Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (196 page)

Fists thrust into the air, and sea-worn faces flushed red hot with anger, shouting curses and war-riddled threats into the mangled structure that served as the port authority’s office. Lance sat in the back, his arms crossed and half of his body and face covered in darkness from the flickering candles, watching and listening to the Aussies squabble about their next move. It had been like this for over three hours, and every second wasted arguing was one more the Chinese had to move closer. Lance knew that the captain’s words would do little against the cannons of the Chinese. And the man who was loudest with his words just so happened to be the one with the least experience in war.

“All we have to go on is the words of a few dozen men. We don’t know what they saw, and it would be foolish to wage war where hundreds of thousands could die because of the false accusations of a few.” Cameron Davies was a merchant who’d made a fortune in selling cattle to the Brazilians. He stood out amongst the other sailors in the room with his new clothes and well-manicured head of hair he kept slick and stiff with oils and balms. His hands were too soft for a man who’d made a living at sea. “We should reach out to the Chinese, send word before we waste millions in gold, food, and materials for what could be no more than a figment of the imagination.”

The room’s divide widened between jeers and encouragement. Lance shifted uncomfortably in the back, Canice standing close by as she put a hand on his shoulder. He remained seated until he could take it no longer and jumped from his seat. “Have you not seen the holes in Danny’s ship, Cameron? Or the lack of vessels that returned?”

“I don’t doubt that you encountered troubles, Captain Mars, but there is no clear evidence that the ships that attacked you were Chinese military. Chinese, yes, but they could be pirates.”

              “Pirates don’t have strategic maps outlining their fleets, nor do they have the type of numbers that me and my crew witnessed.” The crowd parted as Lance made his way to the front of the room, where Cameron and a few other privileged sailors sat at the high table.

Cameron brushed Lance’s words off as if they were a fly buzzing around his meal. “The sea can play tricks on your mind, Captain. Especially at night.”

“And one could argue that your greed has twisted yours.” Lance’s words flew back at Cameron with the foreboding sense of a volcano spewing ash before an eruption. The floor rattled with stomps, and the walls echoed the same split of dissent that had grown in the room.

Cameron stiffened in his chair then leaned forward, his eyes drilling into Lance. “Do not forget where you are, Captain Mars. While your word and your name carry a heavy weight in your own country, you are neither a soldier, nor a political ambassador. You are nothing more than a merchant with a ship. You are here out of the thoughtfulness of this committee. Don’t take that for granted.”

Lance raised his voice, cutting through the clamor of the room and silencing everyone. “I am here because of what I have done, and what me and my crew have sacrificed!” The words rumbled like thunder, and the space between Lance and the rest of the men in the room grew. “You think that you have the choice to sit and decide whether to go to war, but that decision has already been made. The Chinese have turned their sights on your land once again, and this time they have the resources to take it.” Lance felt the heat coming off him, his eyes still locked on Cameron. “You sit there like a puppet master, pulling the strings of those you’ve paid off, but I will not stand here and do nothing and let your follies turn into the blood of my men being spilt!”

Before Cameron answered, the winding din of the harbor alarms wailed, and the silent stillness in the room erupted into a frenzied escape out the front doors, men squeezing through the cramped space all at once. Lance found Canice right by the edge of the dock, watching the horizon and the entrance of the harbor, but the moment she heard the faint echo of cannons, she was the first to the Sani, the crew flying into action.

              Lance rushed back to Danny and the rest of the committee, seizing Danny by the collar. “You send a gunner ship out to the rest of your fleet abroad about the Chinese. You tell them to trust no one unless they bear your official seal.” Lance loosened his grip on Danny’s collar as Danny’s jaw dropped at the sight of the first dozen Chinese warships turning the corner of the harbor. He smacked Danny’s cheek, forcing the man to focus on him. “If we’re lucky, they split up their fleet, with half attacking the northern coast. We’ll need every ship that can hold cannons fitted immediately.”

Danny glanced back out at the seemingly endless line of ships that continued to flood the harbor. “It’s too many. Too many.” He repeated the words softly.

Lance felt the man break out in a cold sweat, and he shook Danny’s shoulders. “We can bottleneck them at the harbor’s entrance and keep pummeling them until reinforcements arrive.” Lance turned to the others. “We need a line of supply ships feeding us ammo and provisions. We can’t let our defensive line break. The moment we let one slip through, we’ll have too much on our hands to deal with. And get what mounted army you can to line the perimeter of the town. You can bet the Chinese already have landed ships farther north, and maybe even south, to come and flank us while our attention is at sea.”

The committee stood there, still gaping at the line of ships on the horizon. Finally, it was Cameron who broke them out of the stupor. “Do as the captain says. Send word to your subordinates, and bring the war provisions out of storage.”

The committee scattered, and Lance sprinted past the remaining ships at the docks, their crew members rushing to get their vessels ready, and hurried up the ramp to the Sani, where his ship was already prepared to depart. He thrust the engines into reverse just as the last mooring lines were flung from the deck.

The crew moved along the ship without the need for orders. They knew what was coming. The howl of wind brought with it the booming of the Chinese cannons growing louder and the massive pieces of lead growing closer.

              The Sani cut through the bay chop with a sense of purpose, and Lance felt his hands mold onto the ship’s wheel. He looked down to Canice, the crew ready to strike. Salt spray splashed the deck and rolled to the walls, where it funneled out of the small portholes and back into the ocean.

It seemed like an endless cycle, one that Lance couldn’t find it in himself to break. This loop of war went on without end, and for a moment he wondered what fate the future held. The beating in his chest offered its opinion of immortality, but his mind gave a different vision, one that ended in black, and in that darkness he was left to roam in blindness, searching for anything to touch and feel against the tips of his fingers.

“Captain!”

Canice’s voice was cut short by the rippling cannon fire from the Chinese ships, now only a few hundred yards off the bow. Two shots grazed the port hull, and Lance felt the vibrations from the hits ripple through his grip on the wheel. “Fire bow cannons!”

Two black cylinder shafts thrust from the front of the Sani’s hull and returned a volley that connected against the lead Chinese ship, forcing its captain to maneuver into another lane that was already occupied by one of its comrades.

Lance watched the ripple effect of the ships turning and ordered another volley from the bow before he turned the Sani to its left, revealing the starboard cannons, which catapulted more metal into the advancing fleet. “They’re clustering!” But Canice had already noticed, ordering the crew to concentrate fire on the flanks.

The Chinese may have had numbers, but not the experience. With the number of ships, it was no doubt they were forced to promote green sailors up the ranks, and the inexperience of war festered a fear of it. It was small but something they could use to their advantage.

Two of the Chinese ships collided, the massive sheets of steel scraping against each other, and the ships desperately tried to prevent each other from sinking. A few ships tried sneaking close to the harbor’s rocky shoreline but ended up running aground in the unfamiliar shallow waters.

              While Lance continued the barrage on the left flank of the approaching fleet, two of the Aussie ships finally joined him in the bay and focused their cannons on the right side, hammering the Chinese with a relentless barrage.

Lines of smoke from the cannon blasts covered the harbor like a morning fog, but instead of the sweet smell of salt air, it was filled with the harsh scent of metal, combined with the hot burst of steam. Sweat rolled down Lance’s forehead and cheeks, a few drops landing on his lips, tasting of salt and dirt.

Two ships set a dead heading course right for the Sani, and Lance adjusted to their movements, positioning his ship to intercept. The way the two Chinese vessels kept their distance in a constant parallel path told Lance one thing. “To arms! To arms!” They meant to board him.

Canice echoed the orders down the deck of the ship as the crew grabbed swords, pistols, clubs, and knives, anything and everything that they could use to defend themselves. Lance lined up the ship, keeping a dead heading to the Chinese vessel on the left. If he could maneuver close enough to the coastline, he knew he could get one of them to run aground.

Lance felt the waters shallowing, and twice the very bottom of the hull scraped against the top of the rocks below, but the strategy was working. In an attempt to surround him, the captain of the Chinese vessel closest to the coast moved farther toward the shallows, and Lance smiled as the ship came to a halt, taking on water.

Amid the shouts and cheers of his crew, with one of the vessels now distressed, Lance turned the Sani hard to starboard to flank the remaining Chinese ship. “Load the forward cannons!” Canice relayed Lance’s message with a hard shove into one of the crew members and marched them toward the bow.

Lance studied the stranded Chinese vessel on his port side, taking into account the number of cannons, men aboard, size of the ship, and materials. The ship had thick walls high on the hull, but it grew lighter toward the bottom. The cannons numbered twelve across on the port side, which fired in a feeble attempt to reach the Sani before it had completely passed by, and assumingly just as many on the starboard.

The Chinese captain still in pursuit made the mistake of slowing, and Lance used the opportunity to maneuver himself into a better position to have the enemy vessel on his port side. “At the ready! Aim for below the hull!” His crew crouched behind the cover of the armored siding that surrounded the entire deck. The grind of the cannons lowering coincided with Lance’s slowing speed.

The two ships coasted toward one another, although the Sani was distinctively quicker. Lance kept his hand raised, waiting for the moment just before the Chinese guns were within range.

The air around the ship seemed frozen, and the battle raging to their right with the gathering Chinese and Australian vessels felt a million miles away. Here in this moment, with his crew and his ship, there was only one enemy that needed to be dealt with. Then, when they won, they’d move on to the next, then the next, and the next. That was war, a grinding, bloody, truculent disease that spread through the world like a cancer, and the only way to beat it was one portion at a time, and keeping it from spreading to the rest of the body.

“Fire!” Lance dropped his arm, and the crew echoed his throaty order with the thunder of the guns on deck, blasting low into the Chinese hull and tearing the metal apart with each hit. The Chinese reciprocated, but the blasts were disjointed and uncoordinated as Lance’s crew boarded the ship and focused their steel on the flesh of the crew.

Harpoons thrust from both sides as the two vessels interlocked each other in a battle to the last man. Pistols were fired only in the beginning, and the sound of gunfire was quickly replaced with the clang of swords. With both ships locked in place, Lance descended from the wheel, joining Canice and the rest of the crew jumping back and forth over the narrow barrier between the vessels.

Splashes of blood laced the foaming salt water on the decks of both ships as men dropped to the hard metal surfaces, clutching their wounds and begging for whatever gods they prayed to for mercy.

Lance jumped onto the enemy ship just as one of its crew members thrust his sword forward, slicing the fabric of Lance’s shirt but missing his stomach. Lance parried back, nearly knocking the blade from the sailor’s hand. The young sailor barely kept his footing on the boat, still searching for his sea legs, sliding across the slick deck.

Lance’s right shoulder and arm burned with each smack of steel, his joints shaking off the rust a decade without war had crusted onto him. But with each slash, thrust, and block, Lance felt the familiarity of combat return, which was cemented with a quick stab into the young sailor’s belly, ending the dance and the boy’s life.

Red foam crusted the corner of the Chinese sailor’s mouth as he collapsed to the deck. Lance watched the young man stare up at him, his eyes glazed over with the wetness of tears and opened wide, taking in the last images of life he had left.

The front half of Lance’s blade dripped with blood, and before he could wipe it clean, another sailor was on him, and the war continued, as he killed another man, then another, and another. His crew cleared the deck of the Chinese vessel until the seawater dripping from the port holes was replaced with blood.

Canice stepped over a cluster of the bodies, her clothes wet and stained red along with most of her right arm, which held a firm grasp of the sword in her hand, a thick crimson substance oozing from the tip of her blade. Her breathing was labored, and her hair frizzled from the salty wind.