Shadow Fortress

by James Axler

  Stepping into the street, the three crouched low as a squad of armed men ran by the arena, closely followed by a horse-drawn cart packed with straw and carrying a ship’s cannon. As the wag rattled around a corner, a lone man scurried into view, his arms full of smoked joints of meat. Leaning against the iron grille, Jak flipped his arm and the man across the street cried out, clutching the knife sticking out of his thigh.

  “Don’t chill me!” he pleaded, crawling away on the seat of his pants, a hand raised to ward off the expected blow.

  From his ragged clothing and demeanor, Krysty could tell he was no sailor or guard. His hands were rough, the knuckles swollen and she made a guess.

  “Carpenter,” the redhead stated, aiming her blaster.

  “Ship’s c-carpenter,” he stammered, inching away. “Look, that meat is mine. A gift from a friend. I’m no thief!”

  Not a good one, anyway. “Talk fast,” Krysty ordered, cocking her piece. “Where is the baron’s house?”

  Badly frightened, the man pointed with a shaky finger. “Two blocks over and up a flight of stairs. Big place, lots of guards.”

  The two women exchanged glances. That description matched the fortress they had seen on the low hill from the window of the gaudy house.

  Stiffly bending, Jak shoved the man’s head against the side of the brick house, knocking him unconscious. Yanking off the knotted rope the carpenter was using as a belt, the teen gave it to Mildred, who tied a tourniquet around the man’s leg. When she was done, he retrieved the blade. The Cajun had no objections to chilling an enemy, but the terrified worker was no threat to the companions. Even in the Death-lands, there were lines that couldn’t be crossed if a man considered himself a man, and not a coldheart. The differences were small, but to the companions extremely important.

  Just then, the sound of marching boots filled the street and the companions slipped into a tavern to hide. More troops passed by, the sailors loading their longblasters on the run. Clothing was disheveled, faces stubbly with beard, and it was painfully clear the men had been roused from their sleep.

  “The battle must be going bad,” Krysty said, peeking out the wooden shutters covering the windows, “if they’re calling in the reserve troops already.”

  “Firebirds against cannons isn’t a fight,” Mildred stated, watching from the front door. “That’s just a slaughter.”

  Jak could only mumble in agreement, his mouth stuffed with food from the abandoned plates on the score of deserted tables.

  As the sailors hurried out of sight, the companions followed in their wake, heading toward the baron’s fortress. Everywhere, people were running about in panic, and several homes had been broken into and looted, clothing and such scattered in the cobblestone streets.

  Smoke was rising from something burning in the distance. Cannons roared as Firebirds streaked across the sky, flintlocks discharging continuously. Half a dozen times, the companions were forced to hide rather than engage the squads of armed pirates, the sailors only seeming to travel in groups of ten or more. Then they found several chilled officers partially buried under the bricks and timbers of exploded buildings, the mashed gun racks and beds in the wreckage indicating this had been a barracks. Unfortunately, the longblasters of the officers were bent and useless, but their pepper boxes and shotguns were undamaged. The companions took the weapons, and the next group of sailors was ruthlessly cut to ribbons by the triple shotgun blasts, then the bleeding bodies looted of all the ammo they could carry.

  Locating the flight of stairs, the women and teenager slowed and proceeded carefully up the hill. Cresting the ridge, they found a low stone wall dotted with cannons. Warily, they crept forward, the reloaded shotguns sweeping for targets. Even if most of the guards had gone to defend the ville, some would always stay at their posts. Fanatics and fools were the essential backbone of any baron’s regime.

  “There it is!” Mildred cried out when the fortress came into sight. A sandbag wall surrounded the structure on the ground, the rooftop foamy with coils of barbed wire. Beyond the fortress rose the escarpment of the towering mesa, the ruins on top lost in the haze of sheer distance.

  Oddly, no guards were in sight, and that made the companions suspicious enough to drop and take cover. Had everybody gone to the ville walls, or were folks already fleeing the ville to escape into the deadly jungle? Rad craters dotted the island, and without a rad counter, any journey through the dense foliage would end quickly in screaming agony.

  Jak covered the women as they moved from the wall of cannons toward the front door of the somber fortress, when without warning, a strident explosion ripped the structure apart, tongues of flame extending from every window and doorway. The concussion brutally slammed the companions to the paved street, and as they watched with ringing ears, a growing fire-ball lifted the building and split it apart, throwing the broken debris and flaming corpses far and wide across the turbulent sky.

  “Mother Gaia, no,” Krysty whispered, staring in horror at the wide expanse of smoky destruction.

  Suddenly, a machine gun stuttered from behind, and the three spun in time to see the missing men gun down a group of pirates taking aim at them from behind the low wall. Krysty and Mildred burst into grins as Ryan and the others joined them, brief smiles playing across their dirty faces.

  “Glad to see you alive, lover,” Ryan said, taking the redhead in his arms. They fiercely hugged, savoring the sheer existence of each other, then reluctantly parted.

  “Same here,” Krysty replied, her animated hair relaxing around her shoulders.

  “Here, compliments of Baron Withers,” he said, passing over her gun belt, blaster and a heavy box of ammo.

  “Thanks,” she said, tossing away the flintlock pistol and quickly checking the load in her revolver.

  Meanwhile, Mildred pulled J.B. close and nearly suffocated the wiry man with a long fierce kiss.

  “You okay?” he asked in concern over the unusual display. The woman was normally much more reserved. Something was wrong.

  “Tell you later,” she replied softly, accepting her ZKR target pistol and a full box of live rounds.

  Gratefully, Dean dropped his load of backpacks to the road, and they all took their bundles of possessions without checking the contents. There was no time for that now. Even with his ankle throbbing, Jak felt better with the pack in place. He always seemed slightly off balance with the backpack missing.

  “What happened to the fort?” Krysty asked.

  “Thought we could use a diversion,” J.B. explained, shifting his grip on the heavy rapidfire. “After the alarm sounded, the guards rushed out to man the walls, so we raided the armory and lit a couple of fuses.”

  “Chaos is the shield of the lost,” Doc rumbled, passing out grens. Each companion got four of the AP charges, and shoved them away into pockets and backpacks.

  Just then, a crackle of blasterfire peppered the stone wall, and J.B. answered with a barrage of lead from the Thompson, the rounds punching a line of holes along the side of a house. Then Doc emptied his Webley, and a pirate appeared in a second-floor window to fall to his death.

  “Nice shot,” Dean complimented him.

  “A necessity,” Doc rumbled, cracking open the top of the Webley and flipping it over to pour out the shells. Tossing them away, the spent brass musically rang on the cobblestoned street as he started thumbing in fresh bullets. As much as the old man hated to admit it, the Webley was a better blaster in every way to the LeMat. More accurate, loaded faster, lighter, less recoil, hit harder, everything. Perhaps his adamantine decision to keep the ancient weapon was due for some serious thought.

  Through the scope of the Steyr, Ryan swept the ville below them, checking the combat encircling the wall. Hummers raked the defenders with machine guns, the pirates replying with flintlocks, cannons and crossbows. But every time the sailors formed a group to concentrate their weapons fire, the sec men launched a Firebird and dozens of sailors were aced.

  “Glassm
an and Mitchum,” Krysty said, scowling at the faraway combat. Then she noticed the granite bridge was gone, and past the valley PT boats patrolled in the shallows off the beach.

  “This is no recce or raid,” she stated, “but a full invasion.”

  “With enough weapons to get the job done,” Ryan agreed grimly, lowering the Steyr. “They came to get us, and found the pirates instead.”

  “Prob think we pirates,” Jak stated, checking his Colt Python. The revolver was in fine shape, clean and oiled. The cartridges looked old, but there was no sign of corrosion. And for the first time in months, he had a full complement of ammo.

  “Most definitely, my friend,” Mildred said, frowning. “I think the sec men want the pirates first, but we’re definitely number two on their hit list.”

  “I do not know who to root for,” Doc muttered. “Glassman or the pirates.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Krysty said unhappily. “Both sides want us aced.”

  “Better take this, Millie,” J.B. said, easing the tension on the arming bolt and passing over the bulky Thompson. “I can’t operate it and my Uzi at the same time.”

  She holstered her revolver. “Chambered for .22 rounds?” the physician asked, accepting the heavy rapidfire. She was surprised by its weight. The thing had to be ten pounds, maybe more.

  “Nope, .45APC,” he replied, and began pulling rectangular ammo clips from his munitions bag.

  “Can’t imagine we’ll need this to get out of here,” she said, stuffing the extra clips into her pockets.

  “Madam, we are going to require a blessed miracle,” Doc said in a deadly serious tone.

  Just then a Firebird launched from the Hummers, and arched over the wall to streak directly toward the companions.

  “Incoming!” Ryan shouted, both of the Webley revolvers blazing away.

  Chapter Ten

  The companions cut loose as the rocket did a lazy spiral over the tumultuous pirate ville. Then it angled sharply and dived almost straight down to disappear behind a brick building. There immediately followed a tremendous explosion.

  “Wasn’t after us,” Ryan said, lowering his blasters. A warm draft from the detonation washing over the companions, carrying the smell of sulfur and roasted flesh.

  “Next time it will be,” Krysty stated, watching the mushroom-shaped cloud rise into the sky. Any hot explosion could cause a similar cloud, but the shape still disturbed her slightly.

  Across the settlement, the blasterfire continued unabated from the wall, but the cannons were sounding more sporadically. Probably running low on black powder. The nameless ville had been there for decades and never been attacked. The locals simply weren’t prepared for a major battle against sec men armed with rapidfires and in war wags.

  Screaming and pointing at the cloud, a group of terrified people ran out of the alleyway, clutching their meager possessions. The companions let them pass unmolested until some armed pirates ran into view. Both J.B. and Mildred dropped into a firing stance, and the Uzi and Thompson chattered briefly, mowing the men down.

  Something slammed into the stone wall in front of them, and Dean spotted a sec man on a rooftop hastily reloading his longblaster. The boy raised the Weatherby, braced for the recoil and fired. The crack of the Nitro Express made heads turn across the ville, and it was a full second before the sniper flipped over backward. Without expression, Dean worked the bolt, levering in a fresh cartridge. At short range the massive rounds went straight through a man like a rock through glass, with about the same results.

  Just then, a rickety cart loaded with barrels of black powder rattled by on the cobblestoned street, the driver cursing and whipping the sweaty horses. Dean raised the Weatherby, but Ryan stopped him from firing.

  “We want the pirates to have the ammo,” he explained. “The longer they fight with the sec men, the fewer can come after us.”

  “Gotcha,” he replied, easing the pressure on the hair trigger.

  “Mayhap it would be appropriate to terminate our visit,” Doc rumbled, discharging the LeMat, then the Webley at pirates coming their way. One man dived for cover with a badly wounded arm, while the other went flat and stayed there.

  “The mesa is only twenty miles or so to the west,” Mildred suggested, fighting to clear a jammed round. Over near the arena, she noted that plumes of smoke were rising from a two-story building with wooden shutters. Good.

  Pulling out his scope, J.B. swept the entire ville.

  “There’s a gate in the western wall,” he said, collapsing the brass telescope. “Only a few guards.”

  “Horse cart came from over there,” Krysty said, making a gesture with her smoking revolver.

  Choosing his target, Ryan chilled an officer on the wall, but ignored the troopers. The more confusion in the ranks, the longer the battle would last.

  “Okay, let’s grab some transport,” Ryan said, deliberately not looking at Jak. “Twenty miles is a long way to run.”

  Firing one blaster, then the other, the albino teen said nothing, but seemed vastly relieved.

  “Let’s go,” the Deathlands warrior shouted over the growing din, and the companions took off at a run into a side street.

  STRIDING ALONG the wide top of the limestone wall that sealed off the valley, Peter Tongamorlena shouted orders to the sailors under his command. The air tasted of black-powder fumes, and aced pirates lay everywhere, pools of their blood making the limestone slippery to walk on. Most he knew by name, shipmates and fellow officers, but every corpse built a rage for revenge against the invaders. How the fuck had the lord baron’s sec men gotten past the rad craters alive? Nobody else had succeeded in getting off the beach in the past fifty years!

  “Keeping firing!” Tongamorlena bellowed, discharging his blaster at the racing Hummers darting about in the jungle. Incredibly, he scored a hit, but the .44 miniball only ricocheted off the armored side of the military wag. The lord baron’s sec men answered with a burst from their giant rapidfire blaster, the spray of .50 caliber slugs raking the wall and its handful of defenders.

  Designed to withstand bombardments from rogue ships in the bay, the stout limestone blocks were holding against the Firebirds and grens. But the steel-plated front gate was beginning to weaken, the cold iron hinges sagging under the weight of the door. Rocks on the brick barbicon had been dropped to hinder the advance of the Hummers. And the tactic worked, but only for a while. The grens of the sec men were slowly clearing a path for the deadly war wags.

  As Tongamorlena quickly reloaded, the pirates struck back with flintlocks and crossbows, the wounded reloading for the healthy. Then the few remaining cannons roared in a ragged volley, sending a hellstorm of seashells and rocks into the jungle. More than once a hidden sec man screamed and fell to the ground horribly mutilated from the razor-sharp barrage. But there always seemed to be more, and nothing stopped the Hummers. Even the tires seemed resistant to lead and arrows.

  Behind him, chaos filled the streets of the ville, buildings burning out of control and the civilians looting like hungry jackals. The triple-damn cowards. There only seemed to be a couple of those PT boats in the bay, and the pirates outnumbered the attackers twenty to one. But those accursed Firebirds made the difference, even when they missed. The fallout from the explosions threw flaming wreckage about and spread the damage across HomePort ville.

  Taking a pepper box from an arm without a body, Tongamorlena tracked the passage of a Hummer and squeezed the trigger. The forty-five tiny chambers of the honeycomb barrel simultaneously fired, the swarm of iron needles spraying the military wag. A sec man cried out, his face a bloody ruin.

  In response, a sec man stepped from the bushes holding a fat tube and launched a Firebird. The rocket streaked past the limestone so low that its fiery exhaust washed over several men, igniting their clothes and hair. Shrieking, the pirates slapped at their crackling bodies, one going over the side, and the other dashing madly about until aced by one of his own men.

  “Cannons,
fire!” Tongamorlena roared, limping along the top of the barrier.

  “Sir, we can’t!” a dirty-faced ensign growled. A red-stained rag was wrapped around his neck, one eye partially closed from a cluster of burn blisters. “The metal is too fuckin’ hot. The powder will blow if we try a reload.”

  “Then wash them with water first!” Tongamorlena bellowed.

  The man spread his arms in reply, indicating the dozen empty buckets scattered on the wall.

  Scorch! They were going to lose the ville because of water?

  “We got any Firebirds?” Tongamorlena demanded.

  The gunner scowled. “We’ve stolen dozens over the years,” he answered, “but they won’t launch at Kinnison’s troops. Got no fucking idea why, but they just won’t do it. It’s like the bastard things were alive!”

  A fifty chattered, and both men ducked for a moment.

  “Okay, then launch them at the sky. When the rockets run out of powder, they’ll rain down on the attackers from above.”

  “Yeah, might work,” the gunner said grudgingly. “But the wind could shift to our side of the wall and—”

  “Obey!” Tongamorlena raged, brandishing the spent pepper box.

  The gunner saluted and limped away, shouting orders. He only got a few yards before a .50 cal cut the man in two.

  Bellowing in anger, Tongamorlena aimed and pulled the trigger on the pepper box before remembering it was empty. Scorch! It was the only weapon they had that was harming the sec men, and it took half an hour to reload! With a hundred of these, Kinnison’s troops would be feeding the fish by now. But there were only about twenty in the whole ville, and each had been used already.

  Furious, the officer tossed the useless blaster away, and grabbed a flintlock and ammo bag from a headless man. As much as the officer hated to admit such a thing, it was starting to appear that they were going to lose this battle. Best be prepared for street fighting. Although with Baron Withers’s fortress gone, he had no idea where the pirates could retreat to for a last stand. Maybe the slave quarters, or the armory? No, that was also gone.