Iron Rage (15 page)

“Stickies don't dig,” J.B. had said. So they loaded the rafts with their personal gear, or such of it as had survived—Krysty's and her friends' had all come through intact—along with necessities, and whatever cargo would fit. The rest they'd buried.

And there it remained. Or at least there was no sign that the ground had been disturbed since they tamped it down over the buried goods.

“But I thought J.B. said stickies didn't dig?” Arliss said in a bantering tone.

“They usually don't,” Krysty stated.

“In all probability,” Doc said from his raft, “they were expressing their rage at being denied a chance to
play with fire. Frustration drives them to frenzy. They might have even expected to find coals still live.”

“Be a good trick,” Santee said, “staying on fire all buried like that.”

“Who knows what goes on in a stickie's mind?” Abner asked.

Once Jak pronounced the area clear, the rest of the party came ashore. And no sooner had they done so than Krysty was stricken leaden-limbed by exhaustion.

Judging by the way the others' shoulders began to sag, when the immediate sense of danger had passed, she was far from the only one.

But not everybody accepted that the danger had passed. “We can't stay here,” Sean muttered. “The bastards came here once. They'll come back, sure as glowing night shit.”

“What would you have us do?” Arliss asked. He was starting to sound exasperated with his friend.

The mechanic just shook his head. “I don't know. I just want to get out of here.”

“We need rest,” Mildred said flatly. “When you get this tired, your judgment goes to pot. Tempers get thin. You spook easily. You don't want to be making decisions in that kind of condition, and you especially don't want to be around people waving blasters in that kind of state!”

“But how can we rest?” Sean demanded. His voice was shrill. It was almost as if he were compelled somehow to prove Mildred right. “If we sleep, the stickies will night creep us. And their sucker fingers will pull the skin right off our faces. From our faces!”

“Well, that is a thing that happens,” J.B. said. “But if some of us keep good watch, we can discourage that sort of thing.” He hefted his Uzi one-handed to show what he meant by discouragement.

“First watch,” Jak said.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” Nataly asked. “You always seem to have the watch. And while mebbe you don't need as much sleep as the rest of us, you need some.”

“Once we got away from those New Vickville boats,” Ricky called back over his shoulder from where he stood at the water's edge, keeping watch out over Wolf Creek, “he went right to sleep. Stayed that way the whole time.”

“I thought he was always alert,” Arliss said.

“As Nataly says, even Jak needs to sleep sometimes,” Krysty added. “But floating back on the raft he didn't see much point in keeping watch. So he got some sleep.”

“But I can't sleep here!”

“
Easy
, Sean,” Arliss cautioned him.

“We don't have to.”

The words, softly spoken, came from an unlikely source. Myron Conoyer stood hard by the waterline, as if daring his wife's killer to come take him to join her.

“What do you mean, Captain?” Nataly asked.

He waved at the grounded tug. “We can sleep aboard the
Queen
.”

“You sure that's a good idea?” Mildred asked.

“Well, it is more defensible,” J.B. told her.

“Yeah, but how do we know it's not crawling with stickies? Maybe they thought it was a nice place for a new nest.”

“To say nothing of their habit of fouling human habitations when they intrude upon them,” Doc added.

“Check out,” Jak said. His manner made it clear even to the
Queen
's crew that he meant he would do it.

“I'll go with you,” J.B. said. “Everybody else, stick tight.” After a moment's consideration he unslung his Smith & Wesson M-4000 riot shotgun, and slung the submachine gun.

“Just the two of you?” Jake asked. “Isn't that suicide, if there are stickies aboard?”

“Son,” J.B. said, “the first sign of stickies, and I will be back here a lot faster than we left. No heroes in this bunch.”

“No stupes,” Jak agreed.

“But what if you have to go in the water and there are crocs?” Arliss asked.

“We'll use them for stepping stones,” J.B. said.

But, miraculously, they soon reported to the group that there were no stickies aboard the partially burned-out boat, nor sign any had been aboard her. Krysty didn't believe in miracles, as such, but in her present frame of mind she was willing and ready to give heartfelt if silent thanks to Gaia for the gift.

They tethered the launch and the boats to the
Queen
's stern in a cluster. Then leaving Jak and an uneasily wakeful Sean on watch, they found berths on deck or below.

Krysty laid out her bedroll by the stern rail. She couldn't remember when she felt so grateful for the relative softness and comfort of its embrace, with her rolled-up jacket for a pillow. This is probably the first
time we've got a chance to rest after our last slow dance with death, she thought.

She felt herself plummeting toward sleep as though she'd stepped off a cliff, her last thoughts of Ryan.

* * *

“T
HE
G
RAND
F
LEET
, Mr. Cawdor,” Baron Tanya said, waving expansively to left and right. “The pride of New Vickville.”

The sky was bright blue, with a wash of thin green and mauve chem clouds here and there. The morning air was still actually cool. The westerly breeze was stiff. It ruffled Ryan's hair as he stood by the rail on the flying bridge, atop and at the front of the flagship's multistory superstructure, and made the blue-and-white New Vickville flags flap loudly.

It also stank of carrion. The smell was stomach-wrenching even over the smell of the fires keeping the fleet's boilers warm for instant action. Something big, or a lot of something small, had to have died out there recently. Ryan had no idea what. The baron seemed not even to notice, which made him wonder if it was a regular occurrence here.

“Impressive,” he said, because it was.

At least all that smell of dying gives me no cause to worry about Krysty and the others, he thought. They were to the north of here, and downwind to boot. Not that he worried much, anyway. His companions could take care of themselves with or without him, and the
Mississippi
Queen
's crew was keen on survival, unless grief drove Myron Conoyer over the edge and he did something stupe. Ryan didn't worry much. He'd
learned early on it only ate up energy and brain-time that might have been better used thinking of a solution to whatever was causing the worry in the first place. Worrying never make things better.

“To our left,” the baron said, “you see the
Clytemnestra
, an armored frigate with eight cannon. To our right, the proud
Medusa
, her sister ship.”

Sister seemed a relative term.
Clytemnestra
had a markedly lower superstructure than
Medusa
. Both had been armored in whatever appropriate gauge iron and steel scrap happened to be available when they were being fitted, and appeared, more or less, in good shape. Still, they looked huge—and Ryan was looking down at both from his vantage point.

Of course, huge was relative, too. Any respectable predark tramp freighter was bigger than even the
Pearl
. To say nothing of the true monsters of the sea he'd encountered in his day, like derelict cruise ships or thousand-foot supertankers. But context mattered. On this stretch of the river, the baron's gaggle of slow, cobbled-together ironclads ruled unchallenged.

Except of course for the opposing fleet of armored war craft, lying plainly visible perhaps two miles south, just before the point where a bend in the big river began. The wind kept the smoke haze largely clear.

“Around us, you can see a few of our attendants—
Artemis
,
Hera
,
Revenge
,
Selene
,
Midori
. All six-cannon frigates, and all satellites to my beautiful flagship here, the
Pearl
.”

The “frigates” were notably smaller than the so-called capital ships. But Ryan thought about how they'd have
looked from the deck of the
Queen
—much less her bitty motor launch—and he got a queasy feeling in his stomach and a dryness in his throat.

“You seem to have a classical turn of mind,” he said, “leaving aside a few fliers.”

“Well,
Revenge
was a Poteetville ship. I took her myself as a prize from the Invincible Armada, back when my poor dear husband, Baron Si, was alive and ruling New Vickville. I was no mere trophy wife, you see.”

She shrugged.

“Or not
just
a trophy wife.”

“‘Si.'”

“Short for Silas. We're less formal than those Poteetville snobs, with all their pretensions at aristocracy. A passel of phonies with sticks up their butts. And I notice that you recognize the classical allusions, Mr. Cawdor.”

“I told you, I wasn't always a mercie.”

“As for
Midori
, I like the name. I heard it means ‘green' in Japanese.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, rubbing his chin. His stubble was getting long enough the hairs were beginning to flop over and not even be prickly anymore. Much longer without a shave and he was going to start looking like a skunk-ape.

“What about
Pearl
?” he asked. “Shouldn't your flagship have a classical name, too?”

“Oh, but she does. She's named for the classical predark character Pearl Forrester. I saw her on a couple of old vids when I was a girl. She became quite the inspiration and role model for me.”

Ryan had no idea who the character was, so he leaned
his arms on the rail and gazed out at the distant Poteetville fleet.

Invincible Armada, huh? he thought. I'm guessing Baron Harvey doesn't read history. Or doesn't read enough.

“I appreciate the guided tour, Baron,” he said. “And I've got to admit that your fleet's an impressive enough sight that I'm glad I got my first real look at it from this side. But I do find myself wondering why the baron of New Vick and commander of that fleet is spending so much time on a dirty, desperate mercie like me.”

“Not quite so dirty anymore, I'd say,” she said with a grin.

They'd washed his clothes overnight, and let him bathe in the room devoted to the purpose on that deck, while a pair of armed sailors stood watch. But either the baron or whoever her sec boss was—Stone didn't seem the type—didn't trust him with a razor in his hand quite yet. So the stubble grew.

He turned and leaned his elbows back on the rail. That brought Stone into view, standing impassively behind them just beyond earshot, and also the pair of honest-to-nuke sec men who stood flanking her. They wore the same blue-green uniforms as the sailors, but they carried lever-action .44-40 carbines with matching 1873 Colt Peacemaker replicas in flapped holsters on their belts. They were black powder weapons, charcoal burner, but cartridge repeaters, not single-shot muzzle loaders or the single-shot Springfield 1873s with the trapdoor actions. They were serious blasters, even by modern standards, and not the sort of weapon that
would be issued to random sailors told to watch the baron's pet coldheart captive.

“What did you bring me up here for?” he asked.

She nodded decisively. “You want turkey? We'll talk turkey.”

She shooed her aide and the sec men farther back.

The baron went to lean on the rail beside him. At least her lavender body wash or whatever it was tended to cut the rotting-meat smell. “Like I said, there you see the Poteetville fleet. They outnumber us every which way, from Baron Harvey J. Poteet Junior's flagship,
Tyrant
, and her twin,
Glory
, and the lesser capital ships
Invincible
and
Conqueror
, down through frigates like the
Terror
and
Bocephus
, through a gaggle of unarmed patrol craft on down to the garbage scow, the
Baron Harvey J. Senior
.”

“Garbage scow?”

She shrugged. “Harvey has daddy issues. Among others, given some of those ship names. I wonder if the Poteet males pass along under-endowment from one generation to the next. We have bigger cannon. We can put as much metal in the air at a time as they can, though they have four capital ships to our three, and ten frigates to our nine. Our weapons, ships and gunners are superior, however.”

She paused to light a black cigarillo in an ebony cigarette holder from a spring-driven mechanical lighter.

“Of course, I'd naturally say that. My point is they are a formidable enemy, and their intent is to destroy New Vick as a sovereign riverine power. But they are not the only deadly enemy. There is another enemy who
is intent upon destroying me in person. They're to be found on this side of the water, Mr. Cawdor.”

“Why not take them down, then?”

“If only it were so simple. My enemies include some of New Vick's leading citizens, as well as the captains of some of my very fleet, and they're the snakes I know about. They are either too well hidden or too powerful to touch—unless I can catch them in the act, which in itself supposes that my best evidence is also the last, by seeing the faces of those who plant their daggers in my back.”

Ryan wondered how a body could see the face of someone who was stabbing them in the back, but he caught her drift.

“You have a sec boss.” It wasn't a question. She might not be a usual baron, but she was every inch one.

“Barleycorn,” she said. “A good man, loyal and meticulous. He'd lay down his life for me. He is also unimaginative as an old oak stump.”