‘How are you tonight, Bess? Happy to see me?’
She rocked back and forth. Since she had no neck, it was the closest she got to a nod.
‘Good girl,’ he said, rubbing his hand over her hump. ‘Good girl.’
He found it was easiest to treat her like a pet, though he wasn’t exactly sure what she was. Was there still something in there of the eight-year-old she’d once been? Perhaps. But he’d come to terms with the death of his niece as best he could. He’d come to terms with his part in it, too, although that had been much harder. The remorse and regret would never truly end. This golem carried some memory of that beautiful child, but it wasn’t her inside that armoured suit. The real Bess was dead. What was left was an echo of her, an imprint.
But that was something.
‘Look what I brought you,’ he said, holding up the book. The title was printed on the red leather cover: Stories for Little Girls. Bess couldn’t read, but after a moment she recognised the book. She clapped her hands with a loud crash of metal, tottered backwards on her stumpy legs and plonked herself onto the ground.
Crake sat down cross-legged next to her. She loomed over his shoulder as he opened the book, craning in eagerly to see the colourful illustrations.
‘Which one shall we read tonight?’ he asked.
Bess made a quizzical noise: an eerie, otherworldly coo. She sensed a question, but she didn’t understand what he’d said. He was never quite sure how much she comprehended of speech. She seemed to have good days and bad days. Or perhaps she was just good at guessing his intentions rather than interpreting the actual words.
‘I’ll pick, shall I?’ he said, turning to one that he knew was her favourite.
She hunkered closer, her face-grille pressed close to the page. Maybe it was the pictures she enjoyed, or maybe she just liked to hear him talk, even if she didn’t know what he was saying. It didn’t matter. While she kept listening, he’d keep reading. He’d brought her into the world, and he had responsibilities. An honourable man had to live up to to live uhis responsibilities.
‘ The Duchess and the Daisy-Chain,’ he announced, and he began.
The desert was a cold and empty place at night. Sand and stone, from horizon to horizon. Barren outcrops jutted out of the steel-grey dunes like rotten teeth. It was a new moon, only visible as a round absence in the swathes of stars overhead. Their frosty shine, coming from an impossible distance, was barely enough for human eyes to see by.
For Jez, piloting the Ketty Jay, it wasn’t a problem. The night was as clear to her as the day.
They were a long way outside the Free Trade Zone, deeply into illegal airspace. She flew with the lights out and thrusters running quiet. With only the sky as a background, the Ketty Jay was a speck hurtling through an infinity of black. Only her thrusters gave her away, their blazing glow alien to the chill dark. But there was nothing to be done about that, except hope that nobody was sharp enough to spot them.
Jez had dropped into a shallow trance as they flew. Her uncanny vision was something she didn’t have to think about, but it was only when she was in a trance that the full range of her Mane senses kicked in. Then she could sense the wind, calculate it, as if its turbulence was something visible and easy to predict. She was aware of Ashua’s heartbeat, fast and nervous, betraying her outwardly confident exterior. She could hear the workings of the aircraft, purring with health since it had been overhauled at Trinica’s expense. It had been a thank-you for saving the pirate captain from the Manes, the very creatures that had given Jez these gifts. They lurked on the edge of her consciousness these days, no longer calling to her as they used to, quiet presences like ghosts at her shoulder.
She was a half-Mane. Once that knowledge had tormented her, but now she was beginning to settle into the idea. She no longer feared the ones who had made her what she was.
Something tugged at the edge of her senses. A disturbance in the desert winds. She frowned, and tracked its source.
‘Malvery!’ she called through the doorway. ‘Five o’clock high! You see anything?’
The Ketty Jay was too bulky for the pilot to see behind the aircraft, which was why they often had a lookout in the cupola. After a few seconds, Malvery called back. ‘I see it. Sammie frigate. Bit of a way off.’
‘They coming towards us?’
Another pause. ‘Reckon so. Reckon they’re coming at quite a clip, as well.’
‘Might be we’re just going across their flight path,’ said Ashua from the shadows at the back of the cockpit. ‘They might not have seen us.’
‘Change course,’at urse, amp;r said Frey quickly, from the navigator’s station. Jez did so, turning the Ketty Jay to a new heading that would force the Samarlans to correct if they wanted to intercept. Minutes ticked by, counted by restless tapping of Harkins’ boot as he tried to contain the explosive hysteria building up inside him. When she judged that enough time had passed, she called again.
‘Doc?’
‘Still coming.’
Jez swore under her breath. ‘They’ve seen the thruster glow.’
‘At that distance?’ Frey said. ‘There’s no way they-’
He was interrupted by a flash and a deafening concussion. The Ketty Jay rang like a struck bell and slewed to port, sending Ashua and Harkins sprawling to the floor and almost knocking Frey out of his seat. Jez wrestled with the flight stick and brought the Ketty Jay back to an even keel.
‘Pretty sure they have, Cap’n,’ she said.
‘They’re lobbing artillery at us, the rude sons-of-bitches!’ Malvery yelled, outraged. ‘And now they’re putting out fighters!’
‘How many?’
‘Four.’
A small frigate, then, if it was only carrying four fighters. But the odds were hopeless even so.
‘Better make ourselves scarce,’ said Jez. She hit the thrusters and the Ketty Jay roared as she surged forward.
‘Let me fly,’ said Frey anxiously, getting up from his seat. ‘I can-’
‘Greatest respect, Cap’n, but sit yourself down,’ she said with a casual firmness that stopped him in his tracks. ‘You’d be blind out there. And you can’t fly where I’m going.’
‘Where’s thaaaAAAA -’ Frey’s question turned to a yell as Jez dumped aerium from the tanks and pushed the Ketty Jay ’s nose down, sending her into a steep plunge towards the ground.
‘Dropping to the deck, Cap’n,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if they dare follow us.’
‘Without lights?’ Ashua cried. ‘Are you insane? You can’t fly that low to the ground when you can’t see it.’
Jez spared a moment to look over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got good eyes,’ she said.
Powerful flood beams swung across the landscape as the approaching frigate and its fighters tried to get a light on them. Harkins let out an involuntary yelp as he saw how close they were to the rocky desert floor.
By going low to the ground, she forced the Samarlans to make a choice. They could either plunge down and match her altitude – a dangerous option in the dark – or they could make shallow dives while firing and then pull up. That meant they couldn’t get on the Ketty Jay ’s tail, and made her much harder to hit.
‘Fighters coming in!’ called Malvery.
‘Deep or shallow?’ Jez called back.
‘You what?’
‘The angle. Deep or… Never mind,’ she said. The cockpit was suddenly illuminated from outside as the beams found them.
The fighters were rigged for night-flying, with banks of floodlights along their wings. She could estimate their angle of approach by the slant of the light as it shone past the Ketty Jay and cast her shadow on the ground. The fighters had chosen the lowest-risk strategy. Even with lights, flying close to the ground on a moonless night was too dangerous for their tastes. They didn’t have the advantages that Jez did.
She trimmed the aerium ballast and levelled out just above ground level, close enough to make Frey give a little squeak in the back of his throat. The desert floor rushed by beneath them. Jez banked hard and swung away from the light as she heard the rattle of machine guns from behind. Tracer fire flitted past the Ketty Jay, chewing up the earth below.