Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

He found himself thinking of this operation more and more in terms of Trinica. It was her he was beating. Maybe he couldn't take her on himself, but it was his plan, his effort that had set up the ambush. It would be him that ended up with the prize. Maybe the Storm Dog would shoot her down, or maybe she'd shoot down Grist. As long as they kept each other busy for long enough, he couldn't care less. But he'd like to see the look on her face when she realised who'd done her over.

'Cap'n,' said Jez. She craned forward and narrowed her eyes. 'Contact.'

Frey sat up. 'You see them?'

Jez looked for a few more moments. 'Bearing two-eighty-five, heading across us to the east.'

Frey thumped the dash in excitement. 'Alright, we're on!' he announced. 'Harkins, Pinn, hit the deck. Stay low, and listen to Jez for course corrections. We're heading up into the clouds.'

'Can we shoot at them this time, Cap'n?' Pinn asked. He was still sore about their last encounter, when they were bested by yokels flying mail planes and cropdusters.

'Unless you can think of some other way of blowing them out of the sky.' Frey replied.

Pinn whooped. 'Watch out, boys! It's dyin' time!' he yelled. Frey presumed he was addressing the enemy.

'Crazy idiot,' Harkins said under his breath, loud enough for everyone to hear.

'Meow,' said Pinn.

'Shut up! You shut your fat yap!' Harkins snapped. Dumb as Pinn was, he was very accurate when it came to hitting a nerve.

'Both of you shut up,' said Frey. 'I want you coming back alive. Remember, as soon as we've got the sphere on board, you break off and fly like your tails are on fire. We'll meet up at Osken's Bar in Westport. Got it?'

'Got it, Cap'n,' said Harkins.

'Meow,' said Pinn.

'That's it!' Harkins shrieked. 'I've had just about enough from you, you, you ignorant piece of—'

Frey pulled his earcuff off and tossed it on to the dash. He pinched the bridge of his nose, where his headache had focused. He didn't need this on top of a hangover and a sleepless night.

'Taking us up,' he said. He fed more aerium into the tanks and the Ketty Jay rose towards the clouds. 'Doc! Tell me if we lose the Storm Dog, okay?'

'Right-o!' came the reply. Frey heard the unmistakable sound of a bottle being swigged.

'Are you drinking up there, Doc?'

'There's a quarter-inch of windglass between me and five crillion volts of lightning, Cap'n. You'll forgive me if I take a nip, eh?'

Frey thought that was fair enough, so he kept quiet. As long as Malvery could still shoot straight. He wasn't exactly a crack shot with an autocannon, but Crake was worse, and Frey couldn't spare anyone else. Silo needed to concentrate on keeping the engine running. He still didn't have the parts he needed to fix it properly, so he was forced to do the best he could with what he had.

The black clouds swallowed them up. Once they were far enough in, Frey flicked on the tail-lights to give the Storm Dog something to follow. Jez went back to her charts and began plotting the trajectory of their targets based on their speed and direction. Frey found it rather impressive that she'd divined that information from many kloms away on a dark, rainy night, but he was used to being impressed by Jez. He took it for granted nowadays.

'Adjust to two-seventy,' she said. Frey did so. Winds shoved the Ketty Jay this way and that. Frey bullied her back on course. He dumped some aerium to lend them weight and stability. Lightning flickered, muffled by the clouds. Thunder detonated all around them.

Frey gripped the flight stick, shoulders tense, and trusted to Jez to get them where they were going.

'Two points to starboard,' Jez said.

Frey adjusted. An odd feeling of unreality had setded on him. Flying through this black churn of wind and rain and flickering light, the air charged and taut, he could almost believe that he'd slipped into another world entirely. He picked up the earcuff from the dash and clipped it back on. Suddenly, he needed to be connected to something familiar, something outside the storm.

'Anyone see anything?' he asked Harkins and Pinn.

'No, Cap'n,' said Harkins, who was in a sulk.

'Me, neither,' said Pinn.

'Keep your eyes peeled,' Frey advised. 'You won't see them till you're right on top of them.'

'What was that?' Pinn cried suddenly. Frey jumped in alarm.

'What? What?' Harkins was already panicking.

'Something went flying past me in the dark,' Pinn said. 'Missed me by a whisker.'

It took Harkins a long moment to get it. 'You rancid bastard, Pinn!'

'Meow,' Pinn said.

Harkins erupted in a barrage of incoherent swear words. Frey looked over his shoulder at Jez and grinned. Jez shook her head in despair.

The Ketty Jay was battered and flung in every direction, but she'd ridden out plenty of storms before. Frey kept her under control, dealing with the jinks and dips with practised skill. Malvery yelled periodic reports, to the effect that the Storm Dog was keeping pace with them. Jez offered course corrections now and again.

Frey tried to concentrate on the journey, not the destination. His nerves were jangling, and not just from the electricity in the atmosphere. Pinn was the only one among them looking forward to the prospect of a dogfight. Anyone with any sense was scared silly.

'I see 'em!' Pinn cried suddenly. 'Dead ahead!'

'He's right!' Harkins said. Their differences were immediately forgotten. 'I saw them ... er ... in a flash! Of lightning!'

'Dead ahead, Cap'n,' said Jez. Frey thought he detected a slight edge of self-satisfaction in her voice. 'Three kloms, I make it.'

'Nice work,' said Frey. Jez had put them right on top of their enemy, plotting their course by dead reckoning, based on a glance from kloms away. The woman was phenomenal.

Now it was his turn. He killed the Ketty Jay's tail-lights: a signal to the Storm Dog.

'Brace yourselves, everyone!' he yelled. 'Dive! Dive! Dive!'

Black clouds flurried at the windglass as the Ketty Jay dove through the clouds. Frey sat hunched over the flight stick, heart thumping in his ears. The cockpit rattled and shook all around him. An unfamiliar and distressing whine had developed in the engines, but it was too late to worry about that now. Too late to do anything but press forward.

The clouds tattered and fluttered away, and there below were the rolling moors of the Flashpan, lit by a stunning blast of lightning. The Delirium Trigger was beneath and ahead of them, huge and black and terrible, its deck and flanks spiky with cannons. Frey felt a little bit of sick jump into his throat at the sight. It was shadowing a double-hulled barque, several times the size of the Ketty Jay but still dwarfed by its escort.

'Storm Dog's breaking through the cloud behind us, Cap'n!' Malvery yelled from the cupola. 'If I were you I'd get out of the way!'

Good advice, thought Frey. He rolled the Ketty Jay to starboard, swooping out of the Storm Dog's line of fire, and angled towards the barque. His guns couldn't scratch a frigate like the Delirium Trigger, but they could certainly put a few holes in the Awakener craft.

'Open fire!' he called to Malvery. With exquisite timing, the Storm Dog picked that moment to unleash her battery of cannons in a deafening barrage.

The Delirium Trigger was taken completely by surprise. A chain of explosions ripped across her hull and deck, blooms of flame lighting her up against the rain and the dark. The force was enough to knock her off course and she went yawing and tipping to port. Frey grinned savagely as he imagined the panic and shock belowdecks. Surrounded by open terrain, when they thought they were all but invisible, they must have believed themselves safe from ambush. But Frey had proved otherwise.