Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [70]
“Cap’n!”
It was Silo. The tall Murthian wasn’t in the engine room after all but was running down the valley toward them with a haste that could only spell trouble. He was carrying a spyglass in his hand.
“Cap’n! Aircraft!” Silo cried, pointing. The others—with the exception of Pinn—scrambled to their feet and ran to look.
“I see it,” said Jez.
“Damn, you’ve got good eyes!” said Malvery. “I don’t see a thing!”
“Nor me!” added Crake.
Jez looked around guiltily. “I mean, I can’t make it out or anything, not really. Just saw a flash of light, that’s all.”
Silo reached them and passed the spyglass to Frey. Frey put it to his eye.
“She coming … from the south …” Silo panted. “Think she … heading for the … hermitage.…”
“Then she’ll pass over us?”
“Yuh-huh. See us for sure.”
Frey cast about with the spyglass, struggling to locate the incoming threat. It swung into view and steadied. Frey’s mouth went dry.
She was a big craft. Long and wide across the deck, black and scarred, yet for all her ugliness she was sleek. A frigate, built more like an ocean vessel than an aircraft: a terrible armored hulk bristling with weaponry. Her wings were little more than four stumpy protuberances: she was too massive to maneuver quickly. But what she lacked in speed, she more than made up for in firepower. This was a combat craft, a machine made for war with a crew of dozens.
Frey took the spyglass away from his eye.
“It’s the Delirium Trigger,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
DRACKEN CATCHES UP—EQUALIZERS—JEZ MAKES A PLAN—PINN’S DEFENSE—LIGHTNING
he reaction among the crew was immediate. Frey had never seen them scramble into action so fast. He vainly wished he had half the authority that the Delirium Trigger apparently did.
“Everyone! Get to stations! We’re airborne!” Frey yelled, even though Silo, Jez, and Malvery were already bolting up the cargo ramp. Harkins had scampered into the cockpit of the Firecrow like a frightened spider, and Pinn was grumbling nauseously to himself as he set about getting himself into the Skylance.
“Crake! Get Bess inside and shut the ramp!” he ordered, as he raced aboard the Ketty Jay. He made his way to the cockpit with a speed born of panic, flying up the steps from the cargo hold two at a time. He squeezed past Malvery, who was climbing into the autocannon cupola on the Ketty Jay’s back, and found Jez already at her post. He threw himself into his chair, punched in the ignition code, and opened up everything he could for an emergency lift.
How did she find me?
Harkins was in the air by the time the Ketty Jay began to rise, and Pinn took off a few moments later, still clad in his half-buttoned Awakener cassock and with a red smear across his forehead. There was a look of frantic bewilderment on his face, like someone rudely awakened from sleep to find their bed is on fire.
The Ketty Jay was facing the Delirium Trigger as she rose. The frigate was coming in fast. Now it was easily visible to the naked eye and growing larger by the second. She couldn’t fail to have spotted the craft lifting into the sky, directly in her path. The question was, would she recognize the Ketty Jay at this distance?
As if in answer, four black dots detached from her and began to race ahead. Outfliers. Fighter craft.
“She’s onto us!” Frey cried. He swung the craft around one hundred eighty degrees and hit the thrusters. The Ketty Jay bellowed as she accelerated to the limit of her abilities.
“Orders, Cap’n?” Jez asked.
“Get us out of here!”
“Can we outrun her?”
“The Trigger, yes. The outfliers are Norbury Equalizers. We can’t outrun them.”
“Okay, I’m on it,” said Jez, digging through her charts with a loud rustling of paper.
“Heads up, everyone!” Malvery called from the cupola. “Incoming!”
Frey wrenched the control stick, and the Ketty Jay banked hard. A rapid salvo of distant booms rolled through the air, followed a moment later by a sound like the end of the world. The sky exploded all around them, a deafening, pounding chaos of shock and flame. The Ketty Jay was shaken and