‘So what you’re saying is that you’d like us to stay around?’ Crake prompted.
‘Yes.’
‘And that you . . . well, that you need us.’
Frey didn’t like the triumphant tone creeping into Crake’s voice. ‘Yes,’ he said warily.
‘And what are you going to do next time someone puts a gun to my head and spins the barrel?’
Frey gritted his teeth. ‘Give them the ignition codes to the Ketty Jay,’ he said, glaring malevolently at the grass between his feet. ‘Probably.’
Crake grinned and gave Bess a quick buff on the hump. ‘You hear that, Bess? We’re pirates now!’ Bess sang happily, a ghostly, off-key nursery rhyme.
‘So you’ll go to the ball?’ Frey asked.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ll go.’
Frey felt a flood of relief. He hadn’t realised how much he’d been counting on Crake’s co-operation until this moment. He was about to say something grateful-sounding when he was interrupted by a cry from further up the valley.
‘Cap’n!’
It was Silo. The tall Murthian wasn’t in the engine room after all, but running down the valley towards them with a haste that could only spell trouble. He was carrying a spyglass in his hand.
‘Cap’n! Aircraft!’ Silo cried, pointing. The others—with the exception of Pinn -scrambled to their feet or ran to look.
‘I see it,’ said Jez.
‘Damn, you’ve got good eyes!’ said Malvery. ‘I don’t see a thing!’
‘Nor me!’ added Crake.
Jez looked around guiltily. ‘I mean, I can’t make it out or anything, not really. Just saw a flash of light, that’s all.’
Silo reached them and passed the spyglass to Frey. Frey put it to his eye.
‘She coming . . . from the south . . .’ he panted. ‘Think she . . . heading for the . . . hermitage . . .’
‘Then she’ll pass over us?’
‘Yuh-huh. See us for sure.’
Frey cast about with the spyglass, struggling to locate the incoming threat. It swung into view and steadied. Frey’s mouth went dry.
She was a big craft. Long and wide across the deck, black and scarred, yet for all her ugliness she was sleek. A frigate, built more like an ocean vessel than an aircraft: a terrible armoured hulk bristling with weaponry. Her wings were little more than four stumpy protuberances: she was too massive to manoeuvre quickly. But what she lacked in speed, she more than made up for in firepower. This was a combat craft, a machine made for war with a crew of dozens.
Frey took the spyglass away from his eye.
‘It’s the Delirium Trigger,’ he said.
Seventeen
Dracken Catches Up—Equalisers—Jez Makes A Plan—Pinn’s Defence—Lightning
The reaction among the crew was immediate. Frey had never seen them scramble into action so fast. He vainly wished he had half the authority that the Delirium Trigger apparently did.
‘Everyone! Get to stations! We’re airborne!’ Frey yelled, even though Silo, Jez and Malvery were already bolting up the cargo ramp. Harkins had scampered into the cockpit of the Firecrow like a frightened spider, and Pinn was grumbling nauseously to himself as he set about getting himself into the Skylance.
‘Crake! Get Bess inside and shut the ramp!’ he ordered, as he raced aboard the Ketty Jay. He made his way to the cockpit with speed born of panic, flying up the steps from the cargo hold two at a time. He squeezed past Malvery, who was climbing into the autocannon cupola on the Ketty Jay’s back, and found Jez already at her post. He threw himself into his chair, punched in the ignition code, and opened up everything he could for an emergency lift.
How did she find me?
Harkins was in the air by the time the Ketty Jay began to rise, and Pinn took off a few moments later, still clad in his half-buttoned Awakener cassock and with a red smear across his forehead. There was a look of frantic bewilderment on his face, like someone rudely awakened from sleep to find their bed is on fire.
The Ketty Jay was facing the Delirium Trigger as she rose. The frigate was coming in fast. Now it was easily visible to the naked eye, and growing larger by the second. She couldn’t fail to have spotted the craft lifting into the sky, directly in her path. The question was, would she recognise the Ketty Jay at this distance?
As if in answer, four black dots detached from her, and began to race ahead. Outflyers. Fighter craft.
‘She’s on to us!’ Frey cried. He swung the craft around one hundred and eighty degrees, and hit the thrusters. The Ketty Jay bellowed as she accelerated to the limit of her abilities.
‘Orders, Cap’n?’ Jez asked.
‘Get us out of here!’
‘Can we outrun her?’
‘The Trigger, yes. The outflyers are Norbury Equalisers. We can’t outrun them.’
‘Okay, I’m on it,’ said Jez, digging through her charts with a loud rustling of paper.
‘Heads up, everyone!’ Malvery called from the cupola. ‘Incoming!’
Frey wrenched the control stick and the Ketty Jay banked hard. A rapid salvo of distant booms rolled through the air, followed a moment later by a sound like the end of the world. The sky exploded all around them, a deafening, pounding chaos of shock and flame. The Ketty Jay was shaken and thrown, flung about like a toy. Pipes shrieked and burst in the depths of the craft, spewing steam. Cracks split the glass of the dashboard dials. A low howl of metal sounded from somewhere in the guts of the craft.
And then suddenly the chaos was over, and somehow they were still flying, the majestic green canvas of the Highlands blurring beneath them.
‘Ow,’ said Frey weakly.
‘You alright, Cap’n?’ asked Jez, brushing her hair out of her eyes and gathering up her scattered charts.
‘Bit my damn tongue,’ Frey replied. His ears were whistling and everything sounded dim.
‘They’re firing again!’ cried Malvery, who had a view of the Delirium Trigger from the blister on the Ketty Jay’s back.
‘What kind of range do those guns have?’ Frey murmured in dismay, and sent the Ketty Jay into a hard dive. But there was no cataclysm this time. The explosions fell some way behind them, and the concussion was barely more than a sullen shove.
‘Not enough, apparently,’ said Jez.
‘Malvery! Where are those fighters?’ called Frey through the door of the cockpit.
‘Catching us up!’ the doctor replied.
‘Don’t fire till they’re close enough to hit! We’ve not got much ammo for that cannon!’
‘Right-o!’
He turned to his navigator. ‘I need a plan, Jez.’
She was plotting frantically with a pair of compasses. ‘This craft has Blackmore P-12s, right?’
‘Uh?’
‘The thrusters. P-12s.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay.’ She looked up from her chart. ‘I have an idea.’
Pinn’s mouth tasted like decomposing mushrooms and his peripheral vision was a swarming haze. He felt like there wasn’t a drop of moisture in his body and yet his bladder throbbed insistently. He was utterly detached from the world. Reality was somewhere else. He was cocooned in his own private suffering.
And yet, some faint part of him was alarmed to find that he was in the cockpit of his Skylance, racing over the Highlands, pursued by four fighter craft intent on shooting him down. That part was urging him to sharpen up pretty quickly and pay attention. Eventually, he began to listen to it.