Iron Rage

by James Axler

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mildred nodded in satisfaction. Her shot had caught the man who had blasted Suzan right between the eyes. Exactly where she’d aimed.

  It was too late to do poor Suzan any good. The middle-aged woman, running up the ramp, had simply fallen straight over the rail into the river when she was shot. Mildred didn’t even know where the bullet had hit her.

  “Move it, Mildred!” Ryan shouted from just below her. He had his panga and his SIG out, and blood in his blue eye. “Admire your marksmanship later.”

  When you’re right, you’re right, she thought, lowering her arm and hustling up the gangplank. She heard Doc start blazing away with his revolver. A moment later J.B.’s M-4000 shotgun joined the chorus.

  Everybody but Ryan was there ahead of her when she puffed her way onto the deck. No living enemies remained. At least not when Jak stood up from the body of the man who’d been shrieking and carrying on.

  On the water below, Mildred heard the Diesels roar. She felt crunching through the soles of her combat boots, heard tormented metal screech on metal.

  She looked down. The Vengeance was backing away from the Pearl. Already she could see the doomed tug was riding deeper in the water, and canted to her port.

  Dark smoke poured out the ob port and hatch. But still, an arm appeared through the front port. It turned a thumbs-up to the ironclad’s deck, then disappeared.

  Ryan was still on the ramp behind her. Mildred realized she was blocking his way when he made a fast motion. He wouldn’t hit her, but he’d push any of his companions out of the way if he had to.

  But the rangy one-eyed man wasn’t going anywhere. He was aiming his SIG up and along the deck to his left.

  “Eyes forward!” he shouted.

  * * *

  RYAN WASN’T SURPRISED when his sight was filled by the ample bulk of Baron Tanya Krakowitz of New Vickville. Even though her cannon crews were still trading spitting-distance shots with their rivals aboard the Tyrant, she knew somehow where the real threat to her flagship lay.

  She was dressed in her tailored admiral suit, which like her stateroom was surprisingly restrained: enough gold braid and bird poop to signify that she was in charge. But no more.

  She stopped dead as blasters pointed at her face.

  “Cawdor!” she exclaimed. “I should have known.”

  “You know when I said I considered myself separated from my earlier employment?” he called. “I lied.”

  “No shit.” She gave her head a little shake. “I knew I never should have trusted you. But how could I help myself? I always knew you were this bloody good.”

  She nodded at the Mossberg shotgun she carried in patrol position across her hips.

  “Well, it looks as if we got ourselves a good old-fashioned Sippi standoff here,” she said.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Baron,” Ryan replied. “You so much as try to twitch that scattergun up, we’ll blast you out of your shoes. No, what really happens now is, you drop the blaster, put your hands up and come peaceably with us. You behave yourself, and I’ll let you go when we’re clear.”

  “You’re hijacking my ship?”

  Ryan jerked his head toward the Vengeance, which was still backing clear of the ironclad. He wasn’t sure where Myron meant to take her. Much less whether she’d survive to get there, before the fire or the water won the race to claim her.

  “It’s our only ride out now,” he said. “So, yeah. Let’s go.”

  “Me? Your hostage? When pigs fly.”

  She dropped the shotgun to the deck. Then with startling grace she sprang to the railing. Before even Ryan could react, she launched herself in a dive for the surface of the Sippi.

  “‘When pigs fly,’” Doc murmured. “At the risk of seeming unchivalrous, that seems curiously apt.”

  “Good form, though,” Avery commented.

  * * *

  CANNON FIRE ERUPTED off to Ryan’s left as he led his storming party forward down the passageway toward the Pearl’s bridge. The stout wooden walls and scrap-steel armor muffled the sounds. But they weren’t hard to identify.

  A lone sentry with a Springfield carbine stood watch by the hatch. His eyes widened when he saw the smoke-smudged, blood-spattered band bearing down on him, bristling with blasters.

  Ryan aimed his SIG toward the middle of the sentry’s forehead. The sentry was a kid, maybe fifteen years old. If he shook any harder, he was in imminent danger of losing some parts.

  “Feel like being a hero?” Ryan asked, his voice soft but deadly. The sentry shook his head.

  “Then get out of here!” Mildred told him.

  “First, lay the blaster down easy,” Ryan added.

  The kid obeyed, vanishing down the ladder on the passageway’s port side.

  At Ryan’s nod, J.B. hauled open the hatch. “Hera reports herself fully engaged with Devastation and Bocephus, Captain,” a female officer was saying. The steel shutters of the portside and forward ob ports were raised, allowing in a weak spill of daylight. The starboard shutters, the ones on the side facing the Tyrant, were closed. “Clytemnestra reports Conqueror withdrawing, but Glory is now firing on her from—”

  Ryan stepped in with blaster leveled in both hands. The briefing stopped.

  The ship’s captain was a fine figure of a middle-aged man, if a bit of a bulldog in build. He had a shock of snow-white hair, coal-black brows over blue eyes, and a chin so manly it could double as an anvil.

  It was set in resolve now. “What is the meaning of this interruption?” he said as he spun to face the intruders.

  When he found himself staring right up Ryan’s handblaster barrel, he didn’t even flinch.

  “We’re taking command now,” Ryan said. “Surrender your ship and we’ll—”

  “Surrender the Pearl? The pride of New Vickville? To a renegade traitor and a gang of filthy pirates? Over my dead bo—”

  Ryan fired a single shot.

  “Does anybody else want to negotiate?” he asked, as Garza folded to his own command deck with both bright blue eyes turned upward toward the hole in his forehead. Ryan turned his handblaster left and right, in case anyone wanted to take him up on his offer.

  Instead the other six people on the bridge promptly raised their hands.

  “Cover them,” Ryan ordered. He lowered his blaster and stepped to where a pull cord hung from the control to a steam-driven horn. The brown-haired female warrant who had been delivering the situation report stepped hurriedly out of his path.

  He sounded the horn, three quick times. Pause, then three blasts more. And then one more time.

  “But that’s the signal to abandon ship!” exclaimed the portly first officer. “What does that mean?”

  Ryan let go of the cord. “It means abandon ship,” he said. “You know that. So it’s time for you and all the rest of you to abandon the rad-blasted ship.”

  “But—”

  Ryan gave him a look.

  The commander’s face paled. “All right! Everybody, to the lifeboats!”

  “What about the Tyrant?” the warrant officer asked. “She’s still firing on us!”

  Indeed, Ryan could hear the noise and feel the trembling of a ball coming in and a ball going out.

  “Our problem now, girl,” Mildred said. “Git!”

  “Are you going to let them go?” Jake asked, as the warrant followed the rest of the bridge crew out the hatch. “Just like that?”

  “It’s not like they’re going to do us any harm,” Ryan said.

  “But what about Santee? What about Suzan?”

  “What about Myron?” Nataly wailed. She covered her face and began to cry again. Somehow Ryan doubted she was calling for avenging him, though. But rather, wondering at his fate.

  And suddenly Ryan knew what the captain intended.

  “Nothing’s going to bring our friends back now, Jake,” Avery said, patting his shipmate on the shoulder as Ryan hurried past him to the port on the starboard side of th
e bridge. “Just let it go.”

  Whether they used gears or clever counterweights to raise and lower the shutters—too heavy to shift by hand—Ryan didn’t know. But the crank turned readily and lifted the heavy plate readily enough.

  He heard people gasp as he leaned far out and looked astern.

  The shots were coming few and far between the ironclad flagships. But as he watched, a lone orange flame spurted from the Tyrant. A single shot replied from Pearl. From the smell of the dense smoke, there was fire aboard both ships.

  But the smoke had cleared enough that he could just make out the red pup-tent form of the Vengeance, flames pouring out of her cabin now, driving full speed at the far side of Tyrant’s hull.

  She disappeared from view.

  Whether it was the fire or Myron finding some way to trigger it, the several hundred pounds of black powder stashed in the tug’s hold went off at once. From the fine timing, Ryan judged the latter.

  From the yellow flash and the knife-sharp sound, it was enough to detonate like a high explosive.

  The enemy ironclad actually rose perceptibly from the water.

  And then a second, vastly louder blast knocked her at least four feet into the air. The sound of her back breaking was not as loud as the second detonation. She settled back down amid a cloud of smoke and steam that instantly shrouded her midsection. Before he pulled back from the port to avoid possible flying debris, Ryan thought he saw her settle in the middle, with bow and stern angling up.

  She was finished, he knew that much.

  “Whoa,” Ricky breathed.

  “Magazine explosion,” J.B. said. “Ace job of driving.”

  “It would appear,” Doc intoned, “that our captain attained the Viking funeral he desired, for himself and his lost loved ones.”

  “And then some,” Mildred said.

  Nataly just wept.

  “What now?” Abner asked, as Ryan pushed his way through the crowd back to the helm.

  “We steam south out of this place,” Ryan said, studying the controls.

  “You know how to pilot this thing?” Jake asked.

  Ryan leaned toward a speaking tube. “Engine, bridge. All ahead, full.”

  He waited for what seemed like forever. After he had concluded that the engine room crew had fled their posts like sensible people, he heard, faintly, “Aye-aye, sir!” rattle out from the horn.

  He felt the vibration as Pearl’s screws began to bite water.

  He turned to the others. “Yeah. I can pilot her.”

  “Didn’t the engine crew hear the abandon ship?” Jake asked. The perpetually gloomy navigator actually sounded skeptical that what was happening was happening.

  “Do I look like I know?”

  Nataly wiped tears from her reddened face. “Ryan, she’s holed and probably sinking. And from the smell I’m almost sure she’s on fire.”

  Krysty came up beside Ryan and slipped her arm around his waist. He put his arm around her and smiled down at her.

  Then he turned his face south. That was where their future lay, and he always tried to keep facing the future.

  Whatever it held.

  “Then we ride her until she won’t go any farther,” he said. “And then we’ll play whatever cards we happen to hold at the time. Same as we always do.”

  “I have an idea,” Mildred said. “Next time, let’s not sign on for the adventure cruise, okay?”

  * * *

  EXHAUSTED FROM HER crosscurrent swim, Baron Tanya Krakowitz of New Vickville hauled herself to her feet in the shallows of the Sippi’s eastern bank.

  She saw Pearl—her flagship—steaming south with black smoke trailing from her stacks. Behind her, and now to the north of her, the Tyrant was sinking with her bow and stern jutting from the water and her middle underwater.

  “Cawdor, you magnificent bastard!”

  Her cry startled a bittern, which exploded from the tall grass to her left that had hidden it and went winging majestically across the mighty river.

  “This doesn’t end anything. Our paths will cross again.”

  She raised her hand to her brow in salute, then she gave the departing ironclad the finger.

  No longer a baron after that major goatscrew, she turned to make her way inland. In her mind, she had already started a brand-new life.

  Again.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-474-02900-1

  IRON RAGE

  © 2015 Worldwide Library

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Victor Milan for his contribution to this work.

  Published in Great Britain 2015

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

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