The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [177]
It came down to a choice. Between the man she knew and the thousands she didn’t.
“Ten.”
All those people. Because I’m a Mane. I should have died back there in the snows that day.
But she hadn’t. And that was part of her now. For better or worse.
“Five.”
She gave up her resistance. The sphere took her like a flood. The trance was almost instantaneous. Between blinks, the world turned to a hyper-real twilight. Her senses became superhumanly clear. She could hear guns firing in the hangar, a sound that had been muffled by the rock until now. Something was up. Bess was awake. She could hear her footsteps.
“Four.”
But whatever help might come, it would come too late to stop Frey being maimed. And she wouldn’t allow that.
“Three.”
The silver lines on the sphere glowed with a spectral light, beaming out from within. Crattle stopped counting. He stared, entranced.
Then there was a terrible shriek, a hurricane of sound that tore through the room and blasted her senses white.
And, with that, it began.
NO ORDINARY STORM—BEDLAM IN THE SANCTUM—FREY’S AUTHORITY
arkins clutched the shotgun tight as he came down the stairs into the cargo hold of the Ketty Jay. He was trembling with fear and an awful, nauseous excitement. Every shadow could be the one hiding his enemy. Part of him dreaded the sight of that damned despicable cat. Another part—the voice that sometimes got defiant when there was nobody around to challenge it—was hoping Slag would show his face after all. A squeeze of the trigger, a bloody puff of fur, and all his troubles would be over.
Oh, who was he kidding? The noise alone would probably scare him witless. He’d deliberated for a long time between pistol and shotgun, on that basis. In the end, he’d picked the one that most suited his shooting style. He always closed his eyes and cringed away whenever he fired at someone, so accuracy was impossible. The shotgun was louder, but the scatter effect made it a bit more likely that he’d actually hit something.
He swallowed and made himself go down the stairs. Crates and boxes and vents: all possible ambush points. He wished he hadn’t come aboard at all. But he had to get a gun. That was the thing. He had to get a gun to save Jez.
He’d sat with his heart in his mouth, listening via Crake’s daemonic earcuff to the gunfight at Grist’s warehouse. He thrilled every time she spoke. She was so strong, so capable. He imagined himself battling alongside her, grim-faced, felling guards with a keen aim. And after they’d won, she’d be kind to him. She’d offer soothing words and encouragement, the way she sometimes did.
But then he’d heard the hangar doors slamming. Jez’s voice. “It’s a trap!” And he knew they were betrayed.
After that, there was little more than a garble. The earcuffs had been taken off them, it seemed. The signal, weak at this distance, became weaker still. Sounds were muffled. It was hard to tell what was going on. Once in a while he heard voices he knew. The Captain’s, for one. And Jez. Sweet Jez.
She was still alive. She was in trouble. And he was the only one who could help her.
The past month had been hard on him. He’d spent the majority of it in the Firecrow’s cockpit. It would have been easier if they hadn’t been hopping around towns in the arctic, but the Firecrow had no heating when the engines weren’t running, so he spent his nights cocooned in blankets, shivering. Harkins wasn’t a reader—in fact, he didn’t do much of anything except fly—so a large proportion of his time had been spent staring into space and thinking of nothing. The need to relieve himself drove him out now and then. He’d head into whatever town was nearby and use what facilities he could find. His contact with the crew was minimal. The only person he saw with any regularity was Jez, who brought him his meals.
He’d looked forward to those visits with a mixture of anticipation and