by James Axler
But it didn’t kill him. Neither did the blast. He switched his aim a few degrees left. The weapon was a gas-operated semiautomatic. It reloaded and cocked itself.
He fired again.
The yellow muzzle-flash of the colossal longblaster was followed instantly by a hell-red glare that filled the inside of the cockpit. Still holding the Lahti over the crouching form of Nataly, Ryan looked right.
He was in time to see the stern half of the Invincible explode in flame and fragments, then came the smoke, like a curtain closing.
Mildred slapped Ryan’s shoulder. “Good shootin’, Tex! Was that a carom shot?”
Ryan shook his head. He had actually heard her. Sort of.
“That wasn’t my doing,” he said, as he shifted to his left. Nataly snapped back into place as if she were on a spring.
“Glancing fire,” J.B. called. “Hit the powder magazine.”
“Not so Invincible after all!” Doc exulted.
And then the pounding began in earnest.
It was as if both fleets, though locked in deadly combat at dagger range in some cases, noticed this weird, armored thing intruding boldly and presumptuous into their playground. Two shots rang off the Vengeance’s armor almost simultaneously from opposite directions. Then three more, as fast as combination punches from a skilled boxer.
“Holding still,” Avery said.
Ryan searched calmly for targets. He hoped his shots had scared the gunners in Selene out of shooting at them anymore. At least until their petty officers beat them back to the task. Even with the monster power of the 20 mm longblaster, he had next to no chance of doing lasting damage to any ironclad.
He did put a shot through a firing port on Clytemnestra, off its port bow, and engaged with the capital Conqueror, which was actually behind the Vengeance and her train of small boats. Ryan wondered how they were doing.
But only briefly. He could do little for them, and they weren’t his people. He wished them well, but that was most of it right there. He gave the big ship’s blaster-port another shot, for good measure.
The 16-gauge wire wraps binding a rail to the front of the bridge parted with musical twangs audible even above the bombardment, and the residual ringing in Ryan’s ear from his own weapon. He saw the rail fall away to angle across the bridge-truss rail through the hatchway to his left.
A New Vick patrol boat appeared fifty yards ahead and steaming right at them. Its bow cannon fired, a shout of yellow fire. The ball struck the bow armor in a shower of red steel-on-steel sparks and went moaning over the cabin.
Ryan was more concerned now about the patrol craft closing and grappling with them. His people could handle a boarding party. What none of them could afford was to be shackled to an enemy ship and stopped in the middle of this firestorm.
More impacts rang off the Vengeance’s armor. Ryan scarcely paid attention to them. Except for the one rail, J.B.’s improvised armor was holding. For now. And again, there was nothing he could do but hope.
But he did know how to chill a steam-powered patrol boat. His next shot made the approaching vessel’s boulder blow up so hard that when, moments later, Vengeance powered past her, she had slewed to the east and was sinking by the blasted-off stern.
Ahead of them to his right he made out the bulk of the Pearl. She was nose to tail with Baron Harvey’s Tyrant. The two flagships were obviously hammering each other at almost hull-scraping range. Somehow in the scrum and the smoke they had swapped original directions, with Tyrant’s bow now pointing north toward Poteetville, and the Pearl’s bow toward her own home port.
Ryan blasted another patrol craft closing from their starboard. This one flew a Poteetville flag, he thought. The usual boiler blast put paid to her as a threat.
His next shot failed to hit the boiler of a New Vick blasterboat, because by chance her helmsman put the wheel over in a hard right turn even as Ryan’s finger tightened on the trigger. The helmsman paid for it when the 20 mm armor-piercer smashed through the wheel and ripped his right arm off his body, just below the shoulder.
A frigate Ryan recognized as the New Vickville Hera steamed toward them almost bow-on, two hundred yards ahead, with black smoke pouring from her twin stacks into a now-cloudy sky. He realized with something like an electric shock that she was the last ironclad between them and open river.
“Holy cow,” Mildred yelled. “I think we’re going to make it!” Ryan aimed for the frigate’s bow cannon and fired. He knew as the blaster cracked that he had pulled the shot high. He aimed again, fired again.
“Strike!” Ricky screamed from just behind him. He was watching Ryan’s target through the longeyes. “You hit the gunner just as he was about to shoot! Wait, there’s another—”
Somehow at this distance Ryan saw the blurred motion of a second brave sailor stepping up to seize the lanyard of the six-pounder bow cannon. He sighted on him and shot again.
As he did, the cannon’s muzzle vanished in yellow glare and white smoke.
Ryan actually felt the shot punch through the unarmored decking, to his left up the walkway between rail and cabin.
Then he felt the shudder and the boom as the black powder shell exploded in the guts of the Vengeance.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Krysty felt like puking. We’ve been hit hard! she thought.
They were hit worse than she thought. In a moment throat-flaying smoke filled the bridge, redolent of wood, oil and seared human flesh.
The door astern burst open. Suzan appeared, her eyes and hair even more wild than usual.
“We’re on fire!”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Lewis said, coughing and waving smoke away from his face. It was futile. All he did was cause eddies in the choking stuff.
Myron came up from below. His hair was half burned off. His eyes stared crazily from a blackened face. His coveralls smoldered.
“We’re breached and taking water!” he shouted. “Arliss is dead.”
“What now, Captain?” Nataly asked.
“Didn’t you hear me? We’re done for! Finished! Kaput!” He began to laugh uncontrollably.
Avery reached out a hand and slapped him. The captain jerked his head back. He blinked twice at the boatswain. He seemed puzzled at being struck, and on the edge of tears.
“That’s not really therapeutic,” Mildred said.
“It shut him up,” Ryan snarled. “That’s therapeutic for us.”
He looked to the first officer. “Steer us toward the Pearl,” he directed. “Right up her ass. You can work the engines from here, right?”
Nataly looked from the tall, grim, one-eyed man back to the scorched and desolated figure of her boss. “I don’t know.”
“Do it,” Myron said. His tone wasn’t just sane. It sounded resolved. “Do what he tells you. And yes. We can work the engines from here.”
“We prefer not to because the linkage is wonky and tends to jam up,” Abner said.
Nataly was turning the wheel. The armored tug’s nose swung toward the capital ship.
“Give her all the speed you got,” Ryan said.
Nataly worked a lever beside the wheel. The Diesels’ growl got louder.
“Engines sound rough,” J.B. said. “Are they fit?”
Myron shook his head. “Both are running now. I can’t promise more.”
“Ryan,” Krysty said, “what do you have in mind?”
“We’re going to ram the bastard,” he said, “and then we’re going to hijack her.”
“Are you out of your nuking mind?” Jake and Avery yelled in unison.
“We’re on fire and sinking,” Ryan replied. “If you’ve got a better plan, I’m all ears.”
“But that’s a battleship,” Avery insisted.
“Pretty soon her cannon won’t depress far enough to hit us,” J.B. said.
The Lahti erupted with terrifying noise twice in quick succession. Even with the head-wrap holding cloth pads over her ears the reports were like daggers st
abbing into Krysty’s skull.
“That should keep Hera’s crew from playing with the bow cannon any more until we’re in close to Pearl,” Ryan said, pulling the big box magazine off the top of the blaster and replacing it with the full one. Their last one, Krysty knew. Not that that seemed to matter much now.
“Do you not understand?” Doc roared. Everyone looked at him except Ryan and Nataly. “We are going to fight them on our terms now!”
“He’s right,” Mildred said. “Crazy as a bedbug. But right.” And she grinned.
“To hell with letting them hammer us with big weapons while we can do nothing about it!”
“Speaking of that,” Ricky said hesitantly, “is anybody still shooting at us?”
“Mebbe not,” J.B. said. The stern of the New Vick flagship was already looming like a house over them. On her far side her cannon and the Tyrant’s were still banging away at each other, close enough one cannon’s flame could scorch its opposite number’s crew. “Don’t want to risk hitting the boss lady. At least, not in the midst of a fight they could still lose.”
“Ryan! The swampers!” Krysty exclaimed. “What about them?”
“We’ve done all we could for them,” J.B. said.
“Take over on the Lahti and empty the mag where you think she’ll do the most good, J.B.,” Ryan said. “I’ll go warn them. You couldn’t have done this without them. Reckon we owe them that.”
“I’ll go,” Krysty said.
“Krys—”
She silenced Ryan with a glare. She was precisely the only person on Earth who could do that. She was the only one not stone crazy who was likely to even try.
“As Ricky says, no one’s shooting at us. And you know better than to try to shield me from danger, don’t you, Ryan?”
“Get going,” he replied. He hunched down behind the Lahti, angled its long barrel up at the rail of the rapidly approaching warship. “And hustle back here, triple fast!”
* * *
WHEN THE LAST spent 20 mm casing bounced jingling on the deck at his feet, Ryan tipped the giant longblaster forward out of the cabin.
“But, Ryan!” Ricky protested. He hated to see a good blaster treated that way, Ryan knew.
“It’s just an anchor now, boy,” J.B. said. He took off his ear-protecting headband and threw it out the hatch. The others followed suit. “Unless you want to hump it, your blasters and your pack up that ramp there.” Before he’d opened fire again, Ryan had suggested everybody grab everything they meant to take with them.
“Ramp?” Nataly asked.
Ryan shouldered her aside. “I got it.”
She looked outraged and tried to push him away. Mildred grabbed her in a bear hug from behind, pinning her arms and dragging her back.
“Let it go, Nat,” Myron said calmly. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s the only one, but that’s enough, now.”
Ryan steered the tugboat for the stern just forward of the big rudder and the submerged screws. A gangplank was tied upright above the spot Ryan was targeting. It looked intact. He didn’t think the Pearl had taken any major fire on this side. Except for his 20 mm rounds raking the rail and the cabin.
He heard the heavy steel scrollwork over the hatch scrape on the deck. “Just heave it over,” he ordered without looking. He heard it clang against the chunk of bridge truss that armored the rail across from it.
“I’m back,” he heard Krysty say. “Swampers cut loose. They’re already rowing south.”
“Godspeed to them,” Doc said.
“Ace,” Ryan said. “Brace for impact.”
The New Vick flagship was armored to the waterline, but Ryan had noticed during his time with the fleet that the improvised plate there wasn’t maintained as well as it might be. It was bright red with rust where it regularly came in contact with the water.
That meant it was weakened. At least slightly. He hoped.
The Vengeance’s bow smashed into the larger ship like a baby whale nuzzling its mother a touch too aggressively. She slammed to a stop with a grinding, screaming, rending crash.
Ryan heard thumping and tumbling and cussing from behind. There was a limit to how braced you could get for an impact like that, especially jammed in a little room that held mostly other people and overfull backpacks.
The tubby river tug was stoutly built, and her bow was armored. Ryan heard her frame creak and felt things break inside her. But she punched a double-big hole in the Pearl’s hull, smashing through the rust-brittled scrap armor. Water instantly began to gush into the New Vick flagship.
“All aboard,” Ryan said.
“But how will we get up?” Jake asked dubiously. He was eying the water-slicked black-iron rungs hammered into the hull as a ladder of sorts to her deck, a story overhead.
“Got,” Jak said. He slipped out the open hatch before anyone could tell him otherwise. Not that Ryan meant to; he’d planned on Jak opening the way for the rest.
J.B. pulled back the lever to cock his Uzi. “I’ll cover,” he said. Stooped slightly beneath his backpack and slung shotgun, he followed the albino out. The others trailed behind.
Nataly took Myron by the arm. “Come on, Captain. It’s time to go.”
But he shook her off. “You go. I’m staying.”
The cabin was getting hot. As he turned away from the wheel, Ryan could see the evil glow of fire down below from the open hatch.
“But the ship is lost!” the first officer said pleadingly.
“No. Trace deserves the Viking funeral I could never give her before. And poor Sean. Me too, for that matter. Plus, I might just be able to do the rest of you some good with my famous final scene.”
Nataly blew out a long breath. “Then I’m staying with you.”
“No! I’m ordering you to go.”
“I won’t!” Her voice was tearful.
Suddenly the potbellied captain had a blaster in his hand, a Russian 9 mm Makarov, of all the rad-blasted things.
“If you don’t go yourself, I’ll shoot you in the leg,” Myron declared. “You don’t want to make your shipmates carry you, do you? Not a fine officer like you?”
She turned and bolted out the hatch, sobbing like a lost child. Outside, Ryan heard full-auto fire stuttering. J.B., on his submachine gun. Apparently some Pearl crew had shown their heads above the rail too close to Jak for comfort.
As Ryan bent to shoulder his pack and sling his Scout, Myron tipped his little black handgun to his brow.
“It’s been an honor serving with you, Cawdor. And thank you.”
Ryan nodded. “You too,” he said. And left.
* * *
THE GANGPLANK SLAMMED down with a thump. It came almost to the deck of the Vengeance, now well stuck in the bigger ship’s stern.
Sometimes the gods smiled, Doc thought, even on the likes of us.
At the top of the ramp he had just dropped to his friends, Jak spun away, his white hair flying, and dived clear of the ramp’s upper end as blasterfire rang out. Wood splintered from the gangplank.
Roaring, holding his ax in both his mighty hands, Santee ran up the ramp with surprising speed.
Doc drew his rapier from his belted sword stick, and with sword in his right hand and blaster in the left, charged up the ramp after the giant Indian. He was no less sick than any of them of suffering one-sided abuse at the hands of tormentors untouchable behind the iron walls of their warships.
As he had told the doubters among their crewmates: this was their kind of fight now. And if the odds still lay against them—as Mildred would say, what else was new?
To the left of the ramp Doc saw Santee, swinging about with his ax. Blood flew from its head. To the right Jak slashed and rolled with his knives.
As he neared the top, Doc heard a shot crack from nearby. He saw the big man’s body jerk, then at least three more shots rippled out.
Santee reeled back a step. He dropped the ax.
Then, drawing in a breath that seemed to inflate his chest to twice it
s normal enormous size, he charged his adversaries.
A sailor jammed a socket bayonet mounted on the end of a carbine into Santee’s stomach. He blasted its single shot into the man.
Bellowing, Santee spread his arms, then he swept them together, gathering up the man who had bayoneted him with two of his mates, like a mother bear scooping up her cubs. Then he hurled himself and the three sailors over the rail to splash into the water below.
Doc came onto the ramp. He saw no opponents to his left. He spun right. A trio of sailors, one with a bayonet-mounted Springfield carbine, one with a Winchester repeater, and a third with a cutlass, were trying to bash or stab the elusive Jak. He eluded their savage sallies, but was finding no opening to riposte.
Doc lunged and thrust the rapier into the kidney of his nearest foe, the man with the bayoneted longblaster. The man shrieked as if he were on fire and fell thrashing, drawing Doc’s arm with him.
The cutlass man spun and cocked his arm back across his chest to cut at Doc. The old man obliterated his bearded face with the charge in the LeMat’s stubby shotgun barrel.
The last sailor raised his repeater to shoot Doc down. His dark eyes went wide as Jak’s matched pair of butterfly knives pierced his stout neck from opposite sides from behind.
Sheets of blood erupted to briefly mask his face as Jak thrust the blades forward and out through his gullet, severing carotid arteries and jugular veins alike.
Blasterfire erupted from behind Doc. He tore his slim blade free of the wounded man and turned. More sailors were swarming onto the deck from the big cabin. One fired a carbine over the rail at the ramp. Others aimed blasters at Doc.
He and Jak jumped nimbly to press their backs across the scrap-armored side of the cabin. The shots went wild.
That was one advantage, to make the best of the bad, of Doc’s condition: on those occasions when he didn’t feel as old as he looked, he also did not move like a man who looked that old. He leveled the LeMat and returned fire from the longer .44 barrel.
More shots sounded from below. Before he could duck back, the man who had leaned over the rail to shoot slumped over it, dropping his blaster into the Sippi.
Then Doc’s comrades stormed onto the ironclad’s deck.
