Time Castaways

by James Axler

  By now, small islands studded with scraggly trees were passing by the Warhammer on a regular basis, the craft constantly changing directions as J.B. tried to make the thick black smoke from the chimney flow toward the longboats to blind the enemy snipers.

  “Liana, you better look away,” Mildred ordered, tossing the lead overboard.

  But instead, the woman offered the doctor a butane lighter.

  Almost smiling at the act, Mildred poured some shine directly into the open wound, and Liana set it aflame.

  Going terribly pale, Doc shuddered from the rush of fire, then collapsed, panting heavily. After a minute or so, the scholar removed the wallet. “I s-see you have been well tutored by Cort S-Strasser,” he mumbled, referring to an enemy who had tortured the scholar on a daily basis before the companions eventually freed him.

  “Sure, we’re lodge brothers,” Mildred retorted, quickly sewing the wound shut with an upholstery needle and lightweight fishing line.

  “Of this, I have no d-doubt, madam,” Doc said, grunting with every stitch.

  “Shut up. I’m busy,” she snapped, wondering who Strasser was as she put away the instruments and wrapped the arm in a fresh bandage.

  Just then, the wind shifted, exposing the steamboat, and another swarm of arrows, lead and boomerangs pummeled the rear of the craft with savage intensity. Ryan replied with the Uzi, then moved to the other honeycomb before triggering two fast rounds from the Steyr, trying to pretend he was not the only defender.

  Seeing that Doc would live, Liana rose to discharge her S&W revolver a fast three times, and changed weapons to launch an arrow before flopping onto the deck and crawling past the forest of arrows to reach the arbalest.

  As Ryan maintained cover fire with the stuttering Uzi, Liana climbed up the weapon to crank the windless, notching an arrow into position. But then she paused and pulled out a pipe bomb. Lashing it to the yard-long shaft of the arrow, Liana swung the weapon around to face the armada of longboats, chose a target and fired.

  Lancing between the two overturned honeycombs, the sizzling arrow streaked away to slam directly into the prow of a longboat, the barbed head coming out the other side and missing the drummer by a scant inch. Contemptuously, the drummer sneered at the companions, while the rest of the sec men laughed in an uproar at the failure, one particularly bold sec man loosening his gunbelt to actually drop his leather pants and moon the companions.

  “The arrow!” Baron Wainwright shouted through cupped hands. “Get rid of the arrow, you feebs!”

  But before the crew of the longboat could do anything, the small pipe bomb exploded, removing the front of the vessel. Spilled into the turgid lake, the mob of wounded men floundered helplessly as the rest of the armada rowed past them without even slowing.

  Suddenly the steam whistle keened loudly and the boat angled sharply to starboard.

  Dodging a hail of boomerangs, Ryan inserted a fresh magazine into the longblaster and glanced toward the bow. Just a little ways ahead of the craft was a tall pair of pine trees dominating a rocky escarpment. One of them was perfectly straight, while the other was badly windswept and bent like a dying oldster, the green bow pointing toward a break in the archipelago, a winding waterway that emptied into the vast body of the Great Lake. Safety was only minutes away.

  The Wendigo suddenly was within range and opened fire, the stream of lead from its rapidfire churning the lake water, tracking after the steaming Warhammer.

  Behind the safety of the bamboo honeycomb, Mildred twirled a pipe bomb to full speed and let it fly. The explosive charge flew true and hit the war wag, only to bounce off before detonating.

  Swaying to the motion of the steamboat, Ryan leveled the Steyr and squeezed off five fast rounds. Sparks flew from the ricochets off the steel plating, then blood sprayed from the blasterport, and somebody inside the wag cursed, the rapidfire veering upward to waste precious ammo on the empty sky. Before the wounded gunner could recover, Ryan put five more rounds into the blasterport, and the rapidfire stopped working.

  Angling into the channel, the Warhammer began to move faster, leaving the combined armada behind in its wake.

  Just then, a salvo of flaming arrows arched high into the sky from the longboats to streak back down and hit the steamboat, creating small puddles of fire everywhere.

  Holstering their blasters, Mildred and Liana dashed around to beat at the spreading flames with their jackets before the wooden deck was set ablaze. There were buckets set into niches along the gunwale for just such an emergency, but the women knew that they would be cut down by the crossbows of the sec men the moment they tried to get a container free to dip into the lake. Surrounded by unlimited water, they were reduced to battling the conflagration with their bare hands.

  Sending two booming rounds toward the barons in the distant longboats, Ryan then sent the next three shots at the war wag, trying again for the small target of the blasterport. It was down to just him now.

  Pausing for a second, Mildred yanked open her med kit to yank out a plastic bottle of sterilized water she kept for washing deep wounds. Pouring half of the fluid over her jacket, she tossed the bottle to Liana, who did the same to her own garment, then the women returned to the fight, warily keeping watch on the sky as additional arrows arrived, setting new fires.

  As Ryan hastily reloaded, he noticed more sec men in canoes paddling closer, those exploding lances lashed to their backs. Those could blow the honeycombs off the deck, leaving the companions exposed to the boomerangs and bolos of the armada. Not to mention the rapidfire of the war wag.

  Making a fast decision, Ryan charged for the arbalest and dropped in a new arrow, then began hacking at the barbed head with his panga, wood chips flying everywhere. “Doc!” Ryan bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Get off your ass!”

  Jerking awake, the scholar gazed around groggily, then lumbered erect and clumsily drew the Ruger. “I have your six, sir,” Doc growled, glaring at the nearby canoes and alternately firing the massive Magnum handblaster.

  Surprised, the sec men in the canoes tried desperately to get away, but the old man mercilessly cut them down, then turned his attention to the longboats. The range was much greater, but he hit living flesh with astonishing regularity. However, from the first discharge of the Ruger, the bandage on his arm became soaked through with fresh blood, and soon a rivulet of red was trickling down his arm to dribble onto the deck.

  The Wendigo’s rapidfire went back into operation, and Ryan hastily cranked the windless. Hunching over the medieval weapon, the one-eyed man held his breath. He would probably only get a single chance at this, and better not miss.

  The hail of lead from the Wendigo chewed a path of destruction along the starboard gunwale, throwing out a storm of chips and splinters. Swaying to the motion of the boat, Ryan did nothing, waiting and watching. Raising the angle of the weapon, the gunner of the Wendigo raked the wheelhouse next, shattering two more windows. Cursing vehemently, J.B. responded with the scattergun, even though the war wag was far outside the range, but it was all that he could do in retaliation.

  Clearing his mind of any distractions, Ryan still did nothing, until the war wag turned slightly to get a better angle and he instantly pressed the release lever. Straight and true, the mutilated arrow flashed away from the arbalest and slammed into the front of the Wendigo, exploding into splinters directly on the driver’s tiny ob port.

  “My eyes!” the driver shrieked from inside. “My fragging eyes!” The war wag was no longer a threat.

  A few minutes later the Warhammer steamed through a channel created by two small islands, and sailed into the limitless expanse of the Great Lake. Gradually, the angry shouts of the barons and their sec men faded into nothingness, and there was only the chugging of the steam engine and the gentle slap of the waves against the wooden hull.

  High in the wheelhouse, J.B. yelled in triumph, then sounded the steam whistle. “Goodbye, Royal Island!” the man shouted happily.

  Moving
stiffly away from the arbalest, Ryan grunted at that. Not quite yet, old friend, he thought. Working the arming bolt of the Steyr, he withdrew a partially used magazine, and inserted a fresh one. There were no other steamboats on the island, and no matter how many sec men the barons put to the oars, or how hard they whipped the slaves, no longboat could ever catch the steamboat in calm water.

  Now that the boat was out of the range of the sec men, Liana rushed to fill a bucket with water, and began to slosh it across the burned deck to extinguish any lingering embers. Retrieving her med kit, Mildred shuffled wearily over to Doc and forced the man to sit, so that she could tend his wounds once more. She sincerely wanted to admonish the scholar for ruining her fine needlework, however his actions may have just altered the outcome of the battle. For a man of peace, Doc Tanner was a bodacious fighter, a chilling machine when roused.

  “Hurt much?” Mildred asked, tenderly removing the bloody bandage.

  “Like the Dickens, madam,” Doc muttered, slumping against the gunwale. “But then, after so many…I have…always…” Slowly, the man’s head descended to his chest, and he began to softly snore.

  Wisely deciding to let him sleep, Mildred passed on stitching the wound closed, and simply wrapped it in several layers of clean bandages, then rigged a crude sling with a length of leather she normally used as a tourniquet. The bleeding had slowed considerably, and right now the exhausted man needed sleep more than anything else.

  Balling up the bloody cloth strip, she started to toss it overboard, when a small hand grabbed her wrist.

  “Not out here,” Liana said, anxiously looking over the vast waters. “Norm blood in a bay sometimes summons a kraken, but out here it always does.”

  “But—”

  “Always.”

  “Fair enough,” Mildred replied, tucking the gory wad into a ziptop bag and stuffing that into a pocket to be disposed of later.

  Busily thumbing loose rounds into an empty clip, Ryan sharply whistled.

  Leaning over sideways, the Armorer stuck his head out the smashed window, careful of the jagged glass edging the opening. “What’s up?” he asked. There was a gash in his cheek from the earlier flying glass, and a new hole in the fedora, but the man still sported a wide grin.

  “Keep going straight until we lose sight of the land,” Ryan called back, working the bolt to tuck the clip into the breech of the Steyr. “Then circle back to the carrier.”

  “Already doing just that,” J.B. replied, disappearing back inside the bedraggled wheelhouse.

  “What are you…Where are we going?” Liana asked, emptying a bucket onto a smoldering firebrand. As the deluge hit, it hissed out of existence.

  “Back to where we found you,” Ryan replied, checking his pockets for any more loose rounds. But he found nothing. Three full magazines, fifteen rounds, and then he was down to the nine in the SIG-Sauer and his knife.

  “For more supplies?” she asked, setting down the bucket.

  While riding together, Doc had told her about the mountain of goods stored in the belly of the predark warship, enough brass to sink a barge, thousands of self-heats, clean clothing and a host of other things, each more amazing and miraculous than the next.

  “Wish we could, but no,” Ryan answered, grimly shouldering the longblaster. “But we weren’t planning on fighting today, and it damn near used every brass we have. If there is even one functioning sec hunter droid onboard that huge carrier, we couldn’t stop it. Nobody is setting foot on the bastard ship.”

  “Then why go back?” Liana asked, brushing the damp hair off her sweaty face. The woman saw the others make the simple gesture all the time, as if it meant nothing, but after a lifetime of hiding in the shadows, exposing her face to others felt wild and improper. Almost defiant.

  “If the sec droids are still working, then maybe so are the repair robots,” Mildred answered, easing her heavy bag to the deck and taking a seat on a coiled pile of wet rope. “And under no circumstances can we allow a functioning mat-trans unit to fall into the hands of the local barons.”

  Thoughtfully, Liana scowled. Yes, Theo had also mentioned those machines. “So, we’re going back to smash them.” She said it as a question.

  “Better,” Ryan said, proceeding to explain the plan.

  As the day wore on, the steamboat chugged steadily due south, and the snowy tors of Royal Island sank below the horizon to disappear from sight. Immediately, J.B. altered their course to the west and started the long journey back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reaching the mouth of the bay, Baron Griffin raised a hand, commanding the armada to a stop. The drummers relayed the order, and the remaining sec men backpad-dled furiously to ease the longboats to a gentle halt. Ahead of them was the vast sea.

  “All right, is anybody bleeding?” Baron Wainwright demanded, looking over the assemblage of sec men and women. “Is there any blood on the outside of the hulls? Any on your oars or blasters?”

  Fully aware of the danger that surrounded them on every side, the combined army studiously checked their possessions, and a ragged chorus answered in the negative.

  “Well, check again!” Griffin snapped, rocking to the motion of the gentle waves. “Everybody inspect the person to your right! We’re out of the bay, and a single drop can put us into a world of hurt!”

  Knowing the baron was referring to a kraken, the sec men and women looked again, much more intently this time. While they were occupied, the two barons turned away from the others to hold a private conversation.

  “Have you done a count?” Griffin asked softly, uncorking a canteen to take a small drink. Unlike those of the sec men, this container held a mixture of coffee sub, sugared milk and shine.

  “No,” Wainwright whispered, accepting the canteen to take a drink without wiping off the top first. That would have been a deadly insult between the cousins. “How many did we lose?” The brew slid down easy and put strength in her blood, clearing away the fatigue of her rudely interrupted sleep from the night before. She had barely escaped from the burning ville with the clothes on her back. All of her precious plastic jewelry was gone, including her irreplaceable necklace of mutie teeth from her childhood. Just another crime that the outlanders had to pay for with their screams.

  “How many? Two longboats, fifty sec men and twenty canoes,” Griffin answered, taking back the container and sealing it tight.

  Absolutely stunned, Wainwright could just barely stop herself from turning to check the count. Shitfire, that was over half the armada! “Are you sure, cousin?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Griffin replied, slinging the canteen over his right shoulder so that the strap would not touch the bandaged wound on his left shoulder. “I was so damn sure they would be an easy chill. How the frag could anybody guess they had a working rapidfire!”

  “Several, plus grens,” Wainwright muttered, hitching up her gunbelt. There came a tinkling sound from her hip.

  Suspicious, the woman drew the knife to find the wooden handle ended in a small broken shard, the rest of the glass blade only tiny pieces rattling in the snake skin sheath. Yanking it free, she tossed the whole thing away to splash into the sea.

  “By the lost gods, I hate a fair fight!” Griffin said petulantly, resting a hand on his late wife’s sawed-off scattergun as if somehow drawing strength from the blaster. “And now they’ve escaped. Gone south across the sea.” He pointed. “Look there! You can still see faint traces of their smoke on the horizon.”

  “Nonsense. It’s a trick,” Wainwright retorted. “Nobody could be feeb enough to leave our island paradise for the endless rad craters and acid rain of the mainland. That would be fragging suicide!”

  “Maybe,” Griffin countered. “I agree, due south is death, but between the Broken Thing, volcanoes, whirlpools and krakens, so is every other direction. There’s no nuking way off the world.”

  “Okay, if there’s nowhere to run, then they’re still on the world,” W
ainwright declared, looking along the rugged coastline in both directions. “So the question-becomes, which way did they go, east or west?”

  Pulling out a well-maintained old Ruger, the baron spun the cylinder, finding solace in the sound of the oiled steel. “We could split the fleet,” he said without much conviction. “But that’s just as stupe as heading south.”

  “Agreed,” Wainwright muttered, running stiff fingers through her tangled frenzy of hair. She still smelled of smoke, and longed to take a quick bath in the cold lake. But there was no time for such things now. Every second left the armada farther and farther behind the vile outlanders.

  “Black dust, what I wouldn’t give for a single falcon,” Griffin said, rubbing a forearm where his beloved pet normally rested.

  “Have faith, cousin, I might know where they are going,” Wainwright said unexpectedly, thoughtfully touching the many blisters on her face. “A few days ago, I sent my sec chief to Green Mountain to check on a story of a Hilly about some outlanders supposedly armed with blasters. It must have been them.”

  “Green Mountain,” the baron repeated. Wild muties supposedly lived in the ivy-covered hills, and nobody who ventured there ever returned. Still it was better than exhausting the sec men by rowing around aimlessly.

  “All right, you gleebs, the rest break is over,” Griffin shouted, facing the expectant crew. “Drummers, give me double time! We row west for Green Mountain!” Then he added, “And there’s a bag of steel waiting for the person who brings me the head of the one-eyed outlander!”

  “Five bags if he’s still alive!” Wainwright continued, upping the ante to not lose control of her troops. “Plus, you get to keep any of the others as your personal slaves!”

  Now the faces of the sec men brightened at the incredible offer, their weary expressions changing into greedy leers of raw avarice. Slaves, steel and revenge! Who could ask for better?