Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (63 page)

Fighter craft flitted about, whipping past like bullets. Sammies built their craft fragile but quick, and they were damned hard to get a bead on. The sky was dangerously crowded with big craft and little ones alike, everyone on their own trajectory, a panicked herd harassed by nimble predators. Aircraft smashed into each other. Shellfire detonated all around him.

Frey kept his head down and concentrated on threading the
Ketty Jay
safely through the chaos. Sammies or Awakeners, his mission hadn’t changed. His object was the
Delirium Trigger
and Trinica. Let the world throw what obstacles it would in his path. He had one last chance to save her, and everyone else with her. His previous despair had fallen away; hope had lit a fire inside. Nothing was going to stop him now.

The Samarlans’ betrayal was a master stroke. Their fleet was too precious to risk even a small part of it, their aerium too limited for even a short campaign in the air. So they’d sold the Azryx device to the Awakeners, and they’d let the Awakeners do all the work for them. The Awakeners had torn the country apart; the Awakeners had suffered the losses necessary to lure the Coalition Navy within range of the device.

And now the Samarlans came in with a surprise attack, having travelled unopposed across Vardic skies. A fleet of well-armed, highly-trained pilots against a group of mercenaries and volunteers, their forces already damaged and weakened. The Sammies had the same countermeasures as the Awakeners and the
Ketty Jay
, so the Azryx device didn’t work on them. And if their timing seemed near-perfect, that was probably because someone on the inside had told them when and where the Awakener attack would occur.

That would be Ashua, then.

The Sammies weren’t going to give Vardia to the Awakeners. That was never their plan. They didn’t want to trade for their aerium any more. They were going to take it for themselves. And with the Coalition Navy out of the way, there wasn’t a lot anyone could do about it.

If this was what future generations would call the Third Aerium War, it would be the shortest war in history.

The
Ketty Jay
’s thrusters screamed as Frey drove her towards the heart of the convoy, where the
Delirium Trigger
hung like a spider at the centre of a web. Pinn and Harkins swept around him, now ahead and now behind, chasing off Sammies, shooting them down when they could. Pinn’s maniacal cackling was getting wearisome, but Frey kept the earcuff in all the same. For once he was glad of the noise in his ear. He hadn’t realised what a comfort his crew were until he’d almost lost them.

The other frigates had gathered around the flagship and the
Delirium Trigger
, a hard core of artillery to defend the Lord High Cryptographer and his Azryx device. Cannons boomed, machine guns spat and autocannons pounded, tracking Sammie fighters as they lashed past in the rain. The sheer noise of it was terrifying. The
Ketty Jay
shook and shuddered as Frey fought to see through the rain sliding off the windglass.

Don’t worry about me
, he told them silently.
I’m an Awakener
.

And as far as they knew, he was. The
Ketty Jay
, with its Cipher decals showing proudly, slipped through the bombardment. The frigates had other targets.

‘Pinn! Harkins! You’ve done your bit! Get out of here!’ he said.

‘No, sir!’ said Harkins. ‘Not while there’s Sammies and Awakeners in the sky over Thesk!’

‘I’m not even halfway done killin’ these losers yet!’ Pinn cried, with an edge of happy delirium in his voice.

‘Alright,’ said Frey. ‘Stay safe. I want to see you both on the other side.’

Now he was above the core of the convoy, and he tipped the
Ketty Jay
into a dive and plunged in. The gathered frigates were like dark metal islands, floating in the sky. He darted between them; their flanks thundered past in a blur. Other Awakener fighters were in here with him, buzzing about like flies, sheltering behind the bigger craft. They ignored him, and he ignored them.

And then there she was, below him. A black shape in the rain, her huge bow emerging from behind another frigate, cannons roaring as she sent shells out towards the Sammies’ capital craft. He closed in with reckless speed, coming in aft of her, and hit the airbrakes hard while dumping aerium from his tanks. Samandra grabbed the navigator’s desk as the
Ketty Jay
decelerated, dropping down towards the
Delirium
’s main deck.

Either the gunners were busy with other matters, or they thought that nobody was foolish enough to try what Frey had in mind. By the time someone realised and swivelled one of the deck guns towards him, it was too late.

The
Ketty Jay
landed heavily and too fast, throwing Frey forward in his chair. She slammed onto her skids with a scream of metal, and magnetic clamps locked on. Frey felt a blaze of pain in his back as his spine was jolted, and Samandra went sprawling on her hands and knees. The
Ketty Jay
’s hydraulics howled as residual forward momentum threatened to rip her from her skids, and for a moment Frey thought she’d topple forward and collapse in a heap of twisted metal.

But then, just when it seemed she couldn’t strain any further, she rocked back again and settled. When they looked up, the deck of the
Delirium Trigger
spread out before them, big enough for a dozen of his craft. Despite the gunner’s best efforts, they were too low to be shot at: safety mechanisms prevented the cannons firing when they might hit their own aircraft.

‘We’re down,’ said Frey.

Samandra looked up from the floor and tipped her tricorn hat back from where it had fallen over her face. ‘You don’t say,’ she replied drily.

Frey released himself from the pilot’s seat and snatched up his cutlass and pistols. Samandra was already out the door, heading down to the hold where the others waited ready. It would only be moments before the crew of the
Delirium Trigger
came swarming out on to the deck.

Frey took a breath. It wasn’t the thought of the fight to come that scared him. It was the thought of facing Trinica.

Time to do this.

He went out into the corridor. Dull explosions from the battle outside rang through the
Ketty Jay
’s hull. The soldier in the cupola had descended the ladder and was disappearing down the stairs into the hold. Frey was about to follow him when something caught his eye further down the corridor.

The door of the infirmary was open. Something black was poking through the doorway, moving slightly.

Frey knew he didn’t have time for it, but there was something urgent in the sight, something that needed investigating. He walked closer, warily, until it became clear that the black thing was a strip of tarp, quivering under the influence of the
Ketty Jay
’s air filters. He went to the doorway and looked inside.

The strip of tarp was part of a larger piece, a sack that lay on the floor near the door, which had been ripped open. It took him a moment to realise that it was the remains of the body bag they’d stored Jez’s charred corpse in. Events had moved so fast that there hadn’t even been time to bury her, so they’d left her on the operating table.

Frey looked from the empty table to the ripped body bag and back again. She wasn’t there now.

He turned and ran, heading down to the hold, his mind awhirl. What did it mean? Had somebody been aboard and taken her while they were imprisoned?

Had she got up and
walked away
?

The cargo ramp was opening as he hurried down the stairs. Crake and Kyne were near the back of the assembled forces, wearing big backpacks and weighed down with daemonist paraphernalia. The Coalition soldiers clutched their weapons, taut with anticipation. Other Century Knights stood among them: Samandra Bree with her tricorn hat and her shotguns; Celerity Blane with her rotary machine-pistols, her face dirtied and eyes fierce; Eldrew Grissom, with his straggly grey hair and his duster full of blades. Colden Grudge had stayed behind; autocannons would be useless here, where the fighting would be at close quarters.

And then there were the golems, in the vanguard. Four of them, not counting Bess, who stood shyly at their side. Pale light from outside spilled onto metal skin as the ramp lowered and the sound of shellfire became louder and more immediate.

The ramp thumped down onto the deck, and they charged.

When the echoes of their battle-cries had died away, when the ramp had closed behind them and the hold stood empty and silent, then she emerged from the shadows.

Everything was pain. Every movement stabbed her with a dozen hot knives. Her vision was a blur, blobs of weak colour and nothing more. She existed in a state of torment.

And yet, she existed.

Jez took a shuffling step out into the light. Red eyes with yellow irises squinted out from a mask of carbonised flesh. One trembling arm was held uselessly before her chest, mottled and weeping with sores. Her overalls – more fireproof than her flesh – still clung to her in pieces. Bits of burnt skin flaked away from her as she moved.

All but the vestiges of reason had fled, driven away by agony. But there was purpose in her, a single goal that pushed her on. It was instinct that guided her now. She put one foot in front of the other, and made her excruciating way forward.

The damage had almost been too much, the shock to her system too great. She’d burned; her flesh had cooked. Had she been living, she would have been overwhelmed. As it was, she’d come within a hair’s breadth of extinction.

But the damage, great as it was, was mostly on the outside. Manes whose bodies had become useless or inoperable were abandoned by the entity that linked them together, severed from the network. Jez’s had just enough left to salvage.

So the daemon began rebuilding her patiently, replacing what needed replacing, changing what needed to be changed. Cell by cell it reconstructed her from the inside out. Even now, it was working: dead nerves were coming back to life; eyes that had boiled and split were swimming back into focus.

She was healing.

In her mind she heard the howls of her brethren. They called encouragement to her, they shared her pain. They told her she was not alone. Their voices gave her the strength to keep going.

Hidden in the dark recesses of the
Ketty Jay
’s cavernous hold, behind crates of machine parts and who knew what else, she found a vent. The grate was loose, but stiff enough to defeat her at first, weakened as she was. She slid her nails into the tiny gap between the grate and the bulkhead, nails that had grown longer and stronger than ever before. The second time she pulled, there was more strength in her. The vent came away with a shriek.

No breath inflated her thin chest. Her heart was still. She reached into the vent, and took hold of a large grey metal casket. It crashed to the floor as she pulled it out, too heavy for her to hold up.

A pair of eyes glittered in the blackness at the end of the vent. Already her eyesight had sharpened enough to make them out. There was a scrabble of claws, and the eyes disappeared.

A cat. She fought to concentrate through the singing in her head. Was it Slag? Slag, who’d guided her to this treasure in the first place? No, not him. He had departed; his mind was silent. Then it was the other cat. The female.

She couldn’t hold on to the thought. It didn’t seem important. All that was important was what was in the box, the thing that Osger had died looking for, that Pelaru had wanted to destroy. What a repellent idea that seemed now. She could no more destroy what was in the box than she could destroy herself. It was part of her, just as her brethren were part of her. Pelaru had never seen that. And though he’d died attempting to save her, she felt nothing for him. He’d chosen to remain apart, too fearful to embrace what he was. He didn’t deserve her lament.

She opened the casket. Inside was a smooth sphere of deepest black. Silver lines ran all across its surface in curves and circles, crafted without symmetry or any pattern that the human mind could grasp. But she saw the pattern, and it was beautiful.

She reached inside and lifted it up, cupping it with both hands. It seemed to throb with energy. Her nerves crackled; the touch of it filled her with exhilaration. The voices in her head were overwhelming now, drowning out everything else. An immense compulsion came over her. The power in the sphere demanded to be used, demanded to be let free. She had no reason to deny it. And she knew how to do it, too.

This wasn’t the first time she’d held a device like this in her hands. She’d used one before, in Sakkan, at the insistence of Captain Grist.

The Awakeners hadn’t realised what they had in their shrine at Korrene until it was too late. By the time they did, by the time their spies had dug out the details of the tale of Captain Grist, the shrine was already lost, the city destroyed by an earthquake. Then the shrine had been found again, and the Awakeners rushed to reclaim it. But Osger had found it first. In following him, Pelaru obtained it. And now it had come to Jez.

It was a distress beacon, an alarm, taken from a Mane dreadnought some time in the distant past. It was a summons, a call to arms. It was Jez’s way home.

They wanted to fight. She sensed it. As she lay dormant, the daemon had picked through her thoughts and divined what she knew. It had learned of a deadly threat, the potential of a daemon nation to the south. If the Awakeners took Vardia, they’d be within striking distance of the Wrack. And that was something that would not be borne.

Call us
, they urged her.
Bring us. We are ready
.

She held the sphere to her scorched breast and bowed her head over it, gathering it to her like the most precious of infants.
Come and get me,
she thought, and she let the wild power loose.

The golems roared and raged, smashing through the crew of the
Delirium Trigger
as they fought on the rain-slick deck. Bess roared with them, stamping here and there on her stubby legs, swinging her huge arms. She tore away limbs and crushed the fallen. Bullets bounced off her armour, and slowed her not a bit. One of Trinica’s pirates got the back of her hand and went sailing over the gunwale and out into the sky.