CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Otherek and Gord stumbled back into the bridge, the khemist sending a blast of charged aether behind him, and scaring off the flock of gheists on his tail. Adrimm, Urdi, Kedren, Locklann and Hrunki stood guard, watching the skies through broken windows. Adrimm had the damaged Trokwi cradled in the crook of one arm. The drillbill let out a sad little whistle.
Otherek sank to his knees, breathing heavily. ‘That was a close-run thing,’ he said. ‘Nighthaunt nearly had us. Killed a few with this, though.’ He tapped his anatomiser thankfully. Ghosts circled the superstructure, but did not dare attack.
Gord snorted, and began to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Ghosts. Killed,’ he snorted. ‘But they’re already dead! That’s what’s funny.’
The duardin looked at each other quizzically. None of them got an ogor’s sense of humour.
‘Where’s the captain?’ asked Evrokk.
‘On the Aelsling.’
‘Then he’s on his own,’ said Evrokk worriedly. ‘She’s pulling ahead, we’ll never catch her now. He’d better win. My brother’s still there.’
‘You know what he’d say to that,’ said Kedren.
‘I’m Drekki Flynt! I always win!’ Otherek mimicked.
‘One day he won’t,’ said Kedren.
‘It won’t be today,’ said Evrokk.
There was a flurry of gunfire as Hrunki and Adrimm drove back a small drift of spectres. Uzki enthusiastically joined in.
‘You’re out of effective range,’ Hrunki scolded. ‘Wait until they get closer. You’ll just waste your ammunition.’
Uzki looked like he’d been told off by his ma.
‘This could be worse,’ said Adrimm. ‘We’ve got a fortune in unrefined aether, salvaged this tub, and we’re not far off the edge of the Dead Air. It’ll all work out fine.’ He sniffed. ‘So long as the captain doesn’t get himself killed.’
The others looked incredulous at this show of optimism.
Otherek pushed himself up off the floor, and went to the back of the cabin. He looked behind them. A host of gheists were following, and floating crowds of them thronged the rear decks, keeping their distance from the wheelhouse. But Otherek wasn’t looking at them, he was looking at Barak-Minoz.
‘You seen this? Drekki was right. The endrins are beginning to overload.’ He pointed at clouds of golden steam erupting into the night from the underside of the port. ‘Nobody? You didn’t see that?’
‘We’ve been a bit busy,’ said Urdi with a shrug.
‘They’re discharging again. Look. Aether lightning.’
Forks of bright gold burst all over the sky-port, leaping from the buildings to some of the nearer metaliths hanging about its edges. They danced all over the city and then ceased, leaving afterimages on their eyes.
‘How long have we got?’ Kedren asked.
‘Depends,’ Otherek said. He continued to watch, counting under his breath. A gunshot and a screech as Adrimm shot one of the Nighthaunt down didn’t interrupt his count. He got to thirty-one before the storm erupted once more.
‘There we go again,’ Otherek said.
The dancing lightning was eerily regular, and a little more violent than before. The duardin heard the discharge over the moaning of the processions as a firecracker crackle.
‘About five minutes,’ Otherek said.
‘What’s the blast radius?’ Kedren asked.
‘For endrins of that size? Further than we’re going to get,’ said Otherek. ‘Sorry, lads. We’re going to have to lighten the load again.’
‘Really?’ said Adrimm, his earlier optimism evaporating. ‘This voyage gets worse all the time!’
‘We’ve got aether on the Aelsling, lad.’ Kedren patted him on the shoulder on his way to the tank control stations.
‘Aye,’ said Adrimm glumly, moving to join him, and handing his gun to Otherek so he could cover the windows. ‘But we don’t have the Aelsling, do we?’
‘Get off my ship!’ Drekki roared. Duzrekar staggered back, nose flattened, blood pouring from his nostrils. He shook his head and snorted clots. Drekki roared and swung his great axe. Runes flared, but Duzrekar dodged, despite his bloodied face. The two duardin circled each other. The dead, warded off by the glittering cloud, circled the Aelsling hungrily.
‘It was you. You did it. You blew the endrins of Barak-Minoz.’
Duzrekar cocked an eyebrow. ‘Figured that out, did you? You’ll never prove anything. So it was me who led the sabotage team from Barak-Mhornar to Barak-Minoz. I was paid to do it. What of it? Nothing wrong about a little corporate espionage. Minoz was pulling ahead. You should be glad. It’s our people that profited from the Skyshoals instead of Barak-Nar, or do you want to see those rich bozdoks get even richer at the expense of our home port? I heard you were a selfish drukker, Drekki Flynt. No sense of civic duty. Without me, you wouldn’t even have a home.’
‘What you did was wrong,’ said Drekki.
Duzrekar laughed. ‘Wrong? Morality’s a matter of perspective. You don’t know how much they paid me. Rich enough to make me head of a guild if I wanted to buy in to one. Richer than you’ll ever be. Nothing’s wrong when you’re rich.’
‘All those people, beardlings too. You killed them.’
‘That wasn’t the plan!’ said Duzrekar, and he looked, for a moment, ashamed. ‘They were supposed to evacuate. They got away. They had fair warning.’
‘None of them got away,’ said Drekki.
Duzrekar nodded, solemn, contrite. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ Then he smiled wickedly. ‘Oh, hang on a minute. I don’t care, because killing them made me rich.’
‘That’s if your employers honour your contract. You’ve been gone a long time. I don’t think they’re going to be happy to see you.’
That made him mad. Duzrekar swung his axes at Drekki, one, two, smashing them down towards him in blurred succession. Drekki fended the first off with his axe haft, the second deflected with the head.
‘Carefully there, Duzrekar,’ Drekki said with a grin.
His own axe roared through the air. Duzrekar moved aside, tried a parry. Drekki jabbed him in the stomach with the haft.
‘Or should I call you Ekrithen?’
Duzrekar looked surprised. Drekki capitalised with a swing that Duzrekar only just dodged.
‘Oh yes, I know. I know how you infiltrated this place. I know how you did it. There’s proof, and I’ve got it.’
‘That doesn’t matter, because you’ll be dead,’ said Duzrekar. They circled each other. ‘What now, then, now you’ve delivered your little speech there? Do you expect me just to hand over this ship, do you? That I’ll be so wracked by guilt that I’ll give in?’
‘No,’ said Drekki. He grinned. Duzrekar frowned. ‘I expect you to surrender to my crew when they come. You might beat me, but can you beat Gord? Can you beat all my duardin?’
‘They’ll never catch me!’
‘Ah, hubris, the defining characteristic of every egomaniac I’ve ever met. Not quite as important as the other one, though.’
‘The other one?’
‘The other defining characteristic is that they’re easily distracted,’ said Drekki.
Drekki edged round, letting Duzrekar see into the cockpit, where Khenna was shutting down the endrins. The Aelsling slowed. The tanker, once more, began to gain upon them.
Duzrekar laughed.
‘Laughing? You’ve lost!’ said Drekki.
‘Have I?’ said Duzrekar. The golden mist was dissipating, aether blowing away on the chilly breeze of the Fifth Air. ‘No endrin power, no aether mist. I think you’re forgetting about them.’
He jerked his head over his shoulder. A wall of skeletal faces glowing an eerie blue glared at them from the sky.
‘No,’ said Drekki, spinning his axe. Fire roared from Kedren’s runes. ‘I’ve got faith in myself and this axe, and I note there’re no runes on yours.’
With a chilling moan, the dead attacked.
Weighed heavily with duardin disappointment, tank one slipped its cradle and dropped like a bomb through the Fifth Air. The crew watched it go solemnly, as if it was a much-loved comrade consigned to the airy deeps.
Kedren sighed. ‘That’s a crying shame.’
‘I thought you didn’t like skybeard nonsense,’ Adrimm said, equally sad.
‘Gold is gold, even when it’s gas,’ said Kedren.
Freed from the weight, the tanker picked up speed. The crew looked hopeful.
Otherek leaned out of one of the broken windows. He shook his head. ‘We’re not going fast enough. Drop the final tank!’ he ordered.
There were grumbles, but the crew moved to obey. Levers were thrown, switches flicked.
‘Tank two away,’ said Adrimm miserably.
Urdi gave out a cry of dismay. ‘Tank two isn’t dropping, aether-khemist!’ He hammered at the plunger. The mechanism clicked. But nothing happened.
A warning lamp flashed nearby.
‘Clamp three is fouled,’ said Kedren, reading the instrument board. ‘Ahem. Or some such skybeard stuff.’
Otherek looked to the rear, calculations of aether blast zones racing through his head.
‘We’ll be caught in the explosion,’ he said. ‘We have to fix it.’ Otherek looked around at them all solemnly. ‘I’m ranking officer in this room. I’m not going order anyone to come with me. There are many dead outside, and if we are caught in the blast, the duardin who stay in this wheelhouse will at least have a chance to live. Whoever’s out there might not.’
The room strobed with yellow light as the endrins of Barak-Minoz flared once again, casting Otherek’s craggy face into shadow.
‘But I can’t do it alone. I need some help, so I need a volunteer.’
The duardin looked one to the other. Adrimm opened his mouth with a resigned expression on his face, but Urdi Duntsson stepped forward and put his hand on Adrimm’s chest before Adrimm could speak.
‘I’ll do it.’ Urdi looked at his crewmates. ‘Things haven’t been the same between us since Bastion. I’m sorry. I know some of you think I shouldn’t be here, but I’m going to risk myself for you all the same. Not because I hope it’ll make you think better of me, but because it’s the right thing to do.’ He went to a tool locker, and selected a huge hammer, wrench, and a crowbar. This was not going to be subtle work.
‘Fair enough,’ said Otherek. ‘Evrokk, keep up the pace. Go as fast as you can. If the explosion hits us…’
‘I’m the pilot, I know what to do,’ said Evrokk. ‘If I can fly us around the Eye of Testudinous, I can handle a little aether explosion.’
‘Don’t worry about the gheists, we’ll cover you from here,’ said Locklann, cocking his rifle. ‘Go!’
While Drekki and Duzrekar traded blows and insults, Khenna limped across the deck to where Bokko lay. She knelt awkwardly with her injuries, but her own pain was forgotten when she got a good look at Bokko. All she could see was Duzrekar’s throwing axe lodged in his shoulder. She could feel it, as if the axe had hit her.
She bowed her head and sobbed.
‘Khenna?’ His eyes flickered open. His voice was hollow in his helmet.
‘You’re alive!’ she gasped.
‘Looks like today is a good day, if you think about it in a certain way.’ He smiled, tried to lever himself up then sank back down. ‘I think my collarbone’s broken.’
Khenna was amazed. ‘But all the blood…’
He gestured weakly with his uninjured hand.
‘It’s not that bad. The blade is mostly stuck in my helm ring, not me.’ He pulled another expression of pain. ‘Not much, anyway.’
Khenna looked again. The axe head had cut into the metal collar piece of his arkanaut suit. Actually cut it.
‘How hard did he throw that?’ she said wonderingly.
‘Trust me, it was pretty hard,’ said Bokko.
Khenna’s hands hovered over the axe. She didn’t know what extra damage she might do to him if she pulled it out. Could it stay in there? Probably not.
‘This will hurt,’ she said. She put one hand on the axe hilt, and braced the other on his chest, close to the wound. Bokko gritted his teeth in anticipation of the pain, but before Khenna could pull the axe free, Bokko tensed. He had seen something behind her.
Khenna turned around slowly.
Behind her, battered and bloody, stood the ape Arkarugen, and he had a gun in his hand. Khenna looked up, hoping the aether would foil the shot, but the air was clear.
The ape bared his teeth.
‘Ahooka!’
‘I always liked you, you know,’ Khenna said to Bokko.
Bokko smiled. His teeth were bloody. ‘I know.’
They closed their eyes.
The expected shot did not come. There was a horrible, meaty thud, followed by a soft thump. Khenna turned back.
‘A spanner, a spanner, a spanner!’ sang Evtorr, hefting the tool Khenna had dropped.
‘You’re back!’ Khenna said.
Evtorr looked confused. ‘I was never away. I was thinking, that’s all. And then I thought I could hear a fight, and my mates were in peril. I saw you fighting that one over there.’ He nodded at Duzrekar, still battling Drekki. ‘I would have helped sooner, but someone had locked the door. Strange.’ He dangled a key from his hand, then he looked at the spanner curiously. ‘So I have a key and a spanner. Keys are good for doors. Spanners are good for nuts, not much good against an axe, but perfectly adequate for a monkey.’
‘What about them?’ said Khenna.
Over the gunwales, now the cloak of aether was gone, hundreds of skull-faced shapes were coming into view. Chains clanked around their necks. Weapons drooped from slack, skeletal hands.
‘Not much good against them,’ Evtorr admitted.
Seeing Otherek and Urdi leave the wheelhouse, the gheists ceased circling and attacked immediately, like predators seizing on prey separated from the herd. The pair raced through a storm of phantoms. Aether-bullets from the wheelhouse hissed past them, punching smoking holes in the dead, and sending them wailing back to Shyish.
The duardin’s boots boomed on the deck plating as they pelted for the broken tank clamp. The sky was alive with coloured fires. The golden, artificial lightning from the dying sky-port competed with the pallid will-o’-the-wisps of the gheists, giving everything a sickly, gloomy feel, like light before a big storm, only deeper, more insipid, such a stain on the air you could almost taste it. Dark had no place in that night. All was brass and smoky blue.
They neared the final tank at the left-hand side of the front of the ship. The Aelsling rode ahead, intermittently obscured by processions of gheists as thick as scudding banks of fog.
They ran past clamp two, whose rusty jaws yawned obligingly wide. To their right, the huge rectangular hole that had housed tank one was open, allowing views down into the airs. A long drop, made all the more terrifying by the hordes of ghosts criss-crossing the skies. Clamp three was down at the front, about as far away as it was possible to get from the wheelhouse, just their luck.
It was a strange situation. Some of the undead paid no attention to the duardin. Others were in a frenzy at their intrusion. Urdi blasted the skull of one of the more aggressive ones into fragments that rained on the deck, even crunching under Otherek’s boots, before they evaporated with a chemical hiss. Where the gheists fell, they left no trace other than a faint sheen of ectoplasm, and the smell of opened tombs.
The tank shifted with the movement of the ship, metal groaning softly, like a large animal in pain.
‘Nearly there!’ gasped Otherek.
They skidded to a halt by clamp three. The rounded metal jaws were only partway opened. Accretions of aerial shellfish had jammed the curved tooth track the travel cogs rolled up. The huge holding lug bolted onto the side of the tank was therefore not free to slip out. There was only a couple of grunti in it. Just a little more and it would have slipped free, but the jaws were too tight. Worse than that, the tank had shifted as much as it could, which had jammed the staple even more tightly in place.
‘Smash those barnacles out of the track,’ Otherek commanded. ‘The jaws will open and the tank will drop if the teeth are cleared.’
‘I’m on it,’ Urdi said.
An unearthly moaning came at them from all quarters. A gheist’s head emerged through the deck, followed by the head of an ancient mace that was so corroded it was little more than a lump of rust on a stick. Otherek shot the gheist through the face.
‘Quickly! I can’t hold them off for long.’ The aether-khemist unhooked the nozzle of his aetheric anatomiser. The gauge needle was the width of three whiskers from the red. ‘I’ve got two bursts left. Hurry!’
A host of the undead flew at them. Urdi clambered on to the clamp mechanism, lump hammer at the ready. He had no safety line, but braced himself as best he could on the shuddering metal, hefted the hammer, and began to swing.
All told, it was not the most ideal of situations, from an undrekruk antrekul[67] point of view.
Otherek waited until the very last moment before sending out a billow of charged aether. Sparkling gold mist enveloped everything, making the machinery of his arkanaut’s suit hitch and sputter where it was drawn into the air vents. The gheists vanished with awful shrieks, clearing the space around them for the moment, but there were thousands more gheists about, and precious little aether in the tank.
Otherek’s hammer bit old shell with a crunch. Sharp bits flew everywhere. He raised his hammer again.
Otherek muttered an appeal to Grungni that the gheists would keep their distance.
On current evidence, that was not going to happen.
Drekki had a problem: Duzrekar was a much better fighter than him.
Every move Drekki made was countered. His great axe, so often a comfort in battle, was a heavy liability. Duzrekar was never where the axe landed. All Drekki seemed to be achieving was making holes in the deck of his ship, which if things continued as they were, wouldn’t be his ship for very much longer.
‘It doesn’t matter how many runes you have,’ said Duzrekar. ‘Or how handy you think yourself in a fight.’ He blocked an overhand strike from Drekki’s axe with crossed hafts, and threw Drekki back with sickening ease. He spun the axes around in his hands to show off his skill. He was enjoying himself. ‘What are you? A self-proclaimed genius, an annoyance to those that encounter him, a passable engineer? Somewhat impressive, but useless here.’ Duzrekar attacked, using the same rapid technique he had against Khenna. Drekki fended off his blows, and swung the haft of his axe in reply, making Duzrekar leap back. ‘You’re not bad, but I’ve thirty-five years with the Mhornar Office of Diplomatic Easing. Twenty more years with the Grey Company Grundcorps.’
‘Never heard of them.’
‘You’re not supposed to have heard of them! I’m only telling you because you’ll be dead soon. I’m sure you can guess what the Grey Company do,’ said Duzrekar. ‘I’m a trained killer, Drekki. There’s not an opponent I can’t beat, least of all a jumped-up pirate like you.’
‘I am not a pirate!’ Drekki said.
‘We could just split the money,’ Duzrekar said. They circled each other cautiously. ‘You understand this world in the sky we have built. There’s no need for oaths or honour. There’s only profit. You’re not so different to me.’
‘I’m nothing like you,’ said Drekki. ‘I might be a rogue, but you’re a villain.’
‘No deal?’
‘No deal. You’ve squandered your chances at making friends here, all things considered.’
‘Then put down your axe, and I’ll make sure you die painlessly.’
‘That’s not a tempting offer,’ said Drekki.
‘Fine, I’ll cut you to pieces instead.’
‘Not if they get you first,’ said Drekki with a wicked grin.
A gheist dove at Duzrekar, bone jaws open in a horrifying screech. The false endrineer leaned out of the way of its rusty spear thrust. Drekki swung his axe at Duzrekar, but he parried, stepped round, neatly cut the head from the Nighthaunt, and squared off against an amazed Drekki.
‘Nothing funny to say to that, Flynt?’ said Duzrekar. ‘You know you’re outmatched.’
Another Nighthaunt flew at them both, a hook on a length of chain thrumming round and round its head. It flung the weapon out, wrapping it around the haft of Duzrekar’s left axe. The duardin yanked hard, dragging the screaming ghost within range of a return blow, but the blade of his axe passed through the Nighthaunt’s robed body, and it flew on, the chain becoming aethereal again, and slipping through the substance of Duzrekar’s axe.
Drekki found himself facing his own gheists. His axe blurred round, streaming fire. It found its mark, and a gheist exploded into flame. Another swerved out of the way as he struck out at it. For a moment, both he and Duzrekar were embattled by phantoms, then the ghosts were gone, rapid and noisy as a swirl of leaves carried off by the wind.
Duzrekar reacted fast, swinging an axe blow that Drekki caught upon the beard of his own blade. The distraction worked. Drekki didn’t see Duzrekar’s low, following kick that took Drekki’s legs out from under him, and he fell with a hard crash to the deck. He lay there winded.
Duzrekar stepped over him. His foot landed on the haft of Drekki’s axe, pinning it to the deck.
‘Any last words? I imagine it being you, you’ve a hell of a lot of them. You’re the kind of showy duardin who formulates what he’s going to say on his deathbed years before he dies.’
‘None seem appropriate, given the circumstances,’ said Drekki.
‘How disappointing,’ said Duzrekar. He sighed. ‘Never mind. I win again. I won when I survived the fall of Minoz. I won again when I lured Duzrekar and his men into that chamber. Nobody beats me, Flynt. Nobody!’
There was a faraway rumble. Drekki began to laugh.
Duzrekar frowned, then he looked up, and his eyes widened.
‘Too clever by half, you are,’ said Drekki. ‘You’re right. I do have last words prepared, but I’m not going to say them today.’