Frey swore loudly and bitterly. Rage swelled up inside him. He pulled off his earcuff, balled his fist and thumped at the ground. ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’
Silo got to his feet and pulled his captain up. ‘Ain’t time for that, Cap’n. We gotta move!’
The two of them ran back up the road towards the house. Crake, Kyne and Plome would have to fend for themselves. Frey had his own problems.
They thought they were laying a trap for the Awakeners. But the Awakeners had laid a trap for them.
As he ran, he heard a sly, silken voice in his head. The voice of a woman he’d thought he knew. ‘I suppose I am a vengeful person after all.’
Well, he couldn’t say Amalicia hadn’t warned him.
Twenty-Nine
By the time Frey and Silo reached the courtyard, they could hear the engines on the wind. The others were hurrying out of the house, bundled up in coats and carrying shotguns and pistols. Samandra was yelling at the crew, pointing them this way and that. Snow flurried round the hamlet, obscuring their vision and blowing in their eyes.
‘Frey!’ she cried as he arrived. ‘You’re with me! Come on!’
‘Come on where?’ Frey called back.
‘Landing pad!’
Frey wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone. Even in a crisis, he was roused to indignity. ‘Now hold your arse for a second, Bree, this is my crew!’
Bree took a breath to swear at him, then decided diplomacy would be quicker. ‘I need to get to that landing pad and get the Wrath airborne,’ she explained. ‘Rest of us need to dig in here ready for when they come at us. I could do with another pair of hands on board, and Grudge is better here with that cannon of his. Now you want to stay or come?’
‘What about the Ketty Jay and the Firecrow? Bess is still locked up in the hold!’
‘You ain’t gonna make it to them in time!’ she said.
She was right. Their best chance lay in getting the heavily armoured Wrath off the ground. The Ketty Jay and the Firecrow were on the other side of a forested rise, through heavy snow. But the road between here and the landing pad was dangerously exposed, and he wondered if they should scatter off into the trees instead of staying in the hamlet. That would leave the bridge undefended, though, and Crake and the others were in there, and-
‘Now, Frey!’ Samandra snapped.
The crew were looking at him expectantly. He made a decision. Any was better than none.
‘We need to get to the landing pad and get the Wrath airborne,’ he said with authority. ‘Rest of you need to dig in here ready for when they come at us.’
Bree rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm and pulled him away towards the road. He heard Silo barking orders behind him, dividing up the crew into defensive positions.
Three Imperators. Three aircraft, and who knew how many guns and men? Frey and his crew knew something they shouldn’t, and the Awakeners were going to make damned sure they didn’t live to tell about it.
Frey and Samandra raced out of the hamlet, boots crunching in the snow. The road cut through the colourless landscape, winding between steep banks. On their left was a forest of bare trees; to their right, the trees had been cleared for meadows.
Frey caught sight of something out there in the whirling whiteness. A bulky grey shadow sinking towards the meadows. A troop transport, by the shape of it, probably packed with mercs or Sentinels or both.
‘Malvery!’ he yelled over the whine and roar of thrusters. ‘They’re coming at you from the south! Tell Silo!’
‘Right-o,’ said Malvery, and he sounded so matter-of-fact that Frey felt himself heartened. He believed in his crew, in their competence and spirit. Silo was a good leader; he’d left them in capable hands. No matter what the odds, they could win out. They always had a chance. He had to believe that.
‘Frey! Heads up!’ Samandra came to a halt, pointing at the sky. Ahead of them, coming from the direction of the landing pad, another craft was taking shape. It pushed out of the gloom, coming in low and steady. Frey stopped next to Samandra, peering at it, unsure of what sort of danger it represented. Was it, too, coming in to put down troops?
A gust of wind pushed the snow aside, and he saw it. His heart sank. It hung in the sky like some enormous bird of prey. A Besterfield Predator. A military grade attack craft. And they were right in its path.
He felt Samandra slam into him just as the Predator’s rotary cannons opened up. They crashed into a snowdrift and a hail of bullets tore past them, throwing up a long cloud of powder. The Predator soared overhead, following the road towards the hamlet.
Frey found himself on his back on the bank, with Samandra lying on top of him, her face inches from hers. Even amid everything, the softness and warmth of her stirred him. He was inordinately pleased to find that he was still capable.
‘Well, hello,’ he said.
‘In your dreams, pirate,’ she said, and shoved herself off him and back to her feet.
‘Hey! Crake’s a pirate too, you know,’ he said, as he pulled himself free of the drift.
He looked about, but he could barely see a thing for the snow-haze. He wasn’t even certain which direction the landing pad was now. He’d got turned around. It was far too easy to get lost when everything was white.
‘Which way’s the-?’
She held out a hand to shut him up. The rotary cannons had started up again. They heard smashing glass and falling slates as the gunship fired on the hamlet. The sound sucked the humour out of him.
Voices came to them, snatches of barked orders. Soldiers or Sentinels, coming from the other direction. He caught a glimpse of grey figures slipping down the bank. The Awakeners had reached the road. Frey and Samandra had delayed too long; they were cut off from the landing pad.
Samandra grabbed him and thumbed at the north bank. They scrambled up it and into the naked forest, before the army of men coming down the other bank could catch sight of them and shoot them dead.
Silo ran through the kitchen with his head down. The window exploded inward; the counter-top was splintered and scored; the stove popped and clanged as it was riddled with holes. He skidded into cover in a doorway and crashed into Malvery, who had his hands over his head.
‘This is pretty bloody unsporting behaviour!’ Malvery yelled over the noise of the rotary cannons. ‘What happened to picking on someone your own size?’
Gallows humour was lost on Silo. Survival was a serious business to a Murthian. He searched the room, looking for better cover, angles of fire, anything that might help them. Years of living as a resistance fighter in Samarla had given him a talent for getting out of desperate situations, and this one was right up there with the best of them.
‘There’s another one!’ Ashua cried, who was crouched by a window on the far side of the house, visible through the open doorway. ‘They’ve got two gunships!’
Two of ’em. Mother. They gonna shred us from both sides.
‘Soldiers coming in over the meadows!’ Jez called.
Silo listened as the first aircraft swung away and began firing on another building. It was hovering over the courtyard, pounding the houses that surrounded it. Silo guessed the pilot didn’t know exactly where they were, so they were cutting up the whole place in the hope of flushing them out.
He hurried through the doorway to the living room and hunkered down next to Jez. She and Ashua were at neighbouring windows overlooking the south slope, where the meadows ran out and the land tipped down to meet the back of the buildings. Off to the right was the hamlet’s generator, attached by a cluster of pipes to a large cylindrical fuel tank.