Retribution Falls

Four

There were very few moments in Jandrew Harkins’ life when he could be said to be truly relaxed. Even in his sleep he’d jitter and writhe, tormented by dreams of the wars or, occasionally, dreams of suffocation brought on by Slag, the Ketty Jay’s cat, who had a malicious habit of using his face as a bed.

But here, nestled in the cramped cockpit of a Firecrow with the furnace-roar of prothane thrusters in his ears, here was peace.

It was a calm day in the light of a sharp autumn sun. They were heading north, following the line of the Hookhollow Mountains. The Ketty Jay was above him and half a mile to starboard. Pinn’s Skylance droned alongside. There was nothing else in the sky except a Navy frigate lumbering across the horizon to the west, and a freighter out of Aulenfay, surfacing from the sea of cloud that had submerged all but the highest peaks. To the east it was possible to see the steep wall of the Eastern Plateau, tracing the edge of the Hookhollows. Further south, the cloud was murky with volcanic ash, drifting towards the Blackendraft flats.

He looked up, through the windglass of his cockpit canopy. The sky was a perfect, clear, deep blue. Never ending.

Harkins sighed happily. He checked his gauges, flexed his gloved hand on the control stick and rolled his shoulders. Outside this tight metal womb, the world was strange. People were strange. Men were frighteningly unpredictable and women more so, full of strange insinuations and cloaked hunger. Loud noises made him jump; crowds made him claustrophobic; smart people made him feel stupid.

But the cockpit of a Caybery Firecrow was his sanctuary, and had been for twenty years. No awkwardness or embarrassment could touch him while he was encased in this armour. Nobody laughed at him here. The craft was his mute servant, and he, for once, was master.

He watched the distant Navy frigate for a time, remembering. Once, as a younger man, he’d travelled in craft like that. Waiting for the call to clamber into his Firecrow and burst out into the sky. He remembered with fondness the pilots he’d trained with. He’d never been popular, but he’d been accepted. Part of the team. Those were good days.

But the good days had ended when the Aerium Wars began. Five years fighting the Sammies. Five years when every sortie could be the one you never came back from. Five years of nerve-shredding dogfights, during which he was downed three times. He survived. Many of his friends weren’t so fortunate.

Then there was the peace, although the term was relative. Instead of Sammies the Navy were after the pirates and freebooters who had prospered during the war, running a black market economy. Harkins fought the smugglers in his own lands. The enemy wasn’t so well equipped but they were more desperate, more savage. Turf wars became grudge matches and things got even uglier.

Then, unbelievably, came the Second Aerium War, a mere four years after the first, and Harkins was back fighting alongside the Thacians against the Sammies and their subjects. After all they’d done the first time, all the lives that were lost, it was the politicians who let them down. Little had been done to defang the Samarlan threat, and the enemy came back with twice the vigour.

It was a short and dirty conflict. People were demoralised and tired on all sides. By the end—an abrupt and unsatisfying truce that left everyone but the Sammies feeling cheated—Harkins was out of it. He’d had too many near misses, lucked out a little too often, seen death’s face more than any man should have to. He was a trembling shell. They discharged him two weeks before the end of the war, after fourteen years in the service. The meagre pension they gave him was all the Navy could afford after such a ruinous decade.

Those years were the worst years of all.

Harkins had come to realise that the world changed fast these days, and it wasn’t kind to those who weren’t adaptable. He had no skills other than those he’d learned as a fighter pilot, and nobody wanted a pilot without a plane. A bleak, grey time followed, working in factories, doing odd jobs, picking up a pittance. Scraping a living.

It wasn’t Navy life that he missed, with its discipline and structure. It wasn’t the camaraderie—that had soured after enough of his friends had died. It was the loss of the Firecrow that truly ached.

Though he’d flown almost a dozen different Firecrows, with minor variations and improvements as time went on, they were all the same in his mind. The sound of the thrusters, the throb of the aerium engines pumping gas into the ballast tanks, the enclosing, unyielding hardness of the cockpit. The Firecrow had been the setting for all his glories and all his tragedies. It had carried him into the wondrous sky, it had seen him through the most desperate dogfights, and occasionally it had failed him when it had no more to give. Everything truly important that had ever happened in his life, the moments of purest joy and sheer, naked terror, had happened inside a Firecrow.

Then in his darkest hour, there came a light. It was almost enough to make him believe in the Allsoul and the incomprehensible jabber of the Awakeners. Almost, but not quite.

His overseer at the factory knew about Harkins’ past as a pilot for the Coalition Navy. It was all Harkins talked about, when he talked at all. So when the overseer met a man in a bar who was selling a Firecrow, he mentioned it to Harkins.

That was how Harkins met Darian Frey, who had won a Caybery Firecrow on an improbably lucky hand of Rake and now had no idea what to do with it. Harkins had barely enough money to keep a roof over his head, but he went to Frey to beg. He’d have sold his soul if it got him back into the cockpit. Frey didn’t think his soul was worth much, so he suggested a deal instead.

Harkins would fly the Firecrow on his behalf. The pay would be lousy, the life unpredictable, probably dangerous and usually illegal. Harkins would do exactly as he said, and if he didn’t, Frey would take his craft back.

Harkins had agreed before Frey had even finished laying out the terms. The same day, he left port as an outflyer for the Ketty Jay. It was the happiest day of his life.

It had been a long journey from that Navy frigate to here, flying over the Hookhollow Mountains under Darian Frey. He’d never again have the kind of steel in his spine he had as a young pilot. He’d never have the obscene courage of Pinn, who laughed at death because he was too dim to comprehend it. But he’d tasted what life was like trapped on the ground, unable to rise above the clouds to the sun. He was never going back to that.

He glanced around apprehensively, as if someone, somewhere might be watching him. Then he settled back into the hard seat of the Firecrow and allowed himself a broad, contented smile.

For Crake, there was no such contentment. Listless, he wandered the tight confines of the Ketty Jay. There was a strange void in his belly, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He drifted about, a spectre of bewildered sadness.

At first he’d confined himself to the near-vacant cargo hold, until the space began to oppress him and his mood started to make Bess uneasy. After that he went to the mess and drank a few mugs of strong coffee while sitting at the small communal table. But the mess felt bleak with no one to share it with.

So he climbed up the ladder from the mess to the passageway that linked the cockpit at the fore of the craft to engineering in the aft. In-between were several rooms that the crew used as quarters, their sliding doors stained with ancient, oily marks. Electric lights cast a dim light on the grimy metal walls.

He thought about going up to the cockpit to have a look at the sky, but he couldn’t face Frey right now. He considered going to his quarters, perhaps to read, but that was unappealing too. Finally he remembered that their new recruit had managed to get herself shot, and decided it would be the decent thing to go and enquire after her health. With that in mind, he walked down the passageway to Malvery’s infirmary.

The door was open when he got there, and Malvery had his feet up, a mug of rum in his hands. It was a tiny, squalid and unsanitary little chamber. The furniture comprised little more than a cheap dresser bolted to the wall, a washbasin, a pair of wooden chairs and a surgical table. The dresser was probably intended for plates and cutlery, but it had found new employment in the display of all manner of unpleasant-looking surgical instruments. They were all highly polished—the only clean things in the room—and they looked like they’d never been used.

Malvery hauled his feet off the chair where they were resting, and shoved it towards Crake. Then he poured a stiff measure of rum into another mug that sat on the dresser. Crake obligingly sat down and took the proffered mug.

‘Where’s the new girl?’ he asked.

‘Up in the cockpit. Navigating.’

‘Didn’t she just get shot?’

‘You wouldn’t think so, the way she’s acting,’ Malvery said. ‘Damnedest thing. When she finally let me have a look at her, the bleeding had already stopped. Bullet went right through, like she said.’ He beamed. ‘All I had to do was swab it up with some antiseptic and slap on a patch. Then she got up and told me she had a job to do.’

‘You were right, she is tough.’

‘She’s lucky, is what she is. Can’t believe it didn’t do more damage.’

Crake took a swig of rum. It was delightfully rough stuff, muscling its way to his brain where it set to work demolishing his finer mental functions.

Malvery adjusted his round, green-tinted glasses and harumphed. ‘Out with it, then.’

Crake drained his mug and held it out for a refill. He thought for a moment. There was no way to express the shock, the betrayal, the resentment he felt; not in a way that Malvery would truly understand. So he simply said: ‘He was going to let me die.’

He told Malvery what had happened after he and Frey were captured. It was an effort to keep everything factual and objective, but he did his best. Clarity was important. Emotional outbursts went against his nature.

When he’d finished, Malvery poured himself another shot and said, ‘Well.’

Crake found his comment somewhat unsatisfying. When it became clear the doctor wasn’t going to elaborate, he said, ‘He let Macarde spin the barrel, put it to my forehead and pull the trigger. Twice!’

‘You were lucky. Head wounds like that can be nasty.’

‘Oh, spit and blood!’ Crake cried. ‘Forget it.’

‘Now that’s good advice,’ Malvery said, tipping his mug at his companion. He hunkered forward in his chair. ‘I like you, Crake. You’re a good one. But this ain’t your world you’re living in any more.’

‘You don’t know a thing about my world!’ Crake protested.

‘Don’t think so?’ He swept out a hand to indicate the room. ‘Time was I wouldn’t set foot in a place like this. I used to be Guild approved. Worked in Thesk. Earned more in a month than this little operation makes in a year.’

Crake eyed him uncertainly, trying to imagine this enormous, battered old drunkard visiting the elegant dwellings of the aristocracy. He couldn’t.

‘This ain’t no family, Crake,’ Malvery went on. ‘Every man is firmly and decidedly for himself. You’re a smart feller; you knew the risks when you threw your lot in with us. What makes you think he’d give up his craft in exchange for you?’

‘Because . . .’ Crake began, and then realised he’d nothing to say. Because it would have been the right thing to do. He’d spare himself Malvery’s laughter.

‘Look,’ Malvery said, more gently. ‘Don’t let the Cap’n fool you. He’s got a way with people, when he has a mind to try. But it’s not here nor there to him if you live or die. Or me, for that matter, or anyone else on board. I wonder if he even bothers about himself. The only thing he cares about is the Ketty Jay. Now if you think that’s heartless, then you ain’t seen the half of what’s out there. The Cap’n’s a good ’un. Better than most. You just got to know how he is.’

Crake didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t want to say something childishly bitter. Already he felt faintly embarrassed at bringing it up.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Hey now, I didn’t say that !’ Malvery grinned. ‘Just saying, you got to realise not everyone thinks like you. Hard lesson, but worth it.’

Crake said nothing and sipped his rum. His sad mood was turning black. Perhaps he should just give it up. Get off at the next port, turn his back on all this. It had been six months. Six months of moving from place to place, living under an assumed name, muddying his traces so nobody could find him. At first he’d lived like a rich hobo, haunting shabby hotels all over Vardia, his days and nights spent in terror or drunken grief. It was three months before the money began to run short and he collected himself a little. That was when he found Frey, and the Ketty Jay.

Surely the trail had gone cold by now?

‘You’re not really thinking of packing it in, are you?’ Malvery prompted, turning serious again.

Crake sighed. ‘I don’t know if I can stay. Not after that.’

‘Bit daft if you leave now. The way I understand it, you paid passage for the whole year with that cutlass.’

Crake shrugged, morose. Malvery shoved him companionably with his boot, almost making him tip off his chair.

‘Where you gonna go, eh?’ he said. ‘You belong here.’

‘I belong here?’

‘Of course you do!’ Malvery bellowed. ‘Look at us! We’re not smugglers or pirates. We’re not a crew! The Cap’n’s only the cap’n ’cause he owns the aircraft; I wouldn’t trust him to lead a bear to honey. None of us here signed on for adventure or riches, ’cause sure as spit there’s little enough of either.’ He gave Crake a conspiritorial wink. ‘But mark me, ain’t one of us that’s not running from something, you included. I’ll bet my last swig of rum on that.’ He swigged the last of his rum, just to be safe, then added, ‘That’s why you belong here. ’Cause you’re one of us.’

Crake couldn’t help a smile at the cheap feeling of camaraderie he got from that. Still, Malvery was right. Where would he go? What would he do? He was treading water because he didn’t know which direction to swim in. And until he did, the Ketty Jay was as good a place as any to hide from the sharks.

‘I just . . .’ he said. ‘It’s just . . . I thought he was my friend.’

‘He is your friend. Kind of. Just depends on your definition, really. I had lots of friends, back in the day, but most of ’em wouldn’t have thrown me a shillie if I was starving.’ He opened a drawer in the dresser and pulled out a bottle of clear liquid. ‘Rum’s done. Have a suck on this.’

‘What is it?’ Crake asked, holding out his mug. He was already pleasantly fogged and long past the point of being capable of refusing.

‘I use it to swab wounds,’ Malvery said.

‘I suppose this is a medicinal-grade kind of conversation,’ Crake said. Malvery blasted him with a hurricane of laughter, loud enough to make him wince.

‘That it is, that it is,’ he said, raising his glasses to wipe a teary eye.

‘So why are you here?’ Crake asked. ‘Guild-approved doctor, big job in the city, earning a fortune. Why the Ketty Jay?’

Malvery’s mood faltered visibly, a flicker of pain crossing his face. He looked down into his mug.

‘Let’s just say I’m exactly where I deserve to be,’ he said. Then he rallied with a flourish, lifting his mug for a toast.

‘To friends!’ he declared. ‘In whatever form they come, and howsoever we choose to define them.’

‘Friends,’ said Crake, and they drank.