Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

'Sorry 71 did that, Cap'n,' he said, but his head was held high and he looked prouder than Frey had ever seen him.

'No, it's me who should be sorry,' said Frey. 'You're a free man on my crew. You shouldn't have had to suffer that.'

He held out his hand. Silo took it and shook.

Roke was gaping in disbelief. 'You killed . . . you just . . . !' He took a step back from Silo, as if from a madman. 'The deal's off! You hear?'

He got another step before he heard the click of a pistol hammer being cocked, and felt the muzzle of a gun in the back of his head. Trinica was on the other end of it.

'You gave it a good try,' said Trinica to Frey. 'But that's enough of being nice. Let's do this quick and easy.' And she shot Roke in the back of the knee.

Roke dropped to the ground, trying to scream but unable to make a noise. Blood steamed on the snow-covered roof. Trinica walked round to stand over him. Frey and the others had instinctively stepped back. Suddenly, all his romantic thoughts of his old sweetheart had disappeared. This was the Trinica who'd robbed and killed and plundered her way across Vardia. Even without her make-up and attire, he could see it in her manner. Utterly cold. Utterly ruthless. No one was getting in her way.

'Now,' she said to Roke. 'Grist. Where?'

Roke just gasped at her. She shot him in the hand, pulverising it into a bloody mash of tendon and shattered bone. He found his voice then.

'He's in Sakkan! Two hundred kloms north-west of Marduk! Warehouse complex on the east edge of the city! That's where we always hid out. He moves his drugs through it. Heavily guarded! He's got his own hangar there and everything! Big enough for the Storm Dog!'

Trinica shrugged at Frey. 'That's where he is,' she said, and she shifted her aim to Roke's forehead.

'Trinica!' said Frey sharply. She looked over at him. He shook his head slowly.

'Whyever not?' she asked. 'This way he can't talk to anyone else.'

The stark logic in her voice chilled him more than the freezing air. Over the past month he'd almost begun to believe this side of her had faded away, and a new tenderness had replaced her steely brutality. The fact that he'd been mistaken came as unpleasant shock.

'Don't be like this, Trinica,' he said.

'But this is how I am, Darian,' she replied.

Roke whimpered and blubbered on the ground, his eyes fixed on the barrel of the pistol pointed at his head. Trinica's gaze was locked with Frey's.

Frey had seen enough murders in his time. He'd just watched his engineer throw a man off the roof. But that was done in anger, was heavily provoked and, to Frey's mind, well deserved. Roke might be a scumbag, maybe even a traitor, but he'd given them the information they wanted. To shoot him now was just too cold-blooded.

Or maybe it was just that it was Trinica holding the gun. Maybe, if she pulled that trigger, he'd lose her for ever.

Please don't be like this.

Frey's heart thumped in his chest. Snow drifted through the space between them. Seconds crawled past.

'Very well,' she said at last. 'As you wish.' Then she lowered her gun and walked off towards the Ketty Jay without another word. Frey let out the breath he'd been holding.

'I need a doctor!' Roke cried suddenly. He was cradling his destroyed hand, face slack with shock. 'Someone get me a doctor!'

Frey turned to Malvery.

'Don't look at me,' Malvery said. 'I've barely got enough supplies to look after you lot. I ain't wasting any on him.'

'Sorry,' said Frey to Roke. 'Looks like you're on your own.'

'Maybe you can ask one of the factory workers for help,' Malvery added maliciously.

Roke was still howling when they left him, and he kept howling until the sound of the Ketty Jay's engines drowned him out.

The Delirium Trigger hung at anchor over the docks, between the frozen land and the ice-blue sky. She floated silently on aerium ballast, linked to the ground by thick chains. Fresh welding scars and burn marks marred her skin, tokens of her battle with the Storm Dog. The patch-up job hadn't been pretty, but that was the price of speed.

Frey and Trinica stood by a wooden railing on a hillside path that overlooked the Yort settlement of Iktak. Here the path bulged outward, perhaps intended as a rest point, a place for carts to pass, or even a convenient spot to take in the view. Frey couldn't imagine it was the latter. There was little to view in Iktak, just a depressing, industrial knot of pipes and factories and grimy snow that never quite thawed. That, and the bleak tundra beyond, an empty expanse broken by streaks of shrubbery in toxic colours.

Frey had stood in this exact spot when he'd said his goodbyes to Crake, a month ago. Back then the Delirium Trigger had been going in for repairs. Now, it seemed they were all but completed.

A place for partings, then, he thought. For there was another one coming, and he'd feel this one even more keenly than the last.

After they left Endurance, a hasty conference in the cockpit had determined their next move. Fly to Iktak, collect the Delirium Trigger, and then move on Grist's hideout in full force. Trinica was confident that her craft would be ready. She knew the workshop and said it was the best in the North. She'd offered them enough to make sure her craft was repaired within a month. It appeared her trust hadn't been misplaced.

'It'll take a day, at least,' she said. 'Maybe two. Break in the new crewmen. Trial flight. Fire the guns. All of that.' She pulled her fur-and-hide coat closer around her shoulders. 'I won't take them into battle untested. Not against Grist.'

'Fair enough. He hasn't made a move this past month. Whatever he's waiting for, what's another day or two? Better to be ready, right?'

'Indeed.'

'I've a trip of my own planned, anyway.'

'Oh yes?'

'I had a talk with my crew.'

She turned towards him slightly. Black birds flapped through the air overhead, croaking. 'About what?'

'About everything. Grist, you. About why I was dragging them all over everywhere.'

'You told them about us?'

'Not everything. Enough.'

'How did they take it?'

'Well, after they'd picked themselves off the floor, I think they were glad to know. It explains a lot for them, I suppose.'

Trinica laid a gloved hand on his arm and gave him a wan smile. Frey felt his throat tighten suddenly and his eyes began to prickle. The moment of affection, this lightest of contacts, had caught him by surprise. He looked away and stared intently into the middle distance, forcing back the threat of tears.

Blood and dust, Frey! Hold it together! You're supposed to be a man!

'They wanted to try and get Crake back,' he said. 'I said yes. Least I could do. Jez thinks she might be able to talk to him. She knows what's eating him up.'

'What about Pinn?'

'Pinn's gone,' said Frey, a touch of regret creeping into his voice. He couldn't help feeling that it was mostly his fault they'd lost their best pilot. 'If he ever told anyone where he came from, they don't remember. Don't have the first clue where to look for him. If he wants to come back, he'll have to find us. But somehow I doubt the lad's got the brains for it.'

'Will you replace him, then?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'I suppose I'll have to, eventually. Won't be the same, though.' He scratched the back of his neck. 'You know, there's a little part of me that's gonna miss that fat, stupid moron.'

He studied the Delirium Trigger. A shuttlecraft was departing from the Iktak docks and heading up towards it. Perhaps it was carrying engineers, still applying finishing touches to the delicate mechanisms inside. Maybe, once all the major work was done, they'd moved it out of the hangar to make space for another craft.