The Black Lung Captain

Thirty-Eight

Frey ran into the cockpit of the Ketty Jay with Jez hot on his heels. Behind him, boots clattered in the passageway as the crew went to their stations. Silo was heading for the engine room. Malvery⁷ clambered noisily up the ladder to the autocannon cupola.

Crake drifted in as Frey and Jez raced through the pre-flights. He was holding his bandaged hand, looking forlorn and slightly useless. Malvery's patch-up job was sloppy, but proper medical attention would have to wait till later.

'Did you shut the cargo ramp behind you?' Frey asked. 'Don't want any Manes getting in.' He glanced at Jez, then added wryly, 'One's more than enough.'

Jez gave him a quick, humourless smile of acknowledgement. Frey wished he'd kept his mouth shut. Whatever she felt about shooting down all those Manes, it wasn't a matter to be taken lightly. She was cool, efficient, grim. That was how she coped, he reckoned. Burying herself in her task. She'd think about it all later.

Was that how people were supposed to deal with things, he wondered? Shutting them out, closing down? It had been Frey's method of choice up till now, but damned if it had done him a scrap of good.

'Jez. Come up here. See if you can spot Harkins.'

Harkins and the Firecrow had disappeared from the landing pad. With the earcuffs gone, he couldn't talk to them. They'd have to rely on the old-fashioned methods they used before Crake came aboard.

Jez left her station and joined him, peering out through the wind-glass at the jumble of fighters and frigates in the sky above. Tracer fire tracked across the black ceiling of cloud. Above it all, the great churning hole in the sky, flashing with its own private lightning.

He hit the aerium engines, flooded the tanks, and the Ketty Jay began to lift.

'You know, that vortex is going to stay open until the sphere is deactivated or destroyed,' said Crake. 'They're going to keep coming.'

Frey didn't need telling. He was well aware that some of this was his fault. He'd helped Grist get his hands on that thing.

But he'd done his best to stop it, too. It wasn't as if he'd intended this. Those lives weren't on his shoulders. It wasn't his responsibility to save them. He was going to fly away and leave them to their fate. There was no sense in sharing it. Maybe his conscience wouldn't be exactly clean, but he could live with a certain level of grubbiness.

He spun the Ketty Jay slowly as she rose, giving Jez a panorama of the battle overhead.

'I see them!' she cried.

'Them?'

'Pinn's with him!'

Crake groaned. 'Really?'

Pinn! Pinn was back! And that meant they were all here, the whole crew, for the the first time in what seemed for ever. Six men, one woman (kind of), a golem and a cat. With Pinn's return, the balance was restored. The crew that had been forged in the firefights and fiascos of Retribution Falls were together again. And suddenly it felt like anything was possible.

The corner of Frey's mouth curled up. 'Pinn,' he said. 'Well, well, well.'

Jez clutched his shoulder and pointed. 'Cap'n! There!'

Her tone told him that she'd spotted something other than the pilots. He followed the line of her finger, but saw only dreadnoughts, one sliding behind another. An explosion rattled the cockpit, too distant to harm them. He looked again.

'The Storm Dog,' she said.

He could see it now. A small black bar, angled steeply upwards, sliding like a slow blade through the chaos. It was ignored by Navy and Mane craft alike.

They're not trying to escape. Where are they heading?

He traced their path to its end. His face went slack.

'You must be joking,' he murmured.

They were heading for the vortex. And Trinica was on board.

Suddenly Frey couldn't breathe. It was as if an iron band was tightening around his chest.

On some level, he'd always believed that Trinica would be alright, that Grist would release her once her purpose was served. Once he'd got away there was no point in killing her. Trinica was a survivor. She'd survive. If he hadn't thought that, he couldn't have left her in Grist's hands.

But now he was seized with an awful certainty. Grist would have kept her as a hostage until he was well away from Frey. That meant she was on board the Storm Dog. Grist was taking her with him, to the place where the Manes came from. Trinica and the sphere. And they wouldn't be coming back.

She wouldn't be coming back.

Ever.

Again.

He lit the thrusters and hauled on the flight stick. The Ketty Jay lurched forward, her prow tilting up towards the blackened, eerie sky.

'Get on the electroheliograph to Harkins and Pinn,' he ordered. 'Get their attention. Tell them to keep the Blackhawks off us.'

Jez caught the urgency in his voice. She darted back to her station and began tapping at the switch, flashing coded messages from the lamp on the Ketty Jay's back.

'Malvery!' he yelled. 'Shoot anything that comes near us!'

'Navy too?'

'No, not the bloody Navy!'

'Right-o. Should be more specific, then, shouldn't you?'

Frey drowned him out by opening the throttie to maximum. The Ketty Jay blasted away from Sakkan, up into the dark morning. As they rose, Frey saw the devastation that had been visited on the city below. Sakkan was pitted and scarred with the impact of fallen craft. Crashed frigates had ploughed furrows through entire districts, leaving fire and rubble in their wake. A pall of oily smoke was spreading into the air.

Ahead of them was a deadly muddle of swooping fighters. Frigates and dreadnoughts exchanged artillery, battered heavyweights duking it out. Frey flew fast and straight, right through the middle, climbing steeply.

'Err . . . Cap'n?' Malvery called from the cupola. 'Can't help noticing that we're heading towards the terrifying vortex.'

Frey didn't reply. He kept going, face hard and jaw set.

'We're going after the sphere?' asked Crake, who was hanging on to the doorway. Frey thought he detected a certain pride in the daemonist's voice. The possibility of a noble act appealed to him.

'We're not going after the sphere,' he said. The citizens of Sakkan could fend for themselves. He had other priorities.

'We'd better not be going after that pestilent white-skinned cow you're sweet on,' Malvery warned.

Crake stared at Frey in wonderment. 'You are, aren't you? Even after everything she's done to you. You're going to try and save her.'

There was a strangled cry from the cupola. Jez joined Crake in staring at her captain. He glanced at her. There was something like admiration in her eyes.

'Some things are worth risking everything for, eh, Cap'n?'

He faced forward and hunched down in his seat. 'Damn right.'

Harkins whimpered as the air was shredded by tracer bullets, lethal fireflies darting past his cockpit. He threw his craft into a roll, and came out of it in a hard dive. His face and scalp reddened as the blood was forced to his head.

Three Blackhawks on his tail. Again.

'Pinn? Pinn? What's . . . how . . . Where are you?' he demanded.

'Five more seconds,' came the reply in his ear.

'I don't have five more—' he began, but then he saw Pinn come in from his starboard side, machine guns flashing. The Blackhawks were caught in a shattering rain of lead. One swerved to evade, hit its neighbour, and all three went down in a raging ball of flame and metal.

'Yeah, you do,' said Pinn.

Harkins slumped back in his seat and wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He wasn't sure he liked this bait-and-ambush game they were playing, but he had to admit it was effective. The Blackhawk pilots flew well, but they were unpractised in a real battle. Tight formation was all well and good for aerobatic displays, but if one member of the squad was hit in just the right way, even the inhumanly synchronised Manes couldn't avoid a mid-air collision. A fact that Pinn was exploiting.

The Navy were finding their opponents harder to handle. The Windblades hadn't got the trick of dealing with the Blackhawks yet, and they were being whittled down. The dreadnoughts and frigates were engaged in cumbersome manoeuvres, each trying to find an advantage. But the Navy had only a limited amount of craft, while more and more dreadnoughts were appearing through that frightening gateway in the sky.

To make things worse, the Navy were handicapped by the need to protect their citizens. They were doing their best to draw the dreadnoughts away from the city because they didn't want any more aircraft crashing down on Sakkan. But the dreadnoughts were staying put. Perhaps they realised their advantage; perhaps they wouldn't abandon their crews, running riot in the streets below.

The Navy aimed to disable rather than destroy. The Manes had no such compunctions. The massive aircraft exchanged barrage after barrage, but the Manes had the best of it.

We're not going to win this one.

Harkins passed a Navy frigate that was listing to one side, dipping slowly and unstoppably towards the streets below. It seethed smoke from a huge tear in its hull. Harkins didn't want to think about what would happen when it reached the ground. He was too busy thinking about himself. Trying to stay alive.

How many more lucky escapes would he get before his number was up? How much longer could he keep doing this? Combat flying was a young man's game. He didn't have the constitution for it any more. The physical and mental stresses were too much. He was getting seriously worried that he'd suffer a heart attack at some point, if he wasn't blown out of the sky first.

And yet, what else was there for him? Flying was the only thing he could do, and the only activity he really loved. Take that away, and there wasn't much left.

No, he was trapped in the cockpit till the end. That was plain.

Just let me live through this.

'Hey!' It was Pinn. 'Down there! To your starboard.'

He looked, and his eye was drawn by a sharp, rapid flash. An electroheliograph. It took him a moment to recognise the blocky, ugly shape of the Ketty Jay. And there was only one person aboard who could operate an electroheliograph that fast.

Jez!

His heart filled and swelled in his chest. A brown-toothed grin split his lips. Jez! Alive and well! He was overcome with joy, and for a few seconds he could do nothing but beam like an idiot.

'They're signalling,' said Pinn. 'I think it's . . . er . . .'

Harkins remembered himself. Quick, quick. What was she saying? It was a code, designed to speedily transmit a message without the need to spell it out. Defend us.

'Yes, ma'am!' he said happily.

'What?' Swept up in the heat of the moment, he'd forgotten Pinn could hear him.

'Nothing. They need us to, er, keep the Blackhawks off them, I suppose.'

'Where are they heading? They're flying into the battle.'

'Let's just do what they say!' Harkins snapped, surprising himself.

Pinn sounded equally surprised. 'Alright, alright. Let's get down there.'

Harkins tipped the Firecrow into a dive, keeping a wary eye out for Blackhawks. It did seem that the Ketty Jay was aiming itself into the heart of the conflict, but he had to assume the Cap'n had his reasons.

His train of thought was interrupted by an artillery shell, which exploded uncomfortably close to him and made him yelp. Concussion shoved at the Firecrow and jolted him in his seat, hard enough to make his cap fall off. The engines groaned as they cut through the disturbed air, then settled back to their usual pitch.

Harkins wasn't a vain man, but he didn't much care for showing off his balding pate, and he felt naked without his cap. He groped around for it in the cockpit, keeping his eye on the skies. When he couldn't find it at his feet, he reached under the seat.

His hand closed on something. Something warm. Something that was all tangled fur and stringy muscle.

'Oh, no,' he said quietly.

With a yowl like the shrieks of the damned, Slag exploded out of hiding and sank his claws into Harkins' calf. Harkins wailed operatically, kicking his leg this way and that in an attempt to dislodge his attacker. But the cat was hanging on as if his life depended on it.

Harkins' flailing hand brushed against his cap, which had fallen down the side of his seat. He scooped it up and and began to beat at the cat with it, maddened by agony.

'Harkins!' Pinn said. 'You getting laid in there? What in rot's name is going on?'

The drone of his engines ascended as the steepness of his dive increased. He wasn't even holding the flight stick any more. He was faintly aware that his aircraft was out of control, but the danger of that seemed dim in the face of the more immediate peril.

Slag released him at last, surrendering to the flurry of blows. He bolted into the footwell, where he ran around between the foot-pedal controls, screeching and hissing. Harkins tried to pull his legs up, but he was strapped in to his seat and he couldn't get far enough out of the way. His leg seared with pain and his trousers were wet with blood.

Pinn was shouting in his ear, but he wasn't listening. His entire attention was focused on the cat.

Slag shot out of the footwell, under his seat and behind him. Harkins fought to turn around, desperate to keep his attacker in view. Having that monster in front of him was bad enough; having him out of sight was worse. But his straps foiled him. He thrashed against them, fumbling for the release, but his hands were clumsy. G-forces were pressing him against his seat. His head was thumping as it filled with blood.

'Pull up! Harkins! You're diving too steep! Pull up!'

The city spun and veered beneath him. Terrifyingly solid, filling his view. The engines had reached an alarming pitch.

Instinct took over. The Firecrow was tumbling. He grabbed at the stick and fought against the roll. He needed to stabilise before he could level off. Otherwise, he wouldn't know which way was up.

There was the sound of fabric ripping. Claws on the back of his seat, ascending fast. Then the hot, stinking weight of Slag landed on his shoulders. The claws sank in, bringing exquisite and unbearable torture. Harkins abandoned the flight stick, beating at himself, consumed by panic.

'Harkins!'

He couldn't hear. The cat was howling. He twisted and contorted himself, trying to get the evil creature off him. The claws detached from his shoulder, scrabbled at his back, slashed his scalp. He couldn't get a hold of his attacker. Caught between two dangers, he lunged for the flight stick instead, which was jolting about of its own accord. His fingers grasped at it and slid away. His hands went back to Slag, who was launching a fresh attack on the nape of his neck, caterwauling at the top of his lungs. The hard, cold streets of Sakkan rushed up towards him.

You're going to die!

Then something clicked in among the panic and confusion. The cat's howling. Harkins had never known that sound to come from Slag before, but he knew an old friend when he heard it. That was the sound of fear.

Slag was scared. Out of his mind. He hadn't been hiding under the seat waiting to pounce. He'd been cowering, terrified of the sky and the noise of the plane and everything around him.

And with that knowledge came fury. He wouldn't go out like this! Not after everything he'd lived through. Dogfights, crashes, dozens of near misses. The whole point of being a coward was not to get killed. But Slag didn't seem to get that. He was just a dumb animal, too scared to know what was good for him.

More scared than Harkins, in fact.

Harkins reached over his head, and found a confident grip on the scruff of Slag's neck. He hauled the cat off him, ignoring the blaze of pain as the claws came free. He dangled the struggling animal in front of his face.

'Bad kitty!' he screamed, and punched the cat as hard as he could in the face. Then he slung his limp and cross-eyed adversary over his shoulder, into the back of the cockpit, and grabbed hold of the flight stick.

The Firecrow was speeding towards the ground, buffeted by the winds, corkscrewing crazily. He gritted his teeth and attempted to counter the roll. His head felt like it was going to burst. The cat was forgotten. There was only him and the Firecrow.

But there was no contest of wills here. Here, even if nowhere else, Harkins was the master.

The craft responded. The spin slowed and stopped. Harkins found the horizon above him. Now he was stable. He stamped on the air brakes and wrenched back on the stick.

'Harkins! Pull up, you stupid bugger! You're going down!' Pinn yelled in his ear.

'I know!' Harkins yelled back. 'Don't you think I know?'

The Firecrow began pulling up. He was still braking hard, but not hard enough. He thumped the valve to flood the tanks with aerium, lightening the craft so the brakes would work better. He was close enough to see the people running in the streets below, and the Manes chasing after them.

'Come on! Come on!' he yelled at his craft. The nose was coming up level . . . slowly . . . slowly . . . too slowly . . .

'Come on!'

The Firecrow screamed down the length of one of Sakkan's main streets, its underbelly scraping the ground with the slightest of touches, sending a fountain of sparks out behind it. Then it was up, up, up, soaring over the rooftops and back into the blessed sky.

Harkins closed his eyes and breathed out.

'Harkins?' It was Pinn. 'You okay?'

'I'm okay,' he said quietly. His mind had gone blank, so he said the only thing he could think of. 'I just punched out the cat.'

There was a long pause from the other pilot. 'You did what?'