Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

'First sensible thing I've heard out of your mouth for a month,' Malvery grumbled.

Crake drew Frey's cutlass from his belt and tossed it to him. 'Here you go, Captain. We stopped off in the hangar to pick up our things after Bess broke us out.'

Frey caught it. His face was reflected in the blade. Grim and stony. That was the Frey he wanted to be now. Frey the Heartless. Frey the Invincible. Frey the Untouchable.

That's right , he thought. Captain Frey. You've got your craft and you've got your crew. Anyone else can go hang.

He thrust his cutlass into his belt and stalked out of the sanctum.

Harkins had spent a lot of his life being afraid. He knew fear in its many forms, from the blind panic of a gunfight to the poisonous, chilly unease that he felt whenever he tried to have a conversation with anyone. But this was a different order entirely. This was a crushing, brutal, animal terror that bypassed the conscious mind altogether and sent wild sparks down every nerve. He couldn't move and yet he was desperate to flee. He wanted to crumple into a ball but he couldn't take his eyes off what was happening.

The Manes were coming.

The landing pad was mayhem. Men ran back and forth, yelling oaths, howling at one another to get into their craft, get airborne, get out of here. Tractors were abandoned with cargo still in the trailer. Pilots threw themselves into cockpits and took off without a care for nearby aircraft. Fighters flew overhead, dangerously low. The space above the pad was full of lumbering hulls and speeding wings. A crash was only a matter of time.

Beyond, and all around, the dreadnoughts were descending on Sakkan. They sank out of the maelstrom, through the eerie half-light. Black, ragged iron monsters, a dozen or more. The damned ghosts of a frigate fleet, come from the land of the dead. As they neared the ground, ropes snaked from their decks. The Manes swarmed down them, scampering head-first, hand over hand. They wore human shape, but they were far from human. They dropped to the ground like spiders and were lost from sight.

Jez is one of them? I don't believe it! I won't believe it!

The thought of Jez brought his mind out of a tailspin, enough to pull a coherent thought together. He should run. He should get in the Firecrow and flee while he still had the chance.

But what about Jez? What about his plan to rescue her? What about being brave?

Taking on Grist's gang single-handed would have been easy compared to this. The Manes were dropping all over the city, infesting the streets that lay between him and her. Trying to reach her would be suicide. And then he'd still have to take on Grist's gang singlehanded.

It was too much for his fragile courage. An impossible task. He felt his resolve failing under the weight of the Manes' presence. But even though he couldn't bring himself to go to her rescue, he wouldn't run out on her either. He couldn't do that. He was a coward and he knew it, but there were limits. If he left now, he wouldn't be able to return. The shame would be too much, even for a man who lived his life ashamed.

What could he do, then? What could he do?

Then, as he looked frantically this way and that, he caught sight of something. Aircraft in the distance, heading towards Sakkan instead of away. They came from the east, beneath the black clouds, silhouetted by a low, glowering sun. Frigates, by the size. Maybe ten of them, flying in formation, approaching at top speed. There was only one organisation he knew of that could summon ten frigates and have them fly with that kind of discipline.

The Navy! The Navy is here!

His heart lifted a little. A ray of hope. How had they got here so fast? Well, he wasn't in any mind to complain. The Navy was here. There would be a battle over Sakkan, as well as in the streets.

The realisation spurred him, and he found the strength to move. On the ground, he was worse than useless: a pathetic shell of a man. But in the sky, ah, there he wasn't so meek. Up there, his enemy respected him. And if they didn't, they soon learned to.

He needed the safety of the cockpit. He could seal himself inside. Within the protective canopy of windglass, he was the master of his own small world. There, he had a chance. If he had to stay, if there was to be a fight, then he'd take it to the air.

A siren had begun to sound in the distance, a low, sinister yowl that floated over the rooftops. It was joined by another, from the far side of the city. He ran for the Firecrow, and was halfway up the ladder to the cockpit when there was a shriek of metal from behind and above him. A wave of heat and pressure shoved him in the back. He looked over his shoulder to see two fighter craft spinning towards the ground, trailing flame. A cacophony of screams rose from the far side of the pad. The crashed fighters hit the ground, ploughing through men and aircraft alike, sending up blooming fountains of fire in their wake.

Harkins scrambled into the cockpit, pulled the canopy shut, and activated the aerium engines. He was usually obsessive about pre-flight checks, but not this time. He was desperate to be off the ground, to get up into the freedom above. He flicked the thrusters to ready and grabbed the flight stick.

A moment. Something was amiss. For an instant, he thought he caught a whiff of a familiar scent. The foul musk of that damned cat, that it sprayed all over the Ketty Jay to mark its territory.

Then he looked down into his lap, and realised that his crotch was sodden in a great dark patch.

Ah, he thought. That must be it. He'd been too scared to notice.

The Firecrow sat up on its wheel struts and rose from the ground. Harkins scanned the busy sky above him. A space in the frantic traffic. He lit the thrusters and flew.

'Cap'n! To your left!'

Frey turned just in time to see one of them come lunging out of an alley, right by his shoulder. A flash impression of yellow eyes, a gaping mouth full of rotten teeth, an animal snarl. Terror paralysed him, but not his blade, which moved of its own accord. The cutlass slashed out in a horizontal arc and halved the creature's head. Frey stepped aside instinctively as the Mane's ragged, sinewy body staggered past him. It fell to its knees and tipped to the floor, gore spilling from its skull cavity.

They'd stumbled into a nightmare. The eerie light of the low sun combined with the black ceiling of cloud made everything seem fractured and strange. The dreadnoughts slid overhead, like the shadowed hulls of ships passing above the graves of drowned men. The grim, cold streets of Sakkan were littered with bodies and echoed with distant cries. And here were the Manes. The ghouls of the sky, terror out of legend, sprung suddenly to awful life.

The shout that saved him had been Malvery's. Frey spotted him nearby. The doc was in trouble himself. He and Silo were backing down the street together, shotguns firing. Three Manes were approaching. They ran and leaped in jerky zigzags that made them tricky to hit. Malvery winged one, sending it twisting to the ground. The shock of the bullet would have taken a human out of action, but the Mane sprang back to its feet and came on again.

'Bess!' he yelled. He needed to give orders, take control. He pointed at the enemy. 'Deal with 'em!' Then he aimed with the pistol in his right hand.

Three Manes. One was slow, one was damned fast, and the other one shifted restlessly from place to place like a jumpy kinetoscope he'd seen once in a travelling show. One moment it was there, the next a half-metre to the left, then back again in the blink of an eye. He'd seen Jez flicker the same way, back on the All Our Yesterdays.