Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

None of that mattered to Harkins, though. He wasn't fussy. All that mattered was that she was kind to him. No doubt it was pity that motivated her, and nothing more, but a man like Harkins would take what he could get. Pity was a start. Perhaps, if he was just a little braver . . .

No. It was no good. What woman could respect a man who was bullied by a cat?

Maybe you just need to stand up to him. You are about twenty times his size, after all.

He burned with shame as he remembered the incident in the corridor. That cat. That damned cat.

If he wanted to be brave for Jez, he'd have to see about that cat.

Pinn, for his part, shared none of the concerns of his fellow outflyer. The idea of worrying about something that far in the future was alien to him. He only ever thought one step ahead, if that. He didn't really do consequences.

He didn't have any real idea what to expect of Kurg, but that didn't matter. Despite his near total lack of knowledge, he was confident he could handle it. The prospect of adventure, fame and riches appealed to him greatly. Artis Pinn, adventurer! Perhaps they'd make some pulp novels of his exploits, the way they did about the Century Knights. Pinn had never read any of them - he never read anything - but their covers looked exciting.

He let his mind drift as he sat in the cockpit of the Skylance, the sea below him, empty sky ahead. The roar of the thrusters, steady and unwavering, lulled him into a daze.

He pictured himself as the subject of a novel, his likeness on the cover. He was standing atop the corpse of some monster, pistol in hand, native wench hanging off his arm. He had no indication of what the native wenches might actually look like, and his imagination was too stunted to guess, so he settled on a Vardic woman wearing very few clothes, and mentally darkened her skin to match Silo's umber tones. Yes, that would do nicely.

He'd heard many stories about the strange and savage land of Kurg, and he believed them all. Tales of tribes of elegant seductresses, and of warrior women who sought strong men to mate with. What kind of exotic ladies might he find there? Surely they'd be fascinated by his foreign ways and amazing aircraft? They'd be fighting to get into bed with him.

Not that he'd sleep with any of them, of course. He'd resist their charms, and it would make them want him all the more. They'd be impressed by his utter devotion to his sweetheart Lisinda, who waited for him back home.

Of course, his devotion only ever lasted so long. In the end he'd give in. His body's needs were scarcely his fault. Any man worth calling a man had masculine urges too strong to control. The important thing was that his love was for Lisinda alone. It wasn't cheating if the women didn't mean anything.

He looked at the small, framed ferrotype of Lisinda, hanging from his dash. What was she doing now, he wondered? Was she thinking of him, even now, as he was of her? He traced her face with a fond finger.

Five years since he'd seen her. Five years since the eighteen-year-old Pinn left her to make his fortune. Five years she'd been waiting for him. At least, he assumed that was what she was doing. After all, she'd told him she loved him and, her being a woman, that meant for ever. Women didn't say that shit lightly.

Five years. That was devotion for you. What a lucky man he was.

It wouldn't be some down-and-out pilot she ended up marrying. It would be a hero. The kind they put on the cover of adventure novels.

Artis Pinn. Hero. He liked the sound of that.

'It won't be long, my love,' he said to the ferrotype. 'Soon I'll be rich, and everyone will know my name. Then I'll come back, just like I promised. You only deserve the best.'

'You only deserve the best, ' mimicked Harkins in a soppy voice. Frey howled with laughter.

Pinn went pale. Nobody had spoken for so long, he'd forgotten half the crew could hear him through Crake's daemonic communicators. He ripped his earcuff off and threw it angrily in the footwell, cutting off Frey's gales of mirth, now laughing so hard he'd begun to choke.

'Bastards!' he snarled. Then he shook his head and started to chuckle himself.

Jez sat in her seat at the navigator's station, listening to the sounds of the Ketty Jay. The ticks and groans and creaks were familiar to her now. Silo's repairs on the engines were holding up, but she was bothered by the tone of the thrusters, which was slightly lower than usual. Frey had noticed it too, and it niggled at him.

Flying in a straight line through calm skies, there was little for a navigator or a pilot to do. Frey yawned. Jez felt like yawning too, but she couldn't. She hadn't been able to since the day she died.

She'd been thinking about that day ever since their meeting with Grist. Perhaps it was the talk of the Azryx and Professor Malstrom that brought it all back. If not for the Professor and his quest to unearth their lost civilisation, she'd never have gone to that blizzard-lashed settlement in the frozen north. How different things might have been then.

They came in their black dreadnoughts and their ragged clothes. The Manes. Feral ghouls from beyond the Wrack, the great cloud-cap that shrouded Atalon's northern pole. They captured those they wanted, turning them into Manes, and killed those they didn't. Jez was one of the captured, but the process of transformation was interrupted. Jez escaped, only to freeze to death in the night.

But by then, the damage had been done. She wasn't fully a Mane, but she was Mane enough. Though her heart had stopped beating, she lived. Or perhaps existed was a better word. She'd wandered for years, moving from place to place, until she found somewhere that would accept her. On the Ketty Jay, they didn't ask questions. They didn't know what had happened to her, they didn't want to, and she'd never told them.

Probably best that way. Manes struck fear into even the most reckless of men. The crew could deal with the fact that she was different, but she wondered how well they'd take the news that they had someone who was part Mane on board.

'How we doing, Jez?' asked Frey from the pilot seat.

Jez checked her charts. 'Coming up on Kurg now, Cap'n. Be at the landing site in six hours at this speed.'

Frey groaned and shifted his butt around to get comfortable. 'Six hours. Right.'

Jez smiled to herself. The truth was it was more like four, but it would give her captain a pleasant surprise when they got in early. Frey wouldn't mind the deception. He knew she could be pinpoint accurate if she wanted, which was more than he could say for any of her predecessors.

'Land, ho,' Frey said, without much interest.

Jez got up and went to stand by the pilot's seat to watch the coast approaching. A wall of black rock rose up out of the sea, as far as the eye could see. Waves smashed at its base. Thick forest crawled away from the clifftops towards barren mountain peaks. Smoke billowed from the mouth of a volcano in the distance, joining the misty clouds that hung over the vast island.

Even from high above, Jez thought there was something forbidding and dreadful about it. What would they find in there? What was waiting for them?

A prickling sensation swept over her skin. Here we go, she thought, and then the world flexed and everything became different.

A twilight had fallen, yet to her eyes everything seemed sharper than before. An unearthly clarity had come upon the world. She could see the hairs on the back of Frey's hand and sense their movement as they trembled. She could hear the Ketty Jay's engines, and pick out the sound of each individual part. Rats scurried in the hold. Crake snored drunkenly in his quarters. Slag dozed in an air vent, his heart thumping slowly.