Iron Jackal (48 page)

It was hard to make out detail, even with a spyglass. The drifting yellow vapours turned everything to a haze. But as he scanned the compound there was something that caught his eye and made him frown. He passed to the spyglass to Silo.

‘Left side, just inside the wall,’ he said. ‘What d’you reckon?’

Silo took a look. ‘Anti-aircraft gun,’ he said at length.

‘That’s what I thought.’ Frey swore under his breath. ‘What the spit do they need an anti-aircraft gun for? Apart from, y’know, shooting down aircraft.’

‘This place ain’t just a work camp,’ said Ehri. ‘It’s a prison. Always the chance someone’ll try ’n’ rescue whoever.’

‘I thought the Sammies just executed anyone they didn’t like.’

Fal raised his head. ‘There’s always exceptions, for one reason or another. People they don’t want to be found, people too valuable to kill, people they just wanna punish slowly, interrogate, torture. They get sent here.’

‘Course, they don’t send ’em out to work down in the quarry with the Murthian slaves,’ said Ehri, bitterly. ‘That’d be too shameful, even for a criminal.’

Frey still couldn’t get used to the way that Ehri and Fal spoke Vardic with the same Draki accent as Silo did. He checked his pocket watch.

‘What time do you have, Silo?’

Silo checked his own pocket watch and called the time, which matched with Frey’s exactly. It was late afternoon, although it was difficult to tell in the unsettling gloom of the Choke Bowl. The sun was a dim disc, and most of its scorching heat had been swallowed, leaving the air tepid and cloying.

A series of low booms sounded in the fog.

‘What
is
that?’ he asked.

Fal said a word he didn’t recognise. ‘They live in the marshes,’ Ehri added.

‘There’s something out there that can
breathe
this shit?’ Frey asked in amazement.

Ehri shrugged. ‘They don’t give the slaves masks. Too expensive to keep replacin’ the filters.’

‘And what happens?’

‘They last a year. Fifteen months at most, before they’re too broken down to work. Then they get shot.’

Her tone was matter-of-fact, but Frey could hear the thrumming anger underneath. She took the spyglass from Silo and trained it on the camp.

‘The pens,’ she said. ‘The gates gonna be guarded, but if we can get through them, we can let out the slaves. That’s the priority.’

‘That’s
your
priority,’ Frey said.

‘We let the prisoners out, they overrun the camp,’ Fal reasoned. ‘Gotta be three times as many slaves as guards.’

‘And while you’re doing that, we’ll be looking for Ugrik.’

‘While we’re drawin’ their fire, you mean,’ said Ehri.

Frey was unmoved. ‘We’ve both got our reasons for doing this.’

Ehri snorted and looked off into the distance. ‘Your woman better show up,’ she said.

‘She’ll be here.’

‘On time?’ Fal asked. ‘They’ll hear us approach. If she’s not on time . . .’

‘She’ll
be
here,’ said Frey irritably. He was annoyed at the implied doubt, doubly so because it touched his own. He wasn’t at all sure of her.

In the water garden in Shasiith, she told him she’d be there. But the way she said it, it felt like a goodbye. Things had been going so well between them – barring his minor lapse of judgement in her cabin on the
Delirium Trigge
r – but it occurred to him now that he was placing an awful lot of trust in her. It had only been a few months since she’d been merrily betraying him left, right and centre. Wasn’t it naïve to expect her to change now? The same kind of naïvety he scoffed at when pretty girls gave themselves up in the hope that they could change him?

No. He’d seen it in her eyes, when he showed her the black spot on his palm. She was afraid for him. She wouldn’t let him die.

He was certain.

Kind of.

He brought out the compass from his pocket. Over the last few months it had become a habit to stare at it while he was blissed out on Shine. It was a connection to her, always pointing to where she was. It made him feel closer to her, knowing she was wearing the ring he gave her.

It was pointing north, which told him nothing. He had no idea how far away she was. Shasiith was north: she might never have left. Or she might have left, and she might never have found the coordinates he’d left at the rendezvous, even though he’d daubed the chest in ghostlight paint, which was invisible to the naked eye but showed up brightly through polarised goggles.

He’d been forced to do things in an infuriatingly roundabout way. Ehri wouldn’t give up the coordinates of Gagriisk until she had the medical supplies, but without them he couldn’t tell Trinica where to go. Trinica couldn’t come with him to Ehri’s camp because the
Delirium Trigger
was too big to conceal anywhere nearby. And there was no time to go back to Shasiith. So he’d been forced to give Trinica a rendezvous point just north of the Choke Bowl, where she could pick up the exact location of Gagriisk.

Except that a dozen things could have gone wrong. She had to fly overnight from Shasiith, find the stash in the dark, and then hide in the Choke Zone until morning, when it would be bright enough for the attack. That was, if she was coming at all.

If all had gone to plan, she was on her way even now, approaching from the north. If it hadn’t, she was probably back in Shasiith. Either way, the compass afforded no answers.

‘She’ll be here,’ he muttered to himself. He really hoped he was right.

He was still worrying about it as he sat in the pilot’s seat of the
Ketty Jay
, an hour later. The yellow murk writhed lazily past the windglass of the cockpit. Jez kept casting concerned glances at him, which he ignored. She was wearing a breather mask for appearance’s sake, so as not to alarm the Murthians, but she hadn’t bothered with goggles.

He checked his compass again. It hadn’t moved. But then, if Trinica was heading towards him, it wouldn’t.

Still, though. Shouldn’t it maybe move a
bit
?

‘Time, Cap’n,’ said Jez.

Frey busied himself immediately, glad of the distraction. He fed aerium gas into the ballast tanks and warmed up the thrusters. Footsteps sounded from the corridor behind him, and he turned in his seat to see Silo in the doorway.

‘Your people ready?’ Frey asked.

‘Yuh. More than ready. Some o’ them kids ready to shoot each other if they don’t get at the Daks.’

‘We’ll be coming in pretty rough, I reckon,’ said Frey. ‘You’re my man down in the hold. We need to do this right.’

Silo nodded and headed back up the passageway, boots clanking.

‘Heading oh-five, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘Keep it straight, an even two hundred, you’ll be on the button. Thrusters quiet as you can make ’em.’

‘Right,’ said Frey, and opened up the throttle. The
Ketty Jay
rumbled as she began to pick up speed. They’d been forced to set down thirty kloms from the compound, for fear of alerting the guards with the sound of their engines. In between was nothing but blasted ground, oozing marshes and the disconcerting booms from the creatures that somehow contrived to live in this stinking miasma.

The timing had to be perfect. Trinica was going to attack from the north, intending to draw off the fighters while the
Ketty Jay
slipped in from the south amid the confusion. Since they couldn’t get too near without warning the enemy, it was necessary to synchronise their attacks. If they waited till they heard the sound of Trinica opening fire, the men on the ground would be forewarned and forearmed by the time the
Ketty Jay
closed in.

Of course, Frey wouldn’t like to be in Trinica’s presence when she found out about the anti-aircraft gun. But even taking that little surprise into account, the
Delirium Trigger
was well capable of dealing with a small frigate and a few fighter craft.

If
she was coming. Because if she wasn’t, they were in a whole pile of trouble. The
Ketty Jay
wouldn’t stand a chance by herself.

The yellow blankness swallowed him. The murk curtailed his vision on all sides. He passed a foetid lake, and thought he saw something shadowy, four-legged and huge go lumbering along its shores.

He replayed his last conversation with Trinica, mining it for nuance. Had there been a message in her tone, in her expression, that he hadn’t picked up? Why had she seemed so sad and resigned when she agreed to save his life? Was it because she knew she wasn’t going to?

‘Twenty kloms,’ said Jez. ‘Reckon they’ll be hearing our engines soon.’

‘No going back, eh?’ said Frey. Nervous dread filled him.

Jez was quiet for a moment. Then she said: ‘You’ll be alright, Cap’n. We’ll get you out of this.’

He smiled at her weakly, but then realised she couldn’t see it behind his mask and goggles. They lapsed back into silence.

‘Ten kloms,’ she said.

He checked his watch. ‘Shouldn’t we be hearing gunfire or something?’

‘Probably,’ she replied. ‘Throttle back a bit. Let’s give her time to get there.’

He did so, but a miserable certainty was beginning to grow in him now. Damn it, how many times did he have to let her kick him in the pods before he learned not to trust her?

He was still stewing when Jez said: ‘Five kloms. She’s not coming, Cap’n.’

‘She’ll be here,’ he said.

‘Cap’n, maybe you ought to pull away before it’s too late.’

But the camp was approaching fast, a dark smear resolving out of the mist, and he wouldn’t pull away. It would be a defeat too hard to take. An admission that all his hopes had been based on smoke, that he’d been gulled, that he’d condemned himself to death.

Don’t make me choose between my crew and you,
she’d said.

Well, it seemed she’d made her choice, in the end.

He still believed she would appear right up until the first explosion shook the
Ketty Jay
. A bloom of fire lit the cockpit and concussion hammered the craft. The shock of it jolted him into action; he wrenched the flight stick and banked. The anti-aircraft gun kept up a steady thumping. Another explosion shoved the
Ketty Jay
from below, tipping her steeply. Frey felt the weight on the flight stick as fifty men and women went sliding to one side of the hold.

Damn you, Trinica.

He swung the
Ketty Jay
level again and dived. Guards were swarming from the grim buildings beneath him, out into the packed-earth training squares and thoroughfares that lay between. The
Ketty Jay
screamed in low over the rooftops, to give the anti-aircraft gunners something to think about. They wouldn’t want to shoot into their own camp.

The frigate took on shape and clarity: a sleek Samarlan design, smooth and insectile. The Sammies built their aircraft fast and beautiful, at the expense of little details like armour. It was all about aesthetics with them. If you had to die, die pretty.

The frigate’s anchor came loose of its mooring, whipping through the air as it was drawn into the body of the craft. Already the frigate was scrambling the first of its fighters, shooting them into the sky like darts.

How’d they get them out so quick? They must be on permanent standby.

Frey had spent enough time at card tables to know when he was holding a losing hand. The trick was to know when to fold it. If those fighters got on his tail, they’d shoot him down. Time to run, while he still had the mist on his side, and he could lose them.

He was glad of the mask that covered his face. No one could see the bitter set of his mouth as he—

Light flared, and a series of bellowing explosions ripped along the flank of the frigate. Looming from the yellow fog came the slow black hulk of the
Delirium Trigger,
its outflyers streaking past it to engage the Samarlan fighters.

‘Yeah! You beautiful bitch!’ Frey cheered wildly, swept up in the hot rush of vindication. Hope surged back, just when it had been slinking off to die. She was here! She came for him!

She cared.

His blood was fired now, and he felt himself overwhelmed by the giddy madness of conflict. He was no longer plain old Darian Frey. He was Captain Frey, of the
Ketty Jay
: a legend, not a man. And it was time to do what he did.

He raced past the camp and then banked hard to bring her about again. The anti-aircraft gunners had lost all interest in him the moment the
Delirium Trigger
appeared. He lined up on the camp and headed back, coming in on the east side, where he’d spotted a likely landing spot.

The guards on the wall took pot-shots at him as he approached, but their bullets were useless against the
Ketty Jay
’s armour. He flew over the top of the wall, decelerating hard, then swung the
Ketty Jay
’s arse end around one hundred and eighty degrees and opened fire with her underslung machine guns. Puffs of stone dust clouded the air as the wall guards fled for cover. He didn’t really hope to hit anyone, just to keep them from putting a shot into the cockpit while he landed.