by James Axler
As the drummers started a beat, the eager sec men and women spit into their sore hands, and began rowing with renewed vigor, each making plans on how to capture the cowardly outlanders alive, and unharmed.
IT WAS LATE in the evening by the time the companions returned to the beached aircraft carrier. The huge green mountain of ivy was ridiculously easy to locate, standing out from the bare granite hills like an emerald sitting in a pile of fresh dung.
For the moment, everybody was on deck, the firebox of the engine packed full with dry wood, and the boiler filled with clean water from the lake. The balcony they had jumped off was now fully exposed from their blaster fight with the droids, the rusty metal jutting out like the hand of a beggar. Ryan mentally counted the steps they had climbed up, doing some rough calculations to try to figure out where the engine room should be located.
Strange enough, the plan had come to the one-eyed man when the Warhammer had gotten caught on the sandbar. The nose of the boat was mired in the muck, yet the back end was still deep in the water. It occurred to him that the Harrington was in the exact same position, albeit on a much larger scale. If he could just breach the hull of the aircraft carrier, then the lake would flood the engine room, drowning the sec droids, and destroying the ancient machinery of the power plants, removing any chance of a possible repair. Without electricity, the mat-trans unit was just an oddly shaped room.
Trying to imagine the metal hidden under the thick growth of plants, Ryan realized that the trick would be to correctly guess the location of the massive engines, without actually going inside the vessel.
“Gotta be near rear,” Jak stated confidently, looking away from the shore and toward the lake. “When we there, deck had tilt, so end must be deep.”
“True, but we want to breach the hull,” J.B. countered, removing his fedora to smooth down his hair, and then replace the hat. “Not just blow a hole in a bile pump, or into a room full of war comps.”
“Those would be protected by watertight bulkheads,” Krysty added, standing with her arms crossed.
Holding on to the gunwale tightly, Liana said nothing, intimidated by the sheer, staggering size of the predark warship. She had serious trouble wrapping her thoughts around the fact that Green Mountain was actually a machine. She had seen war wags, and steamships before, some of them as large as a log cabin, but this was mind-boggling. And it was made of metal. More metal than there was in the private treasure of every baron on the whole damn world!
“All right, head for the stern!” Ryan shouted, pulling out his panga. “That’s our best chance.”
“Aye, aye, skipper!” Doc called out from the wheelhouse, working the throttle and wheel.
Gently moving against the tide, the huffing boat eased around the imposing bulk of the carrier until reaching the far end. Reaching out with the panga, Ryan slashed at the vines and saw only darkness beyond. “Take her in,” he shouted, sheathing the blade. “Dead slow!”
Throttling down the steam engine, Doc eased the boat through the hanging curtain of vines to slip into the thick gloom.
Lighting torches, the companions studied the rusty hull curving above their heads, the metal sloping downward to form a sort of grotto. The water below them was choked with kelp, but dimly seen was a large plane of metal. It was mostly eaten through with corrosion, but still identifiable as a propeller blade.
Using that as his starting point, Ryan backtracked along the hull until reaching a relatively flat section. From his days with the Trader, building and repairing war wags, the man knew that any angle in armor would be the strongest point. His best bet would be a nice straight section like this. Having explored the wrecks of warships before, he knew the hull would be thicker than the reach of his arm, but the implo gren had a range of fifteen feet. More than enough. Hopefully.
Choosing a strong hanging vine, Ryan lashed the gren in place, so that it was dangling just above the choppy surface of the cold lake. Wrapping a fuse around the arming lever, Ryan made sure it was good and tight, then checked again before pulling out the ring and activating the device. When the fuse burned through, the lever would drop off and the gren would detonate.
“Get ready to leave,” Ryan ordered, leaning far over the gunwale and extending the torch. With a sputter, the fuse ignited and sizzled away into the morass of damp vines, moving a lot faster than he had thought it could.
“Haul ass!” Ryan bellowed, tossing the torch.
Hearing the urgent tone in the man’s voice, Doc gave no reply and simply shoved the throttle all the way forward. Sluggishly, the engine revved in power, and the steamboat began to chug faster as it moved away from the imposing bulk of the Harrington.
Charging through the hanging vines, the boat emerged into the pale moonlight. Heading straight into the waves, Doc held as steady a course as possible, their speed steadily building.
“I just hope this works,” J.B. muttered as the boat crested a swell, to slam back down hard. “That was my only implo gren.”
“It’ll work,” Ryan declared, cracking his knuckles. “And if not, we can always—”
Just then, light flashed from inside the hanging cascade of flowering vines, followed by a bizarre sucking noise that almost sounded like a recording of an explosion played in reverse. Instantly, a powerful wind grabbed the Warhammer, trying to haul the boat and companions backward, even as the entire lake seemed to rush toward the carrier.
Squinting through the wild spray, the companions saw that a large section of the vines was gone. The bare metal hull of the carrier was in plain sight, along with a fifteen-foot-wide hole in the hull, most of the wide gap situated under the surface. Swirling and gurgling, the lake rushed in through the breach. Success!
“Done and done.” Mildred smiled in grim satisfaction, her beaded plaits whipping around. “I just hope the damn ship doesn’t have any—”
A blinding flash of blue came from within the Harrington and what strongly resembled a lightning bolt began to crackle over the entire length of the warship. Thousands of flowery vines immediately withered and dropped away to reveal the great ship for the world to see.
“—electrical capacitors,” the woman finished lamely as megavolts of raw power snapped and crackled over the warship, then expanded across the onrushing lake, leaping from wave to wave in a burning spiderweb.
At the terrible sight, the companions braced for death, but the static discharge faded into dancing sparks just before reaching their boat. Easing his stance, Ryan allowed himself a sigh of relief, when from deep within the Harrington there came a loud bang and a hard quiver shook the entire vessel, pieces of the hull breaking off to tumble into the shallows with countless small splashes.
Spinning, J.B. charged down the stairs into the engine room.
“Fireblast, we have cookoff!” Ryan cursed, dashing to the stern of the boat. Drawing his panga, the one-eyed man slashed at the ropes holding the two honeycombs into place. “Lighten the damn boat! Throw away everything we don’t need!”
“Gaia, protect us all,” Krysty said in a hoarse whisper as she sprinted for the heavy arbalest.
The withered vines remaining on the Harrington now burst into flames like a million fuses, the burning network of electrical sparks and fire racing across the carrier to expose a score of crumbled jet fighters on the buckled flight deck. Immediately, the smashed planes exploded into fireballs, then the defensive blasters along the sides of the carrier began to detonate, ripping away from the hull and still shooting as they tumbled through the turbulent night. A forward section of the hull erupted, throwing up a huge geyser of earth, stones and trees. As if in reply, a stuttering salvo of rockets from within the carrier streaked into the starry sky, spiraling randomly.
“Just wanted to flood the bastard ship, not remove it from the face of the Deathlands!” Ryan shouted. “If I’d know this was gonna happen—” Another explosion ripped apart the night, the blast sounding even louder than the others, and the boat was tossed about on the shaking
lake, foaming waves crashing over the gunwale to soak the people. “I’d have used a longer fragging fuse,” he finished in a bellow.
Just then, the megaton cargo of ammunition began snapping in a nonstop discharge.
“Ahoy, the engine room,” Doc shouted into the speaking tube. “We’ve got cookoff! Give me everything you’ve got, my friend.”
There was no reply from the other end of the tube, but a few moments later, the steam engine took on a more powerful tone, and the boat began to noticeably move faster.
“What’s a cookoff?” Liana asked, clearly confused. Then she suddenly understood. The word had to mean exactly what it said. Theo had told her that the cargo bay of the carrier was full of live brass and grens, tons of the stuff, and now the metal hull was alive with a lightning bolt, hotter than the forge of any blacksmith, which obviously meant that at any second…
In a deafening explosion that brightened the night, the aircraft carrier violently detonated, spraying out a lambent halo of debris as it lifted from the shore in a thunderous column of smoke and roiling flame.
Dropping to the deck, the companions stayed as low as possible as a hail of shrapnel hammered the wooden hull like machine-gun rounds. Several times some metal object punched through the gunwale to slam into the deck, quivering and radiating waves of heat.
Holding on to the wheel for dear life, Doc glanced backward through the maelstrom to see the aircraft carrier fall back onto the shore in a triphammer crash that visibly shook the nearby foothills, starting an avalanche. Shattering into several large sections, the multilevel chunks of wreckage tumbled loosely across the landscape, smashing aside pine trees, and leaving behind a smoking contrail of buckled doors, twisted ladders, cookware, rifles, cables, tables and a host of severely smashed sec droids.
“Hallelujah,” Doc muttered, maintaining his death-grip on the wheel and forcing the boat to stay on course. With every passing tick of the clock, the companions got farther away from the crash site until it thankfully dropped below the horizon.
“All clear,” Doc shouted, swaying to the motion of the rough waves.
Prying themselves off the littered deck, the battered companions painfully rose to inspect the damage to their stolen boat. The Warhammer had a dozen splintery holes in the gunwale and deck of various sizes, but the hull still seemed intact and relatively seaworthy.
Unexpectedly, an aced squid bobbed to the surface of the lake, tentacles flopping listlessly. Next came an assortment of various fish, then hundreds of them. In short order, the surface of the lake was packed solid with a sargasso of aced aquatic life of every description: fish, turtles, snakes, crabs, beavers, seals and a few things with multiple heads for which nobody had a name.
“After that, do you think the gateway is still working?” Krysty joked, trying not to smile. Every inch of her animated hair throbbed, and her stomach felt as though she had been rammed by a speeding Hummer.
“Not a chance,” Ryan stated. “That ship is triple aced.”
“Good.”
Coming up the stairs, J.B. anxiously looked over the companions. “Everybody okay?” he asked, straightening his glasses, only to yank them off and dry the wet lenses on a handkerchief.
“We’re fine, John,” Mildred replied, massaging the back of her neck. “Although, I feel like I’ve spent a year inside a cement mixer.”
“Okay, the break is over, back to work!” Ryan commanded, slapping his hands to get their attention. “J.B., join Doc in the wheelhouse and make sure we stay on the shortest course to Michigan. I’ll be down in the engine room chopping wood. Liana, rustle up some hot food. The rest of you check the hull for any leaks. We’ve got a bastard long trip to Michigan, and there’s no more land from here onward.”
“Easy pie,” Jak stated confidently, then frowned and turned with a hand tight on the butt of his blaster.
Softly in the distance, there came the muffled sounds of war drums.
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Watching the craggy shoreline for any sign of the jacked steamboat, the barons and sec men heard the staggering array of explosions long before the longboats crested a rocky escarpment and saw that Green Mountain was gone.
In its place, thick gray smoke covered the shore like a wool blanket, and huge pieces of what looked like machinery were strewed around amid crushed trees and churned dirt, the irregular slabs of metal oddly steaming in the cool night air.
“By the lost gods, look at all that steel!” a sec man cried, pausing in his rowing. “There must be…be…” But the man had no word greater than pounds in his mind.
“All of it!” a sec woman shouted. “That is all of the fragging steel on the whole fragging world!”
“Metal! Unlimited metal!” a drummer whispered, lowering his stick, unable to believe the incredible sight.
Then the excited teenager recoiled in horror as a wave washed a score of limp fish onto the pebbled beach. The shore was covered with the shiny corpses, thousands of fish of every possible description lay on the shore for as far as could be seen in the moonlight. Several foxes and bears had already come out of the woods to start feasting on the incredible bounty. There was even a flapjack dangling from a broken tree branch, dipping a translucent limb down to the beach to snag creatures and haul them back into the recess of some dark arboreal lair.
Hesitantly, a sec woman started to reach for a fat salmon, but then quickly pulled her hand back. Strange deaths were always trouble. Tons of hot metal and waves of aced fish. Had the sea been nuked? Were they all now going to die of the Red Cough from rad poisoning?
“Baron, how is this possible?” a corporal asked, licking dry lips, the lucky talisman of dried human tongue clutched tight in a gloved hand.
“Them,” Baron Wainwright answered, her hand white on the prow of the longboat. “I don’t know how, much less why, but this was done by the outlanders. I can feel it in my bones.”
“And there they are,” Baron Griffin announced, pointing toward the south.
Quickly, everybody turned. On the horizon, a thin trickle of smoke rose into the silvery light of the moon. Then it faded and was gone.
“My steamboat…” Wainwright began plaintively, then abruptly changed her tone into a strident roar. “Drummer! Give me ramming speed!”
As the musicians promptly started beating out a new tempo, a monstrous shape broke the water between the armada and their quarry, the mound of mottled flesh and tentacles soon rising high enough to actually blot out the light of the moon.
“Dark night, a kraken,” a sergeant gasped, dropping an oar to fumble for his new longblaster.
“Flee! Swim for your lives!” a sec man yelled, and dived out of the longboat to frantically head for the shore.
Standing in the prow, Baron Griffin leveled his blaster and waited until the traitor reached dry land before firing. The .38 Ruger hollowpoint round plowed into the back of the man’s head, blowing his face across the weedy grass. Already aced, the body took a single step before collapsing, red blood pumping from the ghastly wound to pool around the twitching corpse before stopping.
Not a single drop of blood ever touched the water, but the noise echoed across the lake. Greedily feasting upon the multitude of aced fish, the kraken slowly turned toward the familiar sound and gazed stupidly for a moment at the flotilla of longboats. Then in growing comprehension, the gigantic mutie started toward the hated two-legs, howling loudly as it pushed the lake out of the way.
Instantly, every sec man began wildly shooting.
“Stop firing, you feebs!” Baron Wainwright commanded, rummaging inside a sack hanging from her belt. “Do nothing! Don’t even breathe!”
As the ragged barrage slowed to a halt, Wainwright pulled a small gourd from the sack, and yanked out the cork with her teeth to pour the oily contents directly into the lake. For a long minute, nothing happened, and the kraken was almost upon them when the mutie incredibly slowed, then turned to quickly return to the deep wat
ers.
The sec men from Northpoint ville cheered, while the ones from Anchor merely stared, dumbfounded. How was this possible?
“That was the blood of a dead kraken,” Wainwright said proudly, corking the gourd once more. “We chilled one several days ago, and I saved the blood for just such an emergency. It’s the only thing on the world that makes them flee.”
“Got any more?” Griffin asked hopefully.
She smiled without humor. “Plenty.”
“Enough to get us across the sea?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Dust, too?”
“Of course.”
“Excellent,” the baron growled, hope renewed in his heart. “All right, you heard my cousin! We want ramming speed!”
“Follow the outlanders!” Wainwright shouted, brandishing the gourd. “To the end of the world, and beyond!”
With a will, the tired sec men returned to their arduous task, grimly intent upon making the outlanders pay for their misery with the only coin of the realm.
HIGH OVERHEAD, polluted clouds formed a solid roof across the world, rumbling sheet lightning flashing across the churning banks of orange and purple fumes in a never-ending barrage.
Baiting one of the upholstery needles from her med kit with a rancid piece of beef left over from an old MRE pack, Mildred found the atmospheric display oddly comforting. The closer the companions got to the mainland, the more the weather was returning to normal. The sky looked like hell, but it was familiar, and it had been well over a day since they last saw any fog, much less the aurora borealis.
Artfully casting out the makeshift fishing pole, Mildred immediately started pulling in the line by hand, jerking it occasionally to try to give the meat on the hook a semblance of life. So far, none of the companions had any luck fishing, and they were starting to get dangerously low on food. Liana had been unable to summon any snakes this far from land, and Jak had already cleaned out the bilge of rats, yielding far fewer than would have been expected on a craft this size. In another couple of days, the companions would not have anything to eat.