by James Axler
“Indeed, my dear friend.”
Two dozen stickie men were already on the promenade. The great wag ramp at the prow was a blind spot for blasterfire, and the stickie men had gone straight up it with ease. They had brought ropes, and pirates were scaling up behind them. Ryan had noticed the relative scarcity of blasters and ammo in Canada. Most he had seen were home-rolled or predark hunting weapons. It had left Canadians with a predilection for firing their blasters dry and then going for their hatchets and war clubs in a way that would have been no stranger to Canada’s original settlers and aboriginals nearly four hundred years previous.
It also meant that nearly any battle in Canada almost instantly turned into a brawl.
Thorpe’s stickie men had hair and wore clothes, but they shared many traits with their purebred brethren. They didn’t seem to feel wounds, their thick rubbery skin made wounding them difficult in the first place and they were unnaturally strong. Worst of all they were beyond fearless. They had the gift of emptiness.
A stickie had a crewman’s head vised in its suckered hands and was smashing it against the side of the LAV, ignoring two crewmen chopping and stabbing into its back with hatchets and knives. The easiest way to chill a stickie was to shoot it in the head.
They fought barehanded, and appeared to prefer suckering people’s throats and ripping them out or firmly attaching themselves and repeatedly smashing their opponents into things between bites.
Ryan dropped the hammer on his SIG and popped the stickie man’s head like a cyst. The crewman slid down the side of the LAV with his head crushed like an egg. Several stickies turned their empty black eyes on Ryan. “One-eye! One-eye!” they hooted.
Someone had given the stickie men a preferred target list.
Several came charging in.
Boo Blacktree wasn’t having it. “Nope!”
He’d sensed his bow wasn’t going to help. He burst into the brawl with his three feet of paddle-shaped club and swung it like an ax. He sheared off a stickie man’s jaw with a single blow. He also stepped into Ryan’s line of fire. The forward promenade was a swirling, eddying mass of combat.
“Fireblast…” Ryan holstered his SIG, relying on his panga and slaughtering knife.
“My friend!” Doc shouted. “I am with you!”
Ryan waded in.
He chopped his panga into the neck of a stickie man. The hybrid turned, hooting and thrusting out its suckered hands. Ryan dropped beneath its clutches and ripped his slaughtering knife across its hamstrings. It flopped down and immediately did a sit-up. A sucking hand slapped for Ryan’s head and mostly caught hair.
Doc’s point pierced the stickie man’s shark-black left eye and slid into its brain. “Up! Up! Up!” Doc urged.
Ryan took an extra heartbeat. He left his panga in the stickie man’s neck for later retrieval and his hand closed around the hard wood handle of a war club shaped like a snake with an apple in its mouth. Right where the stem would be someone had inset a heavy pyramid of sharpened steel. He rolled up to one knee. A hooting stickie man came in clutching and scrabbling with is puckered paws. The one-eyed man cracked his club across its kneecaps. The stickie man tumbled legs-reversed to the deck. Ryan stood and his new war club rose over his head. The ironwood crunched into stickie man’s skull. Bone splintered as Ryan ripped his weapon free. Stickie men charged.
It was ideal for Doc, and he deftly skewered one offender and then another each through the left eye. Despite their inhuman toughness and love of fire and explosions, stickies, whole or hybrid had no defense against forcibly being lobotomized.
Ryan took the war club in both hands and stepped in shoulder to shoulder with Doc. He was reminded of what he had learned of samurai swords by the Keepers of the Sun. The right hand pushed. The left hand pulled, and you let the weight of the weapon do the work. Ryan swung his club. It had a lot of end weight to work with. The spike punched through a stickie man’s left eye but rather than skewering, the club mass tore away temple and socket. Pulped eye and spilled brain spattered.
The LAV was under attack.
A stickie man was halfway down the commander’s hatch and a pirate was crouched on top of the turret trying to figure out the machine blaster. Ryan ran forward. He put one foot on the rear tire, grabbed a cleat in one hand and vaulted to the top deck of the LAV. The pirate took up his empty blaster and swung it like a club. Ryan was faster. His own club blurred in breaking the bones of both hands the man had wrapped around the barrel. He dropped the empty blaster, screaming. Ryan swung his club into the side of the pirate’s head. The spike pierced the man’s eardrum and the club ball followed halfway through his head. Ryan shoved the corpse aside. The stickie man’s suckered feet were anchored onto the turret top as it shoved its torso down the hatch. Ryan swung his club twice and broke both of its feet. He grabbed it by its pirate vest and hauled it up out of the hatch.
The stickie man came up hooting and screeching, holding J.B.’s hat in one hand and his Uzi in the other. Ryan gave it the ball-headed club right between the legs. It dropped J.B.’s favorite accessories and fell vomiting and clutching itself. Ryan swung his club like a polo mallet and sent the stickie man tumbling off the top of the LAV.
“J.B.!” Ryan shouted. “J.B.!”
The Armorer’s head popped up with his glasses askew and blood on his face. Ryan jammed J.B.’s fedora back on his dome. “Keep this on your head! Keep your head on underneath it!”
J.B. nodded as Ryan shoved the Uzi back into his hands. “Right, I— Ryan!”
Ryan spun and looked to where J.B. was staring.
The stickie men were in the wheelhouse.
One’s feet disappeared as it snaked through the ripped-open armored shutters on one of the windows. Three more were tearing their way through. Ryan pulled the pin holding the LAV’s machine blaster in its mount and snapped out the left bipod leg. He held the machine blaster on his and began hosing down the armored sides of the wheelhouse. Ryan cut down one stickie man and then another with head shots. He shouted over his own thunder, “Smythe! Blacktree! The bridge!”
The first mate and the scout broke from the battle and ran up the stairs. Ryan cut aside a third stickie man and set down the smoking autoblaster. “Keep her hot, J.B.!”
Ryan jumped down, club in hand as J.B. slapped in a fresh belt of ammo. The one-eyed man ripped his panga free and flew up the blood-spattered steel stairs to the upper deck. Pirates rushed screaming toward him along the starboard gangway waving tomahawks and cleavers. Ryan dropped the bludgeon and blade and pulled his SIG. He dropped to a knee and took the blaster in both hands and began chilling pirates. The gangway became a slaughter chute. There was no retreat. The pirates knew victory was their only option. Ryan fired his blaster dry. He rose and slapped a fresh mag into his smoking, empty SIG and released the slide on a fresh round. Leaving the gangway littered with the dead, he went through the broken door to the bridge, blaster and club in hand.
The wheelhouse was a slaughterhouse. Blood was everywhere. Mr. Smythe clutched his face and neck. He was a bloody mess but nothing was spurting. Three stickie men lay dead on the deck. Boo Blacktree was putting the finishing touches on a twitching fourth with repeated club blows.
McKenzie lay in front of the wheel of his ship with his throat torn open to the sky. Ryan picked up the captain’s fallen sword and pressed it into the first mate’s bloody hand. “Smythe.”
The man blinked.
“Captain,” Ryan tried again, “your ship is adrift. You’re being boarded.”
Smythe blinked past the blood curtaining down his face.
“Captain Smythe! The Queen!” Ryan shouted.
Smythe blinked again, but this time he was blinking away the fog of battle and shock. “The Queen.” He stared at the bloody blade in his hand. “Right you are, Mr. Cawdor. The Qu
een.”
Doc appeared in the doorway. “Is all… Oh no…”
“Captain! Steer your ship! Keep us off the rocks! Doc!” Ryan pointed his club at the shattered shutter in front of the wheel. “No one comes through the window! Blacktree! No one comes through that door except me!”
Captain Smythe took the wheel; Doc took station to defend him; Blacktree formed the new door to the bridge. Ryan went back out into battle. The forward promenade was clear, but the men defending it had been decimated. He stepped over his blasted dead on the gangway and moved toward the catapult deck. He encountered Hunk Poncet. The baron’s son carried a rifleman’s hawk with a hatchet bit on one side and a hammer peen on the other. Kagan, Kosha and Quinn each savaged the limb of a fallen stickie man while Hunk pounded the hybrid like a nail.
“Hunk! With me!”
“Ryan!” Hunk and his poodles snapped to bloodthirsty attention.
“Reload.”
“What? Oh!” Hunk reached into leather pouch on his belt and began stuffing loose rounds into the single mag of his iron Glock on the fly. The last pirates on the catapult promenade were dead or screaming as they were butchered. Ryan shouted as he took the stairs down to the vehicle deck four at a time.
The tide of the battle had turned. The pirates had overwhelming numbers and nearly achieved complete surprise. LAVs, electric fences and siege engines had been of no avail and the stickie men had almost taken the bridge, but the Queen still had an advantage. Yoann Toulalan was hording his tech, but he passed out Diefenbunker blasters like party favors. The pirates had boarded the Queen in the teeth of massed full autofire from all sides. Pirates and coldhearts were desperately defending themselves in scattered pockets in the narrow lanes among the convoy vehicles, and it was going very badly for them. Convoy and crew were taking the time to reload and blast the invaders down. The dead, dying and mutilated lay everywhere. The deck was an ocean of gore that rivaled the worm attack. Ryan watched as a screaming pirate was hoisted into the air, impaled on three pikes and dumped into the lake. The water around the Queen was a churning red froth of blood, bodies and lampreys.
Hunk and the men from up top whooped and hurled themselves into the fray.
Ryan clicked his tactical radio and rounded the horn. “Krysty.”
“I’m with Mildred, Cyrielle and Yoann. We’re fine.”
“Doc.”
“The bridge is secure, my dear Ryan,” Doc came back. “Captain Smythe stands before the wheel.”
“J.B.”
“Forward promenade secure. Few pirates getting back in their canoes.” Ryan heard the LAV’s machine blaster rattle off a burst. “Ain’t going nowhere,” the Armorer concluded.
“Jak.”
“Vehicle deck. Aft. Mopping up.”
His people were safe for the moment. Ryan allowed himself the luxury of a few long deep breaths. He considered the bloody, ball-headed war club in his hand. He wasn’t about to retire his panga, but he figured he’d hold on to the brutal bludgeon for a little while longer.
Blunt trauma seemed to be the one thing that most problems in Canada responded to.
“Ryan!” Hunk was calling out in happy bloodlust.
The one-eyed man checked the loads in his SIG, hefted his club and waded into the mopping-up action.
Chapter Twenty
Mission Island
Thorpe lowered his spyglass. “Well that coulda gone better.” The Queen was steaming toward the channel between the two islands, and she was leaving a carpet of drifting pirate canoes like dead leaves in her wake.
Mace lowered his own ancient binoculars. “Coulda been worse, and we whittled ’em down some.”
“Whittled ’em down some?” Thorpe was incredulous. “The canoes got annihilated! And most of the men on ’em were mine! I’d say we’ve lost nearly half our forces!”
“Could be worse.” Mace smiled his ugly smile as thunder rolled in the dark clouds advancing over Mount McKay. “Could be raining.”
Thorpe just shook his head. He knew with great certainty that once again Mace knew something he didn’t.
Tag was watching another direction. A pair of motorcycles were zipping across the rusting span of the Mission Bridge from the mainland. Thorpe frowned as the riders came in. Tag had recruited Grizz and Shorty for a job without telling Thorpe about it, and Grizz apparently because despite his woolly, mountain-man appearance he could read and write. They’d been gone about an hour and were just rolling back in now.
Thorpe scowled as they came to halt and turned their engines off. The two chillers were grinning like idiots. The violent giant and the violent runt seemed to be getting along famously. The pirate and the sec man’s hands and clothing were spattered in red as if they had just got through slaughtering a hog. They were both grinning like schoolboys and stopping just short of slapping each other on the back.
“You make the Trans-Canada?” Tag asked.
“Oh yeah, Tag!” Shorty was delighted with his mission. “It weren’t but a few klicks west!”
“How bad are the rads you figure?”
“Not bad, I’d say,” Grizz said. “You got trees and sass growing. Nothing too twisted, but you can tell by the crater and the damage you probably wouldn’t want to stay long or set down roots.”
“You find a good spot on the road?”
“Oh yeah, Tag!” Shorty enthused. “They only got one route before the Trans-Can splits! They gotta see it!”
Tag nodded. “How’s it look?”
Grizz was quite proud of his work. “Bigger’n life. Can’t miss it.”
“Shorty?”
“Aw, rads Tag!” Shorty grinned sheepishly. “I can’t read and even I think it’s good!”
Tag nodded in satisfaction and then at Mace. “Step one and two.”
Mace nodded back.
Thorpe looked warily at the mutant. “Tag, what’s goin’ on?”
Tag pulled his hood over his stubbled head and covered his blaster as the first thin mists of rain began to drizzle down. “Just a little psychological warfare.”
Thorpe struggled to control his anger. He was already tired of Tag and his two-loonie words. “Mace?”
“Yeah, Thorpe?”
“What’s cycle-logical warfare?”
Mace smiled smugly and raised his optics again. Despite his reputation for brutality and terror tactics, Mace Henning was quite possibly the greatest psych-fighter in Canada, except maybe for Tag. Mace watched the Queen approach the pier. He happily muttered one of his favorite mantras of doom upon his enemies.
“Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun…”
THE BEAMS GIRDING the forward ramp hit the pier with a soggy thud. The capstans clanked as the ramp lowered. Crewmen leaped onto the raddled concrete pier with ropes to make the loading zone fast. They had wasted no time. Smythe had brought the Queen into Thunder Bay even while his men were dumping stripped pirate and coldheart bodies over the side, piling captured weapons and gear, and the dead and dying were attended to. No one questioned Smythe’s battlefield ascendancy to captain. No one questioned his choice of Mr. Timms as first mate. Half of the convoy vehicles were painted with blood, but they had been prepped and ready to go before the attack. Ryan peered at the rad counter pinned to his coat. The needle wasn’t spiking, but it was getting a bit twitchy.
Captain Smythe eased himself down the steps. His neck and half his face was swathed in bloody bandages. He wore McKenzie’s hat. The former captain’s ancient, abbreviated officer’s sword hung from his belt.
Everyone in the convoy was making ready to go. Ryan leaned against the rail with his arm around Krysty and drank what he knew would be his last sleeve of spruce beer for a while. He spoke softly to Smythe. “Mace and Thorpe knew exactly where to in
tercept us.”
Smythe glared at Ryan with his unbandaged eye. Ryan had more practice at it and won the stare down easily. Smythe looked away toward the overgrown, fallen skeleton of Thunder Bay. “I know it.”
Six walked up and nodded at the captain. “The convoy is ready, Captain. Yoann has been made comfortable in the med wag. At the loadmaster’s signal we will debark. Yoann says he looks forward to seeing you in the spring.”
Captain Smythe clearly never expected to see Yoann Toulalan in this life again. Nevertheless he managed a defiant smile through his bandages. “You just tell that rad-blasted son of a gaudy slut I’ll be looking for him on the Ottawa come spring, and he had better not keep me waiting.”
One corner of Six’s mouth twitched upward. “I will give him your fondest affections.”
Ryan’s right hand rested on his SIG. “Where were you, Six?”
“What?”
Ryan’s eye narrowed. He didn’t like repeating himself. “Asked where you were during the fight.”
Six cocked his head incredulously. “Why do you ask! I was in the boiler room! I saw stickie men going for it! I went for them!”
Smythe flinched involuntarily. His engineers took a lot of training and were hard to replace. “And? Mr. Guilfoyle? Mr. Bryan?”
“Dead.”
Smythe took it like a blow. “Miss Tamara!”
Tamara jerked to attention. “Dead, Captain! Mr. Timms had me put Jake and Bors on it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me!”
“I— Mr. Timms just told me to take care of it!”
Smythe closed his good eye and put his hand on a bulkhead to feel the throb of his boilers.
Ryan’s voice was chilling cold. “What were you doing in my wag on my radio last night, Six?”
Six literally swelled with outrage. “I already told you.”
Smythe’s gaze snapped back and forth between the stare down. “What are you talking about?”
Ryan kept his eye on Six. “Guilfoyle and Bryan, chilled how, Tamara?”