Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (58 page)

‘Sons of bitches are softening us up!’ Samandra cried over the rain and thunder. ‘They’re puttin’ troops down in the outer districts already. They’ll take strategic points round the city, seize up our supply lines, try to force a surrender!’

‘Then why,’ Malvery puffed, ‘are we running
away
from the fight?’

‘You’ll see,’ said Samandra.

She led them through the maze of streets that sprawled around the Archduke’s palace, high up on the great volcanic plug that overlooked Thesk. Soon they came to a small, out-of-the-way area with a neglected air about it. There she led them into a dead end yard, bordered on three sides by grim and worn walls of black stone. The last wall belonged to a building that looked like a storehouse or factory.

Waiting in the yard were Kyne and several soldiers. Kyne was holding an elaborately sculpted staff of twisted brass, as tall as he was, with a black orb cradled near its tip.

‘Crake!’ said the masked man. ‘I’m glad you made it. You wouldn’t want to miss this!’

‘Feller’s so damn dramatic,’ Samandra said as an aside. ‘Get on with it, Kyne!’

Kyne turned towards the building and held the staff in the air. Crake felt his senses prickle as a wave of daemonic energy passed over him. With a grinding of gears, a section of the wall sank into the ground.

The staff is the key
, he thought to himself, excitement rising in his breast as the gap widened.
But the key to what
?

Inside, all was darkness. The wall rumbled out of sight. Crake peered into the void beyond.

Lightning flickered. Sharp light reflected off metal. And then something stirred within. A slow, huge movement, followed by another elsewhere. He heard a dull boom. A footstep.

They came out of the darkness and into the rain-swept and stormy morning. They clanked and creaked and stamped and steamed. There were dozens in there. Dozens and more.

Crake’s mouth fell open. Bess made a curious cooing noise.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Samandra with a flourish. ‘Meet our own secret weapon. The Archduke’s golem army!’

Thirty-Eight

Harkins Alone – Pinn’s War – Swansong – The Wolverine – A Turn Up for the Books

W
e are many and we are one. Your wings are my wings. We fly with one engine, we fight with one heart. I am the Coalition Navy, and the Coalition Navy is me.

For the first time in Harkins’ life, that was literally true.

He said the mantra over and over in his head as he flew away from the Imperial palace and into the storm-hacked morning. Once, it had been part of his daily ritual. They’d said it at roll-call every day. He’d repeated it so many times that the words became automatic and meaningless.

I am the Coalition Navy
, he thought.
I’m all that’s left
.

Encased in the cockpit of the Firecrow, surrounded by the warming bellow of the thrusters and the howl of the wind, he was alone. The Firecrow was painted with Awakener insignia, so he wouldn’t be attacked. He was an interloper among the enemy, far from help. Whatever he did now, he’d do on his own.

He remembered his earcuff. Crake had given it back to him after the battle at the Tarlock mansion, so he could keep in touch with the Cap’n during the flight. Now he dug in his pocket and clipped in on, hoping to hear voices. Something to relieve this sudden awful solitude, this sense of being cast into the void.

Nothing. He heard rustles and muffled noises now and then, but that was all. None of the others were wearing them. Still, he left the earcuff on. Even those small sounds felt like company, and he’d take what he could get up here in the slaty sky, hurtling through a hostile world.

Fighters raced past beneath him, making low strafing runs along the city streets. The populace were being punished for their resistance; Thesk was the sanctuary of the nonbelievers, and lessons had to be learned. This was no peaceful coup, but a bloody invasion. In a stark blaze of lightning, he saw dozens of people fleeing along a boulevard towards the palace, swarming like insects far below.

Overhead and around him were the frigates and larger craft, their floods shining, blurred by a haze of rain-mist. They ploughed on through the sky, dropping bombs as they went, wounding the capital with fire and destruction. The sight of them drifting unopposed through Coalition skies offended him. With the anti-aircraft batteries choked off by the Azryx device, the Awakeners had no fear any more.

Well, Harkins would give them something to fear.

He slipped in behind a fighter that was just starting a bombing run. It was another Firecrow, all but identical to his. Since they were sold off by the Navy after the Second Aerium War to make way for the Windblades, Firecrows were everywhere, a cheap and reliable combat craft. But they were still dangerous, and many had found their way to the Awakener fleet.

Start with the best fighters
, he told himself.
Leave the rustbuckets. Just do as much damage as you can.

The pilot was oblivious to the threat. So safe and secure in his belief that the battle was won. He didn’t even notice Harkins lining up on his tail. But in his mind’s eye Harkins could still see the Coalition craft falling from the sky, thousands of fighting men and women wiped out in one appalling, cruel, dishonourable stroke. He felt rage bubbling up through him, thawing his fear. He felt the urge to be wanton and vicious.

His finger cradled the trigger. His teeth were gritted. He had the shot, and yet . . .

. . . and yet he didn’t fire. Something held him back. Right now he was hidden; right now he still had the opportunity of escape. He could fly away and leave with his life. The moment he squeezed that trigger, he’d be starting something that could only end in his destruction.

Once, that would have been enough to cow him. Once his nerve would have broken at the thought of the Awakeners’ retribution. But something had awakened in him now, a new awareness, and once realised it couldn’t be ignored.

For a long time now, he’d lived in constant terror, shrinking away from everything and everyone. A miserable, confined existence, so afraid of death he was barely alive. And he couldn’t do it any more. Better to live ten minutes as a wolf than ten years as a rabbit.

So Harkins bared his teeth, and pulled the trigger.

The pilot in the other Firecrow didn’t have a chance. There was no time to evade. Harkins’ guns chewed up his tail assembly, tearing through metal and blasting his rudder to pieces. The fighter slewed wildly, bullets tore along its fuselage, and it exploded.

Harkins pulled away, racing off through the sky. Other fighters were around, some near, some far. Had anyone seen him? He didn’t know. The rain and gloom limited visibility, and the skies were still chaotic, with so many half-trained pilots flying about.

Well, it didn’t matter. No going back now. A Kentickson Aeronaut came flying in from his starboard side, across his path. He swung around and took position on its tail. It was heading down for a strafing run. Harkins followed it down, and opened up on its back end. Tracer fire punched holes up its spine, and the fuel tank was hit. The holes smouldered, fizzed into life like a dynamite fuse, and seconds later the Aeronaut blew apart, sending shrapnel wheeling through the air.

He shot down another, and another, before the Awakeners started to pay attention. Even then, they couldn’t catch him. He banked and looped, turning their best manoeuvres against them, running rings round the rookies and out-thinking the veterans. All around him, planes fell out of the sky. He flew with a freedom that he hadn’t know since his glory days. There was nothing left to lose now, and he knew at last what Pinn had known every time he flew into battle. He knew what it was to be unafraid of death.

We are many and we are one
, he thought to himself, and his hangdog face lit up in the muzzle flash of his machine guns.

Pinn’s overwhelming impression was one of huge disappointment.

That was
it
? That was his war? A few minutes of wiping the sky with Coalition pilots, and then it was over? Granted, the end of the Coalition Navy had been spectacular, but his elation quickly gave way to boredom as the guns went quiet. Where was the fight against impossible odds, the hair-raising escapes, the suicidal bravery? Where was the
heroism
?

If this was the climax of the civil war and the end of the Coalition, then frankly, he felt robbed.

Below him, the city rumbled with explosions. Domes collapsed and grey, rain-battered buildings crumbled. Fighters swooped with blazing guns, sending citizens and militia scattering. The thought of attacking civilians didn’t excite him much. There was no challenge there since the anti-aircraft guns had been disabled.

He flew on listlessly through the sky. Lisinda’s creased portrait radiated disapproval from the dash.

‘Well, I can’t bloody help it if no one has the pods to fight me, can I?’ he snapped at her in exasperation.

He spotted the Awakeners’ flagship off to starboard, a long, rectangular craft, split at the ends like an old rotted beam. The Lord High Cryptographer was on board, they said. He remembered that moment in the Awakener base when he’d gazed upon the leader of the Awakeners, and felt something stir inside that had inspired him to abandon his friends. He fancied he could feel his presence now.

Nearby was a familiar shape: the black bulk of the
Delirium Trigger
, hanging in the sky. Other frigates had begun sending down landing shuttles full of troops, but the
Delirium Trigger
just hung there in the storm. Lightning flickered behind it, and thunder came down on the city like a fist.

The sight of Trinica’s craft brought back a nagging memory, of sitting at a bar with Balomon Crund. They’d both been drunk, sloppy drunk, and Crund had leaned over, shoved his big shaggy head up close to Pinn’s and said ‘You gotta promise me something.’

The promise. That was right. Pinn wasn’t normally one to treat a promise with much gravity, but this one had stuck in the back of his mind. What
had
he promised?

He stared at the
Delirium Trigger
as it slid past his wing, and tried to remember. Wisps of memory began to coalesce in his benighted mind. It seemed as if the answer was almost within his grasp when suddenly he saw a plume of flame light up the sky ahead of him.

He narrowed his eyes and looked closer. That wasn’t a bomb; it was an explosion at altitude. As he watched, he saw two aircraft chasing off after another one. Tracer fire slid silently through the air.

Pinn became suddenly interested. Were they
fighting
over there?

He opened up the throttle and headed in that direction. The war had been a let down so far, but Pinn wasn’t averse to feeding on scraps. Any battle was a good battle, as far as he was concerned. Someone else was going to get the business end of Pinn’s machine guns before the day was through.

Harkins rolled and climbed as tracer fire ripped through the sky behind him. There were two of them on his tail. One was a Firecrow, painted with Cipher decals as his own craft was. The other was a patchwork junker he didn’t even recognise. They flew dangerously close to one another, jostling for position, each eager to be the one to take down the rogue in their midst.

Bad pilots, both of them. Harkins levelled out and gave them both a good few seconds to draw a bead on him, making himself a tempting target. Once he had them on the hook, he threw his craft to starboard. Both pilots reacted instinctively, banking to follow him, but they were flying too tight. The junker’s wings clipped the Firecrow’s and both of them went spinning away into the rainy gloom.

Lightning flickered and thunder rolled. Harkins allowed himself a sweaty grin. He was out on the edge of the Awakener fleet now, and he’d either lost or destroyed all his pursuers for the moment. Fire pumped through his veins. He was the assassin within, the hidden killer. Between the storm and the fact that his craft was painted up like an Awakener’s, he’d avoided drawing the attention of too many pilots at once. Those that took an interest didn’t know if he was the enemy, or his pursuers were. And there were dozens of identical Firecrows in the Awakeners’ service. Once he stopped shooting, he became invisible again.

I am the Coalition Navy, and the Coalition Navy is me
.

He’d head over to the other side of the convoy, start again. It would take them time to pick him up, and by then he’d be gone, harrying them elsewhere. He’d take the whole damned fleet down with him one by one if he had to!

Through the rain-streaked windglass of the cockpit, he caught sight of an aircraft ahead and above him, heading in his direction. He frowned, wiped at the glass, and then remembered the rain was on the outside. He narrowed his eyes and looked closer. There was something about that aircraft.

A gull-winged F-class Skylance, a racing craft bulked out with armour plate and fitted with underslung machine guns. He’d know that craft anywhere. There wasn’t another one like it.

‘Pinn!’ he cried joyously. ‘Hey! Pinn!’

The Skylance opened fire.

Harkins was shocked and slow to react, but his senses had been tuned by battle, and his instincts took over where thought failed him. He banked to starboard, swinging out of the path of the bullets, though not fast enough to avoid them entirely. Several glanced off the Firecrow’s armour. Burning tracers fizzed past him and away.

‘Pinn, you fat idiot! It’s me!’ he screamed. ‘Put in your earcuff!’

But Pinn couldn’t hear him. The Skylance plunged past him as Harkins swung away. He craned in his seat, trying to spot it again. He couldn’t let Pinn come up on him from beneath.

What that moron up to? Why was he attacking? But of course, Harkins knew the answer. His Firecrow looked like every other Firecrow out there. Pinn had no idea who he was.