Iron Rage

by James Axler

  Ermintrude and Joe got back to overseeing the digging-out of the Queen’s hull to refloat her. They both took turns with the shovels, Ricky saw. It was a major job digging deep enough to let in enough water under the Queen’s keep to allow her to back off the shore, but the swampers were good at digging.

  The rest got back to their various preparations.

  An hour later Ricky carried one of the last of the cargo boxes down to the hold. They might as well have some return on this crazy trip, provided any of them made it out alive—Ryan and company as well as the tug’s original crew. Ricky’s group hadn’t exactly been paid. In any event, regardless of Ryan’s and J.B.’s, and even Nataly’s, inclinations to ditch everything not absolutely essential to survival, with so much weight added to the Queen’s superstructure, they needed every ounce of ballast they could find to load.

  From above came a muffled, indecipherable cry. Ricky recognized Jak’s voice. The albino was on watch atop the cabin. His sharp eyes were more use there than his slight frame was in hauling.

  A babble of shouting broke out. Ricky hastily put down the crate of scavvy canned goods and hustled up the ladder.

  Outside he saw the swampers in their boats pointing east and yelling. He looked that way.

  A patrol blasterboat was motoring down Wolf Creek. It was just emerging from the shadows beneath the ruined bridge.

  “¡Nuestra Señora!” Ricky yelped. He scrambled over the bridge-truss-armored gunwales and dropped into the shallows.

  “Purple-and-yellow flag,” Ryan was saying on the shore as he lowered his Steyr from his shoulder. “Poteetville.”

  “So the bastards found a way to get to Wolf Creek,” Arliss said.

  Joe splashed ashore from his little flotilla. “We’ve got to get moving!” he yelled. He sounded near panic. “They’ll massacre us with their deck cannon.”

  Nataly stood by the big trench being dug around the Queen’s bow. She shook her head, her ponytail whipping her shoulders.

  “It’s still not deep enough. We’ll be able to go soon, but not before they get here.”

  “Not a problem,” Ryan said. He handed his Scout carbine to Ricky. “Take this and back me up. Everybody else, lie down. Find what cover you can.”

  Not that there was much, unless they wanted to go retreat into the tall grass. Since both Jak and the swampers reported sign of stickies prowling around, Ricky for one wasn’t eager to do that. He’d rather take his chances with a black powder cannon.

  “You’re just hankering to give that big old bastard a try,” J.B. said mock-accusingly as Ryan swung around the hefty Lahti blaster and started to settle in behind it.

  “It can’t hurt to make sure the blaster and the ammo still work, right?”

  “I guess we need to see if it’s going to have any effect against a real boat,” Jake said.

  Ryan grinned like a wolf.

  “Oh, I know what kind of effect it’ll have on one of them. Now get down. Their bow cannon can throw a ball this far. Their gunner may get luckier than you are.”

  Most of the people on the shore hustled to lie down on their bellies and make themselves as flat as they could.

  “Get on my right,” Ryan told Ricky. “It ejects to the left. And keep back, because the muzzle brake will throw side blast like a bastard.”

  Feeling slightly miffed that Ryan thought so little of Ricky’s armorer skill—so much of it learned from Ryan’s own friend, the masterful J.B.—as to reckon he couldn’t work that out on his own, Ricky settled into a seated position, side-on to the approaching boat, with his ankles crossed. He cinched his arm up in the Scout’s sling the way he’d seen Ryan do. He made sure his left forearm was directly under the forestock, and that his elbows were braced against the insides of his legs. It was a stable firing platform, but mostly he wanted to make sure he could see all the action. He put his eye down behind the ocular.

  “Fire in the hole,” Ryan said. “Be warned, it’ll get loud in three, two, one.”

  The Lahti went off. It made a sound so loud it felt to Ricky as if it would implode his head. The shock wave stung not just the bare side of his head but the whole left side of his body. It almost toppled him, although that might have been from surprise as much as the actual force.

  The effect on the blasterboat, still three hundred yards off, was immediate—and drastic. The boiler simply blew up, or so Ricky guessed. For a moment the craft vanished in an enormous ball of steam. Fragments of the shattered cabin flew fifty feet into the air to rain down on the creek all around.

  “Wow,” Ricky said. He could barely hear himself for the ringing in his ears.

  When the boom of the explosion reached them on the shore, it still wasn’t as sharp as the echoes of Ryan’s shot reverberating between the creek banks.

  When the cloud cleared enough for the boat to be visible again, Ricky gasped at the devastation. The roof of the cabin was gone, except for a few wood tatters swinging from brass uprights. The boiler was a jagged, twisted shell.

  “Don’t see anybody left aboard,” Ricky reported as he scanned the wrecked boat with the scope.

  “Well,” J.B. said, “the blaster works.”

  Ryan sat up and rubbed his shoulder. “Even weighing a hundred pounds and with the muzzle brake, she does pack a kick,” he admitted.

  “I see what you mean about not liking being cooped up with that monster,” Nataly called as she picked herself up off the grass nearby.

  Ryan shook his head. “Can’t do that. Blow everybody’s eardrums out the second shot, max. I’ll go up top to fire, when we need it.”

  “But, Ryan!” Krysty exclaimed, coming up to join them. By that time the Poteetville boat had turned broadside in the current. What looked like smoke began to filter up from below its shattered deck. Ricky recalled Ryan’s account of how the spilled firebox set the New Vick blasterboat he had blasted with its own swivel blaster the day before alight. “The cannon—”

  They had armored the roof of the cabin to protect against what J.B. called “plunging fire.” Since they were lower than the ironclads’ cannon mounts, they risked taking a lot of that.

  “We’ll be moving along pretty brisk,” Ryan said. “They’ll need a lucky shot to drop one on me.”

  Krysty said no more, accustomed as she was to Ryan going into danger. She was also accustomed to how futile it was arguing with Ryan Cawdor once his mind got set.

  As the P’ville boat floated closer, slowly rotating, the swampers began firing it up. A great racket and clouds of smoke rose from their muzzle-loading rifles and fowling-pieces.

  “Shouldn’t we try to stop them?” Mildred shouted.

  “Why?” Ryan asked. “They want to waste their powder and ball, that’s not our problem.”

  “But, ah, what about casualties?”

  “Last night Joe and Ermintrude were telling me about a game the ville blasterboats play when they raid these swamps,” Ryan said. “They like to catch swampers, find a nest of stickies in the shallows somewhere and toss the swampers to them. Then they pull out in the middle of the stream and laugh while the stickies have their fun.”

  Myron, who had been below making last-minute adjustments to his engines, stared at the blasted wreck floating by. Then he gave a resounding slap to the steel armor wired to the side of the cabin, and shouted in a voice loud enough to be heard over the now-sporadic blasterfire from the swamper boats, “In the blood of our enemies, I christen you, Vengeance!”

  Then he covered his face and ran back into the cabin, obviously crying.

  The stricken boat went turning past the aground Queen. Ricky saw pale flames begin to lick up. The shooting from the swampers petered out.

  But the noise of blasterfire didn’t. It went on, and on. Not loud. But deep. Like a monster thunderstorm some distance away.

  “Ryan—” Krysty said.

  “Fireblast!” Ryan growled.

  He looked west. Then everybody did.

  There were already clouds of canno
n smoke visible, rising in the distance. Right about, Ricky judged, where Wolf Creek emptied out into the Sippi.

  The thunder roared…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “We’ve got to go,” Ryan said. “Now. Drop everything and get aboard.”

  “Are you put of your dark dusted mind?” Arliss demanded. “That’s the sound of both damn ironclad fleets going at it hammer and tongs. Right outside the mouth of Wolf Creek!”

  Ryan nodded calmly. “That’s why.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this way both sides will have something better to shoot at than us.”

  “He’s right,” J.B. said. “See, when the CSS Arkansas ran the Northern fleet, it did it all by its lonesome. All the ships were shooting at it.”

  He pushed his hat back on his head.

  “I reckon, we got the advantage over her that way. And she came through fine.”

  “They’re right, Arliss,” Avery said. “It likely is our best shot.”

  “We may even be a little less likely to die,” Jake added.

  Arliss slumped. “Mebbe you’re right. I can’t see we’ve got much to lose by playing it this way, after all.”

  But Nataly shook her head. “No way. She’s still stuck.”

  “Then everybody grab a shovel,” Ryan said.

  * * *

  THE CONFLUENCE AHEAD of the newly renamed Vengeance was a hell-storm of fire, steel, smoke and noise.

  “It looks like both sides are up in each other’s faces,” Avery said.

  “Yeah,” Santee agreed. “Looks like they picked today to settle things up, huh?”

  Ryan could that see the fleets were close, possibly intermingled already. It was hard to make out details for the smoke. But he could see darts of fire from the relatively high cannon decks of the ironclads through the gray banks of smoke, and lesser patrol steamers maneuvering below most of the cloud.

  “They’re going to have their work cut out even seeing us,” J.B. stated.

  “Does that mean they won’t shoot at us?” Avery asked hopefully.

  The Armorer shrugged. “Just less.”

  Twelve people were crowded onto the bridge: the companions and the original crew’s survivors, minus Myron, and Arliss, who was assisting the captain with the Diesels, and Suzan, who had panicked at seeing the inferno they were about to plunge into, and was back in one of the more intact cabins with a blanket over her head.

  Ryan didn’t see how her absence made any difference one way or another. It wasn’t as if she was going to swat cannonballs out of the air with her palms. He couldn’t rightly blame her, truth to tell.

  I wish I had faith in the ability of old smelly wool to keep off the shells, if the makeshift armor can’t, he thought.

  “Better get your hearing protection on,” Mildred said. She was already having to shout to make herself heard over the thunder of the battle going on hundreds of yards away.

  But it wasn’t because of the cannon dogfight they were about to become part of that she had badgered them into making pads of folded rag they could tie over their ears with headbands. It was because of the monstrous blaster, leaning to the left of the helm with its lengthy barrel angled out the front ob port through a gap in the scrolled-steel screen they’d put up. J.B. had backed Ryan’s judgment that the worst of the noise would be diminished by having the muzzle with its brake well outside the cabin. But the backblast would still be hellish—capable of shattering eardrums, in all probability.

  Ricky stuck his head out through the narrow gap between the chunk of scrollwork they’d pulled up to give some protection to the hatch to outside and the top of the entryway. He looked back.

  “Swampers are giving us the thumbs-up,” he reported, ducking back in. Mildred shot him a glare. He pulled his ear protector into place.

  Ryan drew on his own. It muffled the sound but didn’t deaden it. He could hear the others talk if they were close enough—as almost everybody crammed into the bridge or pilothouse was. They just sounded as if they were far down a well.

  The Vengeance began to rock as she left the weed-masked mouth of Wolf Creek into the slow but powerful Sippi current. Ryan began to feel the blasts of cannon firing as the noise grew to thunderstorm proportions about them.

  Not fifty yards ahead a patrol boat crossed their path from port to starboard, the dark smoke trailing from its stack creating a strain of stain in the pervasive light gray cannon smoke. A red-and-white banner whipped from the little mast at her stern. New Vickville colors. Its crew was busily reloading a two-pounder bow cannon and pointing excitedly at the mass of the nearest big ironclad: a P’ville frigate almost broadside to the current, meaning broadside to the smaller vessel, about two hundred yards northwest.

  “Bocephus,” Ryan said. He’d memorized ship silhouettes from both fleets during the dragging downtime of his “employment” with Baron Tanya, along with details of their armament and capabilities. Both sides, he’d learned, had pretty complete dossiers on their rivals’ ironclad warships.

  He wasn’t sure how it could help, but he’d reckoned it might. “Bocephus?” Mildred said. “Really?”

  The P’ville frigate fired its broadside: all of two six-pound smoothbores. That was another advantage their puny little homebuilt ironclad had over the Arkansas, on her legendary running of the Union fleet almost two centuries before: the Northern ships carried a lot more cannon than either of these modern fleets did, mostly heavier, and some rifled. The Confederate ironclad was targeted by a lot more, and more effective, blasterfire than they would be.

  But the frigate’s battery seemed neither small nor ineffectual when it was shooting almost right at a vessel. One shot threw up a forty-foot column of water well off the Vengeance’s port bow as she started her turn south. The other hit the New Vick patrol boat in the foredeck.

  That shot was apparently a shell. Ryan saw a red flash before the inevitable smoke blossom blotted out the scene. When it began to lift, the patrol craft’s deck was a shattered shambles, with it and the front of the pilothouse already on fire. Its lone cannon had been blown right through the bow and into the river.

  Several hundred yards ahead Ryan saw a huge dark shape appear out of the smoke: an ironclad “capital” ship. The others cried out in amazed alarm.

  “That’s the Invincible,” he called out. He recognized her by her armored pilothouse perched at the front of her two-story cabin, which like her two sister P’ville heavy hitters carried eight eight-pound cannon. He’d always thought the extrusion was a stupe idea. It just made the ironclad a bigger target. And it looked double stupe. The ship was steaming almost due south, and just about to go broadside to broadside with the big New Vickville ironclad Medusa.

  Steady, her focus likely as much to blot out the terror of their surroundings as to navigate them safely, Nataly steered the armored tug around her turn. She had called for Myron to reduce power in the Diesels to keep from capsizing the towed flotilla of swamper boats. Now Ryan felt the big engines begin to thrum more powerfully as she accelerated out of the turn.

  The hammer of the gods struck the cabin just off the hatch to the deck. The Vengeance rocked perceptibly to the blow, and her whole substance shivered.

  Avery gave J.B. a thumbs-up. “She held!”

  “Glancing blow,” the Armorer replied.

  Oddly enough, once they were in the midst of the firestorm, Ryan realized the shooting was not a constant storm of steel and flame. Of course it couldn’t be. The cannon took time to swab out and reload. From his time with the fleet, he knew that unless an ironclad was firing a virgin broadside—had not fired yet in combat, or at least recently—the cannon tended to shoot independently as long as they had targets. Or were ordered to continue.

  But there were still a lot of cannon out there. There wasn’t time to catch much of a nap between rounds, either.

  He felt someone clutch his arm. It was Jak. The albino had been flitting about getting different angles on the scene outside
—looking for threats to his friends, the way he always did. He barely seemed to brush up against the others when he did so, even if they were packed in there backside-to-business.

  He pointed a white hand out the hatch. A New Vick frigate lay side-on to them, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away. Ryan recognized her as the Selene.

  Ryan held out his hand. That was the signal for Ricky, who also had the Steyr longblaster slung across his back, to hand the one-eyed man his navy longeyes.

  Through the firing ports in the lower deck of the Selene’s cabin, their steel shutters raised for action, he could see crews frantically at work reloading. As he watched, one man finished and jumped back. A gunner yanked a lanyard.

  Ryan reflexively lowered the longeyes and ducked as fire bloomed from the cannon’s mouth. A beat later the cabin rang to the impact of a shot against a rail to port of the helm. Ryan felt as if the shock wave radiated through steel and wood to hit him, although he suspected that was an illusion of sound and vibrations transmitted through the deck.

  “Fireblast!” It was time to discourage that shit. He gave Ricky the longeyes, grabbed the butt of the Lahti and deadlifted it. In a pinch, he could heft the whole blaster. It took effort to lever it up to aiming level.

  He tapped Nataly on the shoulder. “Duck,” he said.

  She did, into a deep crouch that brought her head below the ob port’s sill. She kept her hands on the wheel. That was enough; this wasn’t a land wag, where you had to keep looking where you were going every second or risk a crash.

  Ryan stepped past her, swinging the Lahti’s barrel to his left to point at the frigate. At some point this blaster had its scope removed, but it didn’t much matter, as the weapon spit out its heavy 20 mm projectiles at 2,600 feet per second, giving them a flat enough trajectory to hit pretty much where the blaster was pointing at that range.

  Even with the smoke, it wasn’t hard for Ryan to spot the blaster-ports. He aimed just above the lower edge of one, braced and fired.

  The monster roared and kicked his shoulder like a mule. It didn’t have the ground to suck up some of the recoil through its sled-like tripod this time. It hurt.