Blood Ties (22 page)

Koto screamed sharply as only horses can and then the sound cut off. Lumpy jumped forward a few steps with the impact of the blast, but the buckshot had only bounced off the green glow around him. He stopped dragging the ass-end of the wagon after a few yards, the weight clearly more than he wanted to pull.

Thank God,
Jake thought, grateful that the enemy unit didn’t have a Gatling gun. A steady stream of fire from one of those would either pin down or make short work of anyone out in the open. Jake looked up at the wall of the warehouse behind them and saw the entire wall filled with buckshot holes except for a precise outline of the wagon.… And
Koto
. A gut-wrenching reality hit Jake, but he pushed thoughts of Cole’s horse out of his mind.

A similar explosion of anti-personnel rounds came from somewhere ahead of Qi’s digger, followed by the fierce clatter of ricochets as men screamed.

Qi’s guns barked, opening up against something metallic, more men screamed. Jake looked down at the Thumper lying beneath him where he’d knocked it over. The four crimson lights glowing on the stock gave him an idea. He remembered Cole shooting at the men behind Qi’s digger the night before. He remembered Qi’s digger tipping over. That had only been setting
three
.

Wispy, white smoke poured over the back of the wagon, and Jake saw Jackinaw Ridge again in his mind’s eye.
I ain’t gonna buy it again to one of these things,
he thought grimly. He grabbed the Thumper, turned the dial from STUN past CROWD CONTROL and THUMP to its highest setting—HAMMER. The HAMMER was only for very special occasions, and Jake couldn’t think of a better time. It would drain the weapon’s power charge completely, and it would take hours for the rifle to recharge, but he had to hope it would do the trick.

He popped up to see a wall of white smoke filling the space between him and the assault unit. He couldn’t see the machine, and it couldn’t see him, but he knew exactly where it stood by the grumble of its power plant.

“Say goodnight, asshole!” Jake shouted just as twin Gatling guns fired blindly through the smoke around him. The terrible realization hit him: this model came equipped with both anti-personnel
and
Gatlings. A round nicked his arm, twisting him slightly, but the soldier in Jake took over. He braced himself, aimed the Thumper, and pulled the trigger. A sharp
crackle
of electricity made his hands tingle, and then the
BOOM
of a lightning strike filled the street as a bright, blue-white pulse blasted out of the Thumper and disappeared through the smoke. The recoil sent Jake flying backward into the wall of the warehouse behind him, and then he heard something massive and metal crash into a building before tumbling to the ground. Through the fog he heard its power plant sputter and go silent.

Jake smiled with the knowledge that the pilot of the deadly machine never knew what hit him.

Qi’s guns and those of the other assault unit were firing at each other, filling the night with a horrendous racket of gunfire and ricochets. Jake stood up and looked over Lumpy to see several figures in black sneaking up towards Qi’s digger. One of them had a lit stick of dynamite in his hand. From that angle, Jake knew Qi couldn’t see them.

“Skeeter! One o’clock, forty feet!” Skeeter propped up on her knees, reached into her jacket and pulled out another popper. She pressed a button on the bottom and hurled it at the men approaching the digger. The popper went off with a loud
BOOM
, and all three men went flying. Jake leapt up onto the driver’s seat, yanked his pistols, and killed all three of them before they could get off the ground.

He spotted another figure in black pajamas dashing between some crates beyond Qi’s position. A snap shot from the Peacekeeper sent the man sprawling.

Qi’s guns went silent, and a second later so did those of the assault unit. Jake figured they were both out of ammunition. In a flash the Confederate machine charged Qi’s digger. She shuffled her machine to the side, but the assault unit reached out with a claw and clamped down on her right gun pod. Hydraulics squealed and crushing metal screamed as the two heavy machines turned once in each other’s grip and fell to the ground in a clanging heap. Jake watched as Qi’s digger tried to pull away, but the second claw clamped down on her other gun pod and squeezed.

“Get back in the pillbox!” Jake hollered at Skeeter. “And give me a couple of them poppers!”

Skeeter dove into the pillbox, noticing two, neat holes from the Gatling gun in the outer plate. She handed up two poppers and crouched back down. Jake took a moment to look over the scene. The wagon had been savaged, Qi’s machine was pinned beneath the assault unit, and twelve men stepped out from behind a row of crates lined up past the next building. All of them carried pistols except for two. Szilágyi stood in the middle of the group, and one of his troopers stood to his immediate left. The trooper held a chaingun.

“Well done, Mister Lasater,” Szilágyi shouted as he clapped. His accent was definitely different than Lady Dănești’s. “A most valiant effort, to be certain. Much better than I expected of you, but it’s time for this farce to end before the little girl gets hurt. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Jake licked his lips and looked at the popper in his right hand.

“I wouldn’t advise that, Mister Lasater. You’d be dead before it went off, and who would protect your little friend?”

“Jake!” Skeeter shouted, but it was too late this time.

Something crashed into Jake’s shoulder from above and to his left. One of the poppers flew out of his hand as he and his attacker clattered metallically across the pavement. They both came up at the same time, but Ghiss’ skeletal arm brought up one of his strange pistols and leveled it in Jake’s face.

“Why Mister Lasater,” Ghiss said smoothly, “imagine meeting you in a place like this.” Jake glared at Ghiss, and the thought of going out in a blaze of glory danced behind his eyes. “What a terrible thought,” the mercenary said, seeing clearly what Jake was thinking, “and pointless. Now drop that remarkable little device and come along quietly. I promise that the girl will be safe.”

“Your word?” Jake asked, knowing that Ghiss, whatever else he might be, still held to a code of honor.

“I give you my word, Mister Lasater. She will come to no harm in my care.”

Jake let the popper clatter to the ground.

“Jake, no!” Skeeter shouted. “You can’t just give up!”

Jake snapped his head towards Skeeter. “This is the way it’s gotta be, you hear me? This is one of those times when I’m telling you what to do.
Understand
?”

Skeeter’s shoulders slouched, and then she nodded. Jake saw tears rolling down her cheeks.

Ghiss turned slightly to face Szilágyi. “It seems that our business arrangement is still in place, Colonel. I have Mister Lasater in my custody, and I’m prepared to turn him over to you upon payment in full.”

Szilágyi laughed, a wicked and heartless sound, and Jake got a sneaking suspicion that things were about to get noisy again.

“Do you really believe I would feel honor-bound to keep my word with a
mercenary
?” Szilágyi shouted and laughed again. “Shoot them
both
,” he said to the man on his left. The chaingun and ten pistols rose with Szilágyi’s laughter.

“Oh, shit,” Ghiss said in that metallic voice as the trooper leveled the chaingun at them. Jake suspected it might be the first time Ghiss had ever cursed.

Chapter Twenty-five – The Enemy of My Enemy

“The key to success in my line of work is thinking five steps ahead of my prey.”

~ Ghiss

The trooper’s chaingun spun up, but Jake picked up the whine of a second chaingun somewhere closer to the bridge. From behind a stack of crates at the water’s edge, Cole stepped into view, chaingun in hand.

“Jake!” Cole screamed.

Jake was already diving away from Ghiss as he watched the chaos unfold. Most of Szilágyi’s men had heard the second chaingun and, like amateurs, were turning to see what it was without bringing their guns around. Szilágyi had obviously heard the sound of the second chaingun, because he dove to the side. He seemed to be considerably better at math than his own man with the chaingun, or maybe the man didn’t hear Cole’s weapon over his own. He merely stood there like a Greek statue with a mean grin splitting his face.

A flash of gunfire erupted from the man’s weapon, and although Ghiss was already moving, Jake saw sparks fly from those skeletal limbs as several rounds hit home. That’s when Cole’s burst took Szilágyi’s man in the back and turned the poor bastard’s chest into a crimson blossom. The chaingun flew from his arms as he went down. Cole swept left and right with the chaingun, chewing up the pistol-wielding assassins. Several managed to turn their pistols and get shots off, but they missed Cole.

Cole, however, didn’t miss them, and they dropped in heaps with chunks torn out of their bodies.

That’s when Jake spotted shadows moving towards them from further up along the channel near the second bridge.

“Cole!” Jake shouted. “On your left!” Jake heard a clank from his right and turned to see the nearest assault unit cutting into the upper cockpit of Qi’s digger. A horrible scream filled the night. Blood poured out and ran down the top of the digger. Then the claw lifted and pressed into the plate covering of Qi’s cockpit.

Jake heard Cole’s chaingun cook off again in short bursts, followed by an occasional scream from the men approaching. Jake’s eyes were riveted on the digger.

The hydraulics of the massive claw screamed as they bit slowly through the black cockpit cover. “Qi!” Jake shouted. He yanked his pistols and unloaded them at the Confederate unit, the rounds sparking harmlessly off the cylindrical hull. Both pistols clicked empty. “Qi!” he screamed again and charged forward just as the digger’s arms pressed up against the assault unit.

“Jake, stay back,” Qi yelled through the machine’s speakers. The cockpit opened as she pushed. She peeked out the top to avoid getting cut in half. Jake saw her close her eyes, raise her hand, and begin making short, swift motions with her fingers, and he could see her muttering something.

The free claw rose up, ready to crash down up her. Her eyes shot open and her hand stretched forth. She pointed at the machine leaning over her and yelled a single, incomprehensible word. A ball of flame shot forth from her finger and grew impossibly large in the short distance it took to travel from her hand to the assault unit.

Both machines were caught in the ensuing explosion, blowing Jake back with the force of the blast. From his back he watched the assault unit rise up into the air, rotate slowly away from the digger, up and over, to crash heavily on its back. Jake could see a melted, slag-edged hole about a foot in diameter in the cylindrical cockpit.

“Qi!” he screamed.

Jake knew the smell of charred flesh, and it filled the air. Miraculously, Qi was still alive and seemed to be unharmed. He tore his gaze away from the ravaged assault unit to focus on four men in black running between several stacks of crates toward the digger with upraised swords. One of them was well ahead of the others and angling straight for Qi.

“God damn it,” Jake muttered, realizing that he was out of options.

A popper sailed in from behind him and detonated at the feet of the man headed for Qi. He flew through the air, landing in a heap between Jake and the digger. His neck canted at a most unnatural angle, and his sword slid right up to Jake’s feet. Jake saw another popper fly over his head, but the men racing towards him saw it and avoided the explosion. Jake picked up the sword and stared at the three men headed in his direction.

“You may find this a little more useful,” a metallic, southern drawl said from behind Jake. The voice sounded strained and weak. Jake turned just as one of Ghiss’ pistols flew through the air towards him. Jake caught it in his clockwork hand and looked down at the mercenary.

Ghiss lay on his side, propped up on a damaged arm. The other, the one he’d used to throw the weapon at Jake, was awkwardly reaching for his second pistol. “I suggest we prepare to defend ourselves, Mister Lasater,” Ghiss added and fired off a shot at one of the approaching assassins. The bright green flash of light, sounding like chirp of static electricity, clipped the assassin’s hip and sent him into a tumbling dodge, but the assassin came up again at a dead run.

Jake fired once, twice, and again, dropping the three men in their tracks, only twenty feet away. And then they both saw about twenty more men sneaking towards them, moving from cover to cover. Every one of them held a blade of some kind, and several also held pistols.

Jake turned to Ghiss. “How many shots do these have?”

“Not enough,” Ghiss replied calmly as he shook his head.

Three men ran silently past Jake, each of them dressed in black with faint golden dragons embroidered on their backs. Another four men ran past, and then four more. Jake looked to his left to see a dozen or more rushing across the path to the bridge. The sound of men fighting grew in volume, carried over the stacks of crates.

“It appears that the cavalry has arrived,” Ghiss said.

Jake turned and saw Ghiss weakly lay down on his back just as a bright orange flare shot up into the air from well past where the bulk of the fighting was going on. Jake heard the sound of airship engines revving up, above and behind him. He turned toward the sound and saw the black gondola of Szilágyi’s airship cutting through the fog like an upside down shark fin. A metallic ladder dropped out of the bottom of the gondola, reaching nearly seventy feet, the last few feet of it dragging across the street along a corridor between the crates.

Jake saw Szilágyi step out into the open a hundred and fifty feet away and grab the ladder as it went by. Jake fired Ghiss’ weapon and watched the blast of energy fizzle out a hundred feet distant. Szilágyi gripped the ladder as it rose swiftly into the air, and he had the gall to salute Jake as he disappeared into the mist above.

“I take it these things don’t have much range,” Jake said angrily, turning to Ghiss.

“I generally don’t need them to,” Ghiss replied without much apology in his voice as he lay back in the dirt. “But don’t worry, Mister Lasater. I’m certain the two of you will have ample opportunity to shoot at each other in the near future.” Ghiss sighed and then lowered his gun into the dirt.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Jake said, his voice full of impotent rage.

“I’d bet my life on it,” Ghiss reassured him tiredly. “But perhaps we should concern ourselves with getting off the street before the local authorities come by with paddy wagons to herd up the survivors.”

“You need not worry about the authorities,” Chung said, stepping out of the shadows.

“The whole city must have heard this,” Jake chimed in.

“I have no doubt, but in addition to the two fires Ming’s men set, the authorities are preoccupied with an aborted bank robbery and an explosion at a one of Ming’s warehouses on the other side of the city.” Chung put on a subtle, little smile and stepped between Jake and Ghiss, heading toward his granddaughter as she climbed out of the downed digger. Jake worried that she might be injured, but she looked to be in one piece as she stepped down onto the street.

With a clenched jaw, Jake leveled the blaster at Ghiss’ head. “How about you just push that pistol my way,” he said slowly. Jake’s eyes darted to the rooftop from where Ghiss had leapt and then back at the man. The question of why Jake was still alive crept into his thoughts. Ghiss could have simply shot him. But he hadn’t. Unfortunately, Jake didn’t have time to ask.

“I wondered when you’d get around to that, Mister Lasater,” Ghiss said, tightening the grip on his pistol but holding his arm against the ground. “It would appear that I am at your mercy. But before you make any decisions as to my disposition, I believe it would be best for us to have a rather lengthy dialogue.”

“That’s the plan, Ghiss. Don’t you worry. I ain’t gonna shoot you here. And I ain’t gonna leave you behind for the marshals, either. You’re coming along with us, and as long as you behave yourself, I won’t put a bullet through that half-face of yours. We understand one another?”

Ghiss didn’t even hesitate. “I believe I find your terms acceptable, sir,” he said, still sounding tired but with a bit of brightness in his voice. He released his grip on the pistol and pushed it toward Jake. “I will be on my best behavior, a consummate southern gentleman.”

The sounds of fighting coming from beyond the stacks of crates had mostly died down, and small groups of Chung’s men were making their way back to the area around the wagon. Chung came back to where Jake stood while Qi climbed back into the digger. Jake watched her disappear into the lower cockpit. With a hiss of hydraulic pistons, the sheared, upper cockpit opened, allowing more blood to pour down the side of the chassis.

Chung yelled something, and two of his soldiers ran to the upper cockpit. They peered inside, and Jake watched as they shook their heads. They exchanged a few brief words and did a fast roshambo. The winner, with paper over rock, reached into the cockpit and grabbed the hands of the man inside. He dragged the upper half of a very small Chinese man out of the cockpit. The torso fell to the ground with a splat, and then the loser reached into the cockpit, a grimace on his face. He came out with the even more grisly lower half, grasped by the man’s waistband.

As the legs fell to the ground, the winner shouted to one of the other soldiers. The two of them dragged both halves away. The remaining man hesitated, seemed to mutter something, and then slid into the upper cockpit. Jake heard a muffled shout from him and then Qi hit the ignition of the digger’s power plant. A high-pitched squeal filled the street, and then the plant turned over, but it didn’t sound nearly as smooth as it had before the assault unit hammered it.

The digger sat up, and with a swing of one leg managed to roll it over on its belly. The arms swung out to the side, folded at the elbows and then pivoted into the machine’s sides. With screaming hydraulics, they pressed down into the earth, lifting the upper portion of the digger a few inches off the ground. The power plant revved up as the arms pressed into the earth, straightening out. The machine looked like it was doing a push-up when the waist bent and the legs slowly walked forward in short, jerky steps. When the feet were nearly between the arms, the waist straightened out, and the digger rose to an upright position.

Standing there, the thing looked like hell. Both cockpits were cut open, there were scratches and gouges in the surface. The entire front of the machine had been scorched. Jake couldn’t believe the thing could still function after the pounding it had taken. He had to admit that Qi was one hell of a tinker.

She’d probably give Tinker Farris a run for his money,
Jake thought to himself.

The digger moved forward, and Jake stepped out of the way. He had a pretty good idea of what Qi had in mind.

“Oh,
God
,” Cole’s sorrowful voice lifted from the other side of the wagon, and it hit Jake hard. “Look what them bastards done to Koto,” he added, his voice thick.

“I’m sorry, Cole,” Jake said. He glanced at Skeeter, and she had a strange, sickened look on her face.
I guess she just learned lesson three,
Jake thought.

“What are you sorry for,” Cole said, turning sharply.

“I guess it’s sorta my fault,” Jake said.

“How you figure that?” Cole asked with an edge in his voice. “The only ones at fault are them fellas … the ones who attacked us, and whoever hooked them up with that Confederate hardware,” Cole added, sending a hateful look in Ghiss’ direction. Cole looked Jake square in the eyes. “Ain’t no way it was your fault, Jake. I knew the risks when we left Denver.” Cole’s face went stony. “I’ll just have to take it out of them foreigners when we cross paths again, and believe me, I will.”

Jake nodded and clapped his partner on the shoulder. Then he turned and inspected the wagon. The rear wheel had been completely destroyed, and what remained of the axle rested on the ground. He looked up at the sheared, lower cockpit of the digger. “Think you can lift this tail end of this wagon off the ground?” he asked Qi. He could just barely make out her figure through the gash in the cockpit cover.

“I believe so,” she shouted from within.

“Cole, get your possibles off of Koto,” Jake said very gently, “and throw them in the wagon.” Cole only nodded and stepped over to Koto. Jake heard Cole loosening the straps to Koto’s saddle.

The digger stepped up beside the wagon as Jake stepped around to the back. As the Lady’s package came into view, he did a double-take. The side of the wagon had been torn to shreds in most places where the anti-personnel rounds hit. The Lady’s box, however, remained completely unmarked. There wasn’t a scratch on it. Jake ran a finger over the smooth, carved surface, looking closely to see if it had taken any damage at all.

“I need to get behind it, Jake,” Qi’s said. He nodded again and stepped out of the way. The digger moved to the back and Qi’s copilot slowly ran one of the mostly-crushed gun pods under the wagon near the corner. The appendage grated across the wood, and then the back axle lifted off the ground. The gun pod bumped up against the rear axle and Lumpy leaned into the harness as the wagon rolled forwards a short distance.

“Ghiss, can you get up there on your own?” Jake asked. Ghiss still lay flat on his back.

“I am afraid I’m not certain,” the mercenary said and moved slowly into a sitting position. His left arm made a horrible grating noise, and his right leg didn’t sound much better.