Free Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding Page B

the comical jostle to separate Pinn and Frey involved a lot of bashing into things and knocking chairs over. The mess was a cheerless place, comprising a fixed central table, a set of metal cabinets for utensils and a compact stove, where Slag warmed himself when Silo chased him out of the engine room.
    Slag was an ancient warrior, a grizzled slab of muscle held together by scar tissue and a hostile disposition. Frey had brought him on board as a kitten the day after he took ownership of the Ketty Jay, fourteen years ago. Slag had never known anything beyond the Ketty Jay, and never been tempted to find out. His life’s purpose was here, as the nemesis of the monstrous rats that bred in the air ducts and pipeways. For more than a decade the battle had been fought, generations of sharp-toothed rodents versus their indestructible antagonist. He’d seen off the best of them - their generals, their leaders - and hunted their mothers until they were near-extinct. But they always came back, and Slag was always waiting for them.
    ‘Will you two stop acting like a pair of idiots?’ Jez cried, as Malvery and Silo pulled Pinn from their captain. Pinn, red-faced with anger, assured Malvery he was calm so the doctor would release him, then made the obligatory second lunge at Frey. Malvery was ready for it, and punched him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
    ‘What’d you do that for?’ Pinn rasped weakly, wide-eyed with the injustice of it all.
    ‘Fun,’ replied Malvery, with a broad grin. ‘Now calm down before I club your stupid block off. You ain’t helping.’
    Frey shook Silo off with a baleful glare and dusted himself down. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve got that out of the way, can I say something, nice and slow so everyone gets it? It - wasn’t - my - fault!
    ‘You did blow up the freighter, though,’ Crake pointed out.
    ‘If you knew anything about aircraft you’d know they always put the prothane tanks as deep inside as possible, well armoured. Otherwise people like us might be able to hit them and blow the whole thing to smithereens.’
    ‘The way you did,’ Crake persisted, out of malice. He hadn’t forgotten Frey’s behaviour when Lawsen Macarde had a gun to his head.
    ‘But I didn’t!’ Frey cried. ‘Machine guns couldn’t have penetrated deep enough to even get to the prothane tanks. Silo, tell them.’
    The Murthian folded his arms. ‘Could happen, Cap’n. But it’s one in a million.’
    ‘See? It could happen!’ Pinn crowed, having recovered his breath.
    ‘But it’s one in a million!’ Frey said through gritted teeth. ‘About the same chance as you shutting up for five minutes so I can think.’
    Slag unfurled from his spot on top of the cabinet and dropped down to the countertop with a thump. He thought little, if at all, of the other beings with whom he shared the craft, but he was feeling unaccountably piqued that nobody was paying any attention to him amid this puzzling furore. Harkins, who had been keeping his head down anyway, cringed into the corner as he caught sight of the cat. Slag gave him a stare of utter loathing, then leaped to the table so he could get into the middle of things.
    ‘The question isn’t whose fault it is—’ Jez began.
    ‘Not mine, that’s for sure!’ Frey interjected.
    Jez gave him a look and continued. ‘It’s not whose fault it is. The question is whether we’re going to get blamed for it.’
    ‘Well, thanks to Harkins being a bloody great chicken, we probably will,’ Pinn said sullenly.
    ‘That guy was a good pilot!’ Harkins protested. ‘He was a . . . he was a fantastic pilot! Well, fantastic, or he had a death wish or something. What kind of idiot flies full throttle through mountain passes in the mist? The . . . the crazy kind, that’s what kind! And I’m a good pilot, but I’m not some crazy idiot! You said minimum escort, someone said minimum escort! No one said anything about . . . about four Swordwings and