Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (6 page)

This both shocked and appalled the crew, but no one spoke. Instead, they just looked at each other, unsure how to respond.

“I know,” Nicatrix continued. “We’re going after the big boys. This is going to be like no mission we’ve ever run. This is the rainmaker, boys. After this, we’ll all retire in style. Even you, Skeetrix. Maybe you’ll marry that whore you visit every time we make berth in Mangalore.” The crew responded well to one of their number, their greatest warrior, being singled out and lauded. They enjoyed seeing him pleased. The Captain knew what she was doing, and in an instant, she had turned apprehension to a raucous joy again.

“I’ve one question, Cap’n,” Zann said, as if thinking aloud.

The Captain silenced the crowd and motioned for him to continue.

“Well, if we’re going against the Vershani, well ... I was just wondering,” he started, unsure how to finish.

“You’re worried about the Vershani warrior we have onboard,” she said, following Zann’s line of thinking even if he didn’t himself. Zann nodded, and this drew the attention of the crew. “There’s a bit of a fight brewing between them,” she said. “And we’ve got the insider’s bit on where a big fat merchant ship’s going to be, come a few hours from now. She’ll be lightly guarded and moving fast, so Mr. Picklett and the boys in the rigging will have to set every stitch of sail to keep her in range of the forward battery. But we’re faster, and she can’t get away. She’ll be coming this way in a while, and I intend to intercept her right here. We’ll be hiding behind that shard yonder,” she pointed to a floating rock formation in the distance. “And once she comes past, we’ll blow out her masts, board her, and make her loot ours.”

Again, the crew exploded in merriment, half-drunk and half-elated.

“And if you have any doubts about this one, bear in mind who will be leading the boarding action.” She swept out her hand to me, and the crew truly lost it, throwing things my way in jest and surrounding me, each taking a turn to poke or touch me, to grab my clothing as if I were a Beatle in a throng of crazed fans.

“All right, settle down,” Nicatrix said, fighting back laughter herself. “Skeetrix will lead the boarding party like always,” she continued, mollifying the cat-man, who alone amongst the crew didn’t seem too happy to have me along. “But Blackjack will be on the front line of the fight, clearing the way for us and leaving a bloody wake, no doubt.”

She let the crew yell and holler for a few moments before going on.

“Things are liable to get dicey. Vershani aren’t the easiest folk to deal with, and they know how to fight. But I’m told their ship will be laden with cargo and valuables, and it’s all ours for the taking.”

Zann leaned over to me and punched my arm, “I hope you’re as good as you say.”

“For my part,” the captain said. “I just want that ship’s flag. I want to wrap it on our mast along with all the others,” she said, drawing the adulation of her crew. Only then did I notice a few dozen flags hanging from the main mast, starting just below the tie to the main mast yard arm, draping down like a fluttering row of scalps. A testament to Nicatrix and her ship’s success.

“There’s one last thing,” she said, lowering her voice so the crew had to strain to listen. “There’s a dignitary onboard the ship, and we’re to keep all our grubby paws, tentacles and fingers off. Is that clear?”

Zann shook his tentacle, now fully healed, and laughter spread through the men.

“How are we to know who it is?” Skeetrix asked, ever to the point.

“Our new Vershani friend will accompany you and identify the target.”

The crew jeered, and when Skeetrix asked his follow-up question, it was exactly what I was wondering.

“How will we recognize him from any of the others, Captain?”

“I’ve just seen him,” Captain Nicatrix said, pursing a smile on her lips, as if privy to an inside joke. “Believe me, it will be easy to identify him from the rest of his countrymen. In any case, he will accompany you, Skeetrix, and guide you to the location where this dignitary will be. I expect the Vershani to guard this individual, giving up their lives to the last man.” Then she came down from the poop deck to join us on the quarterdeck as she said, “But we will have surprise, we will have superior weaponry, and most importantly, we will have Blackjack!”

And with that, the crew lost all semblance of control.

Our men up in the crow’s nests had far sharper eyesight than I did because I didn’t even catch a faint glimpse of our target until ten minutes after one of them cried out, “sail ho!” At first the Vershani ship was but a speck against the swirling orange-black sky, but she was moving fast and in no time you could make her out. My first impression was that it was a swan in mid-flight. The cheetah-man Skeetrix was nearby and handed me his spyglass to get a good look at the ship. She was an open-hulled vessel, like ours, but that was where the similarities ended. Her hull was polished white, as if carved from a single massive piece of alabaster or marble, seamless and perfect. At her bow jutted an upturned and forward-curved figurehead, much like the head of a swan, which, when combined with a sail pattern that opened wide and broad like wings, gave the ship an impression of a winged creature, approaching our ambush.

She came straight for us, oblivious to us, as the Captain had positioned the Lady’s Nightmare behind a floating rocklet, leaving only the topmost part of her masts clear to spot the oncoming ship. Nicatrix ordered us back farther behind cover, now that we knew our prey was coming. A winged crewman flew off to cling off the nearby rock to watch where we couldn’t.

As our ship retreated, she was putting her stern into the wind, forcing a more and more aggressive usage of the reverse thrusters, which lay a few decks below me along the bow. The Lady’s forward thrusters rumbled and strained against the wind that filled our sails. The quartermaster had only minimal sails set, just a topsail on the main and mizzen mast, and the bowsprit, but the winds howled across the deck, creating a vortex that rolled around the ship and forced her forward. The action of the two forces served to keep our ship relatively motionless behind our concealment, but we were also like a coiled cobra, waiting to strike when the enemy ship sailed past. Releasing the forward thrusters would throw us forward like a rock from a slingshot.

“How much longer?” Captain Nicatrix asked, and the signal man sent up a set of flags to the scout that hid along the floating rock. He was a brightly colored creature and his replies using his wings like flags were relayed back to the captain.

“Another minute or two, she says,” the quartermaster replied.

“Can she hold?” the captain asked the pilot, who nodded.

“Should hold, Cap’n.”

“Get ready for action, boys! Roll out the bow chasers, Mister Skeetrix,” the captain roared from the poop. “Perhaps you can get Mister Blackjack to aid you.”

Skeetrix motioned behind me, where a pair of fifteen-foot-long cannon lay side by side, surrounded by a gathering of crew, Skeetrix’ men, who were already throwing open the two port holes. Others were loading the guns, ramming canvas-wrapped bags of gunpowder, slamming the ball of round shot atop the bags. Then came several armfuls of padded cloth as wadding, and finally one man rammed the whole package down the muzzle to the rear of the gun, nice and tight. Once both weapons were loaded, the guns were rolled out, and that’s where I lent a hand, pulling on ropes tied to the gunwale on swivels and back to the gun carriage, until the rolling wheels slammed into chalks. Darmelia, the orc woman, came next, piercing the rear gunpowder bags of each gun with a long metal hook, pouring small volume of powder as a priming charge, and sealing the whole thing with a trigger, like one you’d find on the back of a toy cap gun.

No sooner did we have the guns ready than our winged crewman returned, yelling “Here she comes!”

We got a close look at the Vershani ship. She was a huge thing, easily four times our size, with a dozen masts jutting in each direction, even beneath her deck. In fact, she had sails front and aft, and coming from just about everywhere, but she had a long pair of masts just behind amidships, much longer than any of the others, which gave the impression of wings. These more massive masts had smaller sub-masts protruding down their entire length and were probably the main form of propulsion, as she lacked the thruster banks that made the Lady so fast and so maneuverable. Another thing I noticed she didn’t have was gun ports on the sides of the hull; most of the length of her body was nearly invisible beneath the overlapping layers of sail.

The swan head at her bow was nothing of the sort, instead some sort of beaked serpentine creature in the middle of a savage roar, her eyes a pair of burning green gems.

“Fire at your leisure,” Captain Nicatrix said, and Skeetrix knelt at the right-most gun, peering across its length, using the trigger as a sight, taking a long time to aim. Darmelia stood at the left bow chaser, the trigger string held taut and ready, watching Skeetrix’ every move.

The Vershani ship passed in front of us, her crew completely unaware, and it was so large that it would take over a minute for her entire length to be clear of our guns. The cheetah-man took his sweet time, fiddling with a pivot lever that could raise the cannon a few degrees on the gun carriage.

“Six,” he said, his eyes never leaving his makeshift gun sight. Darmelia leaned down and made a matching adjustment to her gun, before returning to her standing post just beside her weapon, to be clear of the recoil. No sooner had she taken her spot than Skeetrix stood and stepped aside. “Fire!”

Both guns barked, hurling their deadly shots at our enemy ship and slamming the gun carriages back to their stopper chalks, straining their holding ropes. The effect of the cannon shot was instantaneous, as both shots found their mark, powering into the base of the massive starboard ‘wing’ mast. It was masterful gunnery, and the damage done to the enemy ship was crippling; the structure that kept the mast in place exploded, releasing the whole thing from the hull of the ship. If not for the webwork of rigging, the entire mast would have fallen off into the abyss. As it was, the long mast rolled downward, ripping and straining at the ropes and making the mast and all the sub masts and yardarms into a breaking sail, slowing the ship and sending her reeling downward and to starboard.

The crew roared in victory. The tiller released the forward thrusters, unleashing the Lady’s Nightmare forward at breakneck speed toward the Vershani warship.

It’s hard to describe how fast we were going, and how quickly we were catching up with the reeling enemy ship. The damaged sail had the effect of not only slowing the Vershani warship, but also creating a heavy drag to starboard that no pilot could correct, making catching her that much easier.

Once our tiller, Dal’naeth, released the breaks holding us in place, our ship thrust forward like a shell shot out of a cannon. Once she sailed past us, we were perpendicular to her, and the captain did nothing to correct course and send us after her. Instead, she whispered an order to the quartermaster, Mr. Picklett, who yelled, “Man the starboard guns, open the gun ports and ready to fire.”

I half expected Skeetrix to run to the growing ruckus of men in the quarterdeck below, but he stayed at his post and watched as the men reloaded the bow chasers.

“We don’t help down there?” I asked, but he flashed an expression that I took for a confident grin, though it gave his feline features a more savage look.

“Gav is in charge on the gun deck,” he said, realizing that the answer was insufficient for me. “He is ... territorial.”

“Ah.”

“And besides,” Darmelia began, eyeing me closely, noticing the blades strapped to my waist, “we’ll be boarding her soon enough. That is the fun part.”

I looked at the Vershani ship, which was heeling to starboard, crippled by her fallen mast.

“She looks big,” I said.

“Crewed by a thousand or more,” Skeetrix said matter-of-factly. We had less than one hundred aboard the Lady’s Nightmare.

“Not good,” I shook my head. “It’s a suicide mission.”

“Afraid?” Darmelia said, almost scoffing.

I laughed, “That gold fellow we have onboard, if they have a thousand like him, then I’m afraid a lot of you might not live to see tomorrow.”

Darmelia exploded, almost drawing the wicked two-handed axe that lay in a strap across her back. “I am Darmelia of Kerduk, daughter of Krithnia, son of Dulaq. I am more than a match for–” she started, moving toward me with clenched fists, but Skeetrix and another crewman intercepted her.

“Hey, I’m sure you can handle yourself,” I said, “but what about the blue furball with the big mouth, or the red jizz guy.”

“Gav and Deglet,” Skeetrix said, identifying the two crewmen to quell Darmelia’s confusion.

She laughed, “Gav is as fearsome a warrior as you’ve ever encountered. And Deglet is a creature I highly recommend you never quarrel with.”

The tension somewhat lessened, Skeetrix and the other man let her step toward me.

“What about you? How do we know you won’t wet your pants and run at the first sign of trouble?”

I was about to talk about my encounter with the three Mist Lords in my previous visit to Shard World, or my victory over the superhero Epic on Hashima Island, but instead I looked over at the crewmen struggling to run out the bow chasers. Most had stopped what they were doing, expecting a fight between Darmelia and me, but a couple still tugged at the lines, slowly doing the job that many would have made easy. I reached over and picked up the gun carriage, cannon, ropes, and all, including a dangling crewman who threw himself atop the gun in fear when I picked it up. It was effortless, pressing the many tons of metal and wood above my head, then holding it there with just one hand. I smiled, as his expression of hostility and disdain faded, replaced with awe, and perhaps a bit of horror. The crewmen around us just gawked, amazed at the feat of strength, an effort that did little to tax me. Skeetrix alone was unimpressed and the only voice of reason.