“Donna!” She heard the desperation in her own voice and could only hope no one else had.
Donna was pale as milk as she knelt, afraid that the queen was changing her mind about sending her ashore. The older woman was deathly afraid of the Black Captain and she didn’t want to get within a hundred miles of Grays Harbor.
“No more kneeling,” Jillybean said, helping Donna to her feet. “At least for now. I think a hug might be more appropriate.” Donna had never been hugged by the Queen before and her return hug was so wooden it was like hugging a manikin. “Tell Rebecca to string the chains beneath the bridge again,” Jillybean whispered into her ear. “Also fortify the approaches to it on both ends. And post lookouts up the coast. You have to be ready.”
Jillybean’s words were so soft they tickled Donna’s ear, but she understood the need. She had heard the rumors as well and knew that sound carried. “Ready for what?” she asked through a plastic smile, her lips barely moving.
“In case I lose.”
Donna went so stiff that she was almost in full rigor mortis. “You can’t lose!” she hissed. “Don’t even think that. We don’t have enough men to defend ourselves.”
There were only a couple of hundred people left of fighting age in the bay area and most were women who had rarely been called on before all this started to kill anything greater than sea bass in a bucket. But that didn’t matter. Jillybean knew that if she lost, someone would have to make a stand somewhere.
“Rachel has learned my lessons,” Jillybean said, quickly. “And we still have the Guardians. I want you to go to them. Do whatever it takes but get them here. It’s the only way.” She kissed Donna fiercely on the cheek and then broke away. “I’m going to miss you,” she said, loudly with a bright smile on her face. “Be well.”
Donna looked dazed as she made her way to the back of the boat where a small dinghy was bouncing up and down in time with the choppy water.
Behind Jillybean’s smile, her teeth were clenched so hard she feared they might shatter. With a final wave, she turned from Donna and was immediately the cold queen again. She had to be cold as ice. She couldn’t let the cracks show. The very act of admitting there was a chance she could lose had thinned the wall between herself and Eve. The dark girl inside her seemed huge, as if she were wearing Jillybean as an ill-fitting suit.
Without looking anyone in the eye, she went to her cabin, checked her traps quickly and then, without thinking about the consequences, swallowed a dozen Zyprexa.
You’re going to kill us! Eve screamed. Puke that up, damn it. Puke it all up, right now!
Jillybean actually started to gag. She gripped the side of her dresser with both hands and clamped her mouth shut, thinking she would swallow her own puke if she had…
“Are you okay?” Troy asked. He was standing in the doorway, disgust turning his full lips ugly.
The need to vomit blinked away as Eve retreated. Jillybean took a moment to work a smile into place. “Just a little sea-sickness. Nothing to worry about.”
“I just saw you take half that bottle of pills. I don’t know a lot about medicine, but I’m pretty sure that’s bad.”
As she deftly pocketed the bottle, she saw how yellow her skin was; it would only get worse. “Don’t be worried. They’re half-strength and I just need them until we reach Grays Harbor, something we’ll never do by standing around.” She hated being seen as weak as much as she hated being weak. She thrust her chin out and stormed past him. In seconds, she was back on deck barking commands over the wind and the hum of the rigging. Under her supervision, everything moved like clockwork and by mid-afternoon the resupply was complete.
The Queen, salt wind tugging at her black coat, watched Alcatraz dwindle as her fleet hove out to sea. “We go to win an empire,” she said, speaking to no one in particular. Louder she said to her crew, “If any of you have any doubts that we will win, jump into the ocean and swim back to Alcatraz.”
She waited, knowing that none of her crew was brave enough to display that much cowardice. As she waited, she gazed down at a zombie struggling against the side of the ship. It looked ancient and alien. The seawater was dissolving its flesh, turning it slightly pale white in some spots and translucent in others.
“I mean it,” she said. “Now is the time to back out. I want only real men with me. I want only warriors. So run now because if you fail in the face of the enemy, I will kill you. I will shoot you down and give your bodies to the likes of them to feast on.” She nodded to the struggling zombie. No one said a word and no one budged. “Good. We will soon be feasting in Grays Harbor and the world will be ours.”
Don’t you mean it’ll be mine? Eve asked. Even with the pills turning her blood toxic, she was there, quieter than before, but still there.
Jillybean went below to check her traps and as usual Troy came with her, stopping outside her door even though she had left it open. “It’s unseemly for a man to enter the room of a woman un-chaperoned,” he explained.
“Don’t worry about that, I have the entire fleet watching me.” She smiled, her teeth looking extra white compared to her yellowing skin. “Trust me, the open door wasn’t an invitation. I am committed to another.” He raised an eyebrow as if he couldn’t tell if she were lying or not. She wasn’t. She still loved Stu Currans, though sometimes she had to wonder why. It had been an impossible relationship to begin with and now it was even more so. She loved him as much he hated her.
She sighed. “I’m committed to the Black Captain. We will dance and play our parts, and one of us will die.”
Troy’s uncertain look did not waver. He did not know what to make of her and the more he got to know her, the less he understood. “I’ll pray that it isn’t you.”
“Good, that’ll save me the trouble,” she said, without meaning any disrespect. Her plate was already full and on top of Eve and mutinies and assassinations, she had to make her plans to deal with the Black Captain and his army.
“But not his navy,” she said to herself, already so immersed in thought that she didn’t notice Troy shut her door. “No, he won’t risk the remains of his navy, at least not at first, not unless he can spring a trap.” She sat back on her bed and pictured Grays Harbor with its odd bulges and its flat sandy islands.
The mouth of the harbor was narrow, only a mile or so across and there was a chance her fleet could come under fire by soldiers on either side. A withering crossfire would tear her ships apart. What was left would be easy pickings from converging Corsair fleets lurking to the north and south, just inside the harbor.
“But I have drones and thermal scopes,” she murmured. These would give her advanced warning if the Black Captain tried something so obvious. She wished he would. It would be simple to land troops further up shore and bottle her enemies on flat, open ground. “And how would he respond?” Her mind worked over the problems seeing point—counterpoint. Thrust—parry—riposte—feint—lunge.
Jillybean saw the battle laid out before her. Or rather, she saw a hundred battles laid out, each one slightly different depending on the variables introduced. Did the Corsairs have mines? Torpedoes? Had they figured out how to make smoke generators? If so, would they float them? Or would they deliver them in the form of aerial bombardment? Speaking of bombardment, did they have actual artillery? Did they have allies, such as the mountain bandits? Or would they use the dead? Would they leave a skeleton crew to defend their lair and operate a second force outside their lines, able to attack wherever and whenever they wanted? Would they use their slaves as human shields? Would his assassins wait until the heat of battle to shoot her in the back? Or would she drink from the wrong cup and fall over dead in minutes?
The Black Captain was the toughest adversary she had ever faced. The Azael had relied almost completely on numbers and a willingness to use the undead; the Believers had been slaves to their false religion and their false prophet. They had been willing to do atrocious things in his name. The River King had his fantastic wealth
and all the hired guns money could buy. They all had lacked imagination.
On the other hand, the Captain had been methodical in his accumulation of power. He had out-thought all his opponents except for Jillybean and she was sure he was going to use every trick at his disposal to stop her. She feared his ability to adapt and manipulate the most. It opened up so many possibilities that she could not commit to any one exact plan of attack. When asked by Leney how they should form for battle, she always answered, “It depends,” and didn’t bother explaining any of her hundreds of: “If he does this then we do that” scenarios.
She told him that the situation was fluid while in truth it was far more than simply fluid. It was a mental maze, woven in deceit, trickery, and a thousand dead ends, each one ending with her bleeding body at his feet and the annihilation of her people.
The stress on her was terrific and it only got worse when they found Wet-neck dead the next afternoon. He was cold and stiff sitting in his usual spot near the wheel. He’d been there since noon and no one knew when he had gone from being a man to a corpse. He’d been poisoned, drinking from a canteen that matched the Queen’s new one.
Eve was close to bursting through her drug-induced haze at that point until Jillybean took another small handful of pills. Her liver damage was becoming more pronounced every second and her eyes were so yellow they were almost green by then. She barely managed to hold on mentally and physically by reminding herself that she had to win.
And she knew she could win. She had an immense advantage over the Black Captain; she was on the offensive. She had the initiative and could strike wherever and whenever she pleased.
That was the plan at least, as she drew up to Grays Harbor and turned her fleet due east. It was growing late in the afternoon and the sky was building black in the west, blotting out the sunset and giving everything a queer yellow tinge. Above, gulls wheeled endlessly, screeching with piercing voices. Jillybean wanted to shoot them.
“Hold on, you’re almost done,” she said, forgetting to whisper. “Okay, Leney send up the drones.” Leney gave the okay and three drones buzzed away from the fleet. He was personally operating the center drone and at first flew by line of sight. When it became too small to see, he looked down at his screen.
It took ten minutes for them to fly to shore. Everyone on deck crowded around the drone pilots eager to see, and that included the lookouts.
“Nothing on the north peninsula,” one of the pilots said. “Not even like a guard or nothing.”
“Same here on the south. We could waltz right in.”
“If there ain’t no mines,” Leney reminded them. “Which I don’t see.” He had his drone hovering over the mouth of the harbor, going back and forth, looking for any shadow that might indicate a mine was anchored just under the surface. “Nope noth…what the hell?” His head popped up and he stared east. “That’s a sail. There’s a boat right there.”
Everyone turned to stare east where, sure enough, a small white sail could be seen just slipping into the harbor mouth. “Leney, find out whose ship that is,” Jillybean ordered. “Everyone else get to your battle stations.”
There was a mad scramble as the men stumbled over each other. Although half the crew belonged below deck, no one wanted to miss what was happening, which resulted in a throng of men choking the stairs down to the galley.
“She’s not ours,” Leney said. “I mean she’s not a Corsair boat. It’s got to be from up the coast. Maybe a Vancouver boat or a…”
“It’s the Calypso,” Jillybean said, feeling a wave of nausea strike her. She knew the boat just like she knew the handsome golden-haired captain steering right into danger. “Make all sail! We have to stop her.”
This was not in any plan she had foreseen. It was reckless and stupid, and she had absolutely no choice.
“What about the rest of the fleet?” Leney asked. “Are we just going to go charging in blind?”
“No. Have them move to within half a mile of the harbor.” She grabbed a set of binoculars from the forward lookout and stared into the harbor. From what she could see, it was empty. “Leney get your drones up high. We need to see where the Corsair fleet is.”
The drone whipped upwards, while the Queen’s Revenge sprinted madly towards the harbor. With the wind on her beam, she was a cheetah and soon she was racing down on the Calypso which putzed along small and pokey.
“I don’t see the fleet anywhere,” Leney said. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, I see one ship it’s breaking from the Markham shoal. She’s black alright. Anyone know her?”
No one knew. The light was failing quickly and the boat was still too far away. But it wouldn’t be for long.
The Queen’s Revenge was gaining quickly on the Calypso which was cutting southwest towards the Corsair ship, something that didn’t make a lick of sense. “Mike, what are you doing?” Jillybean whispered. Louder, she ordered, “Get between them, Leney. I don’t care if you have to ram both of them. And get me a rifle squad up here.”
“What about a torpedo?” Leney asked.
“Yes,” Jillybean said. “Get one ready. We’re going to blow that boat out of the water.”
Chapter 53
“You shouldn’t make yourself such a target,” Troy Holt murmured in Jillybean’s ear. He got a mouthful of her swirling hair for his trouble as she spun. It was good advice. She was a perfect target, standing boldly at the bow of the Queen’s Revenge as it knifed into the Black Captain’s harbor. Death could come from any direction. Spitting out the hair, he whispered, “At least move to the back of the boat where it’s safer.”
“Marginally safer,” she replied. She knew the dangers she faced: snipers lurking along the shore surrounding them, at least one assassin hiding among her crew, someone on the Corsair boat could take a shot at her. None of that seemed to matter.
Her entire focus was on the Calypso. The presence of the little sailboat was completely baffling. Why here? Why now? Why was she angling towards the Corsair ship? These were not insignificant questions. The fate of the invasion and the lives of thousands of people rested on the answers.
And for once, Jillybean didn’t have the answers.
Logic no longer seemed to be the determining factor in anyone’s actions. The Corsairs should have been running away, the Calypso should have been coming about, and the Queen’s Revenge should never have gone blundering into the harbor in the first place.
The sailors around her had their guess: “It’s a trap. Don’t she sees it’s a trap? They got mines and flying bombs and…”
Although she was able to ignore her whispering crew, it was harder to ignore the whispers growing in her head. Eve wanted to send the torpedo off as fast as possible. Ernest wanted to gut crew members one at a time until they found the assassin. Ipes wanted her to turn around and get out of there before something bad happened. And Sadie wanted to rescue her friends on the Calypso no matter what the consequences were. These were the loudest whispers, but there were more.
“Shut up, all of you!” Jillybean snapped, causing her whispering crew to glance back and forth at each other. For a few moments there was only the sound of the wind singing along the lines and the wash of water along the hull, then the little girl who kept to the shadows giggled, making Jillybean’s skin crawl. “She’s not real,” she told herself, only to hear the giggle again, louder, and more clearly as if it was coming from right behind her. She refused to look back.
Angrily, she jammed the binoculars against her eyes. The lone Corsair ship jumped into blurry view. Fiddling with the magnification didn’t help. The day was dying and the sun’s light was quickly fading. It was a smallish boat with rakish lines. On board were three shadowy figures.
“Only three?” The low number made as little sense as anything else. She swung the glasses toward the Calypso which, because of its white sails and hull, came easily into focus. There were four people on the small deck. Mike, with his broad shoulders and golden hair streaming in the wind, was easily
recognized. She could only guess at the other three. One was almost certainly Jenn, but which one, Jillybean couldn’t tell. The other two were mere figures, though she guessed that they were women by their size.
The sound of grunting and cursing from behind caused Jillybean to turn, her hand reaching for her pistol. It was a trio of men bringing a torpedo to the front. It weighed no more than eighty pounds and yet the men were sweating in fear.
“You can relax,” she told them. “It won’t explode and I think you may want to hold on for a moment anyway. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re doing roughly twelve knots.” Their blank faces suggested they didn’t understand the significance of this. “That’s just about the same speed as the torpedo, soooo…”
“We’d get there at the same time?” one asked.
Jillybean touched her pert nose with her pointer finger. “Bingo. And that would be bad. Let’s have the riflemen instead. I’d like the ship intact, if possible.” In her mind she pictured a quick thunder of rifle fire and a few screams before she snatched up both boats. Reality was far different. Her riflemen had to contend with the failing light, the wind picking up, and the water growing choppy; they missed with remarkable consistency.
Almost as if they want to miss, Ernest suggested. Almost as if they don’t want to kill some of their own.
Eve agreed. They’re spies, Jillybean. Kill one and make an example of him. It’s the only way to make them respect us.
“No,” Jillybean said, hitting the side of her head with the heel of her hand. She hurried up to them, her boots thudding on the deck. “What the hell? Shoot straight for goodness…” She jerked as blood blasted from the head of one her men. One moment he was fine, and the next, his head just exploded. A second man spasmed and spun, showing off a gapping hole where his right eye had been. A third suddenly began to gag as a burning hunk of lead tore through his throat.
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 52