The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [101]
There was a screech of metal, and Crake’s gaze went to Bess, who was pulling aside a girder that was in her way. She was not crippled by fear like the rest of them, it seemed, but only bewildered by the sudden end to the violence. Seeing the Imperator advancing on Frey, she went lumbering in to attack.
The Imperator held up a dismissive hand. Bess froze mid-stride and toppled over with a crash. She didn’t move again.
The sight was like a punch in the chest to Crake. He wanted to scream her name, but no noise would come. What had been done to her? Why wasn’t she moving? Had she been put to sleep, the way he put her to sleep with his thralled whistle? Or had she been extinguished, like a candle? The thought that he might forever lose the chance to save his niece, to atone for his crime—it was more than he could possibly suffer. If that was the case, he’d rather die now.
The Imperator turned his black gaze to Frey, pinning him like an insect. Frey rolled over on his back, whimpering. The Imperator put his boot to Frey’s chest and shoved him down. He leaned over his victim, knife raised.
A gunshot made Crake jump. The Imperator staggered sideways, clutching his shoulder. Another, knocking the black-clad figure back farther.
Jez, getting to her feet, pistol in her hand. Jez, and yet not Jez. There was a strange look to her now. Her usually pale face had gone paler still. Her hair hung lank, eyes dark, lips skinned back over her teeth, a snarl on her face. Something animal in the way she moved, slightly crouched. Feral.
The Imperator straightened. The bullets hadn’t harmed him. Jez pulled the trigger again, but the gun was empty. She tossed it aside, and as she did so, she flickered. One moment she was there, the next she was half a meter to her left, and the next she was back again. Quick enough to be a trick of the eye. But Crake saw it.
I knew it, he thought. I knew it all along.
The Imperator’s grip on Crake’s mind had weakened. The paranoia, the nameless horror, receded to bearable levels. In some distant, rational part of his mind, he found he recognized this feeling of horror that the Imperator inspired. In a strange way, it was familiar to him. He’d come across it before, to a lesser degree, in his experiments. It was the feeling of being close to something wrong. The body’s instinctive reaction to something not of this world.
What manner of man is this?
The Imperator backed away from Jez, blade in his hand. Frey scrambled off gratefully to cringe in a new hiding place. Jez prowled closer to the Imperator, her gaze fixed on him. Nothing physical had changed about her, but her aspect was different. Where once there had been a petite woman in a baggy jumpsuit, now there was something fearful. Something inhuman, alien. A creature that wore the shape of their navigator.
The Imperator was intimidated by her, his dark grandeur diminished. He readied his blade as she moved closer. Then, when she was close enough, he lunged.
Jez flickered. Suddenly she seemed to be in three places at once: before him, beside him, behind him, flitting from one position to the next in the time it took to blink an eye. The Imperator’s thrust hit nothing; Jez sprang onto him from his left, hands clutching the masked head. Her weight took him down to the ground. She smashed his skull twice against the floor, the second time accompanied by a grotesque crack. Then she tore his head off.
The effect was immediate. It was as if Crake had been gripped by an invisible hand squeezing his chest, and now it had been released. He gasped like a drowning man reaching the surface. Next to him, Silo was experiencing similar relief.
It had an effect on Jez too. She stood up and staggered backward, the Imperator’s head dangling from one hand. There was an expression of bewilderment on her face, a look of shock and fear. No longer was she the feral thing they’d seen a moment ago. Now she was small and scared. She stumbled for a few moments, and then her eyes rolled back and she fell to the ground.
Crake hung on to a girder, letting the strength