Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  In his gut, he felt as if he was standing on very thin ice. He’d done all he could do. They’d lost a great deal of rope and canvas rounding the horn, but they’d planned for that and had enough to fight the battle ahead and make it to the next port. Tahitian hardwoods had provided all the spars and timber they needed for repairs. The vessel was shipshape. Ryan considered his crew. They were mostly shipshape too, having regained their health and strength.

  Balls’s pregnant granddaughter had not only survived the trek with a tenacity that had put the rest of the crew to shame but had given birth to a slightly underweight but healthy baby girl. To the delight of all she had named her Gloriana-Tahiti. She, Balls and the surviving Mapuche and gauchos had asked to settle here. Queen Tahiata welcomed the infusion of new bloodlines that had barely been exposed to a single rad. Ryan had been proud when all had volunteered to stay on for the fight against the Sabbaths first. On top of that they had thirty young Tahitian warriors spoiling for the glory of battle on the high sea for their queen.

  Ryan had promoted Nubskull and Onetongue to bosun, and Miss Loral had signed off on it. That left the officers. The Glory had exactly three. Commander Miles was still in med and in bad shape from his bullet wounds opening from the scurvy. Captain Oracle’s whip weals had barely closed before the scurvy had hit him. Mildred couldn’t promise if he would live to see the battle. That left Ryan, Miss Loral and Koa. Loral was a hell of sailor but she hadn’t been in many battles. Ryan had been in more battles than he’d had hot meals, some on ships, but he had never captained a ship in battle until he’d taken the War Pig, and that had been a turkey shoot, won by deception before the first shot had been fired.

  Ryan had promoted Koa to officer. The Hawaiian prince was a veteran of many battles, but nearly all had been fought on beaches or from war canoes. The battle ahead would be against two ships, one larger than Glory and both commanded by seasoned captains and dripping in fighting men.

  Ryan didn’t care to contemplate what Manrape had done to Dorian, but the youngest Sabbath had no more secrets. Ryan new the strengths and weaknesses of both the Ironman and the Lady Evil. The only good news was the state of their blasters. Nearly every fighting man aboard both ships had one, but nearly all were single shooters and many of them were muzzleloaders. Only the officers, the captains’ picked sec men and a few of the crew who’d captured weapons as spoils had predark weapons, and most only had a handful of rounds to fill them.

  J.B.’s mechanical monstrosities were the only advantage the Glory had. Ryan had test-fired two of them. The first had jammed up tight after one round. The other had buzz-sawed out all twenty-five rounds spitting smoke and sparks and fouling in all directions. Everyone watching had clapped their hands in delight. The applause fell dead when Ryan lowered the weapon and the smoke-oozing barrel had slid out and fallen to the sand. The bad news was the worst blasters ever made would decide the Glory’s fate.

  The good news was they had a 150of them.

  Techman Rood had sent the radio signal out to Prince Koa’s people on Molokai in Morse code, knowing Sabbath would intercept it. Sabbath and his daughter were still trying to raise Dorian using the Caesar cipher. They’d broken off searching the west coast port villes and sailed under every inch of canvas to intercept the Glory before she could reach Hawaii and Koa’s people. Ryan smiled into the night at the thought of his fellow officer. Koa had spent all night every night in Tahiata’s big house doing his princely duty by the queen. The crew hadn’t objected to the irregular promotions. They loved Onetongue, and Nubskull had proved his skills around the Cape. Koa was well respected, and the crew couldn’t wait to see him wield his massive, shark-tooth club in battle. The fact that he actually was a prince didn’t hurt either.

  Ryan nodded to himself. He had done all he could do to prepare. All that was left was to sail into the Sabbaths’ teeth and fight. Ryan smelled the unmistakable scent of jasmine, tamanu oil and Tahitian pulchritude that was Queen Tahiata. He knew she had come from the left of the cove out of the trees so that he would smell her and hear her feet in the sand. It was a little late to try to cover up. “Queen.”

  “Chieftainess, Baron Cawdor.” Tahiata admired Ryan’s naked form by moonlight. As usual she wore a sarong, flowers and not much else. “Doc calls me a queen, and I admit I enjoy the sound of it, but we have not had a queen since long before the fall, and other villes in these islands would dispute the claim violently.”

  “I’m the son of a baron,” Ryan corrected.

  “But you could have been baron. Should have been.”

  Ryan shrugged. Koa had been shooting his mouth off. Ryan couldn’t blame him as he admired the Hawaiian’s interrogator in kind.

  “Where is your woman of flame?” Tahiata asked.

  “Sleeping over there. Where’s Prince Koa?”

  “Snoring.” Tahiata smiled at Ryan in open invitation.

  Ryan smiled with genuine regret. “I’m taken.”

  “You are loyal, Ryan. To your woman, your friends, your ship, your captain and your crew.”

  “I try.”

  Tahiata sighed. “But, were a boulder to fall on your sleeping woman, would you?”

  Ryan looked Tahiata up and down. “I might have to consider it.”

  Tahiata glanced at the cliffs above. “What if it were I who had pushed the boulder?”

  Ryan laughed aloud. Tahiata joined in. They stared out at the lights of the Glory. Tahiata’s voice lowered. “Oracle.”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he a...” The Tahitian woman wrapped her lips around a distasteful word she had heard. “Doomie?”

  Ryan considered doomies he’d met in the Deathlands. He compared them with everything he had seen aboard Glory and the sealed note in his coat “He doesn’t rave, speak in tongues or tear his hair and flesh as he spews visions, but I think he’s one of the most powerful I’ve ever met.”

  The Tahitian ruler made a face. “Our islands also give birth to such people.”

  “You cull them.”

  “No, we seal them in caves, so their terrible luck will not infect the villes.”

  “But you consult them.” Ryan smiled bitterly out onto the sea. “Like oracles.”

  “In times of great moment, yes. We currently have three alive. Two in caves, the worst in a pit. All highly agitated. They rave about the Glory. They say Oracle haunts their dreams, and they go on about something aboard that rattles their minds.”

  Ryan knew the Tahitian doomies raved about the hand in the binnacle. “Did they say who’s going to win the battle?”

  “The one in the pit screams about an ocean red with blood.”

  “Sounds about right.” Ryan thought he saw what was coming. “What do you want?”

  “I want Dorian, or what is left of him.”

  “For bargaining.” Ryan had a terrible feeling that things were slipping further out of his control. “When we lose.”

  “If you lose, great warrior of the Deathlands, yes.” Tahiata looked back over her shoulder as she walked away. “May I give you a piece of advice on the eve of battle?”

  “Sure.”

  The Tahitian gave Ryan a savage smile. “Win.”

  * * *

  THE GLORY SAILED to battle. They’d sent out another distress call to Molokai to give the Sabbaths a good triangulation and then set a course straight for Koa’s island. Despite having made all necessary repairs, they’d done no repainting or cleaning of the ship. The Glory carried her worst mended sails. Ryan wanted her looking like a beaten, desperate ship that had barely made it around the Horn without respite. He looked about and was satisfied. He kept a skeleton crew on deck and in the rigging, and they wore their worst rags. Belowdecks, blasters were polished, steel sharpened, and the cannons run out and run out again in dry fire practice. The Tahitians obsessively oiled their war clubs. There had been no time, much less ammo, to train the Mapuches. They’d been issued half pikes or boarding axes by preference. The previous night before Rya
n had banished all nonessentials belowdecks, the Tahitians and the Mapuches had brandished their weapons, howled, stamped and chorused in competing war chants to the great amusement of the crew.

  Techman Rood had been triangulating too. Ryan had asked the ship’s techman when he expected the Glory to raise the Sabbath fleet. Rood had said within one to four hours. Ryan flicked a glance at the sun. That had been an hour ago.

  Jak shouted from the tops. “Sail!”

  “Two sails!” Ricky called. “Four points to starboard!”

  Ryan and Loral snapped out their spyglasses. The Cific was a glassy, purplish blue with too much low-lying haze to the west. The Sabbaths came knifing out of it barely two miles away. Ryan had wanted to spend at least a day playing games with them and give them a long stern chase, eating J.B. and his crews’ nine-pound stern chasers. Ryan took in the sleek white sails of the Lady Evil and the hideous, black sails with white spines of the Ironman, their vector, and knew he couldn’t evade them before nightfall. He grimaced and snapped his longeyes shut.

  “Miss Loral!”

  Loral shouted, “Captain on deck!”

  Ryan spun. Captain Oracle had appeared on the quarterdeck like a magic trick. He looked wasted and gaunt, but he stood straight and wore his full uniform. He’d tucked his single-shot blaster and a wallet of ammo in his gold sash. A short, heavy, recurved kukri knife hung at his left hip. “Miss Loral, all hands on deck, if you please.”

  “All hands on deck!”

  The Indonesians pounded their hand drums and the crew boiled up top like ants. They were something to see. The crew bristled with extremely hostile implements of iron, steel and wood of every description. Oracle walked to the rail overlooking the main deck.

  His broken-slate voice thundered. “Officers and crew of the Hand of Glory, now is the time of battle! Now is the Sabbaths’ time of reckoning!”

  The crew shouted and cheered.

  “They have every advantage—ships, weight of shot, weight of blasters and hordes of men! We are outnumbered. Outgunned. Outmanned. And we must fight both sides of our ship while they only have to fight one.”

  The crew was very well aware of that, but their captain didn’t seem to care, and they bellowed out in defiance of the odds. Oracle’s voice dropped. “I will tell you something else you know.” The captain held up his horrible prosthesis. “All men of the sea know a monkey’s paw will give a man three wishes. And all men of the sea know those wishes come at a terrible price—wrack and ruin upon the wisher and upon all around him as the price!” The crew stared in superstitious awe. “This cursed paw, given onto me by my enemies! I call upon it now! I claim my three wishes. I wish the good ship Glory to win this battle. I wish she and her crew survive to sail the Seven Broken and Boiled Seas. And third...” Oracle lay his right wrist upon the binnacle. Crewmen shuddered and gasped as Oracle drew his kukri. Grown men screamed as the captain severed his mummified ape hand with a single blow. Oracle stabbed his knife into the rail and held up the orange-furred monstrosity as his stump bled. “If a price must be paid for it?”

  The crew recoiled as Oracle tossed the simian horror to the deck below him. He suddenly took up his knife and smashed the glass dome of the binnacle. The embalming fluid cascaded to the quarterdeck. The captain held up the skeletal hand. “But all sailors know the power of the Hand of Glory! By the power of this hand, by my third wish, let that price be paid in full, by me!”

  Oracle dropped the bones over his bleeding stump and the skeletal fingers clenched around it. Ryan’s skin crawled. The captain leaped on top of the rail and grabbed a shroud with his good hand. “Glory be the name of this ship! Glory be her destiny!” Oracle pivoted on the rail and whipped his right arm astern. Blood flew, and the bone-thing clutching his wrist extended its forefinger at the sails chasing them. “I say glory lies that way!”

  The crew erupted in an orgy of cheers, roars and war screams.

  Oracle exploded like an angry god had put its fist through his chest. Blood, flesh and bone chips fountained over the first few rows of crew. The sonic boom cracked like a whip a second later as the projectile continued across the deck and back out to sea. The captain fell shredded to the deck below. The bony hand fell limp from his still bleeding wrist like a dead spider and curled. The crew’s jaws dropped as a unit. Wipe’s moan cut the silence and one by one more joined it.

  For one second the Glory and her fate hung on a precipice.

  Ryan stepped to the rail, usurped command and roared with a confidence he did not share. “You heard the captain! You want to live? You want to see the soft shores of Molokai? You ever want see the Carib again? By paw and hand the captain just paid your jack!” Ryan didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to face the stern and the enemy sails in the distance. “Mr. Manrape!”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  “Turn this tub due east. Start the stern chase!”

  “Aye!” Manrape spun the wheel.

  “Miss Loral!”

  Ryan was relieved she didn’t challenge him. “Aye!”

  “The bridge is yours.” Ryan strode to the sodden, formaldehyde-smelling binnacle. He saw no cannon smoke on the horizon. At this range, the only explanation was the enemy had an antimaterial longblaster or a small-caliber auto-cannon with an optic sight. Ryan took out the Longbow blaster and the handful of remaining shells. He slung his Scout also.

  “I’m going to take a shot or two from the stern.”

  “You heard the man!” Loral shouted. “Action stations!”

  No cheers or shouts greeted the order, but the crew went obeyed. Ryan shouted down the main hatch. “Mr. J.B., bring up your spotting binoculars!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Aboard the Ironman, Emmanuel Sabbath leaned back in the yokes of the smoking 20 mm Oerlikon cannon. The automatic feed had failed long ago, and the weapon had to be loaded awkwardly by hand one round at a time. It had a crack in its hundred-year-old optical sight, but it was still hell for accurate. Pleasure was not a usual expression on Sabbath’s face. Relief was even rarer. Only Kang and the ship’s masterblaster, Narl, saw the captain’s hand shake.

  Sabbath wiped his brow and smiled. Oracle was dead and had lost both of his right hands in the bargain. The doom Oracle had pronounced was dead with him. Sabbath grinned savagely and savored his victory. “Let’s see that doomie bastard come back from that.”

  Kang grunted and lowered his binoculars. The giant Korean had seen Oracle’s torso burst like a balloon. For a split second Kang had seen daylight through Oracle’s body before he fell. “No come back. He dead.”

  Narl nodded eagerly at the Oerlikon. Firing it was one of his favorite things. “Another?”

  Sabbath considered his precious and dwindling supply of 20 mm shells shining in their crate. Oracle was dead. This was the day to make taking the Glory a certainty.

  Sabbath stepped back to let his masterblaster enjoy the task. “Two shells, Narl. Make them count. Take out his stern chasers. Whoever is left in command, his only hope is to draw this out.”

  Narl happily loaded a round, closed the breach and leaned into the yokes. Narl suddenly flew backward in a slightly less violent but still spectacular imitation of Oracle’s extinction. Blood sprayed like a fountain. Kang hugged the deck. The second shot sent sparks shrieking off the action of the Oerlikon and the cannon spun like a top on its pintle. A third heavy-caliber bullet smashed into the besieged cannon and sent it spinning in the opposite direction. Sabbath looked up to see his cannon’s action torn open and, with Narl dead, far beyond repair.

  Sabbath’s eyes suddenly flared. “Ammo! The ammo!”

  Kang lunged to shove the ammo crate off the keg it rested on. He got one hand on it before it exploded in his face. The heavy, antimaterial round shattered the crate like kindling and sent its contents flying. Kang got a face full of splinters and flying rounds. By a miracle nothing detonated. Loose and broken rounds rolled all over the deck. Kang spit and wiped propellant off his face. He looked a
t his captain guiltily. Sabbath was angry, but the sight of Oracle coming apart like a rag doll was something that would take a lot more than the loss of a half-functional 20 mm blaster to ruin.

  “Mr. Kang?”

  “Aye, Captain?”

  “Radio my daughter to get ahead of the Glory and take the weather gauge. She will have to take some shots, but tell her to keep own fire high, masts, sails and rigging. Slow this Deathlander down. Tell her not to close until we catch up.” Oracle grunted to himself. “We’re just going to have to do this the hard way.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Kang was pleased. Besides the act of rape, boarding actions were his favorite thing in life.

  * * *

  J.B. LOWERED HIS spotting binoculars. “Nice shooting.”

  Ryan set down his smoking, empty Longbow. With just a few boxes of ammo, he might well be able to drive the enemy off. That wasn’t going to happen. They were just going to have to do this the hard way. He handed the weapon to J.B. “Thanks.”

  “Wish you’d taken that giant’s head off while you were at it. I’m not looking forward to meeting him when this goes hand to hand.”

  “Me neither.” Ryan took up his Scout. He’d had nearly full mags when they’d been shanghaied in the Carib. After a great deal of soul-searching he had donated much of his 7.62 mm ammo to string together a second belt for the ship’s only machine gun, and he’d donated some more to the sharpshooters in the tops. He’d distributed a lot of his 9 mm ammo too. They were going to be fighting both sides of the ship, and they needed firepower from stem to stern. J.B. was right. It was going to go hand to hand.

  Ryan had thought about that long and hard and had stayed with his new saber rather than his panga. The panga was a tool first and weapon second, and it would break or bend when it faced a flurry of pikes and boarding axes. He’d replaced his survival and slaughtering knives with a long, heavy dirk that was almost more spike than knife.

  J.B. grunted again as he looked out to starboard. “She’s moving fast.”