Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

Jez and Silo walked a slow circuit around the Ketty Jay, studying her as they went. She was a shabby thing to look at, patched up in a dozen places, a bastard combination of a heavy combat craft and a cargo hauler. Yet there was a defiance about her, a certain blunt strength that Jez was fond of. She was built tough, a survivor. Like the cat that patrolled her air ducts, she was scarred, ugly, and invincible.

Over the previous few days, the windglass of the cockpit had been replaced and the Ketty Jay had been cleaned. Silo and Jez had carried out numerous minor repairs on the craft's systems: soldering loose plates, oiling rusty mechanisms, running tests. Jez wasn't half the engineer that Silo was, but she was the daughter of a craftbuilder and she knew enough to lend a hand. Silo, for his part, had been mostly occupied with fixing the engine trouble that had made their last escape such a fiasco.

Silo stopped when they came to the Ketty Jay's starboard side. He scrutinised the hefty thruster above and astern of her wing. The tall Murthian was hard to read, as ever. That umber-skinned, hawk-nosed face was like a mask. Immobile and impenetrable. It was a surprise when his expression changed, like seeing a statue suddenly move.

'Need parts,' he said in his rumbling bass voice. After working on the engine for days, this was Jez's first hint of a diagnosis.

'Expensive parts?' she asked.

'Yuh.' He took out papers and a pinch of herbs, and began putting a roll-up together.

Jez watched his long, clever fingers at work. 'What's wrong with it?'

'Timing on the fuel injectors. All wrong. I keep fixin' it, but it gonna get worse.' His accent was slow and hard, consonants like jagged rocks in the lazy tide of his vowels.

'Ah,' said Jez. She understood. Timing was everything in a prothane engine. If the mechanism was faulty, then it would need replacing. But the Ketty Jay's engine was from a workshop that had long since closed down, and the parts could be tricky to find. She doubted Frey had the money to buy them anyway.

'Will it hold up?' she asked.

'She hold up for now,' said Silo. 'But she could go any moment.'

Jez sighed. That pretty much summed up their whole operation. Held together with elastic and luck, straining at the edges, always ready to snap. Yet somehow it never happened.

Silo offered her a roll-up, out of politeness. She held up a hand and gave him a smile of thanks. Even if she smoked, she wouldn't smoke that. Silo's roll-ups were a blend from Murthia, strong enough to induce hacking coughs and limb spasms in even the stoutest of men. They were all he had left to remind him of the land of his birth, thousands of kloms to the south. Silo was an exile, unwanted everywhere, who'd found his home on the Ketty Jay.

As have we all, Jez thought.

She gave him a comradely slap on the back and left him staring up at the thrusters while she headed astern. The cargo ramp was down, leading into the hold.

A ball came bouncing out of the shadowy gloom and rolled past her feet. She stared after it, puzzled.

It was only the heavy thump of boots that warned her. She threw herself aside as an eight-foot-high armoured monster thundered down the ramp in pursuit of the ball. Half a ton of dull metal and ragged chain mail plunged past her, missing her by inches.

Bess.

The golem pounced on the ball with a triumphant crash, skidding along the landing pad and fetching up just short of the landing struts of a nearby aircraft. She scrambled to her feet, her short, thick legs supporting a humpbacked, outsized torso. The ball was cupped in her huge hands, held in front of the circular grille that passed for her face. Twin glimmers of light shone in the darkness behind the grille, glittering eagerly as she stared at her prize. Then she raced back up the ramp and into the Ketty Jay, ignoring Jez completely.

'Crake!' Jez yelled irritably, as she picked herself up off the floor.

The daemonist appeared at the top of the ramp. He was blond-haired, with a close-cut beard, wearing an expensive coat that had frayed and faded with time. His forehead was creased with worry.

Jez regretted her tone immediately. Crake wasn't looking good these days. His face was as worn as his coat. There were lines there, too deep for a man of thirty. Dark bags under his eyes.

'Are you alright?' he asked, wringing his hands. 'I'm so sorry. The game just got away from us.'

Jez softened. 'No harm done.'

'She didn't hurt you, did she?'

Jez waved it away. 'You know me. I'm like a cockroach.'

'Honestly, Jez, that's a little harsh. You just need a dab of make-up.' Crake cracked a smile, and that made her glad. She hadn't seen too many from him lately.

She went up into the hold. Bess was sitting on the floor, her legs sticking out in front of her, patting the ball this way and that. An eerie cooing noise was coming from within her. They watched her together for a moment.

'She seems happy,' Jez offered. Crake didn't reply. She looked at him. 'How are you holding up?'

Crake frowned at her. As if he couldn't understand what might prompt her to ask such a question. As if he couldn't imagine what she might mean.

'Fine,' he said, coldly. 'Just fine.'

Jez nodded and headed up the stairs from the hold to the walkway above. There she paused and looked over the railing. Crake was standing next to Bess, one arm laid over her arm, his forehead leaning against her face-grille. His mouth was moving. Though he was far out of human earshot, Jez could hear him anyway.

'Good girl,' he whispered, sadly. 'Good girl.'

Jez felt a tightening in her throat, and hurried away.

She'd almost reached the main passageway when a blood-chilling scream made her jump. She ran the last few steps and burst into the room to find Harkins lying on the floor outside the quarters he shared with Pinn, gasping, coughing and clawing at the air.

'What? Harkins, what?' she cried in alarm.

'The ca . . . it wa . . .' he panted, unable to draw breath. A moment later Slag padded out of his quarters. Harkins shrieked and backed up against the wall of the corridor. Slag stared at him with an expression of loathing, then caught sight of Jez and bolted towards the engine room.

'Oh,' said Jez, understanding now. 'Cat slept on your face again?'

'That bloody rotting moggy!' Harkins exploded, scratching at his unshaven cheeks to scrape off the moulted fur. His leather pilot's cap was askew, revealing a head of mousy hair that had thinned almost to transparency. 'It just . . . it's . . . even if I shut the door, Pinn comes in when I'm asleep and leaves it open! And even if he doesn't, the cat gets in through the vent! I have nightmares! Suffocation! You know what that's like? Do you?'

'No,' said Jez honestly, since she didn't need to breathe any more. 'Harkins, it's just a cat.'

Harkins' eyes bulged from his hangdog face. 'It's evil!' he said. 'It's . . . it's ... it waits , can't you see it? It waits till I'm asleep. It hates me! It hates me!'

'You and me both,' said Jez, with a rueful smile. 'I don't get on with animals.'

'It's scared of you. That's not the same. It's not even close to the same! It's about as far from the same as . . .' He trailed off, unable to think of a suitable comparison.

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

The gangly pilot picked himself up with a resentful glare. He looked twitchily around the corridor and then jammed his cap back down on his head. 'I'll never sleep now. Not for hours,' he huffed. Then he hurried off towards the hold and outside, where he'd be safe from the cat. Slag hadn't left the Ketty Jay since he was first brought aboard as a kitten, over fourteen years ago. The only thing that scared him, apart from Jez, was the sky.