Malvery chuckled at his friend’s evident excitement. ‘Blimey, it’s obvious what fires your engine.’
Crake grinned. ‘Yes, well. One of the things they somehow did, and I’ve no idea how, is they’ve made the Cap’n into some kind of… some kind of beacon. He’s putting out a signal, and I think that’s what the Iron Jackal uses to find its target. There’s no question of him getting away. It always knows where he is.’
‘And you think you can block it?’
Crake snapped his fingers. ‘Exactly. Competing frequencies interfere and cancel each other out. That device I gave the Cap’n is a modified resonator, which should – theoretically – cut out that signal.’
‘I’m sensing a but,’ Malvery said.
‘But, the problem is power. My portable batteries are so big you have to cart them around in a backpack, and even they only last a short while. Unless the Cap’n wants to stand by a plug socket the rest of his life, I can’t cut out that signal for long.’
Malvery frowned. ‘So what use is it, then?’
‘With a small battery pack, he can cut it out for a few minutes. Now I don’t know how the daemon hunts, but maybe it’ll give the Cap’n a chance next time it comes for him. And what I do know is that there’s only three nights left before the full moon, and the Iron Jackal still hasn’t put in its second appearance.’ He tapped the table nervously. ‘I’ve got some other ideas too, but they’re not ready yet. I’ve been going as fast as I can.’
Malvery could believe it. Crake looked about ten years older than he was. ‘Sounds like you’re doing a bloody good job, mate.’
Crake gave him a half-smile to acknowledge the compliment. He looked the doctor over uncertainly, then said: ‘You know, not so long ago I was thinking about leaving the Ketty Jay.’
‘You were?’ Malvery was surprised to hear that Crake’s feelings had been running so close to his own.
‘Yes. I decided that… Well, I’d gone as far as I could go. Yes. Iuo; He fidgeted awkwardly and lowered his voice. ‘I’m a daemonist, Malvery. That’s who I am. And while I stay on the Ketty Jay I’ll never have access to the proper equipment. I’ll always be limited by that.’
‘You’ve got a talent and it’s going to waste,’ said Malvery, smoothing his moustache with a knuckle. ‘I get that.’
‘But this business with the Cap’n, it’s given me a bit of a jolt. Forced me to think on my feet. I don’t have state-of-the-art gear, so I’m having to make do with what I have. What’s happening here, it’s a unique opportunity.’
‘An opportunity, you say?’ Malvery’s tone indicated what he thought of Crake’s choice of words.
‘You know what I mean. I’m doing my damnedest to be ready in case the curse isn’t lifted when – if – we return the relic to its rightful place. But I’m not blind to the scientific value of all of this. As far as I know, no one’s ever reliably documented the methods that I’m trying out.’
Malvery felt slightly uncomfortable about the idea of the Cap’n being anyone’s guinea-pig, but he reckoned it would be churlish to make a thing of it. After all, Crake was doing a lot more about the situation than he was.
He flexed his hand back and forth into a fist, frustrated. ‘I wish I could, I dunno, be more useful. I mean, I can help out with relics and all that, but a daemon? A daemon that you can’t bloody see and you never know when it’s coming? I get to thinkin’, what if that was me in the Cap’n’s shoes? Waitin’ for that thing to come and get me when I was alone.’ He took a drink. ‘I’d be scared to buggery.’
‘He is scared to… er… buggery,’ Crake replied. ‘Look, we don’t know when it’s coming next, but we know when it’s coming last. On the full moon. And he won’t be alone that time, I promise you that.’
Malvery coughed on the liquor. ‘Let me get this straight: you’re gonna take on that thing?’
Crake looked down at the table. ‘I’m going to try,’ he said. Then he gave a terrified little smile. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, eh? We’ll put that relic back, and all will be well.’
‘Blimey,’ said Malvery, with genuine admiration. ‘You’re a braver man than me.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Crake.
They sat back in their chairs and listened to the hubbub of the street below, sharing a companionable silence for a time.
"You know what does scare me, though?’ Crake said suddenly. ‘The thought that I might have missed out on this.’
‘This?’
He waved a hand across to indicate the cafe and the scorched, grubby city around them. ‘This. Here. Now. I was really thinking about leaving, you know. I was so fixed on the idea that I needed to do this thing, that I needed a sanctum of my own. I was going to leave my friends behind and go live in some stuffy, safe world of my own. A nice little existence with no hard choices and no nasty shocks. And there’d be no more visiting strange new places, no more saving whole cities like we did at Sakkan-’
‘No more dating Century Knights,’ Malvery said.
Crake flushed and looked downcast. ‘Yes, either way there’ll be no more of that. I’m quite sure she’d shoot me if she saw me again, and I’d deserve it too.’
Malvery chuckled. ‘Still. Samandra Bree. Even the Cap’n can’t say that.’
‘I can’t deny, being on the Ketty Jay does put you in the thick of it.’
‘That,’ said Malvery, ‘is bloody true.’
Crake looked uncomfortable, and Malvery realised that he was more upset about Samandra Bree than he’d been letting on. He probably shouldn’t have laughed, in hindsight, but it was a bit late now.
‘So have you thought about it?’ Crake asked.
‘About what?’
‘What you’d do if the Cap’n was gone?’
Malvery sipped his liquor. ‘Aye,’ he said. Down by the warehouse gate, a thickset Dakkadian was waving up at him. Malvery raised a hand in response. ‘Breaktime’s over. Let’s get to it.’
‘You know,’ said Crake, as they got to their feet. ‘I rather like being an honest trader. It’s quite relaxing. Makes a change from getting shot at all the time.’
‘Don’t get used to it,’ said Malvery, and they left.
Fang and flurry and hot blood bursting in her mouth, the salty victory of the kill. The musty stench of the rat, her hated enemy, filled her nostrils as it struggled in her pinning grip. She marvelled at how the flesh gave way before the points of her teeth and claws. Such a soft sheath for a life, so easy to penetrate.
It was a small rat, no contest at all. Not like the bigger ones d bietrate.
Except once. One of the warm tall beings that clomped and stank in the wide spaces of her world, the corridors and cargo bays. The gangly, nervous one, who’d trapped her and flown her into the endless terror of the sky and then…
She wasn’t sure. It was a smear of feelings rather than an ordered sequence of events, like all her memories. All she knew was that the gangly one was not to be trifled with.
She devoured the rat, tearing open its belly and gobbling the innards. She was mistress of the kill. This was rightness.
Slag ate, and Jez ate with him.
It was hard to know where the cat ended and the person began. She was sewn into the fabric of him, her instincts muddled by his. Her body sat in the pilot’s seat of the Ketty Jay, but her mind was divided. One part was with her body, still aware, ready to lift off from the landing pad at the first sign of trouble. The other was a passenger in Slag’s brain, down in the warm vents and crawlways of the Ketty Jay.
Slag, for his part, didn’t understand what was happening. He was aware of her, she knew, but he had no concept of the implications. Once, he’d feared her, sensing the Mane in her; but now she was a familiar presence, and he was as comfortable with her as if she were his litter-sister. She’d soaked into him, and it was like he’d known her for ever.