were. He kept up a frantic evasion pattern until he spotted two of the Equalisers dwindling in the distance, continuing their pursuit of the Ketty Jay. The plane he’d damaged was still in the air and still a threat, though it was trailing a thin line of smoke that made it easy to find. Burned by his sneak attack, that pilot had decided to deal with Pinn.
He felt better once he’d located the fourth Equaliser. He had two of them on his tail now. They respected him enough that they couldn’t turn their backs on him. Now all he had to do was keep them busy awhile.
He launched into a new sequence of evasions, leading them away from the Ketty Jay as he corkscrewed and twisted and rolled. The Equalisers homed in on him from different angles, doing their best to trap him, but he could see their tactics and refused to play along. The one he’d damaged was limping slightly, a little slow and clumsy, and its pilot couldn’t lock in with his companion. Their manoeuvres were pretty but came to nothing. Sporadic machine-gun fire chattered behind him, but it was more hopeful than effective.
I should just turn around and take these bastards out, thought Pinn. But then he caught sight of the Delirium Trigger, much larger than he remembered when he last looked. Their aerobatics had allowed the bigger craft to catch them up, and Pinn didn’t fancy dealing with her guns on top of everything else.
The Ketty Jay was barely visible in the distance. He’d taken two of the Equalisers out of the chase, and he’d delayed the other two and bought the Ketty Jay time to reach the storm. He’d done his part.
He reached over and grabbed a lever underneath the dash. The Skylance had been built as a racer long before he’d modified it for combat, and it still had a racer’s secret weapon installed. He levelled up and aimed for the horizon.
‘Bye bye, shit-garglers!’ he yelled, then rammed the Skylance to full throttle and engaged the afterburners. The Skylance rocketed forward, slamming him back in his seat with enough force to press his chubby cheeks flat against his face. His pursuers could only watch, hopelessly outpaced, as the Skylance dwindled into the distance, carrying its whooping pilot with it.
‘Two still with us!’ called Malvery from his cupola. ‘Pinn’s drawn off the others.’
Frey grinned. ‘I’d kiss that kid if he wasn’t so hideous and stupid.’ He looked about. ‘Where’s Harkins?’
Jez pointed up through the windglass to the Firecrow hanging high on their starboard side.
‘Tell him to engage,’ he said, then shifted in his seat and hunched forward over the controls. ‘Keep ’em off my tail.’
Jez reached over to the electroheliograph and tapped a rapid code. The lamp on the Ketty Jay’s back flashed the sequence. Harkins gave a wing-waggle and broke away.
The winds were rising as the storm clouds rolled ever closer. Frey’s admiration for Jez had grown a great deal in the moment he saw those thunderheads appear on the horizon. She’d been right on the money. Again. It was an unfamiliar feeling, having someone reliable on his crew. He was rather liking it.
‘Wind is from the northwest today, and it’s sunny,’ she’d said. ‘Warm air rising off the mountains up the side of the plateau, cooled by the airstream coming down from the arctic. This time of the day, this kind of weather, you’re gonna get a storm there.’
The kind of storm a small fighter craft couldn’t handle. But a bigger one, driven by the notoriously robust Blackmore P-12 thrusters - that kind of craft could make it through.
Crake stuck his head round the door. ‘Anything I can do?’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Bess
