Fighter craft flitted about, whipping past like bullets. Sammies built their craft fragile but quick, and they were damned hard to get a bead on. The sky was dangerously crowded with big craft and little ones alike, everyone on their own trajectory, a panicked herd harassed by nimble predators. Aircraft smashed into each other. Shellfire detonated all around him.
Frey kept his head down and concentrated on threading the Ketty Jay safely through the chaos. Sammies or Awakeners, his mission hadn’t changed. His object was the Delirium Trigger and Trinica. Let the world throw what obstacles it would in his path. He had one last chance to save her, and everyone else with her. His previous despair had fallen away; hope had lit a fire inside. Nothing was going to stop him now.
The Samarlans’ betrayal was a master stroke. Their fleet was too precious to risk even a small part of it, their aerium too limited for even a short campaign in the air. So they’d sold the Azryx device to the Awakeners, and they’d let the Awakeners do all the work for them. The Awakeners had torn the country apart; the Awakeners had suffered the losses necessary to lure the Coalition Navy within range of the device.
And now the Samarlans came in with a surprise attack, having travelled unopposed across Vardic skies. A fleet of well-armed, highly-trained pilots against a group of mercenaries and volunteers, their forces already damaged and weakened. The Sammies had the same countermeasures as the Awakeners and the Ketty Jay, so the Azryx device didn’t work on them. And if their timing seemed near-perfect, that was probably because someone on the inside had told them when and where the Awakener attack would occur.
That would be Ashua, then.
The Sammies weren’t going to give Vardia to the Awakeners. That was never their plan. They didn’t want to trade for their aerium any more. They were going to take it for themselves. And with the Coalition Navy out of the way, there wasn’t a lot anyone could do about it.
If this was what future generations would call the Third Aerium War, it would be the shortest war in history.
The Ketty Jay’s thrusters screamed as Frey drove her towards the heart of the convoy, where the Delirium Trigger hung like a spider at the centre of a web. Pinn and Harkins swept around him, now ahead and now behind, chasing off Sammies, shooting them down when they could. Pinn’s maniacal cackling was getting wearisome, but Frey kept the earcuff in all the same. For once he was glad of the noise in his ear. He hadn’t realised what a comfort his crew were until he’d almost lost them.
The other frigates had gathered around the flagship and the Delirium Trigger, a hard core of artillery to defend the Lord High Cryptographer and his Azryx device. Cannons boomed, machine guns spat and autocannons pounded, tracking Sammie fighters as they lashed past in the rain. The sheer noise of it was terrifying. The Ketty Jay shook and shuddered as Frey fought to see through the rain sliding off the windglass.
Don’t worry about me, he told them silently. I’m an Awakener.
And as far as they knew, he was. The Ketty Jay, with its Cipher decals showing proudly, slipped through the bombardment. The frigates had other targets.
‘Pinn! Harkins! You’ve done your bit! Get out of here!’ he said.
‘No, sir!’ said Harkins. ‘Not while there’s Sammies and Awakeners in the sky over Thesk!’
‘I’m not even halfway done killin’ these losers yet!’ Pinn cried, with an edge of happy delirium in his voice.
‘Alright,’ said Frey. ‘Stay safe. I want to see you both on the other side.’
Now he was above the core of the convoy, and he tipped the Ketty Jay into a dive and plunged in. The gathered frigates were like dark metal islands, floating in the sky. He darted between them; their flanks thundered past in a blur. Other Awakener fighters were in here with him, buzzing about like flies, sheltering behind the bigger craft. They ignored him, and he ignored them.
And then there she was, below him. A black shape in the rain, her huge bow emerging from behind another frigate, cannons roaring as she sent shells out towards the Sammies’ capital craft. He closed in with reckless speed, coming in aft of her, and hit the airbrakes hard while dumping aerium from his tanks. Samandra grabbed the navigator’s desk as the Ketty Jay decelerated, dropping down towards the Delirium’s main deck.
Either the gunners were busy with other matters, or they thought that nobody was foolish enough to try what Frey had in mind. By the time someone realised and swivelled one of the deck guns towards him, it was too late.
The Ketty Jay landed heavily and too fast, throwing Frey forward in his chair. She slammed onto her skids with a scream of metal, and magnetic clamps locked on. Frey felt a blaze of pain in his back as his spine was jolted, and Samandra went sprawling on her hands and knees. The Ketty Jay’s hydraulics howled as residual forward momentum threatened to rip her from her skids, and for a moment Frey thought she’d topple forward and collapse in a heap of twisted metal.
But then, just when it seemed she couldn’t strain any further, she rocked back again and settled. When they looked up, the deck of the Delirium Trigger spread out before them, big enough for a dozen of his craft. Despite the gunner’s best efforts, they were too low to be shot at: safety mechanisms prevented the cannons firing when they might hit their own aircraft.
‘We’re down,’ said Frey.
Samandra looked up from the floor and tipped her tricorn hat back from where it had fallen over her face. ‘You don’t say,’ she replied drily.
Frey released himself from the pilot’s seat and snatched up his cutlass and pistols. Samandra was already out the door, heading down to the hold where the others waited ready. It would only be moments before the crew of the Delirium Trigger came swarming out on to the deck.
Frey took a breath. It wasn’t the thought of the fight to come that scared him. It was the thought of facing Trinica.
Time to do this.
He went out into the corridor. Dull explosions from the battle outside rang through the Ketty Jay’s hull. The soldier in the cupola had descended the ladder and was disappearing down the stairs into the hold. Frey was about to follow him when something caught his eye further down the corridor.
The door of the infirmary was open. Something black was poking through the doorway, moving slightly.
Frey knew he didn’t have time for it, but there was something urgent in the sight, something that needed investigating. He walked closer, warily, until it became clear that the black thing was a strip of tarp, quivering under the influence of the Ketty Jay’s air filters. He went to the doorway and looked inside.
The strip of tarp was part of a larger piece, a sack that lay on the floor near the door, which had been ripped open. It took him a moment to realise that it was the remains of the body bag they’d stored Jez’s charred corpse in. Events had moved so fast that there hadn’t even been time to bury her, so they’d left her on the operating table.
Frey looked from the empty table to the ripped body bag and back again. She wasn’t there now.
He turned and ran, heading down to the hold, his mind awhirl. What did it mean? Had somebody been aboard and taken her while they were imprisoned?
Had she got up and walked away?
The cargo ramp was opening as he hurried down the stairs. Crake and Kyne were near the back of the assembled forces, wearing big backpacks and weighed down with daemonist paraphernalia. The Coalition soldiers clutched their weapons, taut with anticipation. Other Century Knights stood among them: Samandra Bree with her tricorn hat and her shotguns; Celerity Blane with her rotary machine-pistols, her face dirtied and eyes fierce; Eldrew Grissom, with his straggly grey hair and his duster full of blades. Colden Grudge had stayed behind; autocannons would be useless here, where the fighting would be at close quarters.