The Black Lung Captain (59 page)

Frey powered through the crossfire, and hoped.

Crake's eyes were wide as he stared at the flickering, churning maw in the sky, waiting to swalow them up, as it had swalowed the
Storm Dog.

'Captain,' he said. 'This might very possibly be a stupid idea.'

'Very possibly,' Frey agreed. But his determination was unshakable. He hadn't felt this certain about anything for a long time.

Grist might have been the wrong side of sane, but he wasn't suicidal. On the contrary, he was desperate to live. Frey had to believe that the other captain knew what he was doing when he plunged into that vortex. And where the
Storm Dog
went, the
Ketty Jay
could folow.

Probably.

Pinn was on his wing, nipping and harrying the Blackhawks, drawing them away as best he could. Malvery was firing at any that came near, without much success. He never had been a briliant shot with the autocannon. Harkins was nowhere to be seen. They'd lost sight of him a few minutes ago, when he suddenly dived away from them.

The
Ketty Jay's
thrusters were labouring. There was a distressing knocking noise coming from deep in her guts. The freezing temperatures she'd endured of late had done nothing to improve the precarious state of her prothane engine. It was a testament to Silo's skil that it was stil operating at al.

He pushed them hard anyway, climbing out of the plane of conflict where the dreadnoughts and frigates were slugging it out. Gradualy the explosions fel behind them and the sky became less crowded. He focused only on his goal, ignoring the dangers al around him as if he could bring them through unharmed by sheer force of wil.

Come on, girl
, he told his beloved aircraft.
You can make it. I know you can.

'Cap'n!' caled Malvery. 'Stray Blackhawk! Coming in on our tail!'

'Where's Pinn?'

'He's run off the others! I reckon—' The rest of his reply was drowned out by the autocannon. Then: 'I got him, Cap'n! I—'

He was interrupted by a huge explosion, terrifyingly close. The
Ketty Jay's
stern end was shoved hard. Multiple impacts peppered the craft, ringing through the hul. Frey reached for the controls to correct, but the
Ketty Jay
was stil on course. Instead, he turned in his seat and yeled up to the cupola.

'Doc? Doc, you okay?' He looked at Crake, who was hanging on to the doorway. 'Crake, see if he's okay.'

Crake leaned out into the passageway and looked up the ladder that led to the gunnery cupola. 'Malvery?'

'I'm alright,' he said. 'Bit deaf. The awkward bugger blew up a few metres off our tail.'

Frey didn't have time for relief. Jez grabbed his shoulder and pointed. 'Cap'n!'

The vortex had grown huge now, as they sped up and out of the conflict. Emerging through the cloud, right in their path, was the scarred bow of a dreadnought.

It dwarfed them, like a cargo ship bearing down on a rowboat.

Frey puled the flight stick to the left. Nothing happened. He tried again, then moved to the right, then shoved it desperately in every direction. Stil nothing happened.

He couldn't steer.

His pupils dilated to tiny points as he stared at the enormous aircraft bearing down on them.

'Uh-oh.'

*

Harkins spared a moment to check that his unconscious stowaway was in no danger of waking up, then headed back towards the
Ketty Jay
as fast as he could.

'Pinn! Where are you?'

'What happened to—'

'Never mind what happened to me. Where's - um - where's the
Ketty Jay?'

'Heading for that great big bloody rip in the sky. Don't ask me why. I'm going back to 'em now.'

'Back?'
Harkins was appaled. He'd left them? 'I had to draw off a few Blackhawks . . . er . . . wait a minute.' The tone of Pinn's voice alarmed him. 'What do you mean, wait a minute?' He flashed at ful throttle through the battlefield, ascending hard. 'What's wrong?'

'The Cap'n's playing chicken with a dreadnought.'

'He's
whaaaaat
?' Harkins screamed. He came out of the main body of the battle, up into clearer sky, and spotted them immediately. The
Ketty Jay
was heading right into the centre of the vortex. A dreadnought, many times their size, was lumbering out of it. And neither looked at al like getting out of the way.

Jez!

He angled the Firecrow towards them and put on al the speed he had.

'Shrapnel in the tail assembly!' Malvery caled from the cupola. 'I can see it! It looks like it's coming loose! Waggle the flaps more!'

'I'm waggling as hard as I bloody can!' said Frey, waggling. 'Dump out the aerium tanks,' Jez advised. 'We'l sink underneath her.'

'We dump those tanks, we'l go off course.'

'Isn't that the idea?'

'We go off course, we'l miss the vortex. We miss the vortex, we might not be able to get back to it. There's no teling when or if we'l have steering again.'

'You want to chase the
Storm Dog
with
no steering
?' Crake cried in disbelief.

'We are going into that vortex!' said Frey.

'There's half a milion tons of metal in the way!' Jez shouted.

'They'l move,' he insisted.

'No, they won't!'

Frey's hand hovered above the valve that would execute an emergency purge of the aerium tanks. The
Ketty Jay
would dip out of the dreadnought's path, but he'd never get her bow up again if he did. Not with that shrapnel in the tail assembly.

Hitting that valve meant giving up on Trinica for ever. Not hitting it meant that he and his crew would end up splattered across the keel of that dreadnought.

He took his hand away.

'They'l move,' he said.

'They won't move!' Harkins shouted at his captain, as if Frey could hear him. He didn't know what the Cap'n was thinking, but he was furious at him for gambling with Jez's life like that. Either the dreadnought hadn't noticed them, or whoever commanded it had decided to run them down rather than waste ammunition. The
Ketty Jay
would crumple like tinfoil against that armoured keel.

Why doesn't the Cap'n just pull out of the way?

Maybe they were in trouble. Maybe they
couldn't
move aside. In that case, a colision was inevitable. In that case . . .

He raced towards them at ful throttle. He wasn't sure what he could do about the situation when he got there, but a fierce determination blazed in him nonetheless. He was heady from defeating Slag, and he felt invincible. Somehow, he'd save them. He'd save
her.

Pinn was further away, approaching from another angle, yeling pointiessly at the Captain. He was as alarmed as Harkins, and just as powerless to intervene.

Then an idea slipped into Harkins' head. Powerless? Him? Not any more. After al, he'd just punched out a cat. Taking on a dreadnought seemed like the next logical step.

There was no time to think about it, anyway. No time to listen to the voice in his head that screamed,
'What are you doing?!!?'
He felt a hard calm overtake him. The kind of calm he'd once possessed in battle, before al those crashes and lost comrades broke his nerve. A colder, more dispassionate part of himself seized control, queling the panic that beat at his mind. His brow creased into a stern frown, and for the first time in years, he felt like someone to be reckoned with.

He slowed as he matched the
Ketty Jay's
course, flying in a few dozen metres above them. Ahead was the dark metal landscape of the dreadnought. The
Ketty
Jay
was heading dead into its keel, but Harkins was approaching above the level of the deck.

He could see the Manes emerging from hatches in the deck, swarming out like cockroaches. No wonder there had been nobody firing the guns. Presumably it was too dangerous to be up on deck when they passed through that swirling vortex. Too dangerous for Blackhawks as wel, he guessed. That was why they were smuggled through in the belies of their mothercraft.

Far back on the deck stood a command tower, a black pile of spikes and rivets with armoured slits for windows. If there was a captain, he'd be there, along with the pilot. So that was where Harkins was heading.

He cut the thrusters further, coming in slow to give his enemy a chance to react. Then he flew over the
Ketty Jay
, leapfrogging her in the air, and headed straight for the command tower.

'You want to play chicken?' he muttered. 'Wel, I'm the biggest chicken of them al!'

He didn't fire his machine guns as he came. He refused to. He'd leave them in no doubt of his intentions. He'd let them know he wasn't going to pul away.

He'd let them know he was going to ram the command tower, and if their captain valued his inhuman life, he'd move aside.

The Manes were scrambling to the deck guns, but they wouldn't get there in time. The dreadnought cruised towards him, framed by the flashing churn of the vortex. Harkins squared his shoulders and flew straight.

His heart slammed against his ribs, his muscles rigid as he held the Firecrow steady. The dreadnought was huge now, growing faster and faster. The Firecrow juddered and rocked around him. The thrusters roared in his ears.

I'm not moving.
He projected his thoughts at his opponent.
Are you?

'Harkins, what the shit do you think you're doing?' Pinn asked. 'They're Manes! This is
not
the time to grow a backbone!'

Pinn. He was the worst of those who laughed at him. Wel, one way or another, no one would be laughing after this.

He was coming up on the deck of the dreadnought. Close enough to see the faces of the scurrying figures there. They howled and pointed. Perhaps they sensed his intention, but they couldn't stop him.

Closer. His hand began to shake on the stick. Doubts ate away at his resolve. What would it feel like to die? What would come after?

Closer. He was passing over the bow of the dreadnought. Suddenly al the bravado he'd gained from beating up a cat deserted him. The cowardly voice in his head rose to a shriek. His arms trembled with the effort of resisting the urge to pul away.

Don't do it!

Don't do what? Don't carry on, or don't crack and flee?

The deck streaked past beneath him. The tower rose ahead. He was stil aiming right for the bridge. The wind shook and battered the Firecrow, as if the whole craft might come apart.

He gritted his teeth to clamp down on the blubbering wail rising up from his chest. The black metal slab of the command tower thundered towards him, the promise of fiery oblivion with it.

Just this once,
he thought.
Just this once. Be a man.

Then there was a deafening blast of escaping gas, and the command tower tilted as the frigate vented its aerium tanks on the starboard side. The dreadnought listed hard and dipped. Manes went scrabbling and sliding across the deck towards the gunwales. Harkins roled to his own starboard as the bigger craft bowed aside, and the Firecrow raced past the command tower, wings vertical, with half a metre to spare.

Harkins blinked in shock. The dreadnought was diminishing behind him, the vortex gaping ahead. He undipped his straps and twisted to look over his shoulder.

The dreadnought was venting on its port side to level itself up, but the added weight was making it sink fast. As it moved out of the way, he saw the
Ketty Jay,
flying over the top of the dipping craft, trailing in his wake.

'Wa-hooo! You crazy bastard!' Pinn was ecstatic. 'That was the bravest damn thing I ever saw!'

A tentative smile spread across his face. That
had
been brave, hadn't it? And even better, he was stil alive to enjoy it.

He turned away from the vortex, back toward the
Ketty Jay.
The electroheliograph on her back was flashing rapidly.
Break off. Don't follow. Meet at Iktak.

Harkins understood. The fighter craft would likely be destroyed in the unknown stresses of the vortex. Maybe the
Ketty Jay
would, too. But there was nothing he could do to prevent that now. His part in this, and Pinn's, was over.

But he'd done himself proud. At least he could say that. He'd done himself proud.

He gave the
Ketty Jay
a tilt of his wings as he approached, acknowledging the message. Then, just before they passed each other, another message flickered from the electroheliograph.

It took him a moment to decipher it, by which time he was already heading away from the battle, with Pinn folowing after. It was a private communication, from Jez to him.

Nice work, hero.

Harkins was so happy he thought he might die.

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 al 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 al been shocked by Harkins' display of bravery, how he'd faced down the dreadnought. Nobody had thought him capable of that, least of al 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. Folowing the
Storm Dog
into the maelstrom seemed like less and less of a good idea with every passing minute.