The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [4]
The Ketty Jay loomed before them, dwarfing the two single-seater fighter craft parked nearby. Frey had long ceased to see her with a judgmental eye. He’d never have called her beautiful, but she wasn’t ugly to him either. After fifteen years she was so familiar that he no longer noticed her squat, hunched body, her stub tail, or her ungainly bulk. He knew her too well for appearances to matter. That wasn’t something Frey could often say about a female.
Harkins, Jez, and Crake stood before her, shotguns and pistols in their hands.
“Get to stations!” Frey panted as he entered the clearing. “Harkins! Pinn! Up in the sky, right now.”
Harkins jumped as if stung and fled toward one of the fighter craft, a Firecrow with wide, backswept wings and a bubble of windglass on its snout. Pinn lurched off toward the other: a Skylance, a sleek racing machine, built for speed.
“We heard gunfire,” said Jez, as Malvery and Frey approached, soaking and bedraggled. She eyed the doctor, who was unsuccessfully trying to catch his breath. “Has he been shot or something?”
Malvery’s retort was little more than an irate wheeze. He staggered off toward the cargo ramp on the Ketty Jay’s far side.
“Robbing the children didn’t go to plan, then?” Crake asked the captain, one eyebrow raised.
Frey shoved the lockbox full of coins into Crake’s hands. “It went well enough. Where’s Silo and Bess?”
Crake regarded the leaking lockbox disapprovingly. “Silo’s in the engine room, trying to fix the problems we had on the way over here. Bess is asleep in the hold. Should I wake her?”
“No. Get on board. We’re going. Last one in, shut the cargo ramp.”
He spared a moment to check on his outfliers before boarding the Ketty Jay. The Firecrow and the Skylance were rising vertically from the clearing as their aerium tanks flooded with ultra-light gas. Satisfied they were on their way, he ran up the ramp.
Malvery was beached and gasping just inside the hold, surrounded by a large puddle. Frey paid him no attention. Nor did he spare a glance for the hulking metal form of Bess, standing dormant and dark by the stairs. She’d long ceased making him uneasy.
He sprinted up the steps to the main passageway. It was cramped and dimly lit, the cockpit at one end and the engine room at the other, with doors to the crew’s quarters and Malvery’s tiny infirmary between them. Hydraulics whirred as the cargo ramp closed, sealing the aircraft.
He pushed into the engine room, a small space cluttered by black iron gantries, allowing access to all parts of the complex assembly overhead. It was warm and smelled of machinery. Frey cast around for signs of his engineer, but the only crew member in sight was Slag the cat, a scraggy clump of black fur, watching him from an air vent.
“Silo! Where are you?”
“Up here, Cap’n,” came the reply, although Frey still couldn’t see him. He guessed his engineer was working around the other side of the assembly. The Ketty Jay, like most aircraft, had two separate sets of engines: aerium for lift and prothane for thrust. Both were tangled together in this room in a confusing jumble of pipes, tanks, and malevolent-looking gauges.
“Are we ready to go?” Frey asked, addressing the room in general.
“Wouldn’t advise it, Cap’n.”
“Can she fly?” he persisted. “It’s a bit urgent, Silo.”
A short pause. “Yuh,” he said at last. “Gonna fly like a slug though.”
“That’ll do,” said Frey, and pelted out of the engine room, his feet squishing in his boots.
Jez was already at the navigator’s station when Frey bundled into the cockpit and threw himself into his seat.
“Destination?” she asked.
“Up,” he replied, and boosted the aerium engines to maximum. The Ketty Jay groaned and shrieked as her tanks filled. Frey leaned forward and peered through the windglass of the cockpit. The first of the villagers had reached the clearing now, but they were too late. The Ketty Jay was dragging herself off the ground and into the air.
Some of them aimed rifles and tried to fire, but their weapons were still too wet to work. One of them made a suicidal dive for the Ketty