‘Layman’s terms, Crake,’ said Frey, getting ever so slightly annoyed.
‘Someone’s tracking the relic.’
‘There, now, that wasn’t so hard.’
Crake wondered if he did have a tendency to over-explain. He ought to work on that. ‘It’s just like the ring and compass, although, I reluctantly admit, more skilful and precise. But somebody, somewhere, has a device that tells them exactly where the relic is at all times.’
‘And only a daemonist could do this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Know any?’
‘None that have been anywhere near that relic.’
‘Can you block it?’
‘Should be easy enough. But it’ll take time.’
Frey tutted. ‘Time’s exactly what we don’t -’
A heavy shudder ran through the Ketty Jay, violent enough to make Crake stumble.
‘-have…’ Frey finished, in a tone of apprehension.
They waited, eyes roaming their surroundings as if they might see what had caused the disturbance.
‘Turbulence, I reckon,’ said Frey.
The Ketty Jay shivered again. Then suddenly it was shaken hard, and Crake wheeled across the cockpit to crash into the bulkhead on the far side.
He shook his head to clear it, only to find that the sickening slant to the cockpit was not a result of his disorientation. The Ketty Jay ’s thrusters puffed and boomed, dying and relighting again. She was listing hard to starboard, and there was a horrible ascending drone that Crake had learned to associate with plummeting aircraft. His stomach plummeted in sympathy.
‘Cap’n!’ he cried. ‘What’s happeni-’
‘Shut it! I’m busy!’ Frey barked at him. The Cap’n was struggling with the flight stick, frantically pulling levers, turning valves, kicking pedals. ‘Everything’s gone haywire!’
Crake clambered to his feet with the help of the back of the pilot’s seat. Over Frey’s shoulder, he could see all kinds of brass dials and meters on the dash. They were flicking crazily this way and that. The steel-coloured waves of desert sand outside were tilted at a frightening angle.
‘One of the aerium tanks is jammed half open!’ Frey cried, thrashing at a nearby lever. They lurched forward, throwing Crake hard against the back of the chair. ‘And the damn thrusters are-’ He swore and punched a button. The thrusters boomed once more and died.
The quiet was sudden and awful. The Ketty Jay ’s nose tipped steadily downwards. Frey wrestled with the stick to stop her rolling to starboard.
‘ What did you do to the thrusters? ’ Crake screamed.
Ugrik chuckled. ‘This is just like this time in Marduk. So cold, it were, the engine froze, and we-’
‘You can shut your trap as well!’ Frey yelled at him. He began frantically strapping himself in with one hand, while trying to hold the course with the other. He cr other. aned round in the seat and shouted down the corridor. ‘Everyone hang on!’
‘Hang on to what?’ Crake howled, casting around the cockpit for something to attach himself to. In the end, he stayed clinging to the back of the chair. He felt the Ketty Jay getting heavier and heavier as she lost aerium. She glided with terrible silent grace through the moonlit night.
‘Do something!’ Crake flapped.
‘Suggestions would be good!’
‘Hit some buttons!’
The Cap’n suddenly lit up. ‘Hey, I never tried that button before.’ He stabbed it with his finger.
The silence was filled by the steady whirring of fans as the air filtration system kicked in.
‘Oh, that ’s where it was,’ said Frey, and then Crake felt a terrific shove from behind, he struck his head against something hard, and the world went black.
Thirty-Seven
The moon hung bloated and malevolent against a dense backdrop of stars. In all directions, to the horizon and beyond, was the deep desert. Endless dunes, utterly still. Not a breath of wind stirred the silver sand. It might have been the landscape of a dead planet.
The Ketty Jay lay at the end of a massive furrow, a scar in the pristine vista. Her nose was buried where the sand had braked her. Her tail end was tilted up into the air at a shallow angle. She’d come in on her belly, her armoured undercarriage taking the brunt of the impact, and it was only as she’d come near to a halt that her front end had ploughed into the sand. There was enough aerium still in her tanks to make her much lighter than her size suggested, and Frey had managed to take a lot of speed out of her in the seconds before they crashed. The Ketty Jay had taken a battering, but she’d held together.
All things considered, it was a damned fine landing. Not that that made Frey feel much better about things.
‘Ain’t no reason for it, Cap’n,’ said Silo, who was peering into a panel underneath the dash. He had an electric torch, attached by wires to a nearby battery pack, and he was shining it around inside. ‘Can’t see none, anyways.’
Frey crouched next to him in the semi-darkness with an oil lantern from the stores. The cockpit windglass was almost entirely covered by the tide of sand. Only a sliver of moonlight was left, and thoe Ketty Jay’s internal lights weren’t working. Not even the emergency backups.
‘How did this happen?’ Frey asked. ‘She just got overhauled.’
‘Ain’t nothing to do with the aircraft,’ said Silo, emerging. ‘Systems that ain’t even connected all went down at the same time.’
‘So it’s something from outside?’
The Murthian’s face was sinister, underlit by the torch. ‘Couldn’t say, Cap’n.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You got your pocket watch? Left mine with a friend.’
Frey brought it out. Silo shone a light on it. ‘Still working,’ said Frey.
‘Watch is pretty simple. Clockwork. So maybe it’s just the delicate stuff got muddled.’
‘Can’t you, I don’t know, reset the systems or something?’
‘Cap’n, there ain’t no reason why some o’ them systems ain’t working. But they ain’t. I reckon whatever did this to the Ketty Jay, it’s still doin’ it. We ain’t even gonna get the lights up till we sort that out.’
Frey was grim. ‘Do what you can, then,’ he said, and then carried his lantern to his quarters and shut himself inside.
He laid his lantern on top of the cabinet, after making sure it wouldn’t slide off due to the Ketty Jay’ s uncomfortable tilt. The weak light made the small, grimy room even smaller and grimier. The flame flickered in uneasy streaks on the metal walls. He washed his face in the tiny sink – the water was running, but it didn’t heat – and regarded himself in the mirror.
He looked haggard. There were dark bags under his eyes and he hadn’t shaved recently. How long had it been since he slept properly? Seemed like for ever.
He returned to the cabinet and unlocked the drawer where he kept his Shine. It was a small clear bottle with a screw-top pipette. He went over to his bunk and sat on the edge, tipping the bottle this way and that, studying the liquid inside.
Probably enough to kill him in there, he reckoned.
He snorted. Stop being dramatic. He’d never had the temperament for suicide. But a couple of drops of Shine seemed like a good idea right about then. Forget everything for a few hours. Dream the blissful, feathery dreams of the Shine-stoned.
No more scrabbling about in the gutter, he’d told himself. Time to make the big moves, he’d said. After all, that was the kind of thie kind ong the hero of Sakkan ought to do. The kind of thing that was expected of him.
And look where he’d ended up. Cursed by some rat-damned ancient blade that he couldn’t keep his hands off. Jez in a coma. Pinn shot for a second time. The Firecrow wrecked. The Ketty Jay crashed in the trackless desert a thousand kloms from anywhere. Very possibly his crew would all die of starvation if the ship didn’t get fixed, but he had a messy evisceration at the hands of the Iron Jackal to look forward to instead. He’d probably helped to kick off a civil war back in Vardia, and he was on the Century Knights’ hit-list after his little stunt at the Mentenforth Institute. On top of that, he’d ruined things with Trinica, and he didn’t know if he could ever make it right, even if he did manage to survive long enough to try.