Iron Rage (28 page)

“Leaving aside that gentleman's less-appealing traits, of course. Such as his penchant for mass murder and torture,” Doc added.

“You don't actually buy that crap about him burning
his boats and then conquering Mexico with just a handful of white guys, do you?” Mildred demanded. “You come right out of that whole colonialist ‘take up the white man's burden' time—I mean, school of thought.”

The old man smiled benevolently. “No, indeed. I have read my Bernal Díaz del Castillo. I don't even speak of Cortés's achievement in talking 100,000 native allies into doing the hard work of conquering the Aztecs for him. The Aztecs themselves did the burden of his convincing for him, by their treatment of their neighbors. No, I speak of his ability, not just to fleece his own men of their hard-stolen plunder, but to admit as much to them—as desperate a crew of coldhearts as ever cut a throat—and not just survive, but fleece them
again
.”

“Thanks?” J.B. said hesitantly.

“But his scheme isn't so crazy, is it, Mr. Cawdor?” Nataly asked earnestly. “You see the evidence before you.”

Ryan grunted.

“Yeah. And I got to admit—you pulled it off. That
Arkansas
story in back of it all may've been nothing but a cloud of nuke dust. But it looks as if you've written your own legend here.”

As if he somehow sensed the topic of conversation, Myron Conoyer emerged from belowdecks, wiping his hands on a grimy rag. “Isn't she beautiful?” he asked.

His wiry hair was a steel-wool disarray. His coveralls were almost black from grease. His face was streaked with broad swatches of the stuff. Under the crud his cheeks glowed pink, and his eyes were bright
with something other than incipient madness. He almost bounced on his feet and looked happy for the first time since his wife had died.

She's ugly as two feet up a stickie's asshole, Ryan thought. But I take your point.

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled. “Yeah, she is.”

And he meant that, too.

“You've done a triple-good job, all of you. The wiring-it-up thing is less solid than bolting the armor on, the way they do it on the New Vick ironclads I saw. But you knew that. Fact is, you're not much less protected than Baron Tanya is in the
Pearl
, except for the matter of sheer size. That's pretty ace.”

“Couldn't have done it without the swampers,” Arliss stated.

“Well, we were motivated,” Joe said. “We're tired of soaking up rads from the ground and the air we breathe, and eating food seasoned with cesium salts. Also, the neighborhood's going to straight nuke anyway these days, what with the Vicks and the P'villes finally going for each other's throats.”

While Mildred had cleaned Ryan up and examined him for major damage—and finding none, at least by his definition of “major”—Krysty had quietly confided that she and the others suspected some kind of internal discord among the swampers was adding to Joe and Ermintrude's urgency to get their respective groups out of the strontium swamps. Their new allies freely admitted that their two hundred or so people were only a fraction of the population in the inhospitable death zones.

That was surprising to Ryan. Then again, he had a keen appreciation of the value in the Deathlands of having a home territory that other people actively didn't want to try to take from you. Or even venture into.

Ryan stood. The effort didn't cost him as much as he thought it would. He barely even swayed.

“So how about it?” he asked. “How soon are we ready to sail?”

“Mechanically, she is as ready as she'll ever be,” Myron said, beaming with pride and joy.

Ryan looked to Nataly and Arliss. While he was inclined to favor the new manic Myron over the suicidally depressed model he'd left behind when he jumped onto the
Yarville
, he wasn't sure he trusted his judgment anymore, although the man knew his ship, and her engines. Still, Ryan had gotten used to thinking of the first mate and master rigger as the responsible adults among the
Queen
survivors.

The two looked at each other.

“Reckon the man to ask is J.B.,” Arliss said. “He's the man with the plan.”

“What about it?” Ryan asked his friend.

“Well, we can fool with her and fool with her until the cows come home,” he said, “and if some simp gunner on one of those big ironclads gets a lucky hit, one shell can still blow us all to Hell.”

“Do you have to be so damned cheerful about it, John?” Mildred demanded.

“Now's the time for plain speaking, Millie. Cards on the table.”

“Good enough,” Ryan said.

Krysty had risen with him and stood beside him, still not touching, but close enough for Ryan to feel the heat of her well-curved body.

He smiled at her.

Krysty's return smile gave him a warm feeling. She knew just what he had in mind.

As usual.

“When can we leave, then?”

“You just got back, Cawdor,” Joe said in his bantering way. “You in a hurry to clear out again so soon?”

“Yeah.”

The swampers laughed.

“I'm saying the same as Myron,” J.B. said. “She's ready as she's going to be. Aside from finishing up some.”

“I see nothing to keep us here,” Nataly added, “although it will take us a while to get our gear stowed back aboard.”

“And supplies,” Arliss stated.

“Right.” Ryan nodded. He looked at the sun. It was already halfway down the sky toward the western weeds.

“Then I guess you folks might as well head back to your camps,” he told the swampers. “Come back tomorrow with your boats and such belongings as you care to carry along. We'll go when you're ready.”

“Right,” Ermintrude said. Without further word the swampers turned back to the assortment of small craft they had arrived in, and in minutes were paddling back toward the derelict railway bridge.

Ryan looked to his companions. “Now. Tell me what still needs done, and I'll get to helping do it.”

“You sure you feel up to it?” Mildred asked.

“I've caught my breath, Mildred,” he said. “And after your fine ministrations, if I'm not fit to fight, I'm fit to fake it.”

He looked around at the others. “And since you-all saw to contriving us a ride out of this hellhole, the only way I'm going to stay in it a moment longer than necessary is if I'm staring up at the stars!”

* * *

“S
O THAT
'
S YOUR
secret weapon?” Joe asked.

It was full daylight. The sky was mostly clear, but it looked as if they might be in for a storm later. Wolf Creek was crowded with swamper boats as the people of the strontium swamp hitched them to the stern of the
Mississippi Queen
, along with the motor launch. To Ricky it all seemed to be taking forever, but Ryan did not seem concerned.

Ricky didn't have much attention to spare for anything but the Lahti L-39 Ryan and J.B. had uncrated and set up on its sled-like tripod on the shore by the tug's bow. The weapon was everything he'd expect something called an antitank rifle to be: a tremendously outsize longblaster, almost seven and a half feet long complete with muzzle brake, with a box magazine sticking out the top that held ten 20 mm armor-piercing cartridges and a pistol grip. It was an ugly monster, weighing in at over a hundred pounds.

Ricky thought he was in love.

“Will it penetrate ironclad armor?” Nataly asked skeptically.

“Some of it,” Ryan said. “Their stuff's not consistent,
either—they use scrap, and a lot more varied than you did here. It's not dedicated armored plate or anything. It's what they could find that fit.”

“Could you test it?” Jake asked.

“You know we only have twenty rounds for it,” Arliss said. “We don't have enough to spare.”

“She'll definitely do for keeping the patrol boats off our necks. Otherwise, we need to rely on armor, speed—and luck.”

“How fast do we dare go?” Nataly asked Joe and Ermintrude. She would have the helm for their escape attempt. As Abner was the best hand with the small boat, the tall, lean, ponytailed woman was most accomplished at steering the tug.

Not that she or any of them had any experience driving the
Queen
with all that armor up top, throwing her balance all out of whack.

“Fast enough to outrun their patrol boats, if she'll handle it,” Ermintrude said.

“She will,” Nataly replied. “Even with all that metal piled on her, and drawing your craft behind, she'll likely be driving less of a load than the barge we were hauling when this mess got started.”

“What about you, though?” Mildred asked. “We had to go superslow when our launch was towing us.”

Joe and Ermintrude exchanged looks. “You were mostly riding those cobbled-together rafts,” Joe said. “Any little thing was liable to upset 'em. Or just cause them to come apart.”

“And we're double good at handling small boats,” Ermintrude added, with more than a trace of smugness.
“That rabbit-looking dude of yours, Abner, he's all right. But the rest of you—” She shook her head.

“Your funeral,” Ryan said. “Right now we need to get back to work. I'm antsy to get moving, and this has already taken longer than I expected.”

“It always does,” J.B. stated. “You should remember that from Trader days. Even an outfit like his.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “But I don't have to like it.”

“What about the blaster?” Nataly asked. “You want us to go ahead and load it?”

“Oh, no,” Ryan said. “It's going in the cabin with us, and you will
not
like it when I touch the bastard off in there.”

Ermintrude and Joe got back to overseeing the digging-out of the
Queen
's hull to refloat her. They both took turns with the shovels, Ricky saw. It was a major job digging deep enough to let in enough water under the
Queen
's keep to allow her to back off the shore, but the swampers were good at digging.

The rest got back to their various preparations.

An hour later Ricky carried one of the last of the cargo boxes down to the hold. They might as well have some return on this crazy trip, provided any of them made it out alive—Ryan and company as well as the tug's original crew. Ricky's group hadn't exactly been paid. In any event, regardless of Ryan's and J.B.'s, and even Nataly's, inclinations to ditch everything not absolutely essential to survival, with so much weight added to the
Queen
's superstructure, they needed every ounce of ballast they could find to load.

From above came a muffled, indecipherable cry.
Ricky recognized Jak's voice. The albino was on watch atop the cabin. His sharp eyes were more use there than his slight frame was in hauling.

A babble of shouting broke out. Ricky hastily put down the crate of scavvy canned goods and hustled up the ladder.

Outside he saw the swampers in their boats pointing east and yelling. He looked that way.

A patrol blasterboat was motoring down Wolf Creek. It was just emerging from the shadows beneath the ruined bridge.

“¡Nuestra Señora!”
Ricky yelped. He scrambled over the bridge-truss-armored gunwales and dropped into the shallows.

“Purple-and-yellow flag,” Ryan was saying on the shore as he lowered his Steyr from his shoulder. “Poteetville.”

“So the bastards found a way to get to Wolf Creek,” Arliss said.

Joe splashed ashore from his little flotilla. “We've got to get moving!” he yelled. He sounded near panic. “They'll massacre us with their deck cannon.”

Nataly stood by the big trench being dug around the
Queen
's bow. She shook her head, her ponytail whipping her shoulders.

“It's still not deep enough. We'll be able to go soon, but not before they get here.”

“Not a problem,” Ryan said. He handed his Scout carbine to Ricky. “Take this and back me up. Everybody else, lie down. Find what cover you can.”

Not that there was much, unless they wanted to
go retreat into the tall grass. Since both Jak and the swampers reported sign of stickies prowling around, Ricky for one wasn't eager to do that. He'd rather take his chances with a black powder cannon.

“You're just hankering to give that big old bastard a try,” J.B. said mock-accusingly as Ryan swung around the hefty Lahti blaster and started to settle in behind it.

“It can't hurt to make sure the blaster and the ammo still work, right?”

“I guess we need to see if it's going to have any effect against a real boat,” Jake said.

Ryan grinned like a wolf.

“Oh, I know what kind of effect it'll have on one of them. Now get down. Their bow cannon can throw a ball this far. Their gunner may get luckier than you are.”

Most of the people on the shore hustled to lie down on their bellies and make themselves as flat as they could.

“Get on my right,” Ryan told Ricky. “It ejects to the left. And keep back, because the muzzle brake will throw side blast like a bastard.”

Feeling slightly miffed that Ryan thought so little of Ricky's armorer skill—so much of it learned from Ryan's own friend, the masterful J.B.—as to reckon he couldn't work that out on his own, Ricky settled into a seated position, side-on to the approaching boat, with his ankles crossed. He cinched his arm up in the Scout's sling the way he'd seen Ryan do. He made sure his left forearm was directly under the forestock, and that his elbows were braced against the insides of his legs. It was a stable firing platform, but mostly he wanted to
make sure he could see all the action. He put his eye down behind the ocular.

“Fire in the hole,” Ryan said. “Be warned, it'll get loud in three, two, one.”

The Lahti went off. It made a sound so loud it felt to Ricky as if it would implode his head. The shock wave stung not just the bare side of his head but the whole left side of his body. It almost toppled him, although that might have been from surprise as much as the actual force.