Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide (34 page)

Ryan kept a wry smile off his face. Someone had ordered him a Praetorian guard. Almost all crewmen had a J.B. Special slung by a cord either under a coat or behind his back. Ryan passed Oracle’s two bloody right hands and took command on the quarterdeck.

Manrape grinned like the ship’s sails had caught a pleasing breeze. “Your orders, Captain?”

“We take them, bos’n.”

“Aye?”

“We took the
War Pig
, and now I want the rest of the Sabbath fleet. All of it.”

Manrape nodded. “Aye, Captain.”

Ryan drew his SIG and emptied it into the
Ironman
’s quarterdeck. Sailors fell. Manrape’s scattergun blasted and blasted. Ryan heard the old, sweet, methodical aimed fire of Doc’s LeMat and then the thud of the revolver’s shotgun barrel. Strawmaker, Rood and the rest of Ryan’s personal sec team began unloading. Bullets whizzed in all directions. Crew on all three ships fell everywhere. Ryan lowered his smoking, empty SIG. The blasterfire tapered off again. The sudden, terrible calm was broken only by the ratchet and pall clanks of the Sabbaths’ capstans. Except for hoarding a round or two for the final fight, both ships’ crew were out of ammo.

The bulked-up crew of the
Ironman
screamed in bloodlust and shook man-butchering and breaking implements of every description as the ships pulled together. The
Lady Evil
’s crew did the same. The
Lady
sailed straight in to ram her bowsprit against the
Glory
’s quarterdeck. Ryan knew that would be their boarding ramp. “Wait for it!” Ryan roared.

The
Ironman
pulled the
Glory
in like a lover. The smaller,
Lady Evil
came in like the knife in the back. Ryan smiled. The die was cast. Doc was right. This was always going to come down to a brawl. He looked at Doc. The old man looked good in his uniform and as salty as hell. Ryan grinned. Doc grinned back. Ryan laughed. Doc laughed back, and Manrape and the rest of the quarterdeck burst out in hilarity. Koa threw back his head, and he and the Tahitians hurled their laughter to the sky.

The laughter ran across the ship from stem to stern. The Sabbath ships howled in response but bloodlust took a strange, pale second place to suicidal mirth. The side of the
Ironman
scraped the
Glory
. The
Lady Evil
’s bowsprit violated the
Glory
’s prow. Boarding ramps fell across Ryan’s decks. The Sabbath crews surged. Ryan had learned long ago that most plans tucked tail and ran at first contact with the enemy.

He gave what might be his last command. “Give it to them! Give them all of it!”

Every
Glory
crewmember raised his or her J.B. Special, pointed and squeezed. Some fired one shot. Some fired two or three or half a dozen. J.B.’s weapons scythed in one, mass salvo. Jak, Ricky and the rest of the topsmen expended their weapons and shot down the rat lines to join the melee. Ryan grinned savagely as his own weapon unloaded all twenty-five rounds and withered an entire boarding ladder.

He dropped the empty subgun and drew his saber. “Repel all boarders!” He gave the
Lady Evil
a last glance. They had avoided the
Glory
’s cannons, but that had forced them to send their borders across the bowsprit. It was a fatal funnel.

“Phalanx, defend the prow!” Onetongue and the Phalanx charged across the deck in a wedge of sharpened iron.

The battle royale was on.

Manrape boomed at the men around him. “Defend the captain! Defend the quarterdeck!”

Gallondrunk charged the boarding ladder screaming and spewing spit. “Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!” His every f-bomb was punctuated by his awful walrus iron spearing an
Ironman
sailor. Skillet fired one barrel and then the other, and his harpoons reduced men to ruin. He started drawing cleavers and throwing them. “For you! For you! For you!”

A huge toothless Canadian leaped to the deck and swung his war club so hard at Ryan it almost whistled. “Fuck you, eh!”

Ryan leaned back from the blow as it smashed into the remains of the broken binnacle. He leaned in and ran the man through. Ryan ripped his blade free. It was a free-for-all across all decks. His personal guard stoppered the attack on the quarterdeck in red-handed fashion. Doc and Rood stood back and flanked Ryan in bodyguard positions with bloodied swords drawn. Doc looked up at the quarterdeck of the
Ironman
. A seven-foot-tall Asian man with a giant cat-o-nine tails glared down at them. From Dorian’s interrogation, Ryan knew this was Kang, and Kang was just about the most feared fighter sailing the seas. He looked down and grinned at what he saw.

Manrape stepped back from the boarding ramp and perfectly pantomimed reaching up, grabbing Kang by his hair, yanking the Korean to his knees and forcing an act of oral copulation with one hand. Kang’s eyes flared. Manrape made a kissy face. Kang jerked his head and shouted. Behind him eight more Koreans face-painted in
Ironman
white and black came forward bearing short, wide and curved-bladed swords in both hands.

Ryan was fairly sure he was about to get chilled. “Fireblast...”

Doc shifted his sword from a low guard to high as he observed the enemy swordsmen. “Oh dear.”

Manrape sighed. “This should be interesting.”

Kang pointed his whip at Ryan and snarled in terrible English. “Kill One-Eye!”

The swordsmen boiled onto the boarding ramp, whirling their blades like human food processors.
“IRONMANNNNN!
”

Ryan and his crew strode forward to meet them

A water barrel on the quarterdeck suddenly turned a slick, wet gray color and uncoiled. Mr. Squid rose to her full height on four arms while her other four extended J.B. Specials. Squid squeezed all four triggers and turned the boarding ramp into a slaughter chute. Seven of the eight Koreans fell. The eighth screamed and turned to run. Mr. Squid launched herself through the air. Her mantle fell across the Korean’s head and shoulders, and she pulled him over the ramp to the sea below, accompanied by skull-crunching sounds.

For one second Kang appeared genuinely appalled.

Ryan shook his bloody saber skyward and charged the ramp.
“Glory
!”

Kang turned away as Ryan and his guards ran up the ramp for the
Ironman
’s quarterdeck. The junk’s rail was so high and curved it was impossible to see what was happening on their decks. What was happening was that Emmanuel Sabbath was waiting. His own twelve-man, ax-bearing guard surrounded him. Some had one ax, some carried two.

Sabbath’s voice was quiet, but it carried over the sound of battle. “Mr. Kang, take the rest of the Canadians. Hit
Glory
amidships.”

Kang nodded. “Aye.” He took three giant strides and leaped from the quarter to the main deck. It was loaded with Canadians brandishing war clubs, tomahawks and knives.

Sabbath drew a sword with a very nasty-looking hook on the back of the blade. He pointed it at Ryan. “Now, as for you, Deathlander...”

Chapter Thirty

Krysty dropped her J.B Special. She had saved her Smith & Wesson for the brawl. Sweet Marie appeared by Krysty’s side and admired the revolver. Sweet Marie held up a nickel-plated derringer missing most of its finish. “Good girl. A woman should always save herself a few rounds for the boarding action.”

Krysty hurled a look to the prow. “The Phalanx!”

“My pike broke. That slobbering idiot Onetongue said ‘Th’tay by Kryth’ty!’ so here I am. And here they come!”

Howling, screaming face-painted men hit the
Glory
’s main deck in a wave. Krysty took her time and put a bullet each into five men. Sweet Marie gave a man both barrels and hefted a freshly sharpened machete. “Stay by me, girlie!”

Krysty reloaded and moved forward on Sweet Marie’s six. The deck was a whirling mass of fights. Krysty put a bullet into any man that charged Sweet Marie, and the big girl cut the man down.

“Empty!” Krysty dropped to one knee and ejected the spent shells. She dug into her pocket for her last reloads.

An inhumanly deep voice roared in happy, horribly accented English. “Flame pussy for Kang!”

Krysty snapped around as a shadow eclipsed her. An enormous Asian man, with what appeared to be a fistful of knotted hawsers, grinned as he swung. The nine ropes spread as they whirled. Krysty snapped her revolver shut and brought it to bear. Her vision went white as the ropes hit her from neck to hip and sent her flying. She bounced on the deck and her revolver left her hand. Instinct made Krysty crane her head and claw for the weapon. The Smith & Wesson clattered away from her fingertips and slid in terrible slow motion across the bloody, pitching deck. The blaster spun and pointed at her as if in one plaintive, last look. Krysty felt the gut punch of irreversible fate as her weapon hit a starboard scupper like a perfect billiards shot and fell away to the great water below.

Sweet Marie snarled and charged. “Not today, High Pockets!

Krysty drew her issued dirk and rose brokenly.

Sweet Marie fell at her feet, clutching a face the ropes had torn into ruins.

The giant Kang stepped forward and swung. “You Kang’s bitch now!” The knotted ropes hit Kristy, but the shortened blow made the coils slam and wrap around her in a terrible contusing embrace. With practiced ease the giant suddenly leaned back, twisted and yanked. Kang’s game of crack the whip centrifuged Krysty into the mainmast. She fell against the great wooden pillar and toppled down the main hatch. Krysty could have sworn she hit every step on the way down. She lay there gasping and knew she had to get up, but her limbs would not obey her. Her dirk was gone. Two cannons went off and half a dozen weapons were blasting.

Krysty dimly heard the ring of steel and the screams of the fighting and dying around her. She knew the enemy had managed to get men belowdecks through the blaster ports. Krysty stared up the main hatch. Down below she was out of the wind, and the sun bathed and limned her in a rectangle of warm light. In her own way, like Ryan, she had known it would always come down to this.

“Gaia, Earth Mother, hear my prayer, aid me in my time of need...”

* * *

R
YAN FELT THE BURN
of cold steel across his forearm. He was losing and badly. None of his wounds were fatal, but they were bad enough. Sabbath was picking him apart. It was as if Sabbath had no bones in his right wrist. His short-sword pinwheeled around his hand and the wicked hook on the back kept catching Ryan’s blade for just an eye blink, just enough to pull it out of line while Sabbath threw a short cut or slice. None was deep, none was vital, but Ryan had seven of them and three were on his sword arm. He was bleeding all over the deck and slowing. One cut was over his good eye, and blood poured into it. The rest of the battle raged across the Ironman’s quarterdeck. Doc shouted Ryan’s name, but he’d been cut off and three ax men forced him down the gangway toward the main deck.

Ryan became very aware that everyone else was letting the two captains duel.

It was a battle he was pretty much doomed to lose. Sabbath drove him back. The rails of the
Ironman
’s quarterdeck opened like gates for boarding. Ryan suddenly realized what was about to happen. He’d been maneuvered into position, and he had no power to stop what happened next. Sabbath took a high cut at Ryan’s head, and the one-eyed warrior barely brought up his sword in time. Sabbath stepped in and put his shoe into Ryan’s stomach. The one-eyed man tumbled down the boarding ramp to the quarterdeck of the
Glory
. He just barely kept hold of his sword. Ryan managed to roll up and steady himself against the remains of the binnacle.

Emmanuel Sabbath stepped onto the quarterdeck of the
Glory
, lifted his chin into the wind and sighed. “It has been too long. Thank you, you Deathlands cyclops, for bringing me back my ship.”

Ryan sagged against the binnacle. He couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. Neither did he seem to have enough blood left in his body, much less his arm, to raise his Falklands saber.

“Did you like how I kicked you down the deck? I’m going to do it again, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” Sabbath marched across the deck with evil purpose. Ryan thought of Krysty and managed to raise his saber and swing it like a drunk. Sabbath hooked it and cut Ryan’s sword arm again. Ryan felt his grip loosen against his will and watched his saber clatter to the deck. Sabbath smiled, flicked up his right foot and kicked Ryan in the face.

Ryan fell over the quarterdeck rail and dropped the seven feet to the main deck. Throughout the shrieks and screams and shouts of battle an undercurrent of moans went up as the
Glory
crew saw Ryan’s fall. He distantly knew that once he was dead it was very likely the crew would surrender the ship. Commander Miles and Manrape would be executed as too dangerous to live.
Glory
’s female crew would be reduced to rape slaves. The able seamen slaughtered. The remaining crew would submit and go back to the bad old days of being a Sabbath crew.

Ryan pushed himself to hands and knees. The battle on the deck boiled, but none came to save him. It seemed battles between captains were sacred. Ryan wished someone had told him. His saber clanged contemptuously to the deck beside him. Sabbath wanted an example made.

“Pick it up.” Ryan looked at his right arm. It was soaked in his blood from shoulder to fingertips. He glared back at Sabbath and filled his left hand with his dirk. Sabbath spoke quietly for just the two of them. “I will give you one thing—or rad-blasted scum, I have always heard you Deathlanders were tough. They say you have to be, given the pesthole you live in. But you? You are also brave, and no man since the breaking has ever risen to captain so fast. I salute your seamanship and your courage. But now I must humiliate you for the benefit of all crews concerned. You will be marked in no books. You and your friends shall die and be forgotten, and now I must humiliate you. Rise.”