The Iron jackal

Thirty-One

The fouled air stirred and turned in slow coils. Overhead was a dirty yellow murk, thickening as it descended until it lay leaden on the ground in a soupy mist. The earth was poisoned and dead. Sulphurous vents were open wounds, seeping fumes; geysers and craters were smoking pustules. There were sad marshes, their waters streaked with metallic greens and greys. The silence was huge, broken only by dull and distant booming sounds.

The Choke Bowl.

Frey lay on the lip of a desolate ridge, squinting through the spyglass. It was hard to see through his goggles, but taking them off would only make his eyes itch and tear. His breather mask was sweaty and uncomfortable, rubbing at the bridge of his nose and rasping against the stubble on his chin. Everything reeked of rotten eggs.

‘They couldn’t have built it somewhere a bit less horrible, then?’ he asked.

Ehri was lying next to him on the ridge. ‘Sulphurous lowlands. Only place for mining allium. Rare and expensive. They use it for jewellery.’ The sneer in her voice was detectable even through her mask.

Beyond her was Fal, and on Frey’s other side was Silo. The Rattletrap that had brought them here was parked downslope. A klom away, on a flat and desolate plain, was Gagriisk.

The compound encompassed dozens of buildings and a small quarry, surrounded by a high wall dotted with guard-posts. It was roughly divided into three sections. The first looked like administrative buildings and guards’ quarters and so on. The second was the pens, a compound within tehe compound. There he could see rows of long buildings: sleeping quarters for the slaves. The third section was the quarry, which was almost invisible at this distance, a kidney-shaped smear that took up three-quarters of the space inside the wall. Standing amidst the buildings was a tall metal tower, a gas derrick, surrounded at its base by a complex apparatus of pipes and enormous tanks.

A frigate hovered at anchor on the far side of the compound, a hulking shadow at the limit of his vision. There was a landing pad outside the walls with a cargo freighter sitting there, but no sign of the fighters Ashua had mentioned. Presumably they were stashed in the belly of the frigate, ready to deploy.

It was hard to make out detail, even with a spyglass. The drifting yellow vapours turned everything to a haze. But as he scanned the compound there was something that caught his eye and made him frown. He passed to the spyglass to Silo.

‘Left side, just inside the wall,’ he said. ‘What d’you reckon?’

Silo took a look. ‘Anti-aircraft gun,’ he said at length.

‘That’s what I thought.’ Frey swore under his breath. ‘What the spit do they need an anti-aircraft gun for? Apart from, y’know, shooting down aircraft.’

‘This place ain’t just a work camp,’ said Ehri. ‘It’s a prison. Always the chance someone’ll try ’n’ rescue whoever.’

‘I thought the Sammies just executed anyone they didn’t like.’

Fal raised his head. ‘There’s always exceptions, for one reason or another. People they don’t want to be found, people too valuable to kill, people they just wanna punish slowly, interrogate, torture. They get sent here.’

‘Course, they don’t send ’em out to work down in the quarry with the Murthian slaves,’ said Ehri, bitterly. ‘That’d be too shameful, even for a criminal.’

Frey still couldn’t get used to the way that Ehri and Fal spoke Vardic with the same Draki accent as Silo did. He checked his pocket watch.

‘What time do you have, Silo?’

Silo checked his own pocket watch and called the time, which matched with Frey’s exactly. It was late afternoon, although it was difficult to tell in the unsettling gloom of the Choke Bowl. The sun was a dim disc, and most of its scorching heat had been swallowed, leaving the air tepid and cloying.

A series of low booms sounded in the fog.

‘What is that?’ he asked.

Fal said a word he didn’t recognise. ‘They live in the marshes,’ Ehri added.

‘There’s something out there that can breathe this shit?’ Frey asked in amazement.

Ehri shrugged. ‘They don’t give the slaves masks. Too expensive to keep replacin’ the filters.’

‘And what happens?’

‘They last a year. Fifteen months at most, before they’re too broken down to work. Then they get shot.’

Her tone was matter-of-fact, but Frey could hear the thrumming anger underneath. She took the spyglass from Silo and trained it on the camp.

‘The pens,’ she said. ‘The gates gonna be guarded, but if we can get through them, we can let out the slaves. That’s the priority.’

‘That’s your priority,’ Frey said.

‘We let the prisoners out, they overrun the camp,’ Fal reasoned. ‘Gotta be three times as many slaves as guards.’

‘And while you’re doing that, we’ll be looking for Ugrik.’

‘While we’re drawin’ their fire, you mean,’ said Ehri.

Frey was unmoved. ‘We’ve both got our reasons for doing this.’

Ehri snorted and looked off into the distance. ‘Your woman better show up,’ she said.

‘She’ll be here.’

‘On time?’ Fal asked. ‘They’ll hear us approach. If she’s not on time…’

‘She’ll be here,’ said Frey irritably. He was annoyed at the implied doubt, doubly so because it touched his own. He wasn’t at all sure of her.

In the water garden in Shasiith, she told him she’d be there. But the way she said it, it felt like a goodbye. Things had been going so well between them – barring his minor lapse of judgement in her cabin on the Delirium Trigge r – but it occurred to him now that he was placing an awful lot of trust in her. It had only been a few months since she’d been merrily betraying him left, right and centre. Wasn’t it naive to expect her to change now? The same kind of naivety he scoffed at when pretty girls gave themselves up in the hope that they could change him?

No. He’d seen it in her eyes, when he showed her the black spot o black sn his palm. She was afraid for him. She wouldn’t let him die.

He was certain.

Kind of.

He brought out the compass from his pocket. Over the last few months it had become a habit to stare at it while he was blissed out on Shine. It was a connection to her, always pointing to where she was. It made him feel closer to her, knowing she was wearing the ring he gave her.

It was pointing north, which told him nothing. He had no idea how far away she was. Shasiith was north: she might never have left. Or she might have left, and she might never have found the coordinates he’d left at the rendezvous, even though he’d daubed the chest in ghostlight paint, which was invisible to the naked eye but showed up brightly through polarised goggles.

He’d been forced to do things in an infuriatingly roundabout way. Ehri wouldn’t give up the coordinates of Gagriisk until she had the medical supplies, but without them he couldn’t tell Trinica where to go. Trinica couldn’t come with him to Ehri’s camp because the Delirium Trigger was too big to conceal anywhere nearby. And there was no time to go back to Shasiith. So he’d been forced to give Trinica a rendezvous point just north of the Choke Bowl, where she could pick up the exact location of Gagriisk.

Except that a dozen things could have gone wrong. She had to fly overnight from Shasiith, find the stash in the dark, and then hide in the Choke Zone until morning, when it would be bright enough for the attack. That was, if she was coming at all.

If all had gone to plan, she was on her way even now, approaching from the north. If it hadn’t, she was probably back in Shasiith. Either way, the compass afforded no answers.

‘She’ll be here,’ he muttered to himself. He really hoped he was right.

He was still worrying about it as he sat in the pilot’s seat of the Ketty Jay, an hour later. The yellow murk writhed lazily past the windglass of the cockpit. Jez kept casting concerned glances at him, which he ignored. She was wearing a breather mask for appearance’s sake, so as not to alarm the Murthians, but she hadn’t bothered with goggles.

He checked his compass again. It hadn’t moved. But then, if Trinica was heading towards him, it wouldn’t.

Still, though. Shouldn’t it maybe move a bit?

‘Time, Cap’n,’ said Jez.

Frey busied himself immediately, glad of the distraction. He fed aerium gas into the ballast tanks and warmed up the thrusters. Footsteps sounded from the corridor behind him, and he turned in his seat to see Silo in the doorway.

‘Your people ready?’ Frey asked.

‘Yuh. More than ready. Some o’ them kids ready to shoot each other if they don’t get at the Daks.’

‘We’ll be coming in pretty rough, I reckon,’ said Frey. ‘You’re my man down in the hold. We need to do this right.’

Silo nodded and headed back up the passageway, boots clanking.

‘Heading oh-five, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘Keep it straight, an even two hundred, you’ll be on the button. Thrusters quiet as you can make ’em.’

‘Right,’ said Frey, and opened up the throttle. The Ketty Jay rumbled as she began to pick up speed. They’d been forced to set down thirty kloms from the compound, for fear of alerting the guards with the sound of their engines. In between was nothing but blasted ground, oozing marshes and the disconcerting booms from the creatures that somehow contrived to live in this stinking miasma.

The timing had to be perfect. Trinica was going to attack from the north, intending to draw off the fighters while the Ketty Jay slipped in from the south amid the confusion. Since they couldn’t get too near without warning the enemy, it was necessary to synchronise their attacks. If they waited till they heard the sound of Trinica opening fire, the men on the ground would be forewarned and forearmed by the time the Ketty Jay closed in.

Of course, Frey wouldn’t like to be in Trinica’s presence when she found out about the anti-aircraft gun. But even taking that little surprise into account, the Delirium Trigger was well capable of dealing with a small frigate and a few fighter craft.

If she was coming. Because if she wasn’t, they were in a whole pile of trouble. The Ketty Jay wouldn’t stand a chance by herself.

The yellow blankness swallowed him. The murk curtailed his vision on all sides. He passed a foetid lake, and thought he saw something shadowy, four-legged and huge go lumbering along its shores.

He replayed his last conversation with Trinica, mining it for nuance. Had there been a message in her tone, in her expression, that he hadn’t picked up? Why had she seemed so sad and resigned when she agreed to save his life? Was it because she knew she wasn’t going to?

‘Twenty kloms,’ said Jez. ‘Reckon they’ll be hearing our engines soon.’

‘No going back, eh?’ said Frey. Nervous dread filled him.

Jez was quiet for a moment. Then she said: ‘You’ll be alright, Cap’n. We’ll get you out of this.’

He smileman"›He d at her weakly, but then realised she couldn’t see it behind his mask and goggles. They lapsed back into silence.

‘Ten kloms,’ she said.

He checked his watch. ‘Shouldn’t we be hearing gunfire or something?’

‘Probably,’ she replied. ‘Throttle back a bit. Let’s give her time to get there.’

He did so, but a miserable certainty was beginning to grow in him now. Damn it, how many times did he have to let her kick him in the pods before he learned not to trust her?

He was still stewing when Jez said: ‘Five kloms. She’s not coming, Cap’n.’

‘She’ll be here,’ he said.

‘Cap’n, maybe you ought to pull away before it’s too late.’

But the camp was approaching fast, a dark smear resolving out of the mist, and he wouldn’t pull away. It would be a defeat too hard to take. An admission that all his hopes had been based on smoke, that he’d been gulled, that he’d condemned himself to death.

Don’t make me choose between my crew and you, she’d said.

Well, it seemed she’d made her choice, in the end.

He still believed she would appear right up until the first explosion shook the Ketty Jay. A bloom of fire lit the cockpit and concussion hammered the craft. The shock of it jolted him into action; he wrenched the flight stick and banked. The anti-aircraft gun kept up a steady thumping. Another explosion shoved the Ketty Jay from below, tipping her steeply. Frey felt the weight on the flight stick as fifty men and women went sliding to one side of the hold.

Damn you, Trinica.

He swung the Ketty Jay level again and dived. Guards were swarming from the grim buildings beneath him, out into the packed-earth training squares and thoroughfares that lay between. The Ketty Jay screamed in low over the rooftops, to give the anti-aircraft gunners something to think about. They wouldn’t want to shoot into their own camp.

The frigate took on shape and clarity: a sleek Samarlan design, smooth and insectile. The Sammies built their aircraft fast and beautiful, at the expense of little details like armour. It was all about aesthetics with them. If you had to die, die pretty.

The frigate’s anchor came loose of its mooring, whipping through the air as it was drawn into the body of the craft. Already the frigate was scrambling the first of its fighters, shooting them into the sky like darts.

How’d they get them out so quick? They must be on permanent standby.

Frey had spent enough time at card tables to know when he was holding a losing hand. The trick was to know when to fold it. If those fighters got on his tail, they’d shoot him down. Time to run, while he still had the mist on his side, and he could lose them.

He was glad of the mask that covered his face. No one could see the bitter set of his mouth as he Light flared, and a series of bellowing explosions ripped along the flank of the frigate. Looming from the yellow fog came the slow black hulk of the Delirium Trigger, its outflyers streaking past it to engage the Samarlan fighters.

‘Yeah! You beautiful bitch!’ Frey cheered wildly, swept up in the hot rush of vindication. Hope surged back, just when it had been slinking off to die. She was here! She came for him!

She cared.

His blood was fired now, and he felt himself overwhelmed by the giddy madness of conflict. He was no longer plain old Darian Frey. He was Captain Frey, of the Ketty Jay: a legend, not a man. And it was time to do what he did.

He raced past the camp and then banked hard to bring her about again. The anti-aircraft gunners had lost all interest in him the moment the Delirium Trigger appeared. He lined up on the camp and headed back, coming in on the east side, where he’d spotted a likely landing spot.

The guards on the wall took pot-shots at him as he approached, but their bullets were useless against the Ketty Jay ’s armour. He flew over the top of the wall, decelerating hard, then swung the Ketty Jay ’s arse end around one hundred and eighty degrees and opened fire with her underslung machine guns. Puffs of stone dust clouded the air as the wall guards fled for cover. He didn’t really hope to hit anyone, just to keep them from putting a shot into the cockpit while he landed.

Below him was a small square, perhaps a drill ground or an exercise yard, bordered on all sides by buildings and the compound wall. Defensible and out of the way. Hydraulics whined as the Ketty Jay extended her landing skids.

He killed the thrusters, dumped aerium from the tanks and was already opening the cargo ramp when the Ketty Jay hit the ground with a teeth-rattling crash. Then he slumped back in his seat and grinned.

‘There,’ he said.

The force of the landing made the assembled Murthians stagger and stumble. They hung on to bulkheads, cargo netting, whatever they could. The ramp at the back of the hold was gaping slowly open: the Cap’n had timed it perfectly. Its lip hit the ground a couple of seconds after the Ketty Jay did. There was a dazed moment, as if no one could quite believe that they were at they down, and then Ehri’s voice rang out: ‘Go! Go! Go!’

Axes swung, severing the straps that had kept the Rattletraps in place. There was a growl of engines, deafening in the enclosed hold, and two of the buggies skidded forward and down the ramp with their gatlings blazing. With them went Bess, roaring as she thundered into the fray. And after them came everyone else.

They were like an undammed tide. After a long night of anxiety and anticipation, the Murthians were desperate to be unleashed. They were mostly young men, who had chafed under Akkad’s rule and were sick of restraint. Years of anger had brought them to this point. They screamed behind their masks, and flooded out of the Ketty Jay with guns in their hands.

There was no subtlety to it. The object was surprise. If they allowed themselves to be hemmed in, pinned inside the Ketty Jay by gunfire, they’d all end up dead. The Dak guards had barely realised the enemy had landed amongst them before the Murthians were out with their weapons blazing. Gatlings strafed the surrounding buildings: guards danced and jerked in the windows as they were mown down. Some of them had been caught in the open, and tried to flee from the square to the wider compound beyond. None of them got far. The Murthians flooded into the buildings, faceless warriors in their goggles and masks, mercilessly slaughtering anyone in a uniform. Bess caught up with one unfortunate Dak, pounded him into the earth and tossed his corpse clear over the rooftops.

Ehri was shouting orders amid the chaos, trying to keep the over-enthusiastic youngbloods under control. Silo found himself doing the same. He couldn’t help it. Surrounded by his own language, he felt like the person he’d once been, instead of the impostor he’d become who thought and spoke in Vardic. He felt the savage joy of vengeance, the fury of uncounted generations of slavery and suffering.

It was just like old times.

The Murthians were disorganised, chasing off without thought for cover or tactics. They hadn’t learned much of battle under Akkad. But the wiser heads remembered, and he saw signs of order emerging as the veterans began to rein in their wilder companions.

He grabbed someone nearby – he didn’t recognise them behind the mask – and pointed up at the wall. The guards were reorganising up there. He didn’t want them capable of firing on the square until everyone had a chance to clear out of it.

Get three more men. Kill those guards if you can, keep their heads down otherwise. Can you do that?

The young man nodded firmly, glad to be given purpose among the madness. He yelled at someone nearby and pointed up at the wall. Silo left him to it and ran across the square, using the body of the Ketty Jay as shelter from the guards.

The Daks had been mostly cleared from the square now, and many had fled the surrounding buildings. The Murthians had been warned not to scatter far, but some needed reminding. Griffden – the Vard who amp;rsq Vard whuo; d been Akkad’s lieutenant – sprinted here and there bellowing, bringing back those who threatened to chase off after the enemy. Silo spotted a few who had thrown themselves into cover, their body language fearful, shocked by their first taste of combat. Overhead, the sky boomed with explosions as the Sammie frigate engaged the Delirium Trigger in earnest. Fighters weaved through the poisonous sky with their guns rattling.

It took Silo a few moments to find what he was looking for. A gutshot Dak, his breather mask torn off, gulping in air and coughing back blood. Silo grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and dragged him into the shelter of a doorway.

By now the Cap’n had made his way out of the Ketty Jay and was sealing up the cargo hold behind him, locking it with the external keypad located on one of the rear landing struts. The rest of the crew were clustered around him, except for Ashua, who had seen what Silo was up to and was hurrying over towards him.

Silo made a quick check of the room – bullet holes, bodies and wrecked office equipment – then returned his attention to his prisoner. He tore off the man’s goggles so he could look him in the eyes. Just the sight of a Dakkadian face close up ignited a killing hate. The Samarlans were the authors of Murthian misery, but they were distant and remote, glimpsed occasionally as overseers in the pens. It was the Daks who were the guards, who doled out the brutality, who killed with impunity. It was the Daks who were the ever-present danger, and he’d learned to despise and fear their pale skin, their blond hair, their narrow eyes and broad faces.

The Sammies had beaten the Murthians long ago. But the Daks were slaves, who’d never bested anyone. Slaves killing other slaves to assert their superiority, in a sick little tangle engineered by their masters.

He didn’t feel anything for the suffering of the dying man in front of him. They had been the unquestioned enemy for so long that empathy was impossible.

((Where is the Yort?)) he demanded. He hadn’t spoken Samarlan for a very long time. It brought ugly memories.

The Dak just gazed at him, wide-eyed. Ashua scampered up and crouched next to him. He ignored her and slapped the Dak around the side of the head to focus him.

((The Yort. He is here. You know where. The prison?))

The dying man coughed fresh blood onto his chin, bright and glittering against the whiteness of his skin. ((Solitary)) he said, and began to cough again. ((No one… sees…))

((Where?))

((The quarry. In the quarry. Away from the others.))

Silo looked at Ashua, who nodded to indicate that she’d understood. Then, abruptly, he stood up, lifted his shotgun and fired it into the prisoner’s chest. Ashua got to her feet, unconcerned, turning away as if t away ashe Dak had never existed. Death was nothing new to her, it seemed. It didn’t appal her in the least.

Frey joined them. He looked over Ashua’s shoulder at the body on the floor, glanced at Silo, and then said ‘Find anything?’

‘He in solitary. Down in the quarry.’

‘The quarry. Right.’

Ehri came running up behind him, and looked in at Silo. Fal was hastily organising people in the background.

~ The pens! she snapped. Then she gave him a hard stare. ~ Are you coming, or not?

He met her eyes steadily. For all the new distance between them, there was something in her look that spoke of past days. The savage certainty of purpose that they’d once shared. A solidarity forged in the heat of terrible risk. They were people who’d known slavery, and who’d needed to prove again and again that nobody shackled them anymore. Silo, perhaps, had forgotten that of late. But he remembered it now. He was nobody’s slave.

He turned to Frey. ‘I gotta go, Cap’n. The pens.’

‘Reckoned you would,’ said Frey. ‘Good luck.’

Silo grunted. For a long moment, he studied the man who’d pulled him out of Samarla, who’d sheltered him for nine years, who’d been his leader and, in a way, his friend all that time. He reckoned he could have picked a worse man to throw his lot in with.

Then Ehri hissed at him to get moving, and he followed her out into the square, where his people were waiting.