Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

Her screams reached a deafening crescendo, and then the darkness erupted into chaos.

'Crake!'

It was Plome. The child in Crake's arms was gone. An unnatural wind was blasting through the sanctum, a hurricane, sending apparatus crashing past him in the dark. There was a terrible roaring, and the sound of something pounding against metal.

He snatched up his lantern before it could be blown away. On the floor was a sharp length of steel, tipped with blood. His blood. A moment after he saw it, it was caught by the wind, skidded along the floor and out of sight.

He looked for Plome, and saw him, on the other side of the room. He was struggling with his control panels, lit by the faint glow from the gauges. Desperately trying to keep up the perimeter defences.

'The chamber!' Plome yelled, pointing.

Crake staggered into the wind, towards the chamber. It was rocking against its struts, dented by the inhuman pummelling from the creature within. The door was still firmly closed. The daemon bellowed as Crake stumbled past the porthole, and he caught a glimpse of a thrashing muddle of eyes and teeth in the lanternlight. Then he was at the control panel. Fumbling fingers found a lever. He threw it.

The daemon screeched as it was bombarded with agonising frequencies. Crake leaned against the lever, his eyes closed, wishing ever greater pain on the monster in the chamber. For what it had done to him. for what it had shown him, he wanted to tear it apart. If he leaned on this lever for long enough, it would be shredded to pieces, dashed by the flux.

He wanted that. He wanted it so badly. But he had a job to do. He had people relying on him. So he took hold of the lever, and he pulled it back. The wind dropped, and there was silence. Several of the electric lights came back on, flickering and crackling uneasily.

Crake brushed sweat-damp hair back from his forehead, panting.

'Are you alright?' Plome asked, from where he knelt by his controls.

'I'm alive,' he said. 'You?'

'Yes, yes, quite unharmed,' he said, his voice wavering. He brandished the pistol he'd brought at Crake's request. 'No need to shoot you, then?' he joked weakly.

'I should think not,' said Crake. He threw the lever again, out of spite, and listened to the daemon shriek for a few more seconds before he turned it off. Then he walked round the echo chamber, and stood in front of the porthole, looking in.

'Now,' he said to the daemon. 'Let's begin again, shall we?'

Artis Pinn lay on his bunk, fingers laced behind his head, and stared at the metal ceiling. It was possible to see shapes in the ancient grime, if you looked hard enough. But today he wasn't playing his usual game. Today, he was thinking.

The quarters he shared with Harkins were narrow, cluttered and dirty. He had the top bunk, due to Harkins' unfortunate tendency to spasm out of bed several times a night. A square vent high up on one wall let in cool air from outside, wafting away the stench of unwashed bedding. There was a small storage cupboard crammed with their meagre possessions, but space for little else. The Ketty Jay wasn't built for luxury.

Pinn had lain there for hours now, trying to make sense of things. He didn't know what this empty, listless sensation was, but he didn't like it much. He didn't want to get up. Didn't want to sleep. Didn't want to do anything, actually. The thought of flying his Skylance failed to excite him. Even the prospect of booze had lost its charm, and he'd often said that when that day came, he'd eat a bullet. But he didn't feel much like shooting himself, either.

Lisinda, he thought. My sweetheart is marrying another man.

Was it even possible? He wasn't sure. After all, she'd said she loved him. Hadn't that meant anything to her? It had certainly meant something to him. It had inspired him to be a hero. It made him want to be a better man. It even made him want to stop cheating on her, although the gap between the desire and the reality was vast indeed.

How could she do it?

A sudden thought struck him, that hadn't occurred until now, even after hours of contemplation. If she was marrying another man, that must mean she'd been fooling around with him for at least a couple of months. Maybe longer. A flood of rage swept through him, and he gritted his teeth. How he'd like to get his hands round that other bloke's throat! Messing with another man's woman! Didn't he know she was taken? She'd already made her choice. Hadn't she said she loved him?

But killing her husband-to-be would surely make Lisinda a bit sad. He'd never do anything to make her cry, and yet honour demanded he stamp his rival's face into the ground. How to solve a problem like that? It was all very confusing. He wished he had half the Cap'n's brains. The Cap'n would have known what to do.

No matter how he turned it over in his head, he couldn't conceive how Lisinda would want to marry anyone else. It just wasn't possible. She must be an innocent victim in all this, somehow. Her heart had been swayed by some sleazy charmer from out of town. Women couldn't help themselves sometimes, that was just a fact. She couldn't be blamed. She was powerless to resist his influence.

Or maybe she was being forced into it. Yes, that was it! She'd said in her letter that she was very happy, but that clearly couldn't be true. Not when her heart was with her absent hero.

His blood boiled at the thought. His Lisinda, married off to some scheming aristocrat three times her age! The kind of man who coveted her beauty because he was too old to win her by fair means. He'd bought her like an ornament to wear on his arm, no doubt.

What if she'd been kidnapped? What if the letter was her coded cry for help? She must have known he'd never believe she would leave him. It was too ridiculous. Had her kidnapper allowed her to send this letter, thinking it innocent? Had she cleverly concealed a message within the message?

He pulled the letter out from under his pillow and began frantically scanning it, searching for codes or clues. Halfway through, he froze as another possibility occurred to him.

Could it be that this was all a plan by some love rival? Perhaps they had written the letter, hoping that Pinn would come racing home prematurely. Then Lisinda would see that he hadn't yet become the strong, honourable and, most importantly, rich man he'd promised he'd be. She'd turn away from him then, disappointed. Right into the arms of another.

He studied the letter furiously, searching for signs of forgery. What did Lisinda's handwriting look like, anyway? She'd never written him a letter before. Neither of them were much for reading or writing. Eventually he gave up. He'd never recognise a forgery if he didn't know the genuine article.

It all made his head hurt. What did the letter mean ? And what was this strange, aching feeling in his guts, this heaviness in his limbs, this lack of appetite? He supposed that all this thinking was making him ill.

He heard a noise by the door and stuffed the letter back under the pillow just as Harkins peeped in. He was carrying a large butterfly net. His eyes roamed the room nervously.

'Pinn. Er . . . you wouldn't happen to ... I mean, have you seen the cat?'

Harkins' eyes widened as he saw that the grille had been taken off the air vent and was lying on the floor. No matter how many times he fixed it back, Pinn always took it off again, complaining that it made the room stuffy. It also allowed Slag to creep into the room and suffocate Harkins, which was part of the fun.

'You took the grille off,' Harkins accused.

'Yeah,' said Pinn.