The Log Book of the Ketty Jay: 6

retribution fallsIt’s Day 6 of our special guest post series featuring a look inside the Logbook of the Ketty Jay. Ever wanted to know what happened to the crew of the Ketty Jay before Retribution Falls? We’ve might just have that answer for you. If you missed our posts last week, you can catch up with the first one here, and check back later in the week for more. 

The Log Book of the Ketty Jay: 6

 Transcriber’s note: In this sixth entry from the Logbook Of The Ketty Jay, the story continues. The adventures of Darien Frey have been luridly recounted by various pulp biographers, but I direct your attention to the only official and unbiased account of the tale, written by this humble scribe, which bears a title as honest and straightforward as the words within: Retribution Falls, available now in bookshops all over Vardia.

Daggersday Secondweek, Howl’s Batten, 147/32

So here’s the plan. We need aerium, badly. The last lot we got hold of has pretty much run dry. Lawsen Macarde wants aerium too, but he doesn’t want to pay full price for it. I don’t even have enough to buy it for cheap, and if I could find some I’d keep it for myself.

There is, however, a way around this.

I’m not too proud to go trawling round junkyards for aerium. See, abandoned ships are not that uncommon, and plenty get shot down. Scavengers just strip what they want and leave the rest, but the higher-ups don’t like to leave wrecks rusting all over the place. So sooner or later the big haulers turn up and take them off to the junkyards. Thing is, what a lot of people don’t realise is that good aerium can be run through the engines four or five time before all the gas is released. Sure, by the last couple of times your craft flies like a whale and you’re liable to drop out of the sky in a storm, but many’s the time I’ve ended up flying on recycled aerium, and I’m not dead yet.

If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for Macarde. So we’ve been haunting the junkyards, siphoning tanks, and we’ve got twelve canisters all sealed up and ready for deliver. We’re going to flog them to Macarde and use the money to buy three or four canisters of the real stuff from a legit supplier. The supplier will charge and arm and a leg, of course, but I’ll pay this time. If you cut corners, you might get some seedy bastard delivering you a load of useless aerium, after all.

All this will mean two things. One, we’d better make ourselves scarce before Macarde finds out what we’ve done. Two, we’re never coming back to Scarwater. I’m fine with both. Macarde’s probably not that desperate for aerium that he’ll immediately fuel up with the stuff we give him, and Scarwater’s a dump anyway.

One more enemy to add to the list. It gets difficult to remember them all, sometimes.

The Ketty Jay Novels are out now. You can start with the first book in the series Retribution Falls or pick up the latest book in the series The Ace of Skulls which is out now.