Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (50 page)

He looked over at Harkins, who was at the next window, furiously concentrating on his task. Ashua needed something more than orders to steady her. Silo took a gamble.

‘How about you, Harkins?’ he called. ‘You wanna run for it?’

‘No, sir!’ Harkins replied, without taking his eyes off the trees. Ashua looked startled.

‘Why not?’ Silo said.

Harkins turned his head. He was addressing Silo, but looking straight at Ashua. ‘Because I’m no chickenshit,’ he said levelly. ‘Sir.’

Ashua spat on the floor and hunkered down to watch the trees again. Shame would keep her where she was. Silo gave Harkins a nod of respect and headed back to Malvery.

He’d seen something in Harkins these last few days. A new distance in his gaze, something firmer in his eye. He snapped to attention when spoken to, he didn’t gripe or bitch like the others as he went about his work. He’d found a way to prop up his courage, and damn if he wasn’t turning out to be useful in a gunfight at last. He still couldn’t hit much with his pistol, but the Awakeners didn’t know that.

Silo crouched next to Malvery, who was looking narrowly out at the road. Silo saw figures moving behind the windows across the courtyard.

‘Don’t like this,’ said Malvery. ‘They’re waiting for something. Could do with getting Grudge to send a few shots their way, keep ’em on their toes.’

‘That feller don’t take no orders from me,’ said Silo.

Malvery glanced at him. ‘Heard what you did back there with Ashua,’ he said. ‘Cap’n made a smart pick having you as first mate. Ain’t anyone else on the crew we’d listen to at a time like this.’

Silo shrugged a shoulder. ‘You my people,’ he said.

The bellow of engines alerted them a moment before the gunship came sweeping out of the blizzard, its cannons pointed right at them. Silo and Malvery scrambled away from the windows and flailed back towards cover as the front of the house was torn up. Splinters and powdered stone and plaster filled the air; the clatter of rotary cannons battered their ears. Silo hunkered in behind the stove. Malvery, having no better option, dived behind the sofa and made himself as small a target as his generous frame would allow.

The assault was over as quickly as it had begun. The gunship swung away and powered off into the blizzard, chased by Grudge’s autocannon. It had been a swift attack, meant to catch them off guard.

Damn nearly did, as well.

‘They’re coming through at the back!’ Ashua called. ‘There’s a lot of ’em!’ Then she opened up with her pistol, and Harkins joined her.

Silo was about to run back there, but Malvery had slipped up to the front of the house and was looking through the ragged hole where one of the windows had been. ‘We’ve got our own problems,’ he said.

‘Hold ’em!’ Silo called back through the doorway.

‘Yeah, I knew you were gonna say that,’ he heard Ashua mutter as he ran over to Malvery. The doctor was already firing. A half-dozen men were spilling from the buildings on the south side and running across the courtyard, using the wreckage of the gunship as cover. Another eight or nine were running in from the road. Silo started shooting.

The gunship’s attack had been a signal to come at the house from both sides. These weren’t mercs: he could tell by the way they used their weapons, their inept understanding of cover. They were Sentinels. Mercs wouldn’t run at a defended position with such abandon. They weren’t suicidal.

Silo and Malvery dropped one, two, three of them. But they kept coming.

Malvery’s shotgun ran dry. He tossed it to the floor, pulled out a stick of dynamite, and struck a match off the wall. Silo covered him till the fuse was lit, and then he lobbed it out through the window.

Some of the oncoming Awakeners saw it coming, tried to check their charge. Their companions crashed into the back of them, sending them stumbling forward in a tangle. The dynamite went off and sent them twisting and rolling away, living men turned to limp corpses.

Silo had ducked down to avoid the explosion; now he popped back up again and levelled his shotgun. It was seized by an Awakener who’d slipped close to the window along the wall. One hand on his shotgun barrel, the Awakener aimed a pistol at his face. Silo pulled his head aside, yanking his shotgun as he did so. It was enough to tug the Awakener off balance. The pistol went off by his ear, loud enough that it was like a punch, but the bullet missed.

Silo struggled with the Awakener, fighting to free his shotgun. The other man was strong, face weathered and teeth gritted beneath his furred hood. He was trying to get his arm through the window, get a good point-blank shot at Silo, but Silo was too close now. He was peripherally aware of Malvery frantically jamming another shell in his shotgun, but the doctor wouldn’t be able to help him in time. So Silo lunged instead, shoving forward, using his weight. It took the Awakener by surprise. He swung the butt of the shotgun and caught the man a glancing blow on the jaw.

The Awakener staggered back from the window, but somehow he held on to the shotgun, bloody-mouthed and furious. The increased distance gave him space to aim his pistol, but then Malvery’s shotgun boomed, and that ended it.

Suddenly the courtyard cobbles were being smashed, and men were smashed with them, limbs blasted into bloody smears on the snow as Grudge rained down autocannon fire from above. Silo didn’t know what had taken him so long – perhaps they’d pinned him down once he’d revealed his position by firing at the gunship – but he was here now, and just in time. The Awakeners had been moments from overwhelming them at the windows; now they scattered and ran for their lives, knowing it was hopeless. Even the faithful had their limits.

Silo shot off the last of his rounds to discourage anyone who thought trying to climb inside would be the best way of escaping the death from above. The Awakeners on the south side had been driven back, but there was no respite for him. Seeing that the courtyard was safely covered, he scooped up a handful of shells and ran through to the other room.

He vaulted the bed and skidded into cover next to Ashua as a flurry of bullets clawed up the wall. Blinking brick dust from his eye, he reloaded and added his gun to Ashua’s. The Awakeners were pouring from the trees now. The short slope of clear ground that led down from the snowy forest was littered with the dead, but it didn’t deter the men behind.

They don’t care ’bout their losses. Just keep comin’ and comin’. They need us dead, and damn if it don’t look like they gonna get their wish.

There was a fevered look in Ashua’s eye, the dangerous gleam of someone backed into a corner. Harkins was frightened too, but he held his post at the window. Both of them knew this was a last stand. Both of them had decided to go down fighting.

An Awakener came skidding down the slope and lobbed a stick of dynamite at the windows. His aim was off: it hit the wall, bounced back, fell in the snow. Two of his companions tried to scramble away from it, but not fast enough.

There was a cry from Harkins. Silo saw him spin away from the window. His pilot’s cap was gone; there was blood all over half his face. He staggered back and collapsed.

‘Doc!’ he shouted, as he crawled on his hands and knees under the windows.

‘Busy here!’ Malvery replied, and Silo heard Grudge’s autocannon start up again. The Awakeners had regrouped and were coming back through the courtyard, autocannon or not.

Harkins’ eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving. Silo didn’t have time for more than a cursory glance at him. Men and women fell in battle all the time; Silo had seen more than his share of that. He’d grieve later, if he had to.

He took up Harkins’ position by the window. Men rushed at him and he fired, primed his weapon, fired again. His movements became automatic, his enemies faceless, reduced from living, breathing people to simple threats that had to be removed. He fought as if in a dream. Sounds were dulled; he was deaf in one ear from the pistol shot. His body was at once incredibly tired and yet vital and strong. He killed and dodged and killed, and there was nothing but this moment, this fight. Nothing before or after. Only this.

Caught in that state, he was slow to recognise the dark shape that appeared among the trees at the top of the slope. It was only when she roared that he recognised Bess.

The sound of her shook the windowsills and rattled the pipes. She ploughed into the Awakeners from behind, swinging her great arms in all directions. The naked trees were smashed to matchwood. Men were swatted aside, crashing into trunks with bone-breaking force. She was like some mythical ogress, a force out of the primal dark come to life.

The Awakeners dissolved into confusion at the sight of her. Some of them scattered to the sides: some came on towards the windows, driven by fear of the beast in the trees.

Ashua fired dry, and was reloading when an Awakener lunged at her through the window. He tried to cram his rifle through to get a close-range shot, but got himself tangled up with her instead. Silo swung his shotgun around, but he couldn’t fire without hitting Ashua. Instead he scooped up Harkins’ pistol and tossed it through the air. Ashua caught it deftly in her left hand, jammed it in the Awakener’s throat and pulled the trigger.

The Awakener pawed at her, gargling. She wrenched the rifle from his hand, put her boot in his chest and kicked him back out into the snow. Now with two weapons, she looked for a new target; but then her eyes widened, and she threw herself behind the bed. Silo turned back to the window in time to see Bess, who’d uprooted a tree, fling it down the slope towards them. He dived out of the way just before it hit the wall with an almighty boom, cracking the wall and crushing several Awakeners between the tree and the house.

‘Fall back! Fall back!’ he heard from outside, as he hunkered amid the falling dust from the ceiling, breathing hard. Caught between the guns in the house and the monster behind them, the Awakeners abandoned the assault at last. He heard them running, some of them screaming louder than the wounded left behind. Bess ran after them, bellowing.

Ashua got shakily to her feet. She climbed back over the bed and stared at the tree that now lay against the windows. An arm hung limply over the sill, its owner mangled just out of sight. She looked over at Silo, a crazed kind of disbelief on her face. ‘The Cap’n came through,’ she said.

‘Don’t he always?’ Silo said. He got to his feet. ‘You did good.’

A little smile touched the edge of her mouth. Then she saw Harkins, and it faded.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Stay here. You see anythin’, yell.’

He went into the front room, where Malvery was lying against the wall, chest heaving, exhausted. The room stank of cordite. The quiet beyond the windows told Silo that the call for retreat had already spread to the courtyard, and that everywhere the Awakeners were routed.

‘I do believe I heard the dulcet tones of Bess a moment ago,’ said

Malvery, and chuckled. He lifted himself up and looked over his shoulder out the window. ‘Look at ’em run.’

‘Need you in the back, Doc,’ said Silo. ‘It’s Harkins.’

Malvery became grim, and he got to his feet and hustled past Silo, through the doorway. Silo went to the windows. Beyond, the fires crackled and snapped, and snow was still falling, blanketing the bodies in the courtyard.

Thrusters sounded in the distance. Even muffled, he recognised the sound of Blackmore P-12s. The
Ketty Jay
was on her way.

I did what I could, Cap’n
, he thought.
Rest is up to you.

‘I can’t see shit up here!’ Samandra yelled down from the cupola.

‘You and me both!’ Frey replied. It hadn’t stopped him from flying recklessly fast. He’d wasted enough time already.

The
Ketty Jay
had been slow to wake in the cold. He’d only got her running by using a trick from the old days, before Trinica had his craft overhauled and everything started working as it should. His toe still hurt from that.

Below him and to starboard lay the hamlet. Half the south side was aflame. Nearby, the tangled remains of the generator burned bright in the gloom. He saw one wrecked gunship, but not the other. Belatedly it occurred to him that he should have asked Malvery what the situation was down there, but his earcuff was deep in his pocket and he couldn’t spare the time to dig for it right now.

Is everyone alright down there? Is Crake? Am I already too late?

He slowed and banked to port, searching the blizzard for the second gunship. He spotted the landing pad where the Century Knights’ aircraft waited, mantled in white. There were no troops in sight, but they’d left churned snow in their wake. He followed their tracks with his eye and found Bess, carving a trench across the meadows. Ahead of her, barely visible, frightened figures stumbled and hurried in the direction of the lander which had brought them here.

They’re running
, he thought, and hope fluttered inside him.
Did we win
?

‘Frey! Ten o’clock!’ Samandra called.

It was the second Predator, dropping out of the grey sky, guns angled downward. It wasn’t facing them: the pilot hadn’t seen them yet. The guns were trained on Bess.

Frey boosted the thrusters and hammered towards the Predator. Bess could hold up to small-arms fire well enough, but those cannons would take her to pieces. The pilot was intent on the target, lining up the shot, as Frey raced closer.

Hang on, hang on, just a second more.

But it was a second he didn’t get. The pilot opened up, a hail of bullets lashed through the air, and Bess disappeared in a cloud of vaporised snow.

‘No!’ Frey cried, and he clamped his finger down on the trigger. Tracer fire spat from the
Ketty Jay
’s underslung machine guns, raking the Predator’s flank, chewing up its ailerons. The craft slewed wildly to starboard, bringing the cockpit into Frey’s line of fire. The windglass smashed and the pilot inside was chopped to meat. Still turning, the Predator dipped its head and its thrusters forced it down, grinding its nose into the earth. It crinkled and exploded in a rolling cloud of flame.