Savage Armada - Deathlands 53 Read online

  "We take this ship!" a bald pirate shouted.

  Desperate men charged the wounded defenders.

  Lying on the deck, Ryan emptied his blaster at the pirates, chilling two more before they were past him and charging the others. They clearly wanted no part of the raven-haired man with the battle-scarred face and a working blaster.

  The two groups converged, each choosing a person to fight. A single blaster roared, and then it was swords, axes and knives in total blood chaos, the individual screams and curses mixing into the muted roar of mob warfare.

  Weapon in hand, Ryan couldn't find anybody to chill. The people were so well mixed, the Deathlands warrior would only ace the sailors he had promised to protect. Then he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye.

  "Crew of the Connie!" he shouted. "Hit the deck!"

  Savage Armada

  #53 in the Deathland series

  James Axler

  A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  To Police Sergeant Matthew A. Mingle, who walked that thin blue line for as long as possible.

  First edition March 2001

  ISBN 0-373-62563-4

  SAVAGE ARMADA

  Copyright © 2001 by Worldwide Library.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Let them hate, as long as they fear.

  —Accius Navius, High Priest

  for Tiberius the Elder, 617 B.C.

  THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

  This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

  There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

  But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

  Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

  Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

  J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

  Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

  Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

  Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

  Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

  In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope…

  Chapter One

  Even as the swirling electronic mists began to fade, the first shock of pain shot through his body and Ryan Cawdor knew that something was terribly wrong with the jump.

  "Fucking hell," Ryan muttered, slumping to the cold concrete floor of the mat-trans chamber and gagging on the taste of sour bile that filled his throat. The big man swallowed a few times to clear his mouth. Fireblast! They hadn't had a jump this bad in weeks. For one terrible moment, he wondered if the machinery had malfunctioned, scrambled their insides, or something equally awful.

  But then the convulsions racking his body began to subside, and Ryan could hear the moans and curses of the others around him. Nobody was screaming, and there was no smell of blood. No malfunc then, just a rad-blasted bad jump. Dimly he could sense the others spreading out, all instinctively trying to get away from the source of their pain.

  Time passed slowly, and Ryan finally summoned enough strength to sit and brush the wild profusion of black hair from his sweaty face. There was the expected stink of sweat and puke in the air, but much stronger than normal. Usually the life-support system of a redoubt cleared away any unpleasant traces within minutes. The atmosphere in the underground bunkers was usually scrubbed clean and smelled with chem disinfectants. But not this time, and Ryan didn't like that.

  Adjusting the patch that covered his ruined left eye, Ryan blinked his right into focus and weakly glanced about. Four, five, six, all of his friends were present, and looking as bad as the Deathlands warrior still felt.

  Sprawled on the floor of the mat-trans unit, with one hand extended onto the concrete apron outside, was a tall slim man with silvery hair. Fighting for breath, the old man wore an old-fashioned frock coat, and a frilly white shirt drenched in sweat. An ebony walking stick with an elaborate silver lion's head was clenched in a twitching hand, and a monstrously huge revolver with two barrels jutted from the holster on his hip. The leather belt supporting the hand cannon was made entirely of lumpy pouches tightly buttoned shut.

  "You…okay, Doc?" Ryan asked, surprised at the hoarseness of his voice.

  Dr. Theophilus Tanner forced open an eye and looked vaguely about until focusing on the speaker. "Have…" He stopped to swallow, then tried again. "Have we crossed the River Styx, my good Ryan?" he asked in a deep rumbling voice.

  Just then a hacking cough took Ryan and he couldn't answer for a while. Nuking hell, he thought, there was another bad smell in the air, something familiar that he couldn't identify immediately. It lay under the stink of their tortured bodies like the scum under a river of sewage. Faint, but bad. Ryan seemed to have some trouble focusing his thoughts. Another side effect of the jump? Fumbling at his side, he found a canteen and tried to force his hands to unscrew the top without spilling the water everywhere.

  "We're not dead yet, you old coot," murmured a stocky black woman flat on her stomach between the two men. Slumped over a canvas bag, a wild array of dreadlocks masked her features. A sleek revolver was holstered at her hip, a battered tin canteen draped over a shoulder. As she struggled to roll onto her side, a canvas lump was exposed as a bulky backpack patched with a dozen different pieces of cloth that almost hid the small red cross.

  "As always, madam," Doc rumbled softly, "I bow to your vast and profound expertise of vaunted medical knowledge."

  "Stuff it," Dr. Mildred Wyeth told him.

  "Ryan," she added, "what happened?"

/>   "Just a bad jump," Ryan answered, lowering the canteen and replacing the cap. Every passing moment was pouring new strength into his body, but that odd smell was still lingering about them like flies over a corpse.

  "Bad? Worst jump ever." Sitting with his back to a wall of the unit, John Barrymore Dix rubbed his pale face with both hands. He covered his features for a moment, massaging his temples. A compact Uzi lay at his side, while a S&W 12-gauge shotgun was draped across his shoulder. On the floor alongside was a canvas bag with a dull red stick of dynamite and length of bright yellow fuse peeking from under the loose flap.

  Wordlessly Ryan passed over the canteen, and J.B. gratefully took the container, sipping steadily. Drink too fast and he'd only lose it again on the floor.

  "Thanks," J.B. said, lowering the container, then holding it out to the others. "Any takers?"

  "Here," a redheaded woman called weakly, reaching for the canteen.

  Shifting position, J.B. passed it over, and Krysty Wroth drank deeply, a trickle of water flowing down either side of her full lips.

  Her khaki jumpsuit was partially unbuttoned, exposing a wealth of cleavage. Draped over her strong shoulder was a bearskin coat, the fur matted from being badly cured. A Smith & Wesson revolver rode a holster near the buckle of her gun belt, the leather loops full of shiny brass.

  "Thanks," Krysty said, passing the canteen back to Ryan. Already the woman was speaking normally, and she stood without trouble.

  In the distant corner of the hexagonal chamber, a boy was on his hands and knees retching quietly. Nobody paid any attention to him. All the friends had gotten jump sickness at one time or another. It was the price they paid for traveling the Deathlands in the mat-trans chambers.

  "What happened?" Krysty asked, her face pensive. Gently caressing her face as if stirred by secret winds, her animated hair coiled and relaxed, mirroring her anxious thoughts. "Some sort of malfunc?"

  "Seems likely," Ryan said, forcing himself to stand, then leaning against the steel wall to keep from going down again.

  "Least not chilled," a pale teenager said. "Or a frybrain."

  "So far," Mildred corrected sternly.

  Ryan frowned but said nothing.

  Nodding in agreement, Jak Lauren was breathing heavily as if gathering strength for an attack. The albino teen's shoulder-length hair was the color of snow, and his strange ruby-red eyes peered out through the tangles like the spotting laser of a sniper rifle. A dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden among the folds of his clothes, and a huge .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver rested backward in a belt holster.

  With fumbling fingers, J.B. retrieved a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket and gently put them on.

  "Where the hell are we?" he asked, staring at the drab chamber walls.

  Grimacing from sore stomach muscles, Ryan moved to the door, which had a square of plain glass in its middle. He scanned the immediate area and, seeing no threat, he turned the plain knob and opened the door.

  "Don't know," he replied grimly, looking into the room outside. "I never saw this redoubt before."

  The domed room was made of corrugated steel, just like the kind used on the floors of big-rig trucks, but welded together in a crazy quilt pattern as if assembled randomly from whatever was available. And across the room was a door that looked as if it had come off a submarine. That was totally wrong.

  "It's not a redoubt," J.B. said grimly, retrieving his crumpled fedora from the floor. He smoothed the brim and placed the hat on his head tilted slightly backward to afford maximum visibility. "Place looks like it was thrown together."

  "Fireblast," Ryan growled. "It's another bastard homemade gateway!"

  "Aw, shit," Mildred said, drawing the ZKR target pistol from her belt and thumbing back the hammer.

  "Homemade hellholes," Jak grunted in displeasure, his voice hoarse and raw.

  Suddenly more retching noises came from across the chamber.

  "Dean, are you okay?" Krysty asked, going closer to the kneeling boy.

  The boy gamely nodded and slowly raised himself off the cold floor. He wobbled a bit, the heavy backpack on his shoulders obviously throwing him off balance. But he grimaced and slowly stood erect as if defying the very laws of gravity.

  "I'm fine," Dean mumbled, stealing a glance at his father.

  Hiding a smile, Krysty turned her back to the boy. Puberty was upon him, and the strong need to be accepted as another adult was making itself felt. But then, Dean was a battle-scarred veteran of a hundred fights, he owned a knife, a working blaster, a pocket full of ammo and carried more food in his backpack than most poor bastards ate in a month. In the Deathlands, that not only made Dean a rich man, but also a formidable opponent. He possessed a younger version of his father's strength and speed. Dean had no fear in a fight, and when he was fully grown, Krysty had no doubt he would become a formidable warrior.

  Taking a rag from his back pocket, Dean wiped the sour drool from his mouth, then tossed the soiled cloth aside. Controlling his breathing, the boy forced his hands to start patting his clothes to make sure his Browning Hi-Power blaster and knife were present. He knew they were, but it was a good trait to hone. He'd seen enough sec men jump from a height and charge into battle, only to find their blaster gone, fallen from its holster when the sec man had hit the ground. As his father always said, trust nobody, not even yourself, because one mistake, and you'd be taking the last train west. True words.

  "Anybody recognize the place?" Ryan asked.

  "Not I," Doc announced, nervously clicking the lion's head on his stick and sliding out a few feet of the steel sword hidden inside, only to slide it closed again with a snap of his wrist.

  "I've never seen steel chambers before," Krysty added. "Looks like it was built from spare parts."

  "Mebbe it was," J.B. said just as the overhead lights flickered briefly.

  The companions froze in place, watching the ceiling. The fixture had six fluorescent tubes, four dark, and if the remaining two blew they would be in total darkness. Easy targets if attacked.

  As the strobing tubes stabilized again, Ryan went to the door and closely inspected the curved oval of steel. The weld marks were plainly visible; no effort had been made to file them smooth or paint them. Ryan placed a palm against the metal, which was oddly cold. For a moment, he thought he felt a vibration in the steel, but then it was gone. As a precaution, he backed away.

  "Yeah, this was thrown together fast," Ryan said thoughtfully.

  "Then mebbe we should leave," Krysty suggested, her hair coiling tightly. "Who knows what's out there?"

  "No need stay," Jak added, frowning. "Let's go."

  A hand resting on his Uzi, J.B. turned from the strange door. "Makes sense. Let's blow, and hope for better luck next location."

  "Sounds good," Dean said.

  But before Ryan could respond, the flickering lights flashed brightly, then winked out completely, plunging the chamber into near total darkness.

  The companions froze. Softly, from the other side of the door, came a hard metallic thump. Then another.

  "Triple red!" Ryan whispered, snicking the safety off his blaster.

  Quickly the others drew their weapons, then dug into their pockets and unearthed greasy candles, lighting them with predark cig lighters. The cheap butane lighters were good for thousands of lights and had cost next to nothing before skydark; now they were worth a baron's ransom.

  Rummaging in her med kit, Mildred found her old battered flashlight. As she flicked the switch, the squat tube gave off only a weak yellow illumination. Cursing softly, the woman turned it off and started to squeeze the pump handle on the side to operate the tiny generator inside and recharge the miniature batteries. After a few moments, the light came back strong, the clear white light filling the chamber. However, Mildred had noticed that the batteries were holding a charge for consistently shorter periods and sadly knew that soon it would be dead.

  "Save it," Ryan ordered.


  Mildred grunted acknowledgment and turned off the device.

  Moving quietly, Krysty and Dean anchored their candles on opposite sides of the room while the rest waited with fingers on triggers. Minutes passed in silence. Then came another metallic thump.

  "Fuck this, let's go," Ryan decided, and walked into the mat-trans unit.

  The companions followed close behind, leaving the candles in place in case they were attacked before the mat-trans activated. Ryan closed the door to activate the jump, but nothing happened. He hit the LD button, but it felt loose, and the swirling mists remained inactive.

  "Trapped," Jak growled.

  "J.B., the door," Ryan ordered, walking from the unit and taking a defensive position near the portal.

  Now Mildred clicked on her flashlight and J.B. went to the door, kneeling before the wheel lock. Expertly he ran his hands along the sides and surface of the smooth metal. Then pulling some mechanical tools from his pockets, he quickly checked the jamb and locking mechanism.

  "No booby traps I can find," he announced. "But who knows what's on the other side?"

  Grimly Ryan nodded in agreement as he holstered the SIG-Sauer pistol and slid the Steyr SSG-70 off his shoulder. The longblaster was freshly cleaned from before the jump, its rotary mag filled with live rounds.

  Working the bolt, the one-eyed man eased off the safety. Behind him, the others spread out in the short arc of a firing line, every weapon trained on the door. Another thump sounded.

  "Open it," Ryan said, the longblaster held ready.

  Flexing his hands, J.B. gripped the wheel, then paused, and released it. Pulling a can of oil from a pocket, he carefully dripped a few drops of the precious lub onto the stem of the wheel, then along the jamb of the door where hinges should be located.

  Tucking the can away, the Armorer tightened his fingerless leather gloves, took hold and started to turn the wheel.

  It refused to budge at first, then suddenly gave a scream of rusted metal and spun freely, almost out of control. The lock disengaged with a muffled thump, and J.B. quickly moved out to one side and swung the Uzi into its usual position.