The Black Lung Captain

Thirty-Five

Harkins clutched the shotgun tight as he came down the stairs into the cargo hold of the Ketty Jay. He was trembling with fear and an awful, nauseous excitement. Every shadow could be the one hiding his enemy. Part of him dreaded the sight of that damned despicable cat. Another part, that voice which sometimes got defiant when there was nobody around to challenge it, was hoping Slag would show his face after all. A squeeze of the trigger, a bloody puff of fur, and all his troubles would be over.

Oh, who was he kidding? The noise alone would probably scare him witless. He'd deliberated for a long time between pistol and shotgun, on that basis. In the end, he'd picked the one that most suited his shooting style. He always closed his eyes and cringed away whenever he fired at someone, so accuracy was impossible. The shotgun was louder, but the scatter effect made it a bit more likely that he'd actually hit something.

He swallowed and made himself go down the stairs. Crates and boxes and vents: all possible ambush points. He wished he hadn't come aboard at all. But he had to get a gun. That was the thing. He had to get a gun, to save Jez.

He'd sat with his heart in his mouth, listening via Crake's daemonic earcuff to the gunfight at Grist's warehouse. He thrilled every time she spoke. She was so strong, so capable. He imagined himself battling alongside her, grim-faced, felling guards with a keen aim. And after they'd won, she'd be kind to him. She'd offer soothing words and encouragement, the way she sometimes did.

But then he'd heard the hangar doors slamming. Jez's voice. 'It's a trap!' And he knew they were betrayed.

After that, there was little more than a garble. The earcuffs had been taken off them, it seemed. The signal, weak at this distance, became weaker still. Sounds were muffled. It was hard to tell what was going on. Once in a while, he heard voices he knew. The Captain's, for one. And Jez. Sweet Jez.

She was still alive. She was in trouble. And he was the only one who could help her.

The past month had been hard on him. He'd spent the majority of it in the Firecrow's cockpit. It would have been easier if they hadn't been hopping around towns in the arctic, but the Firecrow had no heating when the engines weren't running, so he spent his nights cocooned in blankets, shivering. Harkins wasn't a reader - in fact, he didn't do much of anything except fly - so a large proportion of his time had been spent staring into space and thinking of nothing. The need to relieve himself drove him out now and then. He'd head into whatever town was nearby and use what facilities he could find. His contact with the crew was minimal. The only person he saw with any regularity was Jez, who brought him his meals.

He'd looked forward to those visits with a mixture of anticipation and dread. He loved to see her. She'd usually inquire how he was doing, even though she was often distracted. He'd babble something, and his tongue would run away with him, and eventually he'd stumble to a stop. It was embarrassing that she should see him that way. She knew why he was hiding. He was afraid of the cat. He thought that maybe she seemed a little less kind to him nowadays, and wondered if it was something to do with that. Had he failed her? Or did she have other things on her mind? After all, it must be a burden being a Mane.

Pinn had told him the news, gleefully, during one of the rare moments when he wasn't depressed about his own sorry love life. 'Your girlfriend's a Mane!' he crowed. 'She's the walking dead! How'd that be, eh? Humping a dead one!' He leered horribly and made a pumping motion with his hips. 'I always pegged you as a necromofelliac.'

Harkins had never heard of one of those before, but it didn't sound like something he wanted to be. Still, he wasn't particularly concerned by the news. Alive or dead or some combination of the two, she was the same old Jez to him. What did concern him was how the rest of the crew began to talk about her after it became known that she was a Mane. They were mistrustful and uncertain. She didn't deserve that.

He tried to keep her spirits up when she came to visit him, but he always got tongue-tied. Did she think he was like the others, muttering behind her back? He hoped not, but it was hard to tell. Damn, why couldn't he just make his mouth say what his heart felt? Why was he born with a knot between his brain and his voicebox?

Well, actions spoke louder than words anyway. And he needed to be brave. That fat fool Pinn had deserted them good and proper, so there was no one left but him. He needed to be strong for Jez. Somehow, he was going to save her.

He wondered how he'd possibly find the courage to single-handedly defeat Grist's gang of smugglers, if he couldn't deal with one elderly cat.

He hurried down the stairs, across the cargo hold and down the ramp. The Cap'n would have chewed him out for leaving it open, but he needed his escape route clear. He'd left the hood of his cockpit up as well, just to be extra sure. If he spotted Slag, it would only take him seconds to reach the safety of the Firecrow.

He scampered off the Ketty Jay and came to a halt with a sigh of relief. The cat wouldn't follow him out here. Stupid animal. He closed up the ramp and locked it by punching in a code on the exterior control panel, located on one of the Ketty Jay's rear landing struts.

That was when he saw what was happening to the sky.

The morning had been chilly and grey when he entered the Ketty Jay in search of the weapons locker. A shapeless haze of cloud had hung overhead, and the sun had been low on the horizon, shining with a sharp, glittering light.

But things were different now. The sky had curdled and darkened. The wispy, inoffensive sheet of cloud had turned thick and black. Pulses of light flickered in its depths. A strong, icy wind had struck up, blowing the ear flaps of Harkins' cap against his cheeks. Despite the gathering storm, the sun was still visible in the east, between the cloud and the horizon: a shining pupil in a slitted eye. It cast a spectral light over the bleak vista.

Harkins didn't like this. Not at all. There was an eerie, oppressive quality to the atmosphere. He had keen senses when it came to detecting threats. He'd had a lot of practice at being scared, and he was good at it.

This was no ordinary storm.

The clouds were moving, but it wasn't the wind that was pushing them. They were swirling, slowly at first but getting faster, as if stirred by a spoon. Gathering, becoming dense, drawing inward towards a single spot. At that point, the pulses of light had reached a frenzy. The cloud roiled and turned. Silent lightning threw out giant sparks.

Harkins became aware that he was making a low, distressed moan. His feet were rooted to the tarmac. The crewmen of nearby craft had stopped their work and were looking up. Tractors sputtered to a halt as their drivers tipped back their caps and squinted skyward.

This was bad. Somehow, he knew this was very, very bad.

The pulses of light at the point where the clouds were gathering became faster and more frequent. They accelerated to a flickering strobe, and finally to a dazzling burst of whiteness that bleached the city below. The observers shielded their eyes and turned away.

The cloud had collapsed in on itself, and was being sucked away like water down a drain. It was as if the very sky was being consumed, eaten up by the hungry maelstrom.

And out of this sky, through the tunnel of the great, swirling vortex, came the dreadnoughts.

Frey blinked. For a few seconds, all he could see was white. Then darkness began to soak into the picture, giving form to the shapes around him. Fuzzy shapes and blurred colours made themselves known.

Uh? he thought, which was pretty much the best description he could come up with for his mental state at the time.

His body was pins and needles all over, numb and painfully a-tingle at the same time. His tongue lolled in his mouth, barely under his control. There was a loud whistle in his ears.

Gradually he came back to the world, as his overloaded senses restored themselves.

He was in the ancient sanctum somewhere beneath Grist's compound. People were picking themselves up off the ground. Grist was nearby, shaking his head, dazed. Trinica was getting to her feet, leaning heavily on a table in case her legs betrayed her. Jez lay on her side, eyes open, staring into space. The metal sphere was no longer in her hands.

Then he heard something. A rapid thump, growing louder. Like someone running. Someone very heavy.

He looked up.

Bess.

The sanctum doors were set horizontally in the roof of the sanctum. The golem plunged through them like a cannonball, crashing on to the stairs with a roar. Her tiny eyes glimmered behind her face-grille, bright in the gloom.

Bess was in a rare fury this morning.

Panic seized the room. Grist's men scrambled to their feet, flailing and disoriented, desperate to escape the terror that had descended on them. But there was no way out except past Bess.

She thundered down the steps and backhanded the nearest man into the wall with enough force to shatter the brickwork. Her charge brought two more men within her reach, who were too slow to get out of the way. She snatched them up by their necks and smashed their heads together, splattering herself in blood, bone and brain matter. Frey winced. That had to hurt.

Grist and his men had found their guns by now, and were rushing for whatever cover they could find, aiming futile shots at the enraged golem in their midst. Crake, Silo and Malvery came scrambling through the ruined doors and opened up with their own weapons, picking their targets. One of Grist's men caught a bullet and went down, clutching the back of his leg. He fell into Bess's path, and she stamped him flat.

Frey didn't know how his crew had got out or how they'd got their guns back, but he was damned pleased to see them. He turned his attention to Jez, who was still immobile, eyes unfocused. He went to check her breathing, then realised there was no point. He poked her in the nose instead. She blinked. A sign of sort-of life. Good enough for the moment.

The sphere. Where was the sphere?

He cast about for it. There! It had rolled free of Jez's hands and was lying near the base of the pedestal, beneath the daemon cage.

Grist had seen it too. Their eyes locked across the distance between them. Then both ran for it at the same moment.

Frey raced through the corridor of gunfire. Bullets scored the air around him. Bess was a bellowing mountain in the gloom, flinging furniture this way and that. But all his focus was on that sphere. He wasn't even sure what he'd do with it, now that it had been activated. But he knew he didn't want Grist to have it.

Both captains lunged together, and both laid hands on the sphere. They fell into a scrabbling tangle, each fighting to pull the prize from the other's grip. Grist's grimacing face was close to Frey's: hot, smoky breath, the smell of sweat and dirt. His eyes were dark with madness, that terrible rage that Frey had seen before. Frey fought hard, but Grist was a bull, who outweighed him by some considerable fraction. The contest was brief. Grist yanked the sphere from his fingers, and as Frey clutched for it, he drove a clublike fist into Frey's belly.

Frey stumbled away, hunched over and winded. Grist broke off in the other direction, but his momentum carried him into Trinica, who was retreating towards the back of the sanctum, seeking cover. Grist bowled her over and they went down in a mess of limbs, fighting one another for purchase. Grist came up first, dragging Trinica with him, but he didn't let her go. Instead he wrapped one thick arm round her throat - the one carrying the sphere - and with the other he drew his pistol and shoved it into her ribs. He backed away towards cover, with Trinica as his shield.

Grist's men had been decimated by the surprise attack. The last of them were being slaughtered by Bess or picked off by gunfire. The golem had just seized one of Grist's crew, and was raising him triumphantly over her head with both hands, ready to fling him to his death. Only Grist's bosun, Crattle, was still in the fight, hiding behind a bullet-riddled lectern, and the remainder of his life could be counted in seconds.

Frey saw, with a sudden flood of horror, what would happen next. He fought to drag in a breath.

In moments, it would be over. Grist was dead meat. He didn't have a chance. They'd turn their weapons on him, and gun him down, and that would be that.

But to get to Grist, they had to go through Trinica.

He found air at last. Sucked it in and yelled.

'STOP!'

His voice rang out with a volume and authority he hadn't realised he possessed. Friend and enemy alike froze, fingers on triggers.

Silence fell, broken only by the crescendo wail of Grist's crewman as he flew across the room to crunch against the far wall.

Bess made a bubbling noise in her chest that somehow managed to convey an apology.

All eyes went to Frey. Grist stood where he was, his gun in Trinica's ribs. Crattle stayed in hiding, hardly daring to believe his reprieve. The crewmen of the Ketty Jay waited expectantly.

He knew he should let his men loose. He had the power. Kill them all, Trinica too. Be done with all the bitterness and betrayal. It would be so damned good to see her die right now.

But he couldn't. Even with all the anger and hate inside him. This woman was a millstone around his neck, and yet he couldn't bring himself to get rid of her. She was his penance and his punishment. Of all the women he'd wronged, she was the only one that counted. She'd carried his child, and killed it too. Like a vengeful ghost, she followed him out of the past, taking on whichever shape best enabled her to hurt him. He'd never be free.

He wanted her gone. He so desperately wanted her out of his life. But she'd never leave him alone until she was dead, and he couldn't handle that eventuality. Her absence from the world would rob him of something vital, something he needed in order to keep on going. Without it, all that was left was that hollow feeling, the dreadful, indefinable lack that had inspired this whole sorry escapade in the first place.

A grin spread across Grist's face. The advantage was lost. Grist had figured him out. 'Thought so,' he said. He looked at Frey, down at Trinica, and then back to Frey again. 'Ain't that nice?'

Trinica watched him, her face blank. Was she afraid? Was she silently pleading with him to save her? No. Perhaps she simply didn't care if she lived or died. But how could he tell, in the end? How could he trust any emotion from her ever again?

He waved at his men. 'Let 'em go,' he said.

Malvery had his shotgun aimed squarely at Trinica and Grist. His eyes flicked from the gunsight to Frey.

'You what?' he asked, his voice flat with disbelief.

'You heard me.'

'You can't let them walk away,' said Crake. 'Not with that sphere. We'll need it if there's any hope of undoing what's been done.'

'Nobody's undoin' a bloody thing,' said Grist. 'We're walkin' out of here, sphere an' all, or your Cap'n's little missy gets a bullet.'

'Cap'n,' said Malvery, his voice tight with suppressed anger. 'She's a lying, backstabbing bitch and she ain't worth it.'

'I know, Doc,' said Frey. 'No one knows it better than me. But if any one of you pulls his trigger, it's the last thing you'll do as a crewman on the Ketty Jay.'

It wasn't often he had to threaten his crew nowadays. But they needed to know that he meant it. This wasn't a moment for dissent.

Malvery glared at him hard, and for a moment Frey thought he might actually do it: just blow them both away, Trinica and Grist alike, and take the consequences after. But then he spat on the ground, swore the foulest oath in his armoury, and stepped aside. Bess and the others followed his lead, clearing the way for Grist, Crattle and Trinica to get to the stairs.

'Get out of my damn sight,' Frey told Grist and his prisoner alike.

They left without another word. Grist circled close to the sanctum wall, keeping Trinica between himself and the guns trained on him. Crattle stayed close, looking grey, shaken by his close shave. Trinica didn't take her eyes from Frey's the whole time. He didn't flinch from her gaze. Damn her. Let her know that he was unbowed, even after this. It was through his mercy that she lived. She'd better know that.

Then they were gone, up the stairs and away. Weapons were lowered. Malvery kicked a chair to pieces in frustration. Frey closed his eyes and took a breath. Trinica was gone. He felt lighter already.

Crake went to Jez, who was stirring again. She seemed to have been hit harder than the rest of them by the effect of the sphere. Even now, she was dazed and distant. Frey joined them and hunkered down alongside.

'You alright, Jez?'

'I'm okay, Cap'n, I'm . . .' she trailed off, then looked around in alarm. 'They're here,' she said. 'The Manes. They're here.'

'Then we shouldn't be,' said Frey. He got to his feet. After all that had passed between him and Trinica, it felt good to deal with something he could understand. A crew. Orders. Action. 'I've had just about enough of this whole bloody mess. Grist, Trinica, the sphere . . . damn 'em all to a cold grave. What's done is done. We tried to stop it and failed. The people of this city can take care of themselves. We're not paid to be anyone's guardians.' He surveyed his crew. 'Back to the Ketty Jay. We're gone.'

'First sensible thing I've heard out of your mouth for a month,' Malvery grumbled.

Crake drew Frey's cutlass from his belt and tossed it to him. 'Here you go, Captain. We stopped off in the hangar to pick up our things after Bess broke us out.'

Frey caught it. His face was reflected in the blade. Grim and stony. That was the Frey he wanted to be now. Frey the Heartless. Frey the Invincible. Frey the Untouchable.

That's right, he thought. Captain Frey. You've got your craft and you've got your crew. Anyone else can go hang.

He thrust his cutlass into his belt and stalked out of the sanctum.