The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [200]
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 following after. It was a private communication, from Jez to him.
Nice work, hero.
Harkins was so happy he thought he might die.
THE VORTEX—JEZ READS THE WIND—AMONG THE DEAD
he 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 all over the desk of the navigator’s station.
The cockpit was dark, lit only by occasional blasts of brightness from outside. Gray 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 all been shocked by Harkins’s display of bravery, how he’d faced down the dreadnought. Nobody had thought him capable of that, least of all 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. Following the Storm Dog into the maelstrom seemed like less and less of a good idea with every passing minute.
Jez felt as if she was emerging from a daze. Activating the Mane sphere had been like a hammer blow to her mind. The energy released, the sheer force it took to tear open a rift to another place, was colossal. All those in the ancient sanctum had been stunned by the detonation, but Jez had caught it worse than the others. The sphere sent out a cry for help, loud enough to resonate across the planet, to jar the senses of Manes everywhere. Unbraced and unpracticed at dealing with her new, inhuman awareness, she’d been overwhelmed.
Since then she’d been operating on automatic. Her faculties were all in place, but her Mane senses were deadened. Down in the streets of Sakkan, she’d killed Manes without compunction and felt nothing for the loss. She knew the Cap’n worried for her, but he needn’t have. There was no kind of tribal kinship there. She was part Mane, but she didn’t owe them loyalty. They’d press-ganged her. She hadn’t chosen to be one of them.
Now her Mane senses were recovering, and a new awareness was seeping in. She sensed something ahead: a vast, ominous presence, growing stronger as they plowed clumsily through the clouds. The Manes. They were going to where the Manes came from, and their nearness threatened her. She felt herself slipping into a trance.
No. Not now. You could lose yourself for good here.
But despite her best efforts, it was happening. She fought to resist, but it was all she could do to stop herself going under entirely.
She could sense the aircraft around her, like a living thing. She felt the shift and grind of its mechanisms, the stresses on its tortured joints. She could smell the fear coming off Crake and plot the swirl of the clouds that whipped at the windglass. The darkness didn’t affect her. She saw everything with uncanny definition.
Hold it back, she told herself. The temptation to let herself go, to allow herself to be subsumed in the daemon that shared her body, was terrible. Here, so close to the Manes, its pull was fierce.
But she wouldn’t let it win. Her crew needed her now. They needed Jez the navigator, cool and collected. Not a wild Mane in their cockpit.
The craft surged to port, hit an air pocket, and plunged. Frey hollered with amazed joy.
“What are you so happy about?” asked Crake, who was looking green.
Frey ignored him. “Doc!” he yelled through the