'Hah!'
He couldn't care less how many he'd shot down. All he cared about was that he was still breathing. His life was a miserable affair for the most part, scurrying through the shadows of other men, ignored or derided by everyone. But all the same, he clung to it with a fierce grip. Death was even scarier than life was.
Lightning flickered, illuminating the moors beneath. Harkins scanned the sky for potential threats. All he could see was the motley of aircraft that formed the Storm Dog's squadron of outflyers.
'The Delirium Trigger's pulling out!' Pinn yelled suddenly. 'Look! Dracken's running, that pasty-faced chickenshit bitch!'
Harkins banked to bring the frigates into view and saw that Pinn was right. The Delirium Trigger had broken off from the Storm Dog and was rising towards the clouds. The other was making no attempt to pursue. Both craft were battered and blasted, leaking smoke and flame. The Equalisers were scattering across the plain, racing away in different directions, no doubt to rendezvous at some pre-arranged location.
Harkins gave a broad smile at the sight. The battle was over! He'd made it through!
'Cap'n!' he said. 'Cap'n, did you hear that?' There was no reply. 'Jez?' he inquired tentatively, his voice softening.
'Jez? Jez?' Pinn mimicked in a simper. 'They're not listening. Must've taken out their earcuffs. Probably sick of hearing a grown man squeal.'
Harkins bit his lip. Don't rise to it. That's what he wants. But it still hurt.
Once, he'd been a Navy pilot, and his nerve had been as strong as anyone's. What if Jez had met him then, uniformed and proud? He'd always been awkward and highly strung, never quite at ease in his own skin, but he'd been more of a man back then. At least until his comrades started dying in the Aerium Wars. Until he'd been shot down that first time, and then twice more. Until the miraculous escapes began to add up.
If Harkins had been an optimist, he might have thought himself a lucky man. He'd survived dozens of dogfights and got out of scrapes that left his companions dead in his wake. But he was no optimist. Instead, he fretted about how much luck he could possibly have left, and when it was finally going to run out.
Not tonight, though. Not tonight.
Flying was all he knew how to do, but if he had his way, he'd never fight again. All he wanted was an aircraft of his own, and the wide blue sky to fly in. Just to soar for ever. There would be no one to make him feel small. Just him and the sun and the air. He wouldn't ask for anything more.
Well, maybe one thing more. Maybe someone to share it with. Someone he trusted to be kind to him.
Jez, he thought. I wonder what she's doing now?
'Jez?' said Frey tentatively.
She wasn't moving. She lay on the ground next to the decapitated corpse of the Imperator, face down, her hair across her cheek. Frey crept up to her and gave her a poke with the toe of his boot.
'She's not going to bite you, Cap'n,' said Malvery, in the tone of someone who didn't much fancy finding out the truth of that statement for himself.
'How do you know?' Frey asked. 'You saw what happened! She ripped the Imperator's head off with her bare damn hands! One moment she was there, the next she was somewhere else! What was that?'
'That was Jez, and she saved our lives,' said Silo. 'Ain't the first time, neither.'
'That,' said Frey, pointing at her, 'wasn't Jez.'
'Ain't the time nor the place, Cap'n,' said Silo. He picked up the navigator's limp body and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 'Let's get done here and go.'
But Frey couldn't shake the memory of her, feral and snarling, that terrifying look in her eyes. That wasn't anyone he recognised. She'd changed.
Crake was at Bess's side. The golem was stirring, to Crake's evident relief. He was tearing up, and not just from the smoke. Well, at least they hadn't lost anyone. At least there was that.
But could he ever look at Jez in the same way again? Would he be able to fly, knowing she was at the navigator's station behind him?
The Imperator's head lay a short distance away. The smooth mask had come loose, and was hanging off. Frey walked over to it. 'Keep an eye out for any more Sentinels,' he told his crew.
'Cap'n,' said Malvery, a warning in his voice.
'I've dealt with these Imperator bastards before,' Frey said, as if that was an explanation. The truth was, he was angry. This was the second time he'd been unmanned by an Imperator, forced to cower in fear like a whipped dog. He wanted to see the face under the mask. Somehow, he thought it would lessen his fear of them.
He was wrong. When he pushed the mask aside with the barrel of his revolver, the face beneath was enough to make him recoil with a shout. The cheeks and eyes were sunken, irises yellow like a bird of prey. The mouth was stretched open as if in a scream, showing sharp, uneven teeth in receding gums. White, dry skin; the septum of the nose rotted away. It looked like something you'd uncover in a grave.
'Blimey,' said Malvery. 'Someone needs to eat their greens.'
Frey screwed up his face in disgust and looked closer. A stump of a tongue, cut out at the root, showed between cracked lips. There was only a spotting of blood on the floor, despite the brutal nature of the Imperator's death.
'That,' said Frey, 'is not natural.' He turned away and looked at Jez, who was hanging over Silo's shoulder. 'Can anyone enlighten me as to what in buggery just happened to my navigator, by the way?'
'She's a Mane,' said Crake, coughing. 'Partly, anyway. I suppose she wasn't fully infected.'
'You knew?'
'I guessed. Not long after she first came on board. No heartbeat, no need to eat, all of that. There've been other half-Manes, you know. They've come up in daemonist texts. Like I told you, there's always been a school of thought that said Manes were daemons. And really, what other explanation was there?'
'I was trying not to think about it too much, to be honest,' Frey said. 'I didn't think she was a Mane, though.'
'Because you lot don't know anything about them, outside of the drunken tales you hear in bars.'
'Fair comment,' said Malvery. 'We are a pretty thick bunch, all in all.'
'You're supposed to be a doctor,' Frey accused. 'That makes you smart.'
Malvery shrugged. 'I bring up the average. It still ain't great.'
'You do have Pinn on board,' Crake pointed out.
Frey waved his hands. 'Alright, alright! We'll sort this whole bloody mess out later. Malvery, you're with me. Crake, stay with Silo and Bess. Make sure nobody comes up behind us. Let's get what we came for and hoof it before Grist gets wind that we're planning to rob him.'
Beyond the barricade were scattered heaps of debris, and beyond them the corridor was aflame. Slicks of inflammable fluid sent up hazy curtains of black, foul-smelling smoke. Frey could dimly make out a doorway through the debris, uncomfortably close to the fire.
'You think that's where our sphere is?' Malvery coughed.
'One way to find out,' said Frey. He hurried through the steaming debris, his arm over his face to shield him from the heat. By the time he got to the doorway, it was too painful to be cautious, so he just ran right in and hoped nobody would shoot him.
The heat lessened to a tolerable degree once he was inside. It was a small store room, with shelves of chests and rolls of documents that were getting dangerously close to bursting into flame. A large lockbox in the centre stood open and empty.
Malvery hurried in after him, swearing as his moustache singed. He looked around the room, then grabbed Frey's arm and turned him.
'Wakey wakey, eh, Cap'n?' he said, pointing.
There was an elderly man huddled in the corner of the room, propped against the wall. Frey hadn't seen him. He was wearing Awakener robes, but they were not the white of the Speakers or the grey of the Sentinels, but crimson. That made him an Interpreter, according to Crake. Only one level below the Grand Oracles in the Awakeners' organisation. An important man, then.
A long brown beard tumbled over his chest, almost concealing the sphere he held in his bony hands. Blood ran from his nose and stained his lips. His eyes focused in and out uncertainly beneath the Cipher tattooed on his
