“What does she thinks ack-sually gonna happen, huh?” Sticky Jim’s friend demanded in a slightly louder, slightly more aggrieved whisper, one that bordered on treasonous. They called him Deaf Mick because he tended to only “hear” orders that he liked. “Is it her i-dear the Black Captain is just gonna attack like a complete idiot? Huh? She thinks he just gonna walk, derp, derp, derp, right up a hill that ain’t nobody got no bidness being on in the first place?”
“Quiet down!” Leney snapped. “Maybe you forgot that Gaida attacked right up that very hill. And you wanna know why? Because he wanted to flank the damned bridge. Maybe she thinks the Black Captain is going to do the same thing.”
Sticky Jim spread his hands in confusion. “Gaida did it because the bridge had all them ropes on it. Now she went and took them all down, there ain’t no reason to flank the bridge. You see what I’m saying? The Captain ain’t no idiot. He ain’t gonna come close to them hills. He’s gonna see the bridge ain’t defended and he’s gonna rush in and take the prison and all the islands and then it’ll be us whose gotta attack him.”
“Yeah,” his friend agreed. “And what good will our torps be against an island, huh? Ain’t no good at all is what I say.”
Leney nodded and smiled as though he had a mouthful of week-old eel. “I’ll talk to her.” With his throat still stinging from where she had slit it, and his pride in tatters, he made his way to the bow where the Queen stood, eyeing the terrain as they passed.
Before he could say a word, she said, “Trust me.” Although the thrum of the rain and the growing wind drowned out the whispers, she knew the mood of the men by the way they made eye contact with one another and the way they made sure to paste bland expressions across their faces when looking at her.
“I do trust you,” Leney lied.
She saw the lie and understood; how do you trust someone who’d been muttering or laughing to herself half the morning, and who was now suggesting that they throw away every apparent advantage they had?
“You don’t trust me, but you should. Do you know why I didn’t cut your throat wide open earlier?”
Leney swallowed, feeling the pain of the shallow laceration once more. “I don’t know. Because you need me?”
Jillybean laughed at that. The laugh bubbled out of her high, sweet and painfully honest. “No, don’t be silly. I need you as much as I need any of these clowns. I didn’t kill you because you are a tool, Leney. The sharpest tool in a very dull shed. You are my voice when I’m not around to speak. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“For your sake, I hope you do. Right now, you should be my number one cheerleader among the men. These moves you see are only the preliminary moves in a chess match between me and the Black Captain. They may not make much sense at first, however they will soon enough. You understand 3-D chess, correct? Well, this is 4-D.” Leney’s lips drew into a tight smile and she asked him, “You do understand the dimensions?”
“Like in space?”
Jillybean held back the laughter this time. “Not exactly. And I shouldn’t have stated it as I did. Everyone understands the dimensions whether they know it or not. Height, width, depth and the fourth that’s frequently forgotten, is time. The Black Captain is unlikely to have forgotten time and I have to assume that he hasn’t, which in this case means he’s not fighting the last fight.”
“Then why put your men on that hill? It’s the last place he’ll attack.”
“It’s also the last place we would defend,” she said, cryptically. “In chess, you can’t stick to the obvious choices or you’ll fall into trap after trap and before you know it you’re hemmed in and forced to abdicate.”
Leney, who had never played chess in his life, gave her a knowing, “Ahh, yes,” though he didn’t understand at all.
She wasn’t fooled, but let it go. She didn’t have time to walk him through her convoluted thinking process, which entailed considering every ramification from her point of view, the Black Captain’s view, and her men’s. Until only a couple of days before, they had been bloodthirsty Corsairs themselves; she couldn’t pretend their loyalty was absolute.
She was deep in thought when a buoy’s bell made a tinny clank! Leney had taken the wheel and was piloting the Hell Quake under the massive bridge. She saw he was doing his best to pretend that it was just fine that the span was completely deserted save for the twenty black and silver flags hanging from it.
“It’s all part of the plan,” he told the others. “Trust me, the Queen knows what she’s doing.”
“And what is the plan?” Sticky Jim asked, under his breath as Leney turned the wheel.
“Don’t worry about it. Just do your part and everything will work out fine.” He even managed to tip him a confident wink, though he still didn’t have any idea what the battle plan was. About the only thing he knew was that Jillybean was going to run the battle from the north tower of the bridge. Leney, and a retinue of twenty men, were going to act as her personal guard, while Sticky Jim would take the Hell Quake and the rest of the men and dock her at Alcatraz.
“Like a damned prize for the Black Captain,” Sticky Jim muttered so low that only his gap-toothed friend Deaf Mick could hear. Deaf Mick shushed him anyway since there were others near.
The two were soon separated as Deaf Mick joined the small crowd on the port side of the boat trying to simultaneously keep the Hell Quake close to the great cement base of the bridge tower as well as fend it off as the waves heaved them at it with enough force to smash the boat into a thousand pieces.
Leney left the boat first, leaping from the gunwale of the Hell Quake and landing on the moss-slicked cement island. A rope was thrown and he tied her loosely to a stanchion. Two of the more sure-footed sailors came after and then came the Queen. She stepped with light confidence onto the tower base and then immediately headed for the rust-colored door set squarely in the side of the tower. It was a squat little, creaking door that led to a narrow, suffocating staircase.
As she entered, black water rained down on her from what appeared to be an endless, living darkness. From out of that darkness came a long, deep-timbered moan, which was followed by a second moan that was almost identical. There was a pause and then the first moan repeated. It sounded like a pair of shadow giants speaking in some alien language.
“What the ever lovin’ crap is that?” Deaf Mick asked as he jostled his way inside.
Jillybean knew precisely what the sound was and could have gone on at length expounding on the external environmental stressors being applied to the immense structure from which an infinitesimal portion was being released in the form of kinetic sound energy. She could have written a dissertation on the complexity of it all, if she wasn’t suddenly stricken with terror. It wasn’t the tower that frightened her, it was the dark and the creatures whispering to each other within it that made her tremble.
“That’s the tower itself,” Leney said, putting his hand on one of the walls and gazing upward, his face going pale beneath the tattoos, making them look a vibrant green. “This sucker’s gonna fall one of these days.”
“Probably not today,” Jillybean stated with a great deal more confidence than she felt. She couldn’t appear afraid in front of her men no matter how badly the darkness scared her. It reminded her of the darkness inside herself. That was an infinite night and within it were the souls of the people she had killed. There were thousands of them.
Thousands, the darkness agreed. There are thousands of us down here and if you slip and come tumbling down, we will eat you. We will eat you alive. We will devour every…
“Come on,” she growled and began stomping up the iron stairs. Now is not the time! she warned, inwardly. She couldn’t have an “episode” with a battle looming. For all she knew, it was only minutes away; she could emerge from the tower and find the Corsair fleet massed on the horizon.
She grit her teeth together, ignored the voices and went up quickly, while behind her came Leney and he
r guard of ex-Corsairs, every one of whom had once been among the most feared men on the planet. Just then, they were far more fearful than fearsome. The groaning tower and the deep darkness were bad enough, but it was the metal stairs that were falling into ruin which frightened them the most, especially as they mounted higher and higher. Some of the stairs groaned beneath their weight, others sagged as the welds began to give way, and others broke altogether.
One man let out a yelp of pain as ragged, rusted spears tore open his knee. Jillybean plowed ever upward without looking back. The sounds coming from the depths below her were magnified and given texture by the men, making them far more real than anything ahead of her.
After a time, it sounded as if demons were creeping among the men, hurting them, making them whimper and curse.
She hurried even faster. By the time she came to the door which opened onto the bridge, she was dripping sweat and wild-eyed—but she had made it. Gulping down air and throwing aside her fears, it was the Queen who stepped into a grey, wet day. She smiled despite the drenching rain and the fact that she was two hundred and twenty feet in the air and being buffeted by stray winds—the Corsair fleet was indeed before her.
A hundred and twenty ships throwing signals up and down their mainstays in a confusing array of colors and shapes—confusing to most people that is. Jillybean quickly picked out the cipher as a derivation of the one the Corsairs had used in their previous attacks. They were trying to form into three squadrons, however the weather kept pushing some far to leeward, which made them scramble their teams, resulting in the southern team being the weakest of the three.
“Nice flags, jackasses,” she said wearing a grin. Feeling vastly superior, she flicked on her radio. “Come in, Captain McCartt.”
“McCartt here. All ships on station. Over.” His voice was clipped and precise. She could almost imagine him standing at attention on his heaving deck.
“Move to your second position. Let me know when you’re there.”
A burst of static from the radio startled Jillybean. “Hey, this is Melissa Chatman, over. We’re in place, over. Everyone but Will Trafny, over. He says it feels like his lung is filling up with water, over.”
Jillybean sighed and waited for the Islander to go on. When she didn’t, which was surprising, Jillybean explained to her, “Only use the word ‘over’ at the end of your communique, when you’d like me to respond. It’s not like sending a telegram. And tell Will to take the expectorant I gave him and stay indoors. Now, are the bells ready and is your team spread out enough?”
“Yes, I think so and sorry, over. Oh, wait. I wanted to let you know I can see the bad guy fleet really good from here. If you want, I can keep you up to date on what they’re doing, over. You know, like if they’re about to attack or something like that.”
We should’ve killed her ages ago, Eve whispered into Jillybean’s ear, making her twitch.
“No!” Jillybean snapped. It was a moment before she realized everyone thought she was talking to Melissa. “Sorry, I meant no thank you. Keep dry and wait for my signal. Out.”
Ernie says we should kill the weak, Eve said, as if Melissa had broken in on their conversation and was just picking up the pieces of it. And there’s some guy in here who thinks we should eat the weak. He says we can become stronger that way. Like we can take their spirit force or…
“Shut up for once,” Jillybean growled, mentally slamming the door on the darkness within her and forcing her mind onto the details of the imminent battle. She turned her binoculars north to the Marin Highlands, where her infantry force of nearly a thousand men and women were hiding. The Corsair’s slow trip south from Bodega Bay had given them four hours to get into place and to prepare firing positions. These were situated along the land side of the hills overlooking Rodeo Lagoon, which was the only logical landing spot for any attacking force.
The next closest one was north of them at a tricky, rocky inlet called Muir Beach. Landing there would mean that an attacking force would have to endure a four-mile slog through more of the ash/mud mixture. The Captain’s soldiers would begin the fight exhausted from the march, drenched to the bone, and freezing; reinforcements and resupply would come at a trickle along that same muddy route, and a retreat would be an ordeal few would live through.
No, if the Captain landed anywhere it would be at Rodeo Lagoon, and it would be a massacre. Jillybean’s officer in charge, Alec Steinmeyer, the one-time leader of the Coos Bay Clan, had the lagoon surrounded on three sides. All they needed now was for the Captain to comply and attack.
Only he didn’t.
Chapter 17
The largest ship left to the Black Captain was the fifty-five-foot catamaran, The Courageous. As well as being the largest, it was also the quietest ship in the fleet. There were no jokes, no laughter, no singing and almost no farting. If a sailor had to rip one off, he made sure he was far away from the Black Captain before he let it sneak out.
To say the least, it was an utterly unhappy ship.
From the youngest sailor to Captain Chuck Boschee, a constantly smiling North Dakotan with flat, dead eyes and a red/gold beard that he kept meticulously braided, everyone went about on pins and needles, afraid to say or do anything to bring the Black Captain’s wrath down on them. His mercurial mood, once legendary, had been established as fact after he had shot one of Boschee’s sailors for belching too loudly. Before the burp had barely begun, the Captain moved with speed that was in the realm of mythical, snatching one of his twin .44 caliber Colt Anaconda revolvers from its holster, firing and returning it before the belch ended.
And that had been on the first day before the weather had turned cruel. Now, after The Wind Ripper had seemingly disappeared in the puff of a cloud and the Hell Quake, never the fastest ship in the fleet, had managed to elude them, the Black Captain was in a tearing rage.
Boschee had once butchered a man alive, carving off bite-sized hunks of his flesh and shoving them down his throat. On another occasion, he had killed three armed men in an old west style gunfight, blazing away in a room smaller than the average kitchen. He had done these things and more, before the zombies had come, because sometimes life was unpredictable.
He was a deadly man and yet, even he feared the Black Captain.
“Take her in closer,” he ordered Boschee. “I want a better look at the bridge.” It was only a courtesy that he let Boschee give the orders to the crew. The Black Captain had commandeered The Courageous for himself, booting off half of Boschee’s men and making life so miserable that the others wished they’d been booted off, too.
From the outside, the catamaran looked very large, both wide as well as long. Instead of having one huge hull, it had two much smaller ones, more or less like oversized canoes, though in this case they were enclosed with cramped areas for bedrooms and storage. Between the two hulls was a platform with more rooms. Under normal circumstances, The Courageous had a crew of eighteen with men “hot bunking” it, that is, sleeping in shifts. Now there were thirty men on board. It made for cramped conditions, especially as the Black Captain had the largest cabin for himself and did not share an inch of it.
With so many men on board, most of whom did little besides carry their weapons with the full intent of killing anyone who even blinked at the Black Captain in the wrong way, steering the boat was not an easy exercise. God forbid the boom should make an aggressive move toward his royal pain in the ass, Boschee thought to himself.
Thankfully, what crew he did have left knew their stuff, and with barely a word, The Courageous pulled away from the rest of the fleet. The beauty of a catamaran was on full display. Not only was it a lovely, graceful boat, its twin hulls gave it a smooth even ride as they glided forward. At a quarter of a mile, the Black Captain raised a single finger; the sail was hauled in with naval precision.
The Captain didn’t seem to notice. He had a huge pair of binoculars trained on the bridge. Other than forty or fifty junked out cars and some dangling ropes, it seemed
completely empty.
“What’s her game?” he asked, speaking to himself. Slowly, taking his time, he inspected every part of the bay that he could: Alcatraz, a bit of Angel Island, the western face of San Francisco, the grey waste of the Marin Headlands. Other than the distant Hell Quake, moored snugly up against Alcatraz, there was no sign of this queen or anyone else for that matter.
Boschee was startled as the Black Captain handed him the binoculars and said, “Find the trap. It’s there somewhere, I know it.”
“Yes, sir,” Boschee answered, with just a touch of unease. He had heard all the rumors and had read the Intel briefings concerning the Queen, and although he was certain her supposed genius was greatly exaggerated, he too was sure there was a trap just waiting to be sprung. But he couldn’t find it. He scanned every inch of the bay and it looked deserted, ready for the taking.
“Maybe she’s left,” he suggested.
The Captain turned his dark eyes on Boschee. “Just left? She heard we were coming and ran away but left the Hell Quake just sitting there as a gift? Is that what you’re saying? And all these flags.” He gestured toward the bridge and then towards the city. There were black flags emblazoned with a shining silver crown flying, not just from the bridge but also from practically every building in sight. “No, she’s here, Bosch. Trust me on that. But what’s her game?”
Boschee gave the most obvious answer, “I bet she’s lying in wait, hoping we come storming into the bay.” He glanced once more at the six-lane bridge. Because of their low angle, he could only see the near edge of it. There could be a thousand men hidden up there, each with a pile of bowling ball-sized rocks. It would only take two or three good hits to sink a boat. He could picture his beloved Courageous taking a beating as they tried to get past the bridge: her sails ripped up, her elegant mast broken like a twig, rigging in a mess everywhere, and seawater gushing in from half a dozen holes.
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 16