The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [5]
Frey felt secure enough to make an obscene gesture at his pursuers. “Thought you had me, didn’t you? Well, let’s see you yokels fly!” He slumped back in his seat as they cleared the treetops. Deep relief sank into his bones.
Jez got up from the navigator’s station and stood next to him, staring into the night sky with sudden and worrying intensity. Frey followed her gaze.
There were several small, dark shapes in the distance, coming closer.
“Tell me those aren’t what I think they are,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Jez. “It’s the villagers. They’ve got planes.”
A RAMSHACKLE SQUADRON—TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES—A MOMENT OF CLARITY—THE FRUITS OF PERSISTENCE
rey stared out of the cockpit at the dim shadows of the approaching planes. He was getting toward the end of his tether. The paltry amount of money he’d stolen from the orphanage could not be worth this level of aggravation.
“Planes,” he said, in the dull tone of one perilously close to going berserk. “Jez, explain to me how come a bunch of backward country folk have their own air defense force.”
Jez narrowed her eyes. “Crop dusters modified for fighting forest fires. Mail planes for local deliveries. Personal fliers. There’s a small cargo craft in there. Some of them are prop-driven.” She counted. “There’s eight of them in all.”
“Propellers?” Frey scoffed. “Any of them have guns?”
“Not that I can see. Some of them are open-cockpit two-seaters, though. The passengers have rifles.”
Frey could barely make out the shape of the aircraft at this distance and in this light. But it was no surprise to him that Jez could see every detail. Her eyesight was, literally, inhuman.
He glanced at his navigator. She looked like a normal young woman. Very normal, he thought uncharitably, since his habit was to only pay attention to the pretty ones. She wore practical, shapeless overalls and kept her brown hair in an unflattering ponytail. But she was more than she appeared to be. Frey had made it his business not to think about what she actually was, but the fact that she had no heartbeat was a pretty hefty clue that something wasn’t quite right.
Still, all of them had their secrets, and on the Ketty Jay you didn’t ask. She was an outstanding navigator and as loyal as you could want. She was the only other person aboard who was allowed—or indeed able—to fly his beloved aircraft in his absence. That decision had taken a lot of trust on Frey’s part. Trust didn’t come easily to Frey. But she’d been on the Ketty Jay for more than a year now, and she’d never let him down.
In the end, it didn’t matter what she was. She was crew.
Frey fired up the prothane engines and swiveled the craft, presenting her stern to the approaching planes. “They really think they’re going to catch us in those junkers?” he said. “Let’s show ’em what a real aircraft can do.” Jez braced herself against the back of his seat as he lit up the thrusters.
The expected acceleration didn’t come. The boom of ignition was far feebler than Frey was used to hearing. At first the Ketty Jay didn’t move at all, struggling to shift her own weight. When she began to push forward, it was like moving through treacle. The clearing full of angry villagers slid away beneath them, but not half as fast as Frey would have liked.
“Silo wasn’t joking about the engines,” he murmured.
“You ever heard him joke about anything?”
“Suppose not.” He leaned back in his seat and bellowed out the cockpit door, “Malvery! Get up here!”
The Ketty Jay was picking up speed but far too slowly. There was a silver earcuff lying in an ashtray set into the brass-and-chrome dash, between the dials and meters. He snatched it up and clipped it to the back of his ear.
“Harkins. Pinn. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Cap’n, I’m, er, you startled me a bit, I mean, loud and, erm, I can hear you, yes,” came Harkins’s babbled reply.
It sounded as if he was standing right next to Frey, instead of