The Black Lung Captain

The Black Lung Captain

A Tale of the Ketty Jay

Chris Wooding

One

An Escape — 'Orphans Don't Fight Back' —

Pinn Flounders — Destination: Up

Darian Frey was a man who understood the value of a tactical retreat. It was a gambler's instinct, a keen appreciation of the odds that told him when to take a risk and when to bail out. There was no shame in running as if your heels were on fire when the situation caled for it. In Frey's opinion, the only difference between a hero and a coward was the ability to do basic maths.arian Frey was a man who understood the value of a tactical retreat. It was a gambler's instinct, a keen appreciation of the odds that told him when to take a risk and when to bail out. There was no shame in running as if your heels were on fire when the situation caled for it. In Frey's opinion, the only difference between a hero and a coward was the ability to do basic maths.

Malvery was to his left, huffing and puffing through the undergrowth. Alcoholic, overweight and out of shape. Pinn, who was no fitter but a good deal dimmer, ran alongside. Behind them was an outraged horde armed with rifles, pistols and clubs, baying for their blood.

The maths on this one were easy.

A voley of gunfire cut through the forest. Bulets clipped leaves, chipped trees and whined away into the night. Frey swore and ducked his head. He hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself smal. More bulets folowed, smacking into earth and stone and wood al around them.

Pinn whooped. 'Stupid yokels! Can't shoot worth a damn!' His stumpy legs pumped beneath him like those of an enthusiastic terrier.

Frey didn't share Pinn's excitement. He was sick with a grey fear, waiting for the moment when one of those bulets found flesh, the hard punch of lead in his back. If he was especialy unlucky, he might get blinded by a tree branch or break his leg first. Running through a forest in the dark was no one's idea of fun.

He clutched his prize to his chest: a smal wooden lockbox, jingling with ducats. Not enough to be worth dying for. Not even worth a medium-sized flesh wound. But he wasn't giving it up now. It was a matter of principle.

'Told you robbing an orphanage was a bad idea,' said Malvery.

'No, it was
Crake
who said that,' Frey said through gritted teeth. 'That's why he wouldn't come.
You
thought it was a
good
idea. In fact, your exact words were: "Orphans don't fight back."'

'Wel, they don't,' said the doctor defensively. 'It's the rest of the vilage you've got to watch out for.'

Frey's reply was cut off as the ground disappeared from under his feet. Suddenly they were tumbling and sliding in a tangle, slithering through cold mud. Frey flailed for purchase as the forest roled and spun before his eyes. The three of them crashed through a fringe of bracken and bushes, and ended up in a heap on the other side.

Frey extricated himself gingerly from his companions, wincing as a multitude of bumps and scratches announced themselves. The lockbox had bruised his ribs in the fal, but he'd kept hold of it somehow. He looked back at the moonlit slope. It was smaler and shalower than it had seemed while they were faling down it.

Malvery got up and made a half-hearted attempt at wiping the mud off his pulover. He adjusted his round, green-lensed glasses, which had miraculously stayed on his nose.

'Anyway, I've reconsidered my position,' he said, continuing his train of thought as if there had been no interruption. 'I've come to believe that stealing from a bunch of defenceless orphans could be seen as a bit of a low point in our careers.'

Frey tugged at Pinn, who lay groaning on the ground. He'd been on the bottom of the heap, and his chubby face was plastered in muck.
'I'm
an orphan!' Frey protested as he struggled with Pinn's weight. 'Who were they colecting for, if not me?'

Malvery smoothed his bushy white moustache and folowed Frey's gaze up the slope. The forest was brightening with torchlight as the infuriated mob approached. 'You should tel them that,' he said. 'Might sweeten their disposition a little.'

'Pinn, wil you
get up
?' Frey cried, dragging the pilot to his feet.

Even with the moon overhead, it was hard to see obstacles while they were running. They fended off branches that poked and lashed at their faces. They slipped and cursed and cracked their elbows against tree trunks. It had rained recently, and the ground alternately sucked at their boots or slid treacherously beneath them.

The vilagers reached the top of the slope and sent a hopeful barrage of gunfire into the trees. Frey felt something slap against his long coat, near his legs. He gathered up the flapping tail, and saw a bulet hole there.

Too close.

'Give up the money and we'l let you go!' one of the vilagers shouted.

Frey didn't waste his breath on a reply. He wasn't coming out of this without something to show for it. He needed that money. Probably a lot more than any bloody orphans did. He had a crew to look after. Seven mouths to feed, if you counted the cat. And that wasn't even including Bess, who didn't have a mouth. Stil, she probably needed oiling or something, and oil didn't come for free.

Anyway,
he
was an orphan. So that made it okay.

'Everything looks different in the dark,' Malvery said. 'You sure this is the way we came?'

Frey skidded to a halt at the edge of a cliff, holding his arms out to warn the others. A river glittered ten metres below, sparkling in the moonlight.

'Er . . . We might have taken a wrong turn or two,' he ventured.

The precipice ran for some distance to his left and right. Before them was a steely landscape of treetops, rucked with hils and valeys, stretching to the horizon: the vast expanse of the Vardenwood. In the distance stood the Splinters, one of Vardia's two great mountain ranges, which marched al the way north to the Yortland coast thousands of kloms away.

Frey suddenly realised that he had no idea where, in al that woodland, he'd hidden his aircraft and the rest of his crew.

Malvery looked down at the river. 'I don't remember this being here,' he said.

'I'm pretty sure the
Ketty Jay
is over the other side,' said Frey doubtfuly.

'Are you realy, Cap'n? Or is that a guess?'

'I've just got a feeling about it.'

Behind them, the cries of the mob were getting louder. They could see the bobbing lights of torches approaching through the forest.

'Any ideas?' Malvery prompted.

'Jump?' suggested Frey. 'There's no way they'd be stupid enough to folow us.'

'Yeah, we'd certainly out-stupid them with that plan.' Malvery roled up his sleeves. 'Fine. Let's do it.'

Pinn was leaning on his knees, breathing hard. 'Oh, no. Not me. Can't swim.'

'You'd rather stay here?'

'I can't
swim!'
Pinn insisted.

Frey didn't have time to argue. His eyes met the doctor's. 'Do the honours, please.'

Malvery put his boot to the seat of Pinn's trousers and shoved. Pinn stumbled forward to the edge of the cliff. He teetered on his toes, wheeled his arms in a futile attempt to keep his balance, and then disappeared with a howl.

'Now you'd better go rescue him,' Frey said.

Malvery grinned. 'Bombs away, eh?' He put his glasses in his coat pocket, ran past Frey and jumped off the cliff. Frey folowed him, feet first, clutching the box of coins. He was halfway down before he thought to wonder if the river was deep enough, or if there were rocks under the surface.

Hitting the water was a freezing black shock, knocking the wind out of him. Icy spring melt from the Splinters. The sounds of the forest disappeared in a bubbling rush that filed his nose and ears. His plunge took him to the river bed, but the water cushioned him enough to give him a gentle landing. He launched himself back upward, shifting the lockbox to one arm and swimming with the other. Only seconds had passed but his chest was already beginning to hurt. He panicked and struggled for breath, clawing at the twinkles of moonlight above him. Finaly, just when it seemed there was no air left inside him, he broke the surface.

Sound returned, unmuffled now, the hissing and splashing of the river. He sucked in air and cast about for signs of his companions. With the water lapping round his face he couldn't find them, so he struck out for the bank. The river wasn't fast, but he could stil feel the current puling him. He vaguely hoped Pinn was alright.

He'd hate to lose a good pilot.

He hauled himself out, dragging the lockbox with him, which had inconveniently filed with water and was now twice as heavy as before. Jumping in the river had seemed a good idea at the time, but now he was sodden and cold as wel as being dog-tired. He was beginning to think that getting lynched would be preferable to al this exertion.

Once he got to his feet, he spotted his companions. Malvery was swimming towards the bank with one hand, in great bear-like strokes. He was towing Pinn, fingers cupped around his chin. Pinn had gone limp, giving himself over to Malvery's strength.

Frey squelched along the bank to where the current had carried them, and helped them both out. Pinn fel to his hands and knees, retching up river water.

'You rot-damned pair of bastards!' he snarled, between heaves.

'Oh, come on, Pinn,' Frey said. 'I've seen you take down four aircraft without breaking a sweat. You're scared of a little water?'

'I can't
shoot
water!' Pinn protested. He burped noisily and another flood spiled over his lips.

'There they are!' someone yeled from the cliff-top. Bulets pocked the bank and threw up little fins of spray from the river.

'Move it!' Frey scrambled away towards the trees. 'It'l take them ages to find a way round.'

He'd barely finished his sentence before the vilagers began to fling themselves off the cliff. 'We just want our money back!' an unseen voice caled. 'It's for the orphaaaaans!' The final word lengthened and trailed off as the speaker pitched over the edge and plummeted into the water.

'I'm an orphan!'
Frey screamed, infuriated by their persistence. He'd done enough to deserve his escape. Why couldn't they just let him go?

His words fel on deaf ears. Angry faces broke the surface of the river and came swimming towards them.

'Don't those felers give up?' Malvery complained, and they ran.

It was more luck than design that brought them to a familiar trail, which led them back to the
Ketty Jay.
The vilagers had stopped shooting - their guns were soaked - but they showed no signs of abandoning the pursuit. In fact, they were gaining. A lifetime of unhealthy habits and too little exercise hadn't equipped any of Frey's team for a lengthy foot chase. Their waterlogged clothes weighed them down and chafed with every step. By the time they made it to the clearing where their companions waited, Malvery looked like he was about to burst a lung.

The
Ketty Jay
loomed before them, dwarfing the two single-seater fighter craft parked nearby. Frey had long ceased to see her with a judgemental eye. He'd never have caled her beautiful, but she wasn't ugly to him either. After fifteen years she was so familiar that he no longer noticed her squat, hunched body, her stub tail or her ungainly bulk. He knew her too wel for appearances to matter. That wasn't something Frey could often say about a female.

Harkins, Jez and Crake stood before her, shotguns and pistols in their hands.

'Get to stations!' Frey panted as he entered into the clearing. 'Harkins! Pinn! Up in the sky, right now.'

Harkins jumped as if stung and fled towards one of the fighter craft, a Firecrow with wide, backswept wings and a bubble of windglass on its snout. Pinn lurched off towards the other: a Skylance, a sleek racing machine, built for speed.

'We heard gunfire,' said Jez, as Malvery and Frey approached, soaking and bedraggled. She eyed the doctor, who was unsuccessfuly trying to catch his breath.

'Has he been shot or something?'