The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,97

Would he be able to fly, knowing she was at the navigator's station behind him?

The Imperator's head lay a short distance away. The smooth mask had come loose, and was hanging off. Frey walked over to it. 'Keep an eye out for any more Sentinels,' he told his crew.

'Cap'n,' said Malvery, a warning in his voice.

'I've dealt with these Imperator bastards before,' Frey said, as if that was an explanation. The truth was, he was angry. This was the second time he'd been unmanned by an Imperator, forced to cower in fear like a whipped dog. He wanted to see the face under the mask. Somehow, he thought it would lessen his fear of them.

He was wrong. When he pushed the mask aside with the barrel of his revolver, the face beneath was enough to make him recoil with a shout. The cheeks and eyes were sunken, irises yellow like a bird of prey. The mouth was stretched open as if in a scream, showing sharp, uneven teeth in receding gums. White, dry skin; the septum of the nose rotted away. It looked like something you'd uncover in a grave.

'Blimey,' said Malvery. 'Someone needs to eat their greens.'

Frey screwed up his face in disgust and looked closer. A stump of a tongue, cut out at the root, showed between cracked lips. There was only a spotting of blood on the floor, despite the brutal nature of the Imperator's death.

'That,' said Frey, 'is not natural.' He turned away and looked at Jez, who was hanging over Silo's shoulder. 'Can anyone enlighten me as to what in buggery just happened to my navigator, by the way?'

'She's a Mane,' said Crake, coughing. 'Partly, anyway. I suppose she wasn't fully infected.'

'You knew?'

'I guessed. Not long after she first came on board. No heartbeat, no need to eat, all of that. There've been other half-Manes, you know. They've come up in daemonist texts. Like I told you, there's always been a school of thought that said Manes were daemons. And really, what other explanation was there?'

'I was trying not to think about it too much, to be honest,' Frey said. 'I didn't think she was a Mane, though.'

'Because you lot don't know anything about them, outside of the drunken tales you hear in bars.'

'Fair comment,' said Malvery. 'We are a pretty thick bunch, all in all.'

'You're supposed to be a doctor,' Frey accused. 'That makes you smart.'

Malvery shrugged. 'I bring up the average. It still ain't great.'

'You do have Pinn on board,' Crake pointed out.

Frey waved his hands. 'Alright, alright! We'll sort this whole bloody mess out later. Malvery, you're with me. Crake, stay with Silo and Bess. Make sure nobody comes up behind us. Let's get what we came for and hoof it before Grist gets wind that we're planning to rob him.'

Beyond the barricade were scattered heaps of debris, and beyond them the corridor was aflame. Slicks of inflammable fluid sent up hazy curtains of black, foul-smelling smoke. Frey could dimly make out a doorway through the debris, uncomfortably close to the fire.

'You think that's where our sphere is?' Malvery coughed.

'One way to find out,' said Frey. He hurried through the steaming debris, his arm over his face to shield him from the heat. By the time he got to the doorway, it was too painful to be cautious, so he just ran right in and hoped nobody would shoot him.

The heat lessened to a tolerable degree once he was inside. It was a small store room, with shelves of chests and rolls of documents that were getting dangerously close to bursting into flame. A large lockbox in the centre stood open and empty.

Malvery hurried in after him, swearing as his moustache singed. He looked around the room, then grabbed Frey's arm and turned him.

'Wakey wakey, eh, Cap'n?' he said, pointing.

There was an elderly man huddled in the corner of the room, propped against the wall. Frey hadn't seen him. He was wearing Awakener robes, but they were not the white of the Speakers or the grey of the Sentinels, but crimson. That made him an Interpreter, according to Crake. Only one level below the Grand Oracles in the Awakeners' organisation. An important man, then.

A long brown beard tumbled over his chest, almost concealing the sphere he held in his bony hands. Blood ran from his nose and stained his lips. His eyes focused in and out uncertainly beneath the Cipher tattooed on his brow.

'Doesn't look good for him, Cap'n,' Malvery murmured. 'Probably