The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [201]
“Can’t see it,” came the reply. “Then again, I can’t see bugger all else either!”
Frey swooped the Ketty Jay to starboard. She bucked against the wind shear. Metal howled and something burst deep in her guts.
“Wind must have blown it clear! I can steer again!” Frey said.
“Well, can you stop steering?” Crake replied. “We were doing better before!”
Jez surged to her feet. “Cap’n,” she said. “Let me fly her.”
Frey was shocked by the request. He’d always guarded his place in the pilot seat jealously, and only ever let her fly when he wasn’t there to do it. She didn’t know the Ketty Jay’s quirks like he did.
“We’re breaking up, Cap’n,” she said urgently. “But I can ride the winds. I’ll get us through.”
He gave her a long stare.
“Let her try!” Crake urged him.
“Alright,” he said. He slipped out of the seat, his expression faintly resentful. Jez took his place, grabbed the stick, and closed her eyes.
There was an invisible swell coming up from beneath. She angled the wings and let them be carried on it. It should have been a battering ram against their hull. Instead, they were lifted firmly but steadily, like a swimmer on a wave.
“I can get us through,” she said again, and now she knew that she could.
The winds in the vortex were a labyrinth, a three-dimensional maze of turbulence. Jez saw it in her mind’s eye, all the impossible complexities laid out before her. She tracked changes in the currents as they began to happen, knots and valleys in the wind. By the time they reached her, she’d corrected their course to take advantage. She flew as birds flew, at home with the mysteries of the sky.
As she went, she sank further and further into the trance. Her entire concentration was focused on her task, and there was little left to resist the pull of the daemon inside her.
There were voices on the wind. Some called out, some screamed in pain, others murmured as they went about their industry. Drowning them all out was the alarm, the cry of the sphere, pulsing at her mind. It drew her with a primal urgency, like the wail of a newborn draws its mother. Its distress was her distress. Her brethren needed aid. She wanted to help.
The dreadnoughts were beginning to evacuate the Manes from Sakkan. She knew that, without knowing how. They covered for one another, beating back the beleaguered Navy, and let down their ropes for their crew to climb, bringing the newly Invited with them. The sphere was no longer in Sakkan, so they were gathering their people and preparing to give chase.
Even with Jez’s best efforts, the Ketty Jay’s passage through the clouds was violent. She couldn’t react fast enough to account for every variation in the vortex. The craft shivered and whined as she was pummeled from all sides.
But gradually the chaos eased, and the jolts came less often. Finally they reached still air, a featureless bank of gray cloud. Jez sat back in her seat, her expression vacant.
“You did it,” said Crake, after he’d swallowed a few times to get some moisture back into his throat.
“Nice work, Jez,” said Frey. “Bloody nice work.” He got out of the navigator’s seat and slapped the bulkhead. “She’s a tough old boot, the Ketty Jay!”
“Cap’n,” said Jez, her eyes distant. “Cloud’s thinning out.”
A light was growing ahead of them, and the temperature had dropped noticeably. Frey and Crake pulled their coats closer around them and crowded up behind Jez. Their breath steamed the air, despite the Ketty Jay’s internal heating system.
The picture faded in gradually, until at last the land opened up before their eyes.
“Oh, my,” whispered Crake.
The haze in the air had diminished but not disappeared, giving the panorama a bleary, dreamlike quality. The sun shone, weak and distant, forcing the barest illumination through the shroud. Beneath them, a dim white world was laid out, an ocean of ice and snow as far as they could see. Cliffs surged abruptly into the sky at steep angles, as if they’d exploded up violently from beneath. Some lay splintered against one another,