by James Axler
“Fireblast, we’ve been chasing each other around in circles!” Ryan growled angrily. “We need to find someplace to hide, and let them come to us.”
“Here!” Jak whispered, gesturing with his assault rifle.
Off to the side was a tilted door, the condition clearly indicating that the companions were dangerously near the section of the battleship that had compressed from the impact of the fall.
With Krysty and Jak standing guard on either flank, Ryan eased inside, then tossed his torch forward. It landed near a jumbled pile of tables and chairs.
“This must be the galley,” Krysty stated. “Can’t think of a better place to ace cannies.”
“That was our initial thought, too,” a woman said from the shadows.
Diving away from each other, the companions came up with their weapons primed.
“Damn, you’re fast,” a man said from within a pool of darkness. “Now don’t start blasting! I’d hate to be chilled by the very weapon I pulled out of the mud and helped clean.”
Travelers? “We don’t talk to shadows,” Ryan growled. “Now, step into the light, or I’ll chill you where you stand.”
A moment passed, then another.
“Fair enough, I suppose.” The man sighed.
There came the rustle of clothing, and two people appeared in the torchlight. The man was huge, heavily muscled, with callused hands that seemed made for killing. There was an AK-47 assault rifle cradled in his arms, the barrel tipped with a long bayonet, the razor-sharp edges blackened with candle soot.
Alongside him stood a woman, small and slim, with wide eyes and a generous mouth. She had a small automatic handblaster tucked in a canvas shoulder holster, a machete at her side, and a U.S. Mail bag slung across her chest.
If there were more people behind them, none came forward.
“Nice to see you folks up and around,” the man said, resting the assault rifle on a shoulder. “I’ll assume it was you chilling cannies that I heard earlier?”
“A question first,” Ryan said, the Steyr rock-steady in a two-handed grip. “How many animals are at the campsite?”
“Animals, or horses?” the woman asked in a rich, velvety voice.
“Don’t be a smartass, Nye,” the man scolded. “He wants to know if we’re cannies pretending to be norms, or the folks who pulled them out of the lake.”
“Oh, of course, Colonel,” Nye replied, hunching her shoulders in embarrassment.
“Colonel?” Jak asked.
“Colonel Cameron Fife, sec chief for Concord ville.” He waited for a reaction, and when none came the man continued. “Concord...Baron Linderholm?”
“Sorry, never heard of him,” Krysty said politely.
“Not from these parts, eh?” Fife observed, then jerked a thumb to the right. “Anyway, this is Jody-Lynn Nye, our chief healer.”
“The only healer!” she said defiantly.
“Same difference.”
Somewhere in the distance, a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the metal confines of the battleship until it sounded like an entire village of people was being horribly tortured to death.
“Ignore it,” Fife scoffed. “That’s just the cannies trying to lure us out of hiding.”
“Says you,” Ryan stated gruffly. “Last chance.”
Fife frowned, then accepted the rebuff. “Okay, we have eleven horses tethered at the camp,” he stated. “Plus, twenty oxen. Also, I left an old roan mare named Gertie tied to a willow tree near a hillock. She’s got white socks, a scar on her left ear, likes carrots and farts a lot. Good enough?”
“No,” Krysty said, still partially hidden behind the steel doorway. “Tell us about your food.”
“Clever,” Nye said with a slow smile. “The last thing a cannie would notice is the grub. Let’s see, we brought along fish, fish, fish and more fish. Plus, bread...with a little fish in it. That enough?”
“Almost,” Jak said. “If doc, what color eye under patch?”
Instinctively, Ryan touched the leather patch.
“Damn, you’re suspicious folks,” Fife grumbled.
“There is no eye,” Nye stated, a hand on her mailbag. “Just a hole. Looks like a knife wound. Done with a stiletto most likely. One stroke, from a left-handed norm. But I could be wrong.”
“You’re not,” Ryan said with a humorless smile, swinging away the Steyr. Then he offered a hand. “The name’s Ryan Cawdor, and this is Krysty Wroth and Jak Lauren.”
“Thanks for saving our lives,” Krysty said, lowering her blaster, but keeping it in her hand.
“Glad to help,” Fife said as they shook.
“Nice to finally have a name to the face I shaved,” Nye added, smiling sweetly.
“You did a good job, too,” Krysty stated, running a palm along Ryan’s cheek.
Taking the hint, Nye shrugged and looked away.
“Any more of you?” Ryan asked, returning to business.
“Just us,” Fife muttered, touching a bloody bandage on his arm. “Those damn darts got the rest of my people. I think some of them are still alive, but the rest...” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Try rescue with just two?” Jak asked incredulously.
The colonel shrugged. “At the moment, she’s all I have.”
“Besides, any decent healer also knows how to chill,” Nye stated, patting the sleek .32 Ruger blaster in her shoulder holster.
“Glad to hear it,” Ryan said.
“Got antidote for darts?” Jak asked.
Nye frowned. “Sorry, there is none. But it wears off in an hour.”
“Damn.”
Just then there came a flurry of raised voices in the distance, and something exploded.
“Another trick?” Krysty asked with a scowl, her hair flexing.
Fascinated, Nye stared at the woman, while the colonel didn’t seem to notice it at all.
“Just a booby, what my grandpop called a landmine,” Fife said. “We managed to plant a few as diversions before coming here.”
“The cannies won’t come here,” Nye stated, her brow furrowing.
“Why?”
In reply, Nye lifted the torch from the floor to illuminate the ceiling.
“Gaia...” Krysty whispered, her hair going motionless.
The floor had been removed from the galley, joining it to the room above, so that the two would make one huge area. Lining the distant ceiling were rows of human torsos hanging from chains. All of the limbs had been removed, along with the heads, the internal organs and the skin.
“This is their larder,” Fife said, curling a lip in disgust, “for lack of a better word.”
“Triple smart,” Ryan said, impressed. “This is the last place the cannies would check for invaders. This is where everybody else is trying to stay out of.”
Fife almost smiled at that. “You think like a sec man, Cawdor.”
“Thanks, and the name’s Ryan.”
“Cam, to my friends,” the colonel stated. “So, we here for the same reason?”
“We are,” Ryan said, “if it’s to rescue your people and chill cannies.”
“That loads my blaster.”
“Saved our lives,” Jak stated. “Repay.”
“Oh, the sins of honor are paid in blood, both by mortal men and the gods above,” Nye said in a singsong voice, as if quoting a poem.
“Something like that,” Ryan agreed, pausing to listen for any sounds in the outside corridor.
“Hear something?” Fife asked, swinging up the AK-47 assault rifle.
Ryan started to reply when he noticed that the man and woman were both wearing clothing in a camouflage pattern—dark green mixed with splotches of brown and black. Perfect for hunting in a forest.
“At least they’re not wearing green, like that Granite Empire sec man back at the clearing,” Krysty said. “Cam, I think we have a mutual enemy.”
“Yeah, that bitch Angstrom,” Fife agreed. “We intercepted a carrier pigeon that said the king was dead.”
A piercing shriek ripped through the darkness, the anguished cry echoing along the steel corridors.
“Nuking hell, that’s Davis!” Fife snarled. “It’s not a trick this time. They’re cooking one of my men alive.” He stared at the three companions. “The two of us didn’t have a fragging chance of getting anybody out alive, but with five blasters...” He paused expectantly.
“Lead the way,” Ryan replied, hefting the Steyr.
Charging out of the galley, Fife and Nye bolted through the darkness as if intimately familiar with every inch of the convoluted corridors. The companions followed along as best they could, hoping the light from their torches wouldn’t impede the rescue attempt.
Reaching an inverted set of stairs, Fife climbed them like a monkey, then grabbed an overhead pipe and swung himself through an oval doorway. Nye and the companions stayed right on his heels.
Crawling along the support beam of a loading crane, Ryan and the others looked down into the cargo bay. Even sideways, it was still enormous, all of the former crates and boxes removed to form an open circle in the middle.
This was obviously a new site for the cannies, as they had canvas hammocks slung from bolts in the wall, with wicker baskets underneath filled with personal possessions: sneakers, knives and a lot of human scalps.
More importantly, draped with gray canvas, a dozen cannies were hidden on top of the ring of crates. Armed with crossbows, they were obviously waiting for the invaders to come charging in through the angled doors.
“Feebs,” Nye muttered, covering the slide of her handblaster with a hand to try to mask the sound as she chambered a round.
“They think us,” Jak whispered, switching the assault rifle to full-auto.
Inside the circle of crates, five members of a sec team were hanging from sideways poles, their wrists lashed together on top. Helpless, the captives were suspended by their bound wrists, the positions clearly designed to be as painful as possible. The sec team had been stripped, men and women, the skin covered with lash marks, and a few shallow bites.
That invoked an unwanted comparison to the larder, and Ryan fought back a surge of temper. Only cold and precise actions would save these people now. A berserker attack would only get all of them chilled. They had to stay calm, think first, then move fast.
In the center of the circle was a large bonfire made of tree branches and assorted small pieces of wooden furniture. His wrist and ankles chained together, a naked man was suspended over the crackling flames, the smoke rising upward to crawl along a sideways wall and out a buckled hatchway.
“Davis,” Fife said unnecessarily.
Holding on to the other end of the chains, a large, burly cannie was raising and lowering Davis into the fire. As his screams ebbed, the cannie would raise him again, then shift position, so that a different portion of the man’s body would be lowered into the fire, and the screams renewed.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” Nye asked.
“Start shooting and chill everybody,” Fife said, lowering the barrel of the AK-47.
“Wait,” Ryan countered. “Krysty and Jak will shoot the fire, while I snipe the cannies as a diversion.”
With a scowl, Fife stared at Ryan, then at the Steyr. “That silencer actually work?”
“Bet your ass.”
“Shoot the fire?” Nye asked incredulously.
“When the fight starts,” Krysty explained, “the cannies will let go of the rope, and Davis will fall into the flames. He’ll be aced in minutes unless—”
“He lands on deck,” Nye finished. “Damn, that’s good. Colonel?”
“Follow me,” Fife said, crawling away along the girder.
As they disappeared into the roiling smoke, the laughing cannies lowered Davis into the flames again, his screams were much louder at first, then noticeably weaker as he was removed.
“Not survive another,” Jak stated.
“Then let’s hope Cam is faster than he looks,” Ryan returned, lowering the barrel of the Steyr and stroking the trigger.
The shots came fast, the soft coughs unheard over the laughing and the screaming. Then the drum stopped as four of the cannies collapsed to the floor, blood gushing from gaping wounds in their necks.
In unison, Krysty and Jak cut loose with all of their weapons, the fusillade sounding like a thousand blasters. The twin streams of 5.56 mm rounds scattered the pile of burning sticks across the filthy metal floor, and a fat cannie yelped as her leg got burned, then a rolling stick landed in a pile of dirty clothing that promptly caught fire.
Twisting frantically around, the cannies tried to find the source of the bizarre attacks, and Ryan continued to remove them as fast as possible.
Suddenly an explosion rocked the entire cargo hold, and the locked doors were blown off their hinges to flay into the stacked crates. Like a house of cards in a high wind, the crates shifted and came tumbling down, the cannies hidden on top screaming in rage, then shrieking in pain as they became trapped then juicily crushed to death.
Releasing the rope, the rest of the cannies inside the circle dived for their weapons, and Davis smacked onto an empty deck. Limply, he hit the deck and cried out, then rolled off the searing-hot metal, fresh blisters forming on his already discolored shoulders.
While Ryan reloaded, Krysty put a full magazine into the cluster of cannies, the fiery wreath of 5.56 mm hardball rounds punching clean into their bodies and ricocheting off the metal walls to come right back at them again from behind. Torn apart, the jerking cannies howled and cursed as if dropped into a meat grinder full of stinging bees.
Diving to the side, one cannie rolled into a kneeling position with a blowgun in his mouth. Exhaling hard, he sent a dart into the darkness overhead, and Krysty cried out, the noise oddly trailing away into a melodious crooning.
Pulling his bound legs to his chest, Davis lashed out with both legs and slammed his heels directly into the groin of a cannie. The man shrieked and dropped his blowgun to double over and grab his injured genitals.
Kicking upward again, Davis knocked the stunned cannie away and he hit the wall, his head slamming into an exposed stanchion with a sharp crack. Reeling slightly, the cannie slid to the floor, blood covering his face. Wiggling closer, Davis started pawing for the sheathed knife on his belt.
Screaming obscenities, another cannie produced a crossbow and fired. The bolt slammed into Davis’s shoulder, going completely through and pinning him to the unconscious cannie.
As Davis struggled to get free, the cannie quickly notched another quarrel into the crossbow. But before he could fire, an assault rifle chattered. The crossbow was blown into splinters as the cannie spun wildly, his life splattering across the ancient crates.
Moments later a deep silence filled the cargo hold, broken only by the crackle of numerous small fires and the low moans of the dying.
“Clear!” Ryan called down from the crane.
From a deep pool of shadows, there came a bright flash of light and the boom of a shotgun.
“Clear,” Fife replied, walking into view. Cracking open the breech of the weapon, he extracted the spent cartridges and thumbed in fresh.
“Good, I’ll tend the wounded,” Nye said, holstering her handblaster.
“Just our own, healer,” Fife instructed, pulling out the machete. “I’ll handle any cannies still sucking air.”
She paused, then nodded in acceptance and started pulling rolls of bandages from the leather mailbag.
Several minutes later Ryan and Jak appeared carrying a limp Krysty in thei
r arms.
“Jody-Lynn!” Ryan called as they gently eased the woman into an empty hammock.
Busy wrapping a bandage around the arm of the burned sec man, Nye looked up and frowned. “Did she catch an arrow?” she asked, quickly tying off the strip of white cloth.
“Dart,” Jak said, failing to keep the worry out of his voice.
Grabbing her bag, Nye hurried over and briefly examined the unconscious woman.
“Well?” Ryan asked impatiently
“Just let her sleep,” Nye said, rising once more. “She’ll wake with a nukestorm of a headache, but be fine as shine otherwise.”
“Thanks, good to know,” Ryan said, the tension leaving his shoulders.
“We get all,” Jak asked, glancing around at the smoky carnage.
“Fifteen hammocks, fifteen cannies,” Fife said, wiping the blood from his machete with a dirty cloth. “Sounds like a clean sweep to me.”
“Good,” Jak said, resting his weapon on his hip. “Only one round left in rapid-fire.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Fife said, sitting on a steam pipe jutting from the wall. “My baron will fill your pockets with live brass as a reward for this. These sons of bitches have been hounding my men for months. We never did know what was chilling our people. I thought it was a howler or mebbe a droid.” With a wan smile, he sheathed the blade. “Just glad they’re aced at last.”
“Sorry that we only saved five of your people,” Ryan said, removing a partially spent magazine from the Steyr to insert a full one. “But this could have been worse.”
“A lot worse,” Fife heartily agreed, taking out a canteen. Removing the top, he took a long drink.
“Out of curiosity, what’s in here that your baron wanted so bastard much?” Ryan asked, resting a boot on a rusty winch. “Brass...meds...comps?”
“That’s ville biz,” Fife replied, taking his time to put the cap back on the canteen.
“Make it part of the reward,” Ryan suggested, not moving.
“All right, fair enough,” Fife said, slowly standing. “Come on, it’s this way.”
Cradling the AK-47 in his arms, the sec chief strode out of the cargo hold and into a dimly illuminated corridor.
