Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

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.