‘Think that’s the last of ’em,’ she said, as she pulled him from the drift.
‘Persistent sons of bitches, weren’t they?’
‘Reckon they got orders saying nobody leaves alive.’
‘Well, I bloody am,’ said Frey. ‘Come on, can’t be far now. Swear I’ve got frostbite.’ He rubbed his hands together. They were numb and aching, but he couldn’t aim worth shit wearing his gloves, so he was forced to endure it.
Samandra was listening to the distant gunfire. ‘Strikes me my talents might be more use back there with them,’ she said.
‘By the time you get back there, there won’t be anything left. We gotta do something about their air superiority, and I need you on the autocannon.’
She didn’t argue the point any further. They hurried onward. Both were tired: ploughing through the snow was hard work. To their right the land rose, busy with the dark bristles of a hibernating forest. To their left there were no trees, just the howling emptiness of the gorge. Frey navigated by that.
As they went, he took his earcuff from his pocket and attached it with some difficulty. The snap of gunfire sounded in his ear, closer now, coming through Malvery’s earcuff.
‘Doc! How we doing?’
‘Ain’t good, Cap’n,’ came the reply. ‘Jez’s gone berserk and the whispermonger’s gone after her. We took down one gunship and the other’s pulled back a bit, but there’s a whole shitload of Awakeners crawlin’ up our arses and we only got five guns.’
Five guns. He did a quick mental count. Ashua, Silo, Malvery, Harkins, Grudge. They were all still fighting, he realised with relief.
‘Help’s on the way,’ he said. ‘Keep your heads down. You heard from Crake?’
‘You’d know if you ever put your bloody earcuff in,’ said Malvery. ‘No, not a peep.’
Frey couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he said ‘Good luck, mate.’
‘Yeah, you too.’
The boom of Malvery’s shotgun made him wince. He pulled out the earcuff and pocketed it again. Samandra was watching him, her eyes keen beneath the snow-specked fur lining of her hood.
‘No news is good news, right?’ he said to her.
Samandra said nothing.
They climbed another bank, and on the far side they found a clearing on the edge of the chasm, where the trees drew back and there was a stony hollow in the land. Looming out of the snow was the Ketty Jay, her blocky form solid and reassuring in the world of ghostly white.
Some of the tension went out of Frey as he saw her. A small part of him had been worrying that the Awakeners might have found her and surrounded her, as they had the Wrath on the landing pad.
There was a keypad on one of the Ketty Jay’s rear landing struts. Frey poked at the keys with trembling fingers. There was a thump inside the craft, and the squeaking of hydraulics as the ramp opened.
It had barely touched the ground before Bess came barrelling out of the darkened interior. She came to a halt at the bottom of the ramp, swinging her body left and right, looking for enemies. She’d been cooped up too long, and the sound of gunfire had made her agitated.
‘That way,’ said Frey, pointing back towards the hamlet. ‘Anyone that isn’t us, kick ’em all the way to the Wrack.’
Bess roared and thundered off into the trees.
‘That’s some precision strategy you got there,’ Samandra commented as they headed up the ramp.
Frey turned on the lights in the hold and closed the ramp behind them. ‘Every toolkit needs a hammer.’
They went quickly through the cargo hold, their breath steaming the air, and made their way up the stairs to the main passageway. Frey indicated the ladder leading up to the gunnery cupola as he went by.
‘Up there,’ he told her, already halfway to the cockpit.
Samandra slowed and looked up. ‘I ain’t got a clue how to work an autocannon,’ she said.
‘Just point it and pull the trigger,’ Frey called over his shoulder. He jumped in the pilot seat and began flicking switches, beginning with the heaters.
‘Why are there so many rum bottles up here?’ Samandra’s voice drifted through the cockpit door. He ignored her, tapped in the ignition code and hit the engines.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. This time the engines gave an asthmatic wheeze. Frey swore and started pumping the choke.
‘Can’t help noticing a distinct lack of any damn thing happenin’, Frey,’ Samandra shouted down. ‘Why ain’t we takin’ off?’
‘She’s frozen up!’ he yelled back. ‘Gotta let the internals heat through, get the anti-freeze going.’ He cursed himself. He should have had Silo out here keeping her warm. He never thought they’d need a quick launch.
‘How long’s that gonna take? Our guys ain’t exactly got a surplus of time.’
‘Not long!’ he called back confidently. Then, under his breath: ‘I hope.’
Crake went quietly through the mansion, listening as best he could through the ringing in his ears. There was an Imperator somewhere nearby. He felt it.
His hands were ready on the control panel of the sonic flux emitter. He’d fixed the broken connections, and now he was confident it would work as it should. Reasonably confident, anyway. There was no way of telling how much damage the device had suffered by being bashed about. No way except turning it on, anyway. And he wouldn’t do that yet.
Before, he’d been scared. He hadn’t been thinking straight. Turning on the device would likely have drawn the Imperators to him; he was lucky it hadn’t worked. But now he’d killed one of his opponents, and the fight was back in him.
He’d reclaimed his earcuff from where it had fallen, but he hadn’t put it in. He didn’t need help from the crew. He could do this. He could take down the Imperators.
Every muscle was stiff, every movement painful. The skin of his face felt blasted and scoured. A dozen tiny cuts stretched and opened beneath the slashes in his clothes. He bore it all with a stoicism he’d never imagined he possessed.
He crept up to a doorway and looked through. The room beyond was lit by a fire in the grate. A harpsichord stood askew, a settee out of place, a card table on its side. This was the parlour where the Imperators had first attacked them. He’d come back to find his companions.
Nothing moved, but for the lunge and swing of the firelight. He crept into the room, walking softly. From here, he could see past the harpsichord. Behind it, in the corner, a dark lump lay.
A faint nausea trickled into his stomach. Plome. Oh, no, Plome. I didn’t want to drag you into this.
But he’d done it anyway. He’d known the risks of asking his friend to be bait for the Imperators and he’d still gone ahead. Because the Awakeners had to be stopped.
He checked the room again and crept closer, crossing in front of the fire. Once the light was behind him, he could see a little better. He frowned. The lump was too small for Plome, and twisted in a strange way. Another step nearer, and he saw. A rug. A bunched-up rug, that had skidded into the corner, sent there by a running foot.
Plome was nowhere to be seen.
He let out a slow breath of relief. A quick check round the room found no sign of Kyne, either. They hadn’t been killed here. They’d escaped, as he had.
That’s good. That’s great. Now all I need to do is find them.
He slipped out of the parlour and into a corridor. The fight was still in full swing outside. Once in a while, faint screams came to him on the skirling wind. Still he felt the crawling sense of a daemonic presence, somewhere in the dark, somewhere close.
He looked round a corner. A long corridor stretched away from him, with windows all along one side, looking out across the chasm at the white valley slopes. He was on the far side of the mansion from the hamlet, and out there was nothing. Bleak light struggled in, casting the shadow of the panes onto the polished floor.