James Axler - Dectra Chain

"I swear it will be a close-run thing," he said. "The clouds stoop and kiss the waves. They race upon us. It was always said that Pyra Quadde would chase a right whale into the very jaws of Satan himself. Now she will prove that. And take every man of the Salvation with her."

"Why not stop her?" Donfil suggested, blinking spray from his deep-set eyes.

Flynn grinned. "Why not place thy pagan head between the jaws of a great white and bid it to be gentle with thee?"

The lookout reported that the great school of whales had vanished in the shifting murk of the chem storm, but that news did nothing to check the woman in her wild lust to hunt and to butcher. Whatever the cost.

Groping claws of blackness stretched clear across the sky, with a few shreds of vivid cobalt-blue trapped and shrinking between them.

"Man the davits. Mr. Walsh to lower away first!" the captain yelled, her voice fading under the eldritch cry of the storm.

Ryan stood, hands on the ropes, ready to begin the launching of the whaleboat. Each wave snarled higher, white-topped. He glanced around, but his horizon was limited by the waves of the raging ocean, a gray-green, obliterating the land, hiding the tumbling whales ahead of them, hiding the masts of the ship that had been shadowing them. That ship had been completely forgotten in the thrill of the gale and the excitement of the chase to come.

Ogg — kerchief still held to his bleeding mouth — was at Ryan's side, ready to give the orders. Walsh, face pale as a winding-sheet, was already at the tiller, his crew climbing slowly and fearfully to their places.

"I fear it will mean good sailors going to a chilling," Ogg said very quietly.

The wind tore at Ryan's clothes, and the salt spray soaked him clear to the skin. The ocean boiled with the fury of the storm. Yet so great was the fear of Pyra Quadde, that not a single man raised a voice against her orders to launch the frail whaleboat into the howling inferno.

"We'll be on the lee shore in minutes at this rate," Flynn screamed, mouth inches from Ryan's ears.

Ryan had rarely seen such a ferocious chem storm. Up in the Darks there were winds that would tear through the steep valleys and rip the land away from the bedrock. Some of the hot spots in the West and Southwest of the Deathlands were the birthing places for dreadful hurricanes, whipping up nuke-fire from the missile pits, bringing the bone-sick death to anyone unlucky enough to be caught out in them. He'd been locked safe in a massive war wag and felt it rock and vibrate with the force of winds, had found its painted metal wiped clear by the shredding sands.

But he'd never faced such a storm with only a single layer of fragile wood between him and a plunging death.

"Lower!" Pyra Quadde yelled.

The Phoenix had laid off from the shore, avoiding the worst of the storm. But even on the fringes it was a terrifying experience. Jak was hanging onto the shrouds, throwing up over the side. His other hand clutched the butt of his heavy Magnum pistol.

Captain Deacon had taken the wheel himself, with Doc standing in the steering cabin with him. There were two lookouts in the crosstrees, lashed there for safety, and two extra men in the eyes of the ship, peering through the murk.

"She is crazed," the skipper said, teeth gritted. "They say she goes after the school of whales we sighted. They were within a league or less of the rocks, and she goes grinning to perdition. I fear thy friends are likely doomed, Dr. Tanner."

The old man clung to the rail around the shelter, as though his life and his reason depended upon it. His voice was cracked and low. "And the second of the angels poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man. And every living soul died in the sea."

"Book of the Revelations, Doctor. Know it right well."

"It spoke truly of the day of judgement," Doc said. "Day of sky dark and long winter. The Good Book talks about that. A mighty earthquake and the sun became as black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became blood. The stars of heaven fell to earth. The great men, the captains, the kings, the rich, the successful, the military, the powerful and the poor... all of them departed. That was a great cleansing, Captain Deacon. A great cleansing."

The whaling skipper said nothing, concentrating on holding his course, keeping sea room. Away from the eye of the storm where he knew the Salvation had vanished.

The rope strained in the blocks as the crew lowered the first of the whaleboats to the sea. Normally each crew would lower for itself, but the water was far too rough for that. Long before they actually reached the end of the rope, the tops of the waves were snarling around the flanks of the dory.

"Faster, ye cockless scum!" Pyra Quadde yelled.

The davits squeaked as the boat was dropped in a rush. The moment it splashed down, it was swamped by a huge wave, tearing it from the mother ship, snapping the retaining ropes like thin cotton. Every man aboard was immediately tipped out into the turbulent ocean.

Walsh and one other member of the boat's crew were saved. The rest vanished utterly into the raging waves and were never seen again.

The Salvation was less than two hundred paces from the surf pounding on the jagged boulders of the shore.

The ship was hit hard by the chem squall, suffering damage to both foremast and mizzenmast, as well as to much of her canvas and rigging. Planks had been started around the bow where she'd plowed into the butting rollers, and fifteen feet of rail had been torn away. It was a grudging tribute to Pyra Quadde that the ship didn't founder, or carry upon the rocks of the bleak shore.

As it was, it took all of her skill, culminating in her bludgeoning the helmsman to the deck with her belaying pin and taking the wheel herself, battling the head of the ship around, toward open water. None of the crew stayed below; they huddled together behind the tryworks, while the waves broke over them.

Ryan had made his plans. Though he thought death was nearly inevitable, he would never lie back and give in to the dark-masked creature with the glittering scythe. He had found some rope and decided to bind himself to any drifting wood, when the vessel eventually shuddered upon the headland that loomed over them.

The noise of the waves on the shore was deafening, the banshee wail often thousand drowned sailors.

Captain Quadde laid out a trailing anchor to keep the bow of the ship turned toward the wind, running under bare spars.

Chem storms obey no natural order. They can come howling from a clear sky; they can vanish as swiftly as a traitor's smile.

A scant hour after five men had gulped their last desperate breaths, the waves flattened and the clouds scudded away to the northeast. For a few brief minutes the day brightened, the sun managing to break through. But its light was sullen, like fouled brass, and it gave little warmth to the soaked seamen.

In less than an hour, the fog appeared.

Pyra Quadde hadn't had time to get a thorough damage report from the first mate. The sea anchor still trailed out, line limp, across the expanse of painted ocean. Tatters of canvas hung from the spars, and the splintered wood of damaged bulwarks was unmoved. Whatever happened, the Salvation wasn't in any fit shape to hunt whales for several hours.

And by then it would be night.

"Mist off the shore, Captain!" shouted mad Jehu, who was the lookout. "Land's vanished clear away. Coming out from east and west, like the horns of a bull, Captain."

She waved a hand to acknowledge the weather warning, calling back to ask if he could see any sign of the whales.