Iron Rage (31 page)

“No. Trace deserves the Viking funeral I could never give her before. And poor Sean. Me too, for that matter.
Plus, I might just be able to do the rest of you some good with my famous final scene.”

Nataly blew out a long breath. “Then I'm staying with you.”

“No! I'm ordering you to go.”

“I won't!” Her voice was tearful.

Suddenly the potbellied captain had a blaster in his hand, a Russian 9 mm Makarov, of all the rad-blasted things.

“If you don't go yourself, I'll shoot you in the leg,” Myron declared. “You don't want to make your shipmates carry you, do you? Not a fine officer like you?”

She turned and bolted out the hatch, sobbing like a lost child. Outside, Ryan heard full-auto fire stuttering. J.B., on his submachine gun. Apparently some
Pearl
crew had shown their heads above the rail too close to Jak for comfort.

As Ryan bent to shoulder his pack and sling his Scout, Myron tipped his little black handgun to his brow.

“It's been an honor serving with you, Cawdor. And thank you.”

Ryan nodded. “You too,” he said. And left.

* * *

T
HE GANGPLANK SLAMMED
down with a thump. It came almost to the deck of the
Vengeance
, now well stuck in the bigger ship's stern.

Sometimes the gods smiled, Doc thought, even on the likes of us.

At the top of the ramp he had just dropped to his friends, Jak spun away, his white hair flying, and dived
clear of the ramp's upper end as blasterfire rang out. Wood splintered from the gangplank.

Roaring, holding his ax in both his mighty hands, Santee ran up the ramp with surprising speed.

Doc drew his rapier from his belted sword stick, and with sword in his right hand and blaster in the left, charged up the ramp after the giant Indian. He was no less sick than any of them of suffering one-sided abuse at the hands of tormentors untouchable behind the iron walls of their warships.

As he had told the doubters among their crewmates: this was
their
kind of fight now. And if the odds still lay against them—as Mildred would say, what else was new?

To the left of the ramp Doc saw Santee, swinging about with his ax. Blood flew from its head. To the right Jak slashed and rolled with his knives.

As he neared the top, Doc heard a shot crack from nearby. He saw the big man's body jerk, then at least three more shots rippled out.

Santee reeled back a step. He dropped the ax.

Then, drawing in a breath that seemed to inflate his chest to twice its normal enormous size, he charged his adversaries.

A sailor jammed a socket bayonet mounted on the end of a carbine into Santee's stomach. He blasted its single shot into the man.

Bellowing, Santee spread his arms, then he swept them together, gathering up the man who had bayoneted him with two of his mates, like a mother bear scooping
up her cubs. Then he hurled himself and the three sailors over the rail to splash into the water below.

Doc came onto the ramp. He saw no opponents to his left. He spun right. A trio of sailors, one with a bayonet-mounted Springfield carbine, one with a Winchester repeater, and a third with a cutlass, were trying to bash or stab the elusive Jak. He eluded their savage sallies, but was finding no opening to riposte.

Doc lunged and thrust the rapier into the kidney of his nearest foe, the man with the bayoneted longblaster. The man shrieked as if he were on fire and fell thrashing, drawing Doc's arm with him.

The cutlass man spun and cocked his arm back across his chest to cut at Doc. The old man obliterated his bearded face with the charge in the LeMat's stubby shotgun barrel.

The last sailor raised his repeater to shoot Doc down. His dark eyes went wide as Jak's matched pair of butterfly knives pierced his stout neck from opposite sides from behind.

Sheets of blood erupted to briefly mask his face as Jak thrust the blades forward and out through his gullet, severing carotid arteries and jugular veins alike.

Blasterfire erupted from behind Doc. He tore his slim blade free of the wounded man and turned. More sailors were swarming onto the deck from the big cabin. One fired a carbine over the rail at the ramp. Others aimed blasters at Doc.

He and Jak jumped nimbly to press their backs across the scrap-armored side of the cabin. The shots went wild.

That was one advantage, to make the best of the bad,
of Doc's condition: on those occasions when he didn't feel as old as he looked, he also did not
move
like a man who looked that old. He leveled the LeMat and returned fire from the longer .44 barrel.

More shots sounded from below. Before he could duck back, the man who had leaned over the rail to shoot slumped over it, dropping his blaster into the Sippi.

Then Doc's comrades stormed onto the ironclad's deck.

Mildred nodded in satisfaction. Her shot had caught the man who had blasted Suzan right between the eyes. Exactly where she'd aimed.

It was too late to do poor Suzan any good. The middle-aged woman, running up the ramp, had simply fallen straight over the rail into the river when she was shot. Mildred didn't even know where the bullet had hit her.

“Move it, Mildred!” Ryan shouted from just below her. He had his panga and his SIG out, and blood in his blue eye. “Admire your marksmanship later.”

When you're right, you're right, she thought, lowering her arm and hustling up the gangplank. She heard Doc start blazing away with his revolver. A moment later J.B.'s M-4000 shotgun joined the chorus.

Everybody but Ryan was there ahead of her when she puffed her way onto the deck. No living enemies remained. At least not when Jak stood up from the body of the man who'd been shrieking and carrying on.

On the water below, Mildred heard the Diesels roar. She felt crunching through the soles of her combat boots, heard tormented metal screech on metal.

She looked down. The
Vengeance
was backing away
from the
Pearl
. Already she could see the doomed tug was riding deeper in the water, and canted to her port.

Dark smoke poured out the ob port and hatch. But still, an arm appeared through the front port. It turned a thumbs-up to the ironclad's deck, then disappeared.

Ryan was still on the ramp behind her. Mildred realized she was blocking his way when he made a fast motion. He wouldn't hit her, but he'd push any of his companions out of the way if he had to.

But the rangy one-eyed man wasn't going anywhere. He was aiming his SIG up and along the deck to his left.

“Eyes forward!” he shouted.

* * *

R
YAN WASN
'
T SURPRISED
when his sight was filled by the ample bulk of Baron Tanya Krakowitz of New Vickville. Even though her cannon crews were still trading spitting-distance shots with their rivals aboard the
Tyrant
, she knew somehow where the real threat to her flagship lay.

She was dressed in her tailored admiral suit, which like her stateroom was surprisingly restrained: enough gold braid and bird poop to signify that she was in charge. But no more.

She stopped dead as blasters pointed at her face.

“Cawdor!” she exclaimed. “I should have known.”

“You know when I said I considered myself separated from my earlier employment?” he called. “I lied.”

“No shit.” She gave her head a little shake. “I knew I never should have trusted you. But how could I help myself? I always knew you were this bloody good.”

She nodded at the Mossberg shotgun she carried in patrol position across her hips.

“Well, it looks as if we got ourselves a good old-fashioned Sippi standoff here,” she said.

“It doesn't work that way, Baron,” Ryan replied. “You so much as try to twitch that scattergun up, we'll blast you out of your shoes. No, what really happens now is, you drop the blaster, put your hands up and come peaceably with us. You behave yourself, and I'll let you go when we're clear.”

“You're hijacking my ship?”

Ryan jerked his head toward the
Vengeance
, which was still backing clear of the ironclad. He wasn't sure where Myron meant to take her. Much less whether she'd survive to get there, before the fire or the water won the race to claim her.

“It's our only ride out now,” he said. “So, yeah. Let's go.”

“Me? Your hostage? When pigs fly.”

She dropped the shotgun to the deck. Then with startling grace she sprang to the railing. Before even Ryan could react, she launched herself in a dive for the surface of the Sippi.

“‘When pigs fly,'” Doc murmured. “At the risk of seeming unchivalrous, that seems curiously apt.”

“Good form, though,” Avery commented.

* * *

C
ANNON FIRE ERUPTED
off to Ryan's left as he led his storming party forward down the passageway toward the
Pearl
's bridge. The stout wooden walls and scrap-steel
armor muffled the sounds. But they weren't hard to identify.

A lone sentry with a Springfield carbine stood watch by the hatch. His eyes widened when he saw the smoke-smudged, blood-spattered band bearing down on him, bristling with blasters.

Ryan aimed his SIG toward the middle of the sentry's forehead. The sentry was a kid, maybe fifteen years old. If he shook any harder, he was in imminent danger of losing some parts.

“Feel like being a hero?” Ryan asked, his voice soft but deadly. The sentry shook his head.

“Then get out of here!” Mildred told him.

“First, lay the blaster down easy,” Ryan added.

The kid obeyed, vanishing down the ladder on the passageway's port side.

At Ryan's nod, J.B. hauled open the hatch. “
Hera
reports herself fully engaged with
Devastation
and
Bocephus
, Captain,” a female officer was saying. The steel shutters of the portside and forward ob ports were raised, allowing in a weak spill of daylight. The starboard shutters, the ones on the side facing the
Tyrant
, were closed. “
Clytemnestra
reports
Conqueror
withdrawing, but
Glory
is now firing on her from—”

Ryan stepped in with blaster leveled in both hands. The briefing stopped.

The ship's captain was a fine figure of a middle-aged man, if a bit of a bulldog in build. He had a shock of snow-white hair, coal-black brows over blue eyes, and a chin so manly it could double as an anvil.

It was set in resolve now. “What is the meaning of
this interruption?” he said as he spun to face the intruders.

When he found himself staring right up Ryan's handblaster barrel, he didn't even flinch.

“We're taking command now,” Ryan said. “Surrender your ship and we'll—”

“Surrender the
Pearl
? The pride of New Vickville? To a renegade traitor and a gang of filthy pirates? Over my dead bo—”

Ryan fired a single shot.

“Does anybody else want to negotiate?” he asked, as Garza folded to his own command deck with both bright blue eyes turned upward toward the hole in his forehead. Ryan turned his handblaster left and right, in case anyone wanted to take him up on his offer.

Instead the other six people on the bridge promptly raised their hands.

“Cover them,” Ryan ordered. He lowered his blaster and stepped to where a pull cord hung from the control to a steam-driven horn. The brown-haired female warrant who had been delivering the situation report stepped hurriedly out of his path.

He sounded the horn, three quick times. Pause, then three blasts more. And then one more time.

“But that's the signal to abandon ship!” exclaimed the portly first officer. “What does that mean?”

Ryan let go of the cord. “It means abandon ship,” he said. “You know that. So it's time for you and all the rest of you to abandon the rad-blasted ship.”

“But—”

Ryan gave him a look.

The commander's face paled. “All right! Everybody, to the lifeboats!”

“What about the
Tyrant
?” the warrant officer asked. “She's still firing on us!”

Indeed, Ryan could hear the noise and feel the trembling of a ball coming in and a ball going out.

“Our problem now, girl,” Mildred said. “Git!”

“Are you going to let them go?” Jake asked, as the warrant followed the rest of the bridge crew out the hatch. “Just like that?”

“It's not like they're going to do us any harm,” Ryan said.

“But what about Santee? What about Suzan?”

“What about Myron?” Nataly wailed. She covered her face and began to cry again. Somehow Ryan doubted she was calling for avenging him, though. But rather, wondering at his fate.

And suddenly Ryan knew what the captain intended.

“Nothing's going to bring our friends back now, Jake,” Avery said, patting his shipmate on the shoulder as Ryan hurried past him to the port on the starboard side of the bridge. “Just let it go.”

Whether they used gears or clever counterweights to raise and lower the shutters—too heavy to shift by hand—Ryan didn't know. But the crank turned readily and lifted the heavy plate readily enough.

He heard people gasp as he leaned far out and looked astern.

The shots were coming few and far between the ironclad flagships. But as he watched, a lone orange flame spurted from the
Tyrant
. A single shot replied from
Pearl
. From the smell of the dense smoke, there was fire aboard both ships.

But the smoke had cleared enough that he could just make out the red pup-tent form of the
Vengeance
, flames pouring out of her cabin now, driving full speed at the far side of
Tyrant
's hull.

She disappeared from view.

Whether it was the fire or Myron finding some way to trigger it, the several hundred pounds of black powder stashed in the tug's hold went off at once. From the fine timing, Ryan judged the latter.