Iron Rage by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“What?” the confused-looking lieutenant said.

“Something I should have thought of first. Come with me!”

Hand-cranked sirens began to grind and wail all over the big ironclad. “Up!” he said.

“But the baron—”

Ryan heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun action being pumped. He decided to waste the second it took to peek in through the open door.

Clad in a luxuriant green nightgown over something white and lacy, Baron Tanya sat in her big chair. She held a 12-gauge Mossberg 590 marine shotgun with matte-silver metal and synthetic furniture with her two strong, square hands, and the air of a person who knew exactly how to use it. Clearly there was no screwing around with black powder smoke poles for the baron, just like with her assistant.

“I’ve got this,” she said, with what Ryan took for relish. “You go!”

He left, running for the stairs. Stone followed. There was no dither in the woman, he had to give her that.

As soon as he burst out into the open air of the unarmored top deck, his growing suspicions were confirmed. A low fog overlaid the great, black river. It wasn’t thick. He could plainly see the looming, shadowed bulks of the Clytemnestra and the Medusa to either side. He could even see a handful of patrol boats, off upstream. But beyond a hundred and fifty, two hundred yards, the Sippi and what was on it might have been on the other side of a big wall.

“Fire all the cannon you can upstream,” he told Stone. “Whole fleet. High as they can.”

“But—”

“Now!”

He didn’t even see resentment flash in her eyes—and by the light of the lantern hung at the aft end of the top deck, he would have. Instead she sprinted to a speaking tube by the aft rail and began barking orders.

In a surprisingly brief amount of time, a flash from the Pearl’s bow lit up the river clear to where the sight line got swallowed in the mist, throwing a pair of steam blasterboats into garish relief before winking out. Baron Tanya ran a taut ship; Ryan had seen that much during the tour of the iron-sheathed giant Stone had given him that afternoon. From the noise and the concussion that shivered up through the deck and his bare soles, Ryan could tell it was a much bigger cannon than the patrol craft carried.

A flicker of yellow light came from the flying bridge of the Medusa. Turning his head the other way, he saw a similar signal from Clytemnestra. Then her bow cannon belched vast yellow fire. The report of the Medusa’s bow cannon hit the other side of him a heartbeat later.

As he suspected, Stone spoke with the baron’s own voice when need be.

He felt a change in the vibrations from beneath. He guessed that meant the steam engines that drove the Pearl’s colossal bulk were firing up, but it was not the kind of mass you got moving in any kind of a hurry. The ironclad war craft were built for power, not for speed.

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