Iron Rage (30 page)

The monster roared and kicked his shoulder like a mule. It didn't have the ground to suck up some of the recoil through its sled-like tripod this time. It hurt.

But it didn't kill him. Neither did the blast. He
switched his aim a few degrees left. The weapon was a gas-operated semiautomatic. It reloaded and cocked itself.

He fired again.

The yellow muzzle-flash of the colossal longblaster was followed instantly by a hell-red glare that filled the inside of the cockpit. Still holding the Lahti over the crouching form of Nataly, Ryan looked right.

He was in time to see the stern half of the
Invincible
explode in flame and fragments, then came the smoke, like a curtain closing.

Mildred slapped Ryan's shoulder. “Good shootin', Tex! Was that a carom shot?”

Ryan shook his head. He had actually heard her. Sort of.

“That wasn't my doing,” he said, as he shifted to his left. Nataly snapped back into place as if she were on a spring.

“Glancing fire,” J.B. called. “Hit the powder magazine.”

“Not so
Invincible
after all!” Doc exulted.

And then the pounding began in earnest.

It was as if both fleets, though locked in deadly combat at dagger range in some cases, noticed this weird, armored thing intruding boldly and presumptuous into their playground. Two shots rang off the
Vengeance
's armor almost simultaneously from opposite directions. Then three more, as fast as combination punches from a skilled boxer.

“Holding still,” Avery said.

Ryan searched calmly for targets. He hoped his shots
had scared the gunners in
Selene
out of shooting at them anymore. At least until their petty officers beat them back to the task. Even with the monster power of the 20 mm longblaster, he had next to no chance of doing lasting damage to any ironclad.

He did put a shot through a firing port on
Clytemnestra
, off its port bow, and engaged with the capital
Conqueror
, which was actually behind the
Vengeance
and her train of small boats. Ryan wondered how they were doing.

But only briefly. He could do little for them, and they weren't
his
people. He wished them well, but that was most of it right there. He gave the big ship's blaster-port another shot, for good measure.

The 16-gauge wire wraps binding a rail to the front of the bridge parted with musical twangs audible even above the bombardment, and the residual ringing in Ryan's ear from his own weapon. He saw the rail fall away to angle across the bridge-truss rail through the hatchway to his left.

A New Vick patrol boat appeared fifty yards ahead and steaming right at them. Its bow cannon fired, a shout of yellow fire. The ball struck the bow armor in a shower of red steel-on-steel sparks and went moaning over the cabin.

Ryan was more concerned now about the patrol craft closing and grappling with them. His people could handle a boarding party. What none of them could afford was to be shackled to an enemy ship and stopped in the middle of this firestorm.

More impacts rang off the
Vengeance
's armor. Ryan
scarcely paid attention to them. Except for the one rail, J.B.'s improvised armor was holding. For now. And again, there was nothing he could do but hope.

But he
did
know how to chill a steam-powered patrol boat. His next shot made the approaching vessel's boulder blow up so hard that when, moments later,
Vengeance
powered past her, she had slewed to the east and was sinking by the blasted-off stern.

Ahead of them to his right he made out the bulk of the
Pearl
. She was nose to tail with Baron Harvey's
Tyrant
. The two flagships were obviously hammering each other at almost hull-scraping range. Somehow in the scrum and the smoke they had swapped original directions, with
Tyrant
's bow now pointing north toward Poteetville, and the
Pearl
's bow toward her own home port.

Ryan blasted another patrol craft closing from their starboard. This one flew a Poteetville flag, he thought. The usual boiler blast put paid to her as a threat.

His next shot failed to hit the boiler of a New Vick blasterboat, because by chance her helmsman put the wheel over in a hard right turn even as Ryan's finger tightened on the trigger. The helmsman paid for it when the 20 mm armor-piercer smashed through the wheel and ripped his right arm off his body, just below the shoulder.

A frigate Ryan recognized as the New Vickville
Hera
steamed toward them almost bow-on, two hundred yards ahead, with black smoke pouring from her twin stacks into a now-cloudy sky. He realized with something like an electric shock that she was the last ironclad between them and open river.

“Holy cow,” Mildred yelled. “I think we're going to make it!” Ryan aimed for the frigate's bow cannon and fired. He knew as the blaster cracked that he had pulled the shot high. He aimed again, fired again.

“Strike!” Ricky screamed from just behind him. He was watching Ryan's target through the longeyes. “You hit the gunner just as he was about to shoot! Wait, there's another—”

Somehow at this distance Ryan saw the blurred motion of a second brave sailor stepping up to seize the lanyard of the six-pounder bow cannon. He sighted on him and shot again.

As he did, the cannon's muzzle vanished in yellow glare and white smoke.

Ryan actually felt the shot punch through the unarmored decking, to his left up the walkway between rail and cabin.

Then he felt the shudder and the boom as the black powder shell exploded in the guts of the
Vengeance
.

Krysty felt like puking. We've been hit hard! she thought.

They were hit worse than she thought. In a moment throat-flaying smoke filled the bridge, redolent of wood, oil and seared human flesh.

The door astern burst open. Suzan appeared, her eyes and hair even more wild than usual.

“We're on fire!”

“Tell us something we don't know,” Lewis said, coughing and waving smoke away from his face. It was futile. All he did was cause eddies in the choking stuff.

Myron came up from below. His hair was half burned off. His eyes stared crazily from a blackened face. His coveralls smoldered.

“We're breached and taking water!” he shouted. “Arliss is dead.”

“What now, Captain?” Nataly asked.

“Didn't you hear me? We're done for! Finished! Kaput!” He began to laugh uncontrollably.

Avery reached out a hand and slapped him. The captain jerked his head back. He blinked twice at the boatswain. He seemed puzzled at being struck, and on the edge of tears.

“That's not really therapeutic,” Mildred said.

“It shut him up,” Ryan snarled. “That's therapeutic for us.”

He looked to the first officer. “Steer us toward the
Pearl
,” he directed. “Right up her ass. You can work the engines from here, right?”

Nataly looked from the tall, grim, one-eyed man back to the scorched and desolated figure of her boss. “I don't know.”

“Do it,” Myron said. His tone wasn't just sane. It sounded resolved. “Do what he tells you. And yes. We can work the engines from here.”

“We prefer not to because the linkage is wonky and tends to jam up,” Abner said.

Nataly was turning the wheel. The armored tug's nose swung toward the capital ship.

“Give her all the speed you got,” Ryan said.

Nataly worked a lever beside the wheel. The Diesels' growl got louder.

“Engines sound rough,” J.B. said. “Are they fit?”

Myron shook his head. “Both are running now. I can't promise more.”

“Ryan,” Krysty said, “what do you have in mind?”

“We're going to ram the bastard,” he said, “and then we're going to hijack her.”

“Are you out of your nuking mind?” Jake and Avery yelled in unison.

“We're on fire and sinking,” Ryan replied. “If you've got a better plan, I'm all ears.”

“But that's a
battleship
,” Avery insisted.

“Pretty soon her cannon won't depress far enough to hit us,” J.B. said.

The Lahti erupted with terrifying noise twice in quick succession. Even with the head-wrap holding cloth pads over her ears the reports were like daggers stabbing into Krysty's skull.

“That should keep
Hera
's crew from playing with the bow cannon any more until we're in close to
Pearl
,” Ryan said, pulling the big box magazine off the top of the blaster and replacing it with the full one. Their last one, Krysty knew. Not that that seemed to matter much now.

“Do you not understand?” Doc roared. Everyone looked at him except Ryan and Nataly. “We are going to fight them on
our
terms now!”

“He's right,” Mildred said. “Crazy as a bedbug. But right.” And she grinned.

“To hell with letting them hammer us with big weapons while we can do nothing about it!”

“Speaking of that,” Ricky said hesitantly, “is anybody still shooting at us?”

“Mebbe not,” J.B. said. The stern of the New Vick flagship was already looming like a house over them. On her far side her cannon and the
Tyrant
's were still banging away at each other, close enough one cannon's flame could scorch its opposite number's crew. “Don't want to risk hitting the boss lady. At least, not in the midst of a fight they could still lose.”

“Ryan! The swampers!” Krysty exclaimed. “What about them?”

“We've done all we could for them,” J.B. said.

“Take over on the Lahti and empty the mag where you think she'll do the most good, J.B.,” Ryan said.
“I'll go warn them. You couldn't have done this without them. Reckon we owe them that.”

“I'll go,” Krysty said.

“Krys—”

She silenced Ryan with a glare. She was precisely the only person on Earth who could do that. She was the only one not stone crazy who was likely to even
try
.

“As Ricky says, no one's shooting at us. And you know better than to try to shield me from danger, don't you, Ryan?”

“Get going,” he replied. He hunched down behind the Lahti, angled its long barrel up at the rail of the rapidly approaching warship. “And hustle back here, triple fast!”

* * *

W
HEN THE LAST
spent 20 mm casing bounced jingling on the deck at his feet, Ryan tipped the giant longblaster forward out of the cabin.

“But, Ryan!” Ricky protested. He hated to see a good blaster treated that way, Ryan knew.

“It's just an anchor now, boy,” J.B. said. He took off his ear-protecting headband and threw it out the hatch. The others followed suit. “Unless you want to hump it, your blasters and your pack up that ramp there.” Before he'd opened fire again, Ryan had suggested everybody grab everything they meant to take with them.

“Ramp?” Nataly asked.

Ryan shouldered her aside. “I got it.”

She looked outraged and tried to push him away. Mildred grabbed her in a bear hug from behind, pinning her arms and dragging her back.

“Let it go, Nat,” Myron said calmly. “He knows what he's doing. He's the only one, but that's enough, now.”

Ryan steered the tugboat for the stern just forward of the big rudder and the submerged screws. A gangplank was tied upright above the spot Ryan was targeting. It looked intact. He didn't think the
Pearl
had taken any major fire on this side. Except for his 20 mm rounds raking the rail and the cabin.

He heard the heavy steel scrollwork over the hatch scrape on the deck. “Just heave it over,” he ordered without looking. He heard it clang against the chunk of bridge truss that armored the rail across from it.

“I'm back,” he heard Krysty say. “Swampers cut loose. They're already rowing south.”

“Godspeed to them,” Doc said.

“Ace,” Ryan said. “Brace for impact.”

The New Vick flagship was armored to the waterline, but Ryan had noticed during his time with the fleet that the improvised plate there wasn't maintained as well as it might be. It was bright red with rust where it regularly came in contact with the water.

That meant it was weakened. At least slightly. He hoped.

The
Vengeance
's bow smashed into the larger ship like a baby whale nuzzling its mother a touch too aggressively. She slammed to a stop with a grinding, screaming, rending crash.

Ryan heard thumping and tumbling and cussing from behind. There was a limit to how braced you could
get
for an impact like that, especially jammed in a little
room that held mostly other people and overfull backpacks.

The tubby river tug was stoutly built, and her bow was armored. Ryan heard her frame creak and felt things break inside her. But she punched a double-big hole in the
Pearl
's hull, smashing through the rust-brittled scrap armor. Water instantly began to gush into the New Vick flagship.

“All aboard,” Ryan said.

“But how will we get up?” Jake asked dubiously. He was eying the water-slicked black-iron rungs hammered into the hull as a ladder of sorts to her deck, a story overhead.

“Got,” Jak said. He slipped out the open hatch before anyone could tell him otherwise. Not that Ryan meant to; he'd planned on Jak opening the way for the rest.

J.B. pulled back the lever to cock his Uzi. “I'll cover,” he said. Stooped slightly beneath his backpack and slung shotgun, he followed the albino out. The others trailed behind.

Nataly took Myron by the arm. “Come on, Captain. It's time to go.”

But he shook her off. “You go. I'm staying.”

The cabin was getting hot. As he turned away from the wheel, Ryan could see the evil glow of fire down below from the open hatch.

“But the ship is lost!” the first officer said pleadingly.