came late, which meant he couldn’t get us the merchandise on time, which meant we were stuck in port just long enough for one of Macarde’s bumble-butt pilots to fly into a wall.’
‘Hence the need for a swift departure,’ said Malvery. ‘Flawless plans like this are our stock-in-trade. Still want to sign on?’
Jez primed her rifle with a satisfying crunch of metal. ‘I was tired of this town anyway.’
The four of them took up position behind the crates, looking out at the approach road to the docks. The promontory was accessed by way of a wide, cobbled thoroughfare that ran between a group of tumbledown warehouses. The dockers who worked there were moving aside as if pushed by a bow wave, driven to cover by the sight of Lawsen Macarde and twenty gun-wielding thugs storming down the street.
‘That’ll be us outnumbered and outgunned, then,’ Malvery murmured. He looked back to where the Skylance and the Firecrow were rising from the ground, aerium engines throbbing as their electromagnets turned refined aerium into ultralight gas to fill their ballast tanks. Separate, prothane-fuelled engines, which powered the thrusters, were warming up with an ascending whine.
‘Where’s Bess, anyway?’ Frey asked Crake.
‘Do I look like I’ve got her in my pocket?’ he replied irritably.
‘Could do with some help right now.’
‘She’ll be cranky if I have to wake her up.’
‘Cranky is how I want her.’
Crake pulled out a small brass whistle that hung on a chain around his neck, and blew it. It made no sound at all. Frey was about to offer a smart comment concerning Crake’s lack of lung power when a bullet smashed into a crate near his head, splintering through the wood. He swore and ducked reflexively.
Crake replaced the whistle, then leaned out of cover and unleashed a wild salvo of pistol fire. His targets yelled and pointed fearfully, then scattered for cover, throwing themselves behind sacks and barrels that were waiting to be loaded into the warehouses.
‘Ha!’ Crake cried in triumph. ‘It seems they don’t doubt my accuracy with a pistol.’
An instant later his hair was blown forward as Pinn’s Skylance tore through the air mere feet above him, machine guns raking the street. Barrels were smashed to matchwood and several men jerked and howled as they were punched with bullets. The Skylance shrieked up the street and then twisted to vertical, arrowing into the clouds and away.
‘Yeah,’ said Frey, deadpan. ‘You’re pretty scary with that thing.’
The dockers had all fled inside by now, leaving the way clear for the combatants. Macarde’s men were at the edge of the landing pad, fifty feet away. Between them was a small, two-man flyer and too much cover for Frey’s liking. The smugglers had been shocked by Pinn’s assault, but they were regrouping swiftly.
Frey and Jez began laying down fire, making them scuttle. One smuggler went down, shot in the leg. Another unwisely took shelter behind a large but empty packing crate. Malvery hefted a double-barrelled shotgun, aimed, and blew a ragged hole through the crate and the man behind it.
‘Silo! How we doing?’ Frey called, but the mechanic couldn’t hear him over the return fire from the smugglers.
‘Darian Frey!’ Macarde called, from his hiding place behind a stack of aircraft tyres. ‘You’re a dead man!’
‘Threats,’ Frey murmured. ‘Honestly, what’s the point?’
‘They’re
