Haven's Blight

Mildred gestured helplessly at the metal crates containing their own longblasters. “So now we can’t shoot at them, either,” she said sourly.

“There are more of them than there are of us,” Krysty said, as ahead of them the New Hope let loose its own smoke screen and was instantly lost to view. “Even though our friends have some pretty potent weapons, if neither side can see to shoot the other I judge we got the better end of the deal.”

“Long as my friends and I aren’t getting shot at,” Mildred said, “I’m okay. Hey!”

The last was accompanied by a defensive duck as a burst of automatic fire cracked overhead.

“They’re shooting blind,” Krysty said. She wasn’t sure which woman she was trying to reassure, Mildred, or herself. Isis as usual seemed to cool.

The long, lean, exotic captain had opened the lockers and was pulling something out. Before Krysty could tell what it was a whooshing roar drew her attention forward. Even through the dense concealing fog she could see the glows of rocket engines arcing away from the New Hope’s launch racks toward the enemy fleet.

“I guess we are, too,” Mildred said. A heartbeat later an orange glow flared like the sun behind the vivid clouds of an incoming acid-rain storm.

“Not at all,” Isis said, smiling. She held a pair of bulky dark goggles toward the women. “Try these.”

From Finagle’s First Law, the distinctive moan of Stork’s bow-mounted Gatling began to rise above the storm howl. Krysty hesitated momentarily, then pulled the goggles over her eyes and the strap to the back of her head.

Immediately the pirate fleet appeared. It seemed all shades of gray, the hulls brightest, almost silver, as were the blasters in pirate hands. The pirates themselves were duller gray, the ocean a strange liquid construct of endlessly shifting panes in tones of slate and gunmetal, like stained glass robbed of color and rendered somehow fluid. Everything was overlaid with a rainbow shimmer, almost like the sheen of oil on water, except jittery instead of fluid.

“What is this?” Mildred demanded at her side. “I’ve looked through Starlight scopes and IR goggles. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Millimeter wave radar,” Isis said. “Much, much shorter wave than conventional radar. It gets translated into visual imagery by the ship’s computers, then broadcast to these headsets.”

The magical eye of the goggles wouldn’t see through the waves, apparently. Because just then a shift in the shimmery planescape revealed something Krysty hadn’t noticed before. A swarm of small motor craft was forging toward the Tech-nomad squadron, packed dangerously full with pirates wearing black clothes or armbands.

Just how dangerously overloaded they were was proved a few heartbeats later when Krysty saw the bow of a whaleboat plunge into a wave—and keep going until the water swallowed it and the crew whole. Another wave surge, its top torn ragged by the fierce insistent wind, hid where it had vanished from sight. When it subsided, she saw a few heads bobbing and arms flailing futilely above the churning water. She never saw the boat itself again.

A roar of gunfire assaulted Krysty’s eardrums. Through the ringing it left in her ears she heard Isis say, “Hard to hit the buggers in this sea. But at least it’s just as hard for them, plus they’re shooting blind.”

Krysty pulled down her goggles and looked at the approaching swarm of boats. Flashes told her some of the pirates were shooting into the dense brown bank, now rolling toward them like a fog. She heard a few stray shots crack overhead.

She aimed and fired at the nearest boat. As far as she could tell, she missed it cleanly. She heard Mildred fire a burst, then curse. Evidently she’d whiffed as well.

The Egret pitched so vigorously in the waves Krysty was finding it hard to keep her feet. Her stomach, normally as strong as cast iron, was starting to weaken from the complicated motion induced by the storm. But she willed herself to keep her feet, ripping burst after burst at the pirates. Her shoulder started to ache from the relentless pounding of the Browning’s recoil.

“Where do they get all these suckers?” Mildred asked as she bent to grab a fresh magazine.

“From the poor souls downtrodden in the baronies,” Isis said. “From the hopeless trying to scratch a living among the islands, or up the fever-swamp bayous. From the crews of craft they’ve captured.”

She fired a burst. “From other pirate bands they’ve absorbed. They get the same choice as other captives—join or die.”

“They must be doing mighty well,” Mildred said. “Ha, except for you!” Apparently she’d seen a target go overboard. The range was close enough now Krysty was able to bring punishing bursts on targets, spatter boat crews with bullets. Even if the pitching of the sea was so savage that she could only hit one or two at a time before Egret’s motion threw her aim totally off.

It also meant the range was short enough for the pirates’ blind-fired blasters to have effect, as well. Krysty heard a grunt from the rail aft, where other goggled Tech-nomads were shooting with a bizarre assortment of weapons, from M-16s to crossbows. She didn’t look that way as she clawed an empty magazine from the well of her longblaster. Its receiver and barrel cast heat like a midwinter stove.

“To have that many predators hunting together,” Mildred said, “they must eat well.”

Isis was momentarily distracted. She lowered her BAR and moved her lips soundlessly. Krysty guessed that somehow she was still speaking to her crew.

“Dammit,” the captain said, shaking her head. “Another one lost.”

She snapped back into focus, looking at Mildred with her startling blue eyes. “Yes, they eat well,” she said. “And the fattest feast for a hundred miles of this coast is Haven. But so far that shell’s too tough for them to crack.”

“And that’s part of the reason they’re attacking so furiously now, despite the storm and the damage we’re doing,” Krysty said. “Just the value of the Tech-nomads’ own equipment, like these goggles. Let alone whatever cargo we’re carrying.”

“And that’s a big reason we seldom deal with outsiders,” Isis said. “Even the ones who aren’t out-and-out pirates can usually resist anything but temptation.”

A commotion from astern made itself heard even over the noise of blasterfire and the approaching hurricane. “Krysty, look!” Mildred called. “Some of the boats have broken through Finagle’s smoke screen.”

Krysty’s heart lurched with an adrenal shock of fear for Ryan. Not that he was in any greater danger now than a thousand times before, she told herself. And yet despite herself her mind framed the words, Mother Gaia, please, keep him safe.

And Isis cried out, “Here come the bastards!”

Chapter Six

Using his iron sights and the goggles Smoker had provided him and J.B., Ryan snapshot the man steering a twenty-foot boat as it started to slide down the face of a wave toward them. As a vagary of the storm sea pushed the unguided boat past the Finagle’s First Law, Ryan saw Doc leaning out to fire his bulky LeMat into the craft.

Whether by the blast of the big gun or the lurch of the ship, Doc was pitched over the brass rail. Gripping the longblaster in his left hand, Ryan lunged. He managed to tangle his right fist in the long flapping tail of Doc’s frockcoat.

As skeletal-thin as the old man was, he weighed enough to slam Ryan face-first into the rail. The one-eyed man tasted blood. Shaking off the momentary wooziness, Ryan slung his rifle hastily, then got hold of the other man’s coat with his other hand.

The LeMat roared again. By chance he saw the head of a pirate who stood in the stern of the little boat, grinning and aiming some kind of handblaster improvised from a piece of pipe, snap back as the .44 caliber round hit him over the right eye. A piece of his skull came off, taking with it the filthy pink bandanna wrapped around the pirate’s head. He toppled back among his fellows, who were all more interested in scrambling toward the tiller to try to regain control of the wildly tossing little craft than fighting.

The Finagle heeled well over toward the starboard side. Ryan looked down to see Doc’s head and shoulders fully submerged in foam-shot green water. One big bony-knuckled hand held the huge blaster that would normally be down by his thigh—and was now up, out of the water.

Ryan hauled hard. Doc’s head broke free of the waves, streaming and sputtering. As Ryan straightened his legs in a sort of dead lift, a line slithered over the rail toward the fallen man. Doc’s free hand caught the blue-and-white nylon rope and he was able to help haul himself to safety.

“Pretty hard core, aiming and shooting while you were upside down like that,” Ryan said as Doc scrambled inboard with alacrity surprising for one who generally looked as if he weren’t just at Death’s door, but walking on through it. “Triple hard.”

“It was the danger I could do something about, Ryan,” Doc said. He coughed violently, spewing up a torrent.

“Thank you,” he said, recovering quickly. “As well as to my other benefactor.”

“Yeah.” Ryan turned to see the ship’s owner and commander himself, the burly grizzle-bearded black man called Smoker, standing there with his oil-stained coveralls soaked through. He had a big long-barreled Smith & Wesson double-action blaster holstered on one hip and a cutlass with an eighteen-inch blade and a vicious knuckle-duster handguard thrust through his belt at the other. “Thanks, Captain.”

“Least I could do.” From the bow came the weird grinding roar of Stork’s pedals turned, steam-powered Gatling. “Need all the fighters I can get today. Pretty impressive presence of mind, there, Doc, holding that handblaster free of the water even when your head was under.”

Doc smiled. “Though the LeMat isn’t what it once was, the workings must be kept dry.”

“What was the blast?” Ryan asked. He scanned the moving hills of water but saw no immediate danger this side of the smoke screen, which was beginning to fray and come apart under the wind’s increasingly savage onslaught.

“RPG,” Smoker said around the stub of cigar clamped unlit between his teeth. Like all Tech-nomads except a few apparent eccentrics, he had teeth in perfect condition, almost blinding in their whiteness.

“Hit the stern. The nuke-suckers were trying either to take out the prop or the steering. Didn’t make either. Didn’t hurt anybody, beyond a few scorch marks and scrapes. Won’t be so lucky long.”

A hefty thump forward, accompanied by another quick violent vibration of the planks beneath his boots, made Ryan turn.

“There’s our luck running out,” Smoker said as grappling hooks thumped on the deck. He drew his weapons. “All hands stand by to repel boarders.”