‘On it,’ said Frey. He pushed the Ketty Jay’s nose down and looped around to head back the other way. Above him, his outflyers were chasing the freighter’s escort all over the place. Pinn in his gull-winged Skylance, Harkins in his new-but-second-hand Firecrow that Frey bought him after he thrashed the last one to extinction. Mentally unstable as they were, they were both exceptional pilots. Given the quality of their opposition, four to two wouldn’t give them much trouble.
The murk closed in over the Ketty Jay, and the wind began to shake her again. ‘Some directions would be good,’ Frey suggested.
‘They’re above us,’ said Jez from behind him. ‘Oh-thirty-five.’ She was frowning, a faraway look in her eyes, listening to something he couldn’t hear. ‘They’ve broken cloud, heading for another thunderhead.’ She focused again, and became excited. ‘Boost it, Cap’n. We can catch them in the open if we’re quick.’
‘How in damnation can you tell that from-’ Frey began, then stopped himself. ‘Never mind. Woman’s intuition.’
He opened up the thrusters and the Ketty Jay drove onward and out into clear air. They found themselves in a canyon in the sky formed by the sides of two clouds, with the night above them and the ground far below. The shallow lakes and waterways of the Ossia wetlands shone in the moonlight.
Ahead and slightly above the Ketty Jay was the freighter, a dark slab in the storm, its thrusters aglow as it pushed across the canyon towards the slowly swirling wall on the other side.
‘Where are the aerium tanks on a thing like that?’ Frey asked Jez, as the Ketty Jay powered towards its target. She was the daughter of a craftbuilder: she tended to know these things.
‘On the underside, set central, one ten metres fore of the tail assembly and one just aft of the nose.’
Frey gauged the distance between him and his target. ‘Only gonna get one shot at this before we lose it in the cloud again,’ he muttered.
‘Then don’t miss it,’ said Jez, helpfully. A smile touched the corner of Frey’s mouth. That was more like the navigator he knew.
The trick to bringing down a freighter was to hole the ballast tanks. Once it was leaking aerium, it would become too heavy to stay in the sky. As long as the leak was slow enough, the pilot would be forced to land. But if the hole was too big, they’d drop too fast, and there wouldn’t be much left to salvage afterward. Frey didn’t have more than a passing concern for the people on board — they’d signed up with the enemy, after all — but he was very keen on keeping the cargo intact.
The gap between them closed up fast as he came at it from below. Either the freighter crew didn’t see him, or it didn’t have any guns worth firing. The Awakeners must have been stretched thin on resources to trust their treasures to such a light convoy.
Doubt brushed him. Too easy? Too late now.
Frey picked his spot, zeroing in on the aft tanks. There was nothing there to suggest a vulnerable point; it was only Jez’s knowledge of aircraft that guided him.
Closer, closer, and the freighter’s nose had almost reached the cloud.
Now.
The Ketty Jay’s machine guns rattled and a barrage of tracer fire whipped away through the night. Bullets scored the underside of the freighter. Then it slid into the cloud, and was lost to sight.
Frey throttled back and pulled away. He wasn’t chasing that thing in there, not after the scare he’d got last time. ‘Did I get it?’ he asked Jez.
She held up a hand to shut him up while she listened. Frey waited impatiently. Pinn’s triumphant whooping in his earcuff told him that his outflyers had polished off the escort.
‘Jez?’ he said again, when he could stand it no longer.
‘She’s losing altitude,’ Jez said, and gave him that ever-so-slightly frightening grin again. ‘She’s going down!’
Frey let out a little laugh, half of triumph, half of amazement at their triumph. ‘She’s heading for the deck, fellers,’ he said to his outflyers. ‘Come and watch the show.’ And he put the Ketty Jay into a shallow dive, thankful to be heading out of the storm at last.
Below the clouds, the Ossia wetlands spread out beneath them, a glittering muddle of weeds and water, of wide, shallow streams and islands shaggy with trees. Far to the east was the shore of Lake Atten, barely visible, stretching from horizon to horizon. Overhead, the procession of clouds following the storm channels flashed and grumbled. Lightning jabbed at the ground in the distance.
The freighter sank through the floor of the storm and kept sinking. It was a huge, ungainly thing, without wings, only stumpy ailerons for steerage. Something more like a whale than an aircraft, something that didn’t look like it belonged in the sky at all. Frey watched its grand, slow trajectory towards the earth. There was something majestic in its decline.
‘Will you look at that?’ said Frey. He felt expansive in the aftermath of the battle, taken by a new appreciation of the world. ‘That’s kinda beautiful.’
‘I bet the hundred or so people panicking inside it don’t think it’s so beautiful,’ Jez observed.
‘Hey, we gave them a soft landing,’ Frey protested, pointing at the wetlands below. ‘Besides, it’s their fault for being Awakeners. There’s a civil war on, y’know.’
‘A civil war that we kind of, er, started.’
Frey didn’t need reminding of that. ‘It was going to happen anyway,’ he said, as he’d said to himself many times over the past three months. ‘We just made sure the good guys didn’t get taken by surprise.’
‘Get your retaliation in first,’ Jez said, quoting one of Frey’s favourite maxims.
‘Damn right.’
Pinn and Harkins joined them as they descended, following the freighter down, predators tracking their wounded prey. The Awakener pilot managed to keep his craft mostly level right until the last moment. Frey held his breath in anticipation as they reached the ground.
Bring her in safe, he told the pilot.
The freighter touched down, landing on its belly and skimming across water and turf, raising huge fins of spray to either side. As its weight gathered, it ploughed deeper into the earth, the back end fishtailing out, a colossal slow-motion skid accompanied by the hiss of water and the screech of tortured metal. Even from up high, and far removed from the chaos, it was awe-inspiring.
When the water settled, the freighter lay still. Partly submerged, missing a few parts, but almost entirely intact.
It had worked. Their plan had worked. Frey could scarcely believe it.
‘Alright, boys and girls,’ he said. ‘Time for the hand-to-hand. Let’s get down there and rob the shit out of ’em.’ He flopped back in his seat. ‘Somebody wake up Bess.’
Two
From the darkness, a monster emerged.
It loomed into sight, filling up the passageway: a shadowy hulk, hunched and massive. The crash had shorted out the lights of the Awakener freighter, but emergency backups flickered fitfully, providing horrific glimpses of the intruder.
It was an ogre of tarnished metal and chainmail, standing eight feet high and five broad. Its face — if it had a face — was set low between its enormous shoulders and hidden behind a circular grille. Two malevolent and inhuman eyes peered out, cold chips of light shining in a void.
The Sentinels crouched in doorways or took what cover they could find. They were the guardians of the Awakeners, soldiers for the cause. They wore grey cassocks with high collars and the emblem of the Cipher emblazoned in black on the breast.
They aimed their rifles and let fly. Bullets sparked off the creature’s armour. It flinched, bellowed, then came stamping onward with a roar. The foremost of the Sentinels broke cover and ran. Seeing him falter, others followed, backing away in fear. One man, full of the zeal of the faithful, stepped bravely out into the centre of the corridor.