Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide (31 page)

It was far more than Ryan had any right to ask or expect. He waited for the rub. “You’re generous.”

“You will be wanting to recruit warriors and sailors.”

Ryan nodded. “We’ve got just once chance against Sabbath and his daughter. They want to take the
Glory
, not sink her. So we get to hammer away at them with our cannons, while they fire at our spars and masts to try and slow us. In the end, the battle will be decided by lead, steel and wood.”

“You’ll find no shortage of volunteers. Of the many diseases on these islands, one of the strongest is island fever. All volunteers shall have right of return if wished after, say, two years of service?”

“If we survive, the
Glory
will most likely head back to the Caribbean. But all volunteers signed to the book will have the right to take service with another ship after that time or take their leave whenever we are in your waters, even if that’s sooner than two years. Standard shares of spoil and trade will be based on earned rank.”

“Agreed.”

“What else?”

“The moon is right. Tonight, Prince Koa will give me a son and his people shall acknowledge him a prince.”

Koa strangled on his beer.

“Should he fail, his failure shall be known throughout the Cific.”

Ryan nodded. “Agreed.”

“Should you win, and the
Lady Evil
survives, you shall bring her back here, with her cannons and what stores you do not absolutely require. You will give me one of your officers and enough sailors to train a crew for me.”

“Should we survive, agreed.”

Tahiata lifted her chin. “But?”

“But if we’re going to win, we’re going to need blasters.”

“We have a terrible shortage of those in our islands. I can give you none, other than what any volunteer brings with him, and those will be few.”

J.B. stared at Tahiata shrewdly. “I see that you have a fair number of blacksmithed blasters.” He lifted a chin at the royal guards. “How are you keeping your predark steel running?”

“We have the remnants of a machine shop.”

“Mr. Ryan?” J.B. asked.

“Yes, Gunny?”

“Permission to bring Ricky and Techman Rood ashore.”

* * *

I
T WAS A SPACE
dear to J.B.’s heart. It stank of oil, metal and sweat. Far too much of it was taken up by the ville blacksmith’s forge, but they had a few working machines. J.B. grunted. Most had large, double, iron-mongered crank wheels that had to be turned by a pair of large and likely ville lads. They were far weaker than originally designed and could only be used to make small, light parts. Worse still, they were using coconut oil for lubrication and leather and fabric for their running belts. However, some of their basic functions were there. Ricky walked among the few machines. All had seen extensive jury-rigging. A few in the back were hulks that had been cannibalized.

Rood stared at them thoughtfully. This aspect of tech was slightly out of his purview, but he saw the problem and he saw his role in it. “I got a couple barrels of wiring and cables in decent condition in the orlop. I can rewire most of these. We’ll bring in the generator Mr. Ryan found in South America. We’re low on fuel, though. We’re going to have to burn local alcohol. Probably ruin it.”

J.B. nodded thoughtfully. “We run it till it blows.”

Ricky ran his hands over the machines, admiring or scowling at the modifications, depending. “We can bring in the two bicycle generators to supplement the hand cranks for the light stuff. Save the jenny for the bolt assemblies. Those’ll be the tricky part. If we get enough willing participants, a lot of it can be done by hand.”

Rood glanced at the admirable pile of salvaged iron, steel, aluminum and other metal pieces of all descriptions filling most of the small warehouse section. “I don’t see how a few dozen or even a few hundred crude single-shot muskets are going to turn the tide when we have ships boarding us port and starboard.”

J.B. looked over at the ville’s blacksmith, Manua, and his two hulking sons, Manuarii and Nohoarii. The trio stared back eagerly. They didn’t speak English, but one look at J.B. told them they were going to be in for a profitable learning experience.

“We’re not going to make single shooters.”

Ricky and Rood both looked at him.

J.B. looked at the tools and materials he had to work with and imagined the battle they had to win. It all came together in his mind in glowing detail. “Gentlemen, we’re going to manufacture the worst blasters ever made.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Aboard the Glory

Ryan stared at the worst weapon he had ever seen in his life. He had spent the week eating, taking morning and afternoon saber fencing lessons from Doc and assisting with the refitting of the ship. J.B. and his machinist entourage had arrived, requesting a viewing on the quarterdeck.

J. B. Dix was a master armorer, possibly the best left on the broken planet. He handed Ryan a travesty of the armorer’s art. The weapon seemed to mostly consist of a sheet metal tube with a stub of barrel sticking out of it. It had no stock. The pistol grip was a five-inch piece of pipe. The trigger had no guard. The weapon’s sights consisted of a small blob of solder on the muzzle for indexing. The mag stuck out horizontally to the left and seemed to have been press fitted from old predark soup cans. It had spots of rust, and none of the weapon’s parts had any finish. The few discernible moving parts were beaded with oil and grease. Nothing seemed to hold it together other than stamping and pins.

Ryan hefted the stubby, ugly, ungainly, unbalanced, rattletrap thing and shook his head at J.B. “Tell me it’s better than it looks.”

Ricky stopped short of puffing out his chest in pride. “It’s worse than it looks!”

Rood mopped his grease-smeared brow and nodded. Manua and his sons grinned happily.

J.B. seemed strangely proud of his work as he rattled off its tidal wave of shortcomings. “That barrel’s soft iron. It’ll start tearing apart and disintegrating after a dozen or so rounds. Speaking of rounds, they’re all black powder. On full-auto, and that’s the only way it fires, fouling’ll occur almost instantly. The only lubricant we have is coconut oil. It’ll start burning right quick. Between the black powder fouling and the burning oil, you’ll be lucky to fire off even one mag without a catastrophic jam.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Ricky and I agreed—no time to rifle the barrels. They’re as smooth as a shotgun.”

“So accuracy will be...?”

“Hitting a man-sized target beyond twenty-five meters will be genuinely problematic.” The Armorer grinned. “We won’t discuss the state of the springs.”

Ryan saw a silver lining in J.B.’s, Ricky’s and Rood’s proud faces. “So why are you nuked assholes smiling?”

Ricky bounced up and down on his toes. “We have a hundred of them.”

J.B. lifted his chin at the weapon in Ryan’s hand. “When the ships clash, every man will get off at least one burst, from one to twenty rounds. Then every man uses his personal or issue blaster, then it goes hand to hand.”

Ryan held out the weapon like an unwieldy pistol and sighted over the barrel. J.B. had delivered the goods. When the
Ironman
and the
Lady Evil
came alongside and boarded, J.B. will give the crew of the
Glory
one brutal, unreliable, spitting distance opportunity to try to even the odds before the battle went hand to hand.

Mr. Squid stood on the quarterdeck. Her golden eyes examined the weapon. “Gunny, I would like to requisition four of them for the battle.”

J.B. considered his table of organization and allocations. “You ever fired a blaster before?”

“No, but from what I understand of your submachine guns and the nature of the battle before us, I believe that will be of little consequence. All that will matter is concentrated fire.”

“You can’t just jerk a trigger, Squid.”

“From what little I know of firearms, you squeeze the trigger rather than jerking or pulling it.” Mr. Squid held up four arms and their tips all began sinuously making individual sailor’s knots. “I have some understanding of controlled contractions.”

Koa laughed. “This I want to see!”

As the commander on deck, Ryan had to keep the smile off his face. “Gunny, bring your weapons aboard and pick your fire teams. Subaqueous Specialist Squid to be issued four prebattle. Mr. Rood?”

“Aye, sir?”

“Send the signal.”

* * *

R
YAN STOOD NAKED
except for his eye patch and the SIG in his hand beneath the Tahitian moon and watched the gentle, bioluminescent tide. Krysty lay on a blanket just inside the tree line. Ryan had learned that Tahitians made love by the beach all the time but always just out of sight of the surf and always with a blaster or spear near to hand. He felt the breeze play across his skin. It was a beautiful, tropical night.

In his gut, he felt as if he was standing on very thin ice. He’d done all he could do. They’d lost a great deal of rope and canvas rounding the horn, but they’d planned for that and had enough to fight the battle ahead and make it to the next port. Tahitian hardwoods had provided all the spars and timber they needed for repairs. The vessel was shipshape. Ryan considered his crew. They were mostly shipshape too, having regained their health and strength.

Balls’s pregnant granddaughter had not only survived the trek with a tenacity that had put the rest of the crew to shame but had given birth to a slightly underweight but healthy baby girl. To the delight of all she had named her Gloriana-Tahiti. She, Balls and the surviving Mapuche and gauchos had asked to settle here. Queen Tahiata welcomed the infusion of new bloodlines that had barely been exposed to a single rad. Ryan had been proud when all had volunteered to stay on for the fight against the Sabbaths first. On top of that they had thirty young Tahitian warriors spoiling for the glory of battle on the high sea for their queen.

Ryan had promoted Nubskull and Onetongue to bosun, and Miss Loral had signed off on it. That left the officers. The
Glory
had exactly three. Commander Miles was still in med and in bad shape from his bullet wounds opening from the scurvy. Captain Oracle’s whip weals had barely closed before the scurvy had hit him. Mildred couldn’t promise if he would live to see the battle. That left Ryan, Miss Loral and Koa. Loral was a hell of sailor but she hadn’t been in many battles. Ryan had been in more battles than he’d had hot meals, some on ships, but he had never captained a ship in battle until he’d taken the
War Pig,
and that had been a turkey shoot, won by deception before the first shot had been fired.

Ryan had promoted Koa to officer. The Hawaiian prince was a veteran of many battles, but nearly all had been fought on beaches or from war canoes. The battle ahead would be against two ships, one larger than
Glory
and both commanded by seasoned captains and dripping in fighting men.

Ryan didn’t care to contemplate what Manrape had done to Dorian, but the youngest Sabbath had no more secrets. Ryan new the strengths and weaknesses of both the
Ironman
and the
Lady Evil
. The only good news was the state of their blasters. Nearly every fighting man aboard both ships had one, but nearly all were single shooters and many of them were muzzleloaders. Only the officers, the captains’ picked sec men and a few of the crew who’d captured weapons as spoils had predark weapons, and most only had a handful of rounds to fill them.

J.B.’s mechanical monstrosities were the only advantage the
Glory
had. Ryan had test-fired two of them. The first had jammed up tight after one round. The other had buzz-sawed out all twenty-five rounds spitting smoke and sparks and fouling in all directions. Everyone watching had clapped their hands in delight. The applause fell dead when Ryan lowered the weapon and the smoke-oozing barrel had slid out and fallen to the sand. The bad news was the worst blasters ever made would decide the
Glory
’s
fate.

The good news was they had a 150of them.

Techman Rood had sent the radio signal out to Prince Koa’s people on Molokai in Morse code, knowing Sabbath would intercept it. Sabbath and his daughter were still trying to raise Dorian using the Caesar cipher. They’d broken off searching the west coast port villes and sailed under every inch of canvas to intercept the
Glory
before she could reach Hawaii and Koa’s people. Ryan smiled into the night at the thought of his fellow officer. Koa had spent all night every night in Tahiata’s big house doing his princely duty by the queen. The crew hadn’t objected to the irregular promotions. They loved Onetongue, and Nubskull had proved his skills around the Cape. Koa was well respected, and the crew couldn’t wait to see him wield his massive, shark-tooth club in battle. The fact that he actually was a prince didn’t hurt either.

Ryan nodded to himself. He had done all he could do to prepare. All that was left was to sail into the Sabbaths’ teeth and fight. Ryan smelled the unmistakable scent of jasmine, tamanu oil and Tahitian pulchritude that was Queen Tahiata. He knew she had come from the left of the cove out of the trees so that he would smell her and hear her feet in the sand. It was a little late to try to cover up. “Queen.”

“Chieftainess, Baron Cawdor.” Tahiata admired Ryan’s naked form by moonlight. As usual she wore a sarong, flowers and not much else. “Doc calls me a queen, and I admit I enjoy the sound of it, but we have not had a queen since long before the fall, and other villes in these islands would dispute the claim violently.”

“I’m the son of a baron,” Ryan corrected.

“But you could have been baron. Should have been.”

Ryan shrugged. Koa had been shooting his mouth off. Ryan couldn’t blame him as he admired the Hawaiian’s interrogator in kind.

“Where is your woman of flame?” Tahiata asked.

“Sleeping over there. Where’s Prince Koa?”

“Snoring.” Tahiata smiled at Ryan in open invitation.

Ryan smiled with genuine regret. “I’m taken.”