The Ace of Skulls

Eleven

Frey flinched as the sky overhead erupted with a boom louder than thunder. Running in a half-crouch, he scampered along the street, staying close to the walls for cover but ready to flee if any looked like falling on him. The anti-aircraft guns had started up again in earnest. A few streets away he saw a ragged old Westingley lift itself above the broken parapets of the ancient city.

The Awakeners were pulling out, under covering fire from their guns. If the Ketty Jay didn’t get going soon, they’d miss their chance to infiltrate the Awakener fleet.

Damn you, Crake. Why’d you have to run off now?

The street ended suddenly at a chasm, an enormous rip in the earth, twenty metres wide. Parts of buildings still hung precariously over the abyss. Frey decided that Crake was unlikely to have gone this way, unless he’d secretly developed the ability to fly. He backtracked and tried a side-alley, but that turned out to be blocked by a fallen house.

Frey spat on the ground. Dead end. He must have picked the wrong road back at the junction. That meant Crake could be anywhere. Searching for him was all but hopeless.

But he wouldn’t give up. Not yet. Not when it was his fault that Crake was out here. The crew always became unbalanced when one of them went missing. They were a team, and they needed each other. And what about Bess? He didn’t want to think how she might react when she twigged that her master wasn’t coming home.

His eyes fell to the silver ring he wore on his little finger. Crake usually carried the compass with him on expeditions, just in case Frey managed to get himself lost. Had he brought it this time? Frey wasn’t sure. But the compass meant Crake could always find him, if he wanted to.

The problem was, he didn’t want to.

He heard running footsteps coming from a side road. He cast around for a way to get out of sight, but he wasn’t quick enough. Three men came into view. Two of them wore a Sentinel’s cassock and carried rifles. The other was a middle-aged man with a broad, plain face and a cauliflower ear.

One of the Sentinels stopped in front of Frey, ushering the other men past him. More were coming up behind, ten or twelve at least. Three of them carried the various parts of a gatling gun. ‘Come on!’ the Sentinel urged Frey. ‘There are Coalition troops right behind us!’

Frey didn’t miss a beat. He’d always been an agile liar. ‘Thank the Allsoul, brother! When I lost my unit, I thought I was dead!’

‘Get going!’ the Sentinel told him, and Frey ran off with the rest of the Awakeners, who were conveniently hurrying in the general direction of the Ketty Jay.

The recruits were mostly rural folk, by their dress. Some wore stitched Ciphers on their clothes, others didn’t. Some were grimly determined, some looked scared. The Awakener army was a rag-tag mob of untrained recruits. No match for the disciplined Coalition forces. The Archduke’s men could mop these fellers up without the help of people like Frey.

He kept pace with them, waiting for an opportunity to dump them and get away. It occurred to him that he might stay with them, and get to Trinica that way, but there was no chance he was leaving the Ketty Jay behind. Rot knew what would happen if Jez got at the controls, and she was the only other crew member who could fly her.

The street they were following ended in a small square with an ornamental fountain in the centre, long dry. The houses on all sides had been shaken to pieces by the quake. Weeds grew thick among cracked flagstones and piles of broken bricks. Flashes of light from above gave them brief snapshots of the ruin that surrounded them.

They were halfway across when a dozen Coalition soldiers ran into the square from a road to their left. The soldiers were as surprised as the Awakeners, and for a moment no one did anything but stare. No one but Frey, who threw himself over the stone lip of the fountain just before both sides let loose on one another.

Rifles and pistols snapped, men shouted, some shrieked as they were hit. Frey kept his head down while the rest of the Awakeners came piling into cover around him. Some of them had gunshot wounds. One man was shot in the back while trying to help another over.

The Sentinel who’d first spoke to Frey ended up next to him. ‘Get that gun firing!’ he yelled at a group of men down the line. They began hastily assembling the gatling gun. Then he glared at Frey. ‘What are you waiting for?’ And he aimed his rifle and started firing.

Frey pulled out the revolver that he’d emptied into the daemon back at the shrine, and began loading bullets into it. He had a full one in his belt, but he wanted time to think. He wasn’t keen on shooting at Coalition troops. That seemed like the kind of thing that might get a man into trouble. But he’d had no bright ideas by the time he was loaded, so he popped up and loosed off a couple of shots to look convincing. He aimed wild on purpose. The Sentinel was too busy to notice.

No way I’m dying with these losers, he thought, as he looked around for a way out. The Coalition troops had retreated into cover at the edge of the square. To his right, Frey could see a gap in the rubble, perhaps an old alley or something. It would take some clambering to get to, but it was an exit and, most importantly, it was sheltered from Coalition fire by a collapsed house.

There’s my way out, he thought. Now I just have to get there.

It wasn’t far, but it was far enough. If he broke out of cover he’d be a target for the Coalition soldiers. And once the Awakeners saw him deserting, he had little doubt they’d shoot him in the arse.

He hunkered down again as bullets chipped the stone fountain, showering him with speckles of grit. Damn it, he had to get to Trinica! He didn’t have time to get pinned down in a fire-fight!

The Sentinel next to him took advantage of a break in the shooting to pop his head up and aim again. Frey heard him take in a sharp breath and saw his eyes widen. ‘By the Code!’ he said. ‘That’s-’

He was rudely interrupted when his head blew apart, spraying Frey with blood and strips of gelatinous muck that used to be his brain.

‘Ewwww,’ Frey groaned. Getting covered in bits of other people ranked among his least favourite things. He wondered what the Sentinel had seen before he died, but he wasn’t curious enough to stick his head up and find out.

‘You men who fight for the Awakeners!’ roared a commanding voice. ‘Put down your arms and surrender!’

The gunfire petered out at the sound. Frey closed his eyes in silent despair. He knew that voice, and it meant he was screwed.

He found a crack in the fountain wide enough to peer through, and put his eye to it. It only confirmed what he already knew. There was Kedmund Drave, standing boldly before his troops, a smoking pistol in one hand.

Frey cursed his luck. If he was caught by Drave in the company of Awakeners, the Century Knight would string him up for sure.

‘This is your only chance!’ Drave shouted. ‘There won’t be another!’

A gunshot ran out, followed quickly by a second. Two shooters on the Awakener side, trying their luck. Drave thrust out his open hand, palm first. The first bullet sparked off his armoured glove, his hand moved with incredible speed, and the second one whined away too. His pistol came up, he fired twice, and the two shooters went down dead.

Thralled, Frey thought. His gloves have been thralled by a daemonist, just like my cutlass. No wonder the Century Knights seem superhuman, with tricks like that.

As quickly as it had stopped, the gunfire kicked up again. Drave ducked away into cover: even he couldn’t deflect that many bullets. Frey hunched down near the dead body of the Sentinel, shots flying all around him. He was getting desperate now. Maybe he could make that gap. Better than ending up in Drave’s hands. But it seemed an awfully long way between here and there.

He holstered his pistol, took a deep breath. Then he took another.

Ready, he told himself unconvincingly.

Then, from further along the fountain, came a sound that brought hope to his heart. The harsh rattle of a gatling gun. The Awakeners had got their shit together at last.

The Coalition forces retreated into cover as the gatling gun sprayed rounds across the square. Frey squeezed his hands into fists. This was the best chance he was going to have. Now, while their heads were down.

Now!

He scrambled to his feet, ran low around the fountain and vaulted over the lip before any of the Awakeners could react. Now he was out in the open, his feet pounding the flagstones, arms pumping, wild-eyed and afraid. It would only take him seconds to reach cover, but they were long, long seconds, and he could only hope that everyone was too preoccupied to notice him.

‘Frey!’ roared Drave. Frey looked over his shoulder in terror to see the Century Knight rising out of cover, heedless of the bullets flying all around him. He was sighting down the barrel of his pistol at Frey, and Century Knights didn’t miss.

Frey didn’t stop running. His hand went to his belt and his cutlass leaped into it. It guided his arm, moving faster than he ever could. He twisted in mid-stride just as Drave’s pistol fired, and threw the blade up between them.

The cutlass absorbed most of the impact, but not all. There was a jolt up his arm, a shower of sparks in front of his eyes, and he tumbled. But he tucked into a roll, shoulder-first, and came back up on to his feet. He sprinted the last few metres into cover before Drave could work out why his target wasn’t dead.

You’re not the only one who can deflect bullets, he thought.

Sheltered now from the Coalition forces, ignored by the Awakeners who had their own concerns, Frey went scrambling through the gap in the rubble towards the street beyond.

‘Frey!’ Drave yelled from somewhere behind him. ‘I’ll see you dead for this! You damned traitor!’

‘Hold still,’ said Malvery to his patient. ‘This is gonna hurt like buggery.’

Abley nodded, his face pale and sweaty. He lay on his belly on the operating table of the Ketty Jay’s grubby infirmary, a folded belt gripped between his teeth. A bloody trouser leg had been thrown on the floor nearby.

The bullet had gone into his calf and lodged in the muscle there. It wasn’t as bad as it must have felt, but Malvery had been telling the truth when he said it would fester without attention. He aimed with his forceps, gripped Abley’s ankle, and dug in. Abley screamed and passed out.

‘Ain’t so delicate as I used to be,’ Malvery muttered apologetically, as he dropped the bullet into a pan. He cleaned the wound of fabric shreds, swabbed it with antiseptic and put in a couple of stitches. Abley came back to consciousness and started murmuring nonsense as Malvery was wrapping his dressing with gauze.

‘Easy there,’ said Malvery. ‘Done in a jiffy, son.’

Abley took the belt from his mouth and swallowed to wet his throat. ‘Thanks, Doc,’ he croaked. ‘Thanks for not leaving me there.’

‘You just be sure to thank the Cap’n by giving him that code you promised,’ said Malvery sternly.

‘Aye, I will. I ain’t stupid,’ Abley said weakly. ‘This craft gets shot down, so do I.’

Malvery said nothing more as he finished up. There was a familiar sensation in his chest, a strange mix of pride and sadness that he used to feel when stitching up young soldiers on the battlefield. Pride that those big hands of his could help to save a life or a limb. Sadness that they needed to at all.

Abley was just a lad. Strong, handsome, an honest look about him. He probably radiated an aura of robust health when he wasn’t half in shock. He ought to be charming the girls in some rustic village, getting up to no good in the old watermill, eating half his weight at some harvest festival somewhere. Wasn’t right that he’d been dragged into this.

Malvery didn’t much care what anyone believed, as long as it didn’t get in anyone else’s face. But he cared about Vardia and her people. This lad never wanted to fight. Despite his protests, that was plain as day. He just wanted to believe in something that made a bit of sense out of a chaotic world. But war had been forced upon him by the Awakeners. Him and hundreds of thousands like him. He was lucky he’d ended up in such merciful hands.

Malvery wasn’t sure if Frey would really have left Abley in the pumping house. The Cap’n could bluff with the best of them. But Malvery wouldn’t have left him. And if the Cap’n had tried to make him, he’d have quit the crew right there and then. Because while the Cap’n and most of the others seemed to believe that the civil war wasn’t their fight, Malvery was quite sure that it was.

He heard the whine of hydraulics as the cargo ramp closed, hurrying feet and voices in the corridor. Silo and Ashua.

‘Cap’n’s back,’ he told her.

‘Is Crake with him?’ she asked.

Malvery occupied himself with making Abley comfortable as he listened to the hubbub outside. He should check in on Jez, who was lying in her quarters. Wouldn’t do any good, though. He didn’t know how to treat her when she dropped into one of her comas. Best thing he could do was to leave her and hope she woke up.

Frey came up the stairs, barking orders while Ashua asked questions. They were leaving right now. No, he didn’t find Crake. No, they weren’t going back to look. Because Kedmund Drave was on his tail.

‘Kedmund Drave!’ cried Ashua. ‘Now what’ve you done?’

‘Well, he sort of got the idea that we joined the Awakeners for real.’

‘He what? How?’

‘Never mind. Tell the doc to get on the autocannon. I’ll need eyes behind me if we’re going up there.’

Frey hurried off towards the cockpit. Ashua appeared in the doorway of the infirmary.

‘I heard,’ said Malvery. He waved at the patient. ‘Keep an eye on him, will you? Give him two of those pills on the table, too. Wound might go septic otherwise.’ He headed out past her before she could argue. A few metres down the corridor was a ladder bolted to the wall. He pulled himself up it.

The cupola was cramped for a man his size. A battered leather chair hung in a metal cradle that sat at the butt end of a large autocannon. The cannon barrel poked through a hemisphere of windglass within a reinforced steel frame. The whole assembly could pivot and tilt to give a field of fire covering everywhere but directly above. Mechanical locks prevented the trigger being pressed when the cannon was in certain positions, to prevent him accidentally blowing the Ketty Jay’s tail off.

He climbed into the seat and settled himself. This small space was his domain, perhaps more so than the infirmary, since no one ever came up here. It was chilly and musty and smelt of him. Partly empty rum bottles, old broadsheets and battered books were stuffed into spaces in the bulkhead. He rummaged around till he found a bottle that was quarter full, pulled the stopper and raised it to the night sky, which was flashing and thundering with anti-aircraft fire.

‘Stay safe, mate,’ he said to Crake, and drank deeply.

A maudlin mood settled on him. Crake was gone. Just like that. No doubt he was capable of taking care of himself, but still. Stalking off that way. Wasn’t like him. And now they’d been forced to leave him behind.

Still, you had to admire the feller. Man took a stand for what he believed. That was more than Malvery had done. And now Malvery was off to join the Awakeners, the bloody Awakeners, and as far as the Coalition were concerned he was a genuine turncoat, too. All he’d wanted to do was join the war on the Coalition side, but it was too late for that now. Bridges had been burned. They’d never let him join up even if he asked them, and what did they want with a fat old alcoholic anyway, Duke’s Cross or not?

The thought of it curdled the rum in his stomach. He drank some more to wash away the taste.

Should’ve done something, he told himself. Should’ve taken a stand.

But Abley had needed him, and by the time he’d seen to his patient the chance had gone. His fit of pique back at the underground chasm seemed churlish now, an act of defiance that only served to make him feel better. He might have protested, but in the end he hadn’t mustered the wherewithal to do anything about it. He always did go with the flow a bit more than was good for him.

He took another swig of rum. It helped take his mind off it.

The Ketty Jay trembled as the engines powered up. There was a soft buzz through the hull as the electromagnets got to work, extracting gas from liquid aerium, pumping it into the ballast tanks. The Ketty Jay creaked as she became lighter. She stood up on her skids and floated uncertainly off the ground.

‘Doc? You in position?’ the Cap’n’s voice came faintly from below.

‘I’m here!’ called Malvery. Then, quieter and to himself: ‘Always here.’

The sky cracked and flared with explosions. Tracer fire slid up into the night. Coalition Windblades shot by overhead, chasing down Awakener craft that were lifting off from hidden places all over Korrene. To the right of the Ketty Jay, the Firecrow was rising. He saw Harkins in the cockpit, intent on the controls, his pilot’s cap jammed low on his head and his scarecrow legs visible through the bubble of windglass on the nose of his aircraft. Pinn was ascending alongside him, his pudgy face underlit by the dash of his sleek Skylance. Inside the cupola, Malvery felt insulated from it all, as if it were some show happening far away with no power to affect him, and which he was equally powerless to affect.

An explosion close overhead shook the Ketty Jay and made him spit his rum all over his crotch. Suddenly he felt a lot less detached.

The Ketty Jay’s thrusters kicked in, pushing her forward. Her outflyers kept pace alongside. Frey flew them low over the city to avoid the worst of the flak, but it still seemed uncomfortably near to Malvery.

Coalition forces were swarming now. They were determined to inflict some casualties on the scattering Awakeners. Now the Ketty Jay was airborne, Malvery could see that the anti-aircraft fire was much lighter than on their way in. In some areas, it had diminished to almost nothing, as the gunners joined the retreat.

‘Doc! How we doing back there? You still keeping your eyes out?’ Frey called. He had a tendency to nag during a battle. Not being able to see behind his craft made him anxious.

‘Apart from all this sodding flak?’ Malvery called back. ‘Just fine.’ He stopped as he caught sight of something moving in the dark, then bawled: ‘Eight o’ clock high, Cap’n! Fighter! Incoming fire!’

Frey reacted immediately. The world lurched and tilted outside Malvery’s cupola. A flurry of blazing tracers whipped past him and flew away earthwards to be swallowed by the streets. Malvery stuffed the bottle of rum into a gap in the bulkhead so as not to drop it into the corridor below.

‘Where is it now?’ Frey called, wrenching the Ketty Jay back and forth in an evasive pattern. Harkins and his Firecrow swung into view and away. Malvery craned his neck, trying to spot the fighter against the night. A flash of anti-aircraft fire lit it up just as it unleashed another barrage. This time gunfire lashed across the Ketty Jay’s hull, pocking the metal with bullet holes. Something deep inside the craft groaned. A pipe burst and steam hissed out into the corridor below him. He heard Silo come running to fix the leak.

‘It’s on our six, Cap’n! Still above us!’ he yelled over the noise.

‘Well bloody shoot it then!’ Frey yelled back.

‘It’s a Windblade!’ he protested.

‘Do I sound like a man who gives a shit?’ Frey screamed.

‘I ain’t shooting at Coalition!’

‘They’re attacking us! You want to die for your damned patriotism?’

‘Why not?’ Malvery roared. ‘You want us to die for your damned woman, don’t you?’

The Cap’n was momentarily defeated by that. There was silence from the cockpit as he formulated a comeback, but then a fresh salvo from the fighter put a few new holes in their wing, and Frey gave up trying to be witty.

‘Just do it!’ he shrieked.

Exasperated, Malvery grabbed the handles of the autocannon. The cupola swivelled with the gun. ‘Keep her still, then!’ he shouted. Frey stopped jinking about, and Malvery brought the target into the centre of his crosshairs.

It was a peach of shot. The Windblade was lining up on them, encouraged by the lack of return fire. The pilot, thinking only of the kill, wasn’t even trying to dodge. Both of them were in each other’s sights.

‘Malvery!’ Frey yelled.

The first one to fire would destroy the other.

‘Malvery! Take the shot!’

Malvery’s finger hovered over the trigger. He thought of all the people on the Ketty Jay. Of the Cap’n and Silo and Ashua, especially, who he was inordinately fond of. All the people who’d likely die if he didn’t shoot.

‘Malvery!’ Frey screamed, loud enough to threaten imminent prolapse. ‘You horrible fat bastard! Fire!’

Malvery took his finger away, sat back in his battered leather chair, and sighed with something like satisfaction. What would be, would be. But he’d be damned before he shot down a Coalition aircraft.

A moment later, the Windblade exploded, ripped apart by tracer fire from out of the night. Pinn’s Skylance slashed through the air and away.

Malvery watched the flaming pieces of Windblade fall towards the city below. They’d outrun the flak now. There was no more pursuit that he could see.

He pulled out the bottle of rum and emptied the remainder down his gullet. Then he hauled himself out of his seat and went down into the steam-filled corridor in search of another. He was going to get plenty drunk tonight.

Who says I can’t make a stand?