The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,38
them at all. I don't know what they are.
She found a set of stairs and climbed them. Light grew as she neared the top, and she stepped into a long room. Six huge auto-cannons lay dormant before her, ranged along the port side of the hull. Grey daylight crept in through the open gunnery hatches in the dreadnought's flanks.
She approached the nearest autocannon. There was a seat for the operator mounted on the side, and a rusted control panel. She ran her hand over the seat, her fingertips scoring trails in the dust.
How do they live, these creatures? Do they argue, hope, love? What do they think? Do they think at all?
She pulled her hand away. Risky to even consider questions like that. The temptation was too great. She remembered the feeling of connection, of kinship, that she'd experienced when she was on the verge of turning. In that moment, she'd known how lonely and isolated she really was. How lonely all humans were. The Manes were linked, each one to every other. To be included in that was intoxicating.
It had been only the briefest of instants, but she'd never forgotten it. A moment of sight for a blind woman, before being thrown back into the dark. How could she not want more? And yet, what would be the price to get it? If she became a Mane, she wouldn't be human. If she was one of a collective, she wouldn't be an individual. She refused to be assimilated by anyone.
I am human, she thought, addressing the empty craft. Damn you for trying to make me otherwise.
She moved on, through the cannon bay. Beyond, she found a ladder leading to an upper deck, and climbed it. At the top was another slanted passageway, as chill and black as the others. Several doorways led off from it.
Protruding from one of them was an arm.
Jez stared at it. A forearm, visible up to the elbow, lay on the floor of the corridor. A torn, ragged sleeve. Yellowish, waxy skin. Long, cracked nails.
She went closer. The arm was attached to a body. The body lay in a room. And in that room . . .
There were dozens of them in there.
The room beyond the doorway had a large brass globe in the centre, showing the land masses of Atalon in obsidian relief. Beyond it was a porthole, overgrown with vines, but not enough to completely choke the daylight. There were charts on one wall, a desk, a bookcase. The books had been thrown from the shelves in the crash. Now they were scattered on top of the pile of Mane corpses that were heaped against one wall.
It was the captain's quarters. And there, among the pile, in a tatty greatcoat and boots, was the captain. Dead like the rest of them.
How can the dead die twice?
They'd lain here for decades. She knew that by the rainforest that grew around them. Yet they were perfectly preserved, as if they might get up and walk at any moment. The rot that infested the dreadnought hadn't touched them.
She stepped over the corpse in the doorway. It was similar to the one that had tried to turn her: human in appearance, but twisted. Yellow-red eyes stared, unfocused, from a wizened face. Sharp teeth were exposed in a snarl.
Some of the others were more hideous, others less so. Some had the look of monsters; some could have been human. One, even, was handsome, with a cold, eerie serenity to his face. Some wore rags; some were clad in motley armour. Some wouldn't have looked out of place on a street in Lapin; others wore fashions from times long past. There was not a mark of violence on them, except for the way they were heaped up on top of each other. As if they'd been thrown against a wall, limp and inanimate as the books that followed them.
The smell, that awful, comforting odour, was strong here. Dry and animal-like. The smell of the Manes.
She looked away from them. They were painful to see. Something about them inspired a sad ache in her chest.
They didn't even seem dead, not really. They'd just . . . stopped.
Her eyes fell on the books, scattered about the room, lying open, their pages bent. Some of them were in Vardic. Classics, many of which she'd read. Several were in Samarlan and Thacian, languages she recognised but couldn't speak. But most were in a script she'd never seen before.