Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  Oracle hung by his wrists from the X arch of two huge whale ribs. Normally the room had a U-shape of tables much like the feast hall, and it was here Laird met with the island’s masters of agriculture, fishing and forging and headmen of the outer camps. The governor thought it was good for discipline that when the Falkland’s leading citizens came to council meetings they knew that men who had displeased him had hung by Leviathan’s bones and their blood had trickled to the drain in the middle of the room.

  The drain ran red. Big Ian stood behind Oracle with a cattle whip. The captain raised his head. His black eyes peered through the veil of his bloody and sweat-tangled hair. He grinned disconcertingly. “You’re a dead man, Governor.”

  Big Ian put his weight behind the whip. Blood flew. Oracle’s smile tightened to a rictus, but he didn’t break eye contact. A fist pounded on the door. “Message for the gov’nor!”

  Laird smiled back at the captain. “Perhaps that is death knocking now?”

  Big Ian went to the door and a tall sec man still wearing his broad hat and leather duster strode in holding a rolled piece of paper bound with string. He was dripping wet. Big Ian held out his hand. “What is this all—”

  The sec man lunged his bone-furnitured AUG longblaster like a fencer into Big Ian’s solar plexus. Big Ian expelled breath between his missing teeth and bent over. He got one quick glance at the two sec men tasked with guarding the door, laying dead or unconscious on the floor, before the blaster barrel clipped his chin and stood him up. Big Ian managed to get his hands up. The sec man lunged beneath them as if his weapon had a bayonet and rammed the muzzle into Big Ian’s solar plexus a second time. The man dropped into a fetal position as his xyphoid process snapped off and tore through his diaphragm.

  The exchange happened in the space of eye blinks. Governor Laird started to reach for his new Beretta.

  The sec man extended the AUG. “Don’t.” He kicked the door closed behind him and then stomped on Big Ian’s neck with brutal finality. Ryan took off his hat and tossed it on the table.

  Oracle nodded. “Mr. Ryan.”

  “Captain.” Neither Ryan’s eye nor his blaster muzzle wavered from Governor Laird as he walked forward. “You want to live?”

  “Yes!”

  Ryan slashed Ball’s skinning knife left-handed under Laird’s jaw from ear to ear. “Too bad.”

  He grabbed Laird by his thinning hair and hurled him from his chair so the governor of the Falklands could die on the floor like a dog. Ryan cut Oracle down and sat him in the chair. Oracle set his elbows on his knees and just breathed. Ryan grimaced at the sight of the captain’s back. He’d seen men whipped that badly die of their wounds. “Can you walk?”

  “I’ll walk out of here.”

  Ryan relieved Laird of his Beretta and Big Ian of his coat. “This is going to sting.” He stopped as he saw Oracle’s right wrist. The horrible ape paw literally seemed to grow out of his wrist. Two stainless steel bolt heads lower down on his wrist belied that. Ryan helped Oracle gingerly shrug into the sec coat. He put the wide-brimmed brown hat on the captain and donned Big Ian’s black one. Ryan pushed the Beretta and Laird’s half-finished beer at the captain and buckled on Big Ian’s saber. He figured the ruse would last about a heartbeat.

  It might be enough.

  Oracle gulped the beer. “Mr. Squid got you over the wall?”

  Ryan stared at Oracle. “You saw that?”

  “I saw something that might be interpreted that way.”

  The captain’s flayed shoulders sagged under the dead man’s duster. “I shall miss Mr. Squid. He was one of the best crewmen I was ever privileged to command.”

  Ryan smiled to finally know something Oracle didn’t. “She’s sucking fresh water in a rain barrel in the courtyard, waiting for us. I smashed Laird’s radio set and killed his techman on the way down here. Radio silence is going to get noticed real quick and the chron’s ticking. If we aren’t back on ship in about eighteen hours, Commander Miles and Miss Loral are going to burn the entire ville to the ground.”

  Oracle’s flat black gaze went blank. “She?”

  “What, you don’t know how to sex an octopus?”

  “Apparently not.” Oracle smiled again. “And that I did not expect.”

  “We’ve got to go, and we’re leaving by the front door.”

  “Indeed, Mr. Ryan.” Oracle took the Beretta in his left hand and shoved his ape paw in one of the duster’s pockets. “Let us go forth, bold as brass.”

  Ryan hauled the two dead guards back into the council hall and strode down the hall like he owned it. Oracle’s breath rasped, but he kept up. Ryan drew the saber. He figured there was only one like it on the island, and the ruse might last a heartbeat longer if people saw it drawn and its owner stalking the halls. They were lucky that most of the sec man were deployed in the ville proper or out on patrol and the fortress was in semi-lockdown. The few servants scattered at the sight of the drawn saber and the black-coated, black-hatted figure stalking purposefully down the hall with a sec man trotting to keep up.

  “Ryan...” Oracle rasped.

  “Little farther.”

  “I cannot. Go on without me.”

  Ryan couldn’t afford to give Oracle an arm or any visible help. “You’re starting to sound like Squid.”

  “Do you always talk to your captain like that?”

  “When I’m in command of the captain cutting-out party, yeah, I do.”

  Oracle made a croaking noise that might have been a laugh.

  Ryan was mildly shocked that they made it to the front gate of the citadel without incident. Two browncoats bearing whalebone AUGs and bored expressions snapped to attention as Ryan bore down on them. With his hat brim covering his face Ryan marched forward like he was going to walk straight through the door if someone didn’t open it first. One of the men leaped for the bar. “Beggin’ pardon, Big Ian, but what’s going on?”

  The other man pointed at Oracle. “What’s wrong with him, then? He’s bleeding all over the floor!”

  The saber in Ryan’s hand flashed and the blade grated on neck vertebrae. The other sec man dropped the door bar to the floor and tried to yank his AUG around on its sling. Oracle slapped him across the face with his monkey paw and, taking the man’s lower jaw off his face. The sec man fell, drowning in his own blood and shreds of trachea. Oracle fell on his face.

  Ryan heaved the captain into a fireman’s carry. Oracle was a lot heavier than he looked. Ryan threw open the door and stepped out into the lashing wind and rain. The storm was picking up. The two men guarding the open iron portcullis turned at the splash of light coming out of the hall. Ryan knew the men up on the walls were starting to look too. He marched straight toward the stables. Patrols were coming in and out, so the lamps were lit inside and fresh mounts were saddled and ready. A stable boy looked up from rubbing down a horse that had recently come in from the rain.

  “Big Ian! I—” Ryan snap kicked the lad in the groin and smashed him unconscious to the straw with the brass hilt of the saber. Oracle moaned half consciously as Ryan draped him across the saddle of a roan gelding that looked to be the largest and strongest of the lot. He chose a black mare for himself and tied the two mounts in a rope line. Ryan swung up into the saddle and rode out of the stable toward the gate.

  The gate guards had gone to a semi-state of alert, but by their stares Ryan could tell it was still confusion instead of suspicion. The gate was open and they held their blasters at port arms. His horse clip-clopped over the wet, cracked concrete. One squinted into the rain and the darkness beneath Ryan’s hat.

  “Big Ian?”

  Ryan nodded. “Squid.”

  The man frowned. “Squid?”

  A pair of gray, suckered arms constricted around the two sec men’s throats and yanked them back into the darkness beneath the battlement catwalks. Shouts of alarm rang out above. Ryan spurred his horse and hoped Oracle wouldn’t fall off as they rode through the gate. “Squid!”

&n
bsp; Squid materialized beside the portcullis windlass. She took a moment examining the heavy chains and the palls and ratchets, then shot out two arms, suckered one of the wooden gear wheels and ripped it off its pins. The iron gate fell out of control. Iron rang like a bell and the concrete cracked like a gunshot. Shots rang out from the battlements. Squid pushed herself against the portcullis bars and flowed through one of the barely foot-wide iron rectangles like toothpaste out of a tube. “Mount up!” Ryan shouted. “Hold the captain!”

  The gelding screamed and bucked as a giant octopus flowed up over his croup. In Squid’s favor, bucking an octopus out of the saddle was a problematic task at best, and Oracle now had a living seven-point safety harness. Ryan kicked his heels into his horse’s sides and it surged forward. The rope between the mare and gelding went taut and the screaming, eye-rolling roan instinctively stopped bucking and ran with the herd. Ryan rode. The men on the wall pumped rapid semi-auto fire at the road. Ryan knew he was already out of sight and broke left for the creek. His mare’s hooves smashed ice and frozen mud along the bank. The mare seemed to know the path, and he gave the horse her head. Behind him he heard the sound of a hand-crank air raid siren winding up and howling into the storm.

  The ride by horse to the sea was a matter of minutes, unlike the octo/man walk up to the fortress. Ryan hung a right by the ocean and reached the sea wall in moments. He leaped off and tied off his horse to a bit of rusted rebar.

  “Squid, get some air!”

  Squid slid off the newly bucking gelding and took Oracle gently to the sand. The octopus stopped short of running and flung herself into the sea. The gelding shuddered and nuzzled up against Ryan’s mare. Ryan checked Oracle’s pulse. He’d been beaten so badly his bones showed through, and now he was freezing. He was also a mutant who had survived being hanged, and he was still breathing.

  Ryan turned to the waves. “Squid, are you going to be okay?”

  He nearly jumped as Squid spoke right beside him. “I am weary but well. You have saved me again.”

  “When you said you would get me to shore and over the wall, I swore to myself I would get you back to the Glory.”

  Squid shuddered in the shreds of moonlight. “I am only capable of imprinting on one human at a time, but my feelings for you are overwhelming me.”

  “Save your heart for Doc.”

  “I am an octopus. I have three hearts.”

  Ryan’s teeth flashed. “Give all three to Doc, then, and hold him with all eight arms.”

  Ryan had seen a working lava lamp once. Mr. Squid’s flesh glowed and glopped and pulsed like she had red and orange blobs of lava flowing in all directions beneath her flesh. “I am dangerously close to a mating frenzy!”

  “Best knock that shit off. We aren’t back aboard yet.”

  The light show cut off like a light switch had been thrown. “I remain mission oriented.”

  “Good, let’s go see what Balls has for us.” They remounted. The gelding shook down to his bones but took up the load of mutant and octopus. They slowly made their way down the sea wall. Ryan pulled up by the warehouse. From horse height he could see Balls’s cottage and all the lights were off. He raised his longblaster as a voice spoke from the closest boathouse. “That you, Ryan?”

  “Balls.” Ryan road up to the boathouse. The umiak was a dim, white shape. Balls struck a match from the prow and snuffed it out. In the brief flare Ryan saw the great canoe now had an outboard attached. Balls and the pregnant young woman from the hall were within, as well as six men in foul-weather gear and a whole lot of bundles of goods. “What gives?”

  “We’re going with you.”

  “You want to take a pregnant girl around the horn?”

  “You’ll take a pregnant girl and a useless old man around the horn, along with six sailors who can hand and reef and a significant source of supplies you’ll be grateful for.”

  Ryan glanced out into the strait and saw the occasional dull yellow knife of a searchlight. “How do we get past?”

  “We paddle along the beach. The strait is a big fat mouth. Once we get out we hit the outboard and go. They’re looking for the Glory or her boats coming in, not a canoe sneaking out.”

  Ryan spoke low in the dark. “Do they know about Mr. Squid?”

  “I’ve told them, but they don’t believe me.”

  “Tell them not to scream.”

  * * *

  “RYAN, YOU ARE HEREBY promoted to officer,” Miles announced. “Mr. Forgiven, mark it in the book.” Everyone above the rank of bosun was in the cabin. Thunderous applause erupted, and it was echoed above deck and in the fo’c’sle. Commander Miles nodded at Big Ian’s saber. “Hold on to that. Gypsyfair?”

  The little, blind mutant came forward. Ryan felt his throat tighten as she held out a blue officer’s coat. “I hope it fits.” It did, as Ryan knew it would. He stared at himself in the captain’s mirror wearing an officer’s coat and a sword. Ryan Cawdor was the son of a baron. In this broken world he had, for a short time, been the son of privilege. Everything he had gained on the Glory had been earned.

  “Hat and breeches to follow, Ryan.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mildred came out from the partition screening off the captain’s bed. Ryan spoke quietly. “How is he?”

  “Still unconscious. No sign of infection.” Mildred had spent hours attending to the whip’s bloody wounds. “Blissfully unconscious.”

  Techman Rood burst breathlessly into the cabin and held up a paper covered with translated code. “Commander!”

  “More of the Sabbath’s Caesar cipher?”

  “Commander, it’s from Dorian to Laird. The War Pig is out of coal. She is sailing toward the Falklands with a jury-rigged bowsprit and letting the Westerlies do the work.”

  “He still hasn’t figured out we’ve deciphered his code,” Ryan mused.

  “Unless he has,” Miles countered. “Then we would be sailing into the teeth of the Westerlies with him having them at his back. He goes to his engines and he can draw his own killing box. All we could do is flee west for the Africas and the unknown.”

  “I destroyed their radio set. If Dorian has coal and hears nothing, he’ll turn back for the coast. If he doesn’t, there’s no way he go back tack on tack without a bowsprit. He’ll have to come in for fuel and repairs.”

  “A gamble, when we should be sailing for the Horn.”

  Oracle’s voice rasped from behind the partition. “I am curious, Mr. Ryan. What is your first inclination?”

  “I say we sink the War Pig or take her.”

  “Commander Miles?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Sink the War Pig, or take her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  South Atlantic

  “Ship ahoy, sir!” Ricky called.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ricky!” Ryan snapped his longeyes to his eye. It still felt odd being addressed by his friends this way, but he was an officer now. The day was gray and cloudy. The Westerlies blew a bitterly cold forty miles per hour. He didn’t want to contemplate what the weather would be like when the South American continent no long sheltered them. The red and black painted War Pig was unmistakable in the murk. Ryan had calculated the most likely course the War Pig would take to bring them straight to the Falklands, without engines or a spritsail, and he had plotted the Glory’s best course for interception. His calculations were correct almost to the hour, and they had brought his ship nearly exactly behind the crippled behemoth.

  A little part of Ryan’s heart that he would not show to officers, crew or his companions glowed. He was good at this. Whether the War Pig was truly out of coal or not, at least at the start of the engagement, the Glory would have the advantage. “Mr. Manrape! Inform Commander Miles we have the War Pig in sight. Douse all fires and beat to quarters!”

  “Aye, sir!” Manrape roared. “You heard him!”

  Ryan was not the gloating kind, but another part of him enjoyed Manrape calling him “sir.” Yerbua a
nd Nirutam hammered their hand drums. Shouts broke out below and feet instantly pounded wood. Hardly anyone below was sleeping. The entire crew had been waiting for this fight and was eager for it.

  Commander Miles limped onto the quarterdeck. He bore a Colt 1911A1, missing just about all of its finish, strapped to his good leg and he’d thrust his Japanese short sword through his blue sash. He raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and grinned at the War Pig. “Excellent plotting, Mr. Ryan.” He smiled uncharacteristically at Ryan’s full, blinding white and navy blue uniform. “You wear it well.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  The two officers on deck leaned out over the starboard rail and peered at the War Pig. They had spotted the Glory descending on them from the stern, and the Pig’s sailors swarmed like ants in the rigging, taking up and dropping sail as she desperately tried to maneuver. Fitful pulses of ashy gray smoke and then greasy black came out of her black iron smokestack.

  “What do you make of that, Mr. Ryan?”

  Ryan knew he guessed right. “Dorian really is out of coal. We’ve caught him flatfooted. He’s throwing wood, oil and anything else that isn’t nailed down into his fireboxes to try and heat his boilers.”

  “Aye, I make it so as well.”

  “If he can even half turn under power, we’re going to get the hard end of this.”

  “Aye,” Miles agreed.

  “I say we take him now.”

  “We are agreed, Mr. Ryan. Be so kind as to do so.”

  Ryan tensed internally. It was under Miles’ watchful eye, but he had just been given command of the ship. Ryan knew this was Oracle’s order. He stepped to the binnacle and Miss Loral at the wheel behind it. He knew what he would find, but he felt goose bumps along his arms as he found the suspended skeletal hand pointing straight at him and then slowly turn to point in judgment for the War Pig. They had the weather gauge, and that meant that the Glory could choose her maneuvers at will with the wind in her sails, while the War Pig would have to wallow and tack against the wind to try to match. It was a priceless advantage in a battle between sailing ships, trumping surprise or weight of shot. If the War Pig could get her screws turning even slightly, it would be lost. One maneuver might be all they ever got.