less than dust, destroyed by their own weapon.

  Crake let himself breathe out again.

  ‘What’d I miss?’ said a voice below him. Samandra was climbing up the ladder, hoping to squeeze herself up into the cupola, eager to see.

  ‘Oh,’ said Crake, still staring out at the end of the Awakeners. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘They’re retreating!’

  Malvery paused in his labours just long enough to glance at the sky. Hard to tell what was what up there, amid all the fire and ruin. But the Sammies were getting shredded, he could tell that much. Smoking shells of aircraft crashed down on the city below. Caught between the Manes and the anti-aircraft guns, they’d suffered atrocious losses. Nothing more than they deserved, in Malvery’s opinion.

  ‘The Manes!’ said the soldier, seeing that Malvery didn’t understand. ‘Look! They’re pulling back!’ He laughed. ‘They don’t like the taste of our guns any more than the Sammies do!’

  ‘Don’t worry about what’s up there,’ said Malvery. ‘We’ve got work to do down here. Give me a hand, now.’

  Between them, they lifting the groaning man from the road and put him on to a makeshift stretcher made of bloodied Awakener cassocks tied between two rifles. Malvery scanned the road for any last signs of movement, but saw none. This was the third casualty they’d rescued from the killing ground in front of the anti-aircraft emplacement. The rest were beyond saving.

  His eyes roamed over the scattered dead, their bodies chewed up in the jaws of the gatling gun. Beyond lay the wrecked frigate and the smouldering trench it had cut in its wake. Further on, he could see the Archduke’s palace high on the crag, smashed aircraft raining down like meteors around it, fiery explosions blooming in distant streets. Thesk, his city, made apocalyptic. He’d never believed it possible, never thought he’d see the day. Such loss, such waste.

  And yet, as he hauled up the stretcher and they carried their burden away, he felt pride along with his sorrow. Pride for the Cap’n, for Silo, for himself and all the crew of the Ketty Jay. And pride for Ashua, who’d stood with them till the end, and scared him silly doing it. If she’d been killed, he’d never have forgiven himself.

  But she hadn’t. And the Awakeners were wiped out, and the Sammies were defeated. Now the Manes had turned tail, heading back through the vortex to their icy cities beyond the Wrack. Neither Sammies nor Manes had been able to land troops. Only the Awakeners had men in the city, and they’d put up no further resistance.

  The battle was won. Whatever the cost, the battle was won. A fierce heat grew in his breast at the thought, a furnace glow from within.

  They’d won. Vardia had won.

  The anti-aircraft gun was still booming as they carried the wounded man through the gate and laid him down in the courtyard with the others. The sound of it was deafening, but against the roar of war it was only one more noise among many. As the gate shut behind them, Malvery saw Silo up on the wall, bellowing orders, organising the defence of the perimeter. He was taking no chances. No one was recapturing that gun after the price they’d paid to get it.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ Ashua asked as she limped over, an Awakener rifle as her crutch. She was pale, but lively enough, considering. The bullet had gone right through her thigh. There wasn’t much Malvery could do but disinfect it and bind it up. With the right drugs, she’d be fine.

  ‘Just keep your weight off that leg,’ said Malvery.

  ‘Aye aye, Doc.’

  He turned his attention to the wounded man and began cutting away the uniform with a blade so he could assess the damage. Eventually, when Ashua showed no sign of moving, he harrumphed.

  ‘You were brave out there,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘You too,’ she replied.

  He hummed and hawed as he looked in his bag for a new spool of catgut to make stitches. ‘I oughta apologise,’ he said. ‘The way I treated you.’

  ‘S’okay,’ said Ashua. ‘Bloody stupid thing I did. Still. .’ She looked up at the sky. ‘At least I’m the one responsible for the annihilation of the Sammies’ entire air force, eh? In fact, if they hadn’t turned up, the Awakeners would probably have overrun this city by now.’ She took on a thoughtful tone. ‘You might even say I’m. . well, a hero.’

  ‘Don’t push it, girl,’ Malvery growled. He raised an eyebrow and glared at her. ‘However it turned out, you were still-’ Then he saw the expression on her face, and realised she was joking. He shook his head and gave her an exasperated smile. ‘What am I gonna do with you, eh?’

  Ashua laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ll look out for me, Doc. And I’ll do the same for you.’

  Malvery felt himself well up at that, and blinked back tears. Foolish old man, he thought. Getting sentimental.

  ‘Doc!’ yelled Silo, as he came hurrying down from the wall to the courtyard. ‘It’s the Cap’n!’

  ‘He’s alright?’ Ashua asked.

  ‘He comin’ in on our location! Tell the gunner not to fire on him!’

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Ashua, and limped off with as much speed as she could manage.

  Silo came to a halt next to Malvery, who was still working on the wounded man, assisted by the soldier who’d helped carry him. ‘What about Pinn and Harkins?’ Malvery asked.

  ‘They good. Pulled out when the anti-aircraft guns kicked up. Been drivin’ me crazy listenin’ to ’em ever since I put the cuff back in. Had some competition goin’ on, how many Sammies they could shoot down.’

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘Both of ’em, near as I can tell.’ He spotted the Ketty Jay swooping down through the flak, and waved at some nearby soldier. ‘Clear a space there! Cap’n’s back, damn it! Cap’n’s comin’ back!’

  The Ketty Jay’s cargo ramp touched the floor of the courtyard, and the men and women in the hold poured out. Soldiers hugged each other and thumped their comrades’ backs. Grissom and Celerity Blane strode out with their heads held high. Bess larked with the other golems, her childish enthusiasm infecting them.

  But then a voice rose over the others. ‘Make way! Make way, there!’ It was Balomon Crund, with Trinica Dracken in his arms. And behind him came Frey, supported by Crake and Kyne, with Samandra Bree at their heels. The crowd parted for them, and they came out into the courtyard, emerging into the grey daylight surrounded by the tinny stink of vented aerium gas.

  ‘Malvery!’ Crake shouted. ‘Doc!’

  Frey could barely see through the agony. His vision had become blurred and his legs had no strength in them. It was hard to tell one pain from another. His torso was an aching mass. He still couldn’t draw breath properly. But he had a purpose, a focus, and that kept him moving.

  Malvery got up from the ground, where he’d been tending to casualties, and came hurrying over. The doctor’s moustached face loomed in Frey’s vision.

  ‘Frey,’ he said in horror. ‘What in buggery happened to you?’

  ‘Forget about me,’ he said, and gritted his teeth as something shifted and stabbed inside him. ‘Her! Save her!’

  Malvery looked at Trinica. ‘Put her on the floor,’ he told Crund, and then he crouched next to her and looked beneath the cr
ude dressing they’d wrapped around her wound. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Cap’n put a cutlass through her,’ said Crake.

  ‘You what?’ Malvery said. He was feeling her pulse. ‘Second thought, I don’t even wanna know.’ He put the dressing back. ‘Frey, this is too bad. I can’t-’

  ‘I don’t wanna hear it, Doc. Make it happen.’

  ‘She needs blood. Now.’

  ‘Give her mine!’

  ‘You ain’t got enough to give.’

  ‘Do what I say, damn it!’ Frey cried, then was seized by a coughing fit and spat blood on the ground.

  ‘Cap’n!’ Malvery barked, and the volume of his voice shocked Frey into silence. ‘If you ain’t compatible, you’ll kill her. Likely you’ll kill yourself tryin’ anyway. And even if you are compatible, I don’t rate my chances. Let me save you! Or if not you, there’s plenty people round here I can save. I’m a doctor, alright? I know what I’m doing!’

  ‘Take my blood!’ said Crund.

  ‘No!’ said Frey. ‘What if you’re not compatible?’

  ‘What if you’re not?’ Malvery said.

  ‘I am!’ Frey snarled. ‘We were tested. . After we knew about the baby. . Doctor took my blood for. .’

  ‘What baby?’ Malvery said, but Frey ignored him. There wasn’t time to argue! Didn’t he see that?

  ‘We’re compatible,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘We’ve always been. . compatible.’

  ‘Frey, I can’t. It’ll kill you. I can’t do that!’

  Frey found a burst of strength, fuelled by frustration, and he seized Malvery by the front of his jumper and pulled him close. ‘Doc,’ he said. ‘If you ever. . If you were ever a friend to me. . You gotta do this now. This is everything, you hear? This is everything.’

  Malvery’s face was a picture of doubt. This went against everything he believed, as a doctor and as a person. Frey knew what Malvery thought of his obsession. Shit, Malvery didn’t even like Trinica very much. But Frey had to do this, and he couldn’t do it without Malvery’s help.

  He owed Trinica a life. And he aimed to give her one.