The Black Lung Captain

Forty

The Vortex — Jez Reads The Wind —

Among The Dead

The Ketty Jay groaned and screeched as she was flung this way and that. Rivets popped and gauges cracked. Thrusters squealed as they chewed up the roiling air.

Slowly but surely, she was coming apart.

Crake hung on to the cockpit doorway for dear life. Frey fought the controls as if he'd forgotten they didn't work. Jez clutched at her maps and instruments, which were sliding all over the desk of the navigator's station.

The cockpit was dark, lit only by occasional blasts of brightness from outside. Grey cloud flurried past the windglass, whipping and switching in the hurricane. They were in the heart of the vortex. Jez didn't think they'd come out of it in one piece.

They'd all been shocked by Harkins' display of bravery, how he'd faced down the dreadnought. Nobody had thought him capable of that, least of all the Cap'n, who'd been singing his praises until the winds took hold and he had bigger things to deal with. Now, he was probably wishing Harkins hadn't been quite so courageous. Following the Storm Dog into the maelstrom seemed like less and less of a good idea with every passing minute.

Jez felt like she was emerging from a daze. Activating the Mane sphere had been like a hammer blow to her mind. The energy released, the sheer force it took to tear open a rift to another place, was colossal. All those in the ancient sanctum had been stunned by the detonation, but Jez had caught it worse than the others. The sphere sent out a cry for help, loud enough to resonate across the planet, to jar the senses of Manes everywhere. Unbraced and unpractised at dealing with her new, inhuman awareness, she'd been overwhelmed.

Since then she'd been operating on automatic. Her faculties were all in place, but her Mane senses were deadened. Down in the streets of Sakkan she'd killed Manes without compunction, and felt nothing for the loss. She knew the Cap'n worried for her, but he needn't have. There was no kind of tribal kinship there. She was part Mane, but she didn't owe them loyalty. They'd press-ganged her. She hadn't chosen to be one of them.

Now her Mane senses were recovering, and a new awareness was seeping in. Ahead, she sensed something: a vast, ominous presence, growing stronger as they ploughed clumsily through the clouds. The Manes. They were going to where the Manes came from, and their nearness threatened her. She felt herself slipping into a trance.

No. Not now. You could lose yourself for good, here.

But despite her best efforts, it was happening. She fought to resist, but it was all she could do to stop herself going under entirely.

She could sense the aircraft around her, like a living thing. She felt the shift and grind of its mechanisms, the stresses on its tortured joints. She could smell the fear coming off Crake, and plot the swirl of the clouds that whipped at the windglass. The darkness didn't affect her. She saw everything with uncanny definition.

Hold it back, she told herself. The temptation to let herself go, to allow herself to be subsumed in the daemon that shared her body, was terrible. Here, so close to the Manes, its pull was fierce.

But she wouldn't let it win. Her crew needed her now. They needed Jez the navigator, cool and collected. Not a wild Mane in their cockpit.

The craft surged to port, hit an air pocket and plunged. Frey hollered with amazed joy.

'What are you so happy about?' asked Crake, who was looking green.

Frey ignored him. 'Doc!' he yelled through the doorway. 'Can you see that shrapnel? Is it still stuck in our tail?'

'Can't see it,' came the reply. 'Then again, I can't see bugger all else, either!'

Frey swooped the Ketty Jay to starboard. She bucked against the wind shear. Metal howled and something burst deep in her guts.

'Wind must have blown it clear! I can steer again!' Frey said.

'Well, can you stop steering?' Crake replied. 'We were doing better before!'

Jez surged to her feet. 'Cap'n,' she said. 'Let me fly her.'

Frey was shocked by the request. He'd always guarded his place in the pilot seat jealously, and only ever let her fly when he wasn't there to do it. She didn't know the Ketty Jay's quirks like he did.

'We're breaking up, Cap'n,' she said urgently. 'But I can ride the winds. I'll get us through.'

He gave her a long stare.

'Let her try!' Crake urged him.

'Alright,' he said. He slipped out of the seat, his expression faintly resentful. Jez took his place, grabbed the stick, and closed her eyes.

There was an invisible swell coming up from beneath. She angled the wings and let them be carried on it. It should have been a battering ram against their hull. Instead they were lifted, firmly but steadily, like a swimmer on a wave.

'I can get us through,' she said again, and now she knew that she could.

The winds in the vortex were a labyrinth, a three-dimensional maze of turbulence. Jez saw it in her mind's eye, all the impossible complexities laid out before her. She tracked changes in the currents as they began to happen, knots and valleys in the wind. By the time they reached her, she'd corrected their course to take advantage. She flew as birds flew, at home with the mysteries of the sky.

As she went, she sank further and further into the trance. Her entire concentration was focused on her task, and there was little left to resist the pull of the daemon inside her.

There were voices on the wind. Some called out, some screamed in pain, others murmured as they went about their industry. Drowning them all out was the alarm, the cry of the sphere, pulsing at her mind. It drew her with a primal urgency, like the wail of a newborn draws its mother. Its distress was her distress. Her brethren needed aid. She wanted to help.

The dreadnoughts were beginning to evacuate the Manes from Sakkan. She knew that, without knowing how. They covered for one another, beating back the beleaguered Navy, and let down their ropes for their crew to climb, bringing the newly Invited with them. The sphere was no longer in Sakkan, so they were gathering their people and preparing to give chase.

Even with her best efforts, the Ketty Jay's passage through the clouds was violent. She couldn't react fast enough to account for every variation in the vortex. The craft shivered and whined as she was pummelled from all sides.

But gradually, the chaos eased, and the jolts came less often. Finally they reached still air, a featureless blank of grey cloud. Jez sat back in her seat, her expression vacant.

'You did it,' said Crake, after he'd swallowed a few times to get some moisture back into his throat.

'Nice work, Jez,' said Frey. 'Bloody nice work.' He got out of the navigator's seat and slapped the bulkhead. 'She's a tough old boot, the Ketty Jay!'

'Cap'n,' said Jez, her eyes distant. 'Cloud's thinning out.'

A light was growing ahead of them, and the temperature had dropped noticeably. Frey and Crake pulled their coats closer around them and crowded up behind Jez. Their breath steamed the air, despite the Ketty Jay's internal heating system.

The picture faded in gradually, until at last the land opened up before their eyes.

'Oh, my,' whispered Crake.

The haze in the air had diminished but not disappeared, giving the panorama a bleary, dreamlike quality. The sun shone, weak and distant, forcing the barest illumination through the shroud. Beneath them, a dim white world was laid out, an ocean of ice and snow as far as they could see. Cliffs surged abruptly into the sky at steep angles, as if they'd exploded up violently from beneath. Some lay splintered against one another, smashed by epic, millennia-long conflicts. The plains were rippled with sastrugi, great breaking waves, flash-frozen. Distant mountains loomed high and bleak. At their feet was a wide, low shadow, all curves and angles, glowing a faint shade of green.

'By damn,' said Crake. 'Is that what I think it is?'

'Yes,' said Jez. 'It's a city.'

Even Jez couldn't believe what she was seeing. A city of Manes, here in the arctic. To the others, it was barely visible, but Jez's vision was far superior to theirs. The city was all circles and arcs, built from black granite without much thought for human ideas of symmetry.

The majority of the buildings were low and round, stacked in uneven layers, half-circles and crescents and S-shaped curves. Among them stood sharp towers of shiny, glassy black, slender stalagmites that thinned unevenly towards their pinnacles.

The stacks and towers were linked by a complicated sequence of curving, covered boulevards that fractured and split in all directions. The buildings were like points on a diagram, the boulevards a web of connections between them. A seething green light soaked upward from the ground around the city, but Jez couldn't see what was making it. It was too far, even for her.

'Where are we?' asked Frey.

'We're at the North Pole,' said Jez. 'On the far side of the Wrack.'

Crake licked his lips nervously. 'Cap'n . . . what we're seeing here ... no one's ever been here.'

'No one's ever been here and come back alive,' Frey corrected. 'I'll bet the second part's the trickier of the two.' He scanned the sky and pointed. 'There they are.'

The Storm Dog was a few dozen kloms distant, hanging in the air, her thrusters dark. A dreadnought lay alongside, firmly attached to Grist's frigate by a half-dozen magnetic grapples. There was no sign of life or movement on either craft.

'They've been boarded,' said Jez.

'Get us over there, fast,' Frey told her. 'Crake, with me. Let's get tooled up.'

Crake held up his bandaged hand. 'I might sit this one out, Cap'n. I can't fire a gun. I'd be dead weight out there.'

'We can't bring Bess,' Jez added. 'That kind of craft, she'd barely get through the corridors.'

Frey cursed under his breath. 'Alright, Crake. You and Bess make sure the Ketty Jay is still here when we get back. Come get a weapon for Jez while she's landing us.' Then he left, calling for Silo and Malvery.

Crake lingered a moment, until Frey was out of earshot. 'You think he's crazy?' he asked Jez. 'Dragging us through all of this for Trinica?'

Jez just stared ahead. 'I wish I felt half as much for somebody as he does for her,' she replied.

Crake nodded in understanding. 'You should be careful what you wish for,' he said, and with that he was gone.

She brought the Ketty Jay in over the Storm Dog's deck. The blare of the sphere prevented her from sensing any Manes on either craft, and she didn't know how to tune it out. But whether they were unobserved or simply ignored, their approach drew no reaction.

'Cap'n!' she shouted back into the aircraft. 'You got clamps on this thing?'

'Rack on your right! Second switch!'

She flicked it and lowered the Ketty Jay carefully, venting aerium as she went. When she was close enough to the Storm Dog's deck, the newly magnetised landing skids sucked the aircraft down with a hefty thump.

Crake returned to the cockpit as she was getting out of her seat. He threw her a rifle. 'Cap'n says get down to the hold, double quick.'

She began to hurry past him, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

'Good luck out there,' he said earnestly.

She snorted. 'We're due some, I reckon.'



Frey led the way down the cargo ramp, wrapped tight in a greatcoat, breath steaming the air. Malvery, Jez and Silo followed in his wake, pointing their weapons in all directions, searching for enemies. They were met with a profound quiet.

The deck of the Storm Dog was empty. The deck of the dreadnought, looming on the starboard side, was similarly deserted. The blurred sun shone hopelessly through the mist. A lonely wind stirred the air.

It was freezing. Their exposed hands were already turning to icy claws, and their cheeks and foreheads burned. They waited for an ambush. None came.

'Well, I like this,' said Malvery. 'Easiest suicide mission I ever did. Can we get inside before my bollocks turn to snowballs?'

Silo pointed towards a doorway on the deck. It was hanging open, and the top of an iron ladder was visible beyond.

They clambered down the ladder, which had become cold enough to rip at the skin of their hands, and came out into the narrow passageways below. Jez had been right: Bess would never have fit down here. This was no luxury craft like the All Our Yesterdays. The interior was cramped and functional. It was just about possible to walk two abreast, shoulder to shoulder, but that was all.

Tarnished metal surrounded them, lit by electric lights powered by the frigate's internal generator. It smelt of oil and sweat, and a dry, musky scent that Frey recognised from the crashed dreadnought on Kurg. The scent of the Manes.

One of the lights further down the corridor was cracked and flickering. Lying beneath it was a man whose jaw had been torn away from his face. Frey eyed the corpse uneasily.

'Where are we heading, Cap'n?' Malvery asked.

'Captain's cabin?' Frey suggested. 'Most likely place to find Grist.' And Trinica.

'Right-o,' said Malvery. He looked up and down the corridor. 'Where's that, then?'

'They usually put it towards the stern on this type of craft,' said Jez. She took the lead, and Frey followed with a fresh speed in his step. The sight of the dead man had sparked a new fear in him. Would he find Trinica like that? Her face ruined, eyes glazed in death? The woman he'd almost married, shredded like a carcass in a slaughterhouse, reduced to meat and sinew?

He didn't dare think about it. She was somewhere on this aircraft. He'd find her. That was all.

They hurried through the corridors, passing more corpses on the way. Most of them were Grist's crew in various states of dismemberment, but the occasional Mane was tangled up among them. The stink of blood made Frey's gorge rise. Malvery, who'd seen more innards than the rest of them put together, was unmoved.

'Why do I get the impression something's gone horribly wrong with Grist's plan?' he said. 'They don't seem too interested in taking new recruits, do they?'

'Pick it up, Doc!' Frey snapped. 'Let's get what we came for and go.' He was afraid they were already too late. They could hear dull explosions and gunfire on the lower decks, echoing up through the ventilation system. The howls of the Manes drifted faintly through the passageways as they ran.

Jez's prediction was spot on, and she led them right to Grist's cabin. But when they got there, the door was open and it was clear that it was empty. Frey burst into the room nevertheless, and began turning it over, throwing open cabinets and rummaging along shelves. He was searching for a sign of her, some assurance that she was still alive. He needed to know that he wasn't risking his own life and the lives of his crew for nothing.

'They've been driven down below,' said Jez. Her eyes were out of focus and she seemed to be having trouble concentrating.

'Where?' he demanded. 'This aircraft is bloody gigantic! We'll be slaughtered if we go running about down there.'

'That's as good an argument as I've ever heard to bail out while we can,' Malvery said.

Frey stopped his search for a moment and fixed the doctor with a hard glare. 'We're not going anywhere without her.'

'Worth a try,' said Malvery, and delivered a sulky kick to a severed hand that was lying nearby.

Frey needed to keep moving, keep thinking, make a plan. He was full of restless energy that demanded an outlet, but he couldn't just rush off headlong into a horde of Manes. Something was nagging at him. Being here, in Grist's cabin, had reminded him of something. It slid around frustratingly in his mind until he pinned it down.

'Your father's research. You still have it?' Trinica's question to Grist, while they were down in the sanctum.

'Safe in my cabin, don't you worry.'

Frey's eyes fell on a large chest in the corner of the cabin. One of the few places he hadn't already searched. He pulled it out, and found that it was shut tight. He shot off the lock. Malvery jumped at the sound.

'You trying to give me a heart attack?'

'Think!' Frey said, addressing Jez. 'You know this type of craft. Where's the most defensible place? If you were Harvin Grist, where would you go?'

He tried to think of the answer himself as he opened the chest. Looking for Maurin Grist's research was a tactic to keep him occupied, to prevent him from doing anything stupid. His thoughts were on Trinica, and how to save her.

Inside the chest were piles of documents and accounts, bound up in folders. On top of them lay a large manila folio of papers. He picked it up and ruffled though the papers within. It took only a few glances to establish the subject matter. He rolled them up absently and stuffed them in the inner pocket of his greatcoat.

'Come on, Jez!' he said, because he couldn't find an answer himself.

'Engine room,' said Silo.

Jez's face lit up. 'He's right. On a frigate like this, it must have walls a foot thick.'

Frey snapped his fingers at the Murthian. 'Engine room. Then that's where we're going.'