Iron Rage

“Where are we going, anyway?” Ricky asked.

“Captain says she means to head back up the Yazoo,” Arliss said. “From there we’ll play it by ear.”

“So we’re basically in the clear?” The youth sounded relieved.

Krysty lifted her head and gave him a wan grin.

“Don’t ever say that, Ricky,” she said teasingly. “It’s only tempting fate.”

“Ships ahead!” Jak cried out from above. “War boats!”

Chapter Five (#ulink_e5364289-f12e-5a32-8a83-ecb2e724b8af)

“It’s the New Vick fleet!” Arliss exclaimed. “And they got their big tubs with ’em!”

Krysty climbed to her feet in alarm. Without even looking, Ryan stood up beside her and reached an arm to steady her.

Ryan gazed south, along the length of the cabin. Out beyond the prow of the Mississippi Queen a V of five blasterboats was steaming toward them with little mustaches of water by their bows. He knew that meant they were driving hard, although the slow but strong Sippi current’s flowing against them slowed them.

Behind the blasterboats came the main New Vickville fleet, darkened by the long shadows that stretched from the low bluffs on the west bank of the big river. It was still well beyond blaster range, but the ironclad ships looked huge, like a distant range of mountains.

“Fireblast,” Ryan said, almost conversationally. Another person might have taken it for resignation. Another man saying it under the circumstances might have meant it that way.

But not Ryan. Krysty knew that his tone meant he had already accepted the situation—and begun to plot how to beat it and survive, as he had a thousand times before.

“Blasterboats have already cut us off from the Yazoo,” he said.

“And the big boats are squatting right in the river mouth,” said Jake, who among other duties was an assistant navigator, though pretty much every member of the Queen’s crew could do pretty much everyone else’s job.

Krysty and her friends were exceptions, of course, although they were willing hands. All had been aboard ships a number of times. They did what they could and nobody complained. When it came to fighting, it was the river-boaters who were second string.

And she already knew that it would come to fighting. Because if the patrol boats or heavy ironclads didn’t sink them with their blasters, they would wind up having to seek shelter somewhere in the deceptively green, rad- and mutie-haunted countryside around them.

Plus it always came down to fighting, sooner or later. These were the Deathlands.

Ryan was already half carrying her forward at a good clip. Several of the crew raced on ahead, maneuvering carefully past to avoid jostling the pair. They were on good terms, along with being nominally on the same side, but none of the Queen’s complement was eager to cross any of the newcomers. Least of all their tall, one-eyed wolf of a leader. Or his woman.

The rest of the companions followed Ryan and Krysty. They were never eager to race toward danger, at least when that wasn’t called for. Except Jak, who scampered forward along the cabin roof like a white two-legged squirrel.

On the bridge Trace Conoyer was standing determinedly on her own, next to the wheel, where Nataly was still piloting the boat. The captain’s right arm had been safety-pinned to the captain’s shirt to discourage her from waving it around. Mildred hovered next to her, watching her like an anxious mother. “They’ve opened fire,” Nataly said in her flat voice. She never seemed excited.

A waterspout blew up out of the river right in front of them. Droplets struck Krysty in the face, without much force.

“Steady as she goes,” the captain said. She shouted into a speaking tube down to the engine room to maintain full speed.

“But, Captain,” Nataly said. For the first time her voice betrayed emotion. She sounded worried now. “We’re heading right into their cannon!”

“Poteetville patrol boats aren’t that much farther behind us,” J.B. called from the open door. The door-slam sound of the shot that had produced the splash hit Krysty’s ears.

“Steady as she goes,” Conoyer repeated. She was leaning forward, gripping the lower sill of the now-vacant front port with her left hand so hard her knuckles whitened. “On my word, turn her hard aport, smartly as you can.”

The mate glanced nervously aside. Her steely veneer was showing serious cracks now.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” she said.

Ryan, J.B., Doc and Ricky had pushed onto the bridge with Krysty. Jak was doing whatever he was doing, as he usually did. Under the circumstances, he was as helpless as the rest of them. Arliss had come in with them. The rest of the Queen’s crew had dispersed elsewhere.

Flashes flickered from the bows of the oncoming craft. “Get down!” Ryan commanded.

He did as he ordered, although he stayed just high enough to peer out the front port. Krysty did likewise. She realized he had likely ordered his people down to reduce the targets they offered. She doubted the wooden front of the cabin would offer any resistance to a solid cannonball. It had not been built for that.

“You too, Nataly,” Trace ordered. After a dubious glance her way, the mate hunkered as low as she could and still see to steer.

The captain stayed erect. “Mildred, stay hunkered down too, but please help me stand. I need to see.”

Mildred reached out and grabbed her hips to steady her.

A shot whined overhead, then the ship was racked by a shuddering crash that seemed to come up through the deck by way of Krysty’s knee and boot sole. Another crash came from somewhere astern.

“Captain,” Maggie called, coming up the hatch from below, “the bow’s been holed below the waterline. We’re taking on a lot of—”

Something moaned by Krysty’s head, between her and Ryan. A hot breath blew across her face. She saw a lock of her lover’s curly black hair tweaked briefly out from his head as by invisible fingers.

From behind she heard a strange squelching noise, followed by another sound of rending wood. Something like hot rain fell on her shoulders and back. She heard a sizable amount of liquid hit the planks of the deck.

She and Ryan both turned. His lone blue eye was wide.

Maggie stood a step away from the hatch below. Or rather her slight torso did. Her head was missing entirely. A pulse of blood shot up from the terrible vacancy between her shoulders, then her headless trunk toppled down the ladder.

Ricky puked. The stink of vomit, added to the reek of fresh blood, excrement, burned flesh and lingering peppery gunpowder smell, made Krysty’s head spin.

“Arliss,” Trace snapped without turning, “get every hand available to work the bilge-pumps.”

His wrinkled, sunburned face was white beneath his beard, but he bobbed his head. “Aye, Captain.”

He vanished below, slipping slightly in Maggie’s blood.

“Captain,” Nataly said in a strained voice, “those blasterboats are getting mighty close—”

“On my mark, start your turn to port,” the captain said. Nataly stood back upright, her hands white on the wheel.

“Don’t see much of a break, up ahead,” J.B. murmured.

Krysty didn’t, either. The summer-green reeds and rushes on the left bank waved in the breeze in a line unbroken as far as the eye could see. She realized Ryan was gripping her arm, tightly enough to hurt, but she didn’t say anything. It reassured her more than it felt bad.

“Three,” Trace said. “Two…”

“Captain, I don’t see—” Nataly began.