Iron Rage (6 page)

“Nothing shaken, Doc,” he said.

Ryan was surprised that J.B. could see over the stern, as short as he was. But the Armorer was the last person in their group to say more than he knew. “We knew it was going to happen sooner or later. They're way out of range now, anyway.”

“Their frigates can't keep up with us now,” Arliss said. No longer weighed down by the massive barge and her currently burning-to-nuke-shit cargo, the tubby little tug was making surprising time downriver. “They're slow and handle like pigs, with all that armor. Unarmored patrol boats likely can't catch us, even.”

That last bit of information was delivered with a note of unmistakable pride in his voice.

He shook his grizzled head.

“It's lucky we got off as light as we did,” he said. “Except for poor Edna. We're lucky, and that's a fact.”

“Count no man lucky before his death,” Jake said.

Arliss put his hands on his hips and stuck his elbows out to the sides. “Well, aren't
you
Captain Gloom 'n' Doom? What, are you taking lessons from Nataly now?”

“It's an old Viking saying. From my Viking grandmother, Freya.”

“She weren't no Viking.”

“You didn't want to tell her that.”

“Where are we going, anyway?” Ricky asked.

“Captain says she means to head back up the Yazoo,” Arliss said. “From there we'll play it by ear.”

“So we're basically in the clear?” The youth sounded relieved.

Krysty lifted her head and gave him a wan grin.

“Don't ever say that, Ricky,” she said teasingly. “It's only tempting fate.”

“Ships ahead!” Jak cried out from above. “War boats!”

“It's the New Vick fleet!” Arliss exclaimed. “And they got their big tubs with 'em!”

Krysty climbed to her feet in alarm. Without even looking, Ryan stood up beside her and reached an arm to steady her.

Ryan gazed south, along the length of the cabin. Out beyond the prow of the
Mississippi Queen
a V of five blasterboats was steaming toward them with little mustaches of water by their bows. He knew that meant they were driving hard, although the slow but strong Sippi current's flowing against them slowed them.

Behind the blasterboats came the main New Vickville fleet, darkened by the long shadows that stretched from the low bluffs on the west bank of the big river. It was still well beyond blaster range, but the ironclad ships looked huge, like a distant range of mountains.

“Fireblast,” Ryan said, almost conversationally. Another person might have taken it for resignation. Another man saying it under the circumstances might have meant it that way.

But not Ryan. Krysty knew that his tone meant he had already accepted the situation—and begun to plot how to beat it and survive, as he had a thousand times before.

“Blasterboats have already cut us off from the Yazoo,” he said.

“And the big boats are squatting right in the river mouth,” said Jake, who among other duties was an assistant navigator, though pretty much every member of the
Queen
's crew could do pretty much everyone else's job.

Krysty and her friends were exceptions, of course, although they were willing hands. All had been aboard ships a number of times. They did what they could and nobody complained. When it came to fighting, it was the river-boaters who were second string.

And she already knew that it would come to fighting. Because if the patrol boats or heavy ironclads didn't sink them with their blasters, they would wind up having to seek shelter somewhere in the deceptively green, rad- and mutie-haunted countryside around them.

Plus it
always
came down to fighting, sooner or later. These were the Deathlands.

Ryan was already half carrying her forward at a good clip. Several of the crew raced on ahead, maneuvering carefully past to avoid jostling the pair. They were on good terms, along with being nominally on the same side, but none of the
Queen
's complement was eager to cross any of the newcomers. Least of all their tall, one-eyed wolf of a leader. Or his woman.

The rest of the companions followed Ryan and Krysty. They were never eager to race toward danger, at least when that wasn't called for. Except Jak, who scampered forward along the cabin roof like a white two-legged squirrel.

On the bridge Trace Conoyer was standing determinedly on her own, next to the wheel, where Nataly was still piloting the boat. The captain's right arm had been safety-pinned to the captain's shirt to discourage her from waving it around. Mildred hovered next to her, watching her like an anxious mother. “They've opened fire,” Nataly said in her flat voice. She never seemed excited.

A waterspout blew up out of the river right in front of them. Droplets struck Krysty in the face, without much force.

“Steady as she goes,” the captain said. She shouted into a speaking tube down to the engine room to maintain full speed.

“But, Captain,” Nataly said. For the first time her voice betrayed emotion. She sounded worried now. “We're heading right into their cannon!”

“Poteetville patrol boats aren't that much farther behind us,” J.B. called from the open door. The door-slam sound of the shot that had produced the splash hit Krysty's ears.

“Steady as she goes,” Conoyer repeated. She was leaning forward, gripping the lower sill of the now-vacant front port with her left hand so hard her knuckles whitened. “On my word, turn her hard aport, smartly as you can.”

The mate glanced nervously aside. Her steely veneer was showing serious cracks now.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” she said.

Ryan, J.B., Doc and Ricky had pushed onto the bridge with Krysty. Jak was doing whatever he was
doing, as he usually did. Under the circumstances, he was as helpless as the rest of them. Arliss had come in with them. The rest of the
Queen
's crew had dispersed elsewhere.

Flashes flickered from the bows of the oncoming craft. “Get down!” Ryan commanded.

He did as he ordered, although he stayed just high enough to peer out the front port. Krysty did likewise. She realized he had likely ordered his people down to reduce the targets they offered. She doubted the wooden front of the cabin would offer any resistance to a solid cannonball. It had not been built for that.

“You too, Nataly,” Trace ordered. After a dubious glance her way, the mate hunkered as low as she could and still see to steer.

The captain stayed erect. “Mildred, stay hunkered down too, but please help me stand. I need to see.”

Mildred reached out and grabbed her hips to steady her.

A shot whined overhead, then the ship was racked by a shuddering crash that seemed to come up through the deck by way of Krysty's knee and boot sole. Another crash came from somewhere astern.

“Captain,” Maggie called, coming up the hatch from below, “the bow's been holed below the waterline. We're taking on a lot of—”

Something moaned by Krysty's head, between her and Ryan. A hot breath blew across her face. She saw a lock of her lover's curly black hair tweaked briefly out from his head as by invisible fingers.

From behind she heard a strange squelching noise,
followed by another sound of rending wood. Something like hot rain fell on her shoulders and back. She heard a sizable amount of liquid hit the planks of the deck.

She and Ryan both turned. His lone blue eye was wide.

Maggie stood a step away from the hatch below. Or rather her slight torso did. Her head was missing entirely. A pulse of blood shot up from the terrible vacancy between her shoulders, then her headless trunk toppled down the ladder.

Ricky puked. The stink of vomit, added to the reek of fresh blood, excrement, burned flesh and lingering peppery gunpowder smell, made Krysty's head spin.

“Arliss,” Trace snapped without turning, “get every hand available to work the bilge-pumps.”

His wrinkled, sunburned face was white beneath his beard, but he bobbed his head. “Aye, Captain.”

He vanished below, slipping slightly in Maggie's blood.

“Captain,” Nataly said in a strained voice, “those blasterboats are getting mighty close—”

“On my mark, start your turn to port,” the captain said. Nataly stood back upright, her hands white on the wheel.

“Don't see much of a break, up ahead,” J.B. murmured.

Krysty didn't, either. The summer-green reeds and rushes on the left bank waved in the breeze in a line unbroken as far as the eye could see. She realized Ryan was gripping her arm, tightly enough to hurt, but she didn't say anything. It reassured her more than it felt bad.

“Three,” Trace said. “Two…”

“Captain, I don't see—” Nataly began.

“Now! Hard aport!”

“But it's just land!”

“Now, nuke it,
do it now
!”

Ryan let go of Krysty's arm. He started to grab for the wheel.

But Nataly, her normally narrow eyes now saucer-wide, began to crank the big spoked wheel counterclockwise for all she was worth. The
Mississippi Queen
began to heel to the right as her bow swung left.

They were curving toward what indeed looked to Krysty like solid land at a good rate of speed. She gripped the sill in front of her with her right hand and Ryan's arm with her left. Bracing was the only thing she could think of to do.

The vessel shuddered to another hit.

The land rushed toward them. Krysty held her breath.

“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc crowed from behind them. “I see it!”

Then Krysty did, too. The weeds were thinner directly in front of them, stretching twenty or twenty-five yards to either side. The
Queen
's bow slid smoothly among them, right into a channel Krysty would have bet her life a few seconds ago was not there.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Trace said, “welcome to Wolf Creek.”

An explosion came from behind. It was as loud as rolling thunder, and made the stout little vessel rock violently back and forth. Instantly Krysty's keen nostrils
smelled fresh smoke, and not just of burned black powder.

“There's another fire in the cabin,” Avery yelled from the hatch in the aft bulkhead.

“Get anybody who's not pumping out the hull to fight the fire, Avery,” Trace ordered. Her voice was getting as thin as hope.

“That's us,” Ryan said, straightening. Krysty went with him.

“Ryan,” Trace called. Krysty saw her sway despite Mildred's strong hand supporting her. “Have that albino scout of yours keep his eyes skinned. Stand ready to repel boarders.”

“Right,” Ryan said.

“Nataly, take us up-channel at least a mile. Then look for the best place to ground her.”

The first mate had the steel back in her spine. “Aye-aye!”

“Mildred, help me…lie down. Then you're relieved from tending me to join your friends. I need to pass out now.”

“Then let us help you out on deck to get you laid down,” Mildred said, working her hands professionally up the captain's solid body as she stood up. “I'm not laying you down in this slop, no way.”

Trace's short-haired head lolled on her neck. “What…ever.”

Her eyes rolled up in her head. Mildred was ready, but still had to bend her knees to hang on to the woman when her knees sagged.

“I'll help you, Mildred,” Krysty said. She went to
support the now-unconscious—or perhaps semiconscious—captain from the left.

It feels good to be able to do something, she thought. Even if we're nowhere near safe yet.

* * *

“F
IREBLAST
!” R
YAN EXCLAIMED
as the sound of cannon fire echoed between the banks of Wolf Creek.

But when he paused in chopping away burning planks from the starboard side of the
Mississippi Queen
's cabin to look astern to where the dull booms came from, he saw nothing but clear green water on Wolf Creek. They had rounded enough of a bend in the stream that the original screen of weeds that had shielded the creek's mouth had passed out of sight. But he could clearly see two big banks of smoke like river-hugging fog, off above the flat land with its tall grass. The tops of the smoke clouds were already tinted gold by the rays of the sun sinking into the horizon.

“Poteetville and New Vick,” Arliss said grimly. The ship rigger was perched perilously atop the weakening roof of the
Queen
's cabin forward of the fire, directing water from a canvas hose into its hungry red heart. “They found better things to play with than us. Meaning each other.”

“Think they'll follow us this way?” Ricky asked. He was taking a break from manning the deck pumps, which worked on a teeter-totter sort of principle, like a railway flatcar. Although now that they were in a side channel, and out of the line of fire, Myron had throttled back the Diesels and diverted some power to pumping out the water gushing in through the breach. Instead
Ricky and Jak were kicking the burning planks chopped free overboard.

There wasn't enough power to spare for the above decks pumps too. Myron clearly reckoned that if the boat sank, it would take care of the fire, anyway. So his priority was keeping her afloat. His prime enemy as he saw it was
water
, and Ryan couldn't disagree.

Avery laughed. He was pointing out to Ryan where to cut with the ax, plus helping out with one of his own.

“Not triple likely, kid. They probably forgot all about us. The only stuff we had worth stealing's burned to the waterline. Least as far as they know.”

“The only reason either bunch really had for shooting at us,” Arliss pointed out, “was that they're both plain mean. They've been rival king-ass fucks lording over this stretch of river for generations, each with only the other to give them any kind of check. And it went to their heads.”

“So are they meaner than the countryside hereabouts?” Ricky asked.