Retribution Falls (26 page)

‘Apparently not. Give me a hand.’

She began to tug Cordwain towards the trees. After a moment, Crake joined her. As they manhandled him over the drystone wall, his head lolled back, and Crake caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were open, and the whites were dark with blood.

Crake turned away and vomited. Jez waited for him to finish, then said, ‘Take his legs.’

He wasn’t used to this merciless tone from her. He did as he was told, and together they carried him out of sight of the path and left him there.

They returned to the clearing, where Jez replaced the rock in the wall and threw Cordwain’s gun into the undergrowth. She dusted her dress off as best she could.

‘Jez, I—’ he began.

‘I didn’t do it for you, I did it for me,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m not being taken in by any damn Shacklemore. Not when half the world still wants us dead.’ There was a weary disgust in her voice. ‘Besides, you still haven’t told me what you learned in there. The Cap’n will want to hear that, no doubt.’

She wasn’t the same Jez who had accompanied him to this party. The change was sudden, and wrenching. Everything that had happened before, every shared joke and kind word, meant nothing in the face of the crime he’d committed. Crake wished there was something to say, some way he could explain, but he knew that she wouldn’t listen. Not now.

‘It’s better that we don’t speak about what happened here today,’ she said, still brushing herself down. She stopped and gave him a pointed look. ‘Ever.’

Crake nodded.

‘Right, then,’ she said, having arranged herself as best she could. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

She walked down the path towards the landing pad. Crake cast one last glance into the trees, where Cordwain’s body lay, and then followed her.

Twenty-One

Frey Calls A Meeting - Hope - A Captain’s Memories Of Samarla - The Bayonet

‘You want to take on the Delirium Trigger?’ shrieked Harkins. Pinn choked on his food, spraying stew across the table and all over Crake’s face. Malvery gleefully pounded Pinn on the back, much harder than was necessary, until his coughing fit subsided.

‘Thanks,’ he snarled at the grinning doctor.

‘Another day, another life saved,’ Malvery replied, returning to his position by the stove, where he was working on an artery-clogging dessert made mostly of sugar. Crake dabbed at his beard with a pocket handkerchief.

‘So?’ prompted Jez. ‘How do you plan to do it?’

Frey surveyed his crew, gathered around the table in the Ketty Jay’s mess hall, and wondered again if he was doing the right thing. His plan had seemed inspired when he came up with it a few hours ago, but now he was faced with the reality of his situation he was much less certain. It was fine to imagine a crack squad of experts carrying out their assigned missions with clinical precision, but it was hardly a well-oiled machine he was dealing with here.

There was Harkins, reduced to a gibbering wreck by the mere mention of the Delirium Trigger. Malvery, lacing the dessert with rum and taking a couple of swigs for himself as he did so. Pinn, too stupid to even swallow his food properly.

Jez and Crake were trustworthy, as far as he could tell, but they’d barely been able to meet each other’s eyes throughout the meal. Something had happened between them at the Winter Ball - perhaps Crake had made an unwelcome move? - and now Jez’s loathing for him was obvious, as was his shame.

That left Silo, silently spooning stew into his mouth, unknowable as always. Silo, who had been Frey’s constant companion for seven years, about whom he knew nothing. Frey had never asked about his past, because he didn’t care. Silo never asked about anything. He was just there. Did he have thoughts like normal men did?

He tried to summon up some warm feelings of camaraderie and couldn’t.

Oh well, damn it all, let’s go for it anyway.

‘We all know we can’t take on the Delirium Trigger in the air,’ he said, to an audible sigh of relief from Harkins. ‘So what we do is we get her on the ground. We lure Dracken into port and when she’s down . . .’ He slapped the table. ‘That’s when we do it.’

Pinn raised a hand. When Pinn raised a hand it was only ever for effect. If he had something to say he usually just blurted it out.

‘Question,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Because she won’t be expecting it.’

Pinn lowered his hand halfway, then raised it again as if struck by a new idea.

‘Yes?’ Frey said wearily.

‘Why don’t we do something else she isn’t expecting?’

‘I liked the running away plan,’ said Harkins. ‘I mean, we’ve been doing pretty good so far with the running away. Maybe we should, you know, keep on doing it. Just an idea, though, I mean, you’re the Cap’n. Only seems to me that, well, if it ain’t broke it doesn’t need fixing. Just my opinion. You’re the Cap’n. Sir.’

The crew fell silent. The only sounds were Malvery quietly stirring the pot and a wet chewing noise coming from the corner of the mess, where Slag was tucking in to a fresh rat. He’d dragged it all the way up from the cargo hold in order to join the crew’s dinner.

Frey looked at the faces turned towards him and felt something unfamiliar, a strange weight to the moment. He realised with a shock that they were waiting for him to persuade them. They wanted to be persuaded. In their eyes, he saw the faintest hint of something he’d never thought to see from them. Something he was only accustomed to seeing in the expressions of beautiful girls just before he left them.

Hope.

Rot and damnation, they’re hoping! They’re hoping I can save them. They’re hoping I know what I’m doing.

And Frey was surprised to realise he felt a little bit good about that.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Dracken’s been catching us up ever since she set out to get us. She was behind us when she got to Quail, she almost had us at the hermitage, and she was even ahead of us at the Winter Ball. She knows that we know about Gallian Thade, and she’ll assume we’ll keep on after him. But what she doesn’t know is that we know about their secret hideout.’

‘We don’t even know what this secret hideout is,’ Jez pointed out.

Pinn looked bewildered. He wasn’t sure who knew what any more.

‘Crake heard Thade and the Duke talking about Trinica and some secret hideout,’ Frey said. ‘They mentioned charts and a device of some kind. Seems to me that if we get those charts and that device, then we can find our way there too.’

Pinn raised his hand. ‘Question.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why?’

‘Because we need proof. We know Duke Grephen arranged Hengar’s murder. We know he’s planning a coup. But we don’t have any way to prove it. If we can prove it, we can shop those bastards to the Archduke.’

‘What good will that do?’ Jez asked. ‘We still blew up the Ace of Skulls.’

‘You think they’re going to care about the trigger-man if they’ve got the mastermind?’ Frey asked. ‘Look, I’m not saying they’ll necessarily forgive, but they might forget. If the Archduke gets his hands on them, he won’t worry about us. We’re small-time. And without Duke Grephen putting up that huge reward, Dracken’s not going to waste her time chasing us either.’

‘You think we can actually get ourselves out of this?’ Malvery rumbled. He was standing behind Frey, at the stove. He’d stopped stirring and was staring at the pot of dessert.

‘Yes!’ Frey said, firmly. ‘We play this right, we can do it.’

The crew were exchanging glances, as if looking for support from each other. Did their companions feel the same? Were they being foolish, to believe that they could win out against all the odds?

‘Whatever’s going on at this hideout is something to do with all of this,’ Frey said. ‘The answers are there, I’m sure of it. There’s a way out. But we need to hang on, we need to go a little deeper first. We need to take the risk. Because I’m not spending the rest of my life on the run, and neither are any of you.’

‘You said we’ll lure Dracken into a port,’ said Jez. ‘How are we gonna do that?’

‘Parley,’ he said. ‘I’ll invite her to talk on neutral turf. Face to face. I’ll pretend I want to cut a deal.’

‘And you think she’ll agree?’

‘She’ll agree.’ Frey was horribly certain of that.

Nobody spoke for a few moments. Slag looked up, puzzled by the pregnant pause in the conversation, then went back to snacking on his rat.

Frey felt the weight of Malvery’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Tell us the rest of the plan, Cap’n.’

Frey stepped off the iron ladder that ran from the mess up to the main passageway of the Ketty Jay. He stopped there for a moment and took a breath. Explaining his plan had been unusually nerve-wracking. For the first time he could remember, he’d actually worried about what his crew thought. There were a few good suggestions, mostly from Jez. Outright shock as he revealed the final part. But they’d liked it. He saw it on their faces.

Well, it was done. Until now he hadn’t really been sure they’d go with it. It was frightening to have it all seem so suddenly real.

Because he really, really didn’t want a meeting with Trinica Dracken.

Slag scampered up the ladder behind him and thumped down into the passageway, obviously in the mood for some company. He followed Frey into the captain’s quarters and waited while Frey shut the door and dug out the small bottle of Shine from the locked drawer in the cabinet. He sat patiently while Frey administered a drop to each eye and lay back on the bed. Then, once he’d determined that Frey was liable to be motionless for a while, he hopped onto the captain’s chest, curled up and fell asleep.

Frey drifted on the edge of consciousness, dimly aware of the warm, crushing weight of the cat on his ribs. He was scared of what was to come. He hated being forced into this position. He hated having to be brave. But in the soothing narcotic haze he felt nothing but peace, and gradually he fell asleep.

In seeking to block out one thing he’d rather forget, he ended up dreaming of another.

The north-western coast of Samarla was a beautiful place. The plunging valleys and majestic mountains were kept lush and green by frequent rains off Silver Bay, and the sun shone all year round this close to the equator. It was a land of sweeping vistas, mighty rivers and uncountable trees, all green and gold and red.

It was also swarming with Sammies. Or, to be more accurate, it was swarming with their Dakkadian and Murthian troops. Sammies didn’t dirty themselves with hand-to-hand combat. They had two whole races of slaves to do that kind of thing.

Frey looked down from the cockpit of the Ketty Jay at the verdant swells beneath him. His navigator, Rabby, was squeezed up close, peering about for landmarks by which to calculate their position. He was a scrawny sort with a chicken neck and a ponytail. Frey didn’t much like him, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. The Coalition Navy had commandeered his craft and his services, and since the rest of his crew had deserted rather than fight the Sammies, the Navy had assigned him a new one.

‘They’re sitting pretty, ain’t they? Bloody Sammies,’ Rabby muttered. ‘Wish we had two sets of bitches to do our fighting for us.’

Frey ignored him. Rabby was always fishing for someone to agree with, constantly probing to find the crew’s likes and dislikes so he could marvel at how similar their opinions were.

‘I mean, you’ve got your Murthians, right, to do all your hard labour and stuff. Big strong lot for hauling all those bricks around and working in the factories and what. Good cannon-fodder too, if you don’t mind the surly buggers trying to mutiny all the time.’

Frey reached into the footwell of the cockpit and pulled out a near-empty bottle of rum. He took a long swig. Rabby eyed the booze thirstily. Frey pretended not to notice and put it back.

‘And then you’ve got your Dakkadians,’ Rabby babbled on, ‘who are even worse, ’cause they bloody like being slaves! They’ve, what do you say, assistimated.’

‘Assimilated,’ said Frey, before he could stop himself.

‘Assimilated,’ Rabby agreed. ‘You always know the right word, Cap’n. I bet you read a lot. Do you read a lot? I like to read, too.’

Frey kept his eyes fixed on the landscape. Rabby coughed and went on.

‘So these Dakkadians, they’re all dealing with the day-to-day stuff, administration or what, and flying the planes and commanding all the dumb grunt Murthians. Then what do the actual Sammies do, eh?’ He waited for a response that wasn’t going to come. ‘Sit around eating grapes and fanning their arses, that’s what! Calling the bloody shots and not doing a lick of work. They’ve got it sweet, they have. Really sweet.’

‘Can you just tell me where I’m setting down, and we can get this over with?’

‘Right you are, right you are,’ Rabby said hastily, scanning the ground. Suddenly he pointed. ‘Drop point is a few kloms south of there.’

Frey looked in the direction that he was pointing, and saw a ruined temple complex in the distance. The central ziggurat of red stone had caved in on one side and the surrounding dwellings, once grand, had been flattened into rubble by bombs.

‘How many kloms?’

‘We’ll see it,’ Rabby assured him.

Frey took another hit from the rum.

‘Can I have some of that?’ Rabby asked.

‘No.’

They came in over the landing zone not long afterwards. The hilltop was bald, and where there used to be fields there were now earthworks, with narrow trenches running behind them. Battered stone buildings clustered at the crest of the hill. It was a tiny village, with simple houses built in the low, flat-topped style common in these parts. The trees and grass glistened and steamed as the morning rain evaporated under the fierce sun.

Nothing moved on the hilltop.

Frey slowed the Ketty Jay to a hover. He was surly drunk, and his first reaction was disgust. Couldn’t the Coalition even organise someone to meet their own supply craft? Did they want to run out of ammo? Did they think he enjoyed hauling himself all over enemy territory, risking enemy patrols, just so they could eat?

Martley, the engineer, came bounding up the passageway from the engine room and into the cockpit. ‘Are we there?’ he asked eagerly.