‘I’ll go with you!’ called Samandra to Frey.
‘You’ll need me!’ said Crake, hurrying out of the crowd. ‘And Bess! And one of these!’ He held up a tarnished brass amulet. ‘My equipment’s all still inside, right?’
‘You’re taking on Trinica, you’ll need me too,’ said Kyne. ‘We’ll bring golems.’
Others were volunteering now, more than they’d even need. Frey left Silo to sort them out. He embraced first Crake and then Malvery, who gave him a broad grin and laughed as he swept him up in a bear hug.
‘Steady on, mate!’ Frey said. ‘Need all my ribs.’ When Malvery had put him back down, he said: ‘You coming too?’
Malvery gave him an apologetic shake of the head. ‘Love to, Cap’n. But I’m gonna be more use down here. Gonna be a lot of wounded to tend to. We’ll see about them guns.’
Frey seemed to understand. ‘What about you?’ he said to Ashua.
‘Reckon I’ll stick with this ox,’ she said.
Frey looked at Malvery. ‘She alright?’ he asked.
‘Aye,’ Malvery said. ‘She’s alright.’
Frey nodded. ‘Silo!’ he called. The Murthian came over. ‘I’ve got Century Knights, golems and daemonists coming up there with me. Need you to keep an eye on these two. Bring ’em back to me safe.’ There was a question in Silo’s eyes, but Frey was resolute. ‘They’re my crew,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust ’em to anyone else’s command but yours.’
Silo dipped his head gravely. ‘Understood, Cap’n.’
‘Who’s got that other earcuff?’ Frey asked.
Malvery dug it out of his pocket and handed it to Silo. ‘Reckon you ought to hold on to this,’ he said. ‘Let’s all of us try not to lose touch again, eh?’
A cry went up from the south side of the courtyard. Soldiers pointed at the sky. Malvery hurried over as others gathered. Above the wall, near the horizon, a dark line could be seen against the clouds.
One of the soldiers had a spyglass to his eye. ‘Aircraft!’ he yelled. ‘Hundreds of aircraft!’
‘The rest of the Navy?’ someone asked. ‘We can’t have had every craft here!’ ‘There ain’t enough left of the Navy for that.’
‘It’s the Awakeners! They’re bringing reinforcements!’
‘Where did they get that many?’
But Morben Kyne stepped forward, peering into the sky with his mechanical eyes. ‘It’s not the Navy, and it’s not the Awakeners either,’ he said, his voice humming with strange harmonics. He lowered his head, and his hood fell across his face. ‘It’s the Samarlans.’
Forty-One
Dream Come True — A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing — The Casket — Fighting on Deck — Bad Memories
‘Cap’n,’ said Pinn. ‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’
‘I see ’em, Pinn,’ Frey said in his ear. ‘Stay where you are, we’ll be airborne in a sec.’
Pinn watched the approaching fleet from his vantage point above the palace, his forehead creased in a frown. He and Harkins were making slow circles while the Cap’n loaded up men in the courtyard below. They could have simply hovered, but it was too dangerous to hang still in the air. There were Awakener craft flying about, and frigates cruising nearby.
The sight of the Samarlan fleet was faintly dizzying. He’d seen Sammie craft before, over the Free Trade Zone, but never more than a few at a time. The aerium shortage in Samarla meant they couldn’t afford to keep too many in the air. But how many were out there now? A thousand? More? They must have squeezed every last drop out of their reserves to raise this many craft.
‘Why are the Sammies here?’ he asked.
‘That,’ said Frey, ‘is a bloody good question.’
He could make out the shape of the bigger craft now. They were smooth-sided, with sleek lines and pointed ends, and they slipped through the sky like sharks. The Sammies built their craft for beauty first and practicality second, and their elegant designs came at the expense of armour and aerodynamics. Theirs was an aesthetic culture; even their war-making was pretty.
The Awakeners had seen them too. The electroheliograph masts of their frigates were flashing. Pinn had never troubled to learn EHG code to any proficient degree, but every pilot understood the basic signals. From what he could make out, the Awakeners were just as puzzled as he was.
Pinn wasn’t much for politics, but he dimly understood that the Sammies and the Awakeners were working together. The Sammies had sold the Azryx device to the Awakeners, after all. They wanted the Coalition gone so the new rulers would sell them aerium again.
Which was why it all came as a bit of a surprise when the Sammies opened fire.
Pinn stared in amazement as a row of silent flashes rippled along the length of the Sammie line, and the battered cargo freighters that guarded the flank of the Awakeners’ convoy lit up in great blasts of flame. The Awakeners barely had time to register the attack before another salvo ripped into them, this one reaching deeper, hammering the frigates further in. Fighters went spinning away in pieces, blasted apart by the concussion of the heavy guns.
‘Will someone tell me what in the name of buggery is going on?’ Harkins yelled.
By the time the third salvo reached them, the Awakeners were reacting at last, but there was no organisation in their response. They had no plan for this, and no way to communicate orders fast enough. Some frigates broke formation, angling themselves to return fire. Other craft — those whose captains hadn’t been turned into Imperators — made a break for escape. The fighters and bombers who’d been attacking the city swooped and swung about, their pilots confused and panicked.
‘Are the Samarlans on our side now, or what?’ Pinn asked.
‘They’re on their own side,’ said Frey in exasperation. The Ketty Jay was lifting off from the courtyard now. ‘And you two need to keep them off my back till I get to the Delirium Trigger.’
‘What have they got against us? We’re not even Awakeners!’ Harkins cried.
‘You’ve got Ciphers painted on your wings. Think they’ll be able to tell the difference?’
But Pinn was hardly listening now. A sense of mounting excitement was building up within him. He could see a mass of Samarlan fighters racing towards the edge of the convoy, flying ahead of the big frigates, deadly darts shot at the heart of the Awakener ranks. He didn’t care about the why and the what, or who was allied with who. All he cared about was one thing.
Once, there’d been a young man who wanted to go to war. He’d played with planes till he was old enough to fly them. He’d fantasised about being a hero. He’d dreamed of shooting the enemy out of the sky. But then the war had ended too soon, the enemy called it off, and that young man’s dreams had been shattered.
And now at last, after all this time, the enemy had come to make amends.
A huge grin split his pudgy face. His piggy eyes twinkled. A hysterical cackle bubbled up out of his guts, and he threw back his head and let it out. Then he hit the throttle and yanked the flight stick, swinging his aircraft away from the palace and off through the rain.
Finally, finally, Pinn was going to get to kill him some Sammies.
‘On the left! On the left!’
Frey threw the Ketty Jay to starboard, banking hard as a Sammie fighter swept past him, machine guns blazing. Samandra, who’d given the warning, went skidding across the cockpit and almost fetched up underneath the navigator’s desk. She clambered back to her feet as Frey levelled up. The thumping of an autocannon sounded from above and behind them, and something exploded nearby. There was a Coalition soldier in the cupola, a trained gunner whose accuracy put Malvery and Samandra to shame. Frey never thought he’d see the day when he’d let Coalition hands touch any of the Ketty Jay’s controls, but these were strange times.