by James Axler
“There’s not much damage to the textiles, ma’am. But there’s still some. We may need to write off as much as ten percent, adding in for smoke damage.”
“It’s the cost of doing business on the river,” the captain said.
“Baron Teddy’s not going to be triple pleased.”
“You leave him to me. He knows how the world works today.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now run along and send up Avery.”
“Already here, Captain.”
Avery Telsco, the Queen’s chief shipwright, was a long, lanky black dude with short dreadlocks. He wore a monocle, of all the nuking things, screwed into his right eye. Although having seen him work repairing the ship and fighting off the ever-present danger of rot in her wooden meat and bones, Ryan gathered it wasn’t wholly an affectation. He did make use of it on detail work and inspecting for damage.
“Ace. Report.”
“The shot that hit us just busted a chunk of rail all to nuke. Mebbe ten feet. I can have it fixed in twenty minutes with a spare spar from stores. Or, if you’d care to send a boat ashore we could cut down a sapling—”
“Nuke, no!”
“It would be cheaper, Captain,” Edna said.
“Getting people killed by stickies would not be cheaper,” Trace replied. “And I doubt your crew mates would like to have all their hair fall out and have their skin get all gross with rad blueberries and stumble around like zombies for a few days from even a mild rad dosage. Now git!”
The purser turned and hurried back into the cabin as fast as her legs would propel her.
“Do the badlands extend a ways?” Ryan asked. The view astern was completely hidden by the barge now. Under Nataly’s firm hand, the Queen was churning steadily north up the big river. Ryan could see activity at the stern of the barge, including glimpses of Doc Tanner’s disorderly white hair, past the stacked lumber as the damage control crew pitched still-smoldering bales of Baron Teddy’s expensive, recently spun muslin overboard.
“A couple miles in all directions, pretty much,” Trace admitted.
“So if you got a minute, Captain,” Ryan said, “tell us about this arms race between Poteetville and, uh, New Vick.”
“New Vickville is just south of the hot spot that includes the ruins of old Vicksburg, on and around the bluff, down there to the south. The ville got pretty rich off scavvy from the ruins, not too long after skydark.”
“Seems like that would be pretty dangerous, what with all the fallout around here,” Mildred commented.
“The first baron believed in ruling with what you might call an iron hand,” Avery said in a dry drawl.
“Avery here’s our history bug,” Trace stated.
“Poteetville lies about five, six miles north of here,” the shipwright said. “It started out as a camp for people scavvying flotsam on the Sippi, of which there was a drek-load, right after skydark. Eventually both Poteetville and New Vick turned into pretty big river trading ports. And natural rivals, being so close together.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I wouldn’t think they’d both be able to get rich.”
“Well, Poteetville naturally gets first dibs on traffic coming down from the north,” Trace said, “while New Vick is the stop-off spot for ships from the south. Plus there’s a fair amount of traffic coming off the Yazoo, like us.”
“Things started to heat up between them mebbe thirty, forty years ago,” Avery said. “Baron Poteet sent his daughter to marry Baron Vick, and she promptly died under mysterious circumstances. It seems she committed suicide, but that didn’t mollify Poteetville any. Both villes started building up their fleets. Each already had one or two improvised-armor vessels apiece, to repel river pirates.”
“And do a little pirating themselves,” the captain added.
“But both sides decided they needed full-on ironclad fleets. Or mebbe flotillas. So they started building them like crazy. And expanding and consolidating their holds on the countryside surrounding, making lesser villes either pay them tribute or just absorbing them. That kind of thing.”
“Building pocket empires,” J.B. said. He looked at Ryan. “There’s a lot of that going around this days.”
Ryan shrugged. “It was one of the things that kept Trader in business, back when we ran with him.”
“Yeah.”
“Now both sides got, what? A dozen or so apiece of what you might call ironclad warships. They’ve got three or four big vessels that they call ‘capital’ ships, some smaller ones they call frigates, and a shitload of unarmored little patrol boats. Some of them don’t amount to much more than a canoe with a trolling motor, truth to tell.”
“And those that we just had the run-in with were frigates,” Ryan stated.
“Like I said, they’re what pass for frigates,” Trace replied. “The capital ships run up to a hundred and fifty feet long, and can mount up to ten blasters on the Pearl. That’s Baron Vick’s flagship. Baroness, some people would say, though no one would say that to her face. We can be glad we didn’t brush up against them.”
“Any rifled blasters?” J.B. asked. Ryan didn’t think his friend needed to sound quite so rad-blasted hopeful.
But the captain shook her head. “All smoothbore, like the smaller ships carry. But that many weapons can put a lot of metal in the air in a hell of a hurry. It was lucky that we didn’t run into them.”
“I notice you people seem to use the words ship and boat pretty interchangeably,” Mildred said. “In my experience, nautical types tend to get pretty sticky about the distinctions between them. They can be real assholes about it. Pardon my French.”
“‘French’?” Avery asked, blinking in confusion made comical by one eye being magnified to double size by his monocle. “Wait, that was French? I don’t speak French, but I understood what you said—”
“She’s not from around here,” Ryan said by way of explanation.
“This isn’t the Cific,” Trace said drily. “You may have noticed. Not even the Gulf. Back before the Big Nuke there may have been craft working the river big enough to be worth making a fuss over which were ships and which were boats. Not these days.”
“I take it we’re not close to this New Vick,” Ryan said. “Any idea why they’d have their ironclads this far north?”
“Well, things have been coming to a head between them and Poteetville the last few years,” Avery said. Fifteen years ago they were having a bit of a thaw between them. Then the old Baron Vick, Silas Krakowitz, took a new wife after his first one died. And I mean the old baron—the one who started building up his ville and its ironclad armada in the first place. His wife was much younger, late twenties or thereabout. Then Baron Harvey J. Poteet’s Senior’s wife, Maude, insulted Krakowitz’s young wife, Tanya. That started things off. Then, after old Silas croaked, Tanya became the baron. She was still hot past nuke red over Maude’s slight. Not long after Harvey Junior became baron of Poteetville, he refused to recognize Tanya’s legitimacy as baron. So the shit has been seriously headed for the fan between them ever since.”
Ryan frowned.
“That suggests we might just find ourselves running into the Poteetville fleet,” he said.
“Ships!” Jak shouted from atop the Queen’s cabin. “Lots! Big ones!”
“We just did,” the captain replied laconically.
Another rushing roar like a young tornado passed overhead.
Chapter Four
Krysty felt her gut clench and her eyes widen as the roar ended in a colossal splash to the west of Mississippi Queen, so close that the tubby tug rocked perceptibly.
The redheaded beauty looked north. A line of ships, ominously dark in the shadows of chem clouds crossing the afternoon sun, seemed to stretch across the mile-wide river, side-on to each other. Thin lines of dark smoke rose from their stacks, diffusing rapidly as the breeze began tugging it toward the west bank. A puff of lighter smoke, also drifting to her left, stood out from the rest. That was from the
cannon that had fired at them.
Yellow lights flashed from all along the line.
The first boom rolled over them like thunder. Ryan knelt and laid his longblaster across the railing. J.B. knelt by his side, his fedora jammed tightly on his head and his Uzi in his hands. Krysty knew he was by Ryan’s side for support only. His blaster didn’t have the range to do any damage to the hostile ironclads, which were at least a quarter of a mile distant.
Captain Conoyer was already sprinting for the cabin, shouting, “Hard to port, now! Redline the engines!”
She paused at the pilothouse doorway. “Everybody whose duties don’t keep them up top, get belowdecks now!” she bellowed. “Barge damage party, get back aboard and under cover!”
Most of the attackers’ volley dropped into the water at least a hundred yards shy of the Queen’s bow, sending up greenish-brown columns of water that burst into white froth before opening like flowers and falling back again. A couple shots splashed closer, but wide to the right and left.
“At least it’ll take them a while to reload,” Mildred said, wincing as the multiple thumps of cannon shots reach them. She had reflexively hunkered down behind the front rail. So had Krysty.
“Bigger boats are already turning broadside to bring their side blasters to bear,” Ryan reported, peering with his scope through falling spray.
“I’d say it’s just about ready to get serious,” J.B. said, sounding more interested than alarmed.
Krysty looked back. The people who had gone on board the barge to fight the fire in the fabric bales were scrambling back across the thick hawser that connected the hulls. She was relieved and pleased to see Doc trotting right across, as spry as a kid goat, holding his arms out to his sides with his black coattails flapping. Despite his aged appearance, he was chronologically but a few years younger than Ryan. The bizarre abuse and rigors the evil whitecoats of Operation Chronos had subjected him to after trawling him from the late 1800s had aged him prematurely, and damaged his fine, highly educated mind. But he could still muster the agility and energy of a man much younger than he appeared to be.
Ricky came last, straddling the thick woven hemp cable and inchworming along, but he did so at speed.
Avery had vanished. “You and Mildred best head for cover,” Ryan said.
“They’ll only hit us by accident,” Mildred replied, “shooting oversize muskets at us.”
“They’re going to have a dozen or two shots at us, next round,” J.B. said. “That’s a lot of chances to get lucky.”
“Looks like some smaller fry are heading this way,” Ryan reported. “Krysty, Mildred—git!”
“But what good will a wooden hull and decks do against iron cannonballs?” Mildred asked.
“Splinters!” Ryan exclaimed.
“Come on.” Krysty grabbed the other woman’s wrist and began to run for the cabin. Though Mildred was about as heavy as she was, Krysty was barely slowed, towing Mildred as if the woman were a river barge. She was strong, motivated and full of adrenaline.
Krysty heard Ryan open fire. Given the range, the bobbing of the approaching lesser war craft, and the complex movement of the Queen—pitching fore and aft as well as heeling over to her right from the centrifugal force of the fastest left turn the vessel could manage—she doubted he’d be lucky enough to hit anything significant.
The women had almost reached the cabin when the next salvo hit, roaring like an angry dragon. Krysty saw stout planks suddenly spreading into fragments almost in her face.
And then the world vanished in a soundless white flash.
* * *
RYAN’S HEART ALMOST imploded in his chest when he heard the shell crash through the roof of the bridge and detonate. Krysty!
He stood, pushed off from the rail and spun.
The forward port corner of the cabin—his right—had been smashed. Smoke streamed out. He heard screams, smelled burned flesh, and burning horsehair from padded chairs.
Krysty lay on her back on the deck, her head in Mildred’s lap. Her hair was curled close to her head, though not tightly, and was waving feebly. Her face was a ghastly mask of gore and char.
“Krysty!” he shouted.
Mildred waved him off.
“Her forehead’s just nicked,” she said. “The rest is just smoke.”
“She’s not hurt?”
“She’s concussed,” Mildred said. “But she’s tough. She’ll make it. There’s nothing more to do for her right now. Ow! What?”
The last was directed at J.B., who had taken off his fedora and was swatting her on top of the head with it.
“Your hair’s smoldering up top,” he said.
“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Something made me dive for the deck. Since Krysty was hanging on to my wrist it was easy to take her down with me. But she still caught more of the blast than I did.”
“Help!” somebody yelled from inside the cabin. “Somebody help the captain!”
Ryan and Mildred looked at each other. “Look out after Krysty, John,” she said. Easing Krysty’s head to the planks, she extricated herself and stood.
As soon as he saw Krysty’s head laid gently down, Ryan moved ahead of Mildred to the door and looked inside.
A dense haze of greenish smoke filled the bridge, lit poorly by afternoon sunlight slanting in through the hole, and a few oily flickering yellow flames. The stink of burned gunpowder, hair and overcooked flesh was intense. Ryan had to clamp his jaw shut against acid vomit that shot up his throat.
Nataly Dobrynin stood at the wheel. Like Krysty’s, her face was a black-and-crimson mask. She was craning to her left to peer out the front port. The polycarbonate there had been blasted free by the explosion. The right side, though intact, was smoke-smudged, partially melted and tricky to see through.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Scalp cut and smoke damage. It’s not as bad as it looks.” Despite her words, she seemed to be as much holding herself upright as steering the Queen through its hard left turn.
She jerked her head toward the cabin wall to her right. “Help the captain.”
Ryan looked the way she indicated. Trace Conoyer was slumped against the bulkhead. Her right arm was missing from above the elbow. Avery knelt beside her, frantically trying to tie off the wound with a handkerchief. He didn’t seem to be making much headway against the blood spurting all over him, and rendering the floorboards slippery.
“Mildred,” Ryan rasped.
“Already on it,” the predark doctor said. She actually shouldered him out of the way as she entered the bridge and went to the captain.
When she had been studying to become a doctor, Mildred had discovered she enjoyed research more than tending to the sick and injured, so she chose the field of medical research and focused on cryogenics. Ultimately, her research had saved her life, as it allowed her colleagues to freeze her after the botched surgery. Her sleep lasted longer than a hundred years, and when she awakened, the world had drastically changed. And to survive—emotionally as well as physically—she had to change, as well. She had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the role of healer, bringing real medical skill and knowledge to a world that almost completely lacked them. And when she went into full-on healer mode, she would turn aside for nothing.
Not even Ryan Cawdor.
To the right of the entrance, at the bridge’s rear, was a hatch leading to the deck below. Just short of it lay a body. At one time it had been human, but now it was hard to tell. It seemed to have been blown open, with entrails scattered on the deck. A string of intestine was draped over a chart table lying on its side. The chill was still smoldering.
“I had just gone below,” Avery said over his shoulder. He was now helping the dazed captain hold her stump upright while Mildred tied it off properly. “Edna was headed down right behind me.”
“She had to have taken the brunt of the blast,” Nataly said. “She never had a chance. Poor woman.”
Another salvo landed around the vessel. From the sounds
they made, Ryan gathered the Poteetville ironclads were firing a mix of solid shot and explosive shells. Probably whatever was closest to hand.
Ryan stepped up alongside Nataly and began pistoning the butt-plate of his Steyr into what remained of the windscreen. Even damaged as it was, the tough polymer resisted his jackhammer blows. But he managed to pop it out of its framework.
Nataly nodded her thanks as she straightened, showing a quick flash of teeth, bright white against her horror mask of a face.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I was right beside the captain,” she said through gritted teeth. “The blast didn’t do much to me. I thought I was chilled for sure.”
Seeing that both the tall, thin woman and Mildred both had their respective situations well in hand, Ryan went back outside. He found Krysty sitting up against the remains of the cabin’s front wall, while J.B. tried to daub the blood and soot from her face with a wet rag.
She was awake, and she smiled as her emerald green eyes met his.
“You were worried,” she said. “That’s sweet.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. She was clearly still dazed.
He looked around. The Mississippi Queen had already swung its bow past due west and was continuing to turn back south. In the process it had moved most of the way to that shore. Most of the barge was visible to port behind the tug.
Suddenly the rest of the companions were gathered around. “How’s Krysty?” Ricky asked. “Nuestra Señora, please let her be okay!”
“I’ll be fine,” Krysty said, more in the tone of voice of a person agreeing with someone who had just said something she didn’t really understand than as an actual affirmation.
“What are you all doing here?” Ryan demanded of the boy, Jak and Doc.
The old man shot his cuffs with elaborate unconcern. “There seems to be a dearth of jobs for us to do at the moment.”
A shattering sound erupted from aft of the cabin. Pieces of the roof flew off in a big gout of smoke. Yellow flames began to flick just above the jagged edges of the bulkhead.
“Dark night!” J.B. exclaimed, as voices began shouting in alarm. “It must’ve set bedding on fire.”
