Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [91]
“How many kloms?”
“We’ll see it,” Rabby assured him.
Frey took another hit from the rum.
“Can I have some of that?” Rabby asked.
“No.”
They came in over the landing zone not long afterward. The hilltop was bald, and where there used to be fields there were now earthworks, with narrow trenches running behind them. Battered stone buildings clustered at the crest of the hill. It was a tiny village, with simple houses built in the low, flat-topped style common in these parts. The trees and grass glistened and steamed as the morning rain evaporated under the fierce sun.
Nothing moved on the hilltop.
Frey slowed the Ketty Jay to a hover. He was surly drunk, and his first reaction was disgust. Couldn’t the Coalition even organize someone to meet their own supply craft? Did they want to run out of ammo? Did they think he enjoyed hauling himself all over enemy territory, risking enemy patrols, just so they could eat?
Martley, the engineer, came bounding up the passageway from the engine room and into the cockpit. “Are we there?” he asked eagerly. He was a wiry young carrottop, his cheeks and dungarees permanently smeared in grease as if it was combat camouflage. He had too much energy, that was his problem. He wore Frey out.
Rabby examined the earthworks uncertainly. “Looks deserted, Cap’n.”
“These are the right coordinates?”
“Hey!” Rabby sounded offended. “Have I ever failed to get us to our target?”
“I suppose we usually get there in the end,” Frey conceded.
“Did the Navy tell us anything about this place?” Martley chirped. “Like maybe why it’s so deserted?”
“It’s only a drop point,” Frey said impatiently. “Like all the others.”
Frey hadn’t asked. He never asked. Over the past few months, Frey had simply taken whichever jobs paid the most. When the Navy began conscripting cargo haulers into minimum-wage service, the Merchant Guild responded by demanding danger bonuses. Those employed by the big cargo companies were happy to sit out the war ferrying supplies within the borders of Vardia. Freelancers like Frey saw an opportunity.
By taking the most dangerous missions, Frey had all but paid off the loan on the Ketty Jay. They’d had some close scrapes, and the crew complained like buggery and kept applying for transfers, but Frey couldn’t have cared less. After seven years, she was almost his. That was all that counted. Once he had her, he’d be free. He could ride out the rest of the war doing shuttle runs between Thesk and Marduk, and he’d never again have to worry about the loan companies freezing his accounts and hunting him down. He’d be out on his own, a master of the skies.
“Let’s just load out the cargo and get paid,” he said. “If there’s no one here to collect, that’s not our problem.”
“You certain?” said Martley uncertainly.
“If there’s been a screwup here, it’s someone else’s fault,” said Frey. He took another swig of rum. “We’re paid to deliver to the coordinates they give us. We’re not paid to think. They’ve told us that enough times.”
“Bloody Navy,” Rabby muttered.
Frey lowered the Ketty Jay down onto a relatively unscarred patch of land next to the village. Impatient and drunk, he dumped the aerium from the tanks too fast and slammed them down hard enough to jar his coccyx and knock Martley to his knees. Martley and Rabby exchanged a worried glance they thought he didn’t see.
“Come on,” he said, suppressing a wince as he got out of his seat. “Quicker we get unloaded, quicker we can go home.”
Kenham and Jodd were down in the cargo hold when they arrived, disentangling the crates from their webbing. They were a pair of ugly bruisers, ex-dockworkers drafted in for labor by the Navy. The only people on the crew they respected were each other; everyone else was slightly scared of them.
Jodd was smoking a roll-up. Frey couldn’t remember ever seeing him without a cigarette smoldering in his mouth, even when handling crates of live ammunition, as he was now. As captain, Frey made an executive decision to say nothing. Jodd had never blown