Her Majesty's Western Service (14 page)

“
No way?” asked Mack. "They mine that shit out west, and she's heading east. Same direction anyone from Denver
would
be coming.”

“
It's a fifth-rate piece of shit,” said Lenehan.

“
Nobody asked your opinion.”

The
Jolly Rapist
was a crew of real men, twenty-nine strong out of the Black Hills. They were tough killers, not the pussy let-them-live Code adherents, and the ship's name was not ironic. Real men – not like Kennedy and his bunch – had only one use for women, and some of them had the same use for men they captured.

“
You think it's a bluff. Shitty wreck that nobody like us is gonna waste his time bothering with, so they can sneak gold past,” Weaver said.

“
Yeah. I think it is.”

“
So why they fucking scream it out?”

“
Panic? Maybe they thought there might be two of us?”

“
Bullshit a piece of garbage is gonna have gold,” Weaver said, but he sounded less sure. “They going to give their gold courier to someone stupid? It's a bluff. They're trying to let the liner get free. Figure a reward from someone who can operate a
real
ship is going to make up the loss of their garbage.”

Mack shrugged.

“Turns out to be a bluff, we'll kill every last one of them.”

“
I thought we were gonna do that anyway," said Lenehan.

“
Even their bitches.”

That drew a couple of angry noises from others on the bridge.

“Once we're done with `em ourselves, morons.”

Decisively, he turned the helm into an intercept course with the flying jalopy, which looked to be doing about forty-five.

“We'll get `em in a couple minutes. Hail `em down and tell the fuckers they'll live if they do as we say. May as well take their bird – gonna be
some
asshole who'll pay ten grand for it.”

“
You told them
what the fucking hell?
” Nolan demanded.

“
That we're carrying gold. And, as you can see by how they'll have intercepted us in about three and a half minutes, they believe it.”

“
You
bastard
! I know she's not much of a ship, you Imperial son of a bitch, but the
Red Wasp
is
mine
! I've put my life into this bird!"

“
Prize law,” Perry said calmly.

“
What?”

“
Prize law. Considering my men and myself to be Marines - we are, after all, only passengers – then six eighths, or three quarters, of the pirate's value will go to the
ship crew
, yourselves as represented by you. The Service is paying you thirteen hundred for our fare. That airship is going to sell, at absolute minimum, for thirty times that, and that's not counting any cargo aboard. There may also be rewards on the individual men. Do you hear what I am saying?”

“
You're saying we can make a locker’s payload of money if your men can take out this pirate,” said Nolan. “I'd like that more if I knew
how
.”

Perry had been thinking fast about that himself for the last couple of minutes. The problem was that the pirate outgunned them
badly
, whatever she had. She also had better resilience, more power, better steering and probably less inclination to take them intact - after all, a fall wouldn’t damage gold and you could always retrieve it from wreckage.

He had two advantages: One, surprise. The pirates would not be expecting
thirty-two Imperials. Two, discipline. His men were almost certainly better at what they did, on average, than pirate rabble were going to be.

Remember. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy
, he thought. He needed flexibility and backups, and he needed them
now
.

Martind
ale was looking at him as well.

“
They're going to tell us to go down,” said Perry to Nolan. “Comply, but keep them to the lee. What do you estimate the wind as?”

“
Ten, twelve?” Martindale said.

“
Keep them as close as possible to our lee. When I give the signal, dump ballast. Kent, I want you to gather all seven riggers and six other volunteers. Not Swarovski. Make sure they're all armed.”

“
We dump ballast, they're going to open fire on us
right away
," said Nolan. "You can retrieve gold from wreckage. They don't need an intact ship.”

“
But they'll want one, and it'll take them a couple of seconds to respond. My boarding team hits them from above.” Inspired by the way the pirates had come onto 4-106.
Two
could play at that, and it'd be easier with a stationary ship.

“
We rip out their lift. Engage their safeties, rip open the bags. They can dump their own ballast to an extent, but it'll slow them."

“
Immobilize them, you're saying. Then what?”

“
Board and attack.”

“
And what about the rest of us?” Martindale asked.

“
Land, spread out, and attack from all sides while they're distracted.”

“
What if they don't comply with your plan? What if they move faster than expected? What if they shoot this thing down?”

“
Then everyone bails and we engage them from the ground.”

“
I want to board,” Swarovski said as they descended. The pirate was about two hundred yards from them, close enough that through the gaps in the cargo cage they could see individual men. The ship had one rocket launcher that they could see – probably another one to starboard – and what looked like a very crude pressure gun.

“
No. You're of more value with that rifle. Shoot anyone, starting with their riggers, then bridge crew and gunners,” said Perry.

“
But sir–”

“
That's an order, Weapons. We obey orders in the Service,
remember
?”

“
Sir. Yessir,” said Swarovski. Then muttered “I want the next boarding, though.”

“
One hundred!” Nolan called out.

The ground below was grass, two or three feet high. It rippled in waves
under the wind. Nolan was doing an adequate, if jerky, job at keeping them squarely to the freighter's lee.

Just two riggers aboard the pirate ship, although there was going to be a rig station wi
th possibly another one or two in reserve.

“
Fifty,” Nolan called.

“
You will dump four hydrogen sacs on landing and come out with your hands up,” came a voice over the pirate's loudhailer.

“
Charming name, sir,” Halvorsen muttered to Perry. “The
Jolly Rapist
. Ten to one they're not the Code type.”

“
Don't tell me you think there's a jot of substance to that Code noise, Warrant,” Perry murmured back. “If they respected laws, they wouldn't be pirates.”

“
I got a bad feeling,” Lenehan muttered to Captain Mack, on the bridge of the ship. “Gonna be hard men aboard.”

“
Nobody fuckin' asked your opinion, I told you. Fag asshole.”

“
The balance geek's got a point,” said Weaver. “Might be a tramp, but you think they're gonna let gold fly without half a dozen Pinks riding along with it?”

“
Thirty of us,” Mack said. “I've killed two Pinks singlehandedly. They come out with their hands up, or we blow them to slag.”

“
Ten grand for the ship,” Lenehan said.

“
And there might be a hundred in gold. Fuck the ship. She makes a false move, we blow the shithead to hell. Second, remind the guns of that. She
twitches
and we blow her to wreckage.”

“
I got it,” said Weaver.

“
Do we dump the hydrogen sacs?” Nolan asked Martindale. He was uneasy about this,
very
uneasy. This crazy colored Imperial was out for revenge against pirates, but it wasn't
his
, the colored Imperial captain's, stake they were playing with. It was
Nolan's
, and this was insane beyond the standards of what the
Red Wasp
did
normally
.

On the other hand, the size of this potential
score
...

Martindale, who had thrown a blanket poncho over his uniform tunic so that the pirates wouldn't suspect anything, thought for a moment.

“Yeah. We dump them. Your crew ready to dump equivalent ballast and then some? We put them at ease. But we've got to dump that ballast on the
spot
. All at once.”

“
What's wind, Vidkowski?”

“
Ten or eleven.”

The ship bumped to the ground, the pirate about a hundred and fifty yards away, just off the ground. Ropes were thrown down, and a couple of men with rifles dropped into the waist-high grass.

Nolan suddenly became very aware of the pirate's weapons. A rocket launcher at a hundred and fifty yards, with fairly low crosswind? And the pressure-gun just aft of the bridge, aimed
right at them?

How had he allowed the Imperials to talk him into this insanity? Oh. Right. They'd just gone ahead with it.

Well, run!

“
Charlie!” Nolan shouted. The code-signal.

“
They're not dumping!” came a voice, half-heard through the pirates' loudhailer.

The sounds of ballast, dirt sacks pre-clumped together, moving along the deck. And then suddenly
lift
, and Nolan shouted into the speaking tubes: “Keep us steady over them!”

The wind was pushing them up, fast, hard, as more ballast was
dumped and they gained ground.

A rocket fired. Nolan flinched and then screamed as it impacted somewhere aft.
Oh God this thing's going to hell they're better than the Imperials had planned on...

“
Fuckers are better than we figured on,” Halvorsen muttered to Perry, as the rocket hit the cargo grille and detonated. Only a light one, three or four inches, but enough to send some of 4-106's crew reeling across the way.

“Open the loading!”
Perry yelled. They were above the range of the pirate's guns, although she was starting to lift herself.

Swarovski fired his rifle, two quick shots through the cage.

“Got one!”

“
Attending the wounded!” Specialist Second Rogers - the medic - shouted.

Two of the riggers heaved the ten-foot-wide cargo door open. The grey bulk of the
Jolly Rapist
was coming to be below them, one of the riggers throwing himself flat and raising a pistol. Swarovski fired three times in quick succession, and the bullets sparked off the aluminum surface.

“
Now! Go, go, go!” Perry shouted, as the
Jolly Rapist
ditched ballast and leapt up. Only ten feet down, no need for the rope as he fell, just roll and don't fall off the side...

The landing hurt, and he made a dent
in the thin plating. Men were coming in behind him. The pirate rigger fired a shot and then took a bullet himself as Specialist Third Rafferty practically landed on top of him, firing down into him.

Blown by the wind, steering around and powering away, the
Red Wasp
was past them now, with only seven of the fourteen-man boarding party aboard.

Halvorsen was already at work with the crowbar he'd brought. He levered off one of the airship's plates and hacked open the hydrogen
sac below.

“
Get to it, you lot!” Perry yelled. “Cut their lift away or we don't have a damn chance!”

A hatch opened and a man with a submachi
negun came up. Somebody fired at him and he ducked back.

One by one, the
paper-thin, six-by-six-foot aluminum plates were levered off, the hydrogen bags below ripped open.

The man from the hatch raised his gun through it and fired a wild burst. A senior airshipwoman Perry didn't know yelled in pain and rolled, dropping her crowbar and clutching
her chest.