by James Axler
“Don’t need it for the ship!” Ryan shouted, hurrying downward.
Fife frowned. “Then what—”
“I’ll explain on the way!”
Chapter Eighteen
Lumbering along through the forest, the grizzly bear paused, uncertain at a strange sound, a sort of low growl that was rapidly increasing in volume. Standing on his hind legs and spreading his massive shaggy arms, the grizzly loudly bellowed to announce that it was ready to fight anything!
A split second later the Fire Hammer crashed through a stand of saplings and slammed into the creature. With every major bone shattered, the bag of fur and blood flew away to slam into a boulder with sickening results.
With brakes squealing, the Fire Hammer rocked to a full halt and the top hatch flipped up.
Rising into view, Queen Angstrom looked around the forest clearing. There was a bloody cloth wrapped around her neck where flames from the Concord rockets had come licking through a blasterport. The unexpected attack would have killed her for sure if the APC hadn’t automatically slammed shut every port and air vent. She hadn’t even known the machine could do such things. But the ancient whitecoats of DeeCee had certainly saved her ass this day.
Then Angstrom frowned, fingertips touching her badly burned throat. What a nuking disaster! She had been absolutely positive that this night she would be contentedly dining in the great hall of Concord, sipping mulled shine and watching the outlanders beg for mercy as wild dogs gnawed off their bound limbs. Instead she had been forced to flee, to run for her life like a slave from a cruel overseer when the laser had broken.
Angstrom still wasn’t precisely sure if the weapon had overheated, or if the outlanders had somehow managed to shoot out the control cables. Of the two choices, the first seemed much more likely. The second possibility would require marksmanship from Ryan that bordered on the supernatural.
A few moments later what remained of the Granite Empire mounted troops arrived, the sec men on the motorcycles judiciously keeping their machines away from the horses as the exhaust fumes frightened the animals, making them occasionally buck and toss off the riders.
“Okay, this will do,” Angstrom announced in a gravelly voice, a hand touching her aching throat. “Make camp, establish a defensive perimeter...” She smiled. “And cut me some steaks off that bear!”
When the rest of the Granite Empire sec men arrived an hour later, the camp was well established, with a perimeter fence of pungi sticks, a latrine dug, a prisoner bound to a tree and fat juicy steaks roasting over a cheery fire.
Looking as if they had just escaped from the grave, the bedraggled sec men were heaving for breath, many of them still bleeding from small wounds that hadn’t been bandaged yet.
“Wash and get some food!” Angstrom directed, lounging in a folding chair. “There’s clean water to the right, shitters to the left.”
Dumbly nodding, the sec men shuffled away, dragging their weapons along behind them in the dirt, too tired to even lift their blasters anymore.
Counting on his fingers as the weary men and women trundled past, Major Svenson scowled unhappily. “Ninety-two, my queen,” he announced. “Less than a third of what we attacked with.”
“So I see,” Angstrom said, wrapping the soft fur of the wendigo across her lap. “How are the repairs going?”
Softly, there came muffled clangs from inside the Fire Hammer, closely followed by a stream of wildly inventive cursing.
“As well as can be expected.” Svenson sighed, squatting in the grass. “We have plenty of spare wiring to make a new cable, and another lens, but until we find some way to prevent it from happening again...” He looked up at the woman. “My queen, do you think Ryan really shot out the cable from that distance?”
“No.”
“But he has a scope on that fancy longblaster...”
“Bah, it was just a lucky accident, nothing more!” Angstrom dismissed smoothly. “With all of the lead that was flying around, a ricochet was bound to get inside.”
Inhaling deeply, Svenson glared in annoyance at the APC parked across the clearance. The dancing flames of the campfire brightly illuminated the hulking machine, revealing every minor dent, along with the blackened scorch marks from the rocket attack.
“Then our war wag has a serious weakness,” Svenson said bluntly.
“So it would seem,” Angstrom replied, plucking at a loose thread in the embroidery of her shirt.
“We don’t dare to attack Concord again until... Is there anything we can do to fix the problem? Bannister can’t help us with this.”
“Oh yes,” Angstrom said, looking up with a hard smile. “There most certainly is.”
After dinner, and a few hours of sleep, Angstrom and the others strolled over to the prisoner.
His limbs splayed like a starfish on the beach, Charlie Ownes was tied to a large birch tree.
“I do so hate torture,” Angstrom said with a practiced sigh. “Perhaps we should just chill him.”
“Whatever you wish,” a sec man answered, pulling out a large knife.
“No, wait!” Ownes screamed, his eyes wild in terror. “I know the wall! I know every inch of the ville!”
“But we don’t care about that,” Queen Angstrom said quietly. “We want to hear about the battleship you told Sergeant Goldberg about.”
“Corporal, ma’am,” the man said hesitantly.
She smiled. “Not anymore.”
“Thank you, ma’am!”
“The ship?” Ownes asked in confusion. “Sure, no prob. I can help you get all of the guncotton you want.”
With a snarl, Major Svenson punched Ownes in the stomach. Unable to bend over, he gasped and choked, fighting to breathe.
“Dirty little traitor, I’d rather die than betray my ville!” he snarled, grabbing a fistful of hair. Pulling Ownes’s head to the side, he exposed the big vein in the side of the neck and produced a large knife.
“I’d rather live!” Ownes shouted, tears running down his face.
“Would you now?” Angstrom said, holding up a restraining palm. “Then tell us everything about that ship again, especially those plastic windows that can’t be broken.”
Quickly, Ownes repeated everything he had seen and heard while inside the predark battleship.
“And that’s everything?” Angstrom asked.
“Yes, Queen Angstrom, everything!” Ownes said urgently. “Set me free and I can lead you directly there.”
“No, I believe that you’ve told us enough to find the hidden ship,” she replied coldly. “Only now we must make sure this isn’t a trap from Linderholm.”
“It is the truth, I swear it!” Ownes said with a wild tone in his voice.
“Ah, but how can we accept the word from a traitor?” She sighed, snapping her fingers.
Pulling knives, the sec men advanced on the captive and cut away of his clothing, not really caring if they sliced the skin underneath. Naked, and dripping blood, Ownes trembled all over, and shamefully soiled himself.
Prepared for that, a sec man threw a bucket of cold water across the man, washing away the filth.
“Now, this is how it will go,” Angstrom said in a cold voice. “The major will ask questions, and you will answer them. Then he’ll torture you to make sure you’re telling the truth. When he’s satisfied, you die. Fair enough?”
“No, wait, I’ll talk!” Ownes cried, tears running down both cheeks. “You don’t have to...I’ll talk! Tell ya everything ya wanna know!”
“Yeah, you will,” Svenson seethed, reaching out to grab an ear.
“Don’t forget to ask about the cannies!” Angstrom called over a shoulder as she strolled back toward the campsite.
The screaming lasted long into the night, and with the coming of the dawn, Ownes�
��s corpse was buried with the rest of the trash.
After meticulously checking over the repairs made to the Fire Hammer, Queen Angstrom got comfortable behind the controls, fired up the big diesel engines and started driving due east toward Impact Valley with her army of mounted sec men close behind.
* * ** * *
THE NEXT DAY, the sun was directly overhead by the time the companions and Concord ville sec men arrived at the crashed battleship.
During the night, the group had only briefly stopped to relieve themselves or to refuel. Everybody was filthy, the crude ponchos tied around their clothing thickly coated with so much road dust and leaves that they each resembled a corpse freshly escaped from the grave. The windshields and headlights were caked with squashed bugs of every description.
“You were right,” Fife groaned, stiffly rising from the motorcycle. “It’s cracked open like a clam.”
Before them rose the unbroken expanse of the impact mound, and on the other side of the hillock was the underbelly of the great vessel.
“Had to be,” Mildred said, forcing her fingers off the handlebars. “Or else there wouldn’t have been a breeze blowing through the ship. The main air vent is located in the prow, and that’s buried fifty feet underground.”
The strongest part of any oceangoing vessel, the keel for military vessels was designed to withstand a staggering amount of punishment, including torpedo hits. However, the possibility of dropping straight down from the sky hadn’t been included in any theoretical engineering specs.
Incredibly, the keel was still intact, merely bent out of shape. But the hull on either side had split open when the top deck compressed, the conflicting forces too much to absorb. Through the gaping wide hole, the smashed remains of the engines were clearly visible.
“Good call, Millie,” J.B. said, wiping his glasses clean. “Now we have a private entrance, while the others have to use the front door.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Betty demanded, jerking off her poncho and creating a whirlwind of filth. “Wanted to keep that private in case you came back to jack the wreck?”
Easing out of her own poncho, Mildred gently lowered the stiff blanket to the ground. “Something like that,” she admitted.
“Friendlies, not kin,” Ryan reminded them harshly, removing a filthy bandanna from around his head.
Frowning at that, Fife then snorted a laugh. “Fair enough! I would have done the same myself.”
“Too bad we don’t have one of those bazookas,” Ricky said, stomping his boots, dirt and leaves cascading away. “We could put a rocket right into that breech and blow the whole thing from here!”
“And the concussion would crush us into jelly,” J.B. stated, putting his glasses back into place. “We need to get inside and set a bomb with a ten-minute fuse....no, make that fifteen.”
“Mayhap twenty, would be wiser,” Doc rumbled, pulling the M-16 assault rifle from the gunboot alongside the front yoke. “Just in case of trouble.”
“Well, I got enough fuse for an hour.”
“Good man!”
“I hates to think of all guncotton gone forever.” A sec man sighed deeply.
“Guncotton is easy to make,” J.B. replied. “Dark night, I can teach you how to do it from bedsheets and predark coins.”
Fife stared at the man as if he had suddenly grown tentacles. “Are you serious?”
“Dead center. A little distilled water, a few weeks of sunshine, and you’ll be making enough of the stuff to level Cobalt Mountain.”
“Bedsheets and coins? You’re nuking insane,” Betty stated, then gave a toothy grin. “What else would you need?”
“We’ll tell you later,” Ryan said, pointing at the battleship.
Nodding, Krysty swung up a crossbow, took aim and fired. The heavy bolt slammed deep into a pine tree on top of the hillock, trailing behind it was a long length of twine feeding through a loop at the end of the bolt.
Carefully pulling on one end of the twine, Krysty started dragging a much thicker length of rope up the hillock to the tree. She had a little trouble maneuvering it through the greased loop, but finally succeeded, and held both ends of the rope.
Taking turns, the companions climbed up the steep mound, and soon were standing on top looking down into the crater on the other side. Mildred and Ricky stayed behind to guard the bikes and the climbing rope.
“We’re taking a big chance here,” a sec man muttered, scowling at the titanic vessel. “Even if this plastic stuff exists—”
“Does,” Jak interrupted.
“That don’t mean Angstrom is going try to get some,” the sec men retorted.
“Oh yes, it does,” J.B. replied, both hands holding the long Navy telescope. “Incoming, two o’clock, main entrance!”
Swinging up the Steyr, Ryan looked through the telescopic sight. The trees along the top of the hillock were so thick it took him a few moments to find the distant breach in the curved mound. Then he saw the boxy APC park directly in front of the breech, surrounded by a score of sec men on motorcycles. Then a second wave arrived on panting horses.
“Fireblast, Angstrom brought along everybody,” Ryan cursed, lowering the longblaster. “I think she plans to hold this ship, and loot everything useful.”
“Concord doesn’t stand a chance against her fragging laser and troops armed with barrels of guncotton,” Fife stormed, clenching and releasing his fists. Silently, the sec chief looked at the satchel of pipe bombs on the ground, and then at the battleship, his face becoming oddly calm.
“Before we cross the Rubicon, there are other things to try,” Doc said, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. “We are far from dead yet.”
“Well, there’s no way we can blow up the breach now to stop her from getting inside,” Krysty stated, squinting into the distance.
“Will be,” Jak stated, snatching the bag of pipe bombs. Turning, he sprinted into the pine trees and soon disappeared from sight.
“What’s he going to do?” Betty demanded with a scowl.
“Buy us time,” Ryan answered gruffly, grabbing the ropes and throwing them down the inside slope. “Now let’s move with a purpose, people!”
Scrambling into the crater, the group raced closer to the battleship. While Ryan and Fife stood guard, the others fired crossbows at the lowest rent. Trailing knotted ropes, the grappling hooks arched into the darkness. Two fell back, three didn’t, and were quickly anchored.
“Secure,” a sec man reported, tugging a rope hard enough to lift himself off the ground.
“I’ll take point,” J.B. said, starting to climb up the rope, going hand over hand.
He had gotten only a few yards when more crossbows fired, and soon Ryan and Fife were climbing alongside. Long minutes passed in tense silence as the three of them concentrated on getting inside the battleship.
The lightest of the trio, J.B. was first, and as he reached into the rent, a flock of wrens took flight, screaming and cawing at the unwanted intrusion.
“At least, we know there’s nothing waiting for us,” J.B. said, wiggling over the buckled edge of the thick steel plate.
“Nothing that eats birds,” Fife muttered, swinging up a boot, then rolling through the rent. A loose lace caught on a bolt, and he jerked the boot free, the string snapping in two.
Climbing above the opening, Ryan warily lowered himself onto the side of a large piece of machinery, his eye blinking to try to quickly adjust to the darkness.
The interior of the engine room was in total chaos, wire, pipes, cables forming an incomprehensible maze, as if a robotic spider had been hard at work building a web here for the past century. The air smelled dank, and clusters of softly glowing mushrooms were growing in random piles of windblown dirt.
Everywhere gargantuan machinery loomed abov
e Ryan, seemingly paused in the act of falling. Pistons larger than cars swung loosely overhead, making the man feel like an ant about to be stomped by a boot. Broken gears and huge conduits formed nightmarish jumbles of rusty steel, and huge piles of dry leaves were everywhere underfoot.
“If this was a wooden ship, we wouldn’t have to go in any farther,” Fife muttered, flicking a butane lighter into life. “We could put the barrels of guncotton in here, set fire to the leaves and just go.”
“Yeah, and if cows pissed gasoline we’d all be riding in wags,” Ryan retorted, twisting a road flare into action. The magnesium flame surged bright and strong, banishing the gloom, but casting strange shadows on the titled walls and floors.
“Stay sharp! We gotta move fast, and this place is a giant deathtrap,” J.B. said, holding a hurricane lantern high. It was a gift from the new baron, and the strong blue flame showed the decades of rot in shockingly clarity.
“I hear you,” Ryan replied, stepping over the pile of dirty rags that had once been a Navy jumpsuit. Only the patent leather shoes were still in good shape, the plastic coating protecting the leather from the ravages of time, insects and weather.
Drawing his SIG-Sauer, Ryan carefully proceeded deeper into the machinery, kicking the piles of leaves aside to try to reveal the wall underneath. The plates were covered with flakes of corrosion the size of dinner plates, but the metal still seemed strong. At least, he hoped it was. They were at the rear of the vessel, and a fall from here could send them bouncing down an endless series of corridors to land as only a sprinkle of teeth and loose hair at the distant prow. It was a sobering thought.
“We should be roped together,” J.B. said, edging past an open doorway. There was only darkness inside that seemed to extended forever.
“That would only slow us,” Fife muttered, then he cursed as there came the sound of shattering glass and he vanished.
Quickly inching closer, Ryan and J.B. were relieved to see the panting sec chief standing on top of a desk inside a sideways office.