The Iron jackal

Fifteen

There was something wrong with the Firecrow.

Harkins felt his already unbearable terror slide towards full-blown panic. He tried the switch again, and again, flushing air through the aerium vents. The result was the same. It just didn’t sound right.

Was it just his nerves, playing tricks on him? No. Harkins was obsessive about his pre-flight checks. They helped to relax him. He could pass hours checking and re-checking the Firecrow from the sanctuary of his cockpit. Every system on his aircraft had been tested over and over by him personally. He knew the pitch of every squeaking hydraulic pump, the whirr of every actuator.

He looked to his left and right. Beneath a louring grey sky, the other racers were lined up next to him. Eight pilots, including himself. They were parked on a strip of packed earth that had been cleared as a makeshift landing-pad. A hundred metres ahead of them was a cliff, and beyond it, the Rushes: the deadly maze where they would have their race.

There was a cart in front of the aircraft that served as a podium. A man in a badly-fitting suit, who Harkins took to be an announcer of some kind, was climbing on to it.

I can’t fly like this. Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong!

‘Cap’n!’ he said shriCrag wrolly. ‘I need Silo here now!’

‘What’s the problem?’ came the Cap’n’s voice in his ear, transmitted through the silver earcuff he wore.

‘There’s… I mean… Something’s wrong with the Firecrow!’ he sputtered.

‘You’re three minutes from take-off! I thought you checked everything already? Didn’t the officials give all the craft a last-minute inspection for-’

‘I did check it! It was alright then! It’s not alright now!’ Harkins said, his voice rising to a moderately loud scream.

‘Okay, okay. Calm down. Are you sure it’s not just your imagi-’ He stopped himself wisely before Harkins could explode. ‘Never mind. Silo’s on his way.’

Harkins jigged and jittered in his seat. Why, why, why had he volunteered for this? Didn’t he spend his whole life avoiding situations like these? He’d almost died when he found out that the race would be held in the Rushes, instead of the nice flat plain that he’d imagined. The Rushes were a sprawling network of forested gorges carved from a dozen converging rivers which drained from the Splinters into the sea. Earthquakes and erosion had formed a system of tunnels and arches and fantastically precarious pillars, half a klom deep, with thrashing waterways at the bottom.

He’d done it for her, of course. Jez, kind Jez, who despite being kind never seemed to notice him, no matter how heroic he tried to be. Once in a while he managed to admit the truth to himself: it was all beginning to get on his nerves a little bit. But whenever he did, he took it back immediately, not wishing to think bad thoughts about her.

And now he was here, and there were mere minutes to go, and he was desperately hoping that whatever problem the Firecrow had developed would make it impossible to fly.

A small crowd of spectators were gathered along the rim of the gorge ahead of them, where the finish line would be. Nearby was another makeshift landing pad for their aircraft, much bigger than the one Harkins sat on. Among others, he saw the reassuringly ugly shape of the Ketty Jay there, and a small single-seater craft which he’d seen Crickslint arrive in.

‘Racers!’ yelled the announcer. Harkins could only hear faintly through the cockpit hood. Everyone else had their cockpits open, but Harkins had sealed himself in the first chance he got. It felt safer that way. He frowned and tried to concentrate on the muffled words.

‘As we’re coming up to the start of the race, it’s time to remind you of the rules!’ he called. He was a stocky man with a shaved head and a roll of fat where his neck should have been, as if he’d been crushed at some point in his life and never quite sprung back into shape. ‘You’ve all been given maps detailing the network of gorgesworuo; in the race area. You’ll also see that there are four markers numbered one to four. You must pass through these gorges, in order. We’ll have observers watching you, so no cheating. As long as you do that, feel free to pick your own route. There will be two laps. Are we clear?’

Harkins glanced down at the map fixed to his dash. He’d done his best to memorise it, but it refused to stick in his head, sliding off the surface of his mind. He was too agitated to retain any new information.

What if I go the wrong way? What if I forget? What if I There was a loud rapping on the hood of his cockpit. He jumped violently enough to bang his skull against the headrest of his seat. Readjusting his battered leather pilot’s cap, which had fallen over his eyes, he looked for the source of the sound.

Silo. The Murthian’s dark, narrow face gazed in at him from the other side of the windglass.

‘The aerium tanks!’ Harkins cried. ‘They don’t sound right when I vent air through them!’

Silo’s face disappeared. Harkins sat back in his seat, recovering from this new shock. He feverishly hoped that Silo found whatever was wrong. He hoped it was something terminal.

Nervously, he surveyed the other pilots. To his left was an enormously fat man in an Oddsen Blackbird, the craft gleaming silver, its back curved and its wings thin and sharp. He looked like he’d been poured into his cockpit and congealed there. To his right was a brutish-looking Yort in a black Gordinson Airbat. His hair and beard were a tangle of matted locks and braids, his face was tattooed in blue patterns, and there was a curved bone driven through the bridge of his nose. He caught Harkins’ eye and Harkins looked away quickly.

Further down the line was the man who was supposed to be his competition. Gidley Sleen. Harkins couldn’t see him now, but he could see the nose of the Besterfield Nimbus he flew: sleek, fast, built like a dart. They all had the advantage over him in speed, but the Firecrow was a great all-rounder, and it was far more manoeuvrable than these racer models.

Still, he really didn’t think he had a chance of winning.

‘Your altimeters should all read five-seven-seven!’ the announcer continued. ‘Anyone going above six hundred will be disqualified. We have spotters in the air; their decision is final. Stay in the gorges and you won’t get penalised.’

Harkins checked his altimeter was right. He didn’t want to get disqualified.

Wait a minute. Who cares if you’re disqualified? You’ll be lucky to survive!

The thought almost made him bolt. He strapped himself in, to make it more diffi it› cult to disgrace himself with his cowardice.

‘Last rule! Very important!’ the announcer said. ‘No one is allowed to fire weapons until your second lap. Your second lap!’

‘ Weapons? ’ Harkins shrieked, scrambling for the eject button on his seat belt. ‘Nobody said anything about weapons!’

‘Weapons?’ said Frey in his ear.

‘The announcer… I mean… Weapons!… He said we can use weapons on the final lap! What kind of race is this?’

‘Weapons are good, Harkins. You’re the only one flying a combat craft. Those lightweight racers will come apart if you so much as graze ’em with your guns.’

‘But… I… did you know about this?’ he demanded.

‘No. That son of a bitch Crickslint neglected to mention it,’ said the Cap’n, angrily. ‘Look, you’ll just have to do your best. Shoot down anyone faster than you.’

‘You want me to kill people just to win a race?’

‘Harkins, they’re going to try and kill you.’

Harkins squeaked. This was getting worse and worse.

Jez’s voice cut in. She was wearing an earcuff too. ‘He shouldn’t have to do this, Cap’n.’ Her voice flooded him with gladness.

‘It’s not my fault they’re using weapons,’ Frey protested.

‘Harkins!’ She was addressing him now. ‘It’s too dangerous. We can find another way to get the relic.’

‘Hey! Who’s in command here?’ Frey said indignantly.

‘Cap’n, you can’t possibly let him take a risk like this on his own.’

There was silence. Harkins listened intently. Finally, a defeated groan from the Cap’n. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I s’pose. Harkins?’

‘I want to, Cap’n,’ said Harkins.

Frey’s voice was puzzled. He thought he’d misheard. ‘You what?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Harkins said.

It was Jez’s kindness that made him say it. Jez, always looking out for him, who’d persuaded the Cap’n to let him quit because she wanted to keep him safe. Perversely, it made him all the more determined. He’d show her he was brave. He’d make her notice him.

The one thing, the only thing he was good at was flying. And the Cap’n needed him. The Cap’n was in trouble. The Cap’n who’d let him fly this Firecrow in the first place, who’d rescued him from the misery of a land-bound life after he was discharged from the Navy as a shattered wreck.

‘I won’t let you down,’ he said. He could have been talking to either of them.

‘Racers ready!’ the announcer yelled.

Silo knocked on the hood again, and this time Harkins didn’t jump. ‘Try it now,’ the Murthian rumbled.

He blasted air through aerium tanks to purge them. The pitch was just right. He grinned a brown-toothed grin. ‘Silo, you’re… you’re a genius! What was it?’

‘Somethin’ blockin’ the vent,’ said Silo, his face expressionless.

‘Hover!’ called the announcer.

‘Gotta go, Silo. Thanks!’ he called. Silo dropped away and he engaged the aerium engines. The tanks filled with ultralight gas and the Firecrow lifted off. He vented a little to equalise the weight and came to a hover five metres off the ground. The other racers were strung out on a loose line to either side of him, hanging in the air.

‘Harkins,’ said the Cap’n. ‘I want you to know I appreciate this.’

‘You come back, alright?’ said Jez, worried. Her concern warmed him.

‘Good luck,’ Pinn chipped in grudgingly on his own earcuff. Then, after a moment, he added: ‘You bastard.’

Harkins pulled his flight-goggles down over his eyes and adjusted them. He was scared to death, but then, he was used to that.

Ready as I’ll ever be.

‘Three… two… one…’ the announcer counted.

Harkins experienced a brief moment of sheer horror, when the utter foolishness of what he was about to do suddenly revealed itself in full splendour, and all his noble thoughts of bravery, self-sacrifice and heroism became ridiculous.

‘ Go! ’ ghtd the ae

Then he hit the thrusters, and the moment was forgotten in the thrill of acceleration.

The racers skimmed across the flat earth of the plain, the line breaking up as the faster craft pulled ahead. Around them, in the distance, the grass and rock were broken by gullies and valleys and the grey swathes of streams and rivers, making their way to the softer, broken land to the west, where the Rushes began. Harkins’ eyes were fixed on the cliff edge up ahead. That would be their entry into the maze.

They plunged over the precipice in a dizzying tumble. The gorge was deep and wide, its sides shaggy with greenery, descending to a misty torrent at its base. Black and white pennants were hung along its length, with the number ‘1’ printed on each: the first marker. One, in the centre, was larger and bore a pattern of crosses: the start and finish line.

The blood rushed to Harkins’ head as he dived, then back out as he banked and levelled, angling himself up the gorge. The other flyers were distressingly close, swooping across his flight path, and for a few seconds everything was chaos as the pilots picked their racing lines.

Through the aircraft in front of him he saw that the gorge split in two, divided by a thin spine of land down its centre. He decided to take whichever side Gidley Sleen took. The group split neatly in half, and Sleen, who was an early leader, pulled left. Harkins followed, along with two others.

The gorge was uncomfortably narrow now, but Harkins had flown in much tighter spots than this, and he concentrated on keeping out of the backwash of the aircraft ahead. They were all pulling away from him at a steady rate. It was obvious he wasn’t going to be able to beat them in a straight race. But there were areas where the Firecrow’s greater manoeuvrability would be an advantage.

Cold sweat crawled beneath his pilot’s cap. Fear swarmed at him with the intensity of a nightmare. He’d volunteered for this. He’d actually volunteered.

Every firefight he’d been in since the war was the same. A howling torment of primal, animal terror. But still he flew, because if he couldn’t fly, he was nothing at all: a joke of a man. And those awful times were the price he paid for the precious hours of peace, the hours when he soared through a clear sky on the wing of the Ketty Jay , only him and his aircraft and the endless blue.

The gorge narrowed at the point where the divide ended. It was one thing he remembered from studying the crude map on his dash. As they approached, it suddenly occurred to him that he couldn’t see the pilots on the other side of the divide, and that he wouldn’t until the very last moment. The pilots in his group had all kept roughly the same altitude, and there wasn’t much between them in terms of speed. So that meant…

His eyes widened in realisation. Quickly he dumped some aerium, dropping away from the others. It was going to cost him a little velocity, but it would be worth it if- ghtQuic

The two groups swept together from either side of the divide at the same time, forced together by the narrowing walls. Sleen was out in front, but everyone behind him swerved and swooped as they were shuffled together like a pack of cards, crossing each other’s paths. Two craft collided and their wings sheared away with a shriek of metal. Harkins, who was some distance below them, boosted the thrusters and shot past as they came spinning down towards him, trailing smoke. They smashed into the bottom of the gorge and were swept away by the torrent.

Six left, including himself. A slightly hysterical grin split his face. Flying under the pack meant he hadn’t had to slow himself down with evasive manoeuvres. Sleed was out in front, but Harkins had grabbed second place back while the others fought to sort out their racing lines again.

The gorge curved hard left, and Harkins swept round to see a short, straight stretch hung with more pennants, this time marked ‘2’. He swallowed and hunched forward in his seat. Up ahead, the gorge dissolved into a shattered mess of smaller gorges, much tighter than they’d faced so far.

Now things got really dangerous.

I shouldn’t have let him go, Frey thought.

He peered over the edge of the crude barrier that had been hammered into place along the lip of the gorge. There was a crowd of several hundred here at the finish line. The racers had disappeared out of sight, and the spectators waited eagerly for them to come back around.

But even if they couldn’t see it, they’d heard the crash, and seen the thin line of smoke rising into the overcast sky. They knew that someone had bought it. Frey wanted to say something, to ask if Harkins was alright, how things were going, and so on. But he’d taken his earcuff off, at Jez’s suggestion. Talking to Harkins would only distract him. He’d just have to wait, and hope. The rest of the crew, gathered around him, could only do the same.

This whole thing seemed like such a bad idea now. If Harkins died in there, Frey would have no one to blame but himself.

You offered him the chance to pull out, and he didn’t take it, he thought, but it didn’t convince him. That would have washed with the old Frey, but he was a captain now, and he knew a little more about the responsibility that carried. He hated that Harkins had to take a risk like this, alone. All because Frey was too damn stupid to resist Ashua’s goading, or to listen to Trinica. He should have just left the relic alone. His hard-wired instinct to show off in front of a woman had got him cursed, and it might yet get Harkins killed.

Silo slipped his way through the crowd, carrying something wrapped up in a piece of dirty cloth. A Murthian attracted strange and sometimes hostile looks in Vardia, but at least he could move with more freedom than in his home country.

‘You fixed the problem?’ Frey asked.

Silo stood close to him, shielding the object in his hand from the crowd. He turned back a flap of the cloth. ‘Yuh. Found this in the aerium vent. Reckon the maintenance crew put it there when they did that last-minute check.’

Frey’s face darkened. He stared at the object, his eyes hard.

Malvery looked over, saw it, and swore under his breath. ‘That what I think it is?’

Frey didn’t answer. He reached down, adjusted a knob by a fraction, and folded the cloth back over it.

‘You know what to do with that, don’t you?’ he said.

Silo nodded and turned away, making his way out of the crowd. Frey turned his attention to Malvery. ‘Don’t tell the others,’ he said quietly.

The doctor closed his eyes slowly and shook his head, in regret or despair. ‘This ain’t gonna turn out well,’ he said.

Frey was grim. ‘Does it ever?’

Harkins snatched glances at his map as the black and white pennants of the second marker flickered past him like the jerky images from a kinetoscope. He should have studied it harder before he took off. He could have picked the shortest route through the gorges and drawn it in with a pencil. But there was no time now, so it would have to be blind luck.

He felt panic climbing up his ribcage towards his heart. Why didn’t he pull up now? Pull up, back out. The Cap’n had said he could. Even Jez said he could!

But he didn’t. The racers split up as they reached the end of the straight. There, a churning wash of colliding rivers carved new, thin slices through the earth. Walls had collapsed in old earthquakes, slumping into crude new forms that solidified over time, making dark gaps, protrusions and pillars.

Harkins let off the throttle a little. Taking those corners at high speed would be suicide. Here was where his heavier, broader Firecrow would have the advantage over the racing craft, but it would still be a game of reactions in there.

Luckily, Harkins’ reactions had been trained by years of living on the knife-edge of fight-or-flight. There were advantages to being afraid of everything.

Occupied with his map, he didn’t see which route Sleen took, so he picked one at random and went for it. The walls closed in on him fast, an alley of brutal rock overgrown with green vines. A thin waterfall spewed from the cliffs high above, dropping like a hazy white ribbon towards the floor of the gorge. The wind turned to thunder, blasting against the Firecrow. He concentrated on keeping the wings level, fighting the craft’s inclination to roll. The bubble of windglass in the Firecrow’s ncrotheose gave him a horribly good view of what lay below him.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the Yort in the Airbat was on his tail. It caused him a moment’s alarm – a fighter pilot’s reflex – before he remembered that no weapons were allowed till the last lap of the race.

The alley swung left. He took it wide, in case there was something unexpected on the other side. There was: a sharp kink to the right. He yelped, hit the air brakes and slewed hard, losing speed as he did so. The Airbat, seeing what he’d done, took the corner tight and nosed past him as they came out of the turn into a long, uneven curve. Harkins pushed the thrusters a little harder, and they took the curve neck-and-neck, banking in perfect sync.

A drop of rain hit the windglass. Then another, and another.

‘Oh, that’s just great,’ Harkins complained. ‘That’s all I bloody needed.’

The Airbat, which was on the outside of the curve, with a better view down the gorge, suddenly pulled up hard. It gave Harkins a fraction of a second’s warning before he saw the danger himself: a diagonal arm of rock reaching across his path.

Instinct chose for him. He dived instead of climbing, plunging beneath the arm, where the river had tunnelled through it and left a precarious arch hung with straggling foliage. He blasted past it with a boom of thrusters, close enough to make the vines thrash.

He wasn’t allowed even a moment to recover. The gorge fractured again. Three routes to take, no time to decide, so he took the most obvious. He was flying too fast from trying to keep up with the Airbat, and as he climbed and banked out of his dive, he barely missed clipping the wall.

Keep it together! he told himself, as he plunged into a new gorge. He throttled back a little. If he so much as sneezed at this speed, he’d be dead before he opened his eyes again. The walls were even tighter here. The Firecrow rattled and shook, buffeted by the wind. At least the sound of the Airbat’s thrusters had faded: the Yort had taken a different route.

Then he saw what was coming, and his heart stopped. A rough, sheer wall, charging towards him. This gorge was a dead end. No wonder the Yort hadn’t followed.

No! Impossible! There were no dead ends on the map, he was sure of it!

Pull up now. Pull up, give up, before it’s too late!

He looked down through the nose-bubble of the Firecrow. There was a river down there! Where was the river going, if it was a dead end?

Then he saw. The wide, gaping dark. A massive tunnel, a rough and broken maw, swallowing the river.

‘Oh, no,’ he moaned to himself. ‘No, no, no.’

But the momentum of the race had taken over, and he was swept along with it. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d dumped aerium and was diving towards the tunnel. By the time his cowardice caught up, it was too late to climb out of the gorge, and he was committed.

‘Harkins, what in rot’s name are you doiiiing?’ he screamed, his high, thin voice lost in the titanic bellow of the river as it rushed up to meet him. He just had the presence of mind to hit the Firecrow’s bank of lights before the tunnel consumed him.

There was no space for thought any more. He was lost in the thunderous black. The river was mere metres below him, spray blasting up in great fins behind the Firecrow. The walls and ceiling, illuminated in cruel relief, waited to smash his fragile craft to flaming ruin. His lights lit up the tunnel in an arc, stone upon stone plunging towards and past him, and beyond that was a void. He flew into it, every muscle taut, a thin and constant squeal slipping unnoticed through his clenched teeth.

Then the void was filled with rock.

His reactions saved him again. His instincts knew what he had to do before his conscious mind had worked out what it was seeing. He put the Firecrow into a shallow dive, following the curve of the river as it went over a ridge and sloped down. The tunnel roof sloped down with it for a few dozen metres, then levelled. And there, ahead, was a tight arch of grey light, getting brighter and closer until suddenly Harkins was out, the world expanding around him, and he was in a spacious gorge hung with pennants bearing the number ‘3’.

He laughed wildly as he turned into the gorge. Behind him, the river burst from the tunnel mouth and plunged a hundred metres to join another river at the floor of the gorge. It was raining in earnest now, splattering across the hood of his cockpit, but Harkins didn’t care. He felt invincible. He’d reached a pitch of fear that was indistinguishable from mania.

The span between the third and fourth markers was wide and curved, and a great relief to Harkins. At first he suspected some kind of trick, but then he realised that a long, open stretch would be perfect for the second lap, when the pilots would be using their guns. He also realised, when he saw Sleed coming up behind him in his Nimbus, that he was ahead of the pack. The tunnel had been a considerable shortcut.

He passed a ravine on his left, a narrow slash in the land. Glancing at his map, he saw that it cut across the curve he was flying on, and came out directly at the fourth marker. It was another big shortcut, if anyone was crazy enough to take it, but it was barely ten metres wide.

The chasing pack had caught him up, and Sleed was back in front, by the time they passed the fourth marker. The sky had darkened, and rain slid off the hood of the cockpit, driven away by the Firecrow’s speed.

The final stretch was the worst.

The gorge had evidently collapsed at some point in the distant past, then been bored through by the river. The floor rose up by steep, uneven steps in a jumble of stone and waterfalls. Precarious stone bridges soared overhead. Crooked pillars leaned against bulky protrusions of stone. The water found its way through everywhere, joining and dividing, gushing through tiny gaps and leaping off cliffs. Thick foliage hung wherever it could get purchase. It was an upward-sloping obstacle course to the finish, shrouded in a thin water mist.

Harkins airbraked off the straight and took the rise as fast as he dared. The mesh of rock bridges near the top of the gorge made it easier to stay low and cut through the pillars. He weaved left and right, climbing all the time, the Firecrow responding eagerly to every twitch of the flight stick. Huge formations of stone flashed past him with a whumph of air. The mist and rain made it impossible to make out detail, but he saw shapes, and that was enough.

Up and over a spidery limb of rock; shooting beneath a ragged arch; rolling his wings to vertical as he screeched past a pillar. Ahead of him, a dirty cough of flame. Another flyer down. Five left, including himself. Harkins scarcely noticed. All he knew was the sound of engines and the sheer panic of the moment.

He burst out on to the straight in third place. Sleen was in front, the fat man in the Blackbird hard on his tail. Harkins was panting and laughing at the same time. It felt like he was losing his mind. The stress of it all was unbearable, and yet somehow he was still flying, and he took a savage joy in that as the starting line approached, and with it the second and final lap. He could see the crowd gathered along the edge of the gorge, hands raised as they cheered.

It seemed impossible that he’d made it this far. And now he had to do it again. This time with guns.

‘Harkins!’ It was the Cap’n, through the earcuff. ‘I can see you. Thank spit you’re alright. Listen, Harkins, there’s been a development. I reckon Crickslint’s gonna stiff us. Pull out. Take the disqualification. Don’t risk yourself on my account.’

‘Oh, er…’ he said. ‘I think I’ll finish if you don’t mind. I think I can win this.’ It sounded like someone else’s voice coming from his mouth.

‘Harkins!’ Now it was Jez. ‘There’s no point. He doesn’t think Crickslint’s going to give us the relic even if you do win!’

‘Still,’ said Harkins.

‘Harkins! Pull out! That’s an order from your captain, you hear?’ Frey barked.

‘Yes, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘I hear you.’ And he pulled off the earcuff and threw it in the footwell of the cockpit.

The finish line came flying towards him. Htowootwele squared his shoulders and hunkered forward. The rain redoubled in fury, and thunder detonated overhead.

‘I can win this,’ he said to himself. He flashed across the starting line and opened up with his guns.