by James Axler
"Too far," she cursed, her hair moving wildly.
Giving an extra inch of wind sheer, Ryan fired once again, and the windshield of the Petey shattered, the three men clutching their faces and reeling about. With nobody at the helm, the boat veered off into the open sea, just as the pod gushed flame and a salvo of Firebirds was launched. The companions opened fire, but the rockets were pointing in the wrong direction and streaked off to the horizon to splash harmlessly into the sea.
"They seem to be out of rockets!" Doc reported, his hands busily reloading the LeMat.
"But they're still with us!" J.B. added from the smashed wheelhouse.
The Petey was struggling back on course, its side cannons booming while the fifty chattered steadily. Bullets hit the sandbag wall and one spanged off the flue of the boiler, just before a five-pound cannonball hit the water only yards behind them.
"They got our range!" Mildred cursed, going into marksman stance and quickly firing her ZKR. It was too far away to tell if the .38 rounds hit anything, but the Petey neither slowed nor swerved.
Levering in a fresh 7.62 mm round, Ryan swept the enemy deck with his scope, but the sec men had learned their lesson and were constantly moving about, even the pilot. Fireblast! No way he could hit any of them under these conditions, and the Steyr simply lacked the raw power to do any damage to the big boat itself. Wait, that wasn't true.
"Change direction!" Ryan ordered, standing and sliding the longblaster over a shoulder. "Keep the bastards right behind us!"
"Do my best!" the Armorer answered, fighting the vibrating helm. "But this thing doesn't like going straight!"
"How's it going up there?" Dean shouted through the speaking tube. "We're low on wood. Should I stop feeding the boiler?"
"Throw in every scrap!" J.B. shouted at the tube, forcing the sword to tilt. The engraved steel bent under his harsh ministrations, but the yoke slowly followed and straightened out the Spanish blade. "Chairs, blankets, anything you can find that burns!"
"Done!" the boy's voice answered.
Going to the port cannon, Ryan found only wadding and shot, the kegs of black powder gone. The starboard cannon was out of wadding, but still had three small kegs of powder. Kinnison kept his troops well armed. Good.
Prying off a lid, Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and shot a hole in the flat wood, then wiggled it back into place and pounded it tight with his fist. He did the same to the next two, and Jak handed him the munitions bags. Ryan rummaged around and pulled out a thick coil of plastic yellow rope. He held out a good yard length of the primacord, and Jak cut it with a leaf-shaped knife. Ryan then stuffed the fuse into the hole. The second keg got a two-foot fuse, the third even shorter.
Krysty and Doc maintained cover fire while the men hauled the kegs to the side of the boat where the sandbags had been removed.
Mildred was already there with her butane lighter ready.
"On my signal," Ryan said, going to the stern and placing the barrel of the Steyr on the wet sandbags. Through the scope, he found the Petey easy enough and mentally marked his targets.
"Now!" he shouted, placing a ringer on the trigger.
Quickly Mildred lit the long fuse, and Jak heaved the keg overboard. As it bobbed away on the wash of their vessel, the primacord sizzled brightly, then slowed, started to burn really fast, then abruptly slowed to only glow, before sizzling again.
"That not norm," Jak growled.
"Being submerged for a day must have ruined its composition," Mildred added, raising a forearm to hold off her wild tangle of beaded plaits. "Damn things might explode at any time!"
"Even better!" Ryan grunted. "Give them the rest!"
The next two were lit and tossed into the sea.
"What purpose does this serve?" Doc rumbled. "Those will never damage our pursuers. They are much too easy to avoid."
Krysty tensed her lips in understanding. "Yes, they are easy to avoid," she said, going to her knees behind the sandbags to reload. "Easy as going to hell."
Ryan said nothing, the crosshairs of the scope flicking from sec man to captain, as he waited for his real target to present itself.
Chapter Nineteen
"What did they just put overboard?" Brandon asked, his once handsome face slashed with a dozen bleeding wounds. The outlanders would pay for the mutilation in ways even the lord baron didn't like to use, except for kin turned traitors. They'd be starved until they willingly ate their own feces, and that would only be the beginning. They had scarred his face! Brandon would torture them forever, and never let them die. Under any circumstances.
"Who cares?" the pilot snarled. His right eye was gone, clear fluid oozing down his cheek, his hands a maze of shallow cuts that nearly obliterated his tattoo of rank. "Kill them all!"
In horror, Thor lowered the Weatherby scope. "Claymore!" he shouted, that being the only word he knew for a mine of any type.
Sticking his head around the wheelhouse, Brandon stared in the direction indicated. Floating on the surface were three small black-powder kegs, sizzling fuses sticking out of the lids.
"Fucking pitiful." The officer laughed. "They must be out of ammo to try something this desperate."
"Excellent," the pilot muttered hatefully, throttling down the engine.
"Maintain speed," the lieutenant snapped. "Just go around the things without letting them come close. When we reach PT 53, shoot for their legs. I want the bastards alive."
"Yes, sir!" the pilot shouted, and PT 264 banked away from the floating bombs.
Contemptuously Thor drew a bead on the other boat with the Weatherby. "I'll get rid of it," he snarled, and fired. There was an explosion, wisps of smoke rising from the bubbling water.
The sergeant neatly eliminated the second charge when something hard ricocheted off the boiler of PT 264, and a moment later there came the rolling report of a longblaster.
"The bombs were a trick!" Brandon screamed, and grabbed for the wheel from the pilot. "Angle back! Don't expose the boiler!"
But it was too late. Another slug hit the boiler, and the metal shell burst, a vent of live steam screaming across the deck, scalding most of the crew as it knocked them into the sea and boiling the rest alive. The noise was deafening, and Brandon pulled the pilot in front as a human shield in case of a full rupture. Slowly the steam eased down, exposing the partially cooked corpses littering the deck.
"Thor, do the same to their boiler!" Brandon roared, as the speed of their boat quickly dropped to nothing from lack of engine pressure.
Without a word, the sec man dropped his longblaster and slumped to the deck, a crimson stain spreading across his shirt from several pieces of twisted black metal jutting from his flesh. Furious, Brandon grabbed the Weatherby and started shooting wildly at the departing PT 53, but they were too far away, and even as he watched, the outlanders were piling sandbags around the vulnerable boiler.
"Nuking hell!" the lieutenant raged, spittle flying from his mouth, throwing the longblaster aside. "Pilot, fix that boiler and get our pressure back up, right fucking now!"
"Aye, sir," the man said sullenly, a hot rage filling his mind over being used as a shield for the cowardly officer. First an eye, and now this. He would make sure that the limp-dick bastard got his some day. Soon.
Stumbling past the moaning sec men twitching feebly on the deck, the half-blind pilot went to the hot boiler to inspect the damage. "Split a seam, sir," he reported. "Gotta let it cool more and patch her from the inside. Gonna take a couple of hours."
"Bullshit! Get it fixed in thirty minutes, or I'll remove the other eye!" Brandon stormed, then turned about looking over his wrecked gunboat. "Where's Bosun Jarvers?"
"Got aced, sir," a corporal said, holding a hand to a wound on his arm, blood trickling through his fingers.
"Then you're the bosun. Launch the torpedo."
"B-but we only got one left," the new officer warned. "And those other guys are so far away already."
"Do it!" Brandon muttered hatefully. "I
want them sent to Davey before reaching the horizon!"
"Aye, sir!" he said with a salute, and rushed over to the controls of the long fat tube. A single lever released the predark machine, and hopefully it would activate upon hitting the water. Sometimes they sank, often exploded; there was no way of telling. With his heart pounding, the sec man pulled the lever and the giant rolled off the vessel and into the ocean with a huge splash.
"ANYTHING IN SIGHT?" Krysty asked, stacking the last sandbag around the steaming boiler. The heat from the machine was intense, and the wet canvas of the bags was smoking already.
"Nothing yet," Doc reported, the LeMat cradled in his arms. "No, wait, there is something in the water. Could be somebody swimming…sweet Jesus, it is a torpedo!"
"Going too fast! Can't outrace it!" J.B. shouted, sweat dripping off his face from the exertion of controlling the boat. He didn't know which would break first, his arms or the sword.
Frowning deeply, Ryan fired the Steyr at the foaming crest coming their way. This was real trouble. The gunboat was fast, but torpedoes were a lot faster than any surface ship. Even if they had more black powder, the cannons couldn't track the aquatic missile, and bullets couldn't penetrate deep enough to set off the antique until it was dangerously close. Even at a hundred feet away, the blast would flip over their craft, leaving the companions floundering helplessly until the sec men arrived. And the trip-blasted thing would hit; it was only a question of when.
"Any more grens?" he demanded, firing the Steyr and the SIG-Sauer together.
"Not me!" Jak answered, doing the same with his Colt Python and the Webley.
"All out!" Mildred added, squeezing off shots with the ZKR. The spread pattern of the shotgun that made it so effective against the Firebirds made it useless against a torp. Unfortunately the physician didn't know where the warhead of the device was located, and so wasted seconds and precious rounds shooting randomly yards ahead of the crest, and yards behind.
Rushing to the front of the boat, Krysty snatched the Uzi away from J.B.'s outstretched hand and, going to the stern again, emptied a full clip of 9 mm rounds at the unseen war machine.
"Gaia save us!" she cried, slapping in a fresh clip. "Is the damn thing armored?"
"Maybe it doesn't have a warhead," Mildred suggested, "but is only going to punch a hole through us."
"Just as bad," Ryan answered, dropping the SIG-Sauer to reload a fresh mag into the breech of the Steyr. This job required a big-punch blaster, but the Steyr was the best they owned. Might be .75 flintlocks belowdecks, but there was no time to search for them.
Suddenly the powerful booming of the LeMat stopped. "Why are we shooting?" Doc rumbled, holstering the mammoth pistol. "The machine only wants a target to hit."
"Yeah, us!" Jak retorted.
"No, my friend. Anything will serve that purpose fine." As loath as he was to do it, Doc grabbed the tattered corpse of a dead sec man from the deck and heaved it overboard. The headless torso hit their wake and was quickly left behind. "Flotsam meet jetsam!" the scholar cried out in grim gallows humor.
Immediately the rest of the companions started clearing the decks of anything that could float, bodies, cannon swabs, broken pieces of the wheelhouse, the wheel, captain's chair. They were still at it when the ocean thunderously erupted into a steaming geyser, the boiling spout climbing fifty yards into the stormy sky, then arching down to rain hot saltwater across the speeding gunboat.
"Any more torps?" Jak demanded, wiping the water off his face. Somehow, he looked even paler than usual.
"Only saw that one," Ryan stated, watching the enemy Petey disappear over the horizon. But that was only seven miles away, about ten minutes in a PT boat. These babies were fast.
"Then we're safe." Mildred sighed in relief.
"Until they patch that boiler," Krysty added, working the bolt on the Uzi to clear a jam. She wasn't surprised when it happened. Caked with salt residue from the ocean spray, the rapidfire needed a thorough cleaning before it would operate smoothly again.
"Speed is our best chance," Ryan said, removing the clear plastic mag from the Steyr. Just one round remained inside. Grimly he pocketed the partial and slid in the last full mag. "Got to lighten the boat. Jak, Doc, dump those side cannons. We don't have ammo for them anyway."
The men rushed to the weapons and used their belt knives to start hacking them loose from the deck.
"Mildred, stand guard," he directed, lifting a five-pound lead ball and casting it overboard. "Krysty, leave the fifty and dump the sandbags."
"Those are the only defense we got," she said, hoisting one in each hand. "You sure?"
"Too damn risky," he said, a second cannonball following the first into the drink. "Everything goes. Strip the ship!"
"I'd suggest we use that coal oil," J.B. grunted, sweat dripping off the man from his endless fight to keep the rudder straight. The cramps in his arms and shoulder were getting worse, but he stubbornly kept control of the yoke.
"It'll kill the engine in a few hours," he added. "But we're only a few hours away from Spider Island."
"You sure?" Jak asked, looking up from the destruction of the deck.
"Hell, no," J.B. replied honestly. "But I think so."
"Okay, go for it," Ryan said, brushing back his soaked hair. "We gotta reach land before those sec men find us again."
"Mayhap with reinforcements," Doc added, tumbling the small cannon off the craft. "Most undesirable."
J.B. relayed the order down to Dean, and soon the black smoke from the twin funnels shifted to a grayish color, then went almost white as the thumping of the pistons took on a more powerful sound and the PT boat lurched forward. The brine misted over the bow as the battered vessel knifed through the tropical waters.
NIGHT RULED the world, as the three Petey boats chugged softly toward the burning wreck of PT 53. A full moon was rising into the starry sky, the black horizon dotted with silhouettes of a few small islands and several sandy atolls.
Longblaster at the ready, Brandon surveyed the crippled vessel while trying not to scratch at the dozens of badly healing cuts on his face. The itching was driving him insane, and the salt spray wasn't helping any.
Behind the officer stood the launching pod completely restocked with Firebirds from his escort vessels; two spare torpedoes were primed and ready on either side of the gunboat. Even the smashed windshield had been replaced with the one from PT 77. The crew of the three vessels had been spread around so that all were short-handed, but none was too poorly manned to operate properly in a fight.
Lolling in the water, the hull of PT 53 was almost gutted to the keel, the boiler only scraps of twisted metal rising from the charred deck. The sandbags were missing, but that was something Brandon would have done himself to increase speed. However, the .50-caliber was still in place, and who would leave a blaster like that behind?
Carrying an alcohol lantern, a figure rose from the remains of the smashed wheelhouse and walked to the edge of the derelict vessel.
"They're not on board, sir," the bosun reported loudly. "Looks like the boiler blew."
"Could be the sarge hit it before getting aced," the pilot suggested, a rag wrapped around his head to hide the gaping socket of his missing eye. "Just took it a while to finally let go."
"Sometimes that happens," a sec man said, rocking to the motion of the waves. "Ya gets hit here, but blow miles away."
"Makes sense," Brandon agreed hesitantly, tightening his grip on the longblaster in an effort to not touch his face. Scratching would only make the scars worse.
"Then again," he muttered, "I wonder if these tricky bastards are trying to fool us again."
HACKING THEIR WAY through the thick bushes and vines, the companions reached the predark paved road on the hillside overlooking the fishing ville.
"Any sign of pursuit?" Ryan asked, squinting into the darkness.
J.B. already had the telescope out and was scanning the ocean back and forth. "I see some lights far to sea,
" he reported. "North by northeast. But nothing coming this way."
"Good," Dean said, drinking in the cool night air. The hold of the Petey had been worse than the noon desert of the western Deathlands. Many times the boy had wanted to ask for assistance, but stubbornly refused to admit any weakness. His father wouldn't have, and neither would he.
After landing the PT boat on the lee side of the forested island, the companions had off-loaded their gear, then set a bomb in the boiler and let the gunboat sail away by itself, stout ropes holding the yoke in place.
Ryan and the others went directly into the bushes, then climbed the sloping hillside to easily locate the predark road. They were only a few hours' walk away from the gateway and a fast jump out of the Marshall Islands. Hopefully their next location would be better, a nice quiet redoubt full of ammo and food. Such things had happened before, although very rarely.
Taking the point position, Ryan followed the cracked asphalt and led the group directly to the rusted iron bridge. Staying in the bushes, they waited for a few moments, but there was no sign of the cougars or the giant spider, the only sounds coming from some crickets in the grass and the waves cresting on the rocky beach far below. High overhead, a flock of condors flew by, each carrying irregular pieces of a fresh kill.
"Careful," Mildred warned in a hoarse whisper.
"Some species hide underground for weeks waiting for prey to return."
Grunting acknowledgment, Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and pumped a few rounds into the loose soil, probing for an ambush. As the slugs hit, the ground broke part and the spider scrambled into view. Shaking off the excess dirt, the insect charged at the iron bridge, snapping its deadly mandibles. Ryan easily moved out of its reach, and the mutie slammed into the trestle, making the entire length of girders and concrete shake.
"Where brain?" Jak asked, aiming the .357 Colt Python.
"Try between the octemporal lobes," Doc said, cocking back the hammer of the LeMat.
