Iron Rage

by James Axler

  Of course, huge was relative, too. Any respectable predark tramp freighter was bigger than even the Pearl. To say nothing of the true monsters of the sea he’d encountered in his day, like derelict cruise ships or thousand-foot supertankers. But context mattered. On this stretch of the river, the baron’s gaggle of slow, cobbled-together ironclads ruled unchallenged.

  Except of course for the opposing fleet of armored war craft, lying plainly visible perhaps two miles south, just before the point where a bend in the big river began. The wind kept the smoke haze largely clear.

  “Around us, you can see a few of our attendants— Artemis, Hera, Revenge, Selene, Midori. All six-cannon frigates, and all satellites to my beautiful flagship here, the Pearl.”

  The “frigates” were notably smaller than the so-called capital ships. But Ryan thought about how they’d have looked from the deck of the Queen—much less her bitty motor launch—and he got a queasy feeling in his stomach and a dryness in his throat.

  “You seem to have a classical turn of mind,” he said, “leaving aside a few fliers.”

  “Well, Revenge was a Poteetville ship. I took her myself as a prize from the Invincible Armada, back when my poor dear husband, Baron Si, was alive and ruling New Vickville. I was no mere trophy wife, you see.”

  She shrugged.

  “Or not just a trophy wife.”

  “‘Si.’”

  “Short for Silas. We’re less formal than those Poteetville snobs, with all their pretensions at aristocracy. A passel of phonies with sticks up their butts. And I notice that you recognize the classical allusions, Mr. Cawdor.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t always a mercie.”

  “As for Midori, I like the name. I heard it means ‘green’ in Japanese.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, rubbing his chin. His stubble was getting long enough the hairs were beginning to flop over and not even be prickly anymore. Much longer without a shave and he was going to start looking like a skunk-ape.

  “What about Pearl?” he asked. “Shouldn’t your flagship have a classical name, too?”

  “Oh, but she does. She’s named for the classical predark character Pearl Forrester. I saw her on a couple of old vids when I was a girl. She became quite the inspiration and role model for me.”

  Ryan had no idea who the character was, so he leaned his arms on the rail and gazed out at the distant Poteetville fleet.

  Invincible Armada, huh? he thought. I’m guessing Baron Harvey doesn’t read history. Or doesn’t read enough.

  “I appreciate the guided tour, Baron,” he said. “And I’ve got to admit that your fleet’s an impressive enough sight that I’m glad I got my first real look at it from this side. But I do find myself wondering why the baron of New Vick and commander of that fleet is spending so much time on a dirty, desperate mercie like me.”

  “Not quite so dirty anymore, I’d say,” she said with a grin.

  They’d washed his clothes overnight, and let him bathe in the room devoted to the purpose on that deck, while a pair of armed sailors stood watch. But either the baron or whoever her sec boss was—Stone didn’t seem the type—didn’t trust him with a razor in his hand quite yet. So the stubble grew.

  He turned and leaned his elbows back on the rail. That brought Stone into view, standing impassively behind them just beyond earshot, and also the pair of honest-to-nuke sec men who stood flanking her. They wore the same blue-green uniforms as the sailors, but they carried lever-action .44-40 carbines with matching 1873 Colt Peacemaker replicas in flapped holsters on their belts. They were black powder weapons, charcoal burner, but cartridge repeaters, not single-shot muzzle loaders or the single-shot Springfield 1873s with the trapdoor actions. They were serious blasters, even by modern standards, and not the sort of weapon that would be issued to random sailors told to watch the baron’s pet coldheart captive.

  “What did you bring me up here for?” he asked.

  She nodded decisively. “You want turkey? We’ll talk turkey.”

  She shooed her aide and the sec men farther back.

  The baron went to lean on the rail beside him. At least her lavender body wash or whatever it was tended to cut the rotting-meat smell. “Like I said, there you see the Poteetville fleet. They outnumber us every which way, from Baron Harvey J. Poteet Junior’s flagship, Tyrant, and her twin, Glory, and the lesser capital ships Invincible and Conqueror, down through frigates like the Terror and Bocephus, through a gaggle of unarmed patrol craft on down to the garbage scow, the Baron Harvey J. Senior.”

  “Garbage scow?”

  She shrugged. “Harvey has daddy issues. Among others, given some of those ship names. I wonder if the Poteet males pass along under-endowment from one generation to the next. We have bigger cannon. We can put as much metal in the air at a time as they can, though they have four capital ships to our three, and ten frigates to our nine. Our weapons, ships and gunners are superior, however.”

  She paused to light a black cigarillo in an ebony cigarette holder from a spring-driven mechanical lighter.

  “Of course, I’d naturally say that. My point is they are a formidable enemy, and their intent is to destroy New Vick as a sovereign riverine power. But they are not the only deadly enemy. There is another enemy who is intent upon destroying me in person. They’re to be found on this side of the water, Mr. Cawdor.”

  “Why not take them down, then?”

  “If only it were so simple. My enemies include some of New Vick’s leading citizens, as well as the captains of some of my very fleet, and they’re the snakes I know about. They are either too well hidden or too powerful to touch—unless I can catch them in the act, which in itself supposes that my best evidence is also the last, by seeing the faces of those who plant their daggers in my back.”

  Ryan wondered how a body could see the face of someone who was stabbing them in the back, but he caught her drift.

  “You have a sec boss.” It wasn’t a question. She might not be a usual baron, but she was every inch one.

  “Barleycorn,” she said. “A good man, loyal and meticulous. He’d lay down his life for me. He is also unimaginative as an old oak stump.”

  “And?”

  She sighed gustily, puffing out blue smoke like a restive dragon.

  “I need a man of your talents on my team.”

  “You need a new sec man?” He carefully did not say “boss.”

  “I need a new everything. My enemies give me no peace, and they are not considerate enough to take turns. As soon as I turn to face the latest attack, the other is thrusting at me with their spears. Do you begin to see my situation, Mr. Cawdor?”

  “Yeah. You want a problem solver.”

  Her face lit up. She was still handsome, that was sure, even if in an overstuffed, painted-up way.

  “Exactly! And I am prepared to offer—whatever you want, within reason. And I have broad standards of reasonableness that include gold, property, women, even power. I can’t offer you a title, not one that would mean anything. That’s Poteetville’s style, not ours. And our plutocrats would never accept you as an equal. Unless of course I was able to catch one of them at treason and squash him like the roach he is.”

  She brightened visibly at that.

  “I believe I’ve about burned up my considering time,” Ryan told her.

  “You have.”

  “What if I don’t want that kind of responsibility? Do you have any openings for a grunt?”

  She laughed. “You’re far too dangerous to be a common sailor, a soldier, or sec man. Strange as it sounds to say it, I can trust you completely, or not at all.

  “Please understand my position with regards to you, Mr. Cawdor. I find myself in the position of the lady riding the tiger. I dare not dismount.”

  She suddenly grinned. “Don’t look at me like that with that dangerous blue eye. You are a magnificent hunk of masculine lethality, and not at all my type. I prefer my men younger, tenderer and blond. Your duties to me would be strictly p
rofessional.”

  The grin faded. “But from where I stand, I can either bind you to me with whatever appeals to you—or bind you to ballast stones headed for the bottom of the Sippi. Do you honestly see a third way?”

  “Not offhand.”

  “So there you have it. The carrot and the stick, as it were.”

  “Put that way,” he said, “I’ll take the carrot.”

  He reckoned he had played hard to get long enough. She had reminded him of just how baronial she could be, with all that ballast-in-a-bag talk, and getting to know the legendary channel cats. And how ruthless she’d had to be to hold on to her position, once her husband died and the sharks began to circle.

  She turned and stuck out her hand. “I knew you were a smart man. The lieutenant will return your weapons.”

  He shook. Her grip was strong. He expected no less.

  Smart enough to try to see all the angles, he was thinking. While going over the rail into a stolen rowboat some night was still the likeliest option for getting out of there and back to his friends—or just getting sent on some mission ashore and slipping away, leaving any comrades who thought to bar his way behind with extra smiles—he was beginning to glimpse a new, if distant possibility: that he might distinguish himself enough that, as a reward, he could negotiate safe passage out for him and his friends. And even the Queen’s old crew, since there’d be no point in cutting one loose but not the other.

  That was a tall order, given how little time he had before his friends found their own way out—or the rads got them. Or the stickies. But Ryan could distinguish himself a triple load, triple fast.

  “Does this mean I get a room that doesn’t lock from the outside?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you said you’d either trust me all the way, or no way.”

  “There’s trust,” she said, “and then there’s trust. You still have to earn the full consignment. Lieutenant Stone, please show our new, ah—special consultant—around.”

  “Yes, Baron.”

  She seemed neither pleased nor displeased. That high-cheekboned, broad-jawed face might as well have been the beautiful sculpture it resembled.

  But what was the light he glimpsed behind those dark brown eyes?

  Chapter Thirteen

  “But what can we do?”

  The words—almost a wail of despair—penetrated the fog inside Doc Tanner’s tormented mind, but only barely.

  He was walking through Hyde Park arm in arm with his beloved Emily, while their children, Rachel and Jolyon, trailed behind, his daughter excitedly pointing out features of the great glass-and-iron Crystal Palace, that wonder of the world and jewel in Great Britain’s imperial diadem.

  “If you both quiet down and behave,” their mother told them, “we shall take you to see the dinosaurs!”

  “Dinosaurs!” Rachel shouted.

  Emily sighed. “At least the spectacle—and the prospect of dinosaurs—is distracting them from all the bearded, smelly anarchists squawking from their soapboxes for the workers of the world to unite. Isn’t that a boon, dear?”

  “Pardon? Why, yes, my darling. Of course.” He himself was barely paying attention to his surroundings or even his adored family. He was engrossed in an article in The Times of London, concerning a private prosecution for libel the day’s most famous Irish poet had brought against the Marquess of Queensberry, for leaving at his club a calling card on which he had scrawled “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.”

  He stirred himself from his daydream, back to the here and now. It would be less unpalatable than continuing where his thoughts had taken him. Yes, as horrible as his current reality was…

  “We have to do something!”

  Doc recognized the near-panicked voice of Sean O’Reilly. He fears stickies to the verge of outright phobia, Doc remembered. Not that there’s anything inherently irrational in that.

  “We all realize that, Sean,” Nataly replied calmly.

  Doc focused his gaze on her tall, slim, upright figure. She was the functional acting captain much of the time, when that poor wretch Myron was sunk in the twin miseries of losing his ship and his wife on the same dire day.

  “And it leaves the question of what,” Arliss said.

  “Get out!” Sean yelled.

  “We know,” Mildred said patiently. “If the stickies don’t kill us, the radiation and heavy-metal poisoning will.”

  “And that’s if the swampers don’t get us!” Ricky added.

  “I keep telling you,” Myron muttered. “We have to repair and refloat the Queen. She’ll take us out of here!”

  “Myron,” Arliss said gently, “we tried that. That’s what put us here.”

  “Sneaking out on rafts didn’t play out so ace, either,” Jake stated. Whereas Nataly often struck Doc as fatalistic, the cadaverous navigator seemed to revel in wallowing in gloom.

  “It’s all Ryan’s fault,” Sean said. “It was his idea. It was triple crazy, all along! We’re lucky it didn’t get us all chilled.”

  Doc looked to Krysty, but the statuesque redhead merely sat on her backpack on the short grass with the others, a battered boonie hat sheltering her pale, perfect features from the hot midmorning sun. She showed no sign of the brutal day and night preceding, nor the too-short sleep that had followed. She seemed crisp and alert.

  Doc had entered back into the present world fully enough that he did not fail to notice it was Ryan’s backpack. Like his prized longblaster, he had left it behind when he made his mad, brave and inspired leap to single-handedly attack the New Vickville blasterboat.

  She also seemed just as unaffected by the criticism of her lover, now presumably captive—Doc could not bring himself to believe that Ryan Cawdor was dead, not that he really thought he was. Her expression remained calm. Serene, almost. Like a childless Madonna from a Renaissance painting.

  “Ryan’s the only reason any of us are here!” Mildred snapped. “Several times over!”

  “The whole idea was triple stupe!” Sean screamed.

  “She’s right,” Nataly said quietly. “Anyway, pointing fingers is one thing we know won’t get us clear of this mess.”

  Sean dropped to the ground in a heap of misery as complete as the one constituted by Myron Conoyer, who was sitting with his back to the hull of his beloved wreck, as though deriving strength from it.

  “I keep telling you,” Myron told the bare patch of ground between his listless, outspread legs. “The Queen is our only hope of getting out alive.”

  “You know, I think he’s right.”

  The words, delivered softly, seemed to hit the group sitting or standing around on the beach like a charge of electricity. Everybody looked to the eastern end of the cleared shoreline. J.B. stood there, his fedora tipped back on his head, gazing, or so it seemed, toward the rusty remnants of a derelict railroad bridge, a quarter mile or so upstream.

  Doc found it hard to repress a shudder. If he had ever laid eyes on a more certain nesting place for a colony of stickies, he could not summon it to mind.

  “Who’s right, John?” Mildred asked. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  The Armorer turned. “Why, Captain Conoyer, of course.”

  Myron jerked at that. The memory it evoked of the former Captain Conoyer—his wife, Trace—clearly hit him like a spear. But then it seemingly registered that J.B. meant him, not his beloved partner who had been torn limb from limb before his eyes.

  It was Myron who asked, “What do you mean?” incredulously.

  J.B. took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and began to polish them with a handkerchief.

  “We need a way out,” he said, “and fast. And the Mississippi Queen will give us just that.”

  “Against a whole ironclad battle fleet?” Arliss scoffed. “Have you lost your mind, J.B.? I thought you were the most sensible of the bunch. But if one thing in this world is triple sure, it’s that if we get near those ships—either set, take your pick—they’ll finish the job they started a
few days back. How do you propose to get around that? Make the poor Queen fly?”

  “Oh, no.” J.B. replaced his glasses and smiled. “The opposite. Have any of you ever heard tell of the ship called the CSS Arkansas?”

  * * *

  RYAN OPENED HIS EYE.

  The nighttime blackness inside his modest cabin was broken only by a few wisps of starlight shining in through the porthole above him. It was little more than a horizontal slit with a shutter on the inside, currently raised to allow a little muggy air in.

  A cat might have gotten through it, but not Ryan Cawdor, nor any human he knew, including Jak.

  He frowned. He had come all the way awake and alert at once. There was nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was that he had awakened with a sense of alarm thrilling through his body.

  What troubled him was, he didn’t know why.

  He lay perfectly still on his left side, facing the hatch to the passageway outside. He could feel the slight but complex movements of the ship at anchor as the current shifted its enormous mass. He could hear the water slogging against the hull; the chugging of a distant patrol boat’s engine, steadily receding; the faint strains if a harmonica.

  And then he heard whispering, and knew what had awakened him.

  A moment later he heard a faint scrape, little more than a whisper itself, as of wood on steel.

  “Fireblasted amateurs,” he muttered to himself.

  He whipped the cotton sheet off his body and sat up. He was naked. It was a luxury to be able to strip down completely for sleep. Most nights he was lucky if he felt confident enough to take his boots off when he bedded down.

  He dressed in the dark, purposefully but without haste. He knew what had to be happening. It was why he and J.B. schooled their friends to a strict discipline of speaking only in undertones when trying to be covert. Whispers carried, and part of the reason they did was that they were unnatural—out of place. That was why he awakened.

  He only wondered how the raiders had evaded the New Vick guard boats when he and his friends could not.