Then it seemed to collapse back and in on itself like a rubber mask stretched over a deflating balloon as the shot column took away most of the skull and facial bones that gave it structure from behind, right out the right side of the head.
“Rad-blast it, Jak!” J.B. shouted, stepping up and jacking the action of his Smith & Wesson M-4000. “Quit screwing around.”
Jak grinned. “Okay, let’s fight!”
A WHALER CHURNED past the rounded prow of Finagle’s First Law. The muzzle-flashes of the score of pirates crammed board were bright despite the fact the air was full of rain and spray.
Ryan’s rifle slammed his shoulder and cracked. A pirate fell over the rail. The one-eyed man slung his Steyr and drew his handblaster. Holding it in both hands he popped rounds furiously at the craft as it curved around toward the stern.
His 9 mm bullets either had more effect than he saw, injuring or unnerving the man at the tiller, or the pirate steering the thirty-foot boat got careless. Or maybe the unpredictable thrashing of the sea betrayed it. The vessel swung far enough wide of the Finagle that Stork could depress his multibarreled steam-powered blaster to bear on them.
The Gatling set up its terrible grinding moan. The heavy slugs sent up a geyser of water in front of the launch, and the boat powered right into the lead spray.
It was as if a giant invisible butcher began chopping at the pirates with a giant cleaver. Heads blew apart like ripe watermelons dropped on boulders from a great height. Arms and legs flew free, cartwheeling through the water-heavy air like pinwheels spraying blood sparks. Splinters snapped up from the thin hull. Greenish-brown water surged in around the pirates’ legs, some of which stood without the benefits of torsos above the waists. It instantly turned a tainted maroon.
The boat turned sideways; its bow swamped.
The roar of the Gatling stopped. For a moment, as the only sound seemed to be the descending whine as the six barrels gradually slowed their spin, Ryan thought Stork had stopped firing for lack of targets.
Then he saw what looked like a thin red hose hooked from the gangly man’s throat to the deck, which rose and fell rhythmically.
Chapter Seven
Stork’s beaky, wildly hair-fringed face took on a look of almost clinical curiosity. He brought walking-stick fingers to the bullet hole. He pressed the fingertips against it.
Blood squirted out to the sides, down his T-shirt and up into his beard, to the decreasing rhythm of his heart. He toppled from the mesh sling seat.
Wildly Ryan looked around. The smoke screens had turned into a few random brown wisps twisting in the wind. Ahead of the convoy’s lead ship, the Snowy Egret, he could see a break in the waving green wall of the mangrove swamp that made up the shoreline. It was sanctuary of a sort, offered by a bayou mouth: tantalizingly close, yet perhaps an infinity away—because the bigger pirate ships were fast approaching, and the survivors of their swarm of smaller boats, sensing opportunity now that the terrible Gatling had quit ripping at them, were closing in like a pod of killer whales on the Egret and the New Hope. Meanwhile the Hope was no longer sending out a volley of its terrible rockets. Ryan didn’t know whether they were out, or the launcher was out of service, or whether the rocket crew was dead or injured. It didn’t matter.
The sound of rotating barrels got sharper, higher. Ryan spun.
Grinning, coattails flapping behind him like storm-crow’s wings, Doc sat in the recumbent seat of the steam gun. His feet pumped the pedals furiously spinning up the barrels once more. His hands worked the crank to swing the bizarre weapon to bear on fresh targets.
“Have no fear, Ryan!” he sang out over the howl and smash of wind and battle. “I am on it!”
TEETH SHATTERED as Krysty whipped the heavy butt of her BAR across the face of a pirate with long greasy locks and a pale scar running down his face over a dead eye like a cruel parody of her own lover. A long black mustache contradicted the impression until it vanished in the general eruption of blood from his smashed nose and upper jaw.
“Krysty! Behind you!” Mildred yelled.
Half by reflex, half instinct she kicked hard, straight back. Before her leg fully extended, her boot heel contacted hard flesh. She heard a cough of exhalation and the person she kicked fell away.
She spun, bringing the muzzle of the Browning around level with her narrow waist. A wiry little pirate, shirtless to reveal a sunken chest spiderwebbed with crude tattoos, had reeled back against a man twice his size with a gold ring hanging from a much-mashed nose. He had a fat bean-shaped face, steel-wool hair and sideburns poking out to the sides as if he had hedgehogs glued to his cheeks. The big man grabbed his comrade in one hand and pointed a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun at Krysty over his shoulder with the other.
She triggered a quick burst. The smaller man jerked as dark holes appeared like flies caught in the webs of his chest tats. The other man’s tiny bloodshot blue eyes stood suddenly out of their sockets as the jacketed .30-06 slugs, barely slowed by blasting through the lights and heart of his smaller pal, ripped through his belly.
Judging by the way his bandy legs folded one had to have smashed through his spine and cut the cord.
Explosions were blasting off all around. Waves crashed over the rail. The ship rocked through a complex three-dimensional pattern that was ever-changing and totally disorienting.
Smoke obscured Krysty’s vision aft, from where the most recent two attackers had come. She wasn’t sure what was burning. The sharp stink of wood combusting blended with the sweetish barbecue smell of roasting human flesh singed the roof of her mouth and tormented a stomach already disordered by the unpredictable motion of the ship. The smells had to be strong to be detectable at all through the rain and spray, so dense and fierce she couldn’t tell them apart.
On all sides people shouted and screamed. A ferocious tumult rose from the stern, beyond the wall of smoke. Fighting raged there.
She turned the other way to see Mildred caught from behind in a bear hug by a big Latino-looking pirate with his back to a ladder coaming. A smaller man cocked back his arm to drive a long narrow rod with the tip ground to a point into the woman’s belly.
Krysty pointed the BAR at what she hoped was a safe angle clear of Mildred and held back the trigger. The blaster barked and bucked twice, and the heavy receiver locked open. One bullet hit the pirate with the spike on the hip and passed through him, smashing his narrow pelvis. He fell screaming, the needle-like weapon falling from his hands and washed out instantly through the scuppers by a backwash tendrilled with his own blood.
Mildred smashed her head back into the face of the man who held her. He grunted in unexpected pain. Blood squirted from his smashed nose.
The unexpected turn of events made him loosen the grip of his big bare arms. Mildred kicked back just beneath his right knee with her bootheel, then scraped it down his shin. He moaned and she broke free.
As the pirate pawed at her, she brought her knee up hard into his groin. His eyes bugged out and he doubled over.
As his big shaggy head descended, she jammed the muzzle of her ZKR 551 target pistol into his open mouth. Teeth broke. Blood streamed freely where the big sharp-edged front site tore the roof of his mouth. So furious was the sturdily built black woman, the force of it straightened him back up.
Fear of what was coming overcame even the agony and airlessness of smashed balls. His eyes flew wide. Pleading.
“Fuck you,” Mildred shouted, and pulled the trigger. There was a short, sharp bark. His eyes bulged out farther,