The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [88]
“More important than love?”
“Yes!” he replied, without an instant’s pause.
“You see?” said Amalicia. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’re scared. Who in their right mind would take money over love?”
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Frey said, exasperated. He pulled a pistol from his belt and pointed it at her head. “Just drop the damn gun.”
Amalicia went white and stared at him in surprise. Then an uncertain smile spread across her lips. “You wouldn’t shoot me,” she said.
“I’m a pirate, Amalicia. You think I haven’t shot women in cold blood before?”
Crake hadn’t thought so until now, but suddenly he wasn’t sure. Amalicia was even more worried by the suggestion. She hadn’t seen this side of Frey. The hard, uncaring, brutal side. She didn’t move, perhaps expecting him to drop the act at any moment. But Frey’s expression was like stone.
He cocked his pistol. “Gun down, Amalicia. This isn’t a game. That’s a member of my crew you’re threatening. I’m not asking a third time.”
Amalicia’s eyes welled with tears at the tone of his voice. An expression of shock settled on her face as she realized he was serious. She looked like a child stunned by an undeserved reprimand.
“Darian,” she whispered. “You couldn’t.”
He closed one eye and sighted down the barrel toward her forehead.
She looked from one man to the other, and then she lowered her weapon. Crake breathed a low, whistling sigh of relief and took the gun from her hand. She slumped to the floor, her legs gone weak.
“How could you do this?” she asked, head hung. “I love you.”
Frey shoved his pistol back in his belt. “I never asked you to.” He walked to the front door, pulled it open, and went out into the dawn light. Crake cast one last, apologetic look at Amalicia and followed him.
“You don’t know how to love, Darian Frey!” she shrieked after them, as they hurried down the drive toward their rendezvous. “You don’t know how to love!”
THE FLASHPAN—A FLIGHT THROUGH THE STORM—DEAD RECKONING—UNEXPECTED RESISTANCE
uite a storm,” Frey said.
Jez’s reply was drowned out by a clap of thunder loud enough to rattle the brass-and-chrome fixtures of the Ketty Jay’s cockpit.
Frey held his nose and blew through it until his ears popped. “Say again?”
“I said, I’ve seen worse,” Jez told him. “You’ve never flown the Flashpan before?”
“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” Frey was trying to peer through the lashing rain that assaulted his craft. It was almost pitch black out there. Thick clouds cloaked the glow of the moon. They were flying without lights. “I can’t see for buggery, Jez.”
“Then they can’t see us either. I thought that was the point.”
“Just tell me if I’m going to fly into anything.”
“Will do, Cap’n.”
Frey wasn’t enjoying himself one bit. People avoided the Flashpan for a reason. It was an area of boggy moorland that sat at high altitude just east of the Splinters and north of the Vardenwood. Innocuous enough, except for the near-constant storms that raged here. Some unlucky trick of the geography, apparently. Something to do with warm, moist air from the south mixing with freezing air coming the other way. Jez had explained it to him, but he hadn’t listened very hard. He’d been too busy shitting himself at the prospect of the battle to come.
They were going up against the Delirium Trigger.
By the time Frey and Crake had got back from the Thade estate, they were already cutting it fine if they hoped to intercept Dracken and the barque she was escorting. Frey held a hasty discussion with Grist, and they headed off immediately afterward. Their plan wasn’t the tactical masterpiece Frey would have preferred, but it would have to do. They didn’t have anything better.
The Storm Dog was a beast of an aircraft, but, even so, Frey wasn’t sure she could go toe-to-toe with the Delirium Trigger. What they needed was the element of surprise. Not easy when their targets would be flying across open grassland.
But if it was at night, in the middle of a terrific storm? It was possible to sneak up on them