Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [146]
But all that time, she’d been strengthening herself, becoming the woman he saw before him. She could have gone home at any point, back to the safety of her family. They’d have taken her back, of that he was sure. But she never did. She cut out every soft part of herself, so she could live among the scum.
He didn’t pity her. He couldn’t. He only mourned the loss of the young woman he’d known ten years ago. This mockery of his lover was his own doing. He had fashioned her, and she damned him by her existence.
“By the time I got to the Delirium Trigger, I’d made my way in the underworld. I had a reputation, and they respected me. I knew the crew was troubled and I knew the captain was a syphilitic drunk. It took me a year, building trust, winning them around. I knew he was planning an assault on an outpost near Anduss, I knew it would be a disaster, and I waited. Afterward, I led the survivors against him. We threw him overboard from two kloms up.”
She gazed across at him. Her black eyes seemed darker in the faint light of the electric lamps.
“And then you turned yourself into a ghoul,” he finished.
“You know how men are,” she said. “They don’t like to mix desire and respect. They see a beautiful woman in command and they belittle her. It makes them feel better about themselves.” She looked away, her face falling into shadow. “Besides, being pretty never brought me anything but pain.”
“It kept you alive,” he pointed out.
“That wasn’t living,” she returned.
He had no answer to that.
“So that’s the story,” she said. “That’s what it takes to be a captain. Patience. Ruthlessness. Sacrifice. You’re too selfish to make that crew respect you, Darian. You surprised me once, but it won’t happen again.”
There was a knock at the door. A spasm of irritation crossed her face. “I gave orders that I wasn’t to be disturbed!” she snapped.
“It’s urgent, Cap’n!” came a voice from the other side. “The Ketty Jay has gone!”
“What?” she cried, surging to her feet. She tore open the door to the cabin. A crewman was outside, obscured from Frey’s view by the door.
“She were following us with her lights on,” came the breathless report. “All of a sudden the lights go out. By the time we got a spotlight over there, she were nowhere to be seen. She could’ve gone anywhere in the dark. She’s disappeared, Cap’n. Nobody knows where.”
Trinica’s head swiveled, and she fixed Frey with a glare of utter malice.
Frey grinned. “Surprise!”
Chapter Thirty-three
DELIBERATIONS—BACK IN THE BLIZZARD—THE MANES—A FEAT OF NAVIGATION
ez, in the pilot’s seat of the Ketty Jay, flew on into the night.
The craft was dark, inside and out. The light of the moon edged her face in brittle silver. It fell also onto the two bodies on the cockpit floor and glittered in their blood. Dracken’s men. The iron pipe that had staved in their heads lay between them.
Jez’s jaw was set hard. Navigation charts were spread on the dashboard next to her. She stared through the windglass at the world below, eyes fixed. The Ketty Jay slid through the darkness, high above the clouded mountains, a speck in the vast sky.
She could see the lights of other craft, visible at great distance. A flotilla of fighters surrounded a long, rectangular freighter. A prickle of shining dots signified a Navy corvette, cruising the horizon. And, in between, there were the invisible vessels, like the Ketty Jay, that had reason to stay hidden and wanted to move unobserved. Stealthy shadows in the moonlight. A pilot wouldn’t see them unless they were very close, but Jez saw them all.
Even hours later, she was still trembling with the aftershocks of murder. Had there been a gun to hand, she might have used it to threaten the men, then tied them up and kept them prisoner. But they had the guns, and she had only a length of pipe. She crept into the cockpit and brained the navigator before he even knew she was there. The pilot turned in his seat in time to receive the second blow across his forehead.
She’d told herself that she was only going to knock them out, but,