could be dead, Crake thought. That son of a bitch didn’t do a thing to stop it.
‘Listen,’ said Macarde to Frey. ‘Let’s be businessmen about this. We go back, you and I. Worked together several times, haven’t we? And even though I came to expect a certain sloppiness from you over the years - late delivery, cargo that wasn’t quite what you promised, that sort of thing - you never flat-out screwed me. Not till now.’
‘What do you want me to say, Macarde? It wasn’t meant to end up this way.’
‘I don’t want to kill you, Frey,’ said Macarde in a tone that suggested the opposite. ‘I don’t even want to kill that milksop little pansy over there. I just want what’s mine. You owe me an aircraft. I’ll take the Ketty Jay.’
‘The Ketty Jay’s worth five of yours.’
‘Well, consider the difference as the price of me not cutting off your balls and stuffing them in your ears.’
‘That’s fair,’ conceded Frey.
‘That aerium you sold me was bad stuff. Admit it.’
‘What did you expect for that price?’
‘You told me it came straight from the refinery. What you sold me was so degraded it wouldn’t have lifted a biscuit, let alone twenty tons of aircraft.’
‘Sales patter. You know how it is.’
‘It must have been through the engines of every freebooter from here to the coast!’ Macarde growled. ‘I’d have got better quality stuff siphoning it off the wrecks in a junkyard!’
Crake gave Frey a fleeting look of guilt. ‘Actually,’ grinned Frey, ‘it’d have been about the same.’
Macarde was a stocky man, and overweight, but his punch came blindingly fast, snapping Frey’s head back so it cracked against the wall. Frey groaned and put his hands to his face. His fingertips came away bloody from a split lip.
‘Little less attitude will make this all go a lot smoother,’ Macarde advised.
‘Right,’ said Frey. ‘Now you listen. If there’s some way I can make this up to you, some job I can do, something I can steal, whatever you want . . . well, that’s one thing. But you will never get my craft, you hear? You can stuff whatever you like in my ears. The Ketty Jay is mine.’
‘I don’t think you’re in much of a position to negotiate,’ Macarde said.
‘Really? ’Cause the way I see it, the Ketty Jay is useless without the ignition code, and the only one who knows it is me. That puts me in a pretty strong position as long as I don’t tell you.’
Macarde made a terse gesture towards Droop-Eye. ‘Cut off his thumbs.’
Droop-Eye left his shotgun atop the barrel he’d been leaning on and drew a dagger.
‘Whoa, wait!’ said Frey quickly. ‘I’m talking compensation. I’m talking giving you more than the value of your craft. You cut off my thumbs and I can’t fly. Believe me, you do that and I take the code to my grave.’
‘I had five men on that craft,’ said Macarde, as Droop-Eye came over. ‘They were pulling up out of a canyon. I saw it. The pilot tried to get the lift and suddenly it just wasn’t there. Bad aerium, see? Couldn’t clear the lip of the canyon. Tore the belly off and the rest of it went up in flames. Five men dead. You
