Iron Rage. James Axler
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in happier times on his home island of Puerto Rico. Although it couldnât really be called âsniping,â since the weapon lacked a scope, the boy could consistently hit his mark with whisper-quiet shots out to a hundred yards.
In the event Ryanâs people had to reach out and touch somebodyâas Mildred put it in her quaintly anachronistic freezie wayâany farther than one hundred yards, Ryanâs Steyr, which did have a scope, could do the job.
Not that Captain Conoyer believed thereâd be any trouble. But she hadnât batted an eyelash when Ryan suggested turning out as many hands with blasters as possible to wait for it, just in case. Having hired him in part as a sec consultant, as she put it, she had the sense to listen to him on the subject.
Over a third as wide across the beam as she was long, the tug was surprisingly stable as she chugged confidently out into the crosscurrent from the Sippi. As ballast she carried tons of big metal scrap chunks, plus crates of weapons and ammo that were the actual prizes from this current voyage up the Yazoo. The cream of the crop was a Lahti Model L-39: a bolt-action antitank rifle firing 20 mm armor-piercing rounds, in cherry condition, consigned to a wealthy baron up the big river. Or so Ryan was told; sadly, Captain Trace had refused to open the crate despite the near-drooling entreaties of J.B. and his apprentice armorer, Ricky.
The Queen began its turn to starboard almost as soon as it cleared the banks to the north. Ryan glanced back over his right shoulder, along the vesselâs length toward the barge. He knew that getting it safely around the corner would be the trickiest part. But Trace had taken the helm herself, and just in their brief time aboard Ryan and his friends had learned she was expert in piloting the boat.
The one-eyed man was just as glad the Queen wasnât a pusher-style Sippi tug, of the sort her crew told Ryan had dominated the river before the nukeday. Bigger and of all-steel construction, they used to push not just single barges, but sometimes two or more in seriesâeach many times larger than the wooden one the Queen was dragging toward Felivilleâwith their square prows. He didnât even want to try to imagine how pulling off a maneuver like this would have worked in such an arrangement.
He was unlikely to find out. Nukeday had triggered colossal earthquakes that had started shaking up the continental US even before the warheads stopped detonating. None was worse than the quake caused by the New Madrid Fault Line that ran by the Sippi from north of Memphis to St. Louis. The blasts, quakes and seismic water surges had smashed most of the vessels on the river into twisted junk, left them high and dry when the great river actually changed channels, and even tossed them inland, sometimes even into the hearts of major cities.
They had become mother lodes of fabulous scrap for generations of especially intrepid scavvies. Or for barons willing to enslave the people of the villes they ruled to the arduous and dangerous work of ship-breaking. These days most of the river traffic was wood-hulled, driven by steam engines or, as the Queen was, by scavvied Diesels. And when they hauled barges they were content to pull them.
As Ryan turned his face forward again, he scanned the seven-foot weeds that obscured the Yazooâs north bank and the east bank of the Sippi. He wasnât sure what he expected to see, but he expected to see something. His gut told him that trouble was coming.
But it gave him not the slightest clue as to what that trouble would actually be. Nor where it would come from.
He looked back out across the Sippi and saw a geyser of water shoot up into the air, fifty yards ahead and a little off the port bow of the turning tugboat. A heavy boom hit him with an impact as much felt as heard. It was a sound he was all too familiar with.
He spun to look south. Steaming up the river from the south came four boats, a quarter mile away and closing slowly. They were a ragged assortment, no two alike, and none as large as the Queen herself. They had a strange, ugly, bruised glint to them in the afternoon sun, and were gray mottled with red. Black plumes billowed from their smokestacks and were swept away east by a crossing breeze.
Yellow light flared from the bows of the nearest two, accompanied by giant puffs of dirty-white smoke.
âRed alert!â he turned and shouted toward the Queenâs cabin. âCannon fire! Weâre under attack!â
Ryan heard a rushing roar pass overhead. Then a fresh column of water blasted up from the river right in front of the left side of the bow, drenching him.
A hand-cranked siren was winding from the tugâs cabin. Ducking reflexively behind the railâas if that would offer protection from a cannon shot, either shell or solid ballâRyan equally reflexively looked back to Krysty.
His lover was likewise crouched, her Glock 18C blaster looking especially futile clutched in her white hands. Her hair had retracted itself to a tight scarlet cap on her skull.
He felt the vibrations of the hull through his boot soles change. At the same time the growl of the Diesels grew louder and slightly higher in pitch. Trace had ordered full throttle. Her husband was doubtless belowdecks now, babying the powerful marine engines to keep them churning at maximum power. Ryan could feel the propellers straining to drive the vessel and the burden she towed faster. But there was no way to give hundreds of tons jackrabbit acceleration. Their accumulation of speed would go painfully slowly.
And the pursuing vessels already had a speed advantage, even though their steam engines were powering them against the Sippiâs sluggish but immensely powerful flow. If this was a race, they couldnât win it.
And if this was an artillery duelâwell, Ryan thought, the Queen was nuked, as the tug had no artillery. Accommodations were tight aboard the tubby vessel as it wasâhe and his companions slept on deck, when weather permitted, as fortunately it had most nights theyâd been on the Queen. And every pound counted when your entire living was based on hauling cargo. The Conoyers could have mounted a black powder cannon, but they chose not to.
Even if they had, they would have been outgunned. The enemy cannoneers hadnât yet hit the lumbering tug, but it was a matter of time.
Something cracked above Ryanâs head. He ducked even lower, instinctively. The crack was repeated, slightly less loud.
I know that song, he thought. Someone was firing a blaster at himânot a charcoal-burner nineteenth-century replica, but a smokeless-powder high-powered longblaster.
The longblaster shots, in their way, concerned him more than the cannonade. Most black powder cannon werenât rifled, and therefore werenât accurate, even though a metal ball weighing just a couple of pounds could do a shocking amount of damage to a body. While most blaster-shooters werenât particularly accurate, either, there was always the chance that their pursuers would have a marksman in their ranks.
On the other hand, the Queenâs complement most definitely did. And his name was Ryan Cawdor.
He laid the Steyrâs foregrip on the rail and sighted through the low-power Leupold variable scope. He didnât need much magnification to confirm what he already suspected: the weird, dully metallic stuff covering the oncoming boats looked that way because it was weird and metallic.
The vessels had been covered, at least up front, in plates and pieces of scrap metal.
âJ.B.,â he called. He didnât take his eye from the scope. âGet over here. Iâve got work for you.â
The attacking vessels were steaming in a V formation, with the lead boat on Ryanâs right. As he panned his scope across the vessels, he noticed activity on the bow of the one to his left. Men were swabbing out the barrel of their blaster with what looked like a wet mop and probably was, so that the fresh charge of black powder they were fixing to put in wouldnât cook off the moment they inserted it.
Ryan