mess of artillery fire and bullets. Pinn headed straight for it.
The Equalisers opened up on him. He swung left, left again, then dived, making himself a hard target. The frigates swelled as he neared them. An alley of death between them, their blasted metal flanks the walls. Turrets on the Delirium Trigger had swivelled to track him: he heard autocannons kicking in.
Go!
He rolled hard and kept rolling, corkscrewing wildly through the deadly mesh of gunfire. Explosions rattled the Skylance, knocking him off course, jerking him about in his seat. It was only a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch out for ever. He pulled the Skylance level and rammed the thrusters to maximum, racing straight along the length of the frigates and out of the alley, whooping all the way.
He craned around in his seat in time to see one of his pursuers ripped to pieces in the crossfire. He couldn't see the other. Maybe that one hadn't been stupid enough to follow him in. Either way—
Machine guns. A rain of tracer fire from above. Pinn's head snapped up. An Equaliser, coming in from direcdy overhead. The Skylance was laid out flat beneath it, the whole craft presented as a target, with Pinn totally exposed in his cockpit. Rookie mistake. The Equaliser couldn't miss. Pinn's heart sank.
Then the Equaliser erupted in a blast of oily fire, spinning away in a dozen separate pieces, fading to invisibility in the storm. Harkins' Firecrow sped across the sky in the opposite direction to Pinn.
'Pinn! Did he get you?'
Pinn slumped back in his seat. 'No. He didn't get me.'
'You let him come in from above!' Harkins snapped, sounding unaccountably outraged. 'You could have been killed! Pay attention! What's wrong with you?'
'I don't know,' Pinn murmured, gazing at the ferrotype of Lisinda hanging from his dash. 'I don't know.'
Crake's palms were clammy and chill. The revolver in his hand felt like it weighed twice as much as usual. His heart skipped and tripped, little irregular bumps and flutters in his chest. He felt dried out and sick, and he was dog-tired from lack of sleep. On top of all that, he was probably going to get himself shot sometime in the next few minutes.
Not for the first time, Crake wondered how a man like himself, a man of good education, breeding and prospects, had ended up this way.
The cargo ramp was opening, squealing gently on its hydraulics. Cold wind blew in, stirring his hair and clothes. Tarpaulins flapped on the crates stacked nearby. Between the booming of the thunder and the shudder of lightning, there was the quieter sound of distant cannon fire and machine guns.
Silo, Jez and Malvery were keyed up, fidgeting with anticipation. Frey was loading his revolver, his cutlass dangling from his belt. He'd taken out his earcuff. unable to stand listening to Harkins and Pinn babble any longer. Jez would be their contact with the pilots.
Bess stood next to Crake, shifting restlessly. She smelt of old leather and machine grease. A thrumming noise came from her chest, a sign of tension and unease. She knew what was coming. He laid a hand on her mailed elbow to calm her.
I'll fix you, Bess, he thought. I'll make this better somehow. For now, we have to get through this.
He just hoped she wouldn't get hurt. Even though he knew she was all but invulnerable to anything short of high explosives, he hated himself every7 time he allowed her to be sent into battle. But how could he explain his reluctance to the Cap'n without also confessing his crime? To the rest of the crew, Bess was just a dumb lump of metal. Only Jez knew the truth.
I'll be with you, he told the golem silently. Don't worry.
The ramp thumped down. Frey raised his pistol in the air, looked back at his crew and yelled, 'Board 'em!'
They ran down the ramp and out. Wind and rain assaulted them. The hardy moor grass whipped around their legs. A dozen kloms away, the flashing of cannons and the slow lines of tracer fire lit up the Storm Dog and the Delirium Trigger, caught in their own private war. Lightning flickered, scarring jagged paths through the night. The air was charged with it.
Before them, like some vast, slain creature of the deep, was the crumpled hulk of the Awakener barque. They were close enough now to see the name painted along the buckled hull: All Our Yesterdays. Smoke leaked from vents near its stern end. It lay in a trench that stretched away out of sight, the earth rucked up in piles all around it.
'The entrance will be over there,' said Jez, pointing. Jez, the craftbuilder's daughter. She knew her aircraft better than any of them.
They sallied across the gap between the aircraft and located the door that Jez had promised. There was no sign of anybody coming out of the All Our Yesterdays. The door had been bent and twisted in the impact, and was half-buried by the banked-up soil. Bess dug it out with her hands, took hold of the edge, and tore it off.
Frey peered inside. 'We don't want any trouble!' he yelled. 'Put down your weapons, and you won't be—'
He was interrupted by a volley of gunfire, and jumped back sharply. 'Well, I tried,' he said with a shrug. 'Get 'em, Bess.'
Bess roared and charged in through the door. There was a brief salvo of bullets, dissolving into screams and cries of alarm.
'Let's get in there,' Frey said, motioning to his crew. Then he plunged through the door, firing his revolver. The others piled in after him. Crake was not ashamed to be last.
Inside, it was chaos. Crake found himself in an assembly area, with a high ceiling and a gantry that ran around the edge of the chamber. The roof had split in the crash, shedding debris from the room above on to the floor. Cables hung in thick clusters like vines; exposed girders were bent and snapped off; cracked pipes leaked and hissed. A thin, poisonous pall of smoke hazed the air. Emergency lights provided a sinister twilight.
Hiding among the ruination were Sentinels, wearing grey, high-collared cassocks and carrying rifles. The Sentinels were Awakeners who didn't have the talent or the intelligence to become Speakers -those who preached and practised the Awakeners' craft - so they expressed their faith in other ways, by taking up weapons in defence of their organisation. Crake thought them mindless, brainwashed fools, but he supposed a bullet from a fool's gun hurt just as much as any other, so he kept his head down and ran for cover.
Bullets clipped through the air, but nobody was shooting at him: all attention was on Bess. The Sentinels scurried away or took frightened potshots from a distance as she ploughed into the room. Bullets bounced from her scratched and pitted armour, but some penetrated the soft parts at her joints, which only enraged her. She hefted a huge girder and lobbed it at her tormentors, mangling two Sentinels who were making a break for safety. The act of picking it up revealed a third Sentinel, who'd been hiding behind it. He was crouched in a ball, head in his arms, trembling. Bess looked down at him with a quizzical purr and booted him across the chamber.
Crake winced. He didn't like seeing her this way. She was a child, and she had a child's way with violence: thoughtless, gleeful, malevolent. Her good nature turned so easily to viciousness.
Frey and Silo scampered across the room, sniping at the retreating Sentinels. Crake stuck close to Jez and Malvery, who provided covering fire. They moved between the debris, keeping low. Crake squeezed off a shot now and then, without much expectation of hitting anything. Occasional bullets came their way, but the resistance from the Sentinels had crumbled quickly at the sight of the golem, and they were too busy running to put up much of a fight.
Bess lunged among them like a cat in a flock of pigeons, snatching up those she could. She was quick and terrible when angry. Crake saw her grab one man by the head, clamping her massive fingers round his skull and picking him up off the ground. She shook him like a doll and then, satisfied he was broken, she flung his corpse at his panicked fellows.
Frey whistled. 'This way!' he cried, beckoning them towards a doorway that led into a wide corridor.
'Why that way?' Malvery asked as they hurried over.
Frey looked lost for an answer. 'Just because,' he offered at length. 'Crake, call your golem, eh? She's had her fun.'
'Bess! Come on!' Crake shouted. Bess came pounding eagerly through the debris. He patted her on the shoulder and pointed up the corridor. She lumbered off, and they followed.
The smoke was thicker in the corridors, and it was hard to see more than a few dozen metres. Crake's eyes stung and he wanted to cough. Figures stumbled through the gloom ahead of them, calling out for help, asking
