Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [73]
He felt better once he’d located the fourth Equalizer. He had two of them on his tail now. They respected him enough that they couldn’t turn their backs on him. Now all he had to do was keep them busy awhile.
He launched into a new sequence of evasions, leading them away from the Ketty Jay as he corkscrewed and twisted and rolled. The Equalizers homed in on him from different angles, doing their best to trap him, but he could see their tactics and refused to play along. The one he’d damaged was limping slightly, a little slow and clumsy, and its pilot couldn’t lock in with his companion. Their maneuvers were pretty but came to nothing. Sporadic machine-gun fire chattered behind him, but it was more hopeful than effective.
I should just turn around and take these bastards out, thought Pinn. But then he caught sight of the Delirium Trigger, much larger than he remembered when he last looked. Their aerobatics had allowed the bigger craft to catch up to them, and Pinn didn’t fancy dealing with her guns on top of everything else.
The Ketty Jay was barely visible in the distance. He’d taken two of the Equalizers out of the chase, and he’d delayed the other two, buying the Ketty Jay time to reach the storm. He’d done his part.
He reached over and grabbed a lever underneath the dash. The Skylance had been built as a racer long before he’d modified it for combat, and it still had a racer’s secret weapon installed. He leveled up and aimed for the horizon.
“Bye bye, shit-garglers!” he yelled, then rammed the Skylance to full throttle and engaged the afterburners. The Skylance rocketed forward, slamming him back in his seat with enough force to press his chubby cheeks flat against his face. His pursuers could only watch, hopelessly outpaced, as the Skylance dwindled into the distance, carrying its whooping pilot with it.
“TWO STILL WITH US!” called Malvery from his cupola. “Pinn’s drawn off the others.”
Frey grinned. “I’d kiss that kid if he wasn’t so hideous and stupid.” He looked about. “Where’s Harkins?”
Jez pointed up through the windglass to the Firecrow hanging high on their starboard side.
“Tell him to engage,” he said, then shifted in his seat and hunched forward over the controls. “Keep ’em off my tail.”
Jez reached over to the electroheliograph and tapped a rapid code. The lamp on the Ketty Jay’s back flashed the sequence. Harkins gave a wing-waggle and broke away.
The winds were rising as the storm clouds rolled ever closer. Frey’s admiration for Jez had grown a great deal in the moment he saw those thunderheads appear on the horizon. She’d been right on the money. Again. It was an unfamiliar feeling, having someone reliable on his crew. He was rather liking it.
“Wind is from the northwest today, and it’s sunny,” she’d said. “Warm air rising off the mountains up the side of the plateau, cooled by the airstream coming down from the arctic. This time of the day, this kind of weather, you’re gonna get a storm there.”
The kind of storm a small fighter craft couldn’t handle. But a bigger one, driven by the notoriously robust Blackmore P-12 thrusters—that kind of craft could make it through.
Crake stuck his head round the door. “Anything I can do?”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Bess was upset. All the explosions, you see.”
“We’ll try to keep it down,” Frey replied drily. “Get me a damage report from Silo.”
Crake ran off down the corridor to comply. Frey returned his attention to the storm. The Ketty Jay rocked and shivered as the winds began to play around her. Machine-gun fire sounded from behind them.
“There goes Harkins,” Frey said. “Malvery! What’s going on back there?”
“They dodged round him! Still coming!”
“Well make sure you—” he began, but was drowned out by the heavy thudding of the autocannon as Malvery opened up on their pursuers.
Frey cursed under his breath and swung the Ketty Jay to starboard. He heard the chatter of machine guns, and a spray of tracer fire passed under them and soared away toward the clouds.
“Will you hold still?” Malvery bellowed. “I ain’t gonna hit anything if you keep