Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (24 page)

He should have warded the door. It would have been easy to fashion something to deflect attention. But Condred and his wife had always been sneeringly dismissive of their lodger’s mysterious experiments, and the servants had been ordered not to pry, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, he was afraid of getting it wrong and drawing suspicion upon himself. They thought he was nothing more than a budding and inept scientist; better to let them keep thinking that. A locked door was enough.

But a locked door hadn’t been enough to keep a curious child out.

Maybe he’d got complacent and left the door unlocked. Maybe Bess had found a spare key somewhere, in an old drawer or on a peg in some dusty recess. Maybe it was just some sick twist of fate, some awful alignment of coincidence that brought her to his sanctum on
that
exact night, at
that
exact time. He’d never know. It didn’t matter.

He became aware of a scullery maid standing at the end of the corridor, agape. She was watching him with terror in her eyes.

He put the key in the lock and turned it. She gasped and fled.

Well might you run
, he thought. The orderlies had seen her reaction and caught on to her fear, but they were big men and not given to retreat. He pushed the door open before they – or he – could change their minds.

Beyond the doorway, steps led downward into darkness. He reached inside and found the switch with his fingers. An electric lamp sputtered into life, illuminating stone arches and brick pillars, an island of light in the darkness. By that flickering, fitful light he saw a mess of cables and rusty devices, overturned poles and broken bulbs and a large brown stain on the floor which he dared not look at. In the centre was a large metal chamber like a bathysphere. It had been dented outward as if struck by some great force from within, and its door hung open.

He heard a wet clicking noise, so clear that it seemed momentarily real. That sound had troubled his nights for years. The sound of his niece trying to draw breath into punctured lungs.

He wanted to be sick. He wanted to turn and run and never have to return to this place. But he couldn’t, because he owed Condred more than he could ever pay. Everything he suffered, he deserved.

‘Follow me,’ he told the orderlies, and he stepped into the dark.

‘What in all damnation is going on here?’ Frey cried, as he jumped out of the
Delirium Trigger
’s shuttle and went hurrying across the muddy clearing.

The
Ketty Jay
and her outflyers were the centre of a mass of activity. Engineers in overalls were fiddling about inside the cockpit hoods of the fighter craft. Teams of men swarmed over the
Ketty Jay
, pasting enormous decals onto her flanks. A team of Sentinels stood by with rifles.

Frey stormed over. Harkins was being restrained by Pinn, crying in strangled agony as his beloved Firecrow got a massive blue Cipher pasted on to its underwing. Malvery went stamping past the other way, his face like thunder. He ignored Frey’s attempts to hail him.

‘Well, that’s just great, that is!’ he fumed. ‘If that ain’t just the bloody
limit
!’

Frey looked about for someone to strangle. Prognosticator Garin presented himself.

‘Will you tell me what in the wide world of buggering shitarsery you are
doing to my aircraft
?’ he yelled.

‘Calm down, Captain Frey,’ said Garin. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’

‘Nobody messes with the
Ketty Jay
without my say-so!’

Several Sentinels with guns walked over to stand next to the Prognosticator, alerted by the tone of Frey’s voice.

‘You weren’t here,’ said Garin. ‘There are a lot of aircraft waiting to be assimilated into the fleet. We don’t have time to wait around for permission. I take it you do still
want
to join the Awakeners?’ The question had a sinister and ever-so-slightly threatening edge to it.

Frey saw the trap and thought fast. ‘I haven’t even spoken to the quartermaster about pay yet!’

‘If you wanted to quibble about your price, you should have done it before you got here,’ said Garin. ‘This is a secret base, Captain. Nothing bigger than a shuttle gets airborne without permission. If you try to fly out, we’ll shoot you down.’

Frey looked over his shoulder to see the
Delirium Trigger
’s own shuttle taking off. Of course: a shuttle wouldn’t be able to fly far enough to escape the delta. He couldn’t be sure, but could swear he could see Balomon Crund grinning at his discomfort.

‘What are you doing to the engines?’ Frey demanded.

‘Trust in the Code, Captain,’ said Garin benevolently.

‘That’s no bloody answer!’

‘A harmless modification. You won’t notice it.’

‘What does it
do
, Garin? My men will be flying those aircraft, I can’t have them—’

Garin held up a hand. ‘I have my orders, as do we all. The answer will be revealed to you in time. Until then, it’s not the business of a soldier to know the plans of his superiors. The Lord High Cryptographer will guide us.’

Frey narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t know what it does, do you?’

Garin just stared at him. Frey swore loudly and stalked off towards the
Ketty Jay
.

Silo met him on the cargo ramp and walked inside with him. Ashua came rushing up anxiously. Engineers were descending the stairs into the hold, carrying bags of tools.

‘They been up in the engine room, Cap’n,’ Silo advised him.

‘You gotta get rid of them,’ Ashua murmured urgently. ‘Don’t know how much longer I can keep Bess quiet.’

‘You done?’ Frey shouted at the engineers that were coming down the stairs. ‘Good! Now piss off!’ He stormed over, seized one by the shirt and practically threw him across the cargo hold towards the exit. The others hurried after him. When they were gone, Frey hit the lever and shut the ramp behind them.

‘You let them on the
Ketty Jay
?’ he cried, rounding on Silo.

‘They got armed Sentinels with ’em, Cap’n. Reckoned we wanted to look co-operative.’

‘They’re messing with our engines!’ Frey cried.

‘Ain’t nothing they can do I can’t undo,’ Silo said.

The Murthian’s unflappable manner took the edge off Frey’s rage. He saw the sense in that, but it was the
principle
of the thing. He felt defiled.

‘We oughta go see what they been up to,’ said Silo.

Ashua made to follow, but Frey stopped her. ‘Keep Bess busy till the Awakeners have gone, will you?’

‘Sure, sure. Not like I’ve got anything
better
to do,’ she grumbled as she headed back to the sanctum.

The engine room was an oven, warmed by the south coast sun. They made their way among the pipes and gauges until Silo spotted what they were looking for. It was a rectangular metal case, thoroughly sealed and bolted to the frame of the engine. There were no markings on it beyond a meaningless identification code.

Silo poked around at it. ‘Don’t look like it’s even connected to the engine, Cap’n. They just stuck it here. Don’t see how it gonna affect anythin’.’

‘Could it be a bomb?’

‘S’pose,’ he said. ‘Don’t see the good of it, though. Need a bitch of a transmitter to set it off at a distance. And if it’s on a timer, well . . .’ He shrugged. ‘If they wanted to kill us, reckon they’d have done it.’ He tapped the case with the end of a screwdriver that had appeared from his pocket. ‘Let me get into, Cap’n. I’ll let you know.’

‘Later,’ said Frey. ‘I need you downstairs.’

By the time they opened the
Ketty Jay
up again, the Prognosticator and his men were packing up and heading off. Frey glared at them till they were gone. Harkins was flapping about the Firecrow, gibbering in horror at the sight of all those Ciphers. Pinn was complaining about people messing with his engine.

‘Alright, alright! Get in here, you lot!’ Frey called.

The crew assembled in the cargo hold. Pelaru materialised from the gloom. Jez jumped down from the walkway many metres above to land expertly on top of a pile of crates, where she crouched, watching them with shining eyes. Once the ramp was shut, Ashua came out of the sanctum with Bess tramping after her.

‘Swear I need double pay for being her bloody mother on top of everything else,’ she grouched.

‘Ciphers on the
Ketty Jay
,’ Malvery muttered. ‘Insult to injury, that’s what it is. Never thought I’d see the day.’

‘Settle down, everyone,’ said Frey. ‘I’ve got some information.’

‘Oh yeah? Get it from your sweetheart, did you?’ Malvery was in a foul mood.

‘Clam it, eh? You’ll want to hear this. Might stop you carping for two seconds.’

When he had everyone’s attention, he began. ‘So I was talking to Trinica—’

He was interrupted by a chorus of groans.

‘—
talking to Trinica
,’ he continued pointedly, ‘and she told me the Awakeners have a hidden compound a few kloms from here. They’re planning on inviting a bunch of captains over there, her included. Sounds like there’s something important on the boil. I want to find out what, and take a look at that compound while we’re at it.’

‘Bit of breaking and entering, Cap’n?’ Ashua asked, with a wicked look in her eye.

‘Might come to that,’ he said.

‘Why not just find out from Trinica?’ Pelaru asked.

‘Because, believe it or not, she might not tell me the truth,’ Frey replied, irritation creeping in to his voice. ‘Now let’s get something straight, everyone. Despite appearances, we are
not
on the Awakeners’ side and we sure as shit aren’t gonna fight for them. But right now we’ve got a chance to find out what they’re up to and I for one don’t plan to waste it. Might even get us back in the Coalition’s good graces if we’ve got a juicy bone to throw ’em. Right, Doc?’

Malvery crossed his arms, reluctantly mollified. ‘Yeah,’ he sulked. ‘S’pose.’

‘Harkins,’ said Frey. ‘I reckon you should—’

‘Yes, sir! Staying behind to look after Bess, sir!’ said Harkins with a smart salute, his chin outthrust.

‘Er . . . good,’ said Frey, who’d been about to suggest exactly that.

‘I would like to come,’ said Pelaru.

‘If there’s information to be found, you want in, huh?’ said Frey. ‘Alright, you can come.’ Privately he was relieved: he worried what Pelaru might get up to and didn’t trust Harkins to deal with him if he proved troublesome.

He held out his hand to Jez. ‘Lend me your earcuff, will you?’

She plucked it from inside her overalls and dropped it down to him. ‘What happened to yours?’ she asked.

‘It’s in Trinica’s pocket. I slipped it in there when she hugged me. As long as we’re close enough to receive, we’ll be able to hear everything the Awakeners tell her.’ He winked at them. ‘Still got it,’ he said with a grin, and then walked away from his amazed crew, snapping his fingers in the air.

Oblivious to the furore, Slag prowled among the pipes and panels of the
Ketty Jay
’s maintenance ducts. He was angry. A challenge had been made to his supremacy, and that would not be borne. It could only end in blood.

The smell of the intruder was everywhere. It seemed he could scarcely pass a corner without finding that the foreign cat had rubbed against it, impressing its scent over his own. It maddened him and made him murderous.

Slag was not capable of any emotion as subtle as indignant outrage, but his instincts provided a pretty close approximation. The
Ketty Jay
was
his
. He allowed the puzzling and noisy big ones to share it, but only because they knew their place and paid him tribute in food (and occasionally booze). Otherwise he found them generally inoffensive. But the intruder’s scent dredged up hot new sensations that compelled him into action.

The wounds from his fight with the rat hadn’t entirely healed, and the bruises were still making themselves known. In his younger days he’d have shaken them off, but he wasn’t young any longer. He did his best to ignore the aches and twinges, obsessed with the need to eradicate this pretender to his territory.

The intruder was elusive. He’d neither seen nor heard it on his patrols. But now he was on the trail.

He stopped and sniffed at the edge of a vent. The scent was strong. Fresh. He listened. His ears weren’t as keen as they once were, but they were good enough to hear faint movement up ahead. And it didn’t sound like a rat.

He crept slowly forward, hackles rising. At last he had his prey within reach.

The vent became a crossroads up ahead. The sound of movement came from around the corner. It was his enemy, rubbing up against something. He knew the secret ways and hidden routes of the
Ketty Jay
, and he knew that was a dead end. The other cat had no way out.

Slag stalked closer, eyes fixed. Small red lights provided illumination in the warm, close ducts. He sneaked silently through the glow, a dark pile of muscle and mange.

Not silently enough. He heard the enemy freeze, tensing up in alarm. He lunged towards the corner, but the other cat flashed across the junction in front of him. Slag hissed as he went in with his claws, but the intruder was small and fast, and it went darting away down the duct to his left.

Claws scrabbling, Slag gave chase. There was no way he was letting that cat get away.

Down the air ducts they went, over and under pipes and obstacles, sprinting where they could. Slag’s blood was up now; by the size of it, the other cat was no threat at all, and he threw caution to the wind. He pursued it here and there, and though it was agile it didn’t know this territory like he did, and it didn’t have his fury. They thumped and thundered through the narrow metal passageways, Slag yowling like a thing possessed.

Suddenly it skidded to a stop. He caught his first good look at it then, as it bunched its haunches to spring, eyes fixed on something above. It was a thin, ragged, ugly thing, fur a muddle of black and orange. He raced towards it, hoping to bring it down before it jumped, but he was too slow. It disappeared just before his unsheathed claws could find it, leaped upward through a shaft in the ceiling of the vent. He heard a scrabble, and then it was gone.