The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2)

by Cassandra Duffy

  She’d received the affectionate nickname ‘Pirate Kingston’ which was later shortened to ‘Pirate King’ by the end of her first tour. The source no doubt was her leg and the way it caused her to limp like an old pirate with a peg leg. She didn’t mind the moniker because her mechanical leg, which was a disability on land, found perfect use on the open seas as a magnificent anchor point to balance upon a rolling deck. She’d had good sea legs on the missile frigate she’d served on during her navy days, and now she had unshakable balance due in no small part to the gyros in her prosthetic leg.

  They were greeted at the dock by the security detachment assigned to the lumber camp as was routine, although the numbers seemed strained with only the base commander and one bodyguard attendant. Olivia’s team disembarked first under a strange sense of foreboding.

  “Major Bradley,” Olivia greeted the once retired marine corps officer, “why are you traveling in such lonely company?”

  Major Bradley stood haggard and exhausted, a man in his late sixties with a lot of miles having passed beneath his combat boots. His face was chiseled from stone with lines gouged deep, but his brown eyes were still sharp. “Warder Kingston, I’m afraid the news isn’t good,” Major Bradley said, offering a crisp salute in reply to the one provided by Olivia. They began walking back down to the docks to the convoy of old diesel trucks in the roundabout set to unload goods for the Balclutha’s hold. “We were suddenly flush with the first livestock survivors in ages, but as soon as we started sorting the sick and radiated from the healthy, the mutant attacks began.”

  “Mutant attacks this far west?” Olivia asked.

  “It caught us by surprise too.”

  Olivia mounted the carriage among the trucks as directed by Major Bradley while her men began the work of overseeing the offloading of supplies. The Major’s bodyguard saw to the horse team to drive them back around the edge of the bay toward the town. Olivia always wondered where the Major had even found the reasonably nice covered-carriage or the horses to drive it for that matter.

  “It’s going to take us a few days to sort the animals now that we’re having to patrol pretty heavily,” Major Bradley said, raising his voice above the clomping of hooves and the creaking of the old carriage. “Most of the livestock is mutated cows with a few half-feral pigs in the mix. We’ve had to put down and burn almost 80%, but the remaining 20% is beautiful and healthy.”

  “We can certainly prolong our stay,” Olivia said, “and if my team can aid in anyway to the town’s security while we’re here…”

  “You read my mind,” Major Bradley interrupted her. “I’d like to give you a truck to take up the highway a ways to see if you can figure out what is riling the mutants up.”

  “We’re more than equal to the task, Major,” Olivia said, “although I might have a theory already.”

  “Don’t keep me in the dark, Kingston, what do you know?”

  “Since the mutants are sterile, there would be no reason to expand their territory since their population is finite. Commander Marceau’s daughter mentioned a new civilization pressing the Slark across the eastern border of California. If the map is as Claudia Marceau says it is, then the Slark being pushed west would push the mutants west and the mutants being pushed west would push any remaining pockets of livestock…”

  “Right into our lap,” Major Bradley grumbled. “If that’s true, things are likely to get worse all up and down the coastline before they get better, and we’ll be seeing Slark by spring.”

  “Indeed,” Olivia said. “As I said, it is just a theory and I intend on seeing for myself.”

  †

  Olivia’s new duties left Claudia with an astounding amount of time on her hands that she hadn’t realized had previously been consumed by Olivia. She decided the time could be well spent walking down into the Chinican market to drink coffee, eat donuts, and talk with Esme. Her first few attempts hit at busy times in the day, preventing her from doing anything but collecting a cruller to go, until she found the perfect lull in the late afternoon.

  Esme was behind the counter, cleaning the mostly empty trays from the day. She was so engrossed in the work of collecting the day-old donuts into a sack that she hardly noticed Claudia’s arrival until she was standing at the counter.

  “Oh, hello there, Ms. Marceau,” Esme said. “Would you like a cruller before I bag them for the evening?”

  “If I keep eating every time I come here, you’re going to be rolling me back out eventually,” Claudia said, although it wasn’t likely to be true anytime soon. She’d lost a significant amount of weight during her stasis from an already petite frame and it was coming back painfully slow.

  “I would doubt that, and besides, if not a cruller, why would you come down here?” Esme asked as she plated one of the last twisted donuts all the same.

  “To talk to you,” Claudia said. She’d taken to wearing sunglasses and a few trappings of a military uniform although her father hadn’t explicitly said she would return to work as a scout sniper under his command. The sunglasses she removed as their primary function was to prevent people from spotting her irradiated eye, which Esme already knew about.

  “Certainly.” Esme collected the plated donut, set aside her sack, and walked around to the front of the counter to join Claudia at one of the tables. They sat across from each other in silence for a time before Esme spoke. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “I hadn’t thought much about that,” Claudia said. It didn’t make any sense. She was normally so articulate and smooth around people. She could flirt and banter with the best of them in nearly any setting. Yet a donut shop girl was tripping up her game. “You were checking out my legs,” was all Claudia could finally blurt out.

  “There were a lot of things I could have been looking at yesterday,” Esme said, a touch of red finding its way to her cheeks.

  “No, I meant the first day I was…were you checking out my legs yesterday too?”

  “I’m allowed to look at things.” Esme’s blush had gone from a light touch to a full swatch of red that began to leak down to her upper chest.

  The warmth of familiar territory washed over Claudia. She had a degree of certainty that was formerly lacking—Esme was indeed interested in her. “Had I known, I would have worn daring skirts to give you more to look at,” Claudia said.

  “Now you’re teasing me.”

  “No, I am saying I wish I had done more to tease you.” Claudia gave her a wink and a faint smile that tugged only on the right corner of her mouth. “There are things I want to know about the city, things I could ask most anyone about, but I’d rather hear the answers from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Mundane information is always easier to understand if it’s explained by a pretty girl,” Claudia said.

  “Go easy on the charm, Ms. Marceau,” Esme said. “I have a tolerance for the stuff.”

  “Please, call me Claudia.”

  “Okay, Claudia, but if I’m going to answer your questions, you have to answer a few of mine.”

  Claudia shrugged. “Sure, what would you like to know?”

  “No, no, you go first since you asked first.”

  Her deference was kind of endearing; Claudia decided it might be easier to take Esme seriously than she initially thought. “Where did you come by coffee and sugar?”

  “The arboretum in the park had coffee trees and sugarcane plants before the Slark invasion,” Esme said. “We’ve been growing greenhouses full of the stuff for years now.” Esme leaned forward and pinched the end off the cruller in front of Claudia. She tucked the little bite of donut in her mouth and smiled. “Does it worry you to send your girlfriend into possible combat?”

  Claudia furrowed her brow. It sounded like a pointed question, although she couldn’t imagine how Esme would know about past girlfriends in the Ravens or Veronica or… “Do you mean Olivia?” Claudia asked.

  Esme nodded.

  “She’s not my girlfriend and I�
�m certain she can take care of herself on fluff runs up the coast.”

  Esme quirked a curious eyebrow and shrugged. “The talk around the tower says she is your girlfriend.”

  “My relationship status has been mostly single for more than a year now,” Claudia explained. “Beyond sexual entanglements and flirtatious fun, I remain unfettered.”

  “Fair enough,” Esme said. “What do you plan on doing for work, or are you just going to become the princess of the tower?”

  “I think it was my turn to ask a question, but I’ll answer another,” Claudia said. “I plan on going back to what I’m best at, what I was trained for: scout sniper.”

  “Women aren’t really soldiers in the City of Broken Bridges,” Esme said. “Hastings thought it was foolish to throw away fertile women in combat so he all but outlawed it. Olivia was the last woman to really wear a uniform and when she lost her leg, Hastings put an end to it all.”

  “Yes, well, Hastings is dead and I’m not planning on getting pregnant anyway,” Claudia said.

  “That’s a shame—you’d look cute pregnant.”

  “Is that a fact?” Claudia asked.

  “What can I say? I like the look of pregnant women. I want kids; family is important to me.”

  “Then wouldn’t it make more sense for you to be the pregnant one?”

  “Oh, I plan to be, but I want my wife to carry a child as well.”

  And just like that, Claudia was right back where she started. Esme had her tongue tied and confused. She rallied as best she could, a little thrilled by being unbalanced by an unassuming shop girl with big brown eyes. “I would like to see more of the city and I would like you to show me,” Claudia said.

  “Are you asking me on a date?”

  “Do you want it to be a date?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” Esme said with a knowing smirk.

  “Be still my heart,” Claudia teased, “a clever girl who can make a good cruller.”

  Chapter 15:

  Unlikely Harbinger.

  The truck promised to Olivia and her crew was actually an old Suburban retrofitted to run on the mixture of bio diesel and ethanol that was the predominant fuel before Dr. Gatling unlocked the secret to Slark fuel. The roads were rutted and ruined into the rain-drenched forests heading east and the poorly maintained Suburban struggled to crawl over the multiple washouts.

  Her men hadn’t asked their purpose in heading east in such an obviously untrustworthy vehicle. They were stout sailors and good soldiers. They also possessed the funk men can get on a sailing vessel, which prompted Olivia to roll down all the windows even though it was raining.

  The road they’d chosen wound its way through thick sylvan forest, following a river back to its source in the mountains. The forest seemed almost primeval at times. Tree branches grew thick enough to create something of a tunnel above the road. Without regular truck traffic, the branches encroached more and more on the space until they were often scraping along the roof of the suburban. A break in the trees opened up on a large, rocky lobe surrounded by a river bend. On this outcropping of an acre or so of river stones, a cluster of mutants had pinned something at the river’s edge.

  “Stop the truck,” Olivia said from her position in the passenger seat.

  The driver brought the truck to a stop in the middle of the road and they all exited the vehicle armed with their modified carbines. The weapons were also of Dr. Gatling’s design, using a different byproduct of the Slark home planet fish that provided the fuel. The solid propellant created by drying something or other from some gland or other replaced gunpowder and provided a lot more bang for the amount needed. The existing guns required added reinforcement to fire and rotating pieces to prevent fusing of moving parts due to overheating. All things considered, Olivia liked the old gunpowder weapons to the new guns.

  “Skirmisher line,” Olivia ordered her men, “and watch your footing.”

  “Warder Kingston, ma’am, perhaps you should…” her second in command began.

  “Perhaps you should carry out the order you’ve been given,” Olivia interrupted, settling the matter of her leg before it could even begin.

  They climbed down the larger boulders nearest the road toward the rocky flats. Olivia’s leg did indeed give her difficulties in the climbing, although she refused help when her men offered until they simply gave up offering. They scattered into the skirmisher formation as soon as they hit the flat of gathered river stones.

  Above the sound of the mutants howling and the rushing river, Olivia heard something she hadn’t expected to hear again—dog barking. Dogs were the only version of livestock in the early days of the City of Broken Bridges and were eaten almost exclusively during the early years of the war until they were extinct for all Olivia knew.

  “Hold your fire until we’re sure to hit,” Olivia instructed as they advanced on the gathering of a dozen or so mutants.

  The dog barking intensified as they crept up on the mutants. The howling, gibbering forms barely resembled humans anymore. Their limbs were mismatched, their skin strangely colored and distributed irregularly. To add to the disquieting physical appearances, on full display as most didn’t wear much beyond a few tattered rags, was the smell. Olivia had almost forgotten that mutants smelled horrible. Beyond simply being unwashed human, which was a scent they had in droves, Olivia identified the real stench as open bowel. It was a distinct scent somewhere between feces and vomit with a peculiar blood tinge running through it. She wasn’t sure why mutants smelled like disemboweling, but they did.

  The mutants were thoroughly distracted by the pack of wild dogs they’d apparently pinned against the river. The sound of the rushing water and the barking dogs covered the sound of her squad’s approach even as they disturbed stones with every step. As the squad neared, Olivia could see the mutants had already felled a handful of the dogs with their rock throwing. The remaining four or so skeletal German Shepherds were guarding their fallen comrades with snarling teeth and vicious barking.

  “Put the mutants down,” Olivia gave the order.

  Fire rippled down the squad’s line. Olivia selected her target in the middle of the main cluster of the mutants. They advanced slowly on the mutants popping off shots when the footing allowed. The mutants turned to the new threat. A few managed to get a badly thrown rock off in defense. All their projectiles fell woefully short and the thrower always drew the attention of a bullet shortly after. When the tide was clearly turning against the mutants, the remaining few tried to flee into the river. The swift moving current made short work of the ill-equipped creatures, dashing them across rocks before sucking them below.

  The wild dog pack, or what remained of it, took the opening created by the obliteration of the mutant tribe and ran north along the bank. In their wake, the dog pack left several dead and one wounded.

  “Been a long time since we’ve shot mutants, eh, ma’am?” her unofficial second in command asked with an adrenaline induced grin painted on his unshaven face.

  “Like riding a bike, I’m sure, Lane,” Olivia said, although her heart wasn’t in it. She’d shot mutants, countless droves of them in the securing of the lower peninsula before the wall was built. It never felt like combat to shoot half-naked whelps armed with rocks. As much as the idea disagreed with her view of a soldier’s work, she always thought of shooting mutants as putting terminally ill people out of their misery. Olivia could tell from the combat rush her men were enjoying that they didn’t see things the same way.

  “Uh oh, Johnnie has an upset stomach,” Lane said, motioning to the youngest of their group as he doubled over to take another look at his lunch.

  “It’s just the smell,” Johnnie managed to croak after throwing up.

  “Set up a defensive perimeter.” Olivia cranked open the heat port on her carbine and blew across it to speed the gun’s recovery. She slung the cooled weapon over her shoulder and made a slow approach on the wounded dog. “Here’s a good boy,�
�� Olivia whispered soothingly to the dog.

  The primal part of the dog brought to the surface over nearly seven years struggled against the domesticated part that recalled a youth in contact with humans. The gangly German Shepherd growled at her initially followed immediately by a submissive whimper.

  Olivia pressed on fearlessly. She held out the back of her hand to the dog, which eyed it warily but made no further aggressive move. She inched closer to let the dog get a smell of her hand. By and by, after another bout of growling, the dog finally extended his muzzle to gently sniff at her hand.

  “That’s a good boy,” Olivia cooed to the dog. “We’ll have you seen to in no time at all.”

  †

  It took an hour or so and a hammock made of their coats to get the wounded dog back to the truck. The Brits among the bunch took to calling the dog Roger along the way. When the Americans asked why, Olivia told them Roger Davis was a cricket player who lived through being hit by a cricket ball a couple decades earlier. They pointed out that plenty of baseball players were struck by baseballs every season, how could they all seem to remember one player’s name? Olivia asked how many baseball players died from being struck by a baseball. None of course was the answer. And that was the difference, Olivia informed them.

  Roger apparently enjoyed the good natured banter about baseball and cricket as he calmed significantly with the jovial discussion going on around the edges of his makeshift gurney. Olivia was glad her men all appeared to be equally concerned with the dog’s life. By the look of things, the more difficult conversation would come when they would decide who got to keep Roger, should he survive.

  Olivia rode in the rear cargo boot of the Suburban with Roger on the way back. She guessed from the way he was sitting and the pained yelps he would let out when a bump in the road rattled him against the rear gate that he likely had taken a wound to his right rear leg.

  It was nearly dark by the time they pulled back into Crescent City. Roger was sluggish when they tried to unload him at the strip motel repurposed into a veterinary clinic and livestock corral. They may as well have brought in a unicorn for the reaction Roger got from the veterinary staff.