The Black Lung Captain

by Chris Wooding

  Jez laughed as she pushed him away. 'Give a girl some space, you bunch of lunks!' she said. 'We don't have time for all this. That big hole in the sky isn't going to be there too much longer, and I for one am not staying. So anyone who doesn't want to spend the rest of their lives stuck at the North Pole . . . run for it!'

  By the time they came up on the deck, the dreadnought was detaching itself and pulling away from the Storm Dog. Other dreadnoughts were in the sky, droning out of the grey mist, shadows that took on shape and detail as they approached. Returning combatants from Sakkan, some smoking from wounds in their hulls.

  Frey and the others sprinted back to the Ketty Jay. The crew fanned out to their posts, fired by their captain's urgency. Frey put Jez in the pilot's seat.

  'Get us out of here!'

  Jez didn't need any further invitation. She released the magnetic clamps and had the Ketty Jay airborne in moments. It was only when she lit the thrusters that Frey realised something was badly wrong.

  'Silo!' he called. He pushed past Trinica and Crake, who were just arriving in the cockpit, and headed down the corridor towards the engine room. He stuck his head through the open door. 'What's that noise?'

  'Engines are iced, Cap'n,' came the reply. The Ketty Jay's engine room was like a miniature version of the Storm Dog's. Silo, as usual, was invisible, lost somewhere in the walkways. 'She can't take these temperatures. There's cracks in the tanks.'

  'Hold her together! Just till we get out!'

  Silo didn't bother to reply to that. Frey returned to the cockpit, listening anxiously to the clattering noise coming from the thrusters. Trinica and Crake hovered about. They could do nothing to help.

  'She sounds bad, Cap'n,' said Jez, whose mental clarity had apparently returned. She seemed no worse for her experience. In fact, she seemed considerably better.

  'Don't push the thrusters if you can help it,' he told her.

  Til do what I can.'

  The Ketty Jay moved away from the Storm Dog, leaving her hanging in the sky, empty and abandoned. In another time and another place, Frey would have cheerfully stolen her. But all he wanted now was to get to safety in one piece.

  The bleak world of ice and the strange city in the distance were lost to sight, as Jez turned the craft away and took them into the deeper mist. They slipped past the dreadnoughts that were gliding in the other direction. Later, maybe, he'd think about the things he'd seen here, and marvel at the day's events. For now, he was too preoccupied.

  Trinica was watching him. Her mind was a mystery, as it ever was. He'd known better than to expect gratitude, but it still rankled that he'd had no word of thanks from her. No words at all, in fact. He'd risked his life and the lives of his crew to come here and get her. They might yet all die on her account. Wasn't that worth a little praise?

  Instead, she studied him as if he was some new and mildly fascinating thing she'd never noticed before. Her attention made him slightly uncomfortable.

  You stabbed me in the back and I saved your life in return. I'm better than you. Live with that.

  He was conscious of an awkward pressure against his ribs. Irritably, he opened his coat and pulled the rolled-up sheaf of papers from his inside pocket. Since Crake was nearby, he held them out to him.

  'What's this?' Crake asked.

  'Grist's father's research. Apparently it's compelling evidence that the Awakeners have been using daemonism to create Imperators.'

  'They've what? Crake exclaimed. He snatched them from his grasp. 'Give me that!'

  'Yeah, didn't I mention it? When you were away we went to Bestwark University, and we met—'

  'No, you bloody well did not mention it!' Crake began leafing through the papers excitedly, their predicament suddenly forgotten.

  'To tell you the truth, I sort of forgot about it till I was in Grist's cabin. Didn't seem all that important.'

  Crake stared at him, aghast. 'Do you know what this means? he asked, brandishing the folio.

  'Reckon so. If it got into the Archduke's hands, it could help bring down the Awakeners, or something,' he said offhandedly. He didn't much care whether the Awakeners were around or not, but Crake certainly did.

  'Spit and blood! This is incredible!'

  'Yeah, well, enjoy it,' said Frey, listening to the labouring thrusters. 'It won't be so incredible if the prothane engine doesn't hold out.'

  The mist closed in around them, and the wind began to pick up fast. The Ketty Jay started to shake and rattle. Jez stared out into the gloom. What she was seeing, Frey couldn't tell. The route back was invisible to him, but she seemed to know exactly where she was heading. She twitched the flight stick, banked and dived. Frey steadied himself against the navigator's desk. It was going to be rough.

  The wind buffeted them as they flew further in, and Jez was forced to manoeuvre more and more.There was a screeching noise coming from the port thruster. Frey bit his lip and hoped. If the thrusters failed now, they'd be tossed about in the tempest until they came apart.

  If only he'd had the time and money to get the parts Silo had been asking for. If only he didn't live this hand-to-mouth, breadline existence. If they died today, it would be his mediocrity that was to blame.

  You can do it, girl, he thought, addressing his aircraft. Hang on.

  The Ketty Jay bucked and surged as she fought through the storm.

  Lightning flickered in the clouds. Frey felt useless. He wanted to be doing something, but there was nothing he could do. Having given up his seat as pilot, he was just a passenger. He watched Jez, or gazed out at the mist, or listened to the disturbing sounds coming from the engine. Mostly, he willed the aircraft to stay together, and tried to keep his balance as they were jostled around. There were safer places to be while the Ketty Jay was fighting through such savage turbulence, but no one would leave the cockpit.

  Time ticked by. Moment after agonising moment. Frey lost track of it altogether.

  'Not far now,' Jez said.

  Frey exchanged a cautiously optimistic look with Crake. Crake, who was clutching the papers tight in one hand and steadying himself with his other, gave him a brave smile. Maybe they'd make it after all.

  Then the thrusters coughed and hacked and, with a final bang, the engine blew out.

  No.

  Frey felt himself go cold. The world seemed deadened, the silence profound. The injustice was like a blade under the breastbone. To have got so close. So close, and to fall at the final hurdle.

  No.

  Outside was the endless, empty grey. They drifted, somewhere in the vague, strange space between the Wrack and Sakkan.

  No.

  Then the wind hit them, and this time there was no way to ride it. The Ketty Jay was flung hard, throwing Frey off his feet. He crashed into Trinica and they went down together, sliding along the floor to fetch up against a bank of instruments. Crake was thrown against the navigator's station. He cracked his head on the side of the desk and fell senseless to the floor, papers scattering all around him.

  Jez stabbed at the ignition frantically. The thrusters didn't respond. Frey tried to get to his feet, but the Ketty Jay plunged, and he was lifted from the floor and slammed down hard. Jez wrestled with the controls, but her efforts were futile.

  Everything was futile.

  They were shaken like a rag in a dog's mouth. Without thrust, they had no control. Everything not fixed down went flying about the cockpit. There was the squeal of tearing metal from the corridor. The jolts came fast and from all directions, making it impossible to find their feet. Something snapped and crashed down in the cargo hold. The windglass cracked.

  The craft was breaking up. And there was nothing any of them could do about it.

  Frey crawled across the floor towards Trinica. One of her black contact lenses had fallen out in the chaos, revealing the green eye he knew. That eye was the one he focused on. The eye of the woman he'd loved. There was the woman he'd risked it all to save. And she was scared; he could see it. Frightened o
f the end. She didn't want it to be over.

  He reached out a hand to her. She snatched it and clutched it hard.

  Her hand in his. He could think of worse ways to die.

  At least he'd tried, he thought. It was reckless, headstrong and stupid, but it was real and it was worth it. With a little more luck, he'd have made a story that every freebooter, raconteur and drunk would have told for a decade. The man who went into the Wrack, rescued the dread pirate Dracken, and came back to tell the tale. They'd all know the name of the Ketty Jay then. If he never did anything else, at least he'd have done that, and made a tale worth telling of his life.

  He just needed a little more luck. But everyone's luck ran out sometime.

  'Cap'n!' Jez cried. 'Cap'n, look!'

  The tone of her voice drove him to his feet. He pulled Trinica up with him, and they staggered a few steps to clutch the back of Jez's seat.

  Bleary lights in the mist. Electric lights, and a huge shadow behind them. Another dreadnought? No, dreadnoughts flew without lights. Then what?

  'It's the Delirium Trigger!' said Jez, an amazed smile breaking out over her face. 'It's the bloody Delirium Trigger!'

  And it was. Vast, ugly, brutal, looming from the cloud. The wind couldn't threaten a frigate of her size. Thick snakes uncoiled from her shadowy decks and slammed into the hull of the Ketty Jay. Magnetic grapples, clamping on. The lines went taut, and the Ketty Jay began to move through the storm, hauled inexorably forward by the Delirium Trigger's massive engines. They were pulled towards the mouth of the vortex, and the safety of the world they knew.

  Frey couldn't believe it. It didn't seem possible. Jez was cheering in her seat, but he just stared, gaping, unable to credit their reprieve.

  'How did they find us?' he asked. 'In all this mist, how did they find us?'

  Trinica held up her left hand before him. On her finger was the silver ring he'd given her. The ring that was linked to a compass, which Trinica had given to her bosun when she took it from Jez, back in Grist's hangar.

  He looked from the hand to her. She smiled at him. A genuine, beautiful smile, that filled him with such happiness it made tears prickle at his eyes.

  Forty-Three

  Spit And Polish —

  Malvery's Joke — Farewell

  The Yort engineer led the way up the Ketty Jay's cargo ramp. Frey and his crew followed him in, looking around curiously, as if they'd never seen their own aircraft before. A blast of icy air and a flurry of snow chased past them. Beyond, in the grey glare from outside, there were tractors and hangars, and Yorts walking back and forth. They were in dock at Iktak, where the Delirium Trigger had recently been repaired, and the Ketty Jay more recently still.

  'We had to put in a whole new engine assembly,' the engineer was saying. 'Fixed up your thrusters, too, but the guts of 'em were good, so we kept most of it. Blackmore P-12s.' He grinned. 'They don't make 'em like that any more.'

  The engineer was a short man, but stout, making up in width what he lost in height. A well-attended gut hung over his belt, but his shoulders and arms looked stuffed with cannonballs. Orange hair fell down his back in braided ropes, and his jawline was outlined with studs of metal.

  'We did over your control system and some of the internals. She ought to fly better now, at any rate. Don't know how you kept her together all this time. Your Murthian's a bloody genius.' He thumbed at Silo.

  Frey was finding it hard to keep up with his accent. All Yorts spoke Vardic, but it was so heavily inflected that you had to pay strict attention to get any meaning out of it. He suspected they did it on purpose, thorny buggers that they were.

  'Sounds like you did a thorough job,' he said uneasily. He was worried that the Ketty Jay wouldn't be the same old girl he knew. After fifteen years of flying her, he'd learned to compensate for all her little tics and problems. They were part of her character. He felt bad about losing them.

  The engineer didn't notice. 'Lot of environmental damage on the hull, so we gave her a patch and weld, scrubbed her out. Basically did her over, top to bottom. She'll be better now than when you bought her.'

  That's what I'm afraid of, Frey thought. Then he told himself to stop being a grouch. He'd just had his aircraft given an all-over service by one of the best workshops in the North, and it hadn't cost him a shillie. That put a smile on his face.

  'I can't wait to fly her,' he said. 'She looks great.'

  She did look great. She'd been polished up so she looked factory-new. And Frey had never seen the cargo hold so tidy. His crew looked amazed. Like him, they'd never realised there was so much space in here.

  'Anything you couldn't fix?' Frey asked, half-hopefully.

  The engineer pointed to an air duct, where Slag was hiding, watching them malevolently. 'Your cat's disposition,' the engineer replied. 'Damned thing kept attacking us whenever we went near the vents.'

  'The cat?' Harkins scoffed loudly. He made a lunging movement towards the vent. Slag took fright and disappeared in a scrabble of claws. Harkins crossed his arms and looked smug. 'Who's scared of a cat? You are about twenty times his size, after all.'

  Everyone turned to look at him. The engineer gave him a flat glare.

  'Er . . .' said Harkins.

  'Don't mind him,' Frey told the engineer. 'He laughs in the face of danger.' He slung his arm around Harkins' shoulders. Harkins tensed up, as if expecting to be hit. 'May I introduce my outflyer, "Fearless" Harkins. You know, one time, he played chicken with a dreadnought and won!'

  'Him?' the engineer asked.

  'Hey, I could have done that, if I'd got there in time!' Pinn protested. 'I'd have won, too!'

  'I'll leave you all to have a look around, eh?' the engineer said, somehow making it a threat directed at Harkins. Then he stomped off. Frey took his arm away and Harkins relaxed visibly.

  ' "Fearless" Harkins, eh?' he said, glancing sidelong at Jez.

  'Don't let it go to your head,' Pinn grumbled.

  The crew scattered throughout the craft, keen to see what had been done. Only Malvery stayed behind with Frey.

  'I bet they even cleaned the infirmary,' Frey said.

  Malvery snorted. 'About time someone did.'

  'How's the shoulder?'

  'Fine. Crake's hand's healing up okay, too. It won't lose any mobility.'

  'He seems better these days,' said Frey. 'Happier. So does Jez.'

  'We all do, Cap'n. Been through the wars, come out alive. This is the second time we pulled off something we really shouldn't have got away with. The lads are getting confident, I reckon.'

  Frey and the doctor considered the empty hold. The subdued clamour of the docks filled up the silence.

  'Thought I was losing you lot for a while there,' Frey said eventually.

  'Who, us? Nah.' Malvery said. 'Where would we go?'

  'Off to find new sweethearts, like Pinn?'

  Malvery roared with laughter. 'Chance would be a fine thing.' Then his laughter tailed off and he harumphed uneasily.

  'What is it?' Frey asked, sensing something wrong.

  'Actually, Cap'n,' he said. 'About that. I've got a confession to make. You know that letter from Lisinda that Pinn got?'

  Frey groaned. 'Oh, Doc. You didn't.'

  'Well, you know. I thought he was full of it, always talking about that bloody girl of his. Thought I'd call his bluff. To tell you the truth, I posted it a couple of months ago, when I was leathered. Forgot all about it till it turned up in Marlen's Hook.'

  Frey pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

  'Well, I never thought he'd actually go, did I?' Malvery protested. 'I'm fond of the lad, myself.'

  Frey took a deep breath before replying. He thought about all the trouble he'd have faced if Pinn hadn't come back, and he'd been forced to find a new pilot. He wondered if their fight over Sakkan might have turned out differently. Harkins might have been shot down by the Blackhawks. They might never have made it through at all.

  But they had come thro
ugh. They were all safe and well. Given that, it was hard to be angry at Malvery, even if he thought he probably should. The doctor was too much of an affable sort. Besides, no harm was intended, and Pinn seemed more spry than ever since his return.

  'I think, on balance, you did him a favour,' he said. 'But keep it to yourself, eh? And don't do it again.'

  'Aye, Cap'n.' Malvery said with a grin. 'I'll be good.'

  Frey sighed. His aircraft might have been fixed up like new, but his crew were just as they'd always been. Argumentative, dysfunctional and ill-disciplined. Yet for all that, he was glad of them. Individually, they were hopeless. But somehow, when they were all together, they became something greater than the sum of their parts.

  He couldn't believe there had been a time when he'd almost let them slip away from him. What had he been thinking? It was a dirty world out there, and these were the only true friends he had. You didn't throw that away. Not for money, fame or anything else.

  He heard quiet footsteps on the cargo ramp. Malvery turned. 'You've got a visitor,' he said.

  It was her. Trinica. Without her make-up, without her contact lenses. Not the pirate queen, but the woman beneath. She'd come as herself. Just the sight of her warmed him.

  'Morning, ma'am,' said Malvery, as she joined them.

  'Good morning, Doctor.'

  Malvery looked at Frey, then back at Trinica. 'Think I'll make myself scarce. See what they've done to the infirmary.' He slapped Frey's shoulder and strolled off, whistling.

  Frey barely noticed. All his attention was on her. Her hair was still uneven and ragged, but she'd made the best of it for his sake. She was wearing a hide coat and furs against the Yortland cold. There was nothing of glamour about her, but still she mesmerised him.

  Her eyes searched his with that strange curiosity he'd noticed in her gaze ever since he'd rescued her from the Storm Dog. As if she'd never seen him before. As if he was some fascinating artefact that she was trying to puzzle out.