Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

Frey peered inside. 'We don't want any trouble!' he yelled. 'Put down your weapons, and you won't be—'

He was interrupted by a volley of gunfire, and jumped back sharply. 'Well, I tried,' he said with a shrug. 'Get 'em, Bess.'

Bess roared and charged in through the door. There was a brief salvo of bullets, dissolving into screams and cries of alarm.

'Let's get in there,' Frey said, motioning to his crew. Then he plunged through the door, firing his revolver. The others piled in after him. Crake was not ashamed to be last.

Inside, it was chaos. Crake found himself in an assembly area, with a high ceiling and a gantry that ran around the edge of the chamber. The roof had split in the crash, shedding debris from the room above on to the floor. Cables hung in thick clusters like vines; exposed girders were bent and snapped off; cracked pipes leaked and hissed. A thin, poisonous pall of smoke hazed the air. Emergency lights provided a sinister twilight.

Hiding among the ruination were Sentinels, wearing grey, high-collared cassocks and carrying rifles. The Sentinels were Awakeners who didn't have the talent or the intelligence to become Speakers -those who preached and practised the Awakeners' craft - so they expressed their faith in other ways, by taking up weapons in defence of their organisation. Crake thought them mindless, brainwashed fools, but he supposed a bullet from a fool's gun hurt just as much as any other, so he kept his head down and ran for cover.

Bullets clipped through the air, but nobody was shooting at him: all attention was on Bess. The Sentinels scurried away or took frightened potshots from a distance as she ploughed into the room. Bullets bounced from her scratched and pitted armour, but some penetrated the soft parts at her joints, which only enraged her. She hefted a huge girder and lobbed it at her tormentors, mangling two Sentinels who were making a break for safety. The act of picking it up revealed a third Sentinel, who'd been hiding behind it. He was crouched in a ball, head in his arms, trembling. Bess looked down at him with a quizzical purr and booted him across the chamber.

Crake winced. He didn't like seeing her this way. She was a child, and she had a child's way with violence: thoughtless, gleeful, malevolent. Her good nature turned so easily to viciousness.

Frey and Silo scampered across the room, sniping at the retreating Sentinels. Crake stuck close to Jez and Malvery, who provided covering fire. They moved between the debris, keeping low. Crake squeezed off a shot now and then, without much expectation of hitting anything. Occasional bullets came their way, but the resistance from the Sentinels had crumbled quickly at the sight of the golem, and they were too busy running to put up much of a fight.

Bess lunged among them like a cat in a flock of pigeons, snatching up those she could. She was quick and terrible when angry. Crake saw her grab one man by the head, clamping her massive fingers round his skull and picking him up off the ground. She shook him like a doll and then, satisfied he was broken, she flung his corpse at his panicked fellows.

Frey whistled. 'This way!' he cried, beckoning them towards a doorway that led into a wide corridor.

'Why that way?' Malvery asked as they hurried over.

Frey looked lost for an answer. 'Just because,' he offered at length. 'Crake, call your golem, eh? She's had her fun.'

'Bess! Come on!' Crake shouted. Bess came pounding eagerly through the debris. He patted her on the shoulder and pointed up the corridor. She lumbered off, and they followed.

The smoke was thicker in the corridors, and it was hard to see more than a few dozen metres. Crake's eyes stung and he wanted to cough. Figures stumbled through the gloom ahead of them, calling out for help, asking questions, shouting orders. They fled at the sight of Bess.

The crew of the All Our Yesterdays was in disarray. The Awakeners didn't have the martial discipline of the Navy, or combat instincts of pirates and freebooters. They were scholars and preachers, who relied on their Sentinels for protection. This was not a craft intended for battle, and hardly anyone carried weapons or knew how to use them.

A short way along the corridor they came across a wounded man lying against the wall. He was small and bald, wearing glasses with one lens cracked. Blood leaked from a gash in his forehead, staining his collar. He wore a white cassock with red piping, the uniform of a Speaker, the Awakeners' rank and file.

Frey crouched down in front of him. The man looked up at him, dazed.

'You're carrying a special cargo,' said Frey. 'Where is it?'

The Awakener focused, and his eyes hardened as he realised who they were. 'I'll never talk. The Allsoul will protect m—'

Frey pistol-whipped him round the head with shocking speed. The man fell on his side, wailing and blubbering, holding his aching skull.

'Not doing a very good job so far,' said Frey. 'You think the Allsoul will protect you from a bullet in the ear?'

'It's that way!' the Awakener cried, pointing up the corridor.

Frey grabbed him by the collar and pulled him upright. 'Take us,' he said. He shoved the little man towards Malvery. 'Watch him, Doc.'

Malvery grinned and waved his shotgun. 'Don't think of running, now,' he advised his prisoner. Then he poked the barrel into his back. 'Lead on, mate.'

They went deeper into the craft, following their guide as he stumbled through the smoke. He was holding his head as if it would burst. People ran this way and that in the dim emergency lighting, arms over their mouths, coughing into their sleeves. Crake heard the murmur of distant flame, and once they heard an explosion that made the whole craft shiver.

The people they encountered were occupied with fighting small fires or attempting to escape. Some wandered, blank-faced and shell-shocked, through the ruination. Occasionally a Sentinel was brave or idiotic enough to stand up to the invaders, but they were gunned down in short order or pulverised by Bess.

Crake stepped over their corpses, and those of others killed in the crash. Their eyes were wide and they stared at nothing. He dry-heaved at the sight. He'd seen dead men before, but he was too delicate to take it right now. He just wanted this whole affair to be over so he could find a bed and sink into oblivion.

The smoke got worse as they went on, and soon everyone was coughing except Jez. The crackle and snap of a fire was clearly audible now, and they could feel the stifling heat of it.

Frey stopped up ahead, at a corner where a corridor branched off from theirs. He peered round and held up a hand. 'Trouble,' he warned.

Crake caught him up and looked round the corner. Through the murk, he could just about make out the obstruction. The corridor was choked with torn metal and the floor had buckled upward, forming a jumbled barricade.

'I can't see anything,' Crake said.

'When you've been shot at as often as I have, you get used to assuming the worst,' said Frey. 'They'll be waiting for us.'

Crake wiped his tearing eyes, and as he did so he thought he saw someone moving behind the barricade. But when he looked again, he wasn't sure.

Frey went to their prisoner. 'Is there another way round?' he demanded.

'This is the only way,' said the Awakener. 'It's in a room at the end of that corridor.' Frey grabbed him by the collar and glared at him, searching for a lie. 'I swear by the Allsoul!' he cried, his voice high and fearful.

Crake took sour pleasure in seeing the prisoner cringe. He hated Awakeners even more than he hated overprivileged layabouts like Hodd. Them and their ridiculous faith, based on the thoroughly insane ramblings of the last king of Vardia. It would be comical if it weren't for the fact that half of the population believed in their rubbish. It was the Awakeners who championed the persecution of daemonists. Many good men and women had been hanged because of them.