Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

Jez looked around at Grist's crewmates, hoping that some of them would react to this insanity. What she saw was not doubt but excitement. These few were Grist's inner circle. Perhaps they, too, dreamed of immortality. At any rate, Grist had persuaded them to his way of thinking. There would be no help there.

'And what about you?' she said to Trinica. 'Presumably you don't care if a whole city is taken by the Manes.'

'You presume correctly,' said Trinica.

'You think he's going to just let you go after explaining all this to you?' she demanded, pointing at Grist. 'He'll betray you, just like he did everyone else.'

'Actually, ma'am, the only reason I'm explaining it at all is for Cap'n Dracken's benefit,' said Grist. 'Someone needs to know what happened here. Someone who can tell the tale of Cap'n Harvin Grist.'

He smiled nastily. 'Otherwise, how will they know me when I come back for 'em?'

Jez stared. He wasn't just after immortality in the literal sense. He wanted to be a legend. The smuggler who destroyed a city. Who'd joined with the Manes. And who one day might return at the head of a fleet of dreadnoughts. A man to strike fear into the hearts of everyone. They'd use his name to scare children. Be good, or Cap'n Grist will come for you.

'I'm a Mane,' she said. There was desperation in her voice. 'You don't need to do this. I can turn you!'

'Can you?' said Grist, sceptically. 'A half-Mane like you? I don't reckon so. I know what you are, Miss Kyte. You ain't the first. I had my suspicions back on the dreadnought, and I knew for sure on the Flashpan, after we'd dealt with the All Our Yesterdays. Should've taken you then, saved us all a lot of trouble. But I got you now.'

'Let me try!' she begged.

'You ain't capable of giving the Invitation,' he said. 'You ain't even accepted it yourself.'

'The Invitation?' said Frey. 'Is that what you call it?'

'Ain't what I call it. That's what it's called. But I got another use for a half-Mane.' He tossed the sphere to Jez. She caught it automatically. 'Make it work.'

Jez gazed at the sphere clutched in her hands. Just holding it made her nerves crackle. She'd known this moment would come, ever since Grist had confessed his desire to summon the Manes. No wonder nothing had happened during the month when they were searching for him. They'd been expecting news of some catastrophe all that time, and questioning why Grist, who finally had his prize, wasn't using it. Here was the answer. He didn't know how.

But nor did Jez.

'I can't,' she said.

Grist motioned to two of his crewmen. They seized Frey and pulled him over to a nearby table. One of them pressed a pistol to his head; the other was carrying a machete, and forced his hand down on to the wooden surface. Frey struggled and swore, but they were too strong for him. Trinica folded her arms and watched, not a flicker of distress on her face.

'Try,' said Grist. 'I done everything I could, but there ain't no notes on this thing in my father's research. And what I come to conclude is, it takes a Mane to activate it. You're only half o' what I need, but you'll do, I reckon.' His eyes were dark chips of stone beneath his heavy brows. 'So now I'm gonna give you one minute, then I'm gonna chop off your Cap'n's hand. Then I'll do the other one. Then I'll start on his feet. When I run out of limbs, I'm really gonna start hurtin' him. So I suggest you put your mind to the task, ma'am.'

Jez barely heard him. The crackling in her nerves had got stronger and stronger. The power in the sphere was reaching out to her, flowing into her, overwhelming her. She could feel the onset of a trance, the flip into the surreal other world of the Manes. She fought against it.

I can't be responsible for this.

Thousands of lives. All that death would be on her head. Because she was a Mane. Because of the daemon that dwelt inside her.

I can't.

The Manes would come, and they'd give the Invitation to anyone they could, and they'd kill everyone else.

But there was Frey, still struggling, even with a gun to his head. Frey, her captain, the man who'd given her a home on the Ketty Jay when she'd despaired of ever finding one again.

'Thirty seconds,' said Crattle, who was consulting a pocket watch. Trinica looked on, unmoved by Frey's plight.

It wasn't a matter of making it work. It was a matter of preventing it from working. The sphere wanted to be used. Its power leaped eagerly to her, threatening to tip her, to bring on the trance that she knew would be the final step in activating it. Once she let her daemon have its head, it would call its brethren. The eager voices from the Wrack howled encouragement, battering at her resistance.

All those people on one side of the equation. Frey on the other.

'Twenty seconds.'

How could she watch his hand chopped off, then another, then a foot? If she held out now, could she really hold out till the end? What if she crumbled halfway through? That would be worse than death to Frey, to leave him without hands, and she'd still have lost.

It came down to a choice. Between the man she knew, and the thousands she didn't.

'Ten.'

All those people. Because I'm a Mane. I should have died back there in the snows that day.

But she hadn't. And that was part of her now. For better or worse.

'Five.'

She gave up her resistance. The sphere took her like a flood. The trance was almost instantaneous. Between blinks, the world turned to a hyper-real twilight. Her senses became superhumanly clear. She could hear guns firing in the hangar, a sound that had been muffled by the rock until now. Something was up. Bess was awake. She could hear her footsteps.

'Four.'

But whatever help might come, it would come too late to stop Frey being maimed. And she wouldn't allow that.

'Three.'

The silver lines on the sphere glowed with a spectral light, beaming out from within. Crattle stopped counting. He stared, entranced.

Then there was a terrible shriek, a hurricane of sound that tore through the room and blasted her senses white.

And with that, it began.

Harkins clutched the shotgun tight as he came down the stairs into the cargo hold of the Ketty Jay. He was trembling with fear and an awful, nauseous excitement. Every shadow could be the one hiding his enemy. Part of him dreaded the sight of that damned despicable cat. Another part, that voice which sometimes got defiant when there was nobody around to challenge it, was hoping Slag would show his face after all. A squeeze of the trigger, a bloody puff of fur, and all his troubles would be over.

Oh, who was he kidding? The noise alone would probably scare him witless. He'd deliberated for a long time between pistol and shotgun, on that basis. In the end, he'd picked the one that most suited his shooting style. He always closed his eyes and cringed away whenever he fired at someone, so accuracy was impossible. The shotgun was louder, but the scatter effect made it a bit more likely that he'd actually hit something.

He swallowed and made himself go down the stairs. Crates and boxes and vents: all possible ambush points. He wished he hadn't come aboard at all. But he had to get a gun. That was the thing. He had to get a gun, to save Jez.

He'd sat with his heart in his mouth, listening via Crake's daemonic earcuff to the gunfight at Grist's warehouse. He thrilled every time she spoke. She was so strong, so capable. He imagined himself battling alongside her, grim-faced, felling guards with a keen aim. And after they'd won, she'd be kind to him. She'd offer soothing words and encouragement, the way she sometimes did.