Retribution Falls

Two

‘There she is,’ said Malvery, with a grand sweep of his arm. ‘The Ketty Jay.’

Jez ran a critical eye over the craft resting on the stone landing pad before them. A modified Ironclad, originally manufactured in the Wickfield workshops, unless she missed her guess. The Ketty Jay was an ugly, bulky thing, hunched like a vulture, with a blunt nose and two fat thrusters mounted high up on her flanks. There was a stubby tail assembly, the hump of a gun emplacement and wings that swept down and back. She looked like she couldn’t decide if she was a light cargo hauler or a heavy fighter, and so she wouldn’t be much good as either. One wing had been recently repaired, there was cloud-rime on the landing struts and she needed scrubbing down.

Jez wasn’t impressed. Malvery read her reaction at a glance and grinned: a huge grin, springing into place beneath his thick white walrus-moustache.

‘Ain’t the loveliest thing you’ll ever see, but the bitch does fly. Anyway, it’s what’s in the guts that counts, and I speak from experience. I’m a doctor, you know!’

He gave an uproarious laugh, holding his sides and throwing his head back. Jez couldn’t help a smile. His guffaw was infectious.

There was something immediately likeable about Malvery. It was hard to withstand the force of his good humour, and despite his large size he seemed unthreatening. A great, solid belly pushed out from his coat, barely covered by a faded pullover that was stained with the evidence of a large and messy appetite. His hair had receded to a white circlet around his ears, leaving him bald on top, and he wore small round glasses with green lenses.

‘What happened to your last navigator?’ she asked.

‘Found out he’d been selling off spare engine parts on the side. He navigated himself out the cargo door with the Cap’n’s toe up his arse.’ Malvery roared again, then, noticing Jez’s expression, he added, ‘Don’t worry, we were still on the ground. Not that the thieving little bastard didn’t deserve dropping in a volcano.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘Tell you the truth, we’ve had bad luck with navigators. Been through seven in the past year. They’re always ripping us off or disappearing in the night or getting themselves killed or some damn thing.’

Jez whistled. ‘You’re making this job sound awfully tempting.’

Malvery clapped her on the back. ‘Ah, it ain’t so bad. We’re a decent lot. Not like the cut-throat scum you might take on with otherwise. Pull your weight and keep up, you’ll be fine. You take a share of whatever we make, after maintenance or whatnot, and the Cap’n pays fair.’ He studied the Ketty Jay fondly, balled fists resting on his hips. ‘That’s about as much as you can ask for in this day and age, eh?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Jez. ‘So what are you lot into?’

Malvery’s look was unreadable behind his glasses.

‘I mean, cargo hauling, smuggling, passenger craft, what? Ever work for the Coalition?’

‘Not bloody likely!’ Malvery said. ‘The Cap’n would sooner gulp a pint of rat piss.’ He reddened suddenly. ‘Pardon the language.’

Jez waved it away. ‘Just tell me what I’m signing up for.’

Malvery harumphed. ‘We ain’t what you’d call a very professional lot, put it that way,’ he said. ‘Cap’n sometimes doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, to tell you the truth. Mostly we do black market stuff, smuggling here and there. Passenger transport: people who want to get somewhere they shouldn’t be going, and don’t want anyone finding out. And we’ve been known to try a bit of light piracy now and again when the opportunity comes along. I mean, the haulage companies sort of expect to lose one or two cargoes a month, they budget for it, so there’s no harm done.’ He made a vague gesture in the air. ‘We sort of do anything, really, if the price is right.’

Jez deliberated for a moment. Their operation was clearly a shambles, but that suited her well enough. They didn’t seem like types who would ask many questions, and she was lucky to find work at all in Scarwater, let alone something in her field of expertise. To keep moving was the important thing. Staying still too long was dangerous.

She held out her hand. ‘Alright. Let’s see how it goes.’

‘Fine decision! You won’t regret it. Much.’ Malvery enfolded her hand in thick, meaty fingers and shook it enthusiastically. Jez couldn’t help wondering how he managed to button his coat with fingers like that, let alone perform complex surgery.

‘You really a doctor?’ she asked.

‘Certified and bona fide!’ he declared, and she smelled rum on his breath.

They heard a thump from within the belly of the craft. Malvery wandered round to the Ketty Jay’s stern, and Jez followed. The cargo ramp was down. Inside, someone was rolling a heavy steel canister along the floor in the gloom. The angle prevented Jez from seeing anything more than a pair of long legs clad in thick trousers and boots.

‘Might as well introduce you,’ said Malvery. ‘Hey there! Silo! Say hello to the new navvie.’

The figure in the cargo hold stopped and squatted on his haunches, peering out at them. He was tall and narrow-hipped, but his upper body was hefty with muscle, a thin cotton shirt pulled tight across his shoulders and chest. Sharp eyes peered out from a narrow face with a beaked nose, and his head was shaven. His skin was a dark yellow-brown, the colour of umber.

He regarded Jez silently, then got to his feet and resumed his labour.

‘That’s Silo. Engineer. Man of few words, you could say, but he keeps us all in the sky. Don’t mind his manner, he’s like that with everyone.’

‘He’s a Murthian,’ Jez observed.

‘That’s right. You have been around.’

‘Never seen one outside of Samarla. I thought they were all slaves.’

‘So did I,’ said Malvery.

‘So he belongs to the Cap’n?’

Malvery chuckled. ‘No, no. Silo, he ain’t no slave. They’re friends of a sort, I suppose, though you wouldn’t know it sometimes. His story . . . well, that’s between him and the Cap’n. They ain’t said, and we ain’t asked.’ He steered Jez away. ‘Come on, let’s go meet our flyboys. The Cap’n and Crake ain’t about right now. I expect they’ll be back once their hangovers clear up.’

‘Crake?’

‘He’s a daemonist.’

‘You have a daemonist on board?’

Malvery shrugged. ‘That a problem?’

‘Not for me,’ Jez replied. ‘It’s just . . . well, you know how people are about daemonists.’

Malvery made a rasping noise. ‘You’ll find we ain’t a very judge-mental lot. None of us are in much of a position to throw stones.’

Jez thought about that, and then smiled.

‘You’re not in with those Awakener fellers, are you?’ Malvery asked suspiciously. ‘If so, you can toddle off right now.’

Jez imitated Malvery’s rasp. ‘Not likely.’

Malvery beamed and slapped her on the back hard enough to dislodge some vertebrae. ‘Good to hear.’

They walked out of the Ketty Jay’s shadow and across the landing pad. The Scarwater docks were half-empty, scattered with small to medium-sized craft. Delivery vessels and scavengers, mostly. The activity was concentrated at the far end, where a bulbous cargo barque was easing itself down. Crews were hustling to meet the newcomer. A stiff breeze carried the metallic tang of aerium gas across the docks as the barque vented its ballast tanks and lowered itself gingerly onto its landing struts.

The docks had been built on a wide ledge of land that projected out over the still, black lake which filled the bottom of the barren mountain valley. It was a wild and desolate place, but then Jez had seen many like it. Remote little ports, hidden away from the world, inaccessible by any means but the air. There were thousands of towns like Scarwater, existing beneath the notice of the Navy. Through them moved honest traders and smugglers alike.

It had started as a rest stop or a postal station, no doubt. A dot on the map, sheltered from the treacherous local winds, with a ready source of water nearby. Slowly it grew, spreading and scabbing as word filtered out. Opportunists arrived, spotting a niche. Those travellers would need a bar to quench their thirst, someone thought. Those drunkards would need a doctor to see to their injuries when they fell off a wall. And they’d need someone to cook them a good breakfast when they woke up. Most major professions in the cities were harshly regulated by the Guilds, but out here a man could be a carpenter, or a baker, or a craftbuilder, and be beholden to nobody but himself.

But where there was money to be made, there were criminals. A place like Scarwater didn’t take long to rot out from the inside. Jez had only been here a week, since leaving her last commission, but she’d seen enough to know how it would end up. Soon, the honest people would start to go elsewhere, driven out by the gangs, and those who were left would consume each other and move on. They’d leave a ghost town behind, like all the other ghost towns, haunted by abandoned dreams and lost possibilities.

To her left, Scarwater crawled up the stony hillside from the lake. Narrow lanes and winding stairways curved between simple rectangular buildings set in clusters wherever the land would take them. Aerial pipe networks cut across the streets in strict lines, steaming gently in the chill morning air, forming a scaffold for the jumble beneath them. Huge black mugger-birds gathered on them in squads, watchful for prey.

This isn’t the place for me, she thought. But then, where was?

Ahead of them on the landing strip were two small fighter craft: a Caybery Firecrow and a converted F-class Skylance. Malvery led her to the Skylance, the closer of the two. Leaning against its flank, smoking a roll-up cigarette and looking decidedly the worse for wear, was a man Jez guessed was the pilot.

‘Pinn!’ Malvery bellowed. The pilot winced. ‘Someone you should meet.’

Pinn crushed out the cigarette as they approached and extended a hand for Jez to shake. He was short, stout and swarthy, with a shapeless thatch of black hair and chubby cheeks that overwhelmed his eyes when he managed a nauseous smile of greeting. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, young for a pilot.

‘Artis Pinn, meet Jezibeth Kyte,’ said Malvery. ‘She’s coming on as navigator.’

‘Jez,’ she corrected. ‘Never liked Jezibeth.’

Pinn looked her up and down. ‘Be nice to have a woman on board,’ he said, his voice deep and toneless.

‘Pinn isn’t firing on all cylinders this morning, are you, boy?’ Malvery said, slapping him roughly on the shoulder. Pinn went a shade greyer and held up his hand to ward off any more blows.

‘I’m an inch from losing my breakfast here,’ he murmured. ‘Lay off.’ Malvery guffawed and Pinn cringed, pummelled by the doctor’s enormous mirth.

‘You modified this yourself?’ Jez asked, running a hand over the Skylance’s flank. The F-class was a racer, a single-seater built for speed and manoeuvrability. It had long, smoothly curved gull-wings. The cockpit was set far back along the fuselage, to make space for the enormous turbine in its nose that fed to a thruster at the tail end. This one had been bulked out with armour plate and fitted with underslung machine guns.

‘Yeah.’ Pinn roused a little. ‘You know aircraft?’

‘Grew up around them. My dad was a craftbuilder. I used to fly everything I could get my hands on.’ She nodded towards the Ketty Jay. ‘I bet I could even fly that piece of crap.’

Malvery snorted. ‘Good luck getting the Cap’n to let you.’

‘What was your favourite?’ Pinn asked her.

‘He built me an A-18 for my sixteenth birthday. I loved that little bird.’

‘So what happened? You crash it?’

‘She gave up the ghost five years back. I put her down in some little port up near Yortland and she just never took off again. I didn’t have two shillies to bash together for repairs, so I took on with a crew as a navvie. Thought I could do long-haul navigation easy enough; I mean, I’d been doing it for myself all that time on the short-haul. That first trip I got us lost; we wandered into Navy airspace and a couple of Windblades nearly blew us out of the sky. Had to learn pretty quick after that.’

‘I like her,’ Pinn said to Malvery.

‘Well, good,’ he replied. ‘Come on, let’s say hi to Harkins.’ They nodded their farewells.

‘He ain’t a bad lad,’ said Malvery as they walked over to the Firecrow. ‘Dumb as a rock, but he’s talented, no doubt about that. Flies like a maniac.’

Firecrows had once been the mainstay of the Navy, until they were succeeded by newer models. They were built for dogfighting, with two large prothane thrusters and machine guns incorporated into the wings. A round bubble of windglass was set into the blunt snout to give the pilot a better field of vision from the cockpit, which was set right up front, in contrast to the Skylance.

Harkins was in the Firecrow, running rapidly through diagnostics. He was gangly, unshaven and hangdog, wearing a leather pilot’s cap pushed far back. His dull brown hair was thin and receding from his high forehead. Flight goggles hung loosely around his neck. He moved in rapid jerks, like a mouse, tapping gauges and flicking switches with an expression of fierce concentration. As they approached, he burrowed down to examine something in the footwell.

‘Harkins!’ Malvery yelled at the top of his considerably loud voice. Harkins jumped and smashed his head noisily on the flight stick.

‘What? What?’ Harkins cried, popping up again with a panicked look in his eyes.

‘I want to introduce you to the new navvie,’ Malvery said, beaming. ‘Jez, this is Harkins.’

‘Oh,’ he said, taking off his hat and rubbing his crown. He looked down at Jez, then launched into a quick, nervous babble, his sentences running into each other in their haste to escape his mouth. ‘Hi. I was doing, you know, checking things and that. Have to keep her in good condition, don’t I? I mean, what’s a pilot without a plane, right? I guess you’re the same with maps. What’s a navigator without a map? Still a navigator, I suppose, it’s just that you wouldn’t have a map, but you know what I mean, don’t you?’ He pointed at himself. ‘Harkins. Pilot.’

Jez was a little stunned. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ was all she could say.

‘Is that the Cap’n?’ Harkins said suddenly, looking away across the docks. He pulled the flight goggles up and over his eyes. ‘It’s Crake and the Cap’n,’ he confirmed. His expression became alarmed again. ‘They’re, um, they’re running. Yep, running down the hill. Towards the docks. Very fast.’

Malvery looked skyward in despair. ‘Pinn!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Something’s up!’

Pinn sloped into view around his Skylance and groaned. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No, it bloody can’t. Tool up. Cap’n needs help.’ He looked at Jez. ‘Can you shoot?’

Jez nodded.

‘Grab yourself a gun. Welcome to the crew.’