The Ace of Skulls

Seventeen

Trudging off into a swamp in the middle of the night had seemed like a good idea at the time but, like most of Frey’s ideas, the reality fell short of the concept. A few kloms from the base to the Awakeners’ hidden compound didn’t sound like much, but Frey hadn’t accounted for the terrain. After a couple of hours of ploughing through sucking mud and reeds, he was ready to admit they should have abandoned stealth and gone for a good old full frontal assault instead.

It didn’t help that he was a tiny bit lost. Trinica’s directions had been vague at best, and he was beginning to worry that they’d missed the base amid the dense foliage. He’d sent Jez to get some bearings, and she’d sprung off into the dark like a wild animal loosed from its leash. It worked out for all concerned. She moved faster without them, and the group felt better when she wasn’t around.

It was hard to see anything, even with the moon up. A white mist lurked in the hollows and lay on the water, curling between the twisted roots of the mangroves. In the dark, things slithered and moved, some of them unpleasantly large. Insects hammered the hot air with percussive taps and whistles that ranged from mildly annoying to painfully loud.

Malvery in particular was being driven to distraction. His hangover had rallied with the din, and he looked ready to murder somebody. ‘Think we’ve got enough bullets to shut up every bloody living thing in the delta?’ he asked hopefully.

‘I’m up for trying,’ said Pinn, who was equally unimpressed with their situation.

‘Come on, you two, where’s your spirit of adventure?’ Ashua said. ‘Get a lungful of that swamp air! Ooo, I think that was an alligator!’

Pinn and Malvery had been griping ever since they set off, only pausing when one or the other of them tripped and splashed into the brackish water. Ashua, on the other hand, seemed to be rather enjoying her field trip. Frey knew she’d spent most of her life in cities, but the way she talked you’d think she’d never seen a tree before.

Silo was uncomplaining, as ever. Frey was glad to have him by his side. The Murthian’s solid presence helped to anchor him somehow. That was a man he always knew he could count on.

Pelaru followed along silently behind, picking his way through the hot soggy undergrowth. Frey kept a suspicious eye on him. What was his angle? Whispermongers were famous for their neutrality, but Frey couldn’t help feeling the elegant Thacian had some agenda here. The sooner that man was off the Ketty Jay, the better, but there hadn’t been a safe place to offload him yet, and Frey certainly wasn’t going to leave him unsupervised while they were busy playing double agents in the heart of Awakener territory.

Annoyingly, Pelaru was the only one of them still clean. Frey and the others were sweaty, grimy and tired, but he’d somehow escaped with only mud spatters on his boots, and he wasn’t even out of breath.

Thacians. Even in a swamp they’re so rotting superior.

‘Cap’n,’ said Jez by his ear. He jumped and clutched at his heart.

‘Don’t do that,’ he gasped.

‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ she said, but her voice was flat and she wasn’t sorry at all. She looked through him with those shining wolf eyes of hers. ‘I found it.’

Relief soothed Frey’s unease at being so close to her. ‘Nice work, Jez,’ he said. ‘Lead on.’

They spotted the lights of the compound soon after, hazed by mist in the distance. It was surrounded by a perimeter wall, surmounted by electric floods that illuminated the dank swampland all around. Once they got near, they cut across in the direction of the main gate and found a dirt road leading back towards the base. Silo picked out a likely hiding spot which overlooked the road and the gate, and there they settled in amid the mud and roots and scuttling things.

Frey eyed the defences uncertainly. The gate stood open, but it was heavily guarded. The wall was metal, discoloured by the wet air and patched with lichen. This compound had been constructed with care and attention, not at all like the ramshackle hotchpotch of dwellings in the main part of the base. There was no way they’d cobbled it together since the war kicked off. That meant the Awakeners had been up to something in the Barabac Delta long before anyone realised there was a base here at all.

‘Strikes me, Cap’n,’ said Malvery, adjusting his glasses. ‘Strikes me we might just’ve taken this road all the way from the base instead of arsing about in stinking bogs and whatnot.’

‘Wouldn’t have worked,’ said Ashua. ‘I asked about while I was off procuring a few bits.’ She slapped the pack on Silo’s back, one of three that were stuffed with items which Ashua had stolen from the camp, and which Frey dearly hoped they wouldn’t need. ‘They’ve got guards all up and down this stretch.’

‘Besides,’ Frey put in. ‘I reckoned you and Pinn could do with working off a kilo or two.’

‘Oi!’ said Pinn, patting his belly. ‘This is prime steak, you twat!’

‘Good of you to be thinking of our health, Cap’n,’ said Malvery.

‘I’m considerate like that.’

Everyone felt better now they had the compound in sight. Even Malvery’s grumbles were light-hearted. The doc was glad to be doing something to ease his conscience, striking a blow for the Coalition. Frey enjoyed seeing him a bit more upbeat. He’d been in a downer ever since the civil war began, and Crake’s departure hardly helped matters.

Crake, you’d better be alright, you idiot.

Thoughts of Crake reminded him of his earcuff. He hadn’t been wearing it in the swamp. He found voices in his ear distracting, and he was only capable of concentrating on one thing at a time. Now he took it out, clipped it on and listened.

At first there was nothing. He began to worry. What if Trinica had found the earcuff in her pocket? What if she’d changed clothes? But then he heard a muffled voice. He frowned and focused on the sound over the racket of the swamp. Soon he could make out words.

‘. . arriving at the compound soon, eminent captains.’ It was an oily voice that he didn’t recognise. Some random fundamentalist nut-bag, no doubt. ‘I beg of you your complete discretion in the matter of the things we are about to show you.’

Frey let a little smile touch his lips. Oh, she could be discreet if she wanted. But he’d find out all the same.

Trinica was going to kill him when she eventually discovered the trinket in her pocket. That, or she’d laugh and tell him how clever he was. It depended on the day, really; he’d take his chances. But her talk of the growing threat from her crew had disturbed him deeply, and he wanted to keep track of her. He wouldn’t let her get away again.

She’d be hurt that he didn’t trust her, perhaps. But he was smitten, not stupid.

‘They’re on their way,’ he told the others.

Shortly afterward, two vehicles came rumbling up the track, each rolling along on six huge wheels. A pair of Renford Overlanders, armoured all-terrain transport vehicles. Frey had only seen a few before; flying was almost always preferable to land travel in a country as vast and varied as Vardia. But Ashua had told them there was a no-fly zone overhead, and a ring of anti-aircraft cannon ready to enforce it. Obviously the Awakeners didn’t even want to risk shuttle traffic here.

Definitely up to something, Frey thought to himself. Something big.

‘She in one of those Overlanders, Cap’n?’ Ashua asked.

Frey nodded.

‘You’ve really got a thing for her, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘You have no idea,’ muttered Malvery.

Ashua nudged the doctor. ‘Leave him alone. I think it’s kinda sweet. Never pegged him as a romantic.’

‘Fellers, can we stop discussing my love life?’ Frey complained.

‘Or lack of it,’ Pinn put in. ‘When was the last time you got your pods jiggled, Cap’n?’

Malvery coughed to suppress a laugh. Ashua, who wasn’t suppressing it quite so well, said, ‘Yeah, Cap’n. Spill it. When was the last time someone, er, jiggled your pods?’

‘I’ll have you know my pods have been jiggled by some of the finest bloody females in the land!’ Frey said. ‘Now shut it, I’m trying to listen.’

Malvery leaned over to Ashua, covered his mouth and pointed at the vehicles on the road below. ‘Saving himself,’ he stage-whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. Even Silo smiled at that.

‘Swear I’m gonna dump you all at the next port,’ Frey murmured, shaking his head.

The vehicles halted in front of the gate and a pair of Sentinels emerged from the guardhouse. After a brief exchange with the driver of the first vehicle, they waved them through. The second vehicle stayed where it was. The passenger door in the flank slid open, and a dark figure stepped out.

Oh, shit, thought Frey, as his stomach sank.

It was an Imperator.

He was dressed head to foot in close-fitting black leather. A smooth black mask showed beneath the cowl of his cloak. The eyes were the only evidence that there was a person inside there at all, but Frey had seen beneath an Imperator’s mask before, and he knew they were not people. They were more daemon than man, the husks of the faithful turned rancid by monstrous symbiotes from the aether.

The Imperator stood in the middle of the road, bathed in the harsh light of the floods, alone. Slowly, suspiciously, he turned his head, scanning the swamp on the side where Frey and his crew were hiding.

He senses us, Frey thought, and panic burst in his mind at that. He’s gonna find us!

Fear sank down upon him, pressing him into the undergrowth. It wasn’t just a desire to remain unseen, it was a need. He wanted to dig into the mud and disappear. Anything to avoid that dreadful accusing gaze. He was guilty, an unbeliever, a heretic, and if the Imperator saw him it would be as if a light shone through him, turning him transparent, exposing his soul in all its filthy grotesquery. He clawed at the ground and whimpered like a child.

The others felt it too. Their faces were distorted in horror, despair in their eyes. How could they possibly triumph against this kind of terror? Frey knew this feeling to be caused by the power of the Imperators; he’d felt it before. But knowing that didn’t lessen the fear one bit.

He looked back over his shoulder, and saw Jez there. On Jez’s face was not fear but rage. Her teeth were bared, and seemed sharper than before. Her eyes rolled like a maddened beast. She was turning; the daemon in her was forcing its way out. But it couldn’t, it mustn’t! Even though Frey had seen her kill an Imperator before, it seemed inconceivable that she could fight the force that oppressed them.

Driven by one fear to overcome another, he grabbed on to her wrist to hold her back. Her head snapped round and she glared at him as if she was about to rip his throat out with her teeth. Then another hand closed round her other wrist. Pelaru’s. Of all of them, he seemed the calmest, the least affected. He stared hard at Jez, and she stared hard back at him, and the intensity between them was such that Frey felt almost ashamed to witness it, as if he was intruding on something intensely sacred and private.

But Jez stayed where she was, pinned by that gaze, and she didn’t move.

The Imperator’s searchlight gaze swept away, and the fear lifted from them. Frey lay there panting. He heard the door to the Overlander close and the vehicle drive away. He didn’t dare lift his head until silence had returned and the road was empty again.

‘What was that?’ Ashua asked, her eyes round.

‘That’s what we’re up against,’ said Frey. ‘That’s what we’ll get if the Awakeners win.’ The experience, now that it had passed, made him feel angry. That wasn’t the first time he’d been humiliated by an Imperator. Suddenly he was very keen to prevent the Awakeners doing that shit to him again.

‘What about your woman, Cap’n?’ Silo asked.

Frey was reminded to listen to the earcuff again. He put his hand over his ear to block out the noise of the swamp and listened.

And heard nothing.

His face clouded. ‘These things have quite a range, right? I mean, we use them when we’re flying around, don’t we?’

No one needed to answer that.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said, and panic fluttered anew in his chest. ‘It’s like she’s disappeared.’

‘Well,’ said Pinn. ‘That’s Plan A buggered.’

‘We’ve got to get in there,’ said Frey. ‘Something’s wrong. It shouldn’t just have gone dead. Something’s-’

Malvery’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. ‘We’re with you, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look inside, eh?’

The swamp teemed with life. The dark was thick with a thousand sounds and sights and smells. What seemed a bewildering barrage of noise to the others was a wonderful complexity to Jez. She heard everything: the flutter of a sleeping bird stirring in its roost; the footsteps of something many-legged as it rattled through the undergrowth; the squeal of a frog as it was caught up in a predator’s jaws. Insects burrowed through detritus; night-midges were busy over the torpid water washing down towards the sea.

So much life, and she, dead, in the midst of it.

Yet she didn’t feel dead. Her body rang with the presence of the Imperator. Her daemon had stirred inside her, risen close to the surface, and still it lurked there. She felt the power of it. Once she’d feared it, but now she knew it was not something to be feared. It was simply a part of her.

Beyond the swamp, she heard the distant howling of the pack. The Manes, in their cities beyond the Wrack, the great cloud-cap that shrouded the northern pole of the planet. It was like music to her, igniting a yearning, a promise of home. Each surrender was easier. She’d given up her resistance outside the Azryx city, and since then the change had gathered speed and she’d embraced it.

But then came Pelaru.

She shook her head. Concentrate. The Cap’n gave you a job. Concentrate.

She crouched in the branches of a gnarled tree, high up in the dark. Before her was the wall, and beyond it the buildings and tents of the compound itself. Floods cast pockets of rude light, driving back the shadows. The air was moist and close.

There were Sentinels on the wall, enough to make it impossible to approach along the ground unseen. But the branches of the trees spread wide and leaned close, and nobody looked up at them.

The floods faced outward, shining on the swamp. The Sentinels were shadows by contrast. Once the crew were in behind the lights, they’d become shadows too, and nearby guards would find it hard to spot them. But first they had to get up the wall.

The perimeter of the compound was uneven, built to follow the landscape. She’d chosen a place where the wall bulged out, where the foliage helped screen it from the other guards. Here there was a single Sentinel, standing idly, having ceased even any pretence at patrolling. He leaned on the wall and smoked, looking outward. The tip of his roll-up glowed behind the blinding shine of the floods.

When she judged the moment was right, Jez moved. She raced along the branch and leaped, passing silently through the air to land on the walkway atop the wall. The guard saw something move out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t appreciate the danger until he saw her running towards him. Not until he saw the look on her face and the glitter of her eyes, and he saw her teeth bared like an animal. She pounced on him and broke his neck before he could utter a word.

She crouched next to the corpse, a savage grin on her face. The exhilaration of the hunt filled her. That had been worth the wait. Now she wanted more.

But no. She had a task. Stay focused.

Looking around quickly, she saw that she hadn’t been observed. The walkway was protected on both sides by a parapet. As long as she stayed low, no one could see her. Secrecy was the thing. She remembered that.

What now, then? The rope. Yes, the rope, so the slow ones could follow her. She tied it up and dropped it over the wall, then forgot about it. She turned instead to the dead man, took his chin carefully and tilted his head this way and that, studying his face. Blank eyes stared upwards. She tried to feel something and couldn’t. This corpse was meaningless. Would hers be as unimpressive?

Malvery came clambering over the wall, huffing like a bellows. Just like Jez, he was dressed in a beige cassock, though his barely contained his belly. His omnipresent glasses were missing, his bald pate gleamed with sweat, and the sign of the Cipher had been carefully painted onto his forehead in blue ink.

He stood with his hands on his knees, heaving in breaths. ‘Ain’t never gonna live this down,’ he wheezed.

He flopped down against the parapet, looked over at Jez, and then at the dead man. His expression became grim.

‘You really have to do that?’ he asked.

Jez was puzzled. ‘He was in our way,’ she said.

‘He was just a boy. You could’ve knocked him out.’

Jez thought about arguing, but the words wouldn’t arrange themselves. Speech was clumsy and irrelevant and tiresome when she was like this. She turned away instead. What was his disappointment to her? He didn’t understand. None of them understood. Except perhaps Pelaru.

She watched as the whispermonger slipped lithely over the parapet. He didn’t so much as glance at her. But he knew she was there.

She’d expended a lot of thought on Pelaru but come up with very little. He’d taken a half-Mane for a lover, yet he left his sundered corpse to rot when they found him. He’d carried her out of the shrine in Korrene — they’d told her about that — and he’d as much as said that he loved her, yet he was so angry about it that he could hardly bear the sight of her.

She’d never been at home with strong emotions, never knew how to talk her way around them. She couldn’t decipher him. She wanted to explore this new and painful and wonderful sensation, but she felt she lacked the ability.

Pelaru was a blank to her. She caught snippets of the others’ thoughts now and again, mental monologues drifting unbidden into her mind. But not Pelaru’s. He was a blind spot. Something was clouding her perceptions, keeping her at a distance.

Who are you?

Once they were all over the parapet, they threw the rope over the other side and threw the corpse off after it. The edges of the compound where it ran up against the wall were poorly lit, and a building screened them from the camp. They climbed down. Jez untied the rope and dropped down after them.

She found them stashing the corpse in an out-of-the-way spot. They were all wearing the cassocks that Ashua had stolen for them. Some wore the white-and-red of Speakers, some the grey of Sentinels. Real Speakers had the Cipher tattooed on their foreheads, not painted, but they’d pass as long as nobody looked at them too closely. She noted that Frey had gone for one of the Sentinel robes, which meant he only had a Cipher stitched on the breast rather than displayed on his brow. Captain’s privilege. His vanity wouldn’t suffer the kind of disfigurement he’d put Malvery, Jez and Pinn through.

The only one who’d escaped the humiliation was Silo. He’d been forced to remain outside, watching the gates. A Thacian could pass as a Vard with a bit of luck, but a Murthian stood out anywhere outside of Samarla. They left him with Pinn’s earcuff, just in case, but they had little doubt the signal would be lost once they got inside.

When they were ready, Frey addressed them. ‘Alright. We’re here now, so let’s get out there and poke around. Try to look like you belong here. Jez. .’ He gave her a pitying look. ‘You’re kind of giving us away, Jez.’

She realised that she was standing in a predatory crouch. ‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ she muttered, and stood up straight. It was so hard to keep her mind on things.

They stepped out into the open. Storage depots and garages clustered nearby. A dirt road ran inward from the gate, splitting off in different directions to head away across the sprawling compound. There were several more Overlanders parked up, and some smaller buggies and tractors.

The buildings they could see were a mixture of old and new. Some had been here for a while, long enough for mould to grow and the rain and sun to weather them. Between them, clumps of tents alternated with simple prefabricated portable cabins, flown in on freighters. Men and women passed this way and that. All of them wore cassocks. Outsiders were not permitted inside the compound, it seemed.

‘What are they up to in here?’ Malvery wondered aloud.

‘It takes a lot of paperwork to run a war,’ said Pelaru.

‘You think this is the command centre for the Awakener forces?’ Ashua asked.

‘It may be,’ said Pelaru. ‘Their strongholds are too obvious a target. They have no air superiority. Their best tactic is to hide themselves.’

There was a sense of fevered industry in the air. The Awakeners walked with hurried steps. Jez noticed it, and the Cap’n did too.

‘Trinica told me the Lord High Cryptowhatever might be dropping in,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why they’re hustling.’

Ashua whistled and looked aside at Frey. ‘The boss? When you get us in the shit, you really get us in the shit, don’t you, Cap’n?’

‘Never let it be said I don’t take you to the best places,’ Frey said. ‘Let’s find Trinica. Wherever she is, that’s where the answers are.’ He listened again to his earcuff, but evidently heard nothing.

‘How do you reckon we’re gonna find her in all of this?’ Malvery asked, surveying the compound.

Jez pointed. ‘There,’ she said.

They followed her gaze to a blocky stone building, rising above its neighbours on another side of the camp. It was ugly and simple, with sloping sides and an imposingly martial look to it.

‘Any special reason?’ Frey asked.

‘I can. .’ She stopped. ‘I can feel something from it.’

She couldn’t find the right word, but that was the gist of it. There was something unsettling about that building. Something that buzzed at her consciousness. She didn’t like it.

They others looked at her sceptically, unconvinced. Then Pelaru said ‘She could be right. I mean, it’s the logical place if you want to impress somebody. And that is the purpose of summoning the captains, isn’t it?’

Unexpected as it was, Pelaru’s backing was enough to convince the others, who had no better ideas. They took a roundabout route towards the building, skirting the edge of the compound. They saw other Awakeners, but they were only one group of robed figures among dozens and nobody paid them the slightest attention.

As they got closer to the building, the buzzing in Jez’s head got stronger, and she knew that she was right. Her skin prickled. There was a power in there, something sinister, daemonic. It was strong enough to muddle the weak daemon thralled to the earcuff in Trinica’s pocket. If Trinica was in here, that would explain why they lost contact.

‘Something. .’ she said, but once again the words didn’t come easily. The daemon in her was still too close to the surface, roused by their encounter with the Imperator and now this new threat. ‘Something bad ahead,’ she said, her voice strained.

‘Ain’t there always?’ Malvery commented, gazing up at the building. He glanced at Frey. ‘Hate to be the one to bring this up, Cap’n, but you might want to consider the possibility that we’re walkin’ into a trap. Wouldn’t be the first time Trinica stitched us up.’

‘You don’t need to tell me, Doc,’ Frey replied. ‘First sign of anything dodgy and we’re outta here.’

‘Wasn’t that the first sign right then?’ Ashua asked, pointing at Jez. ‘I mean, a half-Mane just warned us there was something bad ahead. I’d say that counts.’

Frey rolled his eyes. ‘Alright, second sign of anything dodgy. How’s that?’

Ashua shrugged. ‘Just saying.’

The entrance to the building was guarded by four Sentinels. A pair of Overlanders were parked outside, which Jez took to be the convoy they’d seen earlier, along with several other vehicles.

‘Anything from Silo?’ Malvery asked.

‘I think I can hear something,’ Frey said, covering his ear with one hand. ‘It’s really faint, but it’s. .’ He became excited. ‘Not Silo. I can’t make it out. But I can hear voices.’

‘Well, we’re not getting in through the front without a firefight,’ said Ashua. ‘Let’s take a look round.’

Staying out of sight as best they could, they circled the building at a distance. They saw no other entrance, but at the back they found a spot where another building pressed up close and there were no floods. In that dark alley was a sheer wall with windows at the top.

‘Jez? You think you can get up there?’ Frey asked.

Jez showed her teeth in what passed for a grin. She snatched the coil of rope from Pinn, slung it over her shoulder and launched herself upward. Splayed hands gripped the wall with inhuman strength. There were no handholds, but she climbed anyway. The tiniest cracks were purchase enough. She scaled the wall with a fierce joy in her heart, glad to be free of the crew for a moment. They slowed her down. Everyone slowed her down.

She slipped through the window into a corridor floored with gridded metal and bright with electric lights. It was quiet, but the sensation of strange power in this place made the air feel raucous. She secured the rope and dropped it down, then headed off scouting, unable to wait for the others.

She investigated to the end of the corridor, but found only closed doors. Her senses were too muddled to detect anything nearby, so she made her way back, in time to find Malvery hauling himself over the sill.

‘. . ever going to notice me? Don’t I do my devotions? Don’t I. .’

She froze. A streamer of thought had curled through her mind. Not Malvery’s. Someone else’s.

A door was opening up the corridor. She ran. A Sentinel stepped through, a young blond man with a pudding-bowl haircut. His rifle was slung across his back. He had only an instant for surprise before Jez pulled him through, seized him by the throat and slammed him up against the wall.

The Sentinel hung there, heels kicking uselessly at the floor. His eyes bulged in terror, face turning red. Jez glared at him, a snarl on her face.

She could squeeze. She wanted to squeeze. The bones in his neck would crack like a bundle of twigs.

Then she lashed a fist across his face, and the Sentinel dropped in a heap, out cold.

She looked down at the man at her feet. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. For once, she didn’t flinch.

‘Attagirl, Jez,’ said Malvery, and there was a warmth in his voice that she heard too rarely nowadays. ‘Attagirl.’