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The first boom rolled over them like thunder. Ryan knelt and laid his longblaster across the railing. J.B. knelt by his side, his fedora jammed tightly on his head and his Uzi in his hands. Krysty knew he was by Ryan’s side for support only. His blaster didn’t have the range to do any damage to the hostile ironclads, which were at least a quarter of a mile distant.
Captain Conoyer was already sprinting for the cabin, shouting, “Hard to port, now! Redline the engines!”
She paused at the pilothouse doorway. “Everybody whose duties don’t keep them up top, get belowdecks now!” she bellowed. “Barge damage party, get back aboard and under cover!”
Most of the attackers’ volley dropped into the water at least a hundred yards shy of the Queen’s bow, sending up greenish-brown columns of water that burst into white froth before opening like flowers and falling back again. A couple shots splashed closer, but wide to the right and left.
“At least it’ll take them a while to reload,” Mildred said, wincing as the multiple thumps of cannon shots reach them. She had reflexively hunkered down behind the front rail. So had Krysty.
“Bigger boats are already turning broadside to bring their side blasters to bear,” Ryan reported, peering with his scope through falling spray.
“I’d say it’s just about ready to get serious,” J.B. said, sounding more interested than alarmed.
Krysty looked back. The people who had gone on board the barge to fight the fire in the fabric bales were scrambling back across the thick hawser that connected the hulls. She was relieved and pleased to see Doc trotting right across, as spry as a kid goat, holding his arms out to his sides with his black coattails flapping. Despite his aged appearance, he was chronologically but a few years younger than Ryan. The bizarre abuse and rigors the evil whitecoats of Operation Chronos had subjected him to after trawling him from the late 1800s had aged him prematurely, and damaged his fine, highly educated mind. But he could still muster the agility and energy of a man much younger than he appeared to be.
Ricky came last, straddling the thick woven hemp cable and inchworming along, but he did so at speed.
Avery had vanished. “You and Mildred best head for cover,” Ryan said.
“They’ll only hit us by accident,” Mildred replied, “shooting oversize muskets at us.”
“They’re going to have a dozen or two shots at us, next round,” J.B. said. “That’s a lot of chances to get lucky.”
“Looks like some smaller fry are heading this way,” Ryan reported. “Krysty, Mildred—git!”
“But what good will a wooden hull and decks do against iron cannonballs?” Mildred asked.
“Splinters!” Ryan exclaimed.
“Come on.” Krysty grabbed the other woman’s wrist and began to run for the cabin. Though Mildred was about as heavy as she was, Krysty was barely slowed, towing Mildred as if the woman were a river barge. She was strong, motivated and full of adrenaline.
Krysty heard Ryan open fire. Given the range, the bobbing of the approaching lesser war craft, and the complex movement of the Queen—pitching fore and aft as well as heeling over to her right from the centrifugal force of the fastest left turn the vessel could manage—she doubted he’d be lucky enough to hit anything significant.
The women had almost reached the cabin when the next salvo hit, roaring like an angry dragon. Krysty saw stout planks suddenly spreading into fragments almost in her face.
And then the world vanished in a soundless white flash.
* * *
RYAN’S HEART ALMOST imploded in his chest when he heard the shell crash through the roof of the bridge and detonate. Krysty!
He stood, pushed off from the rail and spun.
The forward port corner of the cabin—his right—had been smashed. Smoke streamed out. He heard screams, smelled burned flesh, and burning horsehair from padded chairs.
Krysty lay on her back on the deck, her head in Mildred’s lap. Her hair was curled close to her head, though not tightly, and was waving feebly. Her face was a ghastly mask of gore and char.
“Krysty!” he shouted.
Mildred waved him off.
“Her forehead’s just nicked,” she said. “The rest is just smoke.”
“She’s not hurt?”
“She’s concussed,” Mildred said. “But she’s tough. She’ll make it. There’s nothing more to do for her right now. Ow! What?”
The last was directed at J.B., who had taken off his fedora and was swatting her on top of the head with it.
“Your hair’s smoldering up top,” he said.
“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Something made me dive for the deck. Since Krysty was hanging on to my wrist it was easy to take her down with me. But she still caught more of the blast than I did.”
“Help!” somebody yelled from inside the cabin. “Somebody help the captain!”
Ryan and Mildred looked at each other. “Look out after Krysty, John,” she said. Easing Krysty’s head to the planks, she extricated herself and stood.
As soon as he saw Krysty’s head laid gently down, Ryan moved ahead of Mildred to the door and looked inside.
A dense haze of greenish smoke filled the bridge, lit poorly by afternoon sunlight slanting in through the hole, and a few oily flickering yellow flames. The stink of burned gunpowder, hair and overcooked flesh was intense. Ryan had to clamp his jaw shut against acid vomit that shot up his throat.
Nataly Dobrynin stood at the wheel. Like Krysty’s, her face was a black-and-crimson mask. She was craning to her left to peer out the front port. The polycarbonate there had been blasted free by the explosion. The right side, though intact, was smoke-smudged, partially melted and tricky to see through.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Scalp cut and smoke damage. It’s not as bad as it looks.” Despite her words, she seemed to be as much holding herself upright as steering the Queen through its hard left turn.
She jerked her head toward the cabin wall to her right. “Help the captain.”
Ryan looked the way she indicated. Trace Conoyer was slumped against the bulkhead. Her right arm was missing from above the elbow. Avery knelt beside her, frantically trying to tie off the wound with a handkerchief. He didn’t seem to be making much headway against the blood spurting all over him, and rendering the floorboards slippery.
“Mildred,” Ryan rasped.
“Already on it,” the predark doctor said. She actually shouldered him out of the way as she entered the bridge and went to the captain.
When she had been studying to become a doctor, Mildred had discovered she enjoyed research more than tending to the sick and injured, so she chose the field of medical research and focused on cryogenics. Ultimately, her research had saved her life, as it allowed her colleagues to freeze her after the botched surgery. Her sleep lasted longer than a hundred years, and when she awakened, the world had drastically changed. And to survive—emotionally as well as physically—she had to change, as well. She had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the role of healer, bringing real medical skill and knowledge to a world that almost completely lacked them. And when she went into full-on healer mode, she would turn aside for nothing.
Not even Ryan Cawdor.
To the right of the entrance, at the bridge’s rear, was a hatch leading to the deck below. Just short of it lay a body. At one time it had been human, but now it was hard to tell. It seemed to have been blown open, with entrails scattered on the deck. A string of intestine was draped over a chart table lying on its side. The chill was still smoldering.
“I had just gone below,” Avery said over his shoulder. He was now helping the dazed captain hold her stump upright while Mildred tied it off properly. “Edna was headed down right behind me.”
“She had to have taken the brunt of the blast,” Nataly said. “She never had a chance. Poor woman.”
Another salvo landed around the vessel. From the sounds they made, Ryan gathered the Poteetville ironclads were firing a mix of solid shot and explosive shells. Probably whatever was closest to hand.
Ryan stepped up alongside Nataly and began pistoning the butt-plate of his Steyr into what remained of the windscreen. Even damaged as it was, the tough polymer resisted his jackhammer blows. But he managed to pop it out of its framework.
Nataly nodded her thanks as she straightened, showing a quick flash of teeth, bright white against her horror mask of a face.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I was right beside the captain,” she said through gritted teeth. “The blast didn’t do much to me. I thought I was chilled for sure.”
Seeing that both the tall, thin woman and Mildred both had their respective situations well in hand, Ryan went back outside. He found Krysty sitting up against the remains of the cabin’s front wall, while J.B. tried to daub the blood and soot from her face with a wet rag.
She was awake, and she smiled as her emerald green eyes met his.
“You were worried,” she said. “That’s sweet.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. She was clearly still dazed.
He looked around. The Mississippi Queen had already swung its bow past due west and was continuing to turn back south. In the process it had moved most of the way to that shore. Most of the barge was visible to port behind the tug.
Suddenly the rest of the companions were gathered around. “How’s Krysty?” Ricky asked. “Nuestra Señora, please let her be okay!”
“I’ll be fine,” Krysty said, more in the tone of voice of a person agreeing with someone who had just said something she didn’t really understand than as an actual affirmation.
“What are you all doing here?” Ryan demanded of the boy, Jak and Doc.
The old man shot his cuffs with elaborate unconcern. “There seems to be a dearth of jobs for us to do at the moment.”
A shattering sound erupted from aft of the cabin. Pieces of the roof flew off in a big gout of smoke. Yellow flames began to flick just above the jagged edges of the bulkhead.
“Dark night!” J.B. exclaimed, as voices began shouting in alarm. “It must’ve set bedding on fire.”
“We’ve got a job now,” Ryan said grimly. “We’ll man the hoses and try to get the fire out. J.B., help me carry Krysty into the cabin.”
“Just leave me here, lover,” Krysty said. She still sounded out of it, but was clearly pulling her blast-scattered wits back together. “Be as safe here as anywhere.”
“No way,” Ryan said, gathering her in his arms for the briefest of hugs, then pulling her away from the bulkhead so he could hoist her by the shoulders while J.B. lifted her feet. “It’s at least some protection. Better than none.”
“You know what old line about lightning not striking twice in the same place?” Krysty asked, her head lolling. “It’s not true. Lots of times lightning hits the same place a dozen times in the blink of an eye.”
“I know that,” he said. “Stay with me.”
He managed not to say, You’re starting to sound like Doc. Although it probably wouldn’t have mattered because the old man had already led the two youngest members of the team back to where several of the crew were unrolling canvas hoses to fight the flames.
Inside, Mildred was letting Trace Conoyer lower her arm, gingerly, to see if the pressure bandage she had taped over the wound would hold. The dirty-rag tourniquet had already been removed and discarded.
Myron Conoyer and Arliss Moriarty hunched over the captain. Avery hovered in the background, uncertain as to how to help.
The captain had already recovered her senses.
“Go tend the engines, Myron,” she ordered in an almost normal voice. “We need to keep them on full power, and we can’t have them blow up on us.”
“But—”
“If you think Mildred would do as good a job taking care of the Diesels as you would, by all means swap places with her. But somebody needs to be down with those engines, and not just Maggie. She’s ace, but doesn’t have a third of your chops.”
Myron bobbed his balding head. “Aye-aye, uh, Captain.” He turned and hurried back below, shaking his head at the sad mess that was all that remained of Edna.
Ryan and J.B. had settled Krysty on the floor, as clear as they could of the still slightly smoking Edna, the captain, and—most important, in Ryan’s view—the helmswoman’s feet. He had folded his long black coat and propped her head up against it. Her hair lay limply across it, as if eager to give up the fight.
“Thank you, lover,” she said as he kissed her cheek and straightened. “I’ll be back on my feet before you know it.”
“Not before I tell you you’re ready,” Mildred said sternly, not even looking around from examining the captain’s dressing.
“Let’s go, J.B.” Ryan jerked his chin to the door. Though the Queen sported powered pumps, at times like this they used hand pumps to allow the engines to devote full power to driving the vessel and her burden. From the way the deck shuddered beneath his feet, he knew that Myron had followed his wife’s initial order to redline them and keep them there, regardless.
Ryan approved. His own team worked that way: if he told them to do something that pushed the envelope, or even seemed flat crazy—and their own judgment told them it might actually be worth a try—they did it. And they usually pulled it off.
“Ryan.” Trace’s voice rasped as if she’d been gargling lye. “Stay. If you will.”
That latter part was one of the shipboard niceties the captain liked to maintain, and Ryan knew it. He turned back. Aboard the Queen, she was his boss. And in this case what she was calling him back from was adding the strength of his back and arms to saving her ship.
“I need you…to advise me,” she said. “We’ve had more than one run-in with people who want this cargo, and I’ve seen that you know something about tactics.”
“You’re the authority on ship-handling,” he said. “I can’t pretend to know nuke about it.”
“We put our…heads together, then,” she said, managing a wan smile.
She was triple tough, there was no question. When her ship and crew were on the line, she would do her job and die doing it. For their part, the crew knew it, and responded accordingly.
Even Ryan and his people knew that. Good, honest bosses were hard to come by.
“I’m fresh out of ideas, now,” he admitted, as another volley came rushing in with a hurricane sound.
He felt a tremor beneath his feet, accompanied by a thunderous bang from astern. Immediately voices began screaming, “Fire! Fire on the barge!”
A moment later, Suzan Kenn appeared in the door, her gray-shot brown hair in more than the usual disarray.
“A shell hit the barge right where the lumber meets the cloth bales, Captain!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “She started burning like Billy Jesus right off the mark. The only hope we’ve got of dousing the blaze is turning on the power to the pumps.”
“We can’t do that,” Trace rapped. “Cut her loose.”
Suzan blinked. “Captain?”
“Are you sure, Trace?” Arliss asked.
He was the Mississippi Queen’s master rigger, which meant he kept the steering linkages in top shape, among other duties. A little guy, somewhere between J.B. and Jak in size, he had a short frizz of graying hair and a beard, prominent ears, and a missing right front incisor. He was the second-best financial mind on board, after the now-deceased Edna, and usually advised the Conoyers in negotiations, a job Edna had been too shy to do well. Like everybody aboard the Queen, he was ace at his job, and Ryan knew that part of his job was to keep his captain’s eye on the bottom line.
“The price—”
“Probably won’t buy us a new ship, Arliss, and definitely won’t buy a new us. We can’t die for the load.”
“But Baron Teddy—”
“Will have to—” she winced at a twinge of pain as Mildred adjusted the bandage “—deal with his disappointment. We can send him a nice note from upstream. He knew the risks when he ordered the goods. Cut her loose, Suzan.”
