Black Atlantic

by Peter J Evans

  Bane glanced across at Dray. "Can you take her for a second? I'll be back before the swell hits."

  She darted out of the hatch, not even bothering to throw on her slicker, and clattered down the steps. When she reached the crane Angle gave her a lazy mock salute. "Captain on deck!"

  "Yeah, yeah." She slipped behind him and helped Can-Rat tighten the straps until Angle wheezed. "Hey, a guy's got to breathe!"

  "Breathe yes, fall off the damn crane, no." She looked ahead. Abraxis filled half the horizon. "This is it. Remember, throw them on - the magnets will be enough to hold them. If we start rolling towards Abraxis we'll swing the crane back out of the way. Get ready for a rough ride."

  He grinned. "The rougher the better, captain. You know that."

  "Ah, you wish." She waved him away. "Canny, you okay with this?"

  Can-Rat, sensibly, had also lashed himself to the crane with a long cable. He'd be able to get all over the deck if he needed to, but a freak wave wouldn't be able to wash him overboard. "Yes, captain. Well, I've no choice, have I?"

  She almost slapped his shoulder, then remembered his broken ribs and held back. "That's the spirit," she grinned then paused. "You don't, kind of, feel anything's going to, you know..."

  Can-Rat shook his head. "Maybe if I was less terrified."

  Bane couldn't ask for more than that. "Don't throw too hard," she yelled at Angle, then turned and ran back to the bridge.

  Dray was waiting to hand the controls over. "Here we go."

  Dredd's boat was level with the first hull in Abraxis.

  He was ignoring it, powering on past. Amazing how he could operate the throttles with a broken ulna, but she'd always heard Mega-City Judges were built tough. Peyton had tested cures on himself while he was dying of Warchild plague. Vix had taken a monomolecular sword across the ribs and still had the energy to be suspicious, sarcastic and unpleasant.

  Golgotha was fourth in line now the formation had closed up. Bane was watching the ships in front, seeing how they reacted to the swells and crosscurrents. Dredd's boat wasn't worth watching, it was too light, but the Valentino was next along and that had almost the same tonnage as Golgotha.

  "Okay Dray, get him up." At Bane's command, Dray began to work the crane's controls. Can-Rat had already switched them from deck operation to the bridge. Bane watched as Angle was hoisted up and out over the side. He had a demo charge in his hand and two more of the head-sized devices dangling from his belt.

  She saw him swing his arms up and hurl the charge forward. It hit the nearest hull-side and attached itself there. "Yes! First blood!"

  Golgotha was trying to get away from her. Bane was watching the Valentino, trying to keep her eyes off what Angle was doing. The other scavenger was heeling violently to port, and then abruptly it swung around and to starboard. The captain brought it swiftly back to heel, and when Golgotha passed over the same spot Bane was ready for the change.

  Angle had thrown all three charges he had with him. Dray brought him back to the deck for a reload.

  Behind her, a fishing smack was taken too far by a crosscurrent. Bane heard the screams first then looked back to see the ship sliding sideways along the hull line. Seconds later it went over, shattering as she watched. The next scavenger in line rode right over it and only just avoided having the bottom of its hull torn open.

  Bane felt the ship slide horribly sideways, quite without warning. She cursed her lack of attention and hauled on the controls, dragging Golgotha back on course. On the deck, Can-Rat sprawled as the vessel went over at forty degrees, but scampered back to his feet and went back to handing charges to Angle.

  Suddenly, in a moment of awful clarity, she realised the plan wasn't going to work.

  All the charges were going onto the outer vessels of the pirate city. When they went off, Abraxis would shed those hulls like a slick-eel's old skin. But there still wouldn't be enough drag to stop the cityship before it collided with Sargasso. If anything, they were going to make Abraxis faster. Sleeker.

  She opened the comm. "Dredd!"

  "I'm busy, Bane."

  "Dredd, this isn't going to fly! We're just going to take the outer hulls off!"

  "I was beginning to think that myself. Okay, Bane, change of plan. We're going for the core drives."

  Bane felt herself go cold. "We're what?"

  Dredd's plan was simplicity itself. If you wanted a simple way of getting killed.

  Send as many ships as possible into the Abraxis, into the narrow channels between the hulls. Negotiate those channels until they reached the core drives. Plaster the noses of the drives with as many charges as possible, in order to knock out the fusion cores. At worst, if any ship got that far, it could stop the main engines of Abraxis and give the Sargasso maybe enough breathing room to get out of the way. At best, they might even cause a steam explosion.

  But that meant steering bulky, wallowing scavenger vessels between linked hulls hundreds of metres long, each one sailing only a few metres apart and riding on cross-currents that were stable only when compared to the nightmare undertows at the outer hulls.

  It was suicide.

  And it was their only chance.

  Most of the vessels would never get between the pirate city's hulls in the first place. Those that could assembled along the port side. Golgotha, as long as all the cranes were retracted, could just about make it.

  Bane's stomach had turned into a small, hard knot the size of her fist. She couldn't even swallow properly. "C'mon, Dredd," she croaked. "Let's get it over with."

  Almost as if he'd heard her, Dredd stood up in Seawasp and raised his hand.

  "Here we go," said Dray quietly. "Nice working with you."

  Bane didn't answer, just eased Golgotha forwards. Dredd was still alongside Abraxis, powering towards the stern. Suddenly, in a sheet of spray, he slung the little boat to starboard, disappearing between two enormous hulls.

  The Valentino tried to go the same way, but its captain had judged the crossing a moment too late.

  The scavenger almost made it. Then the starboard gunwales clipped the huge angular bow of the next hull in line. The impact caught the Valentino and battered it around, robbing it of speed. Suddenly, it couldn't get out of the way in time.

  The pirate hull rode it down as if it wasn't there. Splinters of wood and plasteen spun across the space between the hulls. As Bane watched, bits of the Valentino began to surface alongside the Abraxis - a mast, half the bridge, part of the helmsman.

  She looked away then took a deep breath, focussing every mutant sense she had, and slammed the Golgotha forwards. The next gap along leapt towards her and she hauled Golgotha over as it came past. Walls of metal raced past on either side and abruptly she was in darkness. The pirate city's deck was above her.

  The second hull slammed into Golgotha's stern and slung it around. Bane fought the throttles until the engines howled and brought the scavenger back into line.

  Abraxis was still moving past her, but this time on either side and above. She turned all the searchlights on.

  Bane let out a deep breath and waited. Another gap was coming up. Dredd wasn't in sight - he must have either gone further in or been ridden down by the cityship. Bane rolled her head around on her neck, trying to get the tension kinks out of her shoulders, then slammed the rudders over again.

  This time she made it without even touching the sides.

  "There!" Dray was pointing through the windshield. Several hulls ahead, something vast and round-nosed could be seen. Daylight, hazy in the spray, shone beyond it. If she wasn't looking right at a core drive, Bane would never see anything that looked more like one.

  There was another massive impact on Golgotha's stern. Bane couldn't help looking around just as a brilliant explosion lit up the underside of Abraxis's hulls in every direction. Bane winced, remembering the pain of seeing the Kraken's fusion torus go up. Only her extra eyelids had saved her from permanent blindness.

  Out of the cloud of flame, the
entire forward end of the Melchior spun out into the channel. The water shuddered and leapt under Golgotha. Bane had to drag hard on the rudders to avoid being slapped against the nearest hull by the shockwave.

  Melchior had been struck by a hull and one of the demo charges on board had gone off.

  Bane opened a general comms channel. "Golgotha to all vessels. Don't anyone else try to get in - we've got a core-drive in sight. If taking out one doesn't do the job, nothing will."

  Dray was staring at her. "Cap'n, do you really think-"

  "If this all goes to hell, maybe some of them can make it to shore." That was all she had to say on the matter. Her next action was to throttle Golgotha forwards.

  When they got to the core drive, Dredd was already there. He was throwing demo charges up as high as he could, but they were heavy, and he was working with a broken arm. Bane told Dray to take Angle up as high as the crane would go.

  She watched the lad going up, keeping Golgotha as steady as she could. The swell was awful and she was having to sail backwards to keep up with Abraxis. She wondered how far they were from Sargasso.

  Angle had his arms full of charges. With his long, flexible limbs wrapped around as many as he could carry, he was still able to flick them underarm towards the core drive, even though the crane was swinging in every direction. Golgotha was wallowing badly and the motion was being transferred up the crane and being amplified by the height. With every swell, Angle was being sent ten metres forward and back.

  He was throwing the charges when he was closest to the hull, and readying another on the backswing.

  Bane saw him throw the last charge and wave wildly to be brought back down. She opened her mouth to ask Dray to do it when she saw part of the sky move oddly, high up between the pirate city's decks.

  In happier times, she would have told herself that it was a drop of water running down the windshield, nothing more. Now, she knew exactly what it was. "Dredd! Warchild!"

  As she yelled, it dropped down onto the deck.

  Its camouflage shivered out, leaving it a white nightmare of armour and extended arm-blades. It saw Can-Rat and darted towards him. Bane heard herself scream.

  Maybe Can-Rat's legendary ability to see trouble coming had returned, or maybe he was just lucky. Whatever the reason, he ducked once under the Warchild's blade and then, as it was whipping back for another blow, hurled himself over the gunwales.

  Bane saw the cable go taut. She also saw a hands-length of Can-Rat's tail flopping on the deck.

  Momentarily robbed of its target, the Warchild paused. Bane looked about wildly, trying to find Dredd. Seawasp had disappeared.

  There was a heavy thump at the stern. Bane yelped. Hadn't Dredd told her that at least two Warchild units were loose on Abraxis? She turned to look, trying to see out of the stern ports, and then the windshield shattered.

  The Warchild on the deck had put a blade clear through it.

  Bane shrieked and dropped to the deck. The blade was slicing left and right, trying to decapitate her from outside. Dray cursed and fell aside, blood welling up from a thin line across his face. He'd taken the tip of the blade from jawline to nose.

  Abruptly, the Warchild fell away. Something came down after it, something big and black and carrying a Lawgiver in its left hand.

  Dredd had been on the roof.

  Bane scrambled up and saw him fire at the Warchild - instead of a single bullet, the Lawgiver fired out about half a dozen, three of which caught the bioweapon across the chest. It staggered back, its skin flashing a wild pattern, its blades flailing.

  Can-Rat was clambering back onto the deck.

  The Warchild saw him and launched itself forwards. Dredd's gun flashed out another bullet, this time one that sizzled as it left a trail of fire through the air. It hit the Warchild in the head.

  The bioweapon erupted into flames. The incendiary shell had turned it into a column of fire, lighting up the front of the core drive like a signal flare. The Warchild whirled away, howling. Dredd followed it and kicked it unceremoniously off the deck.

  Bane snarled a wordless cry of fury and slammed the throttles open. Golgotha surged forwards over the stricken bioweapon and into the channel alongside the core drive. She felt a scrabbling as the Warchild went under the hull, still trying to rip its way in, then the propellers lurched and slowed. A second later, they spun back up.

  Bane looked astern for just a moment and saw pieces of Warchild, still on fire, bobbing to the surface. Then the core drive was past them and they were into its wake.

  The churning water took the scavenger and hurled it around, full circle, then sent it skating across a wild series of eddies. Bane whipped the rudders hard left, then hard right. She felt one of them come off. The ship went up on its stern, and then crashed back down in a blinding fountain of spray. With the windshield gone, Bane caught most of it in the face. Then they were clear.

  Bane spat out foul Black Atlantic water, blinking it out of her eyes. Golgotha was still rotating slowly, but it was clear of the cityship's wake by a hundred metres or more.

  By some miracle, they were free. Bane steadied the ship, stopping the rotation with the remaining rudder. As the vessel settled back to a straight course, the bridge hatch opened and Dredd ducked through. "Nice driving."

  "Nice shooting." She had Golgotha on a wide course around the cityship. She could already see that it was frighteningly close to Sargasso. Dredd saw it too. Bane saw a tiny microphone drop down from his helmet.

  "Dredd to all vessels. Get clear, we're blowing the charges in sixty seconds."

  The ship was level with the multiple bows of Abraxis, drawing gradually past. Dredd gave the other vessels a time check on thirty, and then changed comm channel. "Quint?"

  "I'm here. Glad to see some of you made it."

  Bane wondered how many had, but she didn't ask.

  "It's time," Dredd snarled. "Hit the button."

  The charges went off.

  Bane was looking back at Abraxis when the hulls blew. Everyone was. She saw a line of flickers race around the outer hull, each one sending out a great spray of metal and fire. Abraxis seemed to shiver from end to end. The deck turned hazy black as every feasting fly darted into the air.

  Then the core drive blew, sending a brilliant flash of light erupting from the stern. Most of it was blocked by the cityship's vast bulk, but beams of it, for a tiny fraction of a second, strobed out from between the hulls like searchlights.

  The outer hulls were starting to take on water. Great jagged holes had been torn into them. Many were on fire and smoke began to twist into the air. Bane saw one of the vessels begin to slide over sideways, ripping free of the deck above in a shower of debris and corpses.

  A billowing cloud of flame spurted up from behind the cityship's bridge, surrounded by a wavefront of fragmented metal. There had been no steam explosion, but the dying fusion reaction must have caught a fuel store. In seconds, the whole rear section of Abraxis was ablaze.

  It still wasn't going to be enough.

  Dredd saw it too and cursed under his breath. He opened the comms again. "Quint? Time to deliver the present."

  "Present?" asked Bane. "What present? Who's getting a-"

  Something lashed out from Sargasso's stern. Bane saw it carve a track through the water, impossibly fast, past the Golgotha and into the centre forward hull of Abraxis.

  The hull lifted out of the water. When it came back down, the entire forward half of it was tumbling back in pieces. A shattering roar rippled out across the water, a disc of shockwave, and Bane felt it roll Golgotha hard as it struck.

  The destroyed hull was digging down into the water. Its stern was up, like the Elektra's had been, tearing upwards through the deck. Behind it, stealth-clad towers of habs were tumbling over like toys.

  Abraxis was dying.

  They'd done it.

  21. GRUDSPEED

  It would take hours for Abraxis to die. The cityship, small though it was compared with a le
viathan like Sargasso, was still far too vast to go down all in one go. Bane estimated that it would be a day, maybe more, before it would finally slip beneath the surface.

  By the time they got back to the harbour, the rest of the flotilla were already in. Out of more than forty ships, only eighteen returned. Golgotha was now one of only seven scavengers. Any real feelings of triumph were torn from her by the sight of all those empty berths in the port harbour.

  Quint was on the quayside waiting for them to come in. He looked stricken. The loss of all those ships, all those crews, had taken its toll on him.

  Skipper of a cityship had never been an easy job, but this was more than anyone should bear.

  Bane helped Can-Rat and Angle down the gangplank first. Can-Rat had rebroken a number of his ribs on the way over Golgotha's side, and the end of his tail was lost forever. Angle, after being whipped about on the end of a crane for the whole trip, had finally succumbed to the worst bout of seasickness Bane had ever seen strike anyone.

  She had bandaged Dray's face on the way in. She sent him down next: as captain, she should be last off.

  Dredd was waiting for her on deck. "Pretty fancy sailing," he said.

  "Thanks." She knew it was as close to a compliment she was ever going to get from the man. "But it's not over, is it? The Warchild's still aboard, and we don't know where."

  "Caine knows where."

  It took her a few moments to realise that he was talking about the Old Man.

  After the ships were all docked, Dredd went to find Mako Quint.

  The skipper was on the bridge. Dredd found him standing at the long forward window, looking out over the undamaged portions of the cityship. He looked old.

  As Dredd approached, the man glanced around. "We killed a city," he said, his voice flat and dead. "No one's ever killed a cityship before."

  "It happens." Dredd folded his arms. "Better them than you."