Iron Rage. James Axler

Trace had raised her head upright and was gazing at Ryan with clear, brown eyes.

      â€œGo on, Ryan,” she said. “I like where I think this is going.”

      â€œCaptain,” Arliss said, sounding pained that she was taking a landlubber’s advice, when it ran dead counter to every bit of his own riverman’s lore.

      â€œYeah,” he told the captain. “I got a plan. Bring the Queen as close as you can to the east bank and still safely sheer south. Then cut the barge free before you start your turn. I don’t know if that’s the right lingo, so I put it as plain as I know how.”

      She managed a smile, albeit a thin one, and fleeting.

      â€œClose enough for getting on with. Nataly—”

      The helmswoman had subtly straightened her shoulders. “Aye-aye, Captain!” she said smartly. She had clearly grasped Ryan’s intention.

      Arliss frowned, then he nodded and showed a gap-toothed grin.

      â€œGood one,” he said. “If we’ve got to write off the barge, we can use her to lay us a smoke screen. And give those Poteetville bastards something to think about to get around it. You do know your shit, Cawdor.”

      Ryan nodded once, briskly.

      * * *

      HE HELPED THEM beat down the fire. Fortunately only one of the rooms—which the Conoyers and their crew rather grandly called “staterooms”—was gutted. Sadly, Suzan had shared it Edna, and all their possessions were write-offs. That didn’t matter a bent shell case to Edna anymore.

      It took Ryan, his friends apart from Krysty and Mildred, and the Mississippi Queen’s crew only minutes to reduce the flames to smoldering char. But they were intense minutes, and when they were done even Ryan had to find a cable coil to sit on while he caught his breath.

      Krysty sat next to him, still seeming subdued. Though mostly concerned with keeping an eye on the captain, Mildred had not neglected to watch her concussed friend. She only let the redhead out of the cabin when the fire was out.

      His friends found places to flake out on the deck or railing, as did the regular crew they’d been helping: Jake Lewis, tall and saturnine, Avery Telsco, Suzan Kenn, the cheerful bear of a South Plains Indian, Santee, a medium-sized dude named Abner MacReedy, who looked way too much like a rabbit, although he wasn’t particularly shy or skittish, and finally Arliss Moriarty, leaning back against an intact wall of the cabin smoking a corncob pipe. For some reason that gave Mildred the uncontrollable giggles every time she looked at him.

      Jak, meanwhile, scrambled back onto the cabin roof. Unable to engage in his usual wide-ranging scouting, he settled for perching up there like a pelican, keeping watch at all hours of the day or night. He even slept up there. Aside from the fore and aft ends, both to portside, where shells had struck, the roof seemed pretty sound structurally. Ryan declined to worry about it. Jak of all people knew how to be careful where he put his feet, and not venture out on anything that wouldn’t support his slight weight. And anyway, it was his stupe neck.

      â€œBy the Three Kennedys!” Doc exclaimed.

      He had been squatting on his long, skinny shanks, facing aft. All that was visible behind the tug was churning green water. Arliss and his red-haired crony, Sean O’Reilly, who was back helping Myron and Maggie nurse the engines as usual, had cut the barge loose at what Trace Conoyer judged the optimum moment.

      By that time it was fiercely ablaze from one end to the other. Enough so that Ryan could feel the heat beating off it as he helped work the pumps. Had the wind not been blowing the sparks away from the Queen, they might well have set the tug alight too.

      Now Doc drew himself up to his considerable height and flung out a long arm to point dramatically over the taffrail.

      â€œThe blackguards have found a way around the burning hulk, and are emerging from the smoke!”

      J.B., who was sitting just aft of the cabin near a boat hung in davits with his back to the stern, barely tipped his head back and turned it to glance over his shoulder.

      â€œNothing shaken, Doc,” he said.

      Ryan was surprised that J.B. could see over the stern, as short as he was. But the Armorer was the last person in their group to say more than he knew. “We knew it was going to happen sooner or later. They’re way out of range now, anyway.”

      â€œTheir frigates can’t keep up with us now,” Arliss said. No longer weighed down by the massive barge and her currently burning-to-nuke-shit cargo, the tubby little tug was making surprising time downriver. “They’re slow and handle like pigs, with all that armor. Unarmored patrol boats likely can’t catch us, even.”

      That last bit of information was delivered with a note of unmistakable pride in his voice.

      He shook his grizzled head.

      â€œIt’s lucky we got off as light as we did,” he said. “Except for poor Edna. We’re lucky, and that’s a fact.”

      â€œCount no man lucky before his death,” Jake said.

      Arliss put his hands on his hips and stuck his elbows out to the sides. “Well, aren’t you Captain Gloom ’n’ Doom? What, are you taking lessons from Nataly now?”

      â€œIt’s an old Viking saying. From my Viking grandmother, Freya.”

      â€œShe weren’t no Viking.”

      â€œYou didn’t want to tell her that.”

      â€œWhere are we going, anyway?” Ricky asked.

      â€œCaptain says she means to head back up the Yazoo,” Arliss said. “From there we’ll play it by ear.”

      â€œSo we’re basically in the clear?” The youth sounded relieved.

      Krysty lifted her head and gave him a wan grin.

      â€œDon’t ever say that, Ricky,” she said teasingly. “It’s only tempting fate.”

      â€œShips ahead!” Jak cried out from above. “War boats!”

       Chapter Five

      â€œIt’s the New Vick fleet!” Arliss exclaimed. “And they got their big tubs with ’em!”

      Krysty climbed to her feet in alarm. Without even looking, Ryan stood up beside her and reached an arm to steady her.

      Ryan gazed south, along the length of the cabin. Out beyond the prow of the Mississippi Queen a V of five blasterboats was steaming toward them with little mustaches of water by their bows. He knew that meant they were driving hard, although the slow but strong Sippi current’s flowing against them slowed them.

      Behind the blasterboats came the main New Vickville fleet, darkened by the long shadows that stretched from the low bluffs on the west bank of the big river. It was still well beyond blaster range, but the ironclad ships looked huge, like a distant range of mountains.

      â€œFireblast,” Ryan said, almost conversationally. Another person might have taken it for resignation. Another man saying it under the circumstances might have meant it that way.

      But not Ryan. Krysty knew that his tone meant he had already accepted the situation—and begun to plot how to beat it and survive, as he had a thousand times before.

      â€œBlasterboats have already cut us off from the Yazoo,” he said.

      â€œAnd