The minutes drew out and everyone around the bay waited on pins and needles for Mike to do something.
“He’s just sitting there,” Donna said, once more back at the telescope. “I mean literally, he hasn’t gotten up once. What’s he waiting for?”
“A change in the wind perhaps,” Wojdan suggested. “A divine wind that’ll drive his enemies away. There is historical precedence for it.”
Jenn glanced up at a million stars. Far to the north was a haze of grey clouds, but the wind was coming in from the west. No storm was going to swing in suddenly and rescue the fleet. “It’s not the wind,” she said. “He could be waiting for me to make his choice for him.” It wasn’t a farfetched idea. Her orders had been to fight ship to ship and man to man, only now that seemed like an order condemning her men to a violent and unnecessary death. She knew perfectly well how quickly a soldier could burn through a single magazine in battle.
“May I?” Jenn asked, stepping up to the telescope. With the light of three lanterns shining up to the mast, she had a better view of Mike than she had before. He was indeed still sitting in the same chair. On his handsome face was an odd look, one she couldn’t place. She had expected to see determination or perhaps anger.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered. It was impossible to tell in that light and from that distance. She let the lens rove over the Harbinger. Only two crew members were visible. They were hauling items up from the cabins and galley below and already the deck was cluttered. “Something strange is going on. Mike’s making a mess of his deck. All the boats are. Strange.”
Edgerton asked to look and when she had satisfied herself, she gave the Queen a tight-lipped smile. “They mean to attack at close quarters. They’ll use all that clutter as protection until they can board.”
“Board?” The word sounded foreign to Jenn, although she knew perfectly well what it meant—they were going to fight ship to ship and man to man. They were going to make every bullet count. Jenn felt like vomiting. At least now she understood the look on Mike’s face. It was something like melancholy with a mixture of impending doom thrown on top. The doom was beginning to be a familiar look, however the melancholy was completely new. Mike was always upbeat and when he was on a ship, he thought he was invincible.
The look wasn’t the only thing different about him. He wasn’t helping. That never happened. She looked again at him, now seeing how pale he was. “It must be his arm.” He wore a salt-stained jacket that hid his injured arm, and yet there was blood on it…on the outside of it. And his blue shirt was wet and not with water as she assumed. Even as she watched, someone came up from below with a folded hand towel. The soldier pulled back Mike’s jacket and revealed a blood-soaked bandage on Mike’s abdomen.
Jenn pulled back from the scope. “He’s hurt! Mike’s hurt! We…we…we have to stop this. We have to call it off.”
“I’m afraid that won’t help him,” Bishop Wojdan said. “The Corsair are not going to just let anyone through. You know what will happen to him if they try.”
She knew. Deep in her heart she knew what they would do to her Mike. And it infuriated her. “Then you better start praying for him!” she screamed at the Bishop, her face pale as death. “Pray that he lives, because if he dies then we all die. Every last one of us! Go. Take all your Guardians with you and get praying.”
Her anger was beyond reason or logic. The Bishop merely bowed from the shoulders up and left the rooftop with his people. This did nothing to calm Jenn. She didn’t simply pace the roof top, she marched back and forth, coming so close to the edge each time that she sent showers of rocks skittering away into the darkness.
Finally, she realized she needed to do something constructive. “Bring me those med books that Jillybean left for me,” she ordered Donna. “Shaina! Go fetch a lantern. I need one bright enough to read by. I have to figure out how to fix him.” Her orders were carried out quickly and were a waste of energy. She couldn’t sit still long enough to read. Not that it would’ve made any difference. Surgery wasn’t learned from a book.
She went from the telescope to the edge of the roof and back, wearing out a path.
The wait was agonizing, but when Mike’s fleet set sail and swept silently down on the Corsairs, she thought her heart was going to burst. The Harbinger was the lead ship, out in front by a good fifty yards. Only Mike could be seen on her deck. Everyone else was hiding.
The Corsairs began firing when the ship was a hundred yards out. They sent a storm of bullets across the water, tearing up the decks and shredding the double sails. The Harbinger was hit so many times that she fell off and began drifting, her bow slowly sinking. And still they fired at her with everything they had.
Jenn found herself on her knees, the rocks biting like teeth into her flesh. “Please, no. God! Listen to me, please. Save him!” she screamed. “You have to.” Uncaring whether she looked the part of a queen or not, she sobbed and begged. She was not the only one in tears. No one could watch the final charge and remain unmoved. The rest of the fleet came racing past the stricken Harbinger and were swept by a hail of bullets. Men were hit in spite of the junk strewn across their decks. So much blood poured from the holes in the ships that it looked like they too were bleeding.
Women wept and men beat their chests and pounded their fists, wishing they could do anything to help. There was nothing anyone could do, except pray.
It took two very long minutes for the fleet to reach the Corsairs. The ships did everything they could to get close enough to grapple with their counterparts and in some cases their hooked ropes managed to catch a rail or tangle in another rope. When that happened, the ships were hauled close and boarded. The fights across the deck and down in the cabins were desperate and without mercy. Neither side could afford the luxury of taking prisoners.
In their fury, the Guardians were unstoppable.
Seeing the fate of boarded ships, the Corsairs did everything they could to keep a boarding ship at bay. Guardians brave enough to break from cover to fling their ropes were sometimes targeted by seven or eight guns at once, and no amount of armor could save them. It was the same for the helmsman or any sailor who exposed himself to help winch in a rope or move a sail.
The Harbinger was not as lifeless as she appeared and as the fight began to go against the Guardians, sailors raced up from the galley and cut away the old sail. They worked furiously and in a matter of minutes had a new sail run up the mast. Mike swung the ship back into the fight. He had slipped from the captain’s chair and couldn’t find the strength to get back up again and so sailed by feel alone. Even blind he was able to swing the Harbinger into boarding range of two Corsair ships at once.
Rylan leapt up to hurl a rope and was hit by an even dozen rounds and fell dead across Mike’s legs. Chet and another sailor hauled the ships in close, however the fire was so murderous that no one could possibly raise their head.
“Get him off me,” Mike hissed, shoving weakly at Rylan. “I’ll go first.”
“You’re not going anywhere!” Chet hissed. “You’ll be dead before you get over the rail.”
I’ll be dead soon, anyway, Mike thought. It wasn’t a particularly morose thought, it was simply a fact. Just like it was a fact that his men and his fleet were dying all around him. “But I’m not dead yet,” he muttered. He strained to lift up so he could see over the rail. It was too dark to see anything. The ships were dark, the sails were dark, the water was cold and dark. “We need fire. That’s what we need. Be a good soldier and burn that ship, Chet.”
Chet, tears in his eyes and blood running down his head, let out a wild laugh. “Yeah, I could do that.” He squirmed forward to where the oil lantern still burned. It had over a pint of oil in its reservoir and when he heaved it across at the Corsair ship, it splashed into golden light and sent flames roaring up the length of the sail.
The fire might have engulfed both boats, however, the Corsairs had just cut away the rope entangling them and the two drifted
apart.
“Light ‘em up boys!” Chet screeched across the water before he burst into a mad cackle.
The idea was appealing to the Guardians, most of whom were down to their last few bullets. More lanterns were thrown, as were cups of oil, and even chunks of railing wrapped in burning sailcloth.
Four more Corsair ships were set aflame and lit up the night. The orange-gold light revealed what they all knew: the Guardians were beaten. Their ships were in tatters and their sailors dead or dying. Mike gazed out at his command, broken in body and spirit. Broken but not dead yet. He had three men still with him. Their deaths and his were already written in stone. What mattered was how they died.
“We’ll go fighting,” he muttered. Louder, he growled, “Come about. Aim us for that clump of ships.” Sixty yards away was the big catamaran and three other ships. They were firing in loud volleys, twenty guns at a time. It sounded like they were having fun.
The command was carried out quickly enough and as the Harbinger plowed slowly forward, the sailors scrambled around, searching the dead for more ammo.
Mike did his best to hold himself up for as long as possible. He had to so he could warn his men when the Corsairs were about to fire. Thirty seconds was all he could stand, and all that was needed. “Everyone, get down,” he cried and then slumped over himself. The Corsairs fired into his beloved ship. Three volleys and the new sail tore with a shriek. Another volley and her mast splintered and broke. It came screaming down and now the Harbinger lay dead in the water.
“Sink her!” the Corsair captain bellowed across the water. “Sink them all!”
Chapter 39
Washington, west of Puget Sound
When Jillybean thumbed the button on the detonator, the explosions were so bright that they made the sun look like nothing more than a pale nickel suspended in the sky. Seconds later, that sun was blotted out by the smoke and a vast cloud of dirt and sand. Shards of wood like spears became deadly missiles. Planks of decking, five feet across whipped outward like hundred-mile an hour frisbees. Body parts rained down hundreds of feet away.
The earth shook beneath Jillybean’s feet and when the shockwave sent a blast of hot air racing across the ground with hurricane force, everyone around her cringed. She only turned her battered face into the oil-stinking wind and rocked back on her bruised heels. The ragged clothes she had picked up along her march fluttered around her skinny body. She needed a proper meal, but for the moment, the smell of a world on fire was enough to sustain her.
Eve’s laugh inside Jillybean was so high and sweet that it came bursting from her lips and she smiled with all the radiance of thirty ships on fire. In his paranoia, the Black Captain had made sure not to put all his eggs in one basket and had the rockets spread throughout his fleet. Twenty ships had disintegrated in the first millisecond and nearly three dozen more were burning like torches.
“It’s beautiful,” Eve whispered.
Emily was close enough to see the fire dancing in her mad eyes. “Hey, Jillybean? Jillybean? We still need you.”
Eve spun as Emily tugged on her ragged coat. “Sorry, but you got the wrong girl,” Eve sneered. “Besides, what do you need from her? Wait, does she have more bombs?” Her eagerness for more destruction was sickening. Eve reveled in the idea of a higher body count. “Does she? Tell me. If she doesn’t, then screw you, squirt. We don’t need her anymore. Can’t you see the Black Captain is all sorts of dead?”
“You don’t know that,” Paul Daniels said. “And even if he is, there are plenty of the rest of them. Look. You can see a whole mess of them right there.”
There was a crowd of armed men standing in a long line watching the blaze. From where Emily stood, they looked small and not very frightening, but only if you discounted their numbers. She guessed there were at least a thousand of them, and there were definitely more that she couldn’t see.
Eve shrugged them off as if they were ants she could step on. “They’re your problem, not mine. I blew up the rockets and I saved your stinking wall. Hell, I just saved your whole island. What else do you want me to do? Fight all your battles for you? Weaklings, all of you are weaklings. You’re on the brink of extinction and you look to a poor beat-up woman to save you. Pathetic.”
They gave her angry looks and she spat on the ground at their feet.
Emily stepped in before things got worse. She came to stand eye to eye with Eve. “That’s not true. We don’t want you, we want the real Queen. You know why? Because you’re nothing. Only she can save us, not you.”
Black anger filled Eve’s mind, drowning out the other voices. She shoved Emily in the chest and then advanced on her, shouting, “I am the queen! I was the first! I was always the first. Jillybean would be nothing without me.”
“Prove it,” Emily challenged. She pointed to the remote that was forgotten in Eve’s hand. “Blow up the rest of the bombs. All you need is the code.”
“There are more bombs?” Eve asked, staring at the remote in wonder. “Is the code Pi? Is that it? Jillybean is weird about that number and I don’t get it. But I know it.” Eve punched in 314 and then hit the detonate button. Nothing happened and she grew so angry that she almost smashed the remote.
Emily calmly suggested, “Maybe it’s my birthday.”
“Yours? Why would she care about your birthday?” Emily only smiled as if she was in on the “big” secret. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” Eve snarled. “Fine! I know this. Wait, where were we when you were born? Kansas? No, it was Nebraska. That’s where I poisoned you.”
“I was never in Nebraska.”
Confusion reigned in Eve’s eyes before they gradually cleared and gave way to sanity. “I wasn’t there when you were born.” It was Jillybean back in command of her battered, worn-out body. She lacked the burning hatred that fueled Eve and her shoulders slumped. “I think I was busy saving your dad at that time.” Her eyes flicked to Gunner.
“I know,” Emily said, speaking quickly. “I know all of it now. Everything. And I’d love to talk to you about all of it, but we still have Corsairs left. The bombs didn’t get them all. Look.”
Jillybean turned and stared back at the burning docks. Still with her back to the group, she said, “It’s as I expected. If only I had gotten here sooner.” A tired sigh drifted out of her. “Unfortunately, I doubt we were lucky enough to catch the Captain in all that. If he’s still alive, then we have at least one more battle on our hands.” Silence made her turn. What she saw was disappointing. Even with a good chunk of the Corsair fleet in flames and their rocket threat destroyed, the Islanders had no heart for battle.
“Don’t you think they’ve had enough?” Debbie Meredith asked. “Maybe they’ll leave now.”
“I’m afraid that’s just wishful thinking. The Captain needs a battle now more than ever. And he needs to win.”
Even from this distance, Jillybean could practically hear her enemy’s thoughts. He was afraid, and not of the Islanders. He was afraid of his own men and his new allies, the mountain bandits. He was right to be afraid. Jillybean understood his growing paranoia and knew it was perfectly justified.
In his Corsairs, the Captain had created a race of monsters that were barely human. They were stupid because anyone demonstrating too many smarts usually got his neck stretched. They were overly-aggressive because anyone who acted the least bit weak was singled out for castration. He had made them thoroughly evil because he knew that only a person with a good heart would ever stand up to him. And they were loyal for two reasons: he put the fear of the devil in them, and he was a proven winner.
For ten years he had been untouchable. His record as a conqueror was unblemished. He had never lost. Oh, but now that wasn’t even close to being true. Over the last few months, the Corsairs had faced setback after setback. That’s how he spoke of his catastrophic losses. They were only “setbacks” that could be expected from time to time.
Even though he made sure the blame for these setbacks was always
assigned elsewhere, he knew that his men had begun to whisper.
Jillybean knew it as well. She could almost hear the words: He’s lost it. He’s done. Maybe we should get out while we can, floating on the wind…except the wind was out of the west. It smelled of earth, which meant rain was coming.
Would he fight in the rain? Yes, she decided. He would have to. His men were on the verge of mutiny and it wouldn’t take much to send them over. Yes, he definitely needed a win; a new scapegoat wouldn’t be enough this time. And he could win, easily. He had the numbers and he knew his enemy was weak.
Jillybean also needed a win. The Bainbridge army was in danger of disintegrating right in front of her. She could see from their faces that ordering a new assault was completely out of the question. This reduced her options drastically.
“Maybe we should pull back,” Wayne suggested, interrupting the flow of her thoughts. “Just a little, you know, to give us time to regroup.”
How many hundreds of you would melt away during the move? she wondered. And would it indeed buy any time? Perhaps, but not much. And if we pull back we’ll be giving them a greater opportunity to use their numbers against us. She judged correctly that a battle of maneuver would work in the Captain’s favor.
She shook her head. “I’d give my right hand for a company of Guardians right about now,” she muttered, gazing again at the Corsairs and the land in front of her. She took a deep breath of the earth-smelling air and gave Paul a brief smile. “No. Pulling back will let them out of the trap they’re in.”
“We have them trapped? How?” he asked, laughing high in his throat. “They have boats in case you didn’t notice.”
“I have noticed. Very little escapes my attention. For instance, I see that the docks have been blown to pieces. How will they load three-thousand men onto those ships with a storm approaching? And I noticed that their ships have pulled well away and to me, they don’t look eager to rush back. Which is just as well. After watching half their fleet get blown up, the Corsairs are not going to be jumping at the chance to get back on board right about now.”
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 46