Only Su kept them together. Catcalls, beatings, howled threats and roared curses aside, Su was the toughest of them all. She leapt from cannon to cannon with saber drawn, risking the blue flame to throw blankets and command buckets of water for the blackened flesh of her men. Her eyes raged yellow as a caged lion, and her voice was thunder among the lightning of the cannon-flash.
But still they came. When the stained boards they threw to the side of the Abysmal were knocked aside by her sailors, the rotted specters of the Black Bess's crew crossed on mist, stepping on the surface of the bloody water and clawing their path up the iron-clad sides of Su's ship.
"Prepare to repel!" Su screamed, hacking at one of the molded corpses that clawed up toward the Abysmal's rails. Beside her, Shoi-ming spun a pair of nunchaku, twin oak sticks joined by a thick chain.
The first few sailors from the rotted vessel were aboard before the men could react, their clawed bone hands shredding flesh and tendon. Sea-spray and flesh covered the iron deck of Su's ship, and men with half-faces gibbered with glee as they tore and rent the Abysmal's men. A sailor with half a hand reached for Su, his eye sockets dripping saltwater and putrid mold. Choking, coughing laughter erupted from his partly-fleshed tongue as she spun her saber toward this throat. His head came off cleanly, (as clean as anything on that Godforsaken eve), but the torso continued to claw its way toward her.
Shoi-ming's kick shattered another one's knee, watching the skeletal corpse tumble to the rolling deck. He flipped his nunchaku in his hand, crushing another sailor's shoulder and feeling a sickly wrench as the rotted arm came off in the chain of his weapon. His grim satisfaction in the maneuver was lost, however, when he heard the screams of cannon-fire over his head. Again, the faceless flames from the Black Bess lit the deck with their sickly flickering, and more men cried out in agony.
Red Petals Su considered briefly as she listened to the cursing shrieks of her men. No way forward; the Abysmal's engines were near to bursting already from damage and the attempt to outrun the ghost ship. She darted toward another man-shaped mass, its dripping clothes smelling of sea water and putrid flesh. With a swift kick and a howl, she flung the drowned sailor from her deck, back into the sea that had spawned him. At this speed, the Abysmal risked running aground on the already too-shallow floor of the Maze.
Su screamed in frustration. The Abysmal would have been more than a match for any ship on the ocean. Here, she was nothing but a sitting duck, taking on water through numerous holes. "Even if our cannon could hurt that black wraith," she yelled to Shoi-ming, "She'll run us aground."
Shoi nodded, tucking his nunchaku in his belt. For a moment, he looked up at the crow's nest where a dead sailor hung by the tendons in his heels. Then he looked at Su, pausing amid the carnage to offer his Captain one last salute to honor.
She nodded.
With a leap, he sprang to the rail beneath the crow's nest, and then climbed rapidly aloft. The view from the height was dizzying, and the deck spun beneath him as he rolled into the small cupola. Beneath the crow's nest, sailors fought spectral corpses, their rotting flesh peeling under knife-stabs as their hands clawed at living tissue. Su thrust herself between three skeletal enemies, kicking and swinging her saber in a mad dance of martial expertise. And ahead, the rocks loomed tall and proud, teeth waiting for their last meal.
Blue fire illuminated Shoi-ming's face for one spinning second, and then, he leaped.
Su saw the Silver Tiger arch through the air like a cannon's blast, catching upon the rigging of the other vessel with both hands, then saw it tear beneath his grip. When he fell to the deck of the cursed Bess, she lost sight of him.
"Shoi!" she snarled, jumping to the railing to see across the watery grave that separated the two vessels. Beneath her feet, another blast of cannon fire rocked the iron ship as the Abysmal returned fire once more, and the acrid smell of gunpowder and burning ghost rock filled her nostrils. The ocean, green with mist and red with blood, began to turn dark with a familiar stain.
Through the madly flickering lights of blue fire and flash, she saw Shoi, nunchaku in hand, spinning and weaving through the crew of the Black Bess like a man with fortune's favor. Their daggers sought purchase in his back, but they could not harm him. He leapt to the mast once more, swinging on a bit of broken rigging toward the rear of the ship as the crew howled for blood.
Aboard the Abysmal, one voice rang out above the others, catching Su's complete attention. "There be rocks ahoy! Rocksf It was all she could do not to be thrown overboard as her ship crashed to a shrieking halt, the sound of tearing iron and crushed metal plates filling her ears. The Abysmal turned slightly, missing the bulk of the rock but grounding its metal side firmly between two jutting pillars of granite.
Aboard the Black Bess, Shoi struck the final blow, and a howl erupted from a hundred withered throats. The Captain of the Black Bess fell, torn to pieces by the Silver Tiger's courage, and his men began to retreat to their vessel. Shoi leapt to the rail of the poop deck, preparing to attempt to make it back to the breached Abysmal, but molded hands tore at his clothing, dragging him back down.
Revenge.
"Shoi!" Su called, picking her way through broken bodies— both her own men and those long dead.
The sailors aboard the Bess tore away Shoi's nunchaku, their claws rending his own arm from the socket in a gush of red and black. Still struggling, Shoi spat in their maggot-filled eye sockets as he vanished from view in the mass of rotted specters.
Su screamed again, in anger and in concern, "Shoi!"
But it was too late. With the first touch of dawn, the Black Bess began to fade, her misted waters receding and her flames dying down aboard the Abysmal. Sailors around Su began to cheer as they saw the wraith-ship fade into the ether, confident that the danger was past.
"We've won, Su! You've beaten 'em!" One sailor clapped her back fiercely, kicking the dead body of a companion from the bloody iron deck. Su only stared into the lightening east, certain to her soul that the Black Bess would return. And with the Abysmal wounded and Shoi gone, this time she'd have them dead for sure.
"They'll be back, you fool," she cursed him, cursed the dawn. "They'll be back."
"We're aground, Capt'n," one .of the sailors called, blood caking on his cheek. "No way out."
"There's always a way, mate," Su stalked toward the cargo hold. "And we'd better find it, because if we don't get off these rocks, we're as good as dead anyway"
"Its bad, Su," was all the engineer had to say when he came to report the damage done to the iron sides of the pirate vessel. The hole that had sent the Abysmal into the Maze in the first place had opened again, and three rooms had been sealed with pitch and tar to make them sea-worthy. The rigging was shot, but it would hold back the water so long as they didn't strike a storm. Or a Maze Dragon. Three of the cannons were blackened by the spectral fire, useless and melted to the deck. Kang would be furious.
But Kang was the least of her problems.
Hours later, through strained backs and aching muscles, the crew of the Abysmal finished carrying the last of the ghost rock taken from the huge cavern and placing it at the prow of the ship. It glittered there, black and shining like coal, but with a faintly greenish hue. Su stared at it mournfully, counting it once again. A fortune in mineral lay on the sand, easily worth ten times its weight in gold.
All it took to free the Abysmal was one aimed cannon.
"There's only one way to defeat that black ship," Red Petals Su thought to herself after the crest of the wave had been ridden out. "And nobody, including me, is gonna like it." The Abysmal floated low in the water, her torn hull standing out like a dagger's wound in the back of a bleeding man. "Turn 'round!" Su commanded, pointing toward the rudder and ignoring the bloodstains that scarred the surface of the iron. "We go back to th' cavern!"
Mates stopped, frightened by the sound of her cry.
"We?" Her new first mate wasn't half the man Shoi-ming had been. Then again, he wasn't a
Silver Tiger, either.
"We turn around." Su strode toward him, her hand menacingly touching the pistol at her belt.
"We can't go back to th' cavern. That's where the Black Bess is. She'll destroy us. The Abysmal can't stand another fight like that last one—we'll all die."
The shot from Red Petals Su's revolver echoed in the Maze's high cliff walls. She kicked the body of the mate overboard with a disdainful kick, placing the revolver back in its holster with one red-nailed hand. "Mr. Quon," she hissed to a white-faced sailor nearby, "You're first mate now."
"And if anybody else don't want to come along," Su finished, turning away, "they can swim home."
***
Outside the crevice in the tall stone wall, the Abysmal limped and sputtered. It had taken her the full of the day to reach this far, and with her engine nearly dead, she wasn't likely to make it much farther.
The sun started to fall beneath the horizon even as the iron vessel came to a rocking halt outside the cave's bay. The sailors, pale-faced and frightened, stood their places, all manning their cannon or minding their rigging. As for Red Petals Su, she stood abroad the foredeck, straddling the railing and cleaning her pistol with a scrap of silk. The silver of the revolver was so clean it shone in the dying sunlight, but still she rubbed idly, not allowing her thoughts to betray her.
The new first mate had done her proud, screaming and nearly beating the men until they got the Abysmal as shipshape as it could be, given its slow tack and half-gait. Now, there was nothing left to do except wait for Su's command, and then die trying.
Su squinted up into the sunlight, counting the seconds before dark. Soon, now, she figured, and there'd be a black ship on the water. A little longer, and there'd be Hell to pay. The sailor in the crow's nest never relaxed a moment, clutching to his telescope as if it were his mama's skirts. He wasn't going to see anything, not in this little strip of water, but he didn't care.
Inch by inch, the sun sank lower and the shadows from inside the cave grew darker and darker still, spreading out like a stain on the water. At first, Su thought it was a trick of her eyes, but soon she knew the truth. The ship at the back of the cavern began to glow with faint green light, eerily rising from its grave, its body protruding from the stone wall at the back of the cavern.
"So, you want to keep th' mine?" Su smiled, her teeth sharp and her voice bitter. She lifted the pistol from her lap and pointed it toward the ship as mist began to roll down the sides of the wraith-like vessel. The Black Bess seemed to pause as it glided toward the cavern's opening, toward the open channel and the waiting, wounded Abysmal. "Well, then, Capt'n, you can have it."
"Open fire!"
The cannons roared as they exploded, hurling the last of the ghost rock toward the mine, as well as plenty of gunpowder and iron shot. Dwarfing the repeated fire of Su's pistol, the echoes of cannon reports shook the granite walls of the cavern and rocked the Abysmal in her watery bed.
But the cannon weren't pointed at the Bess. They were pointed at the mine itself, and with a terrible roar that utterly dwarfed the cannon's report, the mine itself burst into explosive flame. Rocks hurtled down from the walls above them, and the cavern was crushed by the weight of the cliff side, sliding down into the sea. The Abysmal's engines threw forth one last collective burst of speed, propelled by the concussive wave which poured from the collapsing waterway.
And Su's last vision of the ghost ship known as the Black Bess was of a roaring flame that would never die, sealed within the grave of a thousand tons of rock.
"You were right, Shoi," Su smiled, putting her empty pistol away. "We do what we have to, to get through." With that, she turned back to her crew and ordered the Abysmal home.
THE PARKER PANIC
by Mike Stackpole
The train had barely left the station, its wheels squealing and engine puffing, when I heard the sound of cards being shuffled. I could have feigned disinterest on account of having watched two of the men there play three-handed poker with a greenhorn who got skinned on the El Paso to Tucson leg of the trip. They were bad poker players, but the greenhorn had been worse—and the cardsharps had seen fit to cheat outright on the few hands where luck hadn't abandoned their victim.
A new man had joined them in Tucson, though, and I didn't want to see him skinned.
I tipped my Stetson back and glanced across the car toward where the three men sat. The dealer, a young and plump fellow, was a hawker for some outfit from Chicago that wanted to out "Smith & Robards" Smith & Robards. Menomony Wilson was the name of the company. I mention it because 1 reckon no one else ever will again, if management can be judged by its hires. It also explains what I call him since I never did get his name. His traveling case sat across his knees and served as their poker table.
I stretched lazily, then got up and swayed my way with the train on over to them. "This just three-hand?"
Wilson looked up with a big smile on his face and perspiration at his temples. "Howdy, pardner. Sit on down."
I ignored his attempt to turn his flat mid-west accent into something western. I offered him my right hand, which I wore a black glove on, and he took it without seeming to find it a slight. I guess if you're a salesman, you have to accept all types. "Name's Nevan Kilbane."
Wilson didn't recognize my name right off, but one of the other two did. Wilson's partner in crime introduced himself as Anderson Quilt, late of St. Louis, a lawyer. The new man, all tall and rail thin, wearing clothes black enough to make him an undertaker or Old Testament preacher, said he was Mitchell Johns. He didn't say where he was from, but his voice had that deep southern lilt that always set me a bit ill at ease, even here in Confederate territory.
Quilt, whose hair had enough white and his middle enough girth to suggest he was pushing forty, gave me an easy smile. "Your name, it's the same as the guy who writes them dime novels. The Doctor Sterling books."
"That would be because I write them." I gave him an easy smile. "The good Doctor frowns on the writing, but he hopes stories of his adventures will keep folks from straying outside the law."
Wilson blinked his piggy eyes in my direction. "You're that Nevan Kilbane? I just read The Parker Panic. That was a corker of a tale. That Doctor Sterling-or do I call him Lord Uxbridge? —he's someone I'd not mind meeting some day. Think I will?"
"Possible, but not likely, unless you've got more hidden in that case than I'm guessing you do."
Johns leaned away from me and rested himself up against the carriage wall. "The Parker Panic? Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with that much of your work, sir."
Wilson's eyes brightened and his hands stilled the manipulation of the deck he'd been shuffling. "Oh, it's a great story. It starts in Parker, Arizona, up northwest of here. I mean, is it okay if I tell it, Mr. Kilbane? It being your story and all?"
I gave him a nod and let him tell it. Given that he'd never meet Reginald Sterling, I was thinking I might as well let him have some enjoyment in life.
***
As Wilson started to drone on, I recollected as how things in Parker had unfolded in a way I'd not have guessed they would. I'd left my horse at the livery and moseyed on up to The Grand Hotel in Parker, which wasn't very grand and was called a hotel because kennel ain't the right term for a place where people live. By the bunch of keys dangling on the wall past the front desk I determined getting a room would be possible, so I signed the guest registry.
The scarecrow of a man clerking turned the register around, blew on the ink, then traced the lettering of my name with an inkstained finger. "Are you that Nevan Kilbane?"
I nodded, then pressed a finger to my lips.
He looked one side then the other-just his eyes moving, not his head, and them eyes didn't always move together. His voice sank into a hoarse whisper that still could rattle panes in the window. "Coming to see for Dr. Sterling about the Lividians?"
"Nope. Down from Nevada."
He gave me a conspiratorial nod. "Say no more, I understand
. Shall I be saving the Presidential Suite for the Doctor, then?"
Again I pressed a finger to my lips, then winked.
He palmed the key to the suite, then gave me the key to room 214. "Upstairs, fronts on the street. It'll let you "see the ghost stampede."
I found 'ghost stampede' a fascinating idea, but decided not to let myself be dissuaded from my original plan concerning Parker. What I intended was to let my horse and me get a couple day's rest, then continue on down to Quartzite. From there I'd see if I could pick up von Kreiger's trail and keep after him. The Confederate territory on the continent was huge, but he'd run out of hiding places eventually.
You may not know about von Kreiger, but those of us who were guests of his at Colton, the prison camp just outside Sparta, Georgia, will never forget him. The Rebels kept Colton as a prison for "special" prisoners; mainly those of us who had escaped other places. Von Kreiger kept us in line by starving us and doing things that were, well, were not quite playing by Hoyle. Kind of unnerving to have the area outside the camp being patrolled by the reanimated corpses of friends.
After that big escape at Colton, von Kreiger was disgraced. The folks in Sparta saw what he'd been doing to the prisoners and ran him out of town on a rail. He vanished and I returned back north with my Lieutenant, Augustus Henry Adams. I vowed von Kreiger would pay for his crimes and set about training myself to be ready to deal with him.
So, years later, being a fair mite bigger than when last von Kreiger would have seen me, I traveled the west looking for him. I kept running into odd things and would send August letters about my adventures. He went and wrote one up as a story about Dr. Reginald Sterling, this British peer who adventured through the West with his loyal aide, me, searching after things dark and devilish. He got an editor whose son had escaped with us from Colton to publish the thing and the piece was popular. The money coming in from the stories didn't hurt.
A Fist Full O' Dead Guys Page 19