by James Axler
“Well?” Kinnison demanded, the second the door closed.
“I lost the fleet,” Brandon reported, taking a chair. Damn, he was tired.
“Ten ships? How is that possible?
“And Cold Harbor ville was on fire the last time I saw it,” Brandon added wearily. “Probably burned to the ground by now.”
“Tell me everything,” Kinnison demanded, and the sec men explained in detail—the fight, the pirates, the outlanders, the mesa with the predark machinery.
“So you chilled the outlanders and smashed the device,” Kinnison said. It wasn’t a question.
“The machine for sure, my lord,” Brandon answered truthfully. “If we don’t control it, no science must be allowed in the islands.”
“Correct.”
“However, I didn’t see the dead bodies of those outlanders. It’s possible they survived the fall. I doubt it highly, but you never know.”
Going behind his desk, Kinnison slumped in a massive chair built just for his bulk. “At least that machine is gone,” he grunted, running his hands along the smooth polished top of the desk. “Unfortunately, we have also lost our main source of flash.”
The baron rubbed the corner of his mouth, his hand coming away stained with red. “Were there any young girls with forked tongues involved in this?”
The lieutenant managed to keep a neutral face. How the hell did the fat bastard know about her?
“No, my lord,” Brandon lied, “there weren’t.”
“Good,” Kinnison said, grimacing. “If you run across any, chill them on sight. No rape, no torture, just a round in the head. Understood?”
“Yes, my lord. It shall be done.”
“I have a son,” Kinnison said from out of nowhere.
The comment startled Brandon, but he smiled broadly. “My congratulations, my lord. What’s his name?”
“Corbet.”
“Good name. May he rule for a hundred years!”
“Of course,” Kinnison said, waving that away. “With the loss of the flash, this places me in an awkward situation with the western islands. The villes are fighting each other again, and if I refuse them both black powder, I could appear weak. It is possible the fools might join forces to attack us.”
“The fact you have an heir now will slow them down some,” Brandon replied, leaning forward in his chair.
“Not by much,” Kinnison shot back, then slammed his bloody hand onto the desk. “Shitfire, I have no choice. Go the quartermaster and have him fill a hundred barrels with our best black powder, the stuff reserved for the castle defense.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then fill another hundred with charcoal dust mixed with some fireplace ashes. That should look enough like black powder to pass a brief inspection.”
Brandon raised an eyebrow. “Sir? We’re going to sell each ville a combination of good and bad?”
“No. We’re selling the weakest villes the good powder, and that bastard O’Keefe the crap. The little villes will slaughter O’Keefe, removing a possible danger to the security of my son. Leaving only the small villes without the resources or sec men to ever challenge Maturo Island. Two problems solved, and we reap double the profit from one sale.”
“It will be done,” Brandon stated firmly. “I can refit my boat in a week and will personally escort the cargo to its destinations.”
“I can send some other PT captain to handle that,” the baron growled, glancing out the window at the bright sunny day. Lighting flashed in the clouds too far away to hear the rumble of its thunder. “Its more important to know if Cold Harbor ville is still standing. If it is gone, I’ll take it over. If it stands, then my Firebirds will level the ville, and again I take it over as abandoned.”
“And what about those outlanders?”
“I want them brought before me, dead or alive,” he growled. “And I prefer alive. The dead can’t be forced to talk. How did they get here from the mainland? Where did they find those rapidfire weapons? There is much I need to know.”
Brandon saluted. “I shall take care of it myself, my lord.”
“No need for that,” Kinnison said smoothly as he drew a pistol from under the desk. “Somebody else will handle the task, not you, fool. The last time we talked, I said that failure to secure the flash meant your death. Did you doubt my word?”
“B-but my lord!” Brandon managed to stammer, rising from his chair. “I have faithfully served you for fifteen seasons! And I brought you the news of the pirate fleet and the outlanders! Surely, that is much more important than one small mistake. I can reclaim Cold Harbor ville and bring you the bodies of the outlanders. Give me a chance! Just one chance, is all I ask!”
“No more chances,” the baron said, and fired twice. The man toppled over clutching his belly, the bones of a shattered knee showing white through the tattered flesh of his leg. Blood pumped freely from an open artery, and Brandon did what he could to hold the flow back with his bare hands.
A heartbeat later, the door was slammed aside and sec men rushed into the room with their blasters drawn. But they paused, uncertain what to do next at the scene of their baron with a blaster and their commander lying in a pool of his own blood.
“Baron, are you okay?” a corporal asked.
“Take that prick to the playroom,” Kinnison commanded, rubbing the sores on his hand. They were stinging badly from the discharge of the weapon. “And keep him alive while you peel off his skin. Let’s see if it fits me better than him.”
The leader of the man paled, but saluted. “At once, my lord!”
“No, please!” Brandon wailed, terror distorting his features. “Baron, don’t do this!”
Kinnison made no reply, his blaster held steady on the crippled man.
As the advancing guards converged, Brandon tried to draw his blaster, and a corporal slammed the wooden stock of his longblaster into the officer’s hand, shattering the bones. The weapon dropped from limp fingers, and Brandon made a mad dash for the window. But the troopers tackled him to the floor before he got ten paces, and ruthlessly beat the officer until he stopped resisting. Bloody and battered, the weeping lieutenant was hauled away, leaving a trail of blood on the freshly scrubbed floor.
As the door closed, cutting off the former sec man’s anguished cries, Kinnison tucked away his blaster and reclined in the cushioned chair to debate whom he should send to find the nameless outlanders and bring them in for questioning.
Chapter Five
A week later, Ryan and the others stood on the balcony of the predark lighthouse. Their clothes were freshly washed and boots polished. Their backpacks bulged with MRE packs and their pouches were jammed with ammo. The past few days had been mostly spent sleeping, and rubbing lotion into wounds. There had been no sign of the lord baron’s PT boats, and while the crabs rallied several times to try to gain entrance through the fireplace, they never made it in alive.
It was a clear, crisp day, the heat of the sun perfectly balancing the coolness of the water. A breeze carried a faint smell of living plants and flowers. Down on the beach, the crabs moved about on the shattered remains of their fallen dead, the broken shells picked clean of anything edible with ruthless efficiency. The wind moaned through the rustling weeds, and the waves gently crashed on the rocky shore. Ryan felt this had to have been what it was like before humanity was born and the world was clean and untouched. Raw. But everything changed, and humanity was now here to stay. If they could survive skydark, then nothing could get rid of Man. The world belonged to them, not the muties.
“Time,” Krysty asked, hunching her shoulders. The straps of her pack would have cut into her shoulders if not for the thick bearskin coat.
“Pretty soon,” Ryan announced, checking his wrist chron.
The plan was simple, as all good plans were. Create a diversion, then wade across the bay to the next island during low tide.
“Good,” Mildred said, her wild hair tied back with a strip of cloth. “I hate long waits.”<
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“That’s not what you said last night,” J.B. whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
Mildred hushed the man with a glance, then smiled and bumped him with her hip.
Ignoring the lovers, Ryan watched the waves on the beach, carefully noting they were cresting lower each time. Soon the tide would be going out, and that was when they would make their move.
“Now,” he announced, clicking off the safety on the handle of the M-16, ready to cut loose on full-auto.
The seven chattering assault rifles sprayed a hellstorm of 5.56 mm death, and the crabs died in droves, chewed to pieces by the streams of lead. Finishing a clip, Ryan dropped it from the breech and slammed in a fresh magazine. They each had one spare, all of the live ammo they could salvage from the stacks and crates. A lot of the M-16 rounds had been bad, not corroded, but simply weak from the long decades. But J.B. had been able to cook up some guncotton and mixed it with the old cordite to get the blasters working with half charges. The rounds had just barely enough recoil to operate the feeder mechanism of the weapons, and misfires were happening constantly.
Soon they had a clear zone at the base of the tower, and J.B. rappelled down first to tether the rope and to stand guard. His M-16 sputtered flame at anything that moved, more than once chewing up weeds, but catching several blues trying to sneak closer under cover of the foliage. In a matter of minutes, the companions were on the ground, spraying lead in every direction. Crabs exploded constantly, their green blood splattering over the rocks and sand dunes.
“Shit,” Jak cursed, working the bolt to free another jam. “Ammo stinks!”
“Better than throwing rocks,” Dean retorted, burping the rapidfire at the thickest cluster of the muties. Seeking protection, the crabs frantically scuttled for the shoreline, and the companions concentrated their weapons in that direction to drive the muties inland and away from the water.
“I’m out,” Krysty reported, dropping the rapidfire and drawing her S&W revolver.
“Same here,” Doc rumbled.
“I hope this works,” Mildred muttered, firing her rapidfire in a long burst only to have to abruptly stop. She cast away the dead blaster and pulled her ZKR in a smooth draw.
“Damn well better,” Ryan growled. “Light the fuse.”
Grabbing a thin string dangling among the climbing ropes, J.B. shielded the end with his body and used a butane cig lighter to start it burning. The long fuse sputtered and popped for a while, started to hiss steadily and climb toward the balcony, then out of sight.
“Thirty seconds!” Ryan shouted, and splashed into the shoals, heading for the next island.
In ragged formation, the rest of the companions followed the man, wading into the shallow water. Walking was tricky with the outgoing tide pulling at their legs, the sand underfoot shifting as it followed the flow. They stayed to the right to avoid a deep ravine spotted days ago by Krysty while she mapped the crossing, then they jogged to the left to bypass another.
But the moment they went into the shoals, the crabs rushed for the beach. The companions started to fire their blasters, while Dean and Jak maintained cover fire with the M-16s until the clips became exhausted. The rapidfires went into the drink, and their regular blasters were hauled into view.
Suddenly, the big blue appeared and started clicking its pincers, directing the other muties. Jak fired his Magnum pistol, the blast rolling over the waves, and the slug scored a glancing blow off the shell of the huge mutie.
“Fucking windage,” the teen cursed, turning to try to catch the others. They were halfway across the bay by now, and had to watch their footing to avoid another ravine full of coral.
“Any second now,” Ryan warned, dropping the exhausted M-16 and pulling out the SIG-Sauer. The blaster glistened with oil, the trigger and most of the internal springs brand-new, taken from another handcannon of similar design.
“Make sure to cover your ears and keep your mouths open,” Mildred warned, kneeling in the damp sand. “That way the concussion won’t make you deaf.”
The ground shook, and the glass Fresnel lens shattered into a million pieces as flames shot out of the lighthouse. The whole peninsula seemed to shake as the base of the tower broke apart from the titanic explosion. The structure lifted into the air on a fireball, then came crashing down, catching most of the advancing crabs under its descending tonnage of granite blocks. The muties were obliterated, the big blue screaming for only a moment before it was gone, smashed flat by the crumbling building.
Then the secondary charges went off. The concussion hit the companions, slamming them into the water as the ground under the lighthouse formed a geyser of boiling flame that licked high into the sky, the six thousand gallons of jellied diesel fuel igniting into a fireball of ungodly proportions. The chimney bricks shot into the sky, and started to fall back to earth randomly.
Soaked to the skin once more, the companions tried to dodge the falling bricks and not fall into one of the coral beds, when suddenly a group of the large blue crabs crawled menacingly into view from over the sand dune. The creatures flicked their eye stalks around the scene of destruction, stared hatefully at the two-legs, then started forward at a remarkable pace.
Ryan raised his longblaster and fired a fast four times. One stopped dead, but the others only flinched as the 7.62 mm rounds glanced off their hard shells. Fireblast! This wasn’t part of the plan.
“On your ten!” the Deathlands warrior shouted, working the bolt and firing again.
The companions cut loose with their assorted collection of blasters, and two more of the giant crabs fell dead before reaching the beach. But the remaining three made it safely into the shallow waters and disappeared from sight.
Ryan fired rapidly into the water, but the rounds were visibly deflected. He would have to get a lot closer before the bullets could cause any damage. Fuck that.
“Run for it,” J.B. ordered, pulling out a gren and flipping away the handle. He pulled the pin and cast the charge between them and the oncoming crabs. While the gren was still in the air, he turned and waded after the others at his best speed.
Glancing over a shoulder, Mildred saw the gren splash into the bay, closely followed by a thunderous explosion of fire, water and coral. As the noise and smoke drifted away, she saw no taint of green in the area to mark a kill.
“No blood!” Mildred warned, and fired a few rounds into the sea before turning and running for the next island with the others. Only a few more yards to go until she was safe on the beach.
The water level dropped from her waist to her knees, the rocky sea bottom changing to sand, and the physician struggled through the loose material, every step more difficult than the previous one. Several of the others had reached the shore and were watching the sea. Suddenly, J.B. gasped and fired the shotgun from the hip.
No! The woman braced herself to be torn apart by the barrage of fléchettes. There was a sharp crack to her left and something screamed loudly. She turned with her blaster in hand, and saw one of the giant blues only a yard away. It was missing a pincer, a torrent of green blood pumping from the shattered end of its limb.
Burbling and hissing, the mutie turned on her and raised both scorpion tails high for a strike. Mildred leveled her weapon and fired once directly into its segmented mouth. The crab jerked back and trembled all over, then collapsed into the water and went still.
“Good shot,” J.B. said, offering a hand and pulling her to dry land.
“Can’t have an armored throat,” she panted, giving a weak smile. “The .38 probably rattled around inside its thick shell, chewing up organs and doing ten times the damage of a gren.”
“I’ll remember that,” Jak snorted, thumbing fresh rounds into his .357 Magnum pistol. These were also partial loads with only half of the usual power. The lower recoil was throwing off his aim.
The strident boom of the LeMat shook the beach as Doc triggered a round at a huge crab rushing out of the water. Five feet wide, the mutie stood over
three-feet tall, its scorpion tails lashing wildly about as it headed for the companions, then moved around as if trying to dodged their bullets.
Bizarre. Sensing a trap, Ryan spun with his longblaster spitting fire. Caught by surprise, the crab right behind him recoiled from the attack. Ryan blew off an eye stalk, then blocked a crushing blow from a pincer as large as a shovel.
J.B. stroked his shotgun’s trigger, and the fléchettes removed the mutie’s face. Unexpectedly blind, the creature went mad, lashing about with its good pincer and both tails in any direction. Stepping into range, Ryan aimed the Steyr and fired into its pulped mouth. The beast reared on its hind legs and stayed that way, frozen in death.
Caught alone, the remaining crab started for the safety of the ocean and was easily chilled by the combined firepower of the companions’ blasters.
“Anybody hurt?” Ryan demanded, shaking his blaster to get rid of the excess water. Droplets flew from the weapon as he jacked the slide to keep the breech clean. Good thing it had been freshly oiled.
“No blood showing,” Mildred announced in relief.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got six more of these to cross before reaching the main island.”
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon by the time the companions reached their goal, the big island with the ville. By now the tide was coming in again, and forced them away during the last crossing. The group was barely able to wade to shore before missing the island entirely and getting swept out to sea.
On the secluded beach, the companions poured salt water from their boots and pulled on dry clothes from their backpacks. There were no footprints on the beach nor any other sign of the place being inhabited, but then, they were a good distance from the ville.
Leaving the beach, Ryan led the group into the jungle and headed westward. It was cool in the lush greenery, but the heavy tangle of vines made for slow travel. Monkeys scampered in the treetops, screaming at the presence of the humans, which sent off the flocks of birds, and soon the jungle was filled with the cacophony of animal screams. Hacking through a cluster of vines with his panga, Ryan fought the urge to chill the noisy bastards. So much for sneaking in close on the quiet. Anybody not deaf knew that strangers were nearby.