James Axler - Haven's Blight

A dark hole appeared in the cooked red mess of that forehead. The scalded Tech-nomad folded to the deck. He had received the only relief possible.

The burly figure of Smoker, the ship’s captain, next appeared from the artificial fogbank that still hid the after half of Finagle’s First Law. The big black man didn’t look as if he’d gotten burned. But he was hurt, and badly, if Ryan was any judge—which he was. The right side of the big man’s coveralls were a darker shade than usual from midchest down. He clutched his right side and limped on his right leg.

But whatever had wounded him hadn’t damaged his voice any. “Abandon ship!” he bellowed like an enraged bull elephant. “All hands—we’re going down!”

A sudden line of bullets stitched fore-to-aft along the side of the cabin. Its path intersected the captain. He jerked, then sagged. Finally he collapsed to the deck of his sinking ship, where an outward roll of the hull sent him limply into the scuppers.

“Shit,” Ryan said.

“We had better seek out boats,” Doc said.

“Do you see any?” Ryan demanded. The two men had to hang on to lines against the ship’s heaving. “The lifeboats I remember were carried back by the stern. We may have to swim for it.”

“In this sea? That would be madness!”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said. They were shouting at each other to make themselves heard over the howl of the storm and the drumming of the rain. “Mebbe triple-stupe. But the way I calculate, if we swim, we may drown. We stay on this tub, we will drown.”

Another blast rocked ship. A yellow fireball rolled upward from the midst of the steam cloud that enveloped the stern. Black smoke poured after. Yellow licks of flame began to dart out the sides of the steam cloud.

“Or burn,” Ryan added.

Doc clutched his arm. “Perhaps there is another choice.”

It was on Ryan’s tongue to say he didn’t see it. Instead he looked where Doc pointed.

The New Hope, rotors spinning furiously in the wind, backed toward the sinking Finagle’s First Law. A small pirate boat tried for some unknown reason to dart between the ships and was crunched as the steamer rode it down. Ryan couldn’t see the impact of Finagle’s up-angled bow, but heard the screams of men being crushed.

Jak stood on the slippery brass railing of the rotor-sailer’s stern, his hair hanging down his face and shoulders like spilled milk. He held on to a guyline, riding the wildly pitching and rolling and yawing craft like some Western cowboy taming a bronco. He laughed into the face of the storm. J.B. stood beside him on the deck, preparing to throw over a rope in a very business-like manner.

“You know,” Ryan said as Jak threw back his head and uttered a panther-scream of exaltation, “that boy’s just having himself way too much fun.”

THE WIND DIMINISHED when they entered the river mouth, which wasn’t to say it cut off. Nor did the rain slacken. Rather it grew even fiercer, and lightning veined the sky in bluish white in an almost continuous pulsation. The thunder was one loud roar, competing with all the other noise.

One noise it wasn’t competing with was blasterfire, Ryan was pleased to note as he stood in the stern with his Steyr ready. The small pirate craft had pulled back and were being laboriously recovered by the larger vessels of the fleet. The ones that survived. It didn’t seem to him there were that many.

“Hard to imagine they’ll keep coming,” Ryan said, “after taking losses like that.”

Cold as the hearts of coldhearts were, they were, after all, mainly predators. And predators tended to seek easy prey. Or they didn’t survive to pass on their genes to baby predators.

“I don’t know,” Long Tom said worriedly. He stood in the stern with them, more concerned with pursuit than with the dangers of navigating a narrow, relatively shallow passage in a hurricane. Clearly he trusted Micro, his sailing master. “Once Black Mask catches the scent of a rich prize, he doesn’t like to let it go. He’s not a man who deals well with disappointment.”

On their last sight of the Black Joke, it had been tossed on massive waves five hundred or so yards astern. Perhaps half a dozen other large craft still clustered around it. That was less than half the fleet that first hove into view over the horizon.

Ryan was pretty sure the Hope’s rocket racks had only accounted for two or three of the enemy ships. If the Tech-nomad squadron boasted any other weapons able to sink a ship of that size, he hadn’t seen them used in the fight. More likely the other captains had chosen to cut and run, from the battle or from the storm.

“He doesn’t much care about losses,” Randy said. “Easy come, easy go. And the more casualties he takes, the fewer pieces the pie has to be cut into.”

J.B. had his hat off and was wringing water out of it. “Not the kind of employer I’d like to work for,” he said, clapping the fedora back on his head. Ryan couldn’t see it was an ounce less soaked than before he’d wrung it out.

“How does he get anybody to sign on with him, got an attitude like that?”

Randy shrugged. “As we told you, there’s no shortage of men without much other choice live along this coast. Not to mention the ones he signs on at blasterpoint. Anyway, he’s free with the jolt and red-eye. And with the women, they say, when they make landfall. Lotta men reckon a fast death with the Black Gang beats a slow death ashore.”

“Cast in those terms,” Doc said, “the attraction of his employ becomes, at least, more readily comprehensible.”

Randy nodded. Despite their circumstances, Ryan felt brief amusement. The black Tech-nomad himself was pretty plainspoken. But by and large the Tech-nomads were about the only people left on Earth who didn’t think Doc talked funny.

“Looks as if the Black Joke is making for the inlet,” a voice called from midships as the Hope fully entered the river. “Pursuing.”

Long Tom winced. “Great. Just what we need. Even with the real storm about to land on us like as asteroid from fucking space.”

“Thought you were the one pointed out this Black Mask slagger didn’t like to let go the trail of fat prey,” Ryan said.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t hope,” Long Tom said.

DESPITE THE LASHING of wind and rain, Ryan stood in the bow of the New Hope at him. J.B. stood by his side, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. His hat was somehow crammed so hard down on his head the 60 mph winds couldn’t dislodge it. Their two other friends were inside the cabin.

“You know, this is crazy, Ryan,” he said. Actually, he hollered. It was the only way to make himself heard. “You know, when nature gets too much for even Jak to handle, it’s probably time to pack it in.”

“You head inside if you want to.”

The Armorer lifted his face to the rain. Ryan wondered how he could see a blessed thing. Even if the rain didn’t totally obscure his glasses, the round lenses were fogged white as Jak’s hair.

“Reckon I’ll stay with you a spell,” the little man said.

This bayou wove a tangled skein of waterways, ever-changing—and never changing faster nor more decisively than when a brutal storm blew in off the Gulf. Ryan had hoped the surviving craft could power directly upriver, put some quick distance between them and the Gulf. Hurricane winds were bad, but water was the big killer.

But they weren’t having that kind of luck. The channel here all but paralleled the coast; from time to time Ryan could see gray waves whipped frighteningly high by the storm through the trees. Sooner or later the water would rise and surge right over the trees at them. And what happened next he didn’t care to speculate about.

“Anyway,” J.B. said, “could be worse.”