extra sure. If he spotted Slag, it would only take him seconds to reach the safety of the Firecrow.
He scampered off the Ketty Jay and came to a halt with a sigh of relief. The cat wouldn't follow him out here. Stupid animal. He closed up the ramp and locked it by punching in a code on the exterior control panel, located on one of the Ketty Jay's rear landing struts.
That was when he saw what was happening to the sky.
The morning had been chilly and grey when he entered the Ketty Jay in search of the weapons locker. A shapeless haze of cloud had hung overhead, and the sun had been low on the horizon, shining with a sharp, glittering light.
But things were different now. The sky had curdled and darkened. The wispy, inoffensive sheet of cloud had turned thick and black. Pulses of light flickered in its depths. A strong, icy wind had struck up, blowing the ear flaps of Harkins' cap against his cheeks. Despite the gathering storm, the sun was still visible in the east, between the cloud and the horizon: a shining pupil in a slitted eye. It cast a spectral light over the bleak vista.
Harkins didn't like this. Not at all. There was an eerie, oppressive quality to the atmosphere. He had keen senses when it came to detecting threats. He'd had a lot of practice at being scared, and he was good at it.
This was no ordinary storm.
The clouds were moving, but it wasn't the wind that was pushing them. They were swirling, slowly at first but getting faster, as if stirred by a spoon. Gathering, becoming dense, drawing inward towards a single spot. At that point, the pulses of light had reached a frenzy. The cloud roiled and turned. Silent lightning threw out giant sparks.
Harkins became aware that he was making a low, distressed moan. His feet were rooted to the tarmac. The crewmen of nearby craft had stopped their work and were looking up. Tractors sputtered to a halt as their drivers tipped back their caps and squinted skyward.
This was bad. Somehow, he knew this was very, very bad.
The pulses of light at the point where the clouds were gathering became faster and more frequent. They accelerated to a flickering strobe, and finally to a dazzling burst of whiteness that bleached the city below. The observers shielded their eyes and turned away.
The cloud had collapsed in on itself, and was being sucked away like water down a drain. It was as if the very sky was being consumed, eaten up by the hungry maelstrom.
And out of this sky, through the tunnel of the great, swirling vortex, came the dreadnoughts.
Frey blinked. For a few seconds, all he could see was white. Then darkness began to soak into the picture, giving form to the shapes around him. Fuzzy shapes and blurred colours made themselves known.
Uh? he thought, which was pretty much the best description he could come up with for his mental state at the time.
His body was pins and needles all over, numb and painfully a-tingle at the same time. His tongue lolled in his mouth, barely under his control. There was a loud whistle in his ears.
Gradually he came back to the world, as his overloaded senses restored themselves.
He was in the ancient sanctum somewhere beneath Grist's compound. People were picking themselves up off the ground. Grist was nearby, shaking his head, dazed. Trinica was getting to her feet, leaning heavily on a table in case her legs betrayed her. Jez lay on her side, eyes open, staring into space. The metal sphere was no longer in her hands.
Then he heard something. A rapid thump, growing louder. Like someone running. Someone very heavy.
He looked up.
Bess.
The sanctum doors were set horizontally in the roof of the sanctum. The golem plunged through them like a cannonball, crashing on to the stairs with a roar. Her tiny eyes glimmered behind her face-grille, bright in the gloom.
Bess was in a rare fury this morning.
Panic seized the room. Grist's men scrambled to their feet, flailing and disoriented, desperate to escape the terror that had descended on them. But there was no way out except past Bess.
She thundered down the steps and backhanded the nearest man into the wall with enough force to shatter the brickwork. Her charge brought two more men within her reach, who were too slow to get out of the way. She snatched them up by their necks and smashed their heads together, splattering herself in blood, bone and brain matter. Frey winced. That had to hurt.
Grist and his men had found their guns by now, and were rushing for whatever cover they could find, aiming futile shots at the enraged golem in their midst. Crake, Silo and Malvery came scrambling through the ruined doors and opened up with their own weapons, picking their targets. One of Grist's men caught a bullet and went down, clutching the back of his leg. He fell into Bess's path, and she stamped him flat.
Frey didn't know how his crew had got out or how they'd got their guns back, but he was damned pleased to see them. He turned his attention to Jez, who was still immobile, eyes unfocused. He went to check her breathing, then realised there was no point. He poked her in the nose instead. She blinked. A sign of sort-of life. Good enough for the moment.
The sphere. Where was the sphere?
He cast about for it. There! It had rolled free of Jez's hands and was lying near the base of the pedestal, beneath the daemon cage.
Grist had seen it too. Their eyes locked across the distance between them. Then both ran for it at the same moment.
Frey raced through the corridor of gunfire. Bullets scored the air around him. Bess was a bellowing mountain in the gloom, flinging furniture this way and that. But all his focus was on that sphere. He wasn't even sure what he'd do with it, now that it had been activated. But he knew he didn't want Grist to have it.
Both captains lunged together, and both laid hands on the sphere. They fell into a scrabbling tangle, each fighting to pull the prize from the other's grip. Grist's grimacing face was close to Frey's: hot, smoky breath, the smell of sweat and dirt. His eyes were dark with madness, that terrible rage that Frey had seen before. Frey fought hard, but Grist was a bull, who outweighed him by some considerable fraction. The contest was brief. Grist yanked the sphere from his fingers, and as Frey clutched for it, he drove a clublike fist into Frey's belly.
Frey stumbled away, hunched over and winded. Grist broke off in the other direction, but his momentum carried him into Trinica, who was retreating towards the back of the sanctum, seeking cover. Grist bowled her over and they went down in a mess of limbs, fighting one another for purchase. Grist came up first, dragging Trinica with him, but he didn't let her go. Instead he wrapped one thick arm round her throat - the one carrying the sphere - and with the other he drew his pistol and shoved it into her ribs. He backed away towards cover, with Trinica as his shield.
Grist's men had been decimated by the surprise attack. The last of them were being slaughtered by Bess or picked off by gunfire. The golem had just seized one of Grist's crew, and was raising him triumphantly over her head with both hands, ready to fling him to his death. Only Grist's bosun, Crattle, was still in the fight, hiding behind a bullet-riddled lectern, and the remainder of his life could be counted in seconds.
Frey saw, with a sudden flood of horror, what would happen next. He fought to drag in a breath.
In moments, it would be over. Grist was dead meat. He didn't have a chance. They'd turn their weapons on him, and gun him down, and that would be that.
But to get to Grist, they had to go through Trinica.
He found air at last. Sucked it in and yelled.
'STOP!'
His voice rang out with a volume and authority he hadn't realised he possessed. Friend and enemy alike froze, fingers on triggers.
Silence fell, broken only by the crescendo wail of Grist's crewman as he flew across the room to crunch against the far wall.
Bess made a bubbling noise in her chest that somehow managed to convey an apology.
All eyes went to Frey. Grist stood where he was, his gun in Trinica's ribs. Crattle stayed in hiding, hardly daring to believe his reprieve. The crewmen of the Ketty Jay waited expectantly.
He knew he should let his men loose. He had the power. Kill them all, Trinica too. Be done with all the
