The Black Lung Captain

Nineteen

'Quite a storm,' Frey said.

Jez's reply was drowned out by a clap of thunder loud enough to rattle the brass-and-chrome fixtures of the Ketty Jay's cockpit.

Frey held his nose and blew through it till his ears popped. 'Say again?'

'I said, I've seen worse,' Jez told him. 'You've never flown the Flashpan before?'

'Can't say I've had the pleasure.' Frey was trying to peer through the lashing rain that assaulted his craft. It was almost pitch black out there. Thick clouds cloaked the glow of the moon. They were flying without lights. 'I can't see for buggery, Jez.'

'Then they can't see us, either. I thought that was the point?'

'Just tell me if I'm going to fly into anything.'

'Will do, Cap'n.'

Frey wasn't enjoying himself one bit. People avoided the Flashpan for a reason. It was an area of boggy moorland that sat at high altitude just east of the Splinters and north of the Vardenwood. Innocuous enough, except for the near-constant storms that raged here. Some unlucky trick of the geography, apparently. Something to do with warm, moist air from the south mixing with freezing air coming the other way. Jez had explained it to him, but he hadn't listened very hard. He'd been too busy shitting himself at the prospect of the battle to come.

They were going up against the Delirium Trigger.

By the time Frey and Crake had got back from the Thade estate, they were already cutting it fine if they hoped to intercept Dracken and the barque she was escorting. Frey held a hasty discussion with Grist, and they headed off immediately afterwards. Their plan wasn't the tactical masterpiece Frey would have preferred, but it would have to do. They didn't have anything better.

The Storm Dog was a beast of an aircraft, but even so, Frey wasn't sure she could go toe-to-toe with the Delirium Trigger. What they needed was the element of surprise. Not easy when their targets would be flying across open grassland.

But if it was at night, in the middle of a terrific storm? It was possible to sneak up on them that way. But first they had to find them.

The problem was, the aircraft they were searching for would be running without lights. Nobody flew the Flashpan unless they didn't want to be found. According to the Grand Oracle, the Awakeners' lives were being made miserable by the Navy lately. Archduke's orders, no doubt. Awakener craft were boarded and searched wherever they were encountered. It wasn't that the Navy expected to find anything; it was just to piss them off. But the Awakeners couldn't risk their precious Mane sphere being found by the Navy, so they were sneaking across the Flashpan at night. In the dark and rain, they were all but invisible.

Not to Jez, though. If anyone could spot them, Jez could.

While she scanned the horizon, Frey concentrated on maintaining course and keeping a safe altitude. The wind jostled the Ketty Jay about, making her groan and rumble. He was flying by his instruments, since vision was almost zero except when a flash of lightning lit up the land. He kept a wary eye on the rock masses that hulked out of the moors below him, half-expecting one of them to loom up into his path.

To calm his nerves, he ran over what he'd learned from the Grand Oracle, hoping to get one step ahead of the game. Pomfrey had been forthcoming about the details of how the Awakeners intended to transport the sphere, but Frey had been left frustrated in other areas. When he asked the Grand Oracle what the Awakeners intended to do with the power source from a Mane dreadnought, Pomfrey had only looked confused.

Frey had prompted him. Were they planning to sell it? Perhaps they wanted to make a deal with the Archduke, a trade in return for freedom from further persecution? Or did they have designs on building an invincible fleet of their own?

The Grand Oracle had seemed mystified. 'What power source?'

At that moment, several people had entered the parlour, and Crake had been forced to wrap it up quickly, commanding the Grand Oracle to remember nothing of the conversation.

But Frey remembered.

What power source?

Grist had lied to him. It wasn't a power source at all. So what exactly was it?

Whatever that son of a bitch was up to, he still wasn't being straight with Frey. And Frey was damned if he'd be mucked around like that.

Once they located their targets, it would be the Storm Dog's job to deal with the Delirium Trigger. The Ketty Jay was far too small to handle her. Instead, she'd go after the Awakener barque, to capture its cargo. The Mane sphere.

As soon as they had that, Frey was going to run for it. Forget Grist and his secrets. Whatever that thing was, Frey was having it, and Grist could go hang. He'd work out later what to do with it.

Some things are worth riskin' every thin' for, Grist had said. But what was it he was after? What was worth that much?

'Doc!' he called through the cockpit door. 'Are they still with us?'

'Wait a sec!' Malvery called back from the gunnery cupola. There was a flash of lightning and a tearing sound overhead.¹ Storm Dog's right on our tail, Cap'n!'

Frey stared out into the night. The cockpit lights had been doused, except for dim night-flying bulbs on the dash to illuminate the instruments. Another flash of lightning showed him the Firecrow and Skylance, flying some distance below them, as Frey had instructed. A lightning strike wouldn't affect the Ketty Jay or the Storm Dog, but smaller craft had a tendency to explode that way. The Storm Dog's outflyers were safely stashed in a hangar in her belly, but that wasn't an option on the Ketty Jay, which was less than a tenth her size. Instead, he used his craft to shelter his pilots as best he could, hoping it would soak up the lightning.

'Harkins. Pinn. Everything alright?' he asked.

'Darker than a miner's arsehole down here,' came Pinn's reply through his earcuff. 'Otherwise, fine.'

Jez had suggested that they might give an earcuff to Grist, to better coordinate the attack, but Frey had flatly refused. The earcuffs were a secret that only the crew of the Ketty Jay shared. A little stroke of genius from Crake. It gave them an advantage that other crews didn't have. He wasn't sharing that with an untrustworthy bastard like Grist.

He hunched forward in his seat, searching the darkness. 'Where are you, Trinica?' he muttered. 'Where'd you go?'

Trinica. In among all his other problems, there was Trinica. Why did she need to get involved? Why did it have to be her who robbed him on Kurg? If it had been anybody else he might have given up, cut his losses and parted company with Grist. But he couldn't take the humiliation, not from her.

He found himself thinking of this operation more and more in terms of Trinica. It was her he was beating. Maybe he couldn't take her on himself, but it was his plan, his effort that had set up the ambush. It would be him that ended up with the prize. Maybe the Storm Dog would shoot her down, or maybe she'd shoot down Grist. As long as they kept each other busy for long enough, he couldn't care less. But he'd like to see the look on her face when she realised who'd done her over.

'Cap'n,' said Jez. She craned forward and narrowed her eyes. 'Contact.'

Frey sat up. 'You see them?'

Jez looked for a few more moments. 'Bearing two-eighty-five, heading across us to the east.'

Frey thumped the dash in excitement. 'Alright, we're on!' he announced. 'Harkins, Pinn, hit the deck. Stay low, and listen to Jez for course corrections. We're heading up into the clouds.'

'Can we shoot at them this time, Cap'n?' Pinn asked. He was still sore about their last encounter, when they were bested by yokels flying mail planes and cropdusters.

'Unless you can think of some other way of blowing them out of the sky.' Frey replied.

Pinn whooped. 'Watch out, boys! It's dyin' time!' he yelled. Frey presumed he was addressing the enemy.

'Crazy idiot,' Harkins said under his breath, loud enough for everyone to hear.

'Meow,' said Pinn.

'Shut up! You shut your fat yap!' Harkins snapped. Dumb as Pinn was, he was very accurate when it came to hitting a nerve.

'Both of you shut up,' said Frey. 'I want you coming back alive. Remember, as soon as we've got the sphere on board, you break off and fly like your tails are on fire. We'll meet up at Osken's Bar in Westport. Got it?'

'Got it, Cap'n,' said Harkins.

'Meow,' said Pinn.

'That's it!' Harkins shrieked. 'I've had just about enough from you, you, you ignorant piece of—'

Frey pulled his earcuff off and tossed it on to the dash. He pinched the bridge of his nose, where his headache had focused. He didn't need this on top of a hangover and a sleepless night.

'Taking us up,' he said. He fed more aerium into the tanks and the Ketty Jay rose towards the clouds. 'Doc! Tell me if we lose the Storm Dog, okay?'

'Right-o!' came the reply. Frey heard the unmistakable sound of a bottle being swigged.

'Are you drinking up there, Doc?'

'There's a quarter-inch of windglass between me and five crillion volts of lightning, Cap'n. You'll forgive me if I take a nip, eh?'

Frey thought that was fair enough, so he kept quiet. As long as Malvery could still shoot straight. He wasn't exactly a crack shot with an autocannon, but Crake was worse, and Frey couldn't spare anyone else. Silo needed to concentrate on keeping the engine running. He still didn't have the parts he needed to fix it properly, so he was forced to do the best he could with what he had.

The black clouds swallowed them up. Once they were far enough in, Frey flicked on the tail-lights to give the Storm Dog something to follow. Jez went back to her charts and began plotting the trajectory of their targets based on their speed and direction. Frey found it rather impressive that she'd divined that information from many kloms away on a dark, rainy night, but he was used to being impressed by Jez. He took it for granted nowadays.

'Adjust to two-seventy,' she said. Frey did so. Winds shoved the Ketty Jay this way and that. Frey bullied her back on course. He dumped some aerium to lend them weight and stability. Lightning flickered, muffled by the clouds. Thunder detonated all around them.

Frey gripped the flight stick, shoulders tense, and trusted to Jez to get them where they were going.

'Two points to starboard,' Jez said.

Frey adjusted. An odd feeling of unreality had setded on him. Flying through this black churn of wind and rain and flickering light, the air charged and taut, he could almost believe that he'd slipped into another world entirely. He picked up the earcuff from the dash and clipped it back on. Suddenly, he needed to be connected to something familiar, something outside the storm.

'Anyone see anything?' he asked Harkins and Pinn.

'No, Cap'n,' said Harkins, who was in a sulk.

'Me, neither,' said Pinn.

'Keep your eyes peeled,' Frey advised. 'You won't see them till you're right on top of them.'

'What was that?' Pinn cried suddenly. Frey jumped in alarm.

'What? What?' Harkins was already panicking.

'Something went flying past me in the dark,' Pinn said. 'Missed me by a whisker.'

It took Harkins a long moment to get it. 'You rancid bastard, Pinn!'

'Meow,' Pinn said.

Harkins erupted in a barrage of incoherent swear words. Frey looked over his shoulder at Jez and grinned. Jez shook her head in despair.

The Ketty Jay was battered and flung in every direction, but she'd ridden out plenty of storms before. Frey kept her under control, dealing with the jinks and dips with practised skill. Malvery yelled periodic reports, to the effect that the Storm Dog was keeping pace with them. Jez offered course corrections now and again.

Frey tried to concentrate on the journey, not the destination. His nerves were jangling, and not just from the electricity in the atmosphere. Pinn was the only one among them looking forward to the prospect of a dogfight. Anyone with any sense was scared silly.

'I see 'em!' Pinn cried suddenly. 'Dead ahead!'

'He's right!' Harkins said. Their differences were immediately forgotten. 'I saw them ... er ... in a flash! Of lightning!'

'Dead ahead, Cap'n,' said Jez. Frey thought he detected a slight edge of self-satisfaction in her voice. 'Three kloms, I make it.'

'Nice work,' said Frey. Jez had put them right on top of their enemy, plotting their course by dead reckoning, based on a glance from kloms away. The woman was phenomenal.

Now it was his turn. He killed the Ketty Jay's tail-lights: a signal to the Storm Dog.

'Brace yourselves, everyone!' he yelled. 'Dive! Dive! Dive!'

Black clouds flurried at the windglass as the Ketty Jay dove through the clouds. Frey sat hunched over the flight stick, heart thumping in his ears. The cockpit rattled and shook all around him. An unfamiliar and distressing whine had developed in the engines, but it was too late to worry about that now. Too late to do anything but press forward.

The clouds tattered and fluttered away, and there below were the rolling moors of the Flashpan, lit by a stunning blast of lightning. The Delirium Trigger was beneath and ahead of them, huge and black and terrible, its deck and flanks spiky with cannons. Frey felt a little bit of sick jump into his throat at the sight. It was shadowing a double-hulled barque, several times the size of the Ketty Jay but still dwarfed by its escort.

'Storm Dog's breaking through the cloud behind us, Cap'n!' Malvery yelled from the cupola. 'If I were you I'd get out of the way!'

Good advice, thought Frey. He rolled the Ketty Jay to starboard, swooping out of the Storm Dog's line of fire, and angled towards the barque. His guns couldn't scratch a frigate like the Delirium Trigger, but they could certainly put a few holes in the Awakener craft.

'Open fire!' he called to Malvery. With exquisite timing, the Storm Dog picked that moment to unleash her battery of cannons in a deafening barrage.

The Delirium Trigger was taken completely by surprise. A chain of explosions ripped across her hull and deck, blooms of flame lighting her up against the rain and the dark. The force was enough to knock her off course and she went yawing and tipping to port. Frey grinned savagely as he imagined the panic and shock belowdecks. Surrounded by open terrain, when they thought they were all but invisible, they must have believed themselves safe from ambush. But Frey had proved otherwise.

Didn't see that one coming, did you, Trinica?

The Storm Dog thundered past the Ketty Jay as Frey went to take care of his own target. Grist was moving into position between the Delirium Trigger and the barque, to block her off and give Frey time to work. The Delirium Trigger would have her cannons in action in moments. She was wounded but far from finished.

The barque was slower to react to the attack. It continued on its course as if oblivious, widening the gap between itself and its escort. It was long and thin, the stern end boxy and stout with stubby fins sticking out to either side to serve as mounts for her ailerons. The foremost two-thirds of the craft was split along its length, giving it the look of a twin-bladed bayonet. A Dakkadian bayonet, like the one Frey had taken in the guts back in Samaria. The memory made Frey's stomach cramp unpleasantly.

He craned forward to see through the rain on the windglass, his finger hovering over the trigger on the flight stick. The barque was a design he'd never come across, and he had nowhere to aim. Not that it bothered Malvery, who was blasting away on the autocannon with reckless abandon.

'Jez!' he snapped urgently. 'You ever seen this kind of craft before?'

'It's a Kedson Harbinger, Cap'n.'

'Any idea where the aerium tanks are?'

'Two on each side, port and starboard. One about ten metres back from the bow, one beneath the ailerons.'

'I could kiss you.'

'I'd rather you didn't. Allsoul only knows where that mouth's been.'

The barque loomed closer. It still hadn't showed any sign of reacting to the surprise attack. Slow crew, badly trained. That was good. They weren't pirates and they weren't Navy. What did Awakeners know about aerial combat?

Frey heard a bellow of cannon to port, and the night was lit by fire: the Storm Dog and the Delirium Trigger were engaging each other in earnest. He ignored them, hoping he was beneath their notice. In this visibility, with all that was going on, the Delirium Trigger probably didn't even know the Ketty Jay was there.

He adjusted his approach, aiming his machine guns for the aerium tanks on the barque's stern end. Shoot out the aerium tanks, and the craft would lose buoyancy and sink. Once they brought it down, it would be easy pickings.

'Steady,' he muttered to himself. 'Steady.'

A stutter of lightning lit up his target.

Not yet . . . not yet. . .

He pressed down on his guns, and at the same moment, the night exploded.

It was like being swatted by a giant. The Ketty Jay was thrown sideways, machine guns raking wildly along the flank of the barque. Frey was flung about in his seat and Jez almost fell out of hers. Pipes shrieked and burst out in the corridor, spraying gas and fluid everywhere. There was the sound of shattering glass and Malvery came tumbling down the ladder that led to the cupola. He crashed in a heap at the bottom, accompanied by a squall of wind and rain.

Frey had just about enough sense to pull the Ketty Jay aside in time to avoid ramming the side of the barque. They shot past on the aft side, passing through the backwash of the engines. The Ketty Jay was lifted and blasted aside, rolling crazily, engines coughing as they threatened to stall.

Don't die on me, girl! Frey begged his aircraft as he wrestled to stop her flipping entirely. Jez hung on to her seat for dear life. Malvery was sent skidding down the corridor on his back, bellowing like a bewildered walrus. Frey could hear distant machine guns, and saw tracer fire gliding past him in the night from the direction of the barque. A moment later, a dozen sharp, punching impacts echoed through the Ketty Jay.

'You never told me the damn thing was armed!' Frey screamed at Jez.

'I didn't think I needed to!' she screamed back. 'I thought you'd be expecting a little resistance!'

'Well, you thought wrong!'

'Well, you're an idiot!' she replied. Then, respectfully, 'Cap'n.'

By now Frey had fought the Ketty Jay level, and the engines were settling down. They raced away from the barque and the Delirium Trigger, slipping safely out of range. Frey's hands were trembling. A freezing hurricane was blowing through the cockpit from the corridor. The cupola was smashed, and rain from outside lashed the passageway.

'Doc! Are you alright?' Frey called through the door of the cockpit.

Malvery was piled against the engine room door in a position that had to be painful. 'Just about, Cap'n,' he wheezed.

'Damage report,' Frey ordered.

'Cuts and bruises. Bashed my knee pretty bad. I've felt better.'

'Not you. The aircraft.'

'Oh. Right-o,' said Malvery. 'I'll ask Silo, shall I?'

'Would you?'

Malvery' untangled himself and headed into the engine room while Frey turned the Ketty Jay.

'Delirium Trigger's putting out her fighters, Cap'n,' said Pinn in his ear. 'Storm Dog too.'

'Get in there,' said Frey. 'Make sure none of them come after me.' He turned to look at Jez, who was arranging herself in her seat again. 'Okay. This time we do it right.'

The aerial battlefield swung into sight as he brought the Ketty Jay around for a second run at the barque. The Delirium Trigger and Storm Dog glided past each other in different directions, slow leviathans, their cannon batteries flashing. Gouts of yellow flame erupted from their hulls; slabs of armour buckled and wheeled away into the storm. The Delirium Trigger's outflyers - Norbury Equalisers, fast and deadly - were spraying from her hangars, emerging to meet the Storm Dog's ragtag squadron of heavier fighter craft. Lightning flickered and thunder shattered the air.

Frey couldn't see Harkins or Pinn in the mix. They'd be waiting for their moment to dart in and hit the Equalisers. Satisfied that the Delirium Trigger and her outflyers were fully occupied, Frey turned his attention back to the barque.

The Awakeners, foolishly, were making a run for it. Perhaps frightened by the sudden appearance of the Storm Dog, they'd boosted their thrusters and opened up distance between themselves and the Delirium Trigger. Maybe they believed they could lose themselves in the storm and escape, leaving their escort behind. But all it did was rob them of their best defence.

Frey closed in on them. This time, he took an evasive pattern, rolling and diving as he approached. A blast of artillery rattled the Ketty Jay, but it didn't come close enough to trouble them. The heavy machine guns fared little better. Tracer fire slipped out of the dark from the turrets on the back of the barque, but it waved about wildly and never got a fix. Now that he was moving around instead of coming in straight, they couldn't draw a bead on him.

'Engines weren't hit, Cap'n!' Malvery shouted from down the passageway. 'Rot knows where we took the bullets, but if you can't feel it in the controls then Silo says not to worry. We probably won't know until we explode.'

Frey barely heard him. He was focused only on his target.

Gunfire came at him from several turrets, but he slipped between it. He headed for the aerium tank at the end of the barque's port prong. With the autocannon out of commission, he only had the nose-mounted machine guns to work with. The trick was to graze the tank, causing a slow leak that would force the pilot to land the craft. But Frey was angry and shaken up, and not in the mood to be subtle. He squeezed the trigger hard, and kept it down. His machine guns didn't so much graze the tank as rip it apart.

The Ketty Jay dove underneath the barque as it vented a pungent cloud of aerium gas. Frey smelt it on the cold wind that whipped around the cockpit and blew his hair against his face. The barque slid through the sky overhead, metal groaning as it tilted. The sudden weight on its port side was pulling it down.

Malvery stumbled into the cockpit, holding on to his glasses with one hand. 'Silo says go easy! Don't tax the engines too much!'

'She'll hold,' Frey said, through gritted teeth. 'Shut the door.'

Malvery hauled the door to the cockpit shut, closing out the wind from outside. Sporadic machine-gun fire followed the Ketty Jay as Frey pulled her around for another pass. The battle between the frigates was in full swing. Their fleets were dogfighting in the space between and around them. Frey caught flickering glimpses of combat, punctuated by occasional explosions that pushed back the blackness for a moment. He heard Pinn's whoops in his ear, and Harkins' cowardly gibbering. They were still in one piece, then. He took heart from that.

The barque was in trouble. It was still moving at full speed, kloms away from its escort, but it couldn't pull itself level and was flying aslant. At this distance, there would be no help from the Delirium Trigger. Its guns were having trouble aiming at anything as the pilot fought to correct the uneven weight of the twin hulls. Tracer fire burned away in all directions, but the artillery cannon had gone silent. Its operator knew that accuracy was impossible until the craft was under control, and had decided not to waste the ammo.

'Got you now, you son of a bitch,' Frey murmured. He raced in, heedless of the gunfire, aiming for the starboard bow tank. A small voice of caution told him that he was supposed to be bringing this craft down gently, but he'd been scared by the barque's surprise attack and he wanted it out of commission, fast. He closed in and yawed to starboard, his machine guns clattering as they punched holes all along the barque's hull. His touch was lighter this time, but not by much.

Frey couldn't see the gas that spewed from the rupture, but he could see the effect. The barque's bow tilted downwards, the push of its thrusters driving it towards the ground. The pilot fought to compensate, but to no avail. The craft was too big and too clumsy.

The pilot airbraked as much as they could on the way down. Somehow they got the bow almost level, so it came in low and flat, like a skimmed stone. Lightened by all the aerium in its stern tanks, the impact wasn't as hard as its size would suggest, but it was still catastrophic. It hit the ground with a wail of metal, ploughing through the soft earth, rending a trench across the moors. Its double bow buckled and split. One of the prongs snapped off altogether. Its underside came away in shreds. An explosion tore through its flank, sending girders and armour plate wheeling through the night.

Finally, after what seemed an age, it came to a halt in the shadow of a rocky outcrop. Crippled, wrecked, but mostly whole.

Malvery whistled. 'Nice one. Cap'n!" he exclaimed, amazed by the scale of the destruction.

'I'm just glad he left enough of it for us to rob,' Jez said.

'I brought it down, didn't I?' Frey said. He looked at Malvery. 'Go get Crake and Silo and tool up. We're boarding that thing. I want that sphere.'

'Right-o,' said Malvery. He made for the door, but Frey stopped him.

'Oh, Malvery? One more thing. Tell Crake to wake up Bess. We're gonna need her good and angry.'