Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding Read Free Book Online

got good eyes,’ she said.
    Powerful flood beams swung across the landscape as the approaching frigate and its fighters tried to get a light on them. Harkins let out an involuntary yelp as he saw how close they were to the rocky desert floor.
    By going low to the ground, she forced the Samarlans to make a choice. They could either plunge down and match her altitude – a dangerous option in the dark – or they could make shallow dives while firing and then pull up. That meant they couldn’t get on the Ketty Jay ’s tail, and made her much harder to hit.
    ‘Fighters coming in!’ called Malvery.
    ‘Deep or shallow?’ Jez called back.
    ‘You what?’
    ‘The angle. Deep or . . . Never mind,’ she said. The cockpit was suddenly illuminated from outside as the beams found them.
    The fighters were rigged for night-flying, with banks of floodlights along their wings. She could estimate their angle of approach by the slant of the light as it shone past the Ketty Jay and cast her shadow on the ground. The fighters had chosen the lowest-risk strategy. Even with lights, flying close to the ground on a moonless night was too dangerous for their tastes. They didn’t have the advantages that Jez did.
    She trimmed the aerium ballast and levelled out just above ground level, close enough to make Frey give a little squeak in the back of his throat. The desert floor rushed by beneath them. Jez banked hard and swung away from the light as she heard the rattle of machine guns from behind. Tracer fire flitted past the Ketty Jay , chewing up the earth below.
    ‘Malvery!’ shouted Frey. ‘What are you waiting for?’
    ‘Orders?’ Malvery suggested.
    ‘Well, consider yourself bloody ordered. Shoot them!’
    ‘Right-o,’ said the doctor, and opened up with the autocannon.
    Another explosion pounded the Ketty Jay , but Jez had sensed the shell whipping through the air and pulled away just in time to avoid being swatted into the ground.
    ‘How in the name of rotting bastardy are they scoring on us at that range?’ Frey demanded.
    ‘Lucky shot,’ said Jez. ‘Next one’s going way wide.’
    As if to illustrate her point, a bloom of fire lit up the night some distance to starboard. She kept up an evasive pattern. The fighters couldn’t draw a bead on her. She could tell when they were lining up on the Ketty Jay by the angle of their light beams, and then she would dodge. They swooped, missed, and looped back into the air to try again. They were slender, needle-nosed things, streamlined like flattened darts. Built to look good, like all Samarlan craft.
    ‘Can’t keep this up for ever, Cap’n. We need to lose them fast.’
    Frey got out of his seat and peered through the windglass of the cockpit. The play of the fighter’s lights were showing glimpses of the terrain ahead. A colossal outcrop reared out of the ground a few kloms ahead.
    Suddenly his face lit up. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.
    ‘I don’t get it.’
    ‘They’re following the glow from our prothane thrusters, right?’ he said. ‘Well, this aircraft doesn’t only run on prothane.’
    She grinned as she caught on. ‘I’d buckle in if I were you, Cap’n.’
    ‘Harkins!’ Frey said. ‘Let the crew know. Batten down. It’s gonna be choppy.’
    Harkins just stared at him, his face blank with fright.
    ‘Move it!’ Frey snapped. The shock broke Harkins’ paralysis, and he scampered out of the cockpit and up the corridor, calling the alarm. Frey threw himself into the navigator’s chair and secured the straps. Ashua slipped her arm through a gap in the bulkhead and braced herself.
    The lights from the fighters behind them slipped and swung all around them. Tracer fire chased them through the night. The outcrop loomed ahead, blacking out the background as Jez took them on a course that would skim close to its flank. Another explosion tore through the air. The frigate was getting nearer, and its shelling would become more accurate as it did.
    Frey was a bag