Hell Road Warriors

by James Axler

  The Queen of the Lakes was dangerously out of trim.

  Outfitted as she was for war, the Queen could probably fight off hordes of war canoes until the next nukestorm came, but when and if the locks came down and heavy wreckage filled the river, or the if the enemy had anything heavier than a war canoe or an oar-driven whaleboat, Ryan and the captain both knew it would take just one heavy blow or ramming attack to tip the Queen and sink her, and then they would all be swimming with the lampreys.

  They still had a few advantages.

  Again, Ryan was averse to becoming dependent on battery-operated devices, but they had them at the moment and in abundance. Yoann had been hording much of the Diefenbunker equipment and tech the convoy had taken; but this would be the battle that decided the convoy’s quest. With Six’s help Ryan had convinced Cyrielle to spread out the tactical radios. Ryan tapped the one attached to his jacket. “Captain, you want to run a last check?”

  McKenzie grimaced at unfamiliar tactical. “Show me again?”

  “The radio in J.B.’s LAV is the central synchronization system. We’re all on the same channel. All you do is press the button.” Ryan clicked. “J.B.?”

  “Forward promenade, ready,” J.B. replied.

  “Doc?”

  “The stern fighting deck is fighting fit! Sand is hot! Pitch is ready!”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. Doc was sounding awfully salty. “Rear loading ramp!” Ryan called. “Sound off!”

  Six immediately came back. “The LAV is trimmed for sail. All equipment and crew assembled, except you and Mr. Smythe.”

  “Right! Hunk?”

  “Whaleboat and men of Manitoulin ready!”

  “Loud Elk?”

  Jon Hard-knife’s contribution to the festivities came back. “First Nations whaleboat ready.”

  Mr. Smythe trotted in. “All machine blasters manned. All nonessential crew manning the rails. Pikes issued on the cargo deck. Miss Mildred, Saw-Doc and Miss Krysty are ready at the aid station.”

  “Very good, Mr. Smythe.” McKenzie took a long, deep breath. The die was cast. There would be very little for him to do now other than to steer his ship. “Well, Ryan. My navigator tells me that assuming we don’t meet too much resistance on the way we should round on the Soo Locks in ninety minutes. You’re welcome to stay on the bridge or wait for deployment down in the hold with your assault crew.”

  “Think I’ll stay topside, mebbe go down on the forward promenade with J.B. Mebbe check on Doc.”

  “As you wish.” McKenzie’s concentration was already laser focused on the approaching river. Ryan took the bridge stairs down to the passenger deck and stepped out onto the promenade. J.B. stood in the LAV turret scanning the water ahead with a pair of Diefenbunker binos. Ryan rapped his knuckles on the iron wag’s armor. “J.B.”

  The Armorer kept his gaze on the gauntlet of the river channel ahead. “Yeah, Ryan?”

  “I need you to conserve ammo.”

  “Know that.”

  “I mean, we may need every last round of 25 mm to punch through the locks.”

  “Know that, too.”

  “Just saying, let Doc, the machine blasters, and the sec men and sailors take out the canoes.”

  “And give thunder only as needed.”

  “You knew that.”

  J.B. shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to hear it.”

  “Good luck.”

  J.B. turned his head. He was grinning. “Dark night, Ryan. This is going to be something. You put that LAV in the water—” J.B. leaned over and slapped the fluted barrel of his 25 mm “—I got your back.”

  Ryan nodded. “I’m depending on it.”

  The Queen chugged into the final, curving stretch of the St. Marys River. The hull throbbed as her boilers pushed her against the current. What once been Canada and the United States girded the border river north and south. The fallen, overgrown shells of ancient and abandoned towns peaked out of the trees on the northern side. The southern bank was windswept rock. The symbolism wasn’t lost on Ryan.

  McKenzie’s voiced boomed over the passenger decks. “Watch for snipers!”

  Ryan unlimbered his rifle. It would come soon.

  J.B. spoke up right on cue across the tactical. “Smoke.”

  Ryan didn’t need an optic to see it. Around the bend in the river a plume of smoke rose up from behind the landform. It was quickly joined by a second and a third. “Smoke, Captain.”

  “I see it, rad-blast it!” McKenzie blustered back.

  Jak, Six and Tamara appeared at Ryan’s elbow. Six gave his big-thunder rifle its trademark spin. “We figured we would lend a hand until it was time to go.”

  “If you get chilled,” Ryan cautioned, “I don’t have time to press new volunteers.”

  “And you get yourself chilled, mon ami? That makes me war chief upon the water.” Six raised one brutal eyebrow. “Should I go back down?”

  Ryan found himself liking the man more and more despite the animosity between them. “Welcome to the forward fighting deck, Mr. Six.”

  Tamara strode to the forward rail, clambered up on the sandbags and shoved her rifle skyward in challenge. “Gimme something to shoot at, you pirate sons of gaudy sluts! I’ll jolly your every last roger right now!”

  Crew and convoy whooped at the sharpshooter’s bravado. Doc was right. The Queen of the Lakes was salty and ready for the fight. McKenzie’s voice reverberated across the decks like an angry god, except for the fact he didn’t sound entirely displeased. “All hands! Shooting stations! That means you Tamara, you blaster whore!”

  Tamara flopped across some sandbags and took a bead on the river ahead. She purred back at Ryan without taking her eye off her optic. “Got a sandbag that could use a man’s hand next to me, Ryan.” He wound his arm through his shooting sling and dropped to a knee beside Tamara.

  The man in the crow’s nest called the warning. “Fire ship!”

  It was a wooden ship, the size of small fishing boat, running about fifty feet and well ablaze from stem to stern. The pirates release had been nearly perfect. The arc of the river and the current took the fire ship slowly but unerringly into the Queen’s path. The Queen of the Lakes was a ship of steel and configured as she was, there was little about her to set ablaze. Then again she was dangerously out of trim, and a collision could well prove fatal. She had never been agile, and now with her offset loads Ryan knew McKenzie was probably as equally afraid of hard maneuvering as he was of the fire ship. “Pikes to port!” the Captain called. “Pole off!”

  Two dozen, twelve-foot boarding pikes slid through the cargo netting on the port vehicle deck. Their iron, leaf-shaped blades were painted red against rust. The fire ship came in with the current, billowing black smoke in her flaming death throes, seemingly intent on taking the Queen with her. Ryan winced at the heat washing off the burning vessel as the captain bawled out orders. “Reverse port engine! Prepare to fend off!”

  Men on the upper decks hunched behind their fortifications as heat and smoke poured across the Queen. The pikemen below snarled and swore as they took the brunt of the ovenlike heat. The vessel slowly turned around the incoming fire ship in a slow dance. The pikes thunked into the burning hulk’s side and prevented contact.

  “Both engines forward!” The Queen left her burning partner behind her as the second fiery suitor joined the dance. “Rad-blast it! Pikes starboard! Reverse starboard engine!” Pikes thudded into burning hull and the Queen danced another slow S-curve with disaster.

  Ryan squinted against the heat. “McKenzie’s good.”

  Tamara glowed with the heat and exultant pride. “This ship is the Queen of the Lakes, Ryan, and Captain Robert Douglas McKenzie is the king.”

  The current and the curve of the river brought th
e third fire ship toward them straight-on. Gray smoke roiled from her deck in ugly waves. McKenzie hesitated as he tried to choose the best path to avoid playing chicken with a death ship. “Back engines! Do it slow! All pikes forward!” Men cursed and wood clattered as the pikemen manhandled their unwieldy weapons across the cluttered cargo deck. “Advance pikes on either side of the ramp! I want to have—”

  “Hell burner!” Doc roared. The old man spent a lot of time mumbling, but with proper motivation he had an opera-quality voice that had probably reached the men in the boiler room. “Hell burner!”

  Ryan clicked his com. “Doc! What are you talking about?”

  The one-eyed man shook his head as Doc came charging down the port rail with his frock coat flapping like a cape and waving his arms like a maniac. “Hell burner! Hell burner!”

  The captain roared through his speaking trumpet. “Dr. Tanner! Get back to the catapults!”

  Doc skidded onto the forward fighting deck. “Hell burner!”

  “Rad-blast you, Tanner!” McKenzie thundered. “Get back to your post!”

  Ryan leaped up with a snarl. “Fireblast, Doc! Get on station!”

  “She’s not a fire ship!” Doc waved his arms frantically and pointed at the fire ship. “She’s a hell burner!”

  “Doc, you had better—”

  “The Dutch!” Doc gasped. “They used them against the Spanish in the siege of Antwerp! They—”

  Ryan suddenly had a real bad feeling. He grabbed Doc by the shoulders and shook him. “Doc! Talk sense!”

  “Look at the smoke! It’s gray! Not black! The ship isn’t burning! There is simply a fire set on top of it! It is a ruse!”

  “What kind of ruse!”

  “They saw us pole off the fire ships rather than sink them!” Doc cried. “They want this one to get that close once more! It’s a bomb! Probably full of black powder, incendiary material and shrapnel! We must—”

  Ryan dropped Doc and hurled his voice to the sky. “Everybody down! Down! Down! J.B.! AP incendiary! Now! Now! Now—”

  The LAV’s autocannon slammed off three rounds in quick succession. The predark, armor-piercing incendiary ammunition had been designed to punch through the rolled steel skins of armored wags back in the day. The wooden side of the fire-hulk proved no obstacle at all.

  The hell burner went sky-high.

  Half of the explosion shot into the sky in a geyser of black powder smoke and fire, and the other half shot straight at the Queen in shaped, malicious intent. Ryan’s eyebrows singed as the heat wash hit him like a tidal roller and slapped him off his feet. Men howled and fell twisting as they were raked by the rocks and iron shards the pirates had laden in the hell burner’s belly to act as shrapnel. Pikemen on either side of the raised forward loading ramp screamed as they were burned alive by the dragon’s tongue of superheated gas and fire. The blast effect pushed the Queen violently off course, and she dipped to starboard sickeningly as her top weight tried to tip her. “Back engines! Back engines!” McKenzie bawled. The Queen’s boilers howled, screamed and chugged as McKenzie’s engineers desperately tried to compensate with full reverse power to both screws.

  Ryan looked at Doc, who sat on the deck yawning and blinking. The Deathlands warrior could barely hear his own voice as he shouted past ringing ears. “You all right?”

  “Hell burners…” Doc mumbled, “from the Dutch hellebranders. Brander is Dutch for ‘fire ship,’ you know. They used them at the Siege of Antwerp to break the—”

  “Nice work, Doc.” Ryan hauled the old man to his feet.

  “Oh, well, thank you very much indeed. You could tell by the smoke that the ship was not truly on fire, it was really—”

  Ryan took Doc firmly by the shoulder and pointed out onto the waters. An armada of war canoes was furiously paddling their way. “Doc, I need you back on the catapults.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. I admit I do go on sometimes. But I now feel that it is—”

  “Now, Doc,” Ryan urged.

  “Right! Indeed! Yes!” Doc raced back to his siege engines.

  The war canoes came through the smoke. Each had a man in the prow firing his blaster as they came into range. Ryan counted nearly two dozen. McKenzie was in a fine fury. His voice boomed down from the bridge. “Mr. Dix! Would now be appropriate?”

  J.B. slid down into the turret and into the gunner’s chair. He flipped the dual feed switch on the 25 mm to feed HE rather than AP incendiary. He silently yearned to unleash his own little 25 mm nukecaust on the approaching pirates, but he remembered Ryan’s words. Cannon shells were at a premium, and this was only the opening round in the hostilities. J.B. flipped off the safety on the coaxial machine gun. He leaned forward to look through the optical sight. One hand slid around the firing grip and the other on the turret traverse. The turret whined and the 25 mm gun and the coax lowered in tandem. “Ready.”

  J.B. laid the coax optical sight-aiming gradients on the closest canoe. The men aboard paddled furiously to close the gap and take the battle hand to hand. The pirates favored shaved heads with scalp locks and drooping mustaches. Most were bare-chested and they were covered in blue tattooing. J.B. squeezed his trigger and walked a burst right up the line of rowers. Paddles fell from dead and wounded hands, and pirates flopped forward or back as the bullets struck them. J.B. goosed the traverse and laid another line of fire up another canoe. Men shattered under the onslaught. The pirates were in open canoes and in open water. There was no cover and nowhere to run. No one jumped overboard and tried to swim for it in the confusion, and J.B. had a pretty good idea why. The only recourse was to keep paddling forward and close.

  Right down the muzzle of J.B.’s smoking autoblaster.

  The Armorer’s machine gun was a merciless scythe, and he reaped pirate lives like wheat. Half a dozen canoes floated adrift in the current as the coaxial blaster racked open on empty. J.B. reached into the rack beside him for another hundred-round belt of ammo and clicked his com. “Forward fighting deck. Chill them all.”

  McKenzie relayed the order through his trumpet. “Forward deck! Commence to blasting! Fire at will!”

  “About time!” Tamara whooped. Ryan was already shooting. The Scout bucked against his shoulder, and the pirate firing from the prow of the new lead canoe buckled and fell into the water. His body wriggled twice oddly and suddenly jerked beneath the water and disappeared. Ryan filed that away as he worked his bolt. He killed the first paddler, the second and the third, and went right down the line. He didn’t stop until nothing moved in the canoe. Ryan reached for another mag. Blasterfire crackled and popped along the arc of the promenade. The hell burner had failed, and pirates in the follow-on assault wave were sitting ducks.

  Tamara whooped with each shot she fired. “Yeah! Oh yeah! Eat this!” With every shot a pirate slumped dead from his paddling bench. Tamara popped her spent mag howling like a banshee. “You want the Queen, you rad-blasted sons of gaudy sluts?” She slammed in a fresh mag and her blaster “clatched” as she hit the bolt release and chambered a fresh round. “Bring it!”

  Ryan was glad Tamara was on his side. All along the promenade men aimed and fired in the shooting-gallery slaughter.

  J.B. was suddenly standing in the turret once more. “Fighting deck! Cease blasting!”

  A few overexcited souls popped off another round or two but the shooting ceased. Ryan gazed through the fog of war. Clouds of smoke hazed the already overcast day. War canoes slowly drifted toward the Queen. The dead and dying didn’t paddle. The canoes just drifted with the current, riding lower and ever more sluggishly as the bullet-riddled hulls of hide took on water. “Pikemen!” the captain ordered. “Prepare to fend off! Look sharp! Some might be playing possum!”

  Ryan craned over his sandbag revetment with his longblaster ready, but there was little to see. Red-
painted pikes stretched out from the sides to keep the canoes off the Queen. Dying men moaned for water, their mothers or mercy. They screamed as men of the Queen speared them and sped them on their way to hell. A few blasters fired sporadically from the top decks giving equally harsh mercy to any living pirates out of reach of the pikes.

  “Mr. Smythe! Damage report!” McKenzie shouted. “Miss Mildred! Casualties!”

  Mildred’s voice spoke across the link with cold precision. “I’ve got ten dead. Four more with third-degree burns that are going to be dead within the hour. Seventeen noneffectives. Thirty walking wounded.”

  “Quartermaster!” McKenzie called. “Rations! Pemmican and a pint of spruce beer to all hands! Navigator says we got thirty minutes to the locks! Wet your tongue and fill your belly! Look sharp!”

  Ryan slid down the sandbags and took a moment to rest. Shooting was thirsty work. The First Nations and Manitoulin marines had nothing to do until they hit the log chains and they ran rations to the shooters on the promenade. Hunk Poncet rushed to be the man to shove a stoop of spruce beer and a pemmican cake into Ryan’s hand. Loud Elk literally vaulted up the prow of the LAV to give J.B. his due. Ryan bit into his elk meat, bison fat and hawberry ration. Right now it was neck and neck with Diefenbunker pizza for one of the best things Ryan had ever eaten. He washed it down with several long, cool swallows of spruce beer.

  Tamara watched Ryan rip into his ration. “Yo, lover, you gonna—”

  Ryan nearly sprayed beer out his nose.

  Tamara cocked her head. “What?”

  “Call me that at your risk.”

  “Right, your flame-head girlfriend.”