The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [6]
“What’s up with the Ketty Jay?” asked Pinn. “Her thrusters are barely lit. Might as well strap a gas stove to her arse for all the acceleration you’re getting.”
“Technical difficulties,” Frey replied. “We’ve got incoming craft. They have a couple of rifles, that’s all. No real danger, but the Ketty Jay isn’t going to outpace them ’til she builds up speed. Keep them off me as best you can.”
“I’ll keep them off you, alright,” Pinn said eagerly. “I’ll—”
“And don’t shoot them down. I don’t want them madder than they already are.”
“We can’t shoot them down?” Pinn cried. “What are we supposed to do? Hypnotize them with fancy flying?”
“It’s a bunch of crop dusters and mail planes, Pinn,” Frey told him. “They’re not much of a threat, and I could do without the Navy coming after us. We’ve managed to stay beneath their notice since the whole Retribution Falls thing. I’d like to keep it that way. Let’s keep the needless slaughter to a minimum, eh?”
“You, Cap’n, are a pussy,” said Pinn.
“And you’re scared of water.”
“He’s scared of water?” Harkins crowed eagerly.
“Don’t you start, you jittery old git!” Pinn snapped. “You’re scared of everything.”
“Not water though,” Harkins replied, with an unmistakable note of triumph in his voice.
“Everyone shut up and fly!” said Frey, before they could get into an argument. Pinn subsided, grumbling.
The Ketty Jay had picked up a respectable amount of speed now. Malvery appeared at the door of the cockpit, still red-faced from his run earlier.
“You bellowed, Cap’n?”
“I need you up in the bubble. There’s planes on our tail. Don’t shoot at them unless I give the word.”
“Right-o,” said Malvery. He returned to the passageway and climbed the ladder that led to the autocannon cupola on the Ketty Jay’s hump. From there, he could act as Frey’s eyes astern. Frey wished there was a better way to see what was going on behind his craft while he was airborne, but if there was, he hadn’t found it yet.
“They’re catching us up, Cap’n,” Malvery reported. “You might want to go a bit faster.”
Frey swallowed his reply and concentrated on flying. The Vardenwood lay for hundreds of kloms in all directions. In the far distance he could see the grand city of Vaspine, a crown of lights on the highest hilltops. Below them was the forest, cut through with steep, sharp valleys that joined and divided haphazardly.
“What’s the plan, Cap’n?” Jez asked.
Frey hated being asked that, usually because he didn’t have an answer. “Well, they can’t really do much. They don’t have guns that can penetrate the Ketty Jay’s hull. Pinn and Harkins can stay out of their range. We just need a bit of time to pick up speed, then we’ll leave them behind.”
Jez returned to the navigator’s station and began looking at her charts. Frey watched Harkins and Pinn drop back behind the Ketty Jay, out of his line of vision.
“Er, one of them’s coming up on us awfully fast, Cap’n,” said Malvery. “Crop duster, by the looks.”
“Put a few warning shots across his bow,” Frey called. “Warning shots, Malvery.”
“Got it, Cap’n.” The autocannon thumped out a short burst.
“Hey, how come Malvery gets to shoot?” Pinn complained in Frey’s ear. Frey ignored him.
“Doesn’t seem to have done much good, Cap’n,” said Malvery from the cupola.
Frey pulled the flight stick sharply left. The Ketty Jay responded with an unsettling laziness.
“That didn’t do much either,” Malvery said. “He’s gonna pass over us.”
“You see any guns?”
“No.”
Frey frowned. He wasn’t quite sure what the pilot of that plane thought he was going to do to a craft the size of the Ketty Jay. He was still wondering when an avalanche of dust hit the windglass of the cockpit, and he found himself flying blind.
“Cap’n!” Malvery yelled. “I can’t see for buggery up here!”
“What in damnation just happened?” Frey panicked, wrestling with his flight