Sins of Honor

by James Axler

  Hidden ports in the front gate slid aside, and the Civil War cannons were shoved through, their fuses already sizzling. As the Granite sec men scowled at the tiny black muzzles, both 6-pound Napoleons rocked back as fiery black smoke thundered from their mouths.

  The first line of Granite Empire sec men appeared to disintegrate in the volcanic discharge, then the next line fell in tatters and the third line dropped screaming, their bodies riddled with gushing holes.

  “Stainless-steel ball bearings,” Fife said with an odd note of pride. “We got them from the office chairs in the battleship.”

  “The chairs?” Ryan asked.

  “Done that myself in the past,” J.B. said, hunching his shoulders. “Thankful for the fat asses of old Navy officers!”

  As the lake breeze cleared away the billowing clouds of smoke, the killing field was littered with pieces of human bodies, only a couple of them intact enough to try to drag themselves away from the monstrous cannons.

  Rising from within the APC appeared a squat black box. There came a low electric hum, the front of the box irised open and out lanced a scintillating rainbow that burned a hole completely through the armored gate.

  Unstoppable, the energy beam extended across the ville, beheading sec men and ville folk, setting fire to a tree in passing, and burning a deep gouge in the side of the Sleepy Dog. The sign caught fire and a high-pitched shriek came from inside the prefab building.

  As every sec man on the wall cut loose with a longblaster, the Napoleons fired again, the thundering double discharge spraying out bent nails, copper pennies and wood screws. More of the Granite Empire sec men died screaming.

  Angling upward, the black box started to hum again, the front irised open wide.

  “Down. Everybody get down!” Ryan commanded, diving for the stone.

  Already keyed to battle pitch, most of the sec men obeyed. The few who foolishly stayed shrieked as the laser swept along the top of the wall. Their flaming bodies staggered blindly before the ammunition in their gunbelts cooked off to messily finish the job.

  On command, the sec men operating the arbalest fired, the baseball bat slamming into the APC. The impact actually made the steel chassis ring briefly, then the laser lurched into operation again and burned the crossbow out of existence.

  Firing his M-16 at a suspicious piece of ground, Doc was rewarded with an answering cry of pain, and a sec man rolled out from underneath a blanket covered with a thick layer of dirt. As he limped away, Doc aimed, but withheld from shooting the escaping man in the back.

  “Fire the cannons again!” Mildred said, grabbing the arm of the baron. “Keep firing as fast as you can!”

  “But we’re out of cannonballs,” the man started.

  “Don’t need them! It’s the smoke you want. It weakens the laser!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes!”

  “Tell them!” Linderholm commanded over a shoulder, firing his big Martini-Henry.

  With a nod, Sandara took off at a full sprint. Just for a moment, Jak watched her go, then turned his full attention to the battle going on in the killing field.

  Digging in for a pitched battle, the Granite Empire sec men were firing from the top of the dirt bulwark, their rapid-fires chattering nonstop. Spent brass tumbled down the slope like autumn leaves.

  Wisely keeping low, the Concord defenders waited until there was a pause when the enemy reloaded, then they stood and fired. The flintlocks boomed, and whole sections of the bulwark erupted, the bodies of the enemy sec men flying away to patter down into the lake.

  “You mined the bulwarks?” J.B. said, slapping a fresh magazine into the Uzi.

  “Never leave an enemy an escape route,” Linderholm stated defiantly, then jerked backward as part of his head was blown off from an incoming miniball.

  Nearly decapitated, the baron staggered, then dropped onto the wall and went still.

  “The baron is aced!” a sec woman bellowed.

  A sec man added, “Then long live Sandara, our new baron!”

  Jak frowned at that, but said nothing.

  Shouting battle cries, the ville sec force redoubled its efforts, handblasters, shotguns, and even a couple of rapid-fires firing freely.

  Spitting the acrid taste of spent black powder from his mouth, Ryan shoved in another magazine, and continued picking off snipers in the distant trees. Every time he saw a flash, he answered back, and a Granite Empire sec man tumbled into view, gushing red life.

  Retreating from the unexpected resistance, the enemy sec men took refuge behind the bulwark, as the Fire Hammer rolled closer, the front of the black box once more irising open wide.

  As the laser began to loudly hum, everybody on the wall took cover. But this time the beam burned holes through the Napoleon cannons, first one, then the other. The stores of guncotton behind them erupted in harmless fury, the columns of roiling fumes reaching high into the sky. Then the lovingly repaired Civil War exhibits were gone, the brass barrels melted into a puddle on the stony ground.

  The laser came again, a slightly wider beam hitting the wall, not penetrating the ten solid feet of limestone. Instead the wide beam quickly began heating the stone, and it loudly cracked apart, chunks falling away to make a gaping crater.

  “How do we stop that thing?” Fife growled, firing his AK-47 at the war wag. As the magazine cycled empty, the colonel tossed it aside and fumbled for another. Then he spotted a familiar face moving among the crowd of Granite Empire sec men. “Bannister!”

  At the shout, the thief paused, and Fife grabbed the Martini-Henry longblaster from the twitching hands of the dead baron. Levering in a fresh cartridge, he aimed and fired, catching Bannister in the shoulder as the man dived behind the Fire Hammer.

  Reloading, Fife shot at an exposed boot. The short-chamber cartridge blew it in two, but there was no response. Cursing at himself for mistaking a corpse for the live man, the sec boss reloaded and fired at anything that moved near the APC, each time moving a little faster and smoother.

  Already hit a dozen times before by miniballs and assorted blasterfire, the headlight on the APC shattered under the triphammer arrival of the titanically huge slug. Instantly the laser swung in his direction.

  Without bothering to light the fuse, J.B. whipped a pipe bomb forward. As it fell into the laser, the pipe bomb violently detonated. Temporarily defused by the explosion, the beam splayed around harmlessly for a moment. On the wall, everybody cheered, only to go quiet once more as the renewed beam stabbed out again and again, burning fresh holes through the limestone blocks.

  In the bamboo cupolas of the guard towers, a couple of sec men leveled long sections of PVC pipe at the Fire Hammer, hissing fuses dangling from the aft end. In sputtering fury, a salvo of homemade rockets lanced from the crude bazookas to miss the machine and bury themselves into the ground underneath the war wag. Then more rockets streaked away from the other guard towers, all of them oddly missing the Fire Hammer and going deep into the earth all round the APC.

  “Wait for it...” Nye smirked, reloading.

  As if suspecting a trap, the people inside the Fire Hammer sent it lurching into motion, but it was too late. The ground around the machine erupted into a gigantic fireball that engulfed the APC. For several minutes writhing flames licked at every inch of the Granite Empire war machine. Somebody screamed from inside, and briefly a rapid fire chattered. Then the flames faded away, leaving a visibly blackened chassis.

  “We did it!” a sec man cheered as if they had just won the fight.

  “Didn’t do shit,” Ryan growled, ducking for cover.

  Abruptly the black box cycled back into view again. As the front irised open, the incandescent energy beam swept sideways across the guard towers, neatly severing the thick wooden beams off their frame.

  As the cupolas slid
off, the hapless sec men inside could only scream as they plummeted toward the earth. Then they hit, and the screaming stopped in a crackling explosion of splintering wood and shattering bamboo.

  Clutching her U.S. mailbag, Nye dashed down the stairs, charging toward the ruined towers.

  Meanwhile, the laser shifted targets and began burning holes in the ville gate, the overlapping layers of sheet metal turning bright red from the brief passage of the beam.

  A sleek cabin cruiser steamed into view out on the lake mist. The Gatling gun mounted on the Lexington’s foredeck began banging steadily, and ricochets zinged off the armored chassis of the Fire Hammer. A dozen sec men nearby fell in bloody ruination as the heavy-caliber rounds tore away their lives. Then one of the Fire Hammer’s military tires exploded off a rim, and the loudspeaker was torn away, the dangling wires visibly crackling with fat blue sparks.

  Quickly, the PEP laser swung in the vessel’s direction and fired. But the shimmering beam missed the speeding boat to only hit the lake. The water erupted into steam at the contact, dead fish falling back down like manna from heaven.

  Angling around, a rocket launched from the Lexington to slam into the rear of the APC with deafening results. For a few moments the Fire Hammer was lost inside the swirling cloud of dark smoke. Then the fumes dissipated and everybody could see that it was completely unaffected.

  Swiveling around again, the black box irised open, and the laser flashed. Grabbing his face, a sailor screamed, then burst into flames. As he stumbled into the lake, the laser stabbed out again to core the Lexington completely. In a sputter, the diesel engines died and everybody jumped off the ship. A moment later the huge stores of fuel and ammunition below decks thunderously detonated. The entire lake seemed to jump as the deafening blast obliterated the cabin cruiser, and a dozen dead sec men smacked into the rocky shoreline with horrible results.

  Scrambling up the stairs, Sandara returned to the wall just in time to see the ship destroyed. She started to speak, then stopped and glanced at the body of her father only a few yards away.

  “What now, Baron?” Fife asked.

  “Are we surrendering?” a sec man asked, pausing in the act of ramming a nimrod down the barrel of his flintlock.

  “Surrender?” another sec man snarled, lowering his weapon. “Are you a feeb? We just lost! The Lexington was our big punch, and it didn’t scratch the bastard tin can.”

  “That’s not what we need to damage,” Ryan said, quickly removing the sound suppressor from the barrel of the Steyr Scout.

  “Why are you doing that?” Ricky asked, inserting a fresh magazine into the DeLisle.

  “The silencer slows down the lead,” Ryan said, “and for this I’m going need all of the speed I can get.”

  “Then use my father’s Martini-Henry,” Sandara said, taking the blood-streaked longblaster from Fife. “Its round is a nuke lot more powerful than your 7.62 mm.”

  “True, but I also need accuracy,” Ryan said, going to the edge of the wall and kneeling on the hot stone.

  Assuming a firing position, Ryan looked through the telescopic sight and focused on the black box atop the LAV-25. Experimentally, he fired a round. As expected, the speeding bullet ricocheted impotently off the dense military armor.

  Encouraged by the total destruction of the cabin cruiser, the Granite Empire sec men were starting to rally over the bulwark again, their blasters firing constantly. The Concord sec men were answering back in tightly controlled bursts.

  Taking a slow, deep breath, Ryan calmed his mind and patiently waited for a target to present itself. Timing. Everything was timing.

  Loudly building power, the black box rose into view once more and swung to aim at the ville gate. As the front irised open, Ryan fired a single shot. Exposed for only a moment, an armored coaxial cable was snipped off and the iris slammed shut, only to then snap open completely.

  Quick-firing, Ryan put three hardball rounds directly into the resilient lens before it slightly cracked, then shattered completely.

  As the laser stabbed outward, the deadly beam went wide, spraying out in every direction. Hit from behind, the Granite Empire sec men screamed as their hair and clothing burst into flames. Turning in shock, others then grabbed their faces, pawing blindly at their blistered eyes.

  Lurching into motion, the Fire Hammer began rolling away from the men on the ville wall, banking sharply to turn and desperately race away. In a ragged formation, the Granite Empire sec men followed after the escaping APC, firing every step of the way, but at what wasn’t precisely clear.

  “Yee-haw!” a sec man yelled, brandishing his flintlock. “We got her on the run, boys!”

  “We won?” a wounded sec man whispered, unable to believe the words.

  “No, we didn’t,” Fife stated in a tired growl. “The queen has merely retreated to make repairs to her laser.”

  “This war is far from over,” Ryan added.

  In ragged stages, the cheering died away to be replaced by deeply worried expressions.

  Slinging her father’s enormous Martini-Henry longblaster over a shoulder, Sandara held out a hand and a sec man gave her the monocular. “It will take her a week to get parts from her home ville,” she declared, dialing for focus. “So we have that much time to make repairs.”

  “Better only count on half of that,” Krysty stated. “I’d say her sec men will ride their horses into the ground to get the parts as fast as possible.”

  “Three days?” Frowning, Fife turned to look over the ville. Most of the small fires were already extinguished, and some sec men were struggling to make repairs to the gate.

  “Wood to patch predark steel,” Jak drawled in disapproval. “Not keep out stickie, never mind war wag.”

  “Agreed,” Sandara said. “But what else can we do? That war wag burned through five years of defenses in ten minutes!”

  “Unfortunately there’s more bad news,” Fife growled. “I saw one of our sec men with her. A man called Bannister...he wasn’t a prisoner.”

  “A traitor?” Sandara seemed to have trouble getting out the word.

  “I’m afraid so, Baron, and with his knowledge of our defenses...”

  “Mutie shit,” a sec man laughed. “There’s no way that bitch will risk Blackie here putting another hole in her precious las!”

  “Never seen shooting like that in my life,” a sec man added, reloading his flintlock. “What kind of scope you got on that longblaster?”

  “Wasn’t the scope,” Fife stated. “It’s the man.”

  Unaccustomed to praise, Ryan said nothing, not really sure how to respond.

  “Sandy...I...that is...Baron?” a sec woman asked, hobbling closer. The right leg of her pants was gone, the bare thigh swaddled in bloody bandages, and a piece of bamboo was tucked under her arm as a crude crutch.

  Sandara waved away the fumble. “What is it, Corporal Harrigan?”

  “Any chance we could get the pirates on our side?” Harrigan asked, scratching her head, “mebbe offer them a slice of the jack if they attack Angstrom from behind?”

  “Oh, they would happily agree to that,” Sandara replied gruffly. “Then cut a deal with the queen to attack us instead.”

  “We’re alone on this, Corporal,” Fife added.

  Nodding, the sec woman hobbled away, picking up dropped blasters from the scattered bodies lining the top of the bloody wall.

  “Better send out some runners to do the same thing in the killing field,” Krysty said. “A lot of the Granite Empire sec men left rapid-fires behind. Those will be very useful when the queen returns.”

  “A good idea,” Sandara said. “Colonel, send out the gaudy sluts.”

  “With some of the less badly hurt sec men as protection,” Fife added, swinging up his AK-47. “A few of those corpses don’t look quite aced enoug
h to suit me.” He fired a round and a distant corpse jerked at the impact. He fired again and another supposed corpse cried out in pain, then went limp.

  “Use knives,” Jak suggested. “Save brass.”

  “Our sluts prefer axes,” Fife told him grimly.

  “Then give them axes, Colonel,” Sandara said, almost smiling. “Better also tell our Sky Master to unleash his birds. All of them. I want them killing every pigeon in the Five Mountains. Nothing must get through. Nothing!”

  Just then, a section of the limestone wall loudly cracked apart, and a large chunk tumbled away to slam onto the ground below.

  “Now, Angstrom wants us bad,” J.B. stated. “So, she will be back. But only after making sure Ryan can’t hurt her war wag again.”

  “And how could she do that?” Sandara asked, rubbing her once-broken nose with a clenched fist.

  “The battleship!” Doc exclaimed excitedly. “Bannister will tell her about the heavy-duty plastic we found there. With a sheet of that protecting the lens, no amount of gunfire would be able to inflict damage.”

  Sandara scoffed. “Bah, plastic windows are easy to break!”

  “Military plas,” Jak explained. “Clear like glass, tough like iron.”

  As she realized the dire implications, Sandara went pale, then straightened her shoulders. “So what’s the plan? Haul all of this plastic away and hide it in a cave, or something?”

  “There’s not enough time for that,” Ryan replied. “We have to do this fast and dirty.”

  “Does the ville have any bikes?” Mildred asked.

  Fife frowned. “Bikes...you mean, Harleys? Sure, we have nine or ten in prime working condition. Lots of juice, too.”

  “Good. We’ll need them, all the juice you can spare and two barrels of guncotton.”

  “Why?” Sandra asked quizzically.

  “Guncotton,” Ryan restated. “The best you have.”

  “Why?” Sandara repeated.

  “To blow up the ship?” Krysty said, starting down the wooden stairs.

  “You don’t need a whole barrel to set off the rest of the ammunition stored onboard,” Fife snapped, looking over the edge of the wall. “Our biggest problem is always trying to make the damn stuff not explode!”