‘Pinn!’ Malvery bellowed. The pilot winced. ‘Someone you should meet.’
Pinn crushed out the cigarette as they approached and extended a hand for Jez to shake. He was short, stout and swarthy, with a shapeless thatch of black hair and chubby cheeks that overwhelmed his eyes when he managed a nauseous smile of greeting. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, young for a pilot.
‘Artis Pinn, meet Jezibeth Kyte,’ said Malvery. ‘She’s coming on as navigator.’
‘Jez,’ she corrected. ‘Never liked Jezibeth.’
Pinn looked her up and down. ‘Be nice to have a woman on board,’ he said, his voice deep and toneless.
‘Pinn isn’t firing on all cylinders this morning, are you, boy?’ Malvery said, slapping him roughly on the shoulder. Pinn went a shade greyer and held up his hand to ward off any more blows.
‘I’m an inch from losing my breakfast here,’ he murmured. ‘Lay off.’ Malvery guffawed and Pinn cringed, pummelled by the doctor’s enormous mirth.
‘You modified this yourself?’ Jez asked, running a hand over the Skylance’s flank. The F-class was a racer, a single-seater built for speed and manoeuvrability. It had long, smoothly curved gull-wings. The cockpit was set far back along the fuselage, to make space for the enormous turbine in its nose that fed to a thruster at the tail end. This one had been bulked out with armour plate and fitted with underslung machine guns.
‘Yeah.’ Pinn roused a little. ‘You know aircraft?’
‘Grew up around them. My dad was a craftbuilder. I used to fly everything I could get my hands on.’ She nodded towards the Ketty Jay. ‘I bet I could even fly that piece of crap.’
Malvery snorted. ‘Good luck getting the Cap’n to let you.’
‘What was your favourite?’ Pinn asked her.
‘He built me an A-18 for my sixteenth birthday. I loved that little bird.’
‘So what happened? You crash it?’
‘She gave up the ghost five years back. I put her down in some little port up near Yortland and she just never took off again. I didn’t have two shillies to bash together for repairs, so I took on with a crew as a navvie. Thought I could do long-haul navigation easy enough; I mean, I’d been doing it for myself all that time on the short-haul. That first trip I got us lost; we wandered into Navy airspace and a couple of Windblades nearly blew us out of the sky. Had to learn pretty quick after that.’
‘I like her,’ Pinn said to Malvery.
‘Well, good,’ he replied. ‘Come on, let’s say hi to Harkins.’ They nodded their farewells.
‘He ain’t a bad lad,’ said Malvery as they walked over to the Firecrow. ‘Dumb as a rock, but he’s talented, no doubt about that. Flies like a maniac.’
Firecrows had once been the mainstay of the Navy, until they were succeeded by newer models. They were built for dogfighting, with two large prothane thrusters and machine guns incorporated into the wings. A round bubble of windglass was set into the blunt snout to give the pilot a better field of vision from the cockpit, which was set right up front, in contrast to the Skylance.
Harkins was in the Firecrow, running rapidly through diagnostics. He was gangly, unshaven and hangdog, wearing a leather pilot’s cap pushed far back. His dull brown hair was thin and receding from his high forehead. Flight goggles hung loosely around his neck. He moved in rapid jerks, like a mouse, tapping gauges and flicking switches with an expression of fierce concentration. As they approached, he burrowed down to examine something in the footwell.
‘Harkins!’ Malvery yelled at the top of his considerably loud voice. Harkins jumped and smashed his head noisily on the flight stick.
‘What? What?’ Harkins cried, popping up again with a panicked look in his eyes.
‘I want to introduce you to the new navvie,’ Malvery said, beaming. ‘Jez, this is Harkins.’
‘Oh,’ he said, taking off his hat and rubbing his crown. He looked down at Jez, then launched into a quick, nervous babble, his sentences running into each other in their haste to escape his mouth. ‘Hi. I was doing, you know, checking things and that. Have to keep her in good condition, don’t I? I mean, what’s a pilot without a plane, right? I guess you’re the same with maps. What’s a navigator without a map? Still a navigator, I suppose, it’s just that you wouldn’t have a map, but you know what I mean, don’t you?’ He pointed at himself. ‘Harkins. Pilot.’
Jez was a little stunned. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ was all she could say.
‘Is that the Cap’n?’ Harkins said suddenly, looking away across the docks. He pulled the flight goggles up and over his eyes. ‘It’s Crake and the Cap’n,’ he confirmed. His expression became alarmed again. ‘They’re, um, they’re running. Yep, running down the hill. Towards the docks. Very fast.’
Malvery looked skyward in despair. ‘Pinn!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Something’s up!’
Pinn sloped into view around his Skylance and groaned. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No, it bloody can’t. Tool up. Cap’n needs help.’ He looked at Jez. ‘Can you shoot?’
Jez nodded.
‘Grab yourself a gun. Welcome to the crew.’
Three
A Hasty Departure - Gunplay - One Is Wounded - A Terrifying Encounter
They were passing out weapons, gathered behind a stack of crates that had been piled up astern of the Ketty Jay, when Crake and the captain reached them.
‘Trouble?’ Malvery asked.
‘Must be that time of the week,’ Frey replied, then yelled for Silo.
‘Cap’n,’ came the baritone reply from the Murthian, who was squatting at the top of the cargo ramp.
‘You get the delivery?’
‘Yuh. Came an hour ago.’
‘How long till you can get her up?’
‘Aerium’s cycling through. Five minutes.’
‘Fast as you can.’
‘Yes, Cap’n.’ He disappeared into the hold.
Frey turned to the others. ‘Harkins. Pinn. Get yourselves airborne. We’ll meet you above the clouds.’
‘Is there gonna be a rumble?’ Pinn asked hopefully, rousing briefly from his hangover. Harkins was already halfway to his aircraft by the time he finished the sentence.
‘Get out of here!’ Frey barked at him. Pinn mumbled something sour under his breath, stuffed his pistol into his belt and headed for the Skylance, oozing resentment at being cheated of a fight.
‘Macarde’s on his way,’ said Frey, as Malvery passed him a box of bullets. ‘Bringing a gang with him.’
‘We’re low on ammo,’ Malvery murmured. ‘Make ’em count.’
‘Don’t waste too many on Crake, then,’ Frey said, loading the lever-action shotgun he’d taken from Droop-Eye. ‘He couldn’t hit the side of a frigate if he was standing next to it.’
‘Right-o, Cap’n,’ said Malvery, giving Crake a generous handful anyway. Crake didn’t rise to the jibe. He looked about ready to keel over from the run.
Frey nodded at Jez. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Jez. New navvie,’ Malvery said with the tone of someone who’d got tired of introducing the same person over and over.
Frey gave her a cursory appraisal. She was small and slight, which was good, because it meant she wouldn’t take up too much space and would hopefully have an equally small appetite. Her hair was tied in a simple ponytail which, along with her unflatteringly practical clothes, suggested a certain efficiency. Her features were petite and appealing but she was rather plain, boyish and very pale. That was also good. An overly attractive woman was fatal on a craft full of men. They were distracting and tended to substitute charm and flirtatiousness for doing any actual work. Besides, Frey would feel obliged to sleep with her, and that never worked out well.
He nodded at Malvery. She’d do.
‘So who’s Macarde, then?’ Jez asked, chambering bullets as she spoke. When they looked at her, she shrugged and said, ‘I just like to know who I’m shooting.’
‘The story, in a nutshell,?
?? said Malvery. ‘We sold the local crime lord twelve canisters of degraded aerium at cut price rates so we could raise the money to buy three canisters of the real stuff, since we barely had enough to get off the ground ourselves.’
‘Problem is, our contact let us down,’ said Frey, settling into position behind the crates and sighting along his shotgun. ‘His delivery came late, which meant he couldn’t get us the merchandise on time, which meant we were stuck in port just long enough for one of Macarde’s bumble-butt pilots to fly into a wall.’
‘Hence the need for a swift departure,’ said Malvery. ‘Flawless plans like this are our stock-in-trade. Still want to sign on?’
Jez primed her rifle with a satisfying crunch of metal. ‘I was tired of this town anyway.’
The four of them took up position behind the crates, looking out at the approach road to the docks. The promontory was accessed by way of a wide, cobbled thoroughfare that ran between a group of tumbledown warehouses. The dockers who worked there were moving aside as if pushed by a bow wave, driven to cover by the sight of Lawsen Macarde and twenty gun-wielding thugs storming down the street.
‘That’ll be us outnumbered and outgunned, then,’ Malvery murmured. He looked back to where the Skylance and the Firecrow were rising from the ground, aerium engines throbbing as their electromagnets turned refined aerium into ultralight gas to fill their ballast tanks. Separate, prothane-fuelled engines, which powered the thrusters, were warming up with an ascending whine.
‘Where’s Bess, anyway?’ Frey asked Crake.
‘Do I look like I’ve got her in my pocket?’ he replied irritably.
‘Could do with some help right now.’
‘She’ll be cranky if I have to wake her up.’
‘Cranky is how I want her.’
Crake pulled out a small brass whistle that hung on a chain around his neck, and blew it. It made no sound at all. Frey was about to offer a smart comment concerning Crake’s lack of lung power when a bullet smashed into a crate near his head, splintering through the wood. He swore and ducked reflexively.
Crake replaced the whistle, then leaned out of cover and unleashed a wild salvo of pistol fire. His targets yelled and pointed fearfully, then scattered for cover, throwing themselves behind sacks and barrels that were waiting to be loaded into the warehouses.
‘Ha!’ Crake cried in triumph. ‘It seems they don’t doubt my accuracy with a pistol.’
An instant later his hair was blown forward as Pinn’s Skylance tore through the air mere feet above him, machine guns raking the street. Barrels were smashed to matchwood and several men jerked and howled as they were punched with bullets. The Skylance shrieked up the street and then twisted to vertical, arrowing into the clouds and away.
‘Yeah,’ said Frey, deadpan. ‘You’re pretty scary with that thing.’
The dockers had all fled inside by now, leaving the way clear for the combatants. Macarde’s men were at the edge of the landing pad, fifty feet away. Between them was a small, two-man flyer and too much cover for Frey’s liking. The smugglers had been shocked by Pinn’s assault, but they were regrouping swiftly.
Frey and Jez began laying down fire, making them scuttle. One smuggler went down, shot in the leg. Another unwisely took shelter behind a large but empty packing crate. Malvery hefted a double-barrelled shotgun, aimed, and blew a ragged hole through the crate and the man behind it.
‘Silo! How we doing?’ Frey called, but the mechanic couldn’t hear him over the return fire from the smugglers.
‘Darian Frey!’ Macarde called, from his hiding place behind a stack of aircraft tyres. ‘You’re a dead man!’
‘Threats,’ Frey murmured. ‘Honestly, what’s the point?’
‘They’re trying to flank us!’ said Jez. She fired at one of the smugglers, who was scampering from behind a pile of broken hydraulic parts. The bullet cut through the sleeve of his shirt, missing him by a hair. He froze mid-scamper and fled back into hiding.
‘Cheap kind of tactic, if you ask me,’ Crake commented, having recovered sufficient breath for a spot of nervous bravado. He knocked the shells from the drum of his revolver and slotted five new ones in. ‘The kind of sloppy, unoriginal thinking you come to expect from these mid-level smuggler types.’
Jez peered round the side of the crates, looking for the man she’d shot at. Instead she saw another, making his way from cover to cover, attempting to get an angle on them. He disappeared before she could draw a bead on him.
‘Can I get a bit less wit and a bit more keeping your bloody eyes open for these sons of bitches coming round the side?’ she snapped.
‘She’s no shrinking violet, I’ll give her that,’ Frey commented to Malvery.
‘The girl’s gonna fit right in,’ the doctor agreed.
More of Macarde’s gang had moved up and taken shelter behind the two-man flyer. Crake was peppering it with bullets.
‘Ammo!’ Malvery reminded him.
Frey ducked away as a salvo of gunfire blasted chips from the stone floor and splintered the wood of the crates. Malvery answered with his shotgun, loudly enough to discourage any more, then dropped back to reload.
Jez stuck her head out again, concerned that she’d lost sight of the men who were trying to flank them. Despite her warning, her companions were still preoccupied with taking pot-shots at the smugglers approaching from the front.
A flash of movement: there was another one! A third man, edging into position to shoot from the side, where their barricade of crates would be useless.
‘Three of them over here!’ she cried.
‘We’re a little busy at the moment,’ Frey replied patiently.
‘You’ll be busy picking a bullet out of your ear if you don’t—’ she began, but then she got shot.
It was a white blaze of pain, knocking the wind from her and blasting her senses. Like being hit by a piston. The impact threw her backwards, into Crake, who half-caught her as she fell.
‘She’s hit!’ he cried.
‘Already?’ Frey replied. ‘Damn, they usually last longer than that. Malvery, take a look.’
The doctor blasted off two shots to keep the smugglers’ heads down, then knelt next to Jez. Her already unhealthy pallor had whitened a shade further. Dark red blood was soaking through her jacket from her shoulder. ‘Ah, girl, come on,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t be dying or anything.’
‘I’m alright, Doc,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m alright.’
‘Just you stay still.’
‘Haven’t got time to stay still,’ she replied, struggling to her feet, clutching her shoulder. ‘I told you they were coming round the side! Where’s the one who . . . ?’ She trailed off as she caught sight of something behind them, coming down the cargo ramp, and her face went slack. ‘What is that?’
Malvery turned and looked. ‘That? That’s Bess.’
Eight feet tall and five broad, a half-ton armoured monstrosity loomed out of the darkness into the light of the morning. There was nothing about her to identify her as female. Her torso and limbs were slabbed with moulded plates of tarnished metal, with ragged chain mail weave beneath. She stood in a hunch, the humped ridge of her back rising higher than her enormous shoulders. Her face was a circular grille, a criss-cross of thick bars like the gate of a drain. All that could be seen behind it were two sharp glimmers: the creature’s eyes.
Jez caught her breath. A golem. She’d only heard of such things.
A low growl sounded from within the creature, hollow and resonant. Then she came down the ramp, her massive boots pounding the floor as she accelerated. Cries of alarm and dismay rose from the smugglers. She jumped off the side of the ramp and landed with a rattling boom that made the ground tremble. One gloved hand scooped up a barrel that would have herniated the average human, and flung it at a smuggler who was hiding behind a pile of crates. It smashed through the crates and crushed the man behind, burying him under an avalanche of broken wood.
‘Well, she’s
cranky, alright,’ said Frey. ‘Good old Bess.’
The golem tore into the smugglers who had been sneaking round the flanks, a roaring tower of fury. Bullets glanced from her armour, leaving only scratches and small dents. One of the smugglers, panicking, made a break from cover. She seized him by the throat with a loud crack and then flung his limp corpse at his companions.
Another man tried to race past her while her back was turned, but she was quicker than her bulk suggested. She lunged after him, grabbing his arm with massive fingers. Bone splintered in the force of her grip. Her victim’s brief shrieks were cut short as she tore the arm from its socket and clubbed him across the face with it, hard enough to knock him dead.