Time Castaways (18 page)

The spinning boomerangs fell short, skipping along the surface of the lake to hit the hull of the Warhammer with a dull thud before splashing into the bay. But arching high, the half-arrows came down like a rain of death, impacting everywhere on the warship, one of them pinning Mildred’s med kit to the deck.

Lifting her crossbow, Liana sent off a single arrow, a piece of burning rope lashed to the shaft. For a long moment it hung in the air, almost seeming to stand still, then it arched down to hit the honeycomb.

Screaming in terror, a sec man yanked out the firebrand, when a shot rang out and he doubled over, his belly gushing red life. Yelling obscenities, another sec
man grabbed the smoking firebrand and used it to ignite the master fuse of the rocket launcher.

Lighting the fuse on a pipe bomb attached to the end of a rope, Doc spun it to near invisibility, then let go. The explosive charge sailed away, going much too high and lofting over the jeering armada before violently detonating.

The hail of shrapnel peppered the assorted crafts, the pieces of casing and bent nails shredding the exposed people, and ripping apart the longboat carrying the honeycomb. Listing at first, the craft slowed, then tilted sideways, just as the rockets started to launch. Skipping across the bay, they blew up two other longboats before the honeycomb went under the surface. The other longboats raced to get away as there was fierce bubbling, and then the launcher detonated, a watery geyser rising high into the afternoon sky, raining pieces of bamboo and human organs across the turbulent bay.

Spotting a busty woman who seemed to be shouting orders to the sec men, Ryan guessed that had to be Baron Wainwright, and centered his crosshairs on her when he saw Baron Griffin rise into view cradling a monstrously huge longblaster. Fireblast, that was a bastard Marlin!

Aiming quickly, the two men fired at the same moment.

The booming .444 Magnum Express round of the predark blaster hit nothing, the slug humming into the distance, but the 7.62 mm round from the Steyr slammed the baron smack in the chest, and he dropped, splinters exploding from under his clothing.

“More fragging armor,” Ryan growled, trying again for the man’s head. But the motion of the steamboat and that of the longboats was making marksmanship mostly a matter of luck. He wasted two rounds hitting nothing, then put two more into the hull. The lead slapped the wood, but the craft did not even slow, much less sink.

As the angry baron struggled to work the Marlin, Ryan coolly emptied an entire clip as fast as he could, the slugs hammering the baron backward, and finally hitting the longblaster. With an audible ricochet, the weapon was jerked from his startled grip and dropped into the bay. Instantly, a sec man dived for the weapon, but even if successful, he was soon left behind by the speeding armada.

Screaming wordlessly, Baron Griffin emptied his blaster at the companions. Holding his breath, Ryan got the man again in the chest. Staggering from the blow, Griffin merely reloaded and started banging away again, before sec chief Donovan pulled him down behind the wooden armor.

More half-arrows and boomerangs were released as several canoes darted ahead of the longboats, the sec men using both hands to paddle, stone knives held in their teeth like outlander pirates.

Peeking out from behind the honeycomb, Mildred kneeled at the gunwale and switched the Uzi to full-auto before hosing the nimble little crafts with a lethal stream of 9 mm Parabellum rounds. The copper-jacketed slugs tore through the sec men before sinking the canoes. Paddling furiously, the rest of the sec men in canoes tried to get away, and Ryan took out one with
the Steyr, while Mildred aced the rest. Doc and Liana concentrated on the longboats.

Raising a protective shield, Wainwright shouted something the companions could not hear, and there immediately came the totally unexpected report of a big-bore blaster from a couple of longboats.

The companions ducked fast, and the gunwale of the Warhammer was pelted with incoming lead. One of the ropes holding a honeycomb into place snapped, and a window in the wheelhouse loudly shattered.

“No damage!” J.B. shouted.

As the companions stood to return fire, another salvo came, and Doc staggered backward, dropping his weapons as a dark red stain began to spread across his frilly shirt.

Chapter Sixteen

The ragged fusillade of blasterfire continued as a bleeding Doc slumped to the deck and the LeMat skittered across the slightly tilting boat, heading straight for the water. Diving forward, Liana caught the blaster just before it went over the edge.

Crouching behind the gunwale, Mildred shoved the Uzi over to Ryan. The one-eyed man checked the clip, then stood and burped the rapidfire at the sec men in short bursts.

“How bad is it?” Mildred demanded, checking the position of Doc’s wound. The upper arm was usually a good place to get shot, if that was possible—lots of flesh, and only a single major artery to worry about. But that was not what she was worried about.

“Just a flesh wound,” Doc said, straining against the pain. “Nothing serious.”

“Glad to hear it,” she remarked, setting down the med kit before pulling the man forward to check the back of the arm. There was no corresponding hole. Damn, she thought, the slug was still in him.

Blasterfire sounded from the longboats again, closer this time, and lead smacked into the wood along the
hull. Then more arrows pelted down from the sky, feathering the deck and wheelhouse.

Slinging the Uzi, Ryan lit the fuse on a pipe bomb, then released it in an easy pitch. It was still airborne when he ducked, and the explosion rattled the Warhammer. Screams came from the sec men, along with a great deal of splashing.

“This is going to hurt, and you know these folks like poison,” Mildred remarked, reaching into the kit to pull out a pair of needle-nose pliers recovered from a car shop, along with a bottle of shine. “So you know what’s coming.”

“D-do your worst, Hippocrates,” the scholar growled, pulling out his old leather wallet and placing it between his teeth. “I am prepared.”

Standing, Liana trigger the LeMat twice, the barrel jumping wildly with every shot. Stepping behind a honeycomb, she scowled at the weapon, then tucked it into her gunbelt. The recoil of the blaster was far beyond her ability to control.

Sloshing shine over the pliers, Mildred plunged them into the wound, causing a surge of fresh blood. Inhaling sharply at the contact, Doc went stiff, but said nothing, his free hand tightening into a fist until the knuckles audibly popped and cracked.

“Theo?” Liana said, the name a question.

“Tut-tut, dear girl, I am fine.” Doc coughed, wiping his mouth on the back of a trembling hand. “The good doctor’s administrations are sometimes medieval in nature, but always highly effective.”

“Shut up, ya old coot,” Mildred snorted, feeling the
contact of steel on the soft lead. As carefully as possible, she extracted the miniball, doing the minimum of damage to the surrounding tissue, and briefly inspected it in the wan sunlight. In spite of the red smears of blood, there seemed to also be some other color on the lead. Damnation, she thought, no choice then.

By now, small islands studded with scraggly trees were passing by the Warhammer on a regular basis, the craft constantly changing directions as J.B. tried to make the thick black smoke from the chimney flow toward the longboats to blind the enemy snipers.

“Liana, you better look away,” Mildred ordered, tossing the lead overboard.

But instead, the woman offered the doctor a butane lighter.

Almost smiling at the act, Mildred poured some shine directly into the open wound, and Liana set it aflame.

Going terribly pale, Doc shuddered from the rush of fire, then collapsed, panting heavily. After a minute or so, the scholar removed the wallet. “I s-see you have been well tutored by Cort S-Strasser,” he mumbled, referring to an enemy who had tortured the scholar on a daily basis before the companions eventually freed him.

“Sure, we’re lodge brothers,” Mildred retorted, quickly sewing the wound shut with an upholstery needle and lightweight fishing line.

“Of this, I have no d-doubt, madam,” Doc said, grunting with every stitch.

“Shut up. I’m busy,” she snapped, wondering who Strasser was as she put away the instruments and wrapped the arm in a fresh bandage.

Just then, the wind shifted, exposing the steamboat, and another swarm of arrows, lead and boomerangs pummeled the rear of the craft with savage intensity. Ryan replied with the Uzi, then moved to the other honeycomb before triggering two fast rounds from the Steyr, trying to pretend he was not the only defender.

Seeing that Doc would live, Liana rose to discharge her S&W revolver a fast three times, and changed weapons to launch an arrow before flopping onto the deck and crawling past the forest of arrows to reach the arbalest.

As Ryan maintained cover fire with the stuttering Uzi, Liana climbed up the weapon to crank the windless, notching an arrow into position. But then she paused and pulled out a pipe bomb. Lashing it to the yard-long shaft of the arrow, Liana swung the weapon around to face the armada of longboats, chose a target and fired.

Lancing between the two overturned honeycombs, the sizzling arrow streaked away to slam directly into the prow of a longboat, the barbed head coming out the other side and missing the drummer by a scant inch. Contemptuously, the drummer sneered at the companions, while the rest of the sec men laughed in an uproar at the failure, one particularly bold sec man loosening his gunbelt to actually drop his leather pants and moon the companions.

“The arrow!” Baron Wainwright shouted through cupped hands. “Get rid of the arrow, you feebs!”

But before the crew of the longboat could do anything, the small pipe bomb exploded, removing the
front of the vessel. Spilled into the turgid lake, the mob of wounded men floundered helplessly as the rest of the armada rowed past them without even slowing.

Suddenly the steam whistle keened loudly and the boat angled sharply to starboard.

Dodging a hail of boomerangs, Ryan inserted a fresh magazine into the longblaster and glanced toward the bow. Just a little ways ahead of the craft was a tall pair of pine trees dominating a rocky escarpment. One of them was perfectly straight, while the other was badly windswept and bent like a dying oldster, the green bow pointing toward a break in the archipelago, a winding waterway that emptied into the vast body of the Great Lake. Safety was only minutes away.

The Wendigo suddenly was within range and opened fire, the stream of lead from its rapidfire churning the lake water, tracking after the steaming Warhammer.

Behind the safety of the bamboo honeycomb, Mildred twirled a pipe bomb to full speed and let it fly. The explosive charge flew true and hit the war wag, only to bounce off before detonating.

Swaying to the motion of the steamboat, Ryan leveled the Steyr and squeezed off five fast rounds. Sparks flew from the ricochets off the steel plating, then blood sprayed from the blasterport, and somebody inside the wag cursed, the rapidfire veering upward to waste precious ammo on the empty sky. Before the wounded gunner could recover, Ryan put five more rounds into the blasterport, and the rapidfire stopped working.

Angling into the channel, the Warhammer began to
move faster, leaving the combined armada behind in its wake.

Just then, a salvo of flaming arrows arched high into the sky from the longboats to streak back down and hit the steamboat, creating small puddles of fire everywhere.

Holstering their blasters, Mildred and Liana dashed around to beat at the spreading flames with their jackets before the wooden deck was set ablaze. There were buckets set into niches along the gunwale for just such an emergency, but the women knew that they would be cut down by the crossbows of the sec men the moment they tried to get a container free to dip into the lake. Surrounded by unlimited water, they were reduced to battling the conflagration with their bare hands.

Sending two booming rounds toward the barons in the distant longboats, Ryan then sent the next three shots at the war wag, trying again for the small target of the blasterport. It was down to just him now.

Pausing for a second, Mildred yanked open her med kit to yank out a plastic bottle of sterilized water she kept for washing deep wounds. Pouring half of the fluid over her jacket, she tossed the bottle to Liana, who did the same to her own garment, then the women returned to the fight, warily keeping watch on the sky as additional arrows arrived, setting new fires.

As Ryan hastily reloaded, he noticed more sec men in canoes paddling closer, those exploding lances lashed to their backs. Those could blow the honeycombs off the deck, leaving the companions exposed to the boomerangs and bolos of the armada. Not to mention the rapidfire of the war wag.

Making a fast decision, Ryan charged for the arbalest and dropped in a new arrow, then began hacking at the barbed head with his panga, wood chips flying everywhere. “Doc!” Ryan bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Get off your ass!”

Jerking awake, the scholar gazed around groggily, then lumbered erect and clumsily drew the Ruger. “I have your six, sir,” Doc growled, glaring at the nearby canoes and alternately firing the massive Magnum handblaster.

Surprised, the sec men in the canoes tried desperately to get away, but the old man mercilessly cut them down, then turned his attention to the longboats. The range was much greater, but he hit living flesh with astonishing regularity. However, from the first discharge of the Ruger, the bandage on his arm became soaked through with fresh blood, and soon a rivulet of red was trickling down his arm to dribble onto the deck.

The Wendigo’s rapidfire went back into operation, and Ryan hastily cranked the windless. Hunching over the medieval weapon, the one-eyed man held his breath. He would probably only get a single chance at this, and better not miss.

The hail of lead from the Wendigo chewed a path of destruction along the starboard gunwale, throwing out a storm of chips and splinters. Swaying to the motion of the boat, Ryan did nothing, waiting and watching. Raising the angle of the weapon, the gunner of the Wendigo raked the wheelhouse next, shattering two more windows. Cursing vehemently, J.B. responded with the scattergun, even though the war wag was far
outside the range, but it was all that he could do in retaliation.

Clearing his mind of any distractions, Ryan still did nothing, until the war wag turned slightly to get a better angle and he instantly pressed the release lever. Straight and true, the mutilated arrow flashed away from the arbalest and slammed into the front of the Wendigo, exploding into splinters directly on the driver’s tiny ob port.

“My eyes!” the driver shrieked from inside. “My fragging eyes!” The war wag was no longer a threat.

A few minutes later the Warhammer steamed through a channel created by two small islands, and sailed into the limitless expanse of the Great Lake. Gradually, the angry shouts of the barons and their sec men faded into nothingness, and there was only the chugging of the steam engine and the gentle slap of the waves against the wooden hull.

High in the wheelhouse, J.B. yelled in triumph, then sounded the steam whistle. “Goodbye, Royal Island!” the man shouted happily.

Moving stiffly away from the arbalest, Ryan grunted at that. Not quite yet, old friend, he thought. Working the arming bolt of the Steyr, he withdrew a partially used magazine, and inserted a fresh one. There were no other steamboats on the island, and no matter how many sec men the barons put to the oars, or how hard they whipped the slaves, no longboat could ever catch the steamboat in calm water.

Now that the boat was out of the range of the sec men, Liana rushed to fill a bucket with water, and began
to slosh it across the burned deck to extinguish any lingering embers. Retrieving her med kit, Mildred shuffled wearily over to Doc and forced the man to sit, so that she could tend his wounds once more. She sincerely wanted to admonish the scholar for ruining her fine needlework, however his actions may have just altered the outcome of the battle. For a man of peace, Doc Tanner was a bodacious fighter, a chilling machine when roused.

“Hurt much?” Mildred asked, tenderly removing the bloody bandage.

“Like the Dickens, madam,” Doc muttered, slumping against the gunwale. “But then, after so many…I have…always…” Slowly, the man’s head descended to his chest, and he began to softly snore.

Wisely deciding to let him sleep, Mildred passed on stitching the wound closed, and simply wrapped it in several layers of clean bandages, then rigged a crude sling with a length of leather she normally used as a tourniquet. The bleeding had slowed considerably, and right now the exhausted man needed sleep more than anything else.

Balling up the bloody cloth strip, she started to toss it overboard, when a small hand grabbed her wrist.

“Not out here,” Liana said, anxiously looking over the vast waters. “Norm blood in a bay sometimes summons a kraken, but out here it always does.”

“But—”

“Always.”

“Fair enough,” Mildred replied, tucking the gory wad into a ziptop bag and stuffing that into a pocket to be disposed of later.

Busily thumbing loose rounds into an empty clip, Ryan sharply whistled.

Leaning over sideways, the Armorer stuck his head out the smashed window, careful of the jagged glass edging the opening. “What’s up?” he asked. There was a gash in his cheek from the earlier flying glass, and a new hole in the fedora, but the man still sported a wide grin.

“Keep going straight until we lose sight of the land,” Ryan called back, working the bolt to tuck the clip into the breech of the Steyr. “Then circle back to the carrier.”