Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [121]
“Two of them are behind us now,” Crake droned in the background. “One ahead, one passing to the side.”
“Which side?”
“Does it matter?”
Something swept past the windglass, a stir in the mist. Frey saw the stretched shape of a human form and distorted, ghastly features. He shied back from the windglass with a gasp.
“What is it?”
“Didn’t you see it?”
“I didn’t see anything!”
Frey’s vision was slipping in and out of focus and refused to stay steady. He burped in his throat and tasted acid and rotten eggs.
“Cap’n …” said Crake.
“I think something’s wrong,” Frey murmured.
“Cap’n … the second set of numbers …”
“What second set of—”
“The numbers! They’re counting up from minus twenty toward zero! It’s coming at us from below!”
“Cap’n! You’re drifting off altitude! You’re diving!” Jez cried.
Frey saw the altimeter sliding down and grabbed the controls, pulling the Ketty Jay level.
“It’s still coming!” Crake shrieked.
“Move!” Jez cried, and Frey boosted the engines. The Ketty Jay surged forward, and a split second later there was a deafening explosion outside, slamming against the hull and throwing Crake and Jez across the cabin. The craft heeled hard, swinging to starboard, and Frey fought with the controls as they were propelled blindly into the red murk. The Ketty Jay felt sluggish and wounded. Frey caught a glimpse of the compass on the floor, its needles spinning and switching crazily.
They’re all around us!
Crake started shrieking. “Daemons! There are daemons at the windows!” Frey’s vision blurred and stayed blurred. There seemed to be no strength in his limbs.
“Cap’n! Above and to starboard!” Jez shouted.
Frey looked and saw a round shadow in the mist. Growing, darkening as it approached. A ghost. A great black ghost.
No. A sphere. A metal sphere studded with spikes.
A floating mine.
Jez grabbed the flight stick and wrenched the Ketty Jay to port. Frey fell bonelessly out of his seat. Crake screamed.
There was another explosion. Then blackness, and silence.
Chapter Twenty-eight
JEZ SAVES THE DAY—LEGENDS COME TO LIFE—THE DOCKMASTER—SOME TACTICAL THINKING—NEWS FROM THE MARKET
rey came to a kind of bleary awareness some time later, to find himself crumpled on the floor of the Ketty Jay’s cockpit. His cheek was pressed to the metal, wet with drool. His head pounded as if his brain were trying to kick its way out of his skull.
He groaned and stirred. Jez was sitting in the pilot’s seat. She looked down at him.
“You’re back,” she said. “How do you feel?”
He swore a few times to give her an idea. Crake was collapsed in the opposite corner, contorted uncomfortably beneath the navigator’s desk.
Frey tried to remember how he’d gotten in this state. He was tempted to blame it on alcohol, but he was certain that he hadn’t been drinking since last night. The last thing he remembered was flying through the fog and fretting about the numbers on the compass.
“What just happened?” he asked, pulling himself into a sitting position.
Jez had the compass and the charts spread out untidily on the dash. She consulted both before replying. “You all went crazy. Fumes from the lava river, I suppose. It would explain all the ghosts and hallucinations and paranoia.” She tapped the compass with a fingernail. “Turns out this thing is to warn us where the magnetic floating mines are. Someone’s gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure this secret hideout stays secret.”
Frey fought down a swell of nausea. He felt like he’d been poisoned.
“Apologies for taking the helm without permission, Cap’n,” said Jez, sounding not very apologetic at all. “Had to avoid that mine, and you were out of action. Close thing. The Ketty Jay took a battering. Anyway, we’re nearly there now.”
“We are?”
“It’s actually pretty easy once you work it out,” she said, although he wasn’t sure if she meant following the route to the hideout or flying the Ketty Jay.
He got unsteadily to his feet, feeling vaguely usurped. The sight of Jez in the pilot’s seat disturbed him. It was an unpleasant vision of the future he feared, in which Jez