“Ren? Could you blink the lantern at that first boat? Just five or six blinks.” Ren did and for whatever reason the man went back below deck. “Three minutes everyone,” Mike hissed down the companion way. To those on deck, he warned, “We’re going to hit kinda hard. If she gets her paint scraped that’s okay, just try to fend her off so we don’t split her open. At the same time, don’t let her move away from the dock.”
Bouncing off was the worst thing that could happen, though there wasn’t much chance of it in Mike’s view. With eighty-nine people on board, the Harbinger was hauling an extra eighteen thousand pounds. As sailboats didn’t come with brakes, stopping the ship would take some ingenious maneuvering, which would steal precious minutes Mike could only hope they had.
As long as the man in the other boat remained below…no sooner had the thought crossed his mind, when the man came out on deck again—a hundred yards separated them. Mike raised his binoculars just as the man flicked on a spotlight.
“Jeeze!” he cried, trying to blink away the strange white blobs filling his vision. The light swept back and forth over the boat, picking out the wounded soldiers at the front and nearly catching Ren gaping. Just before her long red hair gave them away, she ducked down the stairs.
Fifty yards.
“Who are you guys?” the man demanded, his voice carrying easily in the quiet night.
“Who’s asking?” Mike countered. The light transfixed Mike, pinning him in place at the wheel, his blond hair glinting beautiful gold. More quietly, he whispered, “One minute.”
Thirty-five yards.
“Captain Robert Hutton. Now tell me who the hell you guys are and who sent you? It sure wasn’t Grimes so don’t try to feed me any bull. Hey! Why are you riding so low?”
They were close enough now that Mike could see there were two other men on deck and both were armed. “I was told our orders came from Grimes. Was I supposed to question them? He would have my balls if I did. Let me dock and we’ll figure it out.”
Twenty yards and although there was still time for maneuvering, Mike wasn’t about to try it with three overly suspicious Corsairs beaming a light across his deck. It was a wonder they didn’t see the shining spear someone had lashed to the boom for good luck as the Guardian’s usually did. No maneuvering meant they were going to hit hard.
“You got played, boy.” This from a man with the deepest baritone. He chuckled, however the laugh stopped quickly. “Hey! Luff up, damn it. You’re gonna hit. Beam on! Beam on, you moron!”
Hutton was going just as crazy. He was jumping up and down, pointing. “The boom!” he cried in a strangled voice. “Jesus! The boom…turn…Jesus!” He went silent as the Harbinger ate up the distance quickly.
Mike had the bow aimed at the very small gap between the stern of the last boat, a forty-four footer called The Biter, and the floating dock. Nearly fifty-thousand pounds plowed into the little gap, with a long hellish, grinding crash that seemed to go on and on. The line securing The Biter held fast, however the stanchion snapped off as if it were made of plastic.
Attached only at the bow, The Biter swung outward, tipping so precariously that a hundred gallons of briny bay water flooded down the open hatch before it righted itself.
The Harbinger slowly came to a stop and as it did, it dispersed its momentum into the water in the form of waves that lifted the dock four feet into the air only to drop it again a moment later.
“Tie us off!” Mike cried to Ren as he leapt over the rail and ran, sprinting, needing to get to that last ship in the line. Someone had to cover it before the shooting started. He would have made it if the dock wasn’t twisting as it rose and fell. His foot caught one of the boards and down he went, almost sliding right into the water that rushed up to pull him under.
Without pause, he scrambled for his gun, and leapt up just as someone lit off half a dozen rounds. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the three Corsairs either falling or diving into the water. That one second of distraction was enough and once more he tripped on the rolling dock. This time he lost the rifle. It went right off the edge of the dock and sank before Mike could even make a stab for it.
Not knowing what to do, he started to turn back just as three of the wounded Guardians came flying by. The first was a man who’d had his left hand and wrist bitten off by a zombie. The next was Tommy Conrad who’d had his face ripped off—how he was still on his feet, Mike had no idea. Embarrassed to be left behind, Mike jumped to his feet and raced after them.
Now more shots were being fired from all over the place; they were so loud that it seemed as if they were being shot only inches from his head. The battle was quickly becoming so loud that it was drowning out the angry cries and the confused screams. Even the hissing bullets that sizzled past within inches of Mike went unheard. It made it seem like no one was shooting at him at all, which was a great relief.
The illusion was shattered seconds later as the three Guardians in front of him suddenly stopped and began to jerk and jitter. At the same time, Mike was hit by what felt like a wall of blood and gore. It drenched him as he dove to the side.
The three fell and Mike scrambled forward in a low crawl until he reached the first warm corpse and took the rifle from its clawed hands. Pulling himself into a crouch, he scanned for a target, but there was no one in sight.
TAAANNNG! Something smashed into the side of his gun, turning his hands instantly numb. He knew the trigger was still there which meant he could still shoot. Turning to his right, he saw brilliant flashes not ten feet away. Behind the flashes were two shadows that were so close together that it looked as if they were either hugging or wrestling.
Another flash showed that it was a Guardian and a Corsair in a death embrace, fighting over a gun. He couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting the wrong man, so he started to race on again, only to see more flashes from the side. His reactions were pure instinct— the shots were coming from the last boat on the left, streaking diagonally at him, but just passing in his wake—he dove right, uncaring whether he went into the bay or not.
He hit the stern rail of a boat, and like an out of control acrobat, he spun over the top and smashed on deck. Immediately, someone started shooting from below him, punching holes through the fiberglass.
For a few seconds, he was bracketed by burning lead while black fiberglass snowed down on him. Mike rolled, came up firing and then dove back over the railing. Splinters sprayed up into his face without affecting his aim; he was locked on, and three shots dropped two men. Spinning, he fired off the remaining rounds in his magazine, aiming into the galley of the boat he’d just been on where at least three people were still shooting holes up through the deck.
They were still working their guns like mad when his bolt went back. Dropping to a knee, he replaced his magazine and went on, now directing his fire at the last two boats. He shot three into the boat on his right, then three into the one on his left. Back and forth he fired even though no real targets presented themselves, he kept firing until he again went dry. A second later, his empty magazine clinked on the dock, and as it did, a Corsair appeared on the stairs of the boat to the right. He saw Mike, hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then dashed for the stern of the boat, firing as he ran.
As Mike was crouching and the man was a poor shot, the first four bullets missed high and to the right. The next four stitched across the dock getting nearer and nearer—and for some reason that he couldn’t name, Mike froze, watching the holes as they appeared.
The man screamed as he fired, “Holden, Wait!”
Mike only had time to think: Who’s Holden? before the boat behind the man exploded in a blinding fireball. The next thing he knew, he was on his back looking at black sky. It was as if the explosion had snuffed out every star in the galaxy. Then one winked back into existence. Then another and another.
Slowly, Mike sat up, blinking like an owl, his head ringing and his ears feeling as though they were stuffed with cotton. The explosion seemed to h
ave ended the battle. Corpses were everywhere. At least three dozen bodies were strewn along the dock. A like number were floating in the bay or were draped over railings and scattered about ship decks. For a few moments, Mike wondered if he was the only one left alive. Then, one by one, the Guardians began to pick themselves up or emerge from the shadows. A few swam up out of the depths of the bay.
“I think we won,” Mike muttered.
No one cheered, and for good reason. Half of the Guardians were dead or wounded, the Harbinger had a terrible gaping hole just above the water line; two ships were on fire, and two more were even then sinking.
“It could be worse,” he said.
“You’re bleeding,” Ren said. She had not stayed behind with the Harbinger as she was supposed to. She wasn’t a knight, but she was still a Guardian, and when half a dozen of her friends were gunned down right in front of her, she had grabbed a gun and charged into the fight. She had killed people and now felt different. She felt ugly.
Mike heard her words as if they were an old memory. “Huh? I’m what? Bleeding?” He looked down at himself and saw that he was covered in red gore and dusted in fiberglass and splinters. “That’s not my…” He stopped as he felt something wet trickle down his left arm, and heard a drip, drip, drip striking the dock.
Flexing it, he decided the arm wasn’t so bad. “Could be worse,” he said again, this time under his breath. He was fast learning that things could always get worse.
Chapter 31
Puget Sound, Washington
With the Black Captain standing on a hill wearing a frown on his face that could be felt from a hundred yards, Kent painstakingly aimed each of the rockets just as he’d been taught. His stomach was beginning to ache, because for some damned reason he had failed to hit the wall with his first four attempts. Two had gone high, shooting across the sky trailing a brilliant golden fire. He had adjusted downward and the next had plopped into the Sound with barely a splash. The last one had skipped across the water like a stone thrown by a little boy.
It hadn’t even exploded.
Now sweat glistened on his rat-face like he was a glazed ham. He was all alone as he aimed the fifth. His friends, who had been fighting each other over the chance to fire a least one of the rockets, had disappeared into the small crowd. They knew Kent was one miss away from getting the skin lashed from his back and didn’t want any part of that.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered as he checked the angle of the nose for the final time. The damn Queen had made it look so easy, with her elevations and her launch angles. “I shoulda wrote all that crap down,” he groused under his breath. He also should have been more careful with the fins on the rockets. A fin on the third one he’d fired had been bent, and one on the fourth had fallen off and he hadn’t noticed it until it was too late.
With number five he checked every little thing and then double checked it all once again.
“Just do it. Just press the button. 1-2-3 and go.” He was about to when a breeze swept his greasy hair to the side. He almost crapped himself. A breeze could mean a gust and a gust could ruin everything. “Oh God! Just do it. 1-2-3 and go.” This time he pressed the button.
The engine roared into fiery life, letting off an immense scream. The rocket hesitated a second and then leapt from the launcher. At first, it looked as though it was going to fly right over the wall, but then it rolled in flight and leveled out, going faster and faster until it was only a blur and then:
BOOOOM!
It had hit the wall three quarters of the way to the top with a terrific blast of sound and light that was impossible to look at. Kent was the only one who didn’t turn away. He forced his watering eyes to stare into the fire until it died. He fully expected the wall to have been half destroyed by the one missile. Instead there was only an ugly, blackened crater with a ragged hole in its center the size of a television set.
Kent might have been disappointed, but the rest of the Corsairs were going crazy cheering and laughing as if the war had been won by the single missile.
Five hundred yards away, the Islanders were as glum as the Corsairs were happy. They knew that each missile would do that much more damage and that eventually the wall would come down section by section.
“Gather the captains,” Gunner said in his rasping growl. He had been half-heartedly berating Emily for leaving camp against orders while mixing in praise for saving the woman he loved and uncovering the spies at the same time.
Emily had felt neither the sting of his criticism nor the warmth of his praise. Her stomach was in knots over the rockets. She knew they had to be destroyed at all costs, and with the Corsair army huddled across a narrow peninsula, the costs were going to be staggering.
Gunner saw it the same way. “I’ve got good and bad news,” he told the assembled group, minutes later. “We have to attack and it’ll have to be straight on. As our objective is very obvious, maneuvers, feints and dodges will have limited value.”
As Gunner paused to hack up blood from his lung, Paul Daniels asked, “Was that the good news or the bad news?”
Gunner drew in a long, wet breath. “In a manner of speaking, it’s both. Six of you will have the very simple task of winning this war. You will lead your men from the front. You will drive an opening through whatever defensive line the Corsairs possess and you will destroy those rockets. The rest of you will open the attack on the left and right flanks with the hope of disguising our true intentions.”
Another pause as he coughed blood out and sucked air in. “The question is, who will go first?”
There were twenty captains present, each leading a company of a hundred men. None could meet his eye and none raised their hand.
“Alright,” Gunner said as if he had expected the lack of response. “Who’s going lead the next two companies?” Again no one raised a hand. “This is not a trick. I will lead the first company. I will go first, but I need to know who is going to back me up.”
After a sigh, Paul Daniels raised a hand as did Emily’s next door neighbor, Mr. Mahaney. “I’ll come along but I don’t know how many of my men will.”
Gunner grunted in what might have been a laugh. “They all will. Their homes and families are being attacked. They’ll fight. Just like you, all they need is someone to go first.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Emily said in a half-whisper. “I’ll go in my…” She had almost said In my father’s place. “In Gunner’s place. He’s too weak. He won’t make it. And I love my people enough to go first.”
“We have our leaders, Emily. You’ll stay behind and let the adults fight. And that’s an order. The rest of you, we kick off in an hour. Any longer and the dawn will reveal us and make us easy targets. I need three more captains to make up the main attack. The rest will decide left or right. I don’t really care which you choose as long as you make a good show with the feints.”
The captains worked out their positions quickly enough, but that final hour flew by even faster. Emily spent half the time doing everything she could to get Gunner physically ready to go, and the other half begging him to stay behind. If he led the attack, he wasn’t going to live. It was a fact that could not be avoided. The truth crushed Emily to the point she couldn’t breathe, and it also made her so proud that she puffed up her chest, and it made her so angry that she wanted to scream at the world.
She held in the scream, afraid that it would be misconstrued by her own people. They were stepping up, the way they should have from the very beginning. None were hiding or making excuses. They were standing tall and were ready to fight. Three hundred people—it was still hard to call any of them soldiers—had come forward from companies not slated for the attack. They were scared. Despite how little light there was filtering down through the branches from the stars above, she could see the sweat gleaming from their shadowed faces.
Even in the clearings, where the stars seemed tired by the late hour, one face looked like another. Maybe because of this, Gunner finally fit in an
d finally seemed to be accepted by the people he’d been keeping safe for years.
“It’s time,” he said as the sound of the rocket’s explosion rolled over them. “We can’t wait any longer. Tell the company commanders. When the next rocket is launched we attack, and we don’t stop until we destroy that launcher. Wayne?”
“Right here,” he answered in a hesitating whisper. The front line of the Corsairs was so close that their belches could be heard and their rank odor smelled.
“Stay with Emily and keep her out of the fight,” Gunner ordered. “Chain her to a tree if you have to.”
Emily couldn’t believe her ears. “No. I have a right to be with you. And, and, and you need me.”
“I need you to be safe,” he told her. “No more running off. I can’t think straight when you’re in danger, and right now I need to focus. Got it? Good, now help me up. Lean me against that tree.” It took both her and Wayne to get him standing. Even with the tree propping him up, she thought he would fall over again and thought that it would be for the best. “More pills,” he asked. “Five of them. Don’t give me that look, Em. I know what I’m doing.”
He dry-swallowed them and then looked as though he was about to fall over. She tried to hold him up only to realize that he wasn’t falling, he was hugging her, but trying to disguise it. “We go at the sound of the next rocket. Tell them, then stay put, got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Wayne dragged her away and she went willingly. Together, they went to each company, letting them know the signal and that they had to be ready any second. In her own words, they had to be on a hair-trigger. No one was more ready for the signal than Emily. It blinked into being as a pale amber light that screamed with the fury of a dragon. In its glow, Emily saw Wayne French flinch back and throw an arm over his face.
A second later, the light lifted, going higher at first and then zipped away to the west where it suddenly blossomed, its scream changing to a deafening roar. By then, Emily was gone, slipping among the shadows and the soldiers among them. “Up! Everyone up!” she hissed as she went.
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 37