Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [99]
Chapter Twenty-three
BARRICADES—BESS AWAKES—A LESSON IN CARDPLAY—THE MONSTER BELOWDECKS—THIEVES
he Ketty Jay was berthed at a small dock in the outskirts of Rabban, far from the Delirium Trigger. The dock was little more than a barely used landing pad set above a maze of shattered and leaning alleyways. Only a few other craft of similar size shared the space. They sat dark and silent, their crews nowhere to be seen. A few dock personnel wandered around, looking for something to do, their presence revealed by a cough or a slow movement in the shadows. All was quiet.
Silo and Jez worked in the white glare of the Ketty Jay’s belly lights, rolling barrels from the cargo hold and manhandling them into rows of five. There were several such rows positioned around the Ketty Jay. A haphazard kind of arrangement, an observer might think, unless they guessed what the barrels were really for.
They were building barricades.
Harkins was skirting the edge of the landing pad, scampering along in a crouch, a spyglass in his hand. He stayed out of the light of the electric lampposts that marked out the landing pad for flying traffic. Every so often he’d stop and scan the surrounding alleyways, then run off in a nervous fashion to another location and do it again. The dock personnel paid him no mind. As long as his captain paid the berthing fee, they were happy to tolerate eccentrics.
The night was still new when Harkins straightened, his whole body frozen in alarm. He adjusted his spyglass, shifted it this way and that, counting frantically under his breath. Then he fled back toward the Ketty Jay as if his heels were on fire.
“Here we go,” said Jez, as she saw him coming. Silo grunted and levered another barrel of sand into place.
“There’s twenty of ’em!” Harkins reported in a quiet shriek. “I mean, give or take a couple, but twenty’s near enough! What are we supposed to do against twenty? Or even nearly twenty. Ten would be too many! What’s he expect us to do? I don’t like this. Not one measly rotting bit!”
Jez studied him, worried. He was even more strung out than usual. The Firecrow and Skylance were not even in the city. They’d been stashed at a rendezvous point far away. Without his craft, he was a snail out of its shell.
“We do what the Cap’n told us to do,” she said calmly.
“But we didn’t know there’d be twenty! That’s almost half the crew!”
“I suppose Dracken doesn’t want to leave anything to chance,” said Jez. She exchanged a glance with Silo, who headed up the cargo ramp and into the Ketty Jay.
Harkins watched him go, then turned to Jez with a slightly manic sheen in his eyes. “Here, that’s an idea! Why don’t we go inside, close up the cargo hold, and lock it? They’d never get in then.”
“You don’t think they’ve thought of that? They’ll have explosives. Either that or someone who knows how to crack open and rewire a keypad.” She motioned toward the small rectangle of buttons nested in the nearby landing strut, used to close and open the cargo ramp from the outside.
The belly lights of the Ketty Jay went out, plunging them into twilight. The barely adequate glow of the lampposts gave a soft, eerie cast to the near-empty dock. Silo emerged carrying an armful of guns and ammo.
Jez gave Harkins a reassuring pat on the arm. He looked ready to bolt. “Twenty men here means twenty less for the others to deal with,” she said. “The Cap’n said Dracken would be coming for us. We’re ready for it. We just have to hold out, that’s all.”
“Oh, just that!” Harkins moaned with hysterical sarcasm. But then Silo grabbed his hand and slapped a pistol into his palm, and the glare the Murthian gave him was enough to shut him up.
MALVERY AND PINN REJOINED Crake, who was waiting at a safe remove from the Delirium Trigger with a worried frown on his brow. Together, they watched Bess being loaded on. The arm of the crane was chained to the four corners of one great pallet, on which were secured dozens of crates. It lifted the pallet onto the deck of the Delirium Trigger. From