Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

There was a loud bang from below, and several of the window squares shattered. One of the company men toppled backwards, his head and chest a mess of blood and torn skin. The others began to shriek and scramble over each other in an attempt to get away.

'Probably shouldn't be standing next to the window, huh?' Frey muttered to himself, as he pulled Roke aside. Malvery emerged with the Samarlan. Trinica and Silo joined them as the company men hightailed it back to their offices and locked the doors. Silo was glaring with naked hatred at the Samarlan. The very sight of the man inflamed him. The Samarlan returned his gaze with a cool disdain.

Frey took him aside. 'I know, Silo, I know. But we have to find Grist.'

'Grist! Grist!' he snarled. 'What's so important, Cap'n? What you got to prove that's so damn important?'

Frey blinked in surprise. 'I made a mistake, and I'm trying to make it right,' he said.

Silo stared over his shoulder at the Samarlan, nostrils flaring. His fist was clenched and his arm trembled. He looked like he wanted to spring on Roke's 'guest' and beat him bloody.

'Can you deal with it? For me?' Frey asked. 'You don't have to speak to him. Just don't kill him or anything. Please?'

Silo's mouth was pressed tight, as if tasting something bitter. 'I'll do what you ask, Cap'n,' he said. 'But this ain't right. I want you knowin' that. Ain't right.' He hefted his shotgun and pumped the lever-action handle to chamber a round. 'Let's go.'

The refinery floor was like something out of a nightmare. A sea of roaring metal noise punctuated by the shrieking and grinding of gears. Black pistons pumped up and down, shadows lunging against the gory glow of the furnace light. Unoiled mechanisms leaked wisps of acrid smoke. There was a haze in the air that stank of chemicals.

Frey, Trinica, Malvery and Silo hurried down the aisles between the looming machines, weapons ready, alert for danger. Roke and the Samarlan followed, with Roke providing occasional directions. The Samarlan was frustratingly slow; he seemed reluctant to run, and never accelerated above a speedy walk. Malvery was looking distinctly nauseous, still suffering the effects of the previous night. Silo looked like he wanted to murder someone.

They could hear gunshots somewhere ahead of them, and the thumping of Grudge's autocannon. Between the high, echoing roof and the cacophony all around them, it was hard to pick out their location. Frey was as keen to avoid the Century Knights as he was to avoid the armed workers who were sabotaging the refinery. He didn't much want to see the look on Samandra Bree's face when she caught him stealing off with her prisoners.

Frey reached a corner and saw that the coast was clear. He looked back. Once again, the Samarlan was lagging behind, moving with quick steps but not actually breaking into anything that might be described as a jog, let alone a run.

'Will you bleedin' well hurry?' Frey said.

The Samarlan made no effort to do so. Malvery, who was standing nearby, grabbed his arm and pulled him forward with a rough tug. 'Quicken up, eh?'

The Samarlan threw him off angrily, yellow eyes wide in outrage. He began to berate Malvery in his own language: a hissing, harsh tongue that made him sound like a furious snake. Then, realising that Malvery didn't understand him or care, he rounded on Silo, who was standing nearby. He unleashed a tirade, pointing at Malvery and then at Silo. Frey had no idea what was being said, but the Samarlan seemed to be indicating that Silo should have intervened.

Frey had had enough by this point. 'Tell your friend to shut up,' he said to Roke, 'or I'll break his teeth.'

Roke went over and spoke to the Samarlan in his own tongue. Frey looked around anxiously. This was no place for temper tantrums. That Sammie was trying his patience.

The Samarlan calmed, finishing with a few gestures at Silo. Silo hadn't spoken the entire time. He turned away with barely suppressed rage.

'I'm sorry,' said Roke, as he returned. 'He's a Samarlan from the noble caste. They don't run in public. And they certainly don't get touched.'

'They don't run?'' Frey almost choked in disbelief. 'Has anyone explained to him that he's going to be lynched if he doesn't? Does he even know that everyone who's being shot and killed out there is dying on his account?'

Roke gave Frey an apologetic look. 'Every day since they're born, they're attended to by slaves. They live a life of ridiculous luxury. Manners and etiquette are life and death to someone like him. He won't run. It'd be a terrible indignity. He'd rather die.'

'Would he run faster with my toe up his arse?'

'You get us both out, Frey. That's the deal,' Roke reminded him sternly.

Frey rolled his eyes and swore. 'Come on, then.'

They rounded the corner and hurried along a row of vats. Gas flames roared at their bases. Some of them were beginning to bubble. Viscous liquid oozed over the rims and splattered on the floor. The stench made Frey light-headed.

They were halfway along the row when three men ran into view at the far end, carrying shotguns. They were unkempt figures, wearing overalls, their faces lit from below by the gas flames. They paused at the sight of Frey and his group, perhaps thinking that they were on the same side; then one of them raised his shotgun and screamed, 'Sammie!' Even in the half-light, the Samarlan's skin marked him out immediately.

The moment of hesitation was not shared by Frey and his companions. They got off their first volley before the refinery workers even had a chance to shoot. But their accuracy was less impressive than their speed. The workers, alarmed at finding themselves suddenly under fire, shot wildly in the vague direction of their targets, then threw themselves into cover. Frey's group did the same, squeezing into the gaps between the vats.

The Sammie just stood there in the aisle, back straight, an imperious look on his face. Bullets whined through the air around him. He faced them without fear.

'What in blazing shit is that idiot doing?' Frey cried. Presumably, the Samarlan was too dignified to cram himself into the baking hot blackness with the rest of them. 'Malvery, get him out of there!'

Malvery lunged from hiding, grabbed the Samarlan and pulled him into cover. When he began to hiss again, Malvery whacked his head against the side of a vat. He was too shocked to say anything after that.

Frey checked on Trinica, who was pressed up against him in a not entirely unpleasant fashion, then concentrated on dealing with their attackers. These men weren't gunfighters. They were attempting to use the vats as cover, but when they leaned out to fire, they took far too long to aim. That, and they tended to lean out at roughly regular intervals, letting Frey predict when and where they'd appear so he could line up his shots. Easy pickings.

He clipped one with a bullet in the shoulder, sending him sprawling out into the open where Silo finished him off. Malvery hit another man clean in the face. The last worker was understandably distressed by the sight, and ran away, shouting, ' Sammie! Sammie!'

Frey breathed a sigh of relief, then yelped as burning hot liquid bubbled up and spilled from the vat overhead, splashing his leg. He danced out into the aisle, beating at himself. The others emerged in a more controlled fashion.

They set off again in a different direction. The Samarlan began snapping at Silo as they went. It was making Frey angry on his friend's behalf. Silo suffered the abuse with a kind of furious submission. He wasn't making any attempt to defend himself while the Samarlan chewed him out.

'What's he saying?' he demanded of Roke.

'He's just confused as to why there's a Murthian here,' Roke replied.

'No, he's not,' said Trinica. 'He's calling your engineer all kinds of names, most of which involve his mother, and he's doing it in the mode they use to talk to slaves and animals.' She listened for a moment. 'Right now he wants to know why Silo didn't try to shield him from the bullets.'