Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned

by Meredith, Peter

  All around Stu time seemed to speed up. In what felt like a blink of an eye, Corsairs were pouring out of the house, guns in hand. Mike looked as though he had instantly forgotten his weariness and pain; he launched himself at LaBar, who had pulled the Sig Sauer from Jenn’s limp fingers.

  Stu swam as hard as he could for the boat as the two fought for the gun. LaBar had the upper hand. With the heavy backpack, Mike did look like a schoolboy compared to the much bigger Corsair. I’m not going to make it, Stu realized. The boat was drifting into the deep channel, away from Stu. He saw that he would catch it just in time to be confronted by LaBar and the gun.

  He wasn’t wrong. Just as he reached the stern ladder, LaBar twisted the gun from Mike’s hands, fumbled with it for a moment before he was able to turn it on Mike. LaBar grinned just as his friends forty yards away on shore opened fire. The grin disappeared as it felt as though someone took a baseball bat to his left leg. He was spun halfway around before collapsing and falling down the stairs into the cabin.

  To Stu’s surprise, Mike wasn’t hit in that first barrage. Bullets flew all around him and left him miraculously untouched. Mike’s mind was only on protecting Jenn. He turned to rush to her side when a bullet got him, hitting him in the back with a meaty thump that sent him sprawling on deck, unmoving.

  Chapter 11

  The blow to the head had scrambled Jenn’s brain. She couldn’t seem to connect the very obvious dots: gunshots plus LaBar writhing and hissing in pain, plus Mike struggling to breathe and making a wheezing huah, huah, huah sound, meant what? And why was the boom swinging around? That meant something too, something important, she just didn’t know what.

  A soft voice called to her: “Turn the wheel, Jenn.”

  Wheel? What wheel? A car wheel? The wheels on the bus that goes round and round all through the town? “Huh?”

  “Above you, damn it!” The soft voice had been Stu’s; it was no longer soft. His normal growl managed to cut through the fog in her head. She reached up and there was a wheel above her; a boat’s wheel. She started turning it, not really knowing or caring if it was the right direction because just then she realized someone was shooting at them.

  Under the echoing booms of the guns were hissing crackles that seemed very close.

  “Jenn!” It was Stu, sloshing toward the back of the boat. The rain was coming down in fine sprinkles, which didn’t account for the water dancing in zipping lines in front of him, behind him, all around him. It took a second for her to understand: they were shooting at him. And the hissing crackles that seemed very close meant they were shooting at her, too.

  What about Mike? Ignoring the danger, she sat up and saw Mike on his back, his spine arched, desperately trying to find a way to breathe.

  “Jenn! Turn the wheel the other way.”

  She wanted to scream: I don’t care about the damned wheel! This wasn’t Stu’s fault, however. It was hers. She had taken her eyes off the Corsair for two seconds and now Mike was shot, and the boat was heading back into the shallows and Stu was within inches of having the top of his head blown off.

  Hoping she could fix everything with a flick of the wheel, she gave it a spin and tried to rush over to Mike’s side. Her head spun as quickly as the wheel and with the boat suddenly shifting in a new direction under her feet, she tripped and fell down the cabin stairs, landing on top of LaBar, who threatened her with the Sig.

  “Help me or else I’ll…”

  She pushed off of him and climbed back up the stairs. There was no threat he could make that would keep her from Mike. She came on deck just as Stu climbed on board, bringing with him ten gallons of seawater. Before she could rush to Mike, Stu grabbed her by the ankle. As she dropped, bullets whizzed just overhead. The shooters on shore were deadly and precise. They were trying to keep from hitting the hull and sail and even with the dark, fifty yards was not too far.

  Jenn kicked away Stu’s hand and was again about to go to Mike’s side when LaBar suddenly yelled, “Stop shooting! Cannan, it’s me, LaBar. I got them covered.” Just edging up over the top of the deck was LaBar. He swiveled the pistol back and forth from Stu to Jenn.

  “How many are there?” Captain Thomas Cannan called over the water.

  “Two and one dead,” LaBar yelled back.

  Mike wasn’t dead yet. He was still making that terrible, harsh noise as he tried to breathe, but it was fading. Jenn stared at his strangely arched body as the night grew amazingly calm. The rain became a soft drizzle, and the wind only sighed, gently pushing the boat along through the deep channel.

  The calm crept into Jenn, infecting her. She should have been freaking out, screaming and throwing herself at LaBar to tear his eyes out. Instead, she stood and, ignoring the gun LaBar jabbed in her direction, she went to Mike. He was wild-eyed and red in the face, but his grip was still strong. He squeezed her hand hard enough for the pain to cut through to her.

  “Get away from him,” LaBar whispered, afraid that Cannan would think he was letting things get out of control. Cannan wouldn’t hesitate killing him along with the prisoners. “Come on, move! And you, swing us around…” His mouth kept moving but no air was coming out.

  Stu had used the distraction that Jenn had caused to grab LaBar’s AR-15, which had been propped up next to the wheel, forgotten. “Here we are again,” he growled. “You gonna pull that trigger this time, boy?” When LaBar hesitated, Stu laughed, quietly. “That’s what I thought. You were awful tough punching a defenseless girl. Let’s see if you got the balls to trade bullets. Or are you too chicken, boy?”

  Normally Stu wasn’t this chatty. He needed to buy time. The Wind Ripper was very slowly edging down the harbor. In another thirty seconds or so, they would be more shadow than substance to the men on shore.

  “You’re not going to shoot,” Stu went on in a murmur. “We both know it. And if he dies,” he jerked his head toward Mike, “She is going to kill you. She is going to take out her knife and stab you in the throat and there won’t be anything you can do about it because if that gun moves even an inch, I’ll put a bullet in your eye. Your only chance is to drop your weapon and beg for mercy. It’ll help if you tell them that you’re going to bring the boat about.”

  LaBar shook his head. “I won’t.”

  They were running out of time. The Corsairs on shore were waiting. “Then I’ll do it,” Stu told him. Raising his voice, he called out, “I’m coming about.” He wasn’t, of course, he just needed a reason to let the sail fill and float further away.

  “I-I’ll tell,” LaBar said, channeling his inner seven-year-old.

  “And I’ll shoot you. What you’re missing in all this boy, is that I’m not afraid of dying. Are you?” Stu knew he was. It was all the leverage he needed because LaBar knew it, too. Realizing this, the Corsair backed down into the cabin, with his gun pointed steadily at Stu until he could dart to the side, where he leaned against a bulkhead, breathing heavily. His leg ached and there was hot blood leaking down into his left shoe. He had no idea what to do. His options were terrible. If he said nothing he’d be taken hostage and probably killed when they were out to sea and if he called out now his friends…

  Stu seemed to be reading his mind. As he turned the wheel to get the most out of the meager wind, he whispered down to LaBar, “If you call out, your friends will open fire on us and chances are the boat would be shot to pieces. You might get hit. You might even die. I might die but I guarantee you I will set this boat on fire before I do. In fact, it’ll be the first thing I do.”

  Jenn had been trying to get the pack off of Mike’s back when she heard this. She turned to see if this was a bluff and caught Stu’s hard gaze. He wasn’t joking. The three of them had run out of options. They couldn’t allow themselves to be captured and if the sail was reduced to rags, they would lose the ability to steer and would run up in the shallows where their only choice would be to swim across to the bare sandy spit of land on the other side of the harbor where they’d be trapped.
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br />   “Oh crap,” she said under her breath and gave up on the struggle with the straps of the pack. She had found a tiny folding knife with a pearl handle at the house they’d spent the day in; it was not even two inches long and dull as a spoon when she had dug it from a junk drawer. During the long hours of recuperation, when she hadn’t been sleeping, she had honed the blade and oiled the elbow joint.

  It came open with a flick of her wrist and in seconds she had cut away the pack and slid it out from beneath Mike.

  “Oh, lord…that’s better,” Mike said as he rolled to his side. “How bad…is it?”

  So far it was great. It was something of a miracle that he was breathing again; it was a harsh wheeze for sure, yet he was still breathing well enough to form words. Using the knife, she sliced up the back of his shirt and then froze. Other than a deep, ugly purple welt that she could fit her thumb into, he was unharmed.

  “It’s. It’s, hold on,” she said, feeling as though she had been slapped on top of being punched. Grabbing the bag, she saw the hole where the bullet had hit the pack; what she didn’t see was the exit wound. Quickly, she tore the pack open and looked in at the jumble of items. What jumped out at her was one of the medical books; there was a pinky-sized hole in the front just above the title. Turning it over, she saw that the back cover was pushed out.

  “Holy-moly,” she said and pried back the cover to expose a blunted, distorted hunk of metal.

  “What is it?” Mike asked, nervously. When she showed him the bullet and the book, he breathed out, “No way.” He tried to sit up, only to feel a dreadfully, sharp pain in his back. “I think something might be broken in me.”

  Just then there was no time for a diagnosis. The Wind Ripper was slipping between the green, algae-coated buoys that marked the deep channel. Stu was running in a zigzag pattern because for every ten feet forward they went, the boat would slip ten to the left, closer to the shallows. Mike could see he didn’t have the boom angled correctly. He tried to get up but the pain felled him. Then he tried to point at the boom, only just then someone from the shore yelled to tack back.

  “What the hell are you doing, LaBar, you moron?” Cannan demanded.

  They were seventy yards away now. “Tell him the rudder isn’t answering totally,” Mike whispered. “Tell him the wheel is only going a quarter turn.”

  Stu relayed this message to which Cannan bellowed, “Then drop the damned sail! It’s not going to fix itself. Son of a bitch, you’re dumb.”

  “Right. Sorry,” Stu yelled. More quietly, he said, “Everyone lay flat.” Ten seconds went by before the first shot rolled down the bay like an explosion. The bullet streaked by between the sail and the deck; a terrific shot especially as they were a hundred yards away now, and they were essentially a black boat against a black background.

  The next shot streaked over Stu’s prone body, causing the air to stir across the nape of his neck. He shuddered and screamed out, “Stop shooting! We give up! There are women with us!”

  “Drop the sail this instant or else!”

  Unbelievably, Stu started to get to his feet. “Okay! Just don’t shoot. You got one of us, okay?”

  “This is your last warning! Drop the sail!”

  “What are you doing, Stu?” Jenn demanded. “Don’t do it. Are you crazy?”

  He limped slowly over to the mast with his hands in the air. “The only way these guys are this accurate is if they have a thermal scope.” The shots had been scary-close, too close for any marksman they had ever heard of.

  Jenn’s blue eyes were almost bugged out of her head. “If we give up…”

  “We’re not giving up and I’m not really going to drop the sail. I’m only trying to give us a little more time.” The question was: how much time? If he dawdled for one second too long the sniper would put a bullet between his shoulder blades. “J-Just stay down.”

  She hunched lower, pressing herself against Mike’s chest until he groaned. “I should be the one protecting you,” he said. “Or better yet, where’s that book?” It was laying just within reach on the deck; it was heavy and hurt to grab it. That was okay: feeling a little pain was better than being dead, any day. He leaned it against Jenn’s back. “You know what? I think this book is like an omen. It saved my life. Maybe it means you were meant to be, like a surgeon or something.”

  “I don’t know. There’s so much pressure and…” A gunshot stopped her; a fraction of a second later Stu fell near the mast. He was grinning.

  “That was a close one,” he said. Jenn sucked in a breath, looking as though she was about to say something. He cut her off. “Hold on. One-one-thousand. Two-one thousand.” Suddenly, he rolled to his left just as another gunshot rang down the harbor. Fiberglass splinters exploded where he’d been.

  The grin was gone as he whispered: “One-one-thousand,” and rolled again. This time the miss was by three feet. Again, he rolled, this time without counting. There was a pause and then the gun started firing faster. Stu hopped up, pushed the boom over to the side, sending them zigging at a new angle for the harbor entrance.

  Just as the boat heeled slightly in the light wind, he threw out his arms and dropped again. There was a pause in the shooting in which he whispered, “One-one-thousand. Two-one thousand.” Once more he began rolling from one side of the deck to another. The sniper fired twice more before he stopped. By then they were over two-hundred yards away and the thermal image had to be extremely fuzzy.

  “Everyone okay?” he asked, still hugging the deck.

  “I can’t say as I’m exactly okay,” Mike answered, “I’m not dying if that’s what you mean.”

  Jenn sat up and looked around wearing a pensive, pinched expression. They had been flailing from one disaster to another and a part of her was resigned to the idea that nothing would work out for them. Nervously, she touched her arms and hugged herself. She was unhurt and The Wind Ripper had fewer holes in it than she expected which was a good thing since they were heading for the ocean.

  “I’m fine,” she said. For the moment, she didn’t add. Stu still had a bit of a grin about him which was so rare she didn’t want to spoil it. Yet there was a big question hanging over the boat, or rather, within it. “So, what are we going to do with the guy down there?” She pointed at the deck.

  Stu’s mood wasn’t going to be dimmed by a coward. “We can just wait until he dies,” he said loud enough to be heard by LaBar. “I saw his wound and unless you do something for him, Doctor, he doesn’t stand a chance.” Jenn was confused and the way Stu was staring at her with his eyebrows raised up on his forehead and his chin going up and down in an exaggerated nod was only making her more confused.

  Mike caught on. “Do you think he even has a chance? It looked pretty bad to me.” In truth, he had no idea what sort of wound LaBar might have. “The internal bleeding is probably what’s going to do him in. It just sneaks up on you.” Mike began to groan himself into a sitting position when LaBar spoke.

  “It’s just a scratch. I’m fine, so stop trying to scare me.” He was more than scared and the wound was more than a scratch. There were two holes in his thigh and both were leaking blood at an alarming rate. The wound was going to kill him one way or another. In his mind that was pure fact. He was out of options. Even if the people on deck let him go, it wasn’t like he could go back to Cannan. “He’d kill me.”

  And he couldn’t go to San Francisco and try to join up with the Corsairs down there because they had all gone over to this new queen. The intel on her was all over the board. Some of their spies said that she hated the Corsairs with a burning passion and that she was driven by revenge. Others said she would take anyone as long as they swore allegiance to her.

  One way or another, everyone knew he was in Recon and when the Queen found that out she would torture him for information of which he had quite a bit. He knew the names of the spies in San Francisco. He knew how they communicated with the Recon team and he knew the radio frequencies and codes.

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p; And he knew that he would be hunted forever by the Black Captain if he said anything at all.

  “I’m screwed,” he whispered, biting at an already ragged fingernail and studiously avoiding his wounded leg.

  His whisper carried up to the deck. “You’re not that screwed,” Stu told him. “We have a real doctor up here. You know, like from before.” LaBar scoffed at this. There were no more doctors. The closest thing to a doctor LaBar had ever heard about was a sullen, alcoholic crone of a nurse that the Black Captain kept around to keep the men from faking sickness. The nurse killed more men than she ever saved.

  “It’s true,” Stu said. He picked up the medical book with the hole in it and tossed it down into the hold. LaBar picked it up and squinted at it in the dark. He could read the word medical which was in a bold white font, but everything else was something of a blur.

  “Is she going to fix me? Just like that? No questions or nothing?” Skepticism so dripped from his voice that he crossed the boundary into rudeness.

  Stu casually checked the AR-15 and said, “You can trust her or you can bleed to death. Take your pick.”

  Jenn wished she had a say in all of this. She wasn’t a doctor and barely knew a thing about medicine. Still, she knew they couldn’t have an armed enemy below deck. “I can take a look at him if he behaves,” she said, trying her best to imitate Jillybean’s highbrow, imperious mannerisms and speech pattern. “And that means no gun. Do you hear me?” She thumped the deck twice.

  He had heard. LaBar sat in the dark for a good five minutes before his head began to spin. Only then did he agree to give up his gun. As soon as he did, Stu frisked him, tied his hands and got three lanterns burning, one of which sputtered and wavered as if angry at being awakened so late in the evening. It soon went out. The two remaining lights pushed back against the gloom just enough to show Jenn that she was in way over her head.

  Judging from the blood gushing out, a good-sized vein had been nicked. It would mean a repair job without anesthesia beyond a few pills, that is, and without IV replacement fluids.