Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  The Ironman was dead in the water.

  Ryan felt a terrible surge of hope with the crippling of the Ironman. Glory could turn and take the Lady Evil in a stand-up duel of sailing and gunnery and then come back for the Ironman later. “Miss Loral!”

  Loral had already seen it. “Mr. Manrape, hard to starboard! Bring us about on the Lady!”

  Ricky broke ship’s protocol as he shouted in desperate warning. “Ryan! Ryan! The Ironman!”

  Ryan looked back at his stricken prey.

  A cannon rumbled across the Ironman’s forward deck. The weapon’s barrel was long and narrow and painted brown against rust. Ryan’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a snarl as he saw the protruding projectile. The black iron spearhead had huge, sharpened tines pointing backward past the muzzle. Ryan would have given anything for another loaded mag for his Scout. He drew his SIG and began firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. One hundred meters on a pitching deck was long. The black and white face-painted crew rolled the weapon up to the rail. They slammed anchoring hooks into the scuppers and fired. The iron spear flew, twenty feet of chain rattled out from the shank and the rest of the line behind it was heavy rope.

  The cannon was like Skillet’s harpoon blaster, except this weapon was made for harpooning ships.

  Ryan saw the trajectory and roared. “Atlast! Atlast!” The man looked up from desperately splicing cable at the bowsprit. The giant iron shank smashed through him. “Atlast!”

  The massive harpoon head crunched into the deck. DontGo ran forward screaming. “Atlast!”

  Ryan reloaded as men aboard the Ironman ran the harpoon cable to the capstan. Crewmen heaved themselves against the levers. The Ironman was drawing Glory into an embrace of death. The harpoon head ripped free of the deck and dragged Atlast screaming with it. Half a dozen tines sank deep into the bowsprit with the combined weight of two ships of war behind them. Atlast howled as his flesh failed between both. DontGo hacked at the chains with his boarding ax to no avail. Ryan shouted to the tops. “Jak, machine blaster! Clear the Man’s capstan!”

  Ryan and Loral had agreed to put the Glory’s one machine blaster up in the tops. Jak leaned into the stock of the ancient M-60 general-purpose machine blaster and rained lead on the Ironman’s capstan crew.

  Loral’s voice carried like the scream of a leopard over the chaos. “Ryan!”

  Ryan snapped his gaze across the ship just in time to see a second harpoon blaster on the other end of the Ironman fire at Glory’s quarterdeck. The Ironman had two capstans. The grapnel drew furrows in the deck and sank into the rail.

  The Glory was hooked. Men on the Ironman heaved on the capstan spars and reeled her in like a fish. Ryan’s gut went cold as an army boiled up from the Ironman’s hatches. He had been to Canada, and he recognized the tuques, long shirts, leggings and war clubs. When Sabbath had gone through the Northwest Passage, he had taken on Canadian sec men as marines. Lots of them. J.B.’s cannons were emptied and would not respond in time. Ryan was still an amateur ship commander, and despite his surprise turnabout, the Sabbaths had played him.

  Ricky shouted from the tops. “Lady Evil is on us!”

  Ryan looked back. The Lady was on a perfect oblique course to avoid J.B.’s cannons, just like J.B. had taken on the Ironman’s rudder. The Lady’s bow chasers fired. One cannonball tore a chunk from the Glory’s mainmast. The second blasted the Kelper Balls into bloody, exploding strings. The Glory couldn’t move. Ryan watched in horror as the Lady Evil turned in slow pirouette to give the Glory another oblique broadside that could not be answered.

  Ryan roared, “Down! Down! Down!”

  Every Glory crewman hugged the deck.

  The Lady Evil’s cannons roared. Spars broke, rigging snapped and fell, and splinters flew like flying knives. Ryan jumped up to see the Lady turn again. She came in prow first like she intended to ram. Ryan racked his slide home on his last mag as the two brass harpoon blasters on the Lady Evil fired and tore man and deck apart. Ryan watched her forward capstan turn and her cannons give the Glory another broadside. Rope, sail and wood fell and a half-dozen Tahitians were decimated.

  Doc appeared at Ryan’s side. He had his sword in one hand and his LeMat in the other. “My dear Ryan.”

  “No time, Doc!”

  “You are captain now. I have been ordered to defend you at all costs. Truth to tell, I would have done so anyway without an order.”

  Ryan’s world closed in on him as he flung a glance back at the quarterdeck. Miss Loral was down. Manrape attended her. With the Glory harpooned from both sides, there was no point in manning the con. The titan rose as two Mapuche hustled Loral down the hatch to Mildred in the med. Manrape took up his silvery scattergun and snapped on the red-painted bayonet.

  Doc held out a J.B. Special. “It was always going to come to this. Your plan is sound. We can win.”

  Ryan felt Oracle’s last envelope of doom burning in his pocket as he took the blaster and slung it. Ryan barked orders. “Onetongue, form the Phalanx! Yerbua and Nirutam, sound all hands on deck except cannon crews! Everyone abovedeck, fire your personal blasters dry! Ready your J.B. Specials and wait for the order!”

  The drums pounded. Cannons fired as J.B. continued to rip out the Ironman’s guts. Ryan strode across the ship with Doc as his shadow. Techman Rood fell into step with a carved, ivory, dragon-hilted samurai sword. Strawmaker draped his cape over his arm and fell into formation. Gallondrunk ran to join them with his terrible walrus iron. Skillet stood waiting by the gangway with his double harpoon longblaster and assortment of cleavers of all sizes. Nubskull and Smyke were already by the con.

  Ryan kept a wry smile off his face. Someone had ordered him a Praetorian guard. Almost all crewmen had a J.B. Special slung by a cord either under a coat or behind his back. Ryan passed Oracle’s two bloody right hands and took command on the quarterdeck.

  Manrape grinned like the ship’s sails had caught a pleasing breeze. “Your orders, Captain?”

  “We take them, bos’n.”

  “Aye?”

  “We took the War Pig, and now I want the rest of the Sabbath fleet. All of it.”

  Manrape nodded. “Aye, Captain.”

  Ryan drew his SIG and emptied it into the Ironman’s quarterdeck. Sailors fell. Manrape’s scattergun blasted and blasted. Ryan heard the old, sweet, methodical aimed fire of Doc’s LeMat and then the thud of the revolver’s shotgun barrel. Strawmaker, Rood and the rest of Ryan’s personal sec team began unloading. Bullets whizzed in all directions. Crew on all three ships fell everywhere. Ryan lowered his smoking, empty SIG. The blasterfire tapered off again. The sudden, terrible calm was broken only by the ratchet and pall clanks of the Sabbaths’ capstans. Except for hoarding a round or two for the final fight, both ships’ crew were out of ammo.

  The bulked-up crew of the Ironman screamed in bloodlust and shook man-butchering and breaking implements of every description as the ships pulled together. The Lady Evil’s crew did the same. The Lady sailed straight in to ram her bowsprit against the Glory’s quarterdeck. Ryan knew that would be their boarding ramp. “Wait for it!” Ryan roared.

  The Ironman pulled the Glory in like a lover. The smaller, Lady Evil came in like the knife in the back. Ryan smiled. The die was cast. Doc was right. This was always going to come down to a brawl. He looked at Doc. The old man looked good in his uniform and as salty as hell. Ryan grinned. Doc grinned back. Ryan laughed. Doc laughed back, and Manrape and the rest of the quarterdeck burst out in hilarity. Koa threw back his head, and he and the Tahitians hurled their laughter to the sky.

  The laughter ran across the ship from stem to stern. The Sabbath ships howled in response but bloodlust took a strange, pale second place to suicidal mirth. The side of the Ironman scraped the Glory. The Lady Evil’s bowsprit violated the Glory’s prow. Boarding ramps fell across Ryan’s decks.
The Sabbath crews surged. Ryan had learned long ago that most plans tucked tail and ran at first contact with the enemy.

  He gave what might be his last command. “Give it to them! Give them all of it!”

  Every Glory crewmember raised his or her J.B. Special, pointed and squeezed. Some fired one shot. Some fired two or three or half a dozen. J.B.’s weapons scythed in one, mass salvo. Jak, Ricky and the rest of the topsmen expended their weapons and shot down the rat lines to join the melee. Ryan grinned savagely as his own weapon unloaded all twenty-five rounds and withered an entire boarding ladder.

  He dropped the empty subgun and drew his saber. “Repel all boarders!” He gave the Lady Evil a last glance. They had avoided the Glory’s cannons, but that had forced them to send their borders across the bowsprit. It was a fatal funnel.

  “Phalanx, defend the prow!” Onetongue and the Phalanx charged across the deck in a wedge of sharpened iron.

  The battle royale was on.

  Manrape boomed at the men around him. “Defend the captain! Defend the quarterdeck!”

  Gallondrunk charged the boarding ladder screaming and spewing spit. “Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!” His every f-bomb was punctuated by his awful walrus iron spearing an Ironman sailor. Skillet fired one barrel and then the other, and his harpoons reduced men to ruin. He started drawing cleavers and throwing them. “For you! For you! For you!”

  A huge toothless Canadian leaped to the deck and swung his war club so hard at Ryan it almost whistled. “Fuck you, eh!”

  Ryan leaned back from the blow as it smashed into the remains of the broken binnacle. He leaned in and ran the man through. Ryan ripped his blade free. It was a free-for-all across all decks. His personal guard stoppered the attack on the quarterdeck in red-handed fashion. Doc and Rood stood back and flanked Ryan in bodyguard positions with bloodied swords drawn. Doc looked up at the quarterdeck of the Ironman. A seven-foot-tall Asian man with a giant cat-o-nine tails glared down at them. From Dorian’s interrogation, Ryan knew this was Kang, and Kang was just about the most feared fighter sailing the seas. He looked down and grinned at what he saw.

  Manrape stepped back from the boarding ramp and perfectly pantomimed reaching up, grabbing Kang by his hair, yanking the Korean to his knees and forcing an act of oral copulation with one hand. Kang’s eyes flared. Manrape made a kissy face. Kang jerked his head and shouted. Behind him eight more Koreans face-painted in Ironman white and black came forward bearing short, wide and curved-bladed swords in both hands.

  Ryan was fairly sure he was about to get chilled. “Fireblast...”

  Doc shifted his sword from a low guard to high as he observed the enemy swordsmen. “Oh dear.”

  Manrape sighed. “This should be interesting.”

  Kang pointed his whip at Ryan and snarled in terrible English. “Kill One-Eye!”

  The swordsmen boiled onto the boarding ramp, whirling their blades like human food processors. “IRONMANNNNN!”

  Ryan and his crew strode forward to meet them

  A water barrel on the quarterdeck suddenly turned a slick, wet gray color and uncoiled. Mr. Squid rose to her full height on four arms while her other four extended J.B. Specials. Squid squeezed all four triggers and turned the boarding ramp into a slaughter chute. Seven of the eight Koreans fell. The eighth screamed and turned to run. Mr. Squid launched herself through the air. Her mantle fell across the Korean’s head and shoulders, and she pulled him over the ramp to the sea below, accompanied by skull-crunching sounds.

  For one second Kang appeared genuinely appalled.

  Ryan shook his bloody saber skyward and charged the ramp. “Glory!”

  Kang turned away as Ryan and his guards ran up the ramp for the Ironman’s quarterdeck. The junk’s rail was so high and curved it was impossible to see what was happening on their decks. What was happening was that Emmanuel Sabbath was waiting. His own twelve-man, ax-bearing guard surrounded him. Some had one ax, some carried two.

  Sabbath’s voice was quiet, but it carried over the sound of battle. “Mr. Kang, take the rest of the Canadians. Hit Glory amidships.”

  Kang nodded. “Aye.” He took three giant strides and leaped from the quarter to the main deck. It was loaded with Canadians brandishing war clubs, tomahawks and knives.

  Sabbath drew a sword with a very nasty-looking hook on the back of the blade. He pointed it at Ryan. “Now, as for you, Deathlander...”

  Chapter Thirty

  Krysty dropped her J.B Special. She had saved her Smith & Wesson for the brawl. Sweet Marie appeared by Krysty’s side and admired the revolver. Sweet Marie held up a nickel-plated derringer missing most of its finish. “Good girl. A woman should always save herself a few rounds for the boarding action.”

  Krysty hurled a look to the prow. “The Phalanx!”

  “My pike broke. That slobbering idiot Onetongue said ‘Th’tay by Kryth’ty!’ so here I am. And here they come!”

  Howling, screaming face-painted men hit the Glory’s main deck in a wave. Krysty took her time and put a bullet each into five men. Sweet Marie gave a man both barrels and hefted a freshly sharpened machete. “Stay by me, girlie!”

  Krysty reloaded and moved forward on Sweet Marie’s six. The deck was a whirling mass of fights. Krysty put a bullet into any man that charged Sweet Marie, and the big girl cut the man down.

  “Empty!” Krysty dropped to one knee and ejected the spent shells. She dug into her pocket for her last reloads.

  An inhumanly deep voice roared in happy, horribly accented English. “Flame pussy for Kang!”

  Krysty snapped around as a shadow eclipsed her. An enormous Asian man, with what appeared to be a fistful of knotted hawsers, grinned as he swung. The nine ropes spread as they whirled. Krysty snapped her revolver shut and brought it to bear. Her vision went white as the ropes hit her from neck to hip and sent her flying. She bounced on the deck and her revolver left her hand. Instinct made Krysty crane her head and claw for the weapon. The Smith & Wesson clattered away from her fingertips and slid in terrible slow motion across the bloody, pitching deck. The blaster spun and pointed at her as if in one plaintive, last look. Krysty felt the gut punch of irreversible fate as her weapon hit a starboard scupper like a perfect billiards shot and fell away to the great water below.

  Sweet Marie snarled and charged. “Not today, High Pockets!

  Krysty drew her issued dirk and rose brokenly.

  Sweet Marie fell at her feet, clutching a face the ropes had torn into ruins.

  The giant Kang stepped forward and swung. “You Kang’s bitch now!” The knotted ropes hit Kristy, but the shortened blow made the coils slam and wrap around her in a terrible contusing embrace. With practiced ease the giant suddenly leaned back, twisted and yanked. Kang’s game of crack the whip centrifuged Krysty into the mainmast. She fell against the great wooden pillar and toppled down the main hatch. Krysty could have sworn she hit every step on the way down. She lay there gasping and knew she had to get up, but her limbs would not obey her. Her dirk was gone. Two cannons went off and half a dozen weapons were blasting.

  Krysty dimly heard the ring of steel and the screams of the fighting and dying around her. She knew the enemy had managed to get men belowdecks through the blaster ports. Krysty stared up the main hatch. Down below she was out of the wind, and the sun bathed and limned her in a rectangle of warm light. In her own way, like Ryan, she had known it would always come down to this.

  “Gaia, Earth Mother, hear my prayer, aid me in my time of need...”

  * * *

  RYAN FELT THE BURN of cold steel across his forearm. He was losing and badly. None of his wounds were fatal, but they were bad enough. Sabbath was picking him apart. It was as if Sabbath had no bones in his right wrist. His short-sword pinwheeled around his hand and the wicked hook on the back kept catching Ryan’s blade for just an ey
e blink, just enough to pull it out of line while Sabbath threw a short cut or slice. None was deep, none was vital, but Ryan had seven of them and three were on his sword arm. He was bleeding all over the deck and slowing. One cut was over his good eye, and blood poured into it. The rest of the battle raged across the Ironman’s quarterdeck. Doc shouted Ryan’s name, but he’d been cut off and three ax men forced him down the gangway toward the main deck.

  Ryan became very aware that everyone else was letting the two captains duel.

  It was a battle he was pretty much doomed to lose. Sabbath drove him back. The rails of the Ironman’s quarterdeck opened like gates for boarding. Ryan suddenly realized what was about to happen. He’d been maneuvered into position, and he had no power to stop what happened next. Sabbath took a high cut at Ryan’s head, and the one-eyed warrior barely brought up his sword in time. Sabbath stepped in and put his shoe into Ryan’s stomach. The one-eyed man tumbled down the boarding ramp to the quarterdeck of the Glory. He just barely kept hold of his sword. Ryan managed to roll up and steady himself against the remains of the binnacle.

  Emmanuel Sabbath stepped onto the quarterdeck of the Glory, lifted his chin into the wind and sighed. “It has been too long. Thank you, you Deathlands cyclops, for bringing me back my ship.”

  Ryan sagged against the binnacle. He couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. Neither did he seem to have enough blood left in his body, much less his arm, to raise his Falklands saber.

  “Did you like how I kicked you down the deck? I’m going to do it again, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” Sabbath marched across the deck with evil purpose. Ryan thought of Krysty and managed to raise his saber and swing it like a drunk. Sabbath hooked it and cut Ryan’s sword arm again. Ryan felt his grip loosen against his will and watched his saber clatter to the deck. Sabbath smiled, flicked up his right foot and kicked Ryan in the face.