The Ace of Skulls

Thirty-Eight

We are many and we are one. Your wings are my wings. We fly with one engine, we fight with one heart. I am the Coalition Navy, and the Coalition Navy is me.

For the first time in Harkins’ life, that was literally true.

He said the mantra over and over in his head as he flew away from the Imperial palace and into the storm-hacked morning. Once, it had been part of his daily ritual. They’d said it at roll-call every day. He’d repeated it so many times that the words became automatic and meaningless.

I am the Coalition Navy, he thought. I’m all that’s left.

Encased in the cockpit of the Firecrow, surrounded by the warming bellow of the thrusters and the howl of the wind, he was alone. The Firecrow was painted with Awakener insignia, so he wouldn’t be attacked. He was an interloper among the enemy, far from help. Whatever he did now, he’d do on his own.

He remembered his earcuff. Crake had given it back to him after the battle at the Tarlock mansion, so he could keep in touch with the Cap’n during the flight. Now he dug in his pocket and clipped in on, hoping to hear voices. Something to relieve this sudden awful solitude, this sense of being cast into the void.

Nothing. He heard rustles and muffled noises now and then, but that was all. None of the others were wearing them. Still, he left the earcuff on. Even those small sounds felt like company, and he’d take what he could get up here in the slaty sky, hurtling through a hostile world.

Fighters raced past beneath him, making low strafing runs along the city streets. The populace were being punished for their resistance; Thesk was the sanctuary of the nonbelievers, and lessons had to be learned. This was no peaceful coup, but a bloody invasion. In a stark blaze of lightning, he saw dozens of people fleeing along a boulevard towards the palace, swarming like insects far below.

Overhead and around him were the frigates and larger craft, their floods shining, blurred by a haze of rain-mist. They ploughed on through the sky, dropping bombs as they went, wounding the capital with fire and destruction. The sight of them drifting unopposed through Coalition skies offended him. With the anti-aircraft batteries choked off by the Azryx device, the Awakeners had no fear any more.

Well, Harkins would give them something to fear.

He slipped in behind a fighter that was just starting a bombing run. It was another Firecrow, all but identical to his. Since they were sold off by the Navy after the Second Aerium War to make way for the Windblades, Firecrows were everywhere, a cheap and reliable combat craft. But they were still dangerous, and many had found their way to the Awakener fleet.

Start with the best fighters, he told himself. Leave the rustbuckets. Just do as much damage as you can.

The pilot was oblivious to the threat. So safe and secure in his belief that the battle was won. He didn’t even notice Harkins lining up on his tail. But in his mind’s eye Harkins could still see the Coalition craft falling from the sky, thousands of fighting men and women wiped out in one appalling, cruel, dishonourable stroke. He felt rage bubbling up through him, thawing his fear. He felt the urge to be wanton and vicious.

His finger cradled the trigger. His teeth were gritted. He had the shot, and yet. .

. . and yet he didn’t fire. Something held him back. Right now he was hidden; right now he still had the opportunity of escape. He could fly away and leave with his life. The moment he squeezed that trigger, he’d be starting something that could only end in his destruction.

Once, that would have been enough to cow him. Once his nerve would have broken at the thought of the Awakeners’ retribution. But something had awakened in him now, a new awareness, and once realised it couldn’t be ignored.

For a long time now, he’d lived in constant terror, shrinking away from everything and everyone. A miserable, confined existence, so afraid of death he was barely alive. And he couldn’t do it any more. Better to live ten minutes as a wolf than ten years as a rabbit.

So Harkins bared his teeth, and pulled the trigger.

The pilot in the other Firecrow didn’t have a chance. There was no time to evade. Harkins’ guns chewed up his tail assembly, tearing through metal and blasting his rudder to pieces. The fighter slewed wildly, bullets tore along its fuselage, and it exploded.

Harkins pulled away, racing off through the sky. Other fighters were around, some near, some far. Had anyone seen him? He didn’t know. The rain and gloom limited visibility, and the skies were still chaotic, with so many half-trained pilots flying about.

Well, it didn’t matter. No going back now. A Kentickson Aeronaut came flying in from his starboard side, across his path. He swung around and took position on its tail. It was heading down for a strafing run. Harkins followed it down, and opened up on its back end. Tracer fire punched holes up its spine, and the fuel tank was hit. The holes smouldered, fizzed into life like a dynamite fuse, and seconds later the Aeronaut blew apart, sending shrapnel wheeling through the air.

He shot down another, and another, before the Awakeners started to pay attention. Even then, they couldn’t catch him. He banked and looped, turning their best manoeuvres against them, running rings round the rookies and out-thinking the veterans. All around him, planes fell out of the sky. He flew with a freedom that he hadn’t know since his glory days. There was nothing left to lose now, and he knew at last what Pinn had known every time he flew into battle. He knew what it was to be unafraid of death.

We are many and we are one, he thought to himself, and his hangdog face lit up in the muzzle flash of his machine guns.

Pinn’s overwhelming impression was one of huge disappointment.

That was it? That was his war? A few minutes of wiping the sky with Coalition pilots, and then it was over? Granted, the end of the Coalition Navy had been spectacular, but his elation quickly gave way to boredom as the guns went quiet. Where was the fight against impossible odds, the hair-raising escapes, the suicidal bravery? Where was the heroism?

If this was the climax of the civil war and the end of the Coalition, then frankly, he felt robbed.

Below him, the city rumbled with explosions. Domes collapsed and grey, rain-battered buildings crumbled. Fighters swooped with blazing guns, sending citizens and militia scattering. The thought of attacking civilians didn’t excite him much. There was no challenge there since the anti-aircraft guns had been disabled.

He flew on listlessly through the sky. Lisinda’s creased portrait radiated disapproval from the dash.

‘Well, I can’t bloody help it if no one has the pods to fight me, can I?’ he snapped at her in exasperation.

He spotted the Awakeners’ flagship off to starboard, a long, rectangular craft, split at the ends like an old rotted beam. The Lord High Cryptographer was on board, they said. He remembered that moment in the Awakener base when he’d gazed upon the leader of the Awakeners, and felt something stir inside that had inspired him to abandon his friends. He fancied he could feel his presence now.

Nearby was a familiar shape: the black bulk of the Delirium Trigger, hanging in the sky. Other frigates had begun sending down landing shuttles full of troops, but the Delirium Trigger just hung there in the storm. Lightning flickered behind it, and thunder came down on the city like a fist.

The sight of Trinica’s craft brought back a nagging memory, of sitting at a bar with Balomon Crund. They’d both been drunk, sloppy drunk, and Crund had leaned over, shoved his big shaggy head up close to Pinn’s and said ‘You gotta promise me something.’

The promise. That was right. Pinn wasn’t normally one to treat a promise with much gravity, but this one had stuck in the back of his mind. What had he promised?

He stared at the Delirium Trigger as it slid past his wing, and tried to remember. Wisps of memory began to coalesce in his benighted mind. It seemed as if the answer was almost within his grasp when suddenly he saw a plume of flame light up the sky ahead of him.

He narrowed his eyes and looked closer. That wasn’t a bomb; it was an explosion at altitude. As he watched, he saw two aircraft chasing off after another one. Tracer fire slid silently through the air.

Pinn became suddenly interested. Were they fighting over there?

He opened up the throttle and headed in that direction. The war had been a let down so far, but Pinn wasn’t averse to feeding on scraps. Any battle was a good battle, as far as he was concerned. Someone else was going to get the business end of Pinn’s machine guns before the day was through.

Harkins rolled and climbed as tracer fire ripped through the sky behind him. There were two of them on his tail. One was a Firecrow, painted with Cipher decals as his own craft was. The other was a patchwork junker he didn’t even recognise. They flew dangerously close to one another, jostling for position, each eager to be the one to take down the rogue in their midst.

Bad pilots, both of them. Harkins levelled out and gave them both a good few seconds to draw a bead on him, making himself a tempting target. Once he had them on the hook, he threw his craft to starboard. Both pilots reacted instinctively, banking to follow him, but they were flying too tight. The junker’s wings clipped the Firecrow’s and both of them went spinning away into the rainy gloom.

Lightning flickered and thunder rolled. Harkins allowed himself a sweaty grin. He was out on the edge of the Awakener fleet now, and he’d either lost or destroyed all his pursuers for the moment. Fire pumped through his veins. He was the assassin within, the hidden killer. Between the storm and the fact that his craft was painted up like an Awakener’s, he’d avoided drawing the attention of too many pilots at once. Those that took an interest didn’t know if he was the enemy, or his pursuers were. And there were dozens of identical Firecrows in the Awakeners’ service. Once he stopped shooting, he became invisible again.

I am the Coalition Navy, and the Coalition Navy is me.

He’d head over to the other side of the convoy, start again. It would take them time to pick him up, and by then he’d be gone, harrying them elsewhere. He’d take the whole damned fleet down with him one by one if he had to!

Through the rain-streaked windglass of the cockpit, he caught sight of an aircraft ahead and above him, heading in his direction. He frowned, wiped at the glass, and then remembered the rain was on the outside. He narrowed his eyes and looked closer. There was something about that aircraft.

A gull-winged F-class Skylance, a racing craft bulked out with armour plate and fitted with underslung machine guns. He’d know that craft anywhere. There wasn’t another one like it.

‘Pinn!’ he cried joyously. ‘Hey! Pinn!’

The Skylance opened fire.

Harkins was shocked and slow to react, but his senses had been tuned by battle, and his instincts took over where thought failed him. He banked to starboard, swinging out of the path of the bullets, though not fast enough to avoid them entirely. Several glanced off the Firecrow’s armour. Burning tracers fizzed past him and away.

‘Pinn, you fat idiot! It’s me!’ he screamed. ‘Put in your earcuff!’

But Pinn couldn’t hear him. The Skylance plunged past him as Harkins swung away. He craned in his seat, trying to spot it again. He couldn’t let Pinn come up on him from beneath.

What that moron up to? Why was he attacking? But of course, Harkins knew the answer. His Firecrow looked like every other Firecrow out there. Pinn had no idea who he was.

Harkins brought the Firecrow around, banking and diving, chasing the Skylance downward even as it started climbing back up towards him. There was a moment when he had a clear shot at the exposed cockpit, and he almost took it; but he hesitated. This was Pinn. However much of a disgusting fool he was, he was part of the Ketty Jay’s crew. Harkins couldn’t just-

The Skylance fired early, catching him by surprise again. Harkins swung out of the way, pulling up hard. The blood drained from his head and his vision sparkled as g-forces dragged at him. He levelled up and raced behind a cargo freighter, putting it between him and his attacker. The huge craft was heavily damaged; fires blazed inside the holes in its hull.

Pinn! Why’d it have to be Pinn? Everywhere he went, everything he tried to do, Pinn was there to screw it up. His repulsive grinning face loomed large in all of Harkins’ memories of the Ketty Jay. Pinn had always been his chief tormentor, merciless in his mockery, never offering a kind word. And the insults weren’t even the worst of it. He’d been forced to share his quarters with that evil shit for years now, putting up with his stink and his snoring. That man had been the bane of his life from the moment Harkins laid eyes on him.

And now here he was to ruin things again, spoiling Harkins’ swan-song. Any nobility Harkins might have found in death would be lost now. Harkins would die ridiculous, shot down by his erstwhile crewmate who, in his blithe stupidity, would never even recognise what he’d done.

‘Just piss off, Pinn!’ he cried. ‘Just leave me alone for once!’

But it wasn’t going to happen. He flew out of cover behind the freighter and there, homing in on him, was the familiar shape of Pinn’s Skylance. Harkins gritted his teeth. That son of a bitch wasn’t going to give up.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’

He angled his Firecrow into the heart of the fleet and opened up his throttle. Ahead of him, the sky thickened with frigates and fighters. The flagship and the Delirium Trigger hung there, motionless, as other craft glided by like dull grey whales in the rain. Easier to fight in there, where it was tight. The Firecrow didn’t have the Skylance’s speed, but it was more manoeuvrable. And Pinn would have a harder time shooting at him if he didn’t want to hit other Awakener craft. Harkins didn’t have that handicap.

The Skylance raced to intercept him. Tracers whipped past him and he heard the rattle of guns. Thunder boomed. He banked behind a frigate, sweeping along its flank, blocking his pursuer’s line of sight. Then he turned hard and dived, coming out under the frigate’s belly, facing in the direction of the Skylance.

He pressed his triggers as soon as his enemy came into sight. No hesitation this time. But the Skylance rolled and plunged and the bullets hit nothing.

Harkins chased him down. He should have waited for a better shot. Pinn was too good a pilot to let himself get tagged at that range. His leering face appeared in Harkins’ mind, distorted and made horrible by hate.

You’re mine, he thought.

A heavy fighter, a Wolverine, came flying in on his port side. Its electroheliograph mast was flashing: Cease fire. Cease fire. Well, it was only a matter of time before someone else weighed in. Harkins ignored the Wolverine and shot past, the roar of his engines as loud as the roar of blood in his ears.

The air was busy with craft now. Harkins darted between them, tracking the Skylance through the storm. One of the frigates opened fire on them both, but they were small targets, almost impossible to hit at speed. They were past it and gone before the gunners got their range.

Using the big craft as cover, they chased after each other, turning and diving, climbing and rolling, playing hide-and-seek. Harkins lost the Skylance at one point, only to pop up again on its tail; but it got away from him, and he was surprised shortly after by a burst of gunfire that nearly took off his port wing. He escaped with a few holes, and was lucky not to have been hit in the fuel tanks.

Harkins flew with gritted teeth. Usually it was panic that fed his reactions; now it was anger. He knew that, however this ended, it would end in his death. But he wouldn’t go out at Pinn’s hands. After all that man had done to him, it would be too much.

He swung around, spotted the Skylance through the rain again. Pinn appeared to have lost him, and was searching. Harkins pushed the throttle and closed the gap. The Skylance was passing close to the port side of a frigate; Harkins raced up the starboard side, keeping the bigger craft between them, hoping to surprise Pinn at the far end.

When he emerged, the Skylance was nowhere to be seen.

Where’d he go?

Gunfire. Harkins jerked on the flight stick as tracers shredded the air, pinging off the Firecrow’s armour, scoring its flank. The windglass of the cockpit cracked. Harkins caught a glimpse of his attacker before the two craft crossed paths and flew off in different directions.

Not Pinn, he realised, thoughts wild with alarm. The Wolverine.

He dived, still shaken, unsure how much damage he’d sustained. Suddenly he was beneath the belly of a frigate, its keel blurring past above him. A section of windglass rattled in its pane. If it cracked, he was done for: wind and rain would blind him.

Muzzle flash ahead. He looked up and his eyes widened in horror. The Skylance was there, roaring along the length of the frigate from the opposite direction, machine guns chattering, coming at him head-on. Harkins didn’t even think of evading; he didn’t have time to think at all. He pulled the trigger and let loose with everything he had.

For a single, endless second, the two aircraft shot towards each other, a hail of lead filling the air between them. But Harkins had the better aim. He saw the Skylance’s nose chewed up by his bullets, saw it burst apart. He pulled the Firecrow away as the Skylance tipped upward and ploughed into the underside of the frigate, dragging a long line of fire all along its keel before exploding in one final, stunning detonation. Then Harkins was flying away into the rain, looking over his shoulder as the bow of the wounded frigate began to dip and the enormous craft went sinking towards the city below, its aerium tanks breached.

His head snapped round and he faced forward again. His heart pounded, and his skin was cold. Bloodshot eyes stared into the gloom ahead of him.

Pinn.

He’d killed Pinn. All those times he’d dreamed of doing it, and finally he had. The enormity of it piled onto him. All those times Pinn had mocked him. All that abuse.

Harkins’ throat went dry. He’d just killed his best friend.

Something welled up within him, expanding from his thin belly up through his chest, swelling until it couldn’t be contained any more. He let out a loud yell. His voice rang in the confines of the cockpit. He yelled until he was out of breath, then sucked in air and yelled again. A raw, wordless sound of uncontainable grief and fury.

Then, as abruptly as it had come, the feeling was gone. His mouth snapped shut; his eyes went hard. He yanked on the flight stick and slammed the Firecrow into a turn. He was looking for someone, anyone, to vent his feelings on.

Where are they? Where are they?

Tracer fire came flitting towards him. He took it as an invitation, and gunned the fighter down. Another one came for him at three o’clock. He swung round and flew straight towards it, reckless, uncaring. His guns rattled; his enemy fell from the sky.

Bullets from behind. He evaded automatically, then craned round in his seat to try to catch sight of whoever was on his tail. He couldn’t, so he banked to starboard and shot behind a frigate instead, hoping to block them off. The frigate started up with its guns, but way too late; he was past it and away by then. He found himself on the tail of another fighter, one whose pilot seemed totally unaware of the battle going on around him.

Harkins didn’t care. Conscript or volunteer, peasant or mercenary, armed or unarmed; they were all Awakeners to him. He pressed down on his guns, and the pilot died.

More bullets came from behind him. He looked back, and saw there were two of them on his tail now. They were spreading out, working together to get angles on him. They knew how to fly, then. That was going to present a problem. He was attracting too many aircraft, flying wild. Asking for it.

He dodged and weaved, but they stayed on him. Fiery shells whipped past the cockpit. The Firecrow’s engines screamed, and the cracked windglass of his canopy shivered and pinged.

Just let me get you in my sights, you bastards, he thought. But they were good, and they didn’t let him turn. They hung in his blind spot, careful and methodical, and sent gunfire his way when they had the opportunity. Sooner or later they were going to nick him, and a few bullets in the right place was all it would take.

One of the frigates had found his range now, and started sending artillery his way. The Firecrow was shaken and shoved, and the cockpit hummed with the force of the detonations. Harkins barrel rolled and dived down towards a wallowing barque, hoping to put it between himself and the frigate. He cut in close to its flank, swung around behind it-

— and came face to face with the Wolverine, coming the other way. He’d swung right into its path, and was dead in its sights. His stomach plunged with the inevitable certainty of what would come next. The Wolverine opened fire-

— and exploded, ripped apart by gunfire from above. Harkins just stared as the heavy fighter blew to pieces in a belch of dirty flame, and a fighter craft went plunging past.

‘Waaaaa-hooo!’

‘Pinn?’ Harkins almost screamed.

‘Who else, you twitchy old freak?’

Harkins’ brain refused to process what he was hearing. He flew away from the barque on automatic, out of range of the frigate. Who was this talking in his ear? Was it some trick of the daemon-thralled earcuff, channelling emanations from beyond the grave? He’d never trusted those damned things.

‘But. . but. .’

‘But. . but. .’ Pinn mimicked cruelly. ‘Thought it was you. I’d recognise your flying anywhere.’

‘Why weren’t you wearing your earcuff?!’ It was the only thing Harkins could think of to say.

‘Just put it in now,’ said Pinn. ‘Why, what’s up?’

‘I thought I killed you, that’s what’s up!’

Pinn howled with laughter. Harkins felt himself redden. He checked around himself and saw that the pursuit had fallen away. The pilots on his tail had been scared off by the artillery or by the prospect of an even fight. Probably mercs, then. The faithful wouldn’t have given up so easily.

Now that he wasn’t shooting, he was anonymous once again. He tried to find Pinn among the frigates in the rain. ‘I shot down your Skylance!’ he said, still trying to make sense of it all.

‘That wasn’t me in there!’ Pinn crowed. ‘You think you’d have got me? The Awakeners stole my craft and gave it to someone else. They gave me some old piece of shit instead, but I can still. .’ He tailed off as the penny finally dropped. ‘You shot down my Skylance?’ he squawked.

‘I thought you were flying it,’ said Harkins, in his defence.

‘You thought. . you thought what?. . You. . ggnnaaaRRRGHHHH!’

Harkins felt a smile spread over his face as Pinn degenerated into incoherent animal noises of rage. He’d never heard Pinn so angry. And it was all on his account.

Well. That was a turn up for the books.

Pinn came up on his wing. He was flying a Linfordby Warrior, a pre-war fighter that had been ahead of its time but had been superseded by other models since. If Harkins looked closely, he thought he could see Pinn thrashing about in the cockpit, waving his arms and hitting the dashboard.

‘You alright, Pinn?’ he asked cheerily. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have joined up with the Awakeners after all.’

Pinn fixed him with a deadly glare across the gap between them. Then suddenly, his tone changed, his anger forgotten. ‘Wait, wait!’ he said. ‘Where’s the Cap’n?’

‘Cap’n’s gone,’ said Harkins. ‘North, to Yortland.’

‘He’s gone?’

‘Left not long ago.’

‘We gotta catch him up!’ said Pinn. ‘He might come within range of these ear thingies if we throttle it!’

‘Err. .’ said Harkins, half his mind on flying. ‘Why?’

‘Cause I think I know how to save the Coalition!’ he said. ‘Follow me! Artis Pinn, Heeero of the SkiiiEEEEEES!’

He banked his Warrior and belted off north, away from the fleet. Harkins, bewildered and full of excitement, could do nothing but go after him. Save the Coalition? However ridiculous his plan, if there was even a chance it had merit, he had to see it through.

It was only once he was far from Thesk that he realised he’d somehow survived his suicide mission.

Thirty-Nine

North — Crund’s Message — Responsibility — The Ace of Skulls

Frey listened to the steady exhalation of the Ketty Jay’s thrusters, the hum of her aerium engine, the creaking of her bulkheads. This is all I need, he said to himself. I have everything I want right here.

The words rang hollow in his mind, so he said them again to convince himself. Once, he wouldn’t have needed convincing. Once he’d believed only Darian Frey mattered in the world, and he was content with that.

Maybe, with enough effort, he might believe it again.

Silo stood in the doorway of the cockpit, leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed and head down. He hadn’t said a word since they left. Frey wished he’d go away, back to the engine room where he spent most of his time. He felt judged. The Murthian’s presence reminded him that he’d had a crew once. It was something he desperately needed to forget.

He gazed out with dull eyes at the cloudy morning. The storm was behind them now; the skies were calm and sunless. Less than half an hour ago, he’d been at the end of a rope. This particular day seemed a poor reward for survival, but he’d take what he could get.

Survival. That was what it was all about now. Survival, and nothing more.

Yortland would suit his mood: icy, empty and cruel, a hard place populated by hard people. He had a vague plan to track down Ugrik, the batshit insane son of the High Clan Chief who’d helped them find the Azryx city in Samarla a few months back. Ugrik ought to be able to set him up with some work. After that, well, he’d do what he’d always done. He’d get by.

Once Vardia was in the Awakeners’ hands, Yortland would be the only safe place left. No point heading for Thace; even if they let him in, it would be first on the invasion list once the Sammies got the aerium they craved. Maybe he’d make the run to New Vardia if the Great Storm Belt wasn’t too bad. He’d find himself a quiet place with a game of Rake and a few suckers to fleece. That’d do him.

Trinica. . Well, he wouldn’t think of Trinica. She was lost in some hell where he couldn’t reach her, and that was all there was to it. It took a lot for Frey to admit he was beaten, but that was the fact of the matter. Suck it up and move on.

There’d been a time when he had no aspirations and no possibility of disappointment, but these past few years he’d taken to fooling himself with delusions of grandeur and the pursuit of fame, riches and love. People said it was better to try and fail than to never try, but those people obviously hadn’t failed hard enough. Hope had raised him higher than he’d ever have believed possible, but the fall from there was crippling.

You’ll find another crew, he told himself. There’ll be other women.

He said the words again in his head, to convince himself.

Silo, by the bulkhead, stirred and straightened. ‘You’re gonna want to hear this, Cap’n.’

‘Hear what?’ said Frey, who couldn’t hear anything outside of the workings of the Ketty Jay.

Silo walked over, pulled the silver earcuff from his ear and held it out. Frey looked from the earcuff to his first mate and back again.

‘Took it off the dash,’ said Silo by way of explanation. ‘Seemed you weren’t usin’ it.’

Frey was angered, for no reason he could understand. Silo had been listening for the voices of the crew as they departed, drawing out the connection to the very last. He wanted to know how they were faring. But the anger lasted only a moment before it was washed away by guilt. Frey knew how much it had cost Silo to come with him, how much faith and loyalty this man had shown by leaving the others behind. If Frey had been capable of love right then, he’d have loved him for that.

With some trepidation, he took the earcuff and clipped it on to his ear.

‘-nyone listening? Cap’n? Can you hear us?’

‘Oi! Cap’n!’

‘It doesn’t make it go further if you shout louder, you quarter-wit!’

‘Ah, shut your clam trap. You don’t know how these things work.’

Frey frowned in disbelief. Was that Pinn? Pinn and Harkins, bickering away like always? It didn’t seem real. He listened to them yell at each other for a short while more. It was strangely comforting.

‘I’m here,’ he said at last.

‘Cap’n!’ they both cried together, and the joy in their voices made something twist in his chest.

‘You decided to come with me, then?’ he asked. Their presence felt like an endorsement. He’d made the right choice.

‘What?’ said Harkins. ‘No, Cap’n, we came to bring you back.’

Frey’s brief good feeling withered. ‘I’m leaving, Harkins,’ he said. ‘I told you that.’

‘Something I’ve got to tell you first,’ said Pinn. ‘A message from Balomon Crund.’

Crund? What did he want? The man had always hated him, jealous of Trinica’s affection.

‘He made me promise, Cap’n. If I could find you, I had to tell you. He said you’re the only one outside the crew who ever gave a shit about Trinica. The only one who might be able to do something about it.’

‘Just spill it, Pinn.’

‘Trinica’s not gone,’ said Pinn. ‘That’s what he told me. He said he knows. The old Trinica’s still in there, under the daemon.’

The words piled like stones onto Frey’s heart. The dreadful weight of responsibility, expectation, obligation. Of all people, Balomon Crund was reaching out to him, asking him to save Trinica. He’d persuaded himself that there was no chance, that his love was a lost cause, and now here was Pinn to shatter that certainty and let in the vile, deceitful light of hope.

No. He wouldn’t believe it. ‘What does Crund know?’ he said bitterly. ‘What in damnation makes him so sure? What is it, a feeling he’s got? Some bloody intuition? Why’s he trying to lay this on me?’

Pinn seemed confused by Frey’s tone. Perhaps he’d expected gratitude instead of scorn. ‘Er. .’ he said. ‘I don’t know. He just said to tell you she’s been carrying a book around.’

That caught him. ‘What?’

‘Yeah,’ said Pinn. ‘Some book you gave her. He says she started carrying it about after she got turned. Reading it sometimes.’

Frey went cold. There was only one book he could possibly mean. The Silent Tide. He’d given it to her in Samarla as a present over dinner, a token of love back before he’d even admitted his feelings to himself. And for a moment he was there again, on the veranda of the most expensive restaurant he’d ever sat in, with the river in the background and the city lights reflecting in its dark waters.

‘What’s it about?’ he heard himself ask her, for he hadn’t known himself. He couldn’t even read the title; it was in Samarlan.

‘It’s a classic romance,’ she replied, her eyes shining.

‘Do they get it together at the end?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘They die. It’s a tragedy.’

Frey’s breath grew short. What would a daemon be doing reading a classic romance in Samarlan? There was only one explanation Frey could think of. Trinica, the real Trinica, had somehow exerted enough control to make it happen. Maybe she’d disguised its significance from the daemon; maybe the daemon thought it didn’t matter. Or maybe it was just some old instinct, a last act of tough and stubborn love.

However he looked at it, it meant only one thing. A cry for help. Not from Crund, but from Trinica. A signal that had reached him, against all the odds, across thousands of miles, across the frontier of a war.

Tears welled in Frey’s eyes, blurring his vision. She was alive in there, a prisoner in her own body. It was too awful to bear.

‘That’s not all, Cap’n!’ Harkins enthused, oblivious to his reaction. ‘Listen to this!’

‘Oh, right,’ said Pinn. ‘Yeah! The Azryx device, the one that took out the Coalition Navy? Guess who’s carrying it.’

‘The Delirium Trigger!’ Harkins cried gleefully.

‘Oi! He was meant to guess!’

Frey pulled off the earcuff and cut their voices to silence. Now all he could hear was the Ketty Jay, the one precious constant all through his adult life. He stared out at the empty sky ahead.

Yes, of course, it made sense. Turn the captains of the biggest frigates into Imperators to keep them loyal, and then have them carry the Azryx device. The Delirium Trigger was the most formidable craft in the fleet, even more than the flagship. Naturally they’d put it there.

Frey felt the walls of the cockpit closing in on him. All he wanted was to be free. To fly off into nothingness and never to have to deal with pain or misery or suffering ever again. To cut his losses and fold his hand while he still could.

But life wouldn’t let him. The same tides of fate that had brought him to this point were now trying to suck him back. As much as he tried to suppress it, a plan was forming in his mind. A way to save Trinica, and incidentally to save Thesk and the Coalition as well. A plan that only he could carry out.

It’s not my responsibility, he thought. Then, with gritted teeth, he hit the dashboard with his fist. ‘It’s not my responsibility!’

Silo, standing by, said nothing.

But the crack that Pinn had made in his shell of denial was widening. Everything he’d stuffed inside came spilling out in a flood, filling him with breathless hope, panic, joy and resentment. He wanted to burst into tears; he wanted to kill somebody; he wanted to dance and rage all at the same time.

Was loving Trinica worth his death? Would a life not loving her be worth anything? Everything, everything rested on him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to force him to a choice like that.

‘Do you think we can do it, Silo?’ he said quietly.

Silo could not have heard half the conversation that he’d had with Pinn and Harkins, but it didn’t matter. He knew what Frey was talking about.

Frey waited. If he detected even a hint of doubt, the merest shred of uncertainty, then he was determined to hit the throttle and never look back. If he thought the man at his side had anything less than absolute faith, it wouldn’t be enough to give him the courage he needed to do this. It wasn’t the danger that frightened him; he’d faced danger plenty. It was the thought of getting back on the horse that had thrown him. It was the possibility of failure.

‘Cap’n,’ said Silo at length. ‘I known you a long time now. And I ain’t never met nobody so good at screwin’ up a winnin’ hand as you are.’

Frey blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

‘But I also ain’t never met nobody so good at turnin’ a losin’ hand to winnin’,’ Silo continued. ‘You took this crew o’ outcasts and misfits, people who didn’t have no place in the world, and you made us into somethin’. Don’t you remember, Cap’n? We took down the Awakeners once already, back at Retribution Falls. Saved the Archduke’s hide that time.’ His voice became unexpectedly passionate as he went on; it wasn’t something Frey was used to hearing from his first mate. ‘We took on the Manes, Cap’n! We flew behind the Wrack and we looked ’em in the eye and we came back to tell about it. And after that, what d’you reckon we did? This team o’ alcoholics and layabouts and shit knows what else that you pulled together? We found a damn Azryx city right in the heart of Samarla! We saw a Juggernaut! And what we brought back, it pretty much set off this whole war they all fightin’ back there! None of us weren’t nothin’ on our own, but ’cause of you, we shook the damn world!’

He put his hand on Frey’s shoulder. Frey felt the warm strength of it through his coat.

‘We a losin’ hand, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘But you the Ace of Skulls. Anyone can turn us to winnin’, you can.’

Frey stared out through the windglass a long time. His face was grim, but there was something new in his eyes. Something that hadn’t been there since they’d left the Awakener camp in the Barabac Delta.

Determination. Cold, hard purpose.

‘Reckon some things are worth risking everything for,’ said Frey.

‘You damn right about that,’ said Silo, as Frey began to turn the Ketty Jay around.