The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,68

everyone else, she was already different in a thousand little ways.

Her apologetic displays of knowledge intimidated her friends. She found herself frustrated by their lack of ambition. Her horizons had been expanded through literature, but theirs hadn't, and she couldn't understand how they could think so small. They were still friends, as they'd always been; but no matter how she tried, she was faintly alien to them now.

There was no help among the educated, either. They spotted her immediately, and despised her as a try-hard attempting to rise above her station. A few small friendships blossomed, but they could only survive in isolation, and circumstances eventually put an end to them.

She hardened herself to rejection. She embarked on adolescent romances, and found them as unsatisfying as her friendships had been. She always broke them off before her partner could.

Her father talked of university, but it was his dream and not hers. Someone like her didn't get into places like that. And even if she did, she'd never escape her birth. It would be just another round of being on the outside. So when the time came, she broke her father's heart and went off to see the world in the little A-18 he'd built for her sixteenth birthday. Out there, she'd find her place. Or if not, at least she'd be alone on her own terms.

Funny, how things turned out.

She walked out of sight of the men in the dell and picked her way through the trees to a likely looking rock, where she sat down. There, she pulled out a book and opened it. The writing was all circles and arcs. It still smelled of the captain's cabin in the dreadnought.

The patterns made no sense to her, but she stared at them anyway.

'Awakeners,' said Crake. 'I hate Awakeners.'

Frey wasn't too fond of them himself. It was the Awakeners that had been behind the attempt to frame him and his crew for the murder of the Archduke's eldest son. And now, if Crake's daemon was to be believed, they were behind the theft of Grist's mysterious power source.

He shifted uncomfortably on the ridge and angled the spyglass down at the Awakener's compound. It was a collection of grand buildings, the size of a small town, with the look of a sprawling university or an ancient library complex. A high wall surrounded it, studded with guard posts, overlooked by a clock tower that rose from the central quad. It sat on a bare island in the midst of a deep blue lake that ran the length of the valley. Next to it was a landing pad, upon which several aircraft sat dormant. Hovering at anchor over the lake was the dirty black bulk of the Delirium Trigger, spoiling the sense of idyll entirely.

Frey felt a surge of irritation and anger. What was Trinica doing, working for the Awakeners again? Hadn't she learned her lesson last time, after the whole debacle with Duke Grephen? She was probably already under sentence of treason because of that little affair. But she just had to get involved, didn't she? She had to get in his way. Just to spite him.

There was a bigger question here than Trinica's involvement, however. What interest did the Awakeners have in a crashed Mane aircraft? Why had they sent anyone at all?

He scanned the outer wall. Sentinels walked there, armed with rifles. They wore grey, high-collared cassocks and carried twinned daggers in their belts. On their breasts was the Cipher, the emblem of their faith, a tangled design of small, linked circles.

Huge lamps like lighthouses had been built on every corner, no doubt powered by generators inside the compound. Approaching unseen across the lake and the barren island would be impossible, whether by day or night.

Grist lay next to him, smoking angrily. 'You see a way in?'

'There isn't a way in,' Frey said.

'There's always a way in,' Grist replied.

Frey put down the spyglass. 'Well, I don't much fancy assaulting a heavily fortified compound with a handful of men, if that's what you're thinking. Might as well shoot each other now, save everyone a bit of time.'

'Can't we sneak inside?' suggested Crattle, raising his head to look over his captain at Frey.

'Even if we could, which we probably can't, what happens then?' Frey asked. 'Follow the arrows to the treasure? Look how big that place is. We'd need days to search it.'

'In disguise, then?' Crattle persisted.

'You'd be caught,' said Crake, who lay on Frey's other side. 'Without even a basic knowledge