The Black Lung Captain

by Chris Wooding

  With them was Trinica. Black-clad, white-haired, crouching at the barricade with the rest of them, a pistol in her hand. Trinica. Alive and kicking.

  His reaction was not what he'd expected. Bitterness tinged his relief. He suddenly remembered the burn of her betrayal. It angered him to find her like this: not as a prisoner, but ready to fight on Grist's side. Of course, even enemies became allies when necessary, and she was probably only being practical. But it upset his vision of the grateful maiden, waiting to be saved, and that spoiled things.

  All he'd wanted to do, ever since he saw the Storm Dog disappear into the vortex, was to rescue Trinica. But now he knew that wasn't quite right. He wanted to rescue the idea of her. To salvage the possibility of love as he'd once known it. But the reality was considerably more complex and messy.

  How was it that life never worked out the way it did in his head?

  Well, anyway, they were here now, and he was bloody well going to rescue her. If only so he could hold it over her later.

  There were six of them in all, including Trinica. Along with Grist and Crattle were two sturdy-looking thugs and a scared engineer. Another man lay face-down, shot through the chest. All of them, except Trinica and the corpse, were occupied with shooting at the Mane, to no effect. Trinica, sensibly, was saving her ammo.

  Keeping well to their rear, Frey took the opportunity to descend from the walkway to ground level. Shooting down on them from an elevated position seemed like a good idea at first, but the walkways provided little protection from return fire, and Frey didn't much fancy catching a bullet between the legs.

  He reached ground level a dozen metres behind Grist's position. Silo followed him down, and Malvery was just stepping off when Crattle yelled, 'The Manes are coming in! Get ready!' Then, warned by some intuition, the bosun looked over his shoulder, and saw Frey and his men.

  They needed no other signal. Frey, Malvery and Silo opened fire.

  Their first shots, instinctively, were all aimed at Crattle, who'd raised his pistol towards them. He jerked and twisted, bloody spray punching from his back, and went sprawling to the floor. The rest of Grist's crew had a few seconds to react. It wasn't enough. Silo and Malvery chambered new rounds, picked their targets, and blew them away. The last of Grist's men, the engineer, managed to get off one wild shot before he, too, was killed.

  While his companions took care of the others, Frey aimed at Grist. But a dozen metres wasn't an easy distance for Frey, and Grist was quick for a big man. Frey took three shots, but somehow Grist slipped between them, and Frey hit nothing.

  Trinica hadn't been as fast to appraise the situation as Grist had. She wasted an instant on shock, surprised by the sight of Frey. Then Grist came lunging towards her. Too late, she raised her pistol to shoot him. He cannoned into her, knocking her weapon aside. They rolled together along the ground, and he ended up with one huge arm around her throat, gun pressed to her head. He slid backwards until he came up against the barricade, and lay there, with her lying across him as a shield.

  Grist grinned. Stalemate. Again.

  Not this time.

  Frey raised his pistol and aimed it at Grist's head, where it protruded from behind Trinica's. She was struggling in the captain's grip, but she didn't have his strength.

  At that moment, there was a triumphant howl, multiplying rapidly in volume. The door was opening. The Manes were getting in.

  'We gotta go, Cap'n,' Malvery said.

  I might hit her, he thought, sighting down the barrel of his pistol. His hand began to tremble. I might kill her.

  'We gotta go!' Malvery yelled at him, as the shrieks of the Manes got louder still.

  Take the shot, he urged himself.

  Her eyes met his. Maybe it was wild fancy, but he thought he spotted a flicker there. A crack in the facade. Fear. There had been a time when she'd genuinely not cared if she lived or died. But something had changed now. She wanted to live. He saw it in her.

  Don't leave me. Don't let me die.

  Malvery and Silo were backing away now, towards the steps. The cries of the Manes had reached a deafening pitch. He heard the slap of their feet as they raced into the room. At any moment they'd come flooding round the corner of the engine assembly to consume him.

  Take the shot or run! he told himself. But he couldn't do either. He couldn't tear his gaze from hers. There was a longing there, he was sure of it. Regret.

  I wish this were different, she said to him.

  The Manes came into sight, a filthy tide of tooth and nail, and he knew it didn't matter whether he took the shot or not.

  Then something moved. Dropped like a cat from an upper gantry, to land right in the path of the Manes. A jumpsuited figure with a dark brown ponytail. She threw back her head and howled. The horde, as one, came to a stop before her.

  Jez.

  Jez, and yet not Jez.

  Forty-Two

  The Invitation — A Mouthpiece —

  The Last Stand

  Sister.

  Comrade.

  Beloved.

  The hurricane of joy that met her almost swept her away. A thousand voices, risen in greeting. At last their discordant song made sense. They were no longer terrifying, but wonderful. They were welcoming her. Welcoming her as one of them.

  She'd fought the daemon inside her every inch of the way, in those long years since the day of her death. Frightened of the temptation it presented. Terrified of being subsumed. Desperate to keep hold of herself.

  But when she saw the Manes break into the engine room of the Storm Dog, when she saw her crew - her friends - standing in the path of that savage fury, she abandoned her resistance at last. This time, it was no hostile invading force that took her against her will. This was a surrender.

  Strength surged into her body. Confusion was replaced with clarity of thought. She sprang from the walkway where she'd lingered unnoticed, in a daze, while her friends shot down Grist's men. And the Manes halted before her.

  But these Manes were not the horrors she knew. She saw past skin and muscle and bone, to the cascade of harmonics within, a music that could be seen and sensed in all its marvellous subtlety. Each Mane was a symphony to themselves, yet each had movements and passages in common. The daemon that possessed each of them was one entity split among many bodies. That was the uniting force. Otherwise, they were as different as earth and sky. The Manes were human, only more so. So much more, that they'd passed beyond the understanding of the beings they once were.

  She was still herself. They welcomed her, they wanted her, but it was Jez that bathed in their love. The same Jez it had always been. It was a delight she could never have imagined.

  What had she ever been afraid of?

  She wanted to speak, but speech was impossibly clumsy. There was no need, anyway. Her thoughts were transparent to them. Yet still she tried, forming words with her mind, because she knew no other way.

  Not these, she thought. You must not harm them.

  And the Manes knew what she knew. They shared her memories of Frey, of her crew, her time aboard the Ketty Jay. They sensed her gratitude at being given a home when no one else would give her one. They learned how the crew had accepted her, even in the face of their own ignorance and fear of the Manes. They saw the beautiful simplicity of their friendships.

  She knew, then, that they wouldn't be harmed. Not by any hand here.

  And yet, for all this astonishing completeness that she felt, there was greater yet to come. She'd connected with them on the most rudimentary level. The intoxicating sense of kinship and understanding was only a fraction of what she might feel, if she took the Invitation wholeheartedly.

  The daemon inside her had accepted her surrender, but only temporarily. It didn't want her unwilling. The Invitation was just that: an invitation. It could be refused. It was just that very few ever did, with this heaven of belonging within their grasp. Who, when offered this, would choose the lonely isolation of humanity?

  Jez was on
ly partway there. To be a Mane in its fullest sense meant accepting the Invitation. And she knew that there was no returning from that.

  They spoke to her without words.

  Will you join us?

  Frey's gun was still levelled at Grist's head. Grist's gun was pressed against Trinica's, at a considerably closer range. Jez was on the far side of the barricade, crouched like a cat. The unearthly howl she'd made was dying away in her throat. The Manes stood at bay before her.

  Nobody dared make a move.

  What in the name of buggery is going on?

  Then Jez straightened and turned. Frey saw the awful change that had been wrought in her, just like on the All Our Yesterdays. Her face was not physically different, but something else lived behind it now. Something feral and mad, something other. It was in her posture and her expression, and above all in her eyes. She jarred against his senses, and terrified him.

  Then she spoke. Her voice was straining, gasping, horrible, as if she was unfamiliar with the workings of her own throat. A flock of whispers that coalesced into sound.

  ~ This one speaks for the Manes ~

  'Jez?' said Malvery. 'That you?'

  ~ This one is she. She is our mouthpiece. We have lost your way of speech. You are mute to us, as we are to you ~

  Frey felt his skin crawl. He summoned up a little defiance for form's sake. 'What have you done to her?'

  ~ Nothing she has not chosen. Be calm, Captain Frey. You and your crew will not be harmed. This one places great value on you ~

  'Her, too,' Frey said immediately, pointing at Trinica. 'She's done you no wrong.'

  Jez didn't reply to that. Instead, she said, ~ Captain Grist. Let the woman go. Bring us the sphere ~

  'No funny business, Frey,' Grist warned.

  Frey put up his weapon. Grist let go of Trinica, and she scrambled out of his grip and backed away from the Manes towards Frey. Frey moved closer, carefully, as if fearing a sudden move would lead her to be snatched from him again. Relief crashed in as his hand closed around her wrist and he pulled her towards him. He felt a fierce desire to take her in his arms and hold her, but something in her manner prevented it. She was no longer the kind to be held and comforted.

  Grist had picked up his cutlass from where it had fallen during the struggle with Trinica, and shoved it in his belt. Now he retrieved the sphere from where it lay, bundled up in a coat. He stepped past the barricade and walked towards Jez, still clutching his pistol in his right hand. 'You know why I came here, don't you?' he said.

  ~ Yes ~

  'Give me the Invitation.'

  ~ We know what you want ~ She took the sphere from Grist and stared at it, brow furrowed in concentration.

  Frey felt the air go slack. It was as if some tight wire, that had been tugging at the edge of his mind, had quietly snapped. The sensation was noticeable only by its absence. He hadn't realised he was detecting the sphere, even in the faintest way, until it stopped broadcasting. Now, finally, it was silent.

  'I brought you a thousand new recruits,' said Grist, eyeing Jez warily. 'My offerin' to you. All I want's to be one of you. To live always. It's all I want.'

  Jez's gaze went from the sphere in her hands to Grist. ~ We came to find the sphere. We came believing that our long-lost brethren were in peril. But there were no Manes there ~

  'I had to find you,' Grist said. A note of uncertainty had crept into his voice. 'It was the only way.'

  ~ Hundreds of our kind and yours have died today, Captain Grist. All so you could come here before us ~

  'I did what had to be done,' he growled. Even in the face of a crowd of Manes, he prickled at having his decisions questioned. He addressed the horde defiantly. 'Don't pretend you're strangers to killin', yourselves!'

  ~ We kill to survive. What your kind call kidnapping, we call recruitment. We must grow in number, and we have no other way of reproduction. But the sight of us inspires terror in your kind. They are apt to resist. We are forced to defend ourselves ~

  'Aye,' said Grist. 'But it all adds up to a whole heap o' bodies, whichever way you cut it.' He swept the Manes with a hard stare. He wasn't a bit afraid of them. 'Now, I've proved myself, ain't I? I want the Invitation.'

  ~ No-

  Grist's face darkened. 'No?'

  ~ We are not monsters. We do not want you ~

  Grist drew a cigar from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a match. A dangerous calm had settled on him. 'Am I to understand,' he said, puffing, 'that after two years of searchin', after turnin' over every rock and stone in Vardia, after I lost my whole damn crew and chased you to the North bloody Pole . . . That ain't enough?'

  ~ It will never be enough. We do not give the Invitation to everyone. Some are unsuitable ~

  'Unsuitable, you say? You realise, o' course, that by refusin' me, you're condemnin' me to death from the Black Lung?'

  ~ You should not concern yourself. Your death will come considerably sooner than that. You are far too dangerous to be allowed to live ~

  Grist surveyed the ranks of ghouls before him. 'I reckon you're right, at that.' Then he turned around and looked over his shoulder. His eyes met Frey's across the barricade between them. Frey could see the suppressed anger there, his fury at being thwarted at the last. He'd come all this way, and lost.

  Grist gave him a grudging salute. Frey returned it just as grudgingly. Both of them knew that he'd reached his end, but Frey couldn't help respecting him for the way he faced it.

  'Well,' he said, 'death, then.' He spun around, switching his pistol to his off-hand and drawing his cutlass. 'Which o' you bastards wants it first?'

  With a roar, he ran at the Manes, firing his pistol as he came. They fell on him in a howling frenzy as he plunged into them, cutting and slashing this way and that, shooting point-blank at his opponents until his bullets ran out. With long nails and crooked teeth they tore at his skin and raked at his face, but he shook them off time and again, bellowing his defiance. He hacked off limbs and heads to his left and right, a gory and fearsome figure amid the thrashing mass. All control had left him now: he was berserk with rage, more animal than man, a force of nature. As feral as the Manes that surrounded him. At last they pulled him under, overwhelming him by weight of numbers, but a moment later he struggled to his feet again, throwing them back with irresistible strength. They flung themselves at him, biting and scratching, rending strips of flesh from his arms and shoulders, but he battered them away.

  'Come on!' Grist howled. 'You ain't even tryin'!'

  Frey stared, appalled by his courage. Grist was surrounded by pieces of dead Manes, a butcher in a slaughterhouse, bleeding from dozens of wounds. He was visibly weakening, but he still kept his feet. No matter how they fought, they couldn't bring him down.

  In the end, it was his own blood that did it. He slipped on the slick floor, and disappeared beneath the tide. This time, he didn't come up again.

  They savaged him as he struggled on the floor. They plucked out his eyes and tore out his tongue. They ripped his belly open and pulled his innards from them in great loops. They gnawed his hands while he still thrashed, peeled muscle from bone, shredded him.

  Frey had never heard screaming like it.

  Then, at last, it was over. As much as Frey had hated Grist, he was glad when they were done, and silence returned. As if at a signal, the Manes began to retreat, melting away into the depths of the craft. What was left of Harvin Grist was scarcely recognisable as human, a bag of red and broken bones connected by strips of sinew.

  Malvery cleared his throat. 'In my professional opinion,' he said, 'that feller is dead.'

  Jez, who'd stood apart from the fighting, walked up to Frey. ~ The sphere is deactivated. The vortex is closing. You must move with haste ~

  'What about Jez? You ain't keeping her!' Malvery said.

  ~ We do not hold her captive. She has chosen her path ~

  'Oh, aye? And what path is that?'

  ~ She was given the Invitation. She refus
ed ~

  'I didn't know you could refuse,' Frey said. 'Of course she refused, then! Why wouldn't she?'

  ~ Few do. You cannot understand the choice she has made ~

  Frey wasn't going to argue about it. But the creature before him was still not Jez, his navigator. 'Then what is she, if she's not one of you?'

  ~ A half-Mane ~

  'Wasn't she one already?'

  ~ It is different now. She has accepted her Mane side, as we have accepted her humanity. She no longer resists us. In time, she will learn to control those aspects of us that she bears, or find others to teach her ~

  'There are others?'

  ~ Some are agents of our cause in the world beyond the Wrack. Others tread their own way. One day our kind and yours will meet, in war or peace. On that day, there may be need of those who can bridge the gap between us ~

  Frey was too tired and numb to take it all in. It was all too much for him right now. He just wanted to go. He wanted to take his crew and Trinica and leave as fast as he bloody well could.

  ~ She chose you over us, Captain. That is a rare honour indeed ~

  Then a shadow passed from her, some dark alter ego departing, and she sagged and staggered. When she raised her head, the feral look was gone from her. The shift in her aspect was subtle but unmistakable. She was back. She pushed some loose hair away from her forehead and gave them a wan smile.

  Malvery thundered over to her and swept her up in a bear hug, planting a huge kiss on her cheek. Silo came next, and laid his hand on her shoulder. Their eyes met, and a certain understanding passed between them, something that Frey had no knowledge of. But whatever it was, the half-Mane navigator and the silent Murthian shared something in that moment. Unless Frey was mistaken, Silo was proud of her.

  Frey joined them, and hugged her too. She was the smallest on his crew, but sometimes she was tougher than all of them. To have her back, to be chosen by her, filled him with a nameless gladness. She was precious, like all of his crew, and it was only then that he truly realised what a loss it would have been if she'd left them.