Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  Ryan watched the Lady Evil take a parallel course in the distance. He was a newly minted sailing man, but he marveled at her lines and the breathtaking amount of sail she’d raised into the winter winds of the south Cific. He didn’t need to check his chron. “She’ll pass us within the hour and get the gauge on us in the next.” Ryan watched the vast, black Ironman lagging behind. “It’ll take him three to catch up.”

  J.B. shot him a dry look. “Getting pretty good at this, are you, Captain?”

  Ryan looked at his friend. Ryan was the leader of his group, but by unspoken agreement and as first among equals. He’d had unwavering support from Krysty and Doc, but he’d had precious little time to do anything but first survive and then bark orders at the rest of his friends as their ship-ranked superior. “I’ve got to get real good and real fast if we’re ever going to see the Deathlands again.”

  At the sound of a sob, Ryan and J.B. looked across the ship. As the captain’s hand servant, Doc had sewn Oracle into a bit of canvas. Doc’s hands were still bloody. He sat on a crate next to Mr. Squid’s barrel. Mr. Squid sat inside, conserving her hydration for the battle. She had one suckered arm across Doc’s shoulders. Her arm contracted in slow, gentle contractions and the colors of the rainbow rippled across her flesh.

  “Gunny, bring up your crews for the stern and bow chasers. Make everything ready. The Lady Evil is going to try and chip away at us, so make her pay for it. You’re at liberty to fire at will.”

  J.B. grinned and put a knuckle to his fedora. “Mighty kind of you, Captain.”

  Ryan descended from the stern to the main deck. Koa squatted among the Tahitians, muttering quietly. Since he’d shacked up with Tahiata he’d gone from a figure of foreign islander abuse to the de facto Polynesian commander. Gypsyfair had had no time to tailor him an officer’s jacket. The only one available had been too small, so he’d cut off the sleeves. Combined with his royal Hawaiian headdress and cape, his sartorial splendor was something to see.

  Ryan crooked a finger. “Mr. Koa, if you please.”

  Koa rose. “Yah, boss!”

  “How’s the crew?”

  “Freakin’ out, brah. Oracle made a speech, and the powers that be listened. Captain called the thunder, and he got struck down. Question is, is the trade done, or did he doom us?”

  Ryan looked to where Oracle had fallen. The deck had been scrubbed clean of blood and gore except for two circles of coagulated blood where Oracle’s horrible ape paw and his genuinely scary skeletal hand lay on the wood. No crewman was willing to touch them, and neither Ryan nor Loral had seen fit to give the order. Ryan was just glad neither had started moving of their own accord. Oracle lay in state in his cabin.

  “Do you know?” Koa asked.

  Ryan considered everything Oracle had told him and Oracle’s last, terrible, unopened envelope. “No.”

  “This crew’s hanging by a thread. They’ll fight, but that’s because they have no choice. No one knows who’s captain anymore. Morale is low. You got any ideas?”

  “You’re girlfriend told me my best option was to win.”

  “Tahiata’s a good woman, and that’s good advice.”

  “...right before she offered to sleep with me on the beach.”

  Koa’s eyes flew wide. “You dick!”

  Heads turned around the deck. Ryan nodded. “Bet your last jack on it, poi-boy.”

  Koa threw back his head and laughed. Given the ship’s situation, the sound was almost alien. “I will kill you, brah!”

  Ryan ignored the insubordination and possible mutiny and spoke loud enough for all to hear. “If we win, I give the Ironman to you and Molokai, Tahiata gets the Lady Evil, then you two can have yourself a real naval battle.”

  “Screw that. We learn those ships good, then maybe we sail around the horn and give those Falklanders a dose of Polynesian pain. I remember a challenge in the gov’nor’s hall!” Koa’s voice rose to a roar. “Maybe Glory wants a piece of that!”

  Crewmen of every stripe shouted, whistled and whooped in affirmation. Ryan shouted above it. “Skillet!”

  The cook shouted up the gangway. “What?”

  “A meal for the crew!”

  “Tahiata sent us off with some pig.”

  “Cook it! Cook it all! Then douse all fires!”

  “Aye!”

  “Purser Forgiven!”

  Forgiven squinted into the sunlight shining down the gangway. “Aye?”

  “Tot of grog for every crewman who wants it after the meal, a stiff one!”

  “Aye!”

  The ragged cheers strengthened. Ryan strode to starboard and leaped onto the rail. He grabbed a shroud and looked at the Ironman behind and the Lady Evil pulling ahead. “We’ve run two continents, two oceans and sea. I’m tired of running.” Ryan turned to look at the crew. “Who wants to fight?”

  The crew roared.

  “Mr. Manrape!”

  Manrape called back from the con. “Aye!”

  “After the crew is fed and grogged—” Ryan turned his gaze back toward the Ironman disappearing into the distance “—turn this tub around.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The sound of cannon fire was continuous. Miss Loral was sailing rings around the Ironman. The Lady Evil had sprinted far ahead of the Glory to gain the weather gauge and hold her. The last thing either Sabbath had expected was for the Glory to turn about and attack the Ironman.

  Ryan’s bet had paid off. The Ironman was huge, even bigger than the War Pig, but she had been built after the fall. She was a far from perfect imitation of the oceangoing junks of old, and so were her cannons. Ironman had a lot of them, but they were crude, small and slow. The Glory was a museum piece, and her cannons had been forged in a long vanished, far better time of craftsmanship. Glory’s blaster crews had a century-old tradition of excellence, and they had J.B. Dix riding herd on them as gunny.

  The Glory was pounding the Ironman to pieces.

  Her cannons were larger, faster and better aimed, and she clung a hundred meters out to the Ironman’s starboard side and smashed out her blaster ports with terrible precision. The Ironman shot for sails and spars, and damage was being done. Ryan was inches from giving the order to lower Glory’s aim and shoot to smash Ironman’s hull at the water line.

  Ryan and Koa stood at the prow and fired. The one-eyed man and his Scout longblaster were the only shooters in the battle with an optic, and he shot for officers and gunners. Koa had his beautiful, wood-furnitured AR and swept the Ironman’s tops. Ryan squeezed his trigger and killed the third man to take the Ironman’s wheel. Sabbath was not to be seen. Ryan shouted over the sound of cannon fire. “Koa, I told you the Ironman would be yours and Molokai’s! But—”

  “Sink the fucker!” Koa shouted. His AR pinged out a last spent shell. “Empty!”

  “Take command of the Tahitians!” Ryan ordered. “Go!”

  Koa scooped up his war club and ran down to join the Glory’s platoon of war-screaming Polynesians. The Ironman turned to bring her stern about. Like the War Pig, she had four stern chasers to the Glory’s two. With most of his starboard weapons silenced, Sabbath was taking a last desperate shot at cracking one of the Glory’s masts. Ryan saw his chance and shouted down the hatch. “Gunny, go for the Ironman’s rudder! Fire as she bears!”

  J.B.’s voice was ragged from the powder smoke filling the lower deck. “Aye!”

  The Ironman poured in fire, but it was slackening. Their predark blasters were few in number and running out of shells. The sharpshooters in the Glory’s tops were doing cold-hearted chilling work. The cannons below went silent. Ryan watched the Ironman desperately try to bring her four stern cannons to bear. The enemy ship gave J.B. a perfect line. He shouted the order. “Fire as they bear!”

  The Glory’s port side cannons began going off with slow, terrible precision. Cannonballs smashed low into the rudder of the Ironman. Ryan watched black-painted wood shatter and throw white splinters with the blows. Cables broke, and th
e rudder suddenly sagged like a broken fan in its housing.

  The Ironman was dead in the water.

  Ryan felt a terrible surge of hope with the crippling of the Ironman. Glory could turn and take the Lady Evil in a stand-up duel of sailing and gunnery and then come back for the Ironman later. “Miss Loral!”

  Loral had already seen it. “Mr. Manrape, hard to starboard! Bring us about on the Lady!”

  Ricky broke ship’s protocol as he shouted in desperate warning. “Ryan! Ryan! The Ironman!”

  Ryan looked back at his stricken prey.

  A cannon rumbled across the Ironman’s forward deck. The weapon’s barrel was long and narrow and painted brown against rust. Ryan’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a snarl as he saw the protruding projectile. The black iron spearhead had huge, sharpened tines pointing backward past the muzzle. Ryan would have given anything for another loaded mag for his Scout. He drew his SIG and began firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. One hundred meters on a pitching deck was long. The black and white face-painted crew rolled the weapon up to the rail. They slammed anchoring hooks into the scuppers and fired. The iron spear flew, twenty feet of chain rattled out from the shank and the rest of the line behind it was heavy rope.

  The cannon was like Skillet’s harpoon blaster, except this weapon was made for harpooning ships.

  Ryan saw the trajectory and roared. “Atlast! Atlast!” The man looked up from desperately splicing cable at the bowsprit. The giant iron shank smashed through him. “Atlast!”

  The massive harpoon head crunched into the deck. DontGo ran forward screaming. “Atlast!”

  Ryan reloaded as men aboard the Ironman ran the harpoon cable to the capstan. Crewmen heaved themselves against the levers. The Ironman was drawing Glory into an embrace of death. The harpoon head ripped free of the deck and dragged Atlast screaming with it. Half a dozen tines sank deep into the bowsprit with the combined weight of two ships of war behind them. Atlast howled as his flesh failed between both. DontGo hacked at the chains with his boarding ax to no avail. Ryan shouted to the tops. “Jak, machine blaster! Clear the Man’s capstan!”

  Ryan and Loral had agreed to put the Glory’s one machine blaster up in the tops. Jak leaned into the stock of the ancient M-60 general-purpose machine blaster and rained lead on the Ironman’s capstan crew.

  Loral’s voice carried like the scream of a leopard over the chaos. “Ryan!”

  Ryan snapped his gaze across the ship just in time to see a second harpoon blaster on the other end of the Ironman fire at Glory’s quarterdeck. The Ironman had two capstans. The grapnel drew furrows in the deck and sank into the rail.

  The Glory was hooked. Men on the Ironman heaved on the capstan spars and reeled her in like a fish. Ryan’s gut went cold as an army boiled up from the Ironman’s hatches. He had been to Canada, and he recognized the tuques, long shirts, leggings and war clubs. When Sabbath had gone through the Northwest Passage, he had taken on Canadian sec men as marines. Lots of them. J.B.’s cannons were emptied and would not respond in time. Ryan was still an amateur ship commander, and despite his surprise turnabout, the Sabbaths had played him.

  Ricky shouted from the tops. “Lady Evil is on us!”

  Ryan looked back. The Lady was on a perfect oblique course to avoid J.B.’s cannons, just like J.B. had taken on the Ironman’s rudder. The Lady’s bow chasers fired. One cannonball tore a chunk from the Glory’s mainmast. The second blasted the Kelper Balls into bloody, exploding strings. The Glory couldn’t move. Ryan watched in horror as the Lady Evil turned in slow pirouette to give the Glory another oblique broadside that could not be answered.

  Ryan roared, “Down! Down! Down!”

  Every Glory crewman hugged the deck.

  The Lady Evil’s cannons roared. Spars broke, rigging snapped and fell, and splinters flew like flying knives. Ryan jumped up to see the Lady turn again. She came in prow first like she intended to ram. Ryan racked his slide home on his last mag as the two brass harpoon blasters on the Lady Evil fired and tore man and deck apart. Ryan watched her forward capstan turn and her cannons give the Glory another broadside. Rope, sail and wood fell and a half-dozen Tahitians were decimated.

  Doc appeared at Ryan’s side. He had his sword in one hand and his LeMat in the other. “My dear Ryan.”

  “No time, Doc!”

  “You are captain now. I have been ordered to defend you at all costs. Truth to tell, I would have done so anyway without an order.”

  Ryan’s world closed in on him as he flung a glance back at the quarterdeck. Miss Loral was down. Manrape attended her. With the Glory harpooned from both sides, there was no point in manning the con. The titan rose as two Mapuche hustled Loral down the hatch to Mildred in the med. Manrape took up his silvery scattergun and snapped on the red-painted bayonet.

  Doc held out a J.B. Special. “It was always going to come to this. Your plan is sound. We can win.”

  Ryan felt Oracle’s last envelope of doom burning in his pocket as he took the blaster and slung it. Ryan barked orders. “Onetongue, form the Phalanx! Yerbua and Nirutam, sound all hands on deck except cannon crews! Everyone abovedeck, fire your personal blasters dry! Ready your J.B. Specials and wait for the order!”

  The drums pounded. Cannons fired as J.B. continued to rip out the Ironman’s guts. Ryan strode across the ship with Doc as his shadow. Techman Rood fell into step with a carved, ivory, dragon-hilted samurai sword. Strawmaker draped his cape over his arm and fell into formation. Gallondrunk ran to join them with his terrible walrus iron. Skillet stood waiting by the gangway with his double harpoon longblaster and assortment of cleavers of all sizes. Nubskull and Smyke were already by the con.

  Ryan kept a wry smile off his face. Someone had ordered him a Praetorian guard. Almost all crewmen had a J.B. Special slung by a cord either under a coat or behind his back. Ryan passed Oracle’s two bloody right hands and took command on the quarterdeck.

  Manrape grinned like the ship’s sails had caught a pleasing breeze. “Your orders, Captain?”

  “We take them, bos’n.”

  “Aye?”

  “We took the War Pig, and now I want the rest of the Sabbath fleet. All of it.”

  Manrape nodded. “Aye, Captain.”

  Ryan drew his SIG and emptied it into the Ironman’s quarterdeck. Sailors fell. Manrape’s scattergun blasted and blasted. Ryan heard the old, sweet, methodical aimed fire of Doc’s LeMat and then the thud of the revolver’s shotgun barrel. Strawmaker, Rood and the rest of Ryan’s personal sec team began unloading. Bullets whizzed in all directions. Crew on all three ships fell everywhere. Ryan lowered his smoking, empty SIG. The blasterfire tapered off again. The sudden, terrible calm was broken only by the ratchet and pall clanks of the Sabbaths’ capstans. Except for hoarding a round or two for the final fight, both ships’ crew were out of ammo.

  The bulked-up crew of the Ironman screamed in bloodlust and shook man-butchering and breaking implements of every description as the ships pulled together. The Lady Evil’s crew did the same. The Lady sailed straight in to ram her bowsprit against the Glory’s quarterdeck. Ryan knew that would be their boarding ramp. “Wait for it!” Ryan roared.

  The Ironman pulled the Glory in like a lover. The smaller, Lady Evil came in like the knife in the back. Ryan smiled. The die was cast. Doc was right. This was always going to come down to a brawl. He looked at Doc. The old man looked good in his uniform and as salty as hell. Ryan grinned. Doc grinned back. Ryan laughed. Doc laughed back, and Manrape and the rest of the quarterdeck burst out in hilarity. Koa threw back his head, and he and the Tahitians hurled their laughter to the sky.

  The laughter ran across the ship from stem to stern. The Sabbath ships howled in response but bloodlust took a strange, pale second place to suicidal mirth. The side of the Ironman scraped the Glory. The Lady Evil’s bowsprit violated the Glory’s prow. Boarding ramps fell across Ryan’s decks. The Sabbath crews surged. Ryan had learned long ago that most plans tucked tail and r
an at first contact with the enemy.

  He gave what might be his last command. “Give it to them! Give them all of it!”

  Every Glory crewmember raised his or her J.B. Special, pointed and squeezed. Some fired one shot. Some fired two or three or half a dozen. J.B.’s weapons scythed in one, mass salvo. Jak, Ricky and the rest of the topsmen expended their weapons and shot down the rat lines to join the melee. Ryan grinned savagely as his own weapon unloaded all twenty-five rounds and withered an entire boarding ladder.

  He dropped the empty subgun and drew his saber. “Repel all boarders!” He gave the Lady Evil a last glance. They had avoided the Glory’s cannons, but that had forced them to send their borders across the bowsprit. It was a fatal funnel.

  “Phalanx, defend the prow!” Onetongue and the Phalanx charged across the deck in a wedge of sharpened iron.

  The battle royale was on.

  Manrape boomed at the men around him. “Defend the captain! Defend the quarterdeck!”

  Gallondrunk charged the boarding ladder screaming and spewing spit. “Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!” His every f-bomb was punctuated by his awful walrus iron spearing an Ironman sailor. Skillet fired one barrel and then the other, and his harpoons reduced men to ruin. He started drawing cleavers and throwing them. “For you! For you! For you!”

  A huge toothless Canadian leaped to the deck and swung his war club so hard at Ryan it almost whistled. “Fuck you, eh!”

  Ryan leaned back from the blow as it smashed into the remains of the broken binnacle. He leaned in and ran the man through. Ryan ripped his blade free. It was a free-for-all across all decks. His personal guard stoppered the attack on the quarterdeck in red-handed fashion. Doc and Rood stood back and flanked Ryan in bodyguard positions with bloodied swords drawn. Doc looked up at the quarterdeck of the Ironman. A seven-foot-tall Asian man with a giant cat-o-nine tails glared down at them. From Dorian’s interrogation, Ryan knew this was Kang, and Kang was just about the most feared fighter sailing the seas. He looked down and grinned at what he saw.

  Manrape stepped back from the boarding ramp and perfectly pantomimed reaching up, grabbing Kang by his hair, yanking the Korean to his knees and forcing an act of oral copulation with one hand. Kang’s eyes flared. Manrape made a kissy face. Kang jerked his head and shouted. Behind him eight more Koreans face-painted in Ironman white and black came forward bearing short, wide and curved-bladed swords in both hands.