Iron Jackal (70 page)

‘I ain’t
ever
seen anything like that!’ Ugrik said. A toothy grin spread across his face and he cackled loudly. ‘That was somethin’! That was definitely somethin’!’

Frey walked over to Crake. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I mean it.’

Crake held out a hand to shake. ‘My pleasure, Cap—’

Frey grabbed Crake in a crushing hug, driving the breath from his lungs.

He was alive. All the fear and tension that had been dammed up inside him suddenly broke, and he was so overwhelmingly, completely
grateful
. The whole crew had backed him every step of the way, but Crake had stood alone as his last line of defence. He’d worked himself to the bone for Frey’s sake, to save his Cap’n from the mess he’d got himself into. And in the end, he’d achieved what they both thought was impossible.

‘You’re a real friend, Crake,’ Frey muttered. Then he felt slightly embarrassed, so he broke away and slapped the daemonist on shoulder with an appropriate amount of manly gusto. ‘Not to mention a damn genius.’

‘I am, aren’t I?’ Crake said. ‘Can I have my cutlass back now?’

Frey’s smile faltered. ‘You want the cutlass back?’

‘Just as a little thank-you. For saving your life and all.’

Frey fought to keep the good humour on his face. The cutlass was his most precious possession after the
Ketty Jay
. It had saved his life several times. And yet, how could he refuse the daemonist now? After what he’d done? The joy of the moment curdled in his guts, but he swallowed down the bile and nodded.

‘Alright,’ he said. It had fallen from his hand after he stabbed the daemon. He looked around for it, and spotted it lying nearby. ‘Fair’s fair, I suppose.’ He went over and brought it back, then held it out to Crake.

Crake took it from him and swept it experimentally through the air a couple of times.

‘It’s a fine sword,’ Frey said.

‘It
is
a fine sword,’ Crake agreed. Then he tossed it back to Frey, who caught it in the air. He beamed. ‘I’m only joking, Cap’n. Just wanted to see if you’d do it.’

Frey gaped at him, aghast. ‘You horrible son of a bitch!’ he accused, but he stuck the cutlass back in his belt before Crake could change his mind.

This time it was Crake who embraced Frey. ‘Glad you’re still with us, Cap’n,’ he said warmly. ‘Wouldn’t be the same without you.’

After a few moments, he felt a burly arm sliding round his back. They looked into Ugrik’s grinning, bearded face. The Yort was hugging both of them.

‘Er,’ said Crake stiffly. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just wanted a piece o’ the love in this room.’

‘Would you get off, please?’

They disengaged awkwardly with much shuffling and looking at their shoes.

‘Right, then,’ said Ugrik, looking round the empty chamber. ‘Curse is gone. Now what?’

Frey felt a tremor through the soles of his feet. He frowned.

‘Did you just feel that?’ he asked. Crake shushed him. The daemonist had an intent expression on his face. He was listening.

‘I can hear something from outside,’ he muttered.

Frey listened. He could hear something too, but it was too faint to tell what it was. There was another tremor, like a distant earthquake. The sounds got a fraction louder, and he managed to place them at last.

‘Are those
screams
?’ asked Crake.

‘Yep,’ said Frey. ‘Definitely screams.’

Forty-Six

The Juggernaut – Contact – Heading for the Rendezvous – Vines – Man Down

S
amandra Bree had predicted that getting out of the power station would be much harder than getting in. She was wrong. There wasn’t a Samarlan left in the building.

When they got outside, they saw why.

The gates had been left open and unguarded, black doors with a faint sheen of green like a beetle’s carapace. The Century Knights went forward with Bess, cautious of an ambush. Silo heard Samandra let loose a deeply unladylike oath as he followed them out.

The upper platform on which the power station sat was deserted. Samarlan bodies lay here and there, remnants of the earlier firefight, but the living had abandoned this place.

The lake was at their back and the city spread out before them, rising up the bowl-shaped sides of the oasis. The slopes were speckled with the light of many windows, peeking through the dense foliage. The moon hung high overhead: full dark had come. Surrounding them was the excavated zone, where Azryx boulevards and plazas lay revealed. They could see men running there, and hear their shouts and hysterical shrieks.

The platform trembled beneath their feet. Silo looked up, and saw what had caused Samandra to swear. Further up the slope, just beyond the edge of the city, something was rising from beneath the ground, sloughing off soil and vines and trees. Something enormous.

The sheer size of it beggared belief. It was bigger than the power station that towered behind them. As it rose, it tore up the earth around it, sending a landslide of dirt through the foliage, which rolled over the city’s outermost buildings and buried them.

At first he wondered if it was an incredible aircraft, or some kind of massive subterranean machine. But then its legs began to unfold, and it
shook
itself. A cloud of displaced earth cloaked it from sight, and clods rained down on the jungle canopy for kloms around.

But the cloud settled, and the upheaval ceased, and then it was revealed. The most colossal creature he’d ever laid eyes on.

‘What in the name of the Allsoul’s sacred bollock sweat is
that
?’ said Pinn, ever one for a bit of creative blasphemy.

Nobody had an answer. In form, it was something like an ape, with large powerful forelegs and smaller hindquarters. But there the resemblance to any living animal ended. It was covered in interlocking plates of white armour, made of some material with the matte smoothness of eggshell. At the joints, where it was necessary to flex, it was possible to see the wet glitter of dark red muscle. Its face was like a gas mask, with that same disconcerting lack of expression. Two blank white eyes without brows or lids bulged above a short round tube of a mouth, like the turbine intake of an aircraft, forming a grotesque muzzle.

Silo stared in horrified awe. He recognised the same technology he’d seen in the custodians of the power station, the same unnatural fusion of organic and inorganic. But this was on such a scale as to make the hybrids seem like toys.

The Murthians had tales, told by the witch-sisters in the dreaming-house. Tales of the Tall Walkers, whom Mother had sent to cleanse the world of her first twisted brood that the Vards called Gargants. When these new monsters had destroyed the old, they died and left the world to the new generation, the humans.

But only the Murthians still kept the faith with Mother. Samarlans had a different version of history, and their own legends. Their versions of the Tall Walkers were malevolent, sent as punishment by their absent gods, and they had a different name. Silo could hear them screaming it in the streets below, but the word that came to him was Vardic.

Juggernaut
.

‘You think maybe we woke that thing up?’ Ashua asked, her voice small.

Malvery put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Welcome to the crew of the
Ketty Jay
,’ he said. ‘You ain’t a member till you’ve caused at least one major catastrophe.’

There was an explosion from deep in the bowels of the power station. Silo looked up at the hourglasses to either side. The lightning within was becoming frenzied, striking everywhere with rapid fury, pummelling at the walls of its prison. The sweeping arms that orbited around the inner edges had slipped out of sync and lost their rhythm.

The city lights wavered and went out.

Darkness came suddenly. The slopes turned black, as if a hundred thousand glowing eyes had all closed at the same time. All that remained were the clunky Samarlan lamps, running off their fuming generators, in the streets of the excavated quarter. All else was moonlight.

The Juggernaut slowly turned its massive head towards the city, towards the screams and the light. Its expressionless eyes regarded the scene, its mouth an idiot O. Then light began to gather in front of its face. A million sparkling particles ignited in the air around that turbine mouth, and were pulled inside, as if the creature were sucking in a huge breath. There was an ascending squeal as it drew in more and more of the bright motes that twinkled out of the dark.

It stopped. The twinkles faded. The squeal fell silent.

A heartbeat passed.

Then the Juggernaut fired.

The mouth wasn’t a mouth. It was a cannon. A beam of scorching, seething white energy screeched forth, down into the buildings and streets where the Sammies ran. Where it touched, everything exploded. It raked the beam across the city, leaving billowing clouds of fire blossoming in its wake. The detonations were more than a klom away from where they stood outside the power station, but they felt the hot air on their faces, and the sight was enough to make them cry out and shield themselves instinctively.

It lasted no more than a few seconds. But those few seconds left a flaming scar of devastation across the width of the excavated zone and beyond. Leaves burned and buildings slumped into blackened alleys.

Pinn lowered the sling-wrapped arm he’d thrown up in front of his face. ‘I
need
to get a gun like that,’ he said reverently.

‘Silo? Are you seeing this?’

Silo remembered the earcuff he was wearing. The Cap’n must have just put his on. Frey hated wearing it when he didn’t need to; he found the background babble of other voices distracting. Of course it meant they could only talk when the Cap’n wanted to but, well, that was his way.

‘I’m seeing it, Cap’n. You alright?’

‘Never better. How are your lot?’

‘They all in one piece so far. We oughta head for the Rattletraps, though.’

‘Is that the Cap’n? Is he alive?’ Pinn was asking. Silo, who was trying to listen, waved him away with a terse nod. It only occurred to him then that the Cap’n really
was
alive, that he must have overcome the curse.

The mantle of owner of the
Ketty Jay
and leader of her crew wouldn’t pass to him after all, then. He’d been so focused on his task that he hadn’t fully taken in the gravity of Frey’s request. Now he found himself deeply relieved. Maybe he didn’t want to be a slave any more, but he didn’t want to fill the Cap’n’s boots either. First mate would serve him just fine.

‘Hey, everyone!’ said a chirpy voice in his ear.

‘Jez!’ said the Cap’n. ‘How was your coma?’

‘Instructive,’ she replied. ‘Listen, you ought to know the
Ketty Jay
’s up and running again.’

‘You fix her?’

‘Nothing to do with me. Everything just came back at once.’

‘Reckon whatever was suppressing the
Ketty Jay
’s systems died when the power did,’ Silo said, then flinched as another explosion sounded from the building behind him.

‘Are we gonna get moving anytime soon?’ Samandra demanded, pointing towards the Juggernaut, which was lumbering down the slope towards the edge of the city.

Silo ignored her. ‘Cap’n,’ he said. ‘Forget the Rattletraps. Ain’t gonna have time to get to ’em. This power station ain’t stable.’

‘Jez, can the
Ketty Jay
fly?’

‘Don’t see why not.’

‘We’re gonna need a pickup,’ said the Cap’n. ‘Now.’

‘On it,’ said Jez. ‘Where am I going?’

‘Due east. Look for the landing pad, we’ll meet you there. You ought to be able to see the city now the power’s out.’

‘City?’

‘Long story. Get going. Oh, and Jez?’

‘Cap’n?’

‘Watch out. There’s one awfully mean-looking bastard between you and us.’

The Cap’n’s voice went silent as he took off his earcuff again. The others, having only been privy to Silo’s voice in the conversation, looked at him expectantly. He pointed to where a landing pad sat on the edge of the excavated area, supported by a thin pillar that branched as it rose, giving it the appearance of a flat-topped, skeletal tree.

‘That’s where we’re headed. Move!’

‘At last!’ said Samandra, who viewed plans as an unnecessary impediment to action.

They made their way down to street level. The Juggernaut was still visible upslope. It was some distance away, but not far enough for Silo’s liking. As he watched, it reared up on its hind legs, and he saw that it had wide, spatulate feet with four armoured toes at ninety-degree intervals. It came down hard on a particularly large building, smashing in through the roof. The earth shook as it landed.

The Juggernaut was making its way towards the excavated zone, where the Samarlans were concentrated. Silo didn’t know if it was attracted by the lights or Sammies, or if it was simply engaged in mindless destruction. Whatever its motive, it was perfectly willing to obliterate the city of its masters. Why would the Azryx – for it had to be Azryx in origin – build something like that?