The Black Lung Captain

Thirty-Nine

The Ketty Jay rocked and trembled, pushed by the concussive forces of the artillery exploding all around them. Frey's shoulders were hunched, as if by making himself smaller he could somehow shrink the Ketty Jay and present a harder target. His gaze was fixed on the stormy vortex ahead of them, a vast, flashing swirl of heaving cloud. Shells flitted across his path to smash into the flanks of Navy frigates that loomed on his port side. Windblades darted past them, with squads of Blackhawks in pursuit.

Frey powered through the crossfire, and hoped.

Crake's eyes were wide as he stared at the flickering, churning maw in the sky, waiting to swallow them up, as it had swallowed the Storm Dog.

'Captain,' he said. 'This might very possibly be a stupid idea.'

'Very possibly,' Frey agreed. But his determination was unshakable. He hadn't felt this certain about anything for a long time.

Grist might have been the wrong side of sane, but he wasn't suicidal. On the contrary, he was desperate to live. Frey had to believe that the other captain knew what he was doing when he plunged into that vortex. And where the Storm Dog went, the Ketty Jay could follow.

Probably.

Pinn was on his wing, nipping and harrying the Blackhawks, drawing them away as best he could. Malvery was firing at any that came near, without much success. He never had been a brilliant shot with the autocannon. Harkins was nowhere to be seen. They'd lost sight of him a few minutes ago, when he suddenly dived away from them.

The Ketty Jay's thrusters were labouring. There was a distressing knocking noise coming from deep in her guts. The freezing temperatures she'd endured of late had done nothing to improve the precarious state of her prothane engine. It was a testament to Silo's skill that it was still operating at all.

He pushed them hard anyway, climbing out of the plane of conflict where the dreadnoughts and frigates were slugging it out. Gradually the explosions fell behind them and the sky became less crowded. He focused only on his goal, ignoring the dangers all around him as if he could bring them through unharmed by sheer force of will.

Come on, girl, he told his beloved aircraft. You can make it. I know you can.

'Cap'n!' called Malvery. 'Stray Blackhawk! Coming in on our tail!'

'Where's Pinn?'

'He's run off the others! I reckon—' The rest of his reply was drowned out by the autocannon. Then: 'I got him, Cap'n! I—'

He was interrupted by a huge explosion, terrifyingly close. The Ketty Jay's stern end was shoved hard. Multiple impacts peppered the craft, ringing through the hull. Frey reached for the controls to correct, but the Ketty Jay was still on course. Instead, he turned in his seat and yelled up to the cupola.

'Doc? Doc, you okay?' He looked at Crake, who was hanging on to the doorway. 'Crake, see if he's okay.'

Crake leaned out into the passageway and looked up the ladder that led to the gunnery cupola. 'Malvery?'

'I'm alright,' he said. 'Bit deaf. The awkward bugger blew up a few metres off our tail.'

Frey didn't have time for relief. Jez grabbed his shoulder and pointed. 'Cap'n!'

The vortex had grown huge now, as they sped up and out of the conflict. Emerging through the cloud, right in their path, was the scarred bow of a dreadnought. It dwarfed them, like a cargo ship bearing down on a rowboat.

Frey pulled the flight stick to the left. Nothing happened. He tried again, then moved to the right, then shoved it desperately in every direction. Still nothing happened.

He couldn't steer.

His pupils dilated to tiny points as he stared at the enormous aircraft bearing down on them.

'Uh-oh.'

*

Harkins spared a moment to check that his unconscious stowaway was in no danger of waking up, then headed back towards the Ketty Jay as fast as he could. 'Pinn! Where are you?'

'What happened to—'

'Never mind what happened to me. Where's - um - where's the Ketty Jay?'

'Heading for that great big bloody rip in the sky. Don't ask me why. I'm going back to 'em now.'

'Back?' Harkins was appalled. He'd left them? 'I had to draw off a few Blackhawks . . . er . . . wait a minute.' The tone of Pinn's voice alarmed him. 'What do you mean, wait a minute?' He flashed at full throttle through the battlefield, ascending hard. 'What's wrong?'

'The Cap'n's playing chicken with a dreadnought.'

'He's whaaaaat?' Harkins screamed. He came out of the main body of the battle, up into clearer sky, and spotted them immediately. The Ketty Jay was heading right into the centre of the vortex. A dreadnought, many times their size, was lumbering out of it. And neither looked at all like getting out of the way.

Jez!

He angled the Firecrow towards them and put on all the speed he had.

'Shrapnel in the tail assembly!' Malvery called from the cupola. 'I can see it! It looks like it's coming loose! Waggle the flaps more!'

'I'm waggling as hard as I bloody can!' said Frey, waggling. 'Dump out the aerium tanks,' Jez advised. 'We'll sink underneath her.'

'We dump those tanks, we'll go off course.'

'Isn't that the idea?'

'We go off course, we'll miss the vortex. We miss the vortex, we might not be able to get back to it. There's no telling when or if we'll have steering again.'

'You want to chase the Storm Dog with no steering?' Crake cried in disbelief.

'We are going into that vortex!' said Frey.

'There's half a million tons of metal in the way!' Jez shouted.

'They'll move,' he insisted.

'No, they won't!'

Frey's hand hovered above the valve that would execute an emergency purge of the aerium tanks. The Ketty Jay would dip out of the dreadnought's path, but he'd never get her bow up again if he did. Not with that shrapnel in the tail assembly.

Hitting that valve meant giving up on Trinica for ever. Not hitting it meant that he and his crew would end up splattered across the keel of that dreadnought.

He took his hand away.

'They'll move,' he said.

'They won't move!' Harkins shouted at his captain, as if Frey could hear him. He didn't know what the Cap'n was thinking, but he was furious at him for gambling with Jez's life like that. Either the dreadnought hadn't noticed them, or whoever commanded it had decided to run them down rather than waste ammunition. The Ketty Jay would crumple like tinfoil against that armoured keel.

Why doesn't the Cap'n just pull out of the way?

Maybe they were in trouble. Maybe they couldn't move aside. In that case, a collision was inevitable. In that case . . .

He raced towards them at full throttle. He wasn't sure what he could do about the situation when he got there, but a fierce determination blazed in him nonetheless. He was heady from defeating Slag, and he felt invincible. Somehow, he'd save them. He'd save her.

Pinn was further away, approaching from another angle, yelling pointiessly at the Captain. He was as alarmed as Harkins, and just as powerless to intervene.

Then an idea slipped into Harkins' head. Powerless? Him? Not any more. After all, he'd just punched out a cat. Taking on a dreadnought seemed like the next logical step.

There was no time to think about it, anyway. No time to listen to the voice in his head that screamed, 'What are you doing?!!?' He felt a hard calm overtake him. The kind of calm he'd once possessed in battle, before all those crashes and lost comrades broke his nerve. A colder, more dispassionate part of himself seized control, quelling the panic that beat at his mind. His brow creased into a stern frown, and for the first time in years, he felt like someone to be reckoned with.

He slowed as he matched the Ketty Jay's course, flying in a few dozen metres above them. Ahead was the dark metal landscape of the dreadnought. The Ketty Jay was heading dead into its keel, but Harkins was approaching above the level of the deck.

He could see the Manes emerging from hatches in the deck, swarming out like cockroaches. No wonder there had been nobody firing the guns. Presumably it was too dangerous to be up on deck when they passed through that swirling vortex. Too dangerous for Blackhawks as well, he guessed. That was why they were smuggled through in the bellies of their mothercraft.

Far back on the deck stood a command tower, a black pile of spikes and rivets with armoured slits for windows. If there was a captain, he'd be there, along with the pilot. So that was where Harkins was heading.

He cut the thrusters further, coming in slow to give his enemy a chance to react. Then he flew over the Ketty Jay, leapfrogging her in the air, and headed straight for the command tower.

'You want to play chicken?' he muttered. 'Well, I'm the biggest chicken of them all!'

He didn't fire his machine guns as he came. He refused to. He'd leave them in no doubt of his intentions. He'd let them know he wasn't going to pull away.

He'd let them know he was going to ram the command tower, and if their captain valued his inhuman life, he'd move aside.

The Manes were scrambling to the deck guns, but they wouldn't get there in time. The dreadnought cruised towards him, framed by the flashing churn of the vortex. Harkins squared his shoulders and flew straight.

His heart slammed against his ribs, his muscles rigid as he held the Firecrow steady. The dreadnought was huge now, growing faster and faster. The Firecrow juddered and rocked around him. The thrusters roared in his ears.

I'm not moving. He projected his thoughts at his opponent. Are you?

'Harkins, what the shit do you think you're doing?' Pinn asked. 'They're Manes! This is not the time to grow a backbone!'

Pinn. He was the worst of those who laughed at him. Well, one way or another, no one would be laughing after this.

He was coming up on the deck of the dreadnought. Close enough to see the faces of the scurrying figures there. They howled and pointed. Perhaps they sensed his intention, but they couldn't stop him.

Closer. His hand began to shake on the stick. Doubts ate away at his resolve. What would it feel like to die? What would come after?

Closer. He was passing over the bow of the dreadnought. Suddenly all the bravado he'd gained from beating up a cat deserted him. The cowardly voice in his head rose to a shriek. His arms trembled with the effort of resisting the urge to pull away.

Don't do it!

Don't do what? Don't carry on, or don't crack and flee?

The deck streaked past beneath him. The tower rose ahead. He was still aiming right for the bridge. The wind shook and battered the Firecrow, as if the whole craft might come apart.

He gritted his teeth to clamp down on the blubbering wail rising up from his chest. The black metal slab of the command tower thundered towards him, the promise of fiery oblivion with it.

Just this once, he thought. Just this once. Be a man.

Then there was a deafening blast of escaping gas, and the command tower tilted as the frigate vented its aerium tanks on the starboard side. The dreadnought listed hard and dipped. Manes went scrabbling and sliding across the deck towards the gunwales. Harkins rolled to his own starboard as the bigger craft bowed aside, and the Firecrow raced past the command tower, wings vertical, with half a metre to spare.

Harkins blinked in shock. The dreadnought was diminishing behind him, the vortex gaping ahead. He undipped his straps and twisted to look over his shoulder.

The dreadnought was venting on its port side to level itself up, but the added weight was making it sink fast. As it moved out of the way, he saw the Ketty Jay, flying over the top of the dipping craft, trailing in his wake.

'Wa-hooo! You crazy bastard!' Pinn was ecstatic. 'That was the bravest damn thing I ever saw!'

A tentative smile spread across his face. That had been brave, hadn't it? And even better, he was still alive to enjoy it.

He turned away from the vortex, back toward the Ketty Jay. The electroheliograph on her back was flashing rapidly. Break off. Don't follow. Meet at Iktak.

Harkins understood. The fighter craft would likely be destroyed in the unknown stresses of the vortex. Maybe the Ketty Jay would, too. But there was nothing he could do to prevent that now. His part in this, and Pinn's, was over.

But he'd done himself proud. At least he could say that. He'd done himself proud.

He gave the Ketty Jay a tilt of his wings as he approached, acknowledging the message. Then, just before they passed each other, another message flickered from the electroheliograph.

It took him a moment to decipher it, by which time he was already heading away from the battle, with Pinn following after. It was a private communication, from Jez to him.

Nice work, hero.

Harkins was so happy he thought he might die.