Time Castaways (4 page)

But more giant arrows were launched from the other guard towers, and the kraken twisted madly in the deadly cross fire, roaring defiantly.

A catapult snapped upward from the roof of the barracks, and a wooden barrel arched gracefully upward. It sailed over the guard towers and ignited a split second before crashing on top of the kraken. Covered with burning shine, the mutie went insane, lashing its tentacles around and knocking a dozen sec men off the walls. A flurry of crossbow arrows slammed into the beast, as additional firebombs hammered the creature. However, the attacks were only enraging the beast, and it sent several long tentacles snaking into the ville to snatch away the bloody corpse of the prisoner, leaving behind the ragged stumps of his arms still tied to the learning tree.

Inside their ramshackle homes, the civies were quaking with fear, muttering prayers to forgotten deities.

In a crash of splinters, the gate leading to the dockyard slammed open and a host of writhing tentacles entered the ville. But forewarned of the attack by the baron, the fishermen had a double line of crackling
bonfires already burning between the gate and the rows of homes. Hesitating in front of the wall of flames, the kraken tried to find a way around the painful barrier, then it attempted to go underneath, and finally withdrew. It reappeared a few moments later, the tentacles shoving several fishing boats taken from the docks to crash a path through the fiery obstruction.

“Baron…” sec chief LeFontaine said as a question, his face tense, a throwing ax in his hand.

“Not yet, my friend,” the baron muttered, loading the last flare.

More firebombs and arbalest arrows slammed into the monster, along with a score of spears, boomerangs and a fishing harpoon that just missed going into one of the huge, inhuman eyes.

Dodging a tentacle, a sec woman fell off the wall and crashed onto the roof of a shed. The distance was not very great, but she did not rise again, and after a few seconds something red began to trickle down the side of the building.

“Milady, please…” the sec chief begged, taking a half step toward the tumultuous combat. His face was flushed and he was breathing heavily from the strain of not joining his troops in combat.

“Just a few ticks more, Sergeant,” Wainwright said gently, cradling the flare gun protectively in both hands.

Unexpectedly, the body rolled off the little shed as the roof slid aside, exposing a honeycomb of bamboo tubes. A nest of fuses dangled from the rear of each and as the baron watched in growing horror, a torch was touched to the group fuse, setting them aflame.

“No! Too soon!” Wainwright cried.

“Too late,” LeFontaine replied curtly.

With no other choice, the baron jumped off the dais and raced into the middle of the ville square. Raising both hands, she carefully aimed the flare gun and fired. The charge thumped from the wide barrel and streaked away to hit the kraken in the face. Snapping around with surprising speed, the colossus stared down at the tiny norm in open hatred and moved along the wall, its tentacles reaching out for the fresh meat.

In a stuttering series of smoky explosions, the top row of bamboo tubes unleashed a dozen homie rockets, closely followed by the second row, then the rest.

The rockets flashed upward and slammed into the kraken, disappearing into the mottled hide. Howling in anger, the mutie probed the tiny wounds with some tentacles just as the next wave of rockets struck, and then the first salvo detonated.

Gobbets of raw flesh exploded like a geyser from the monster, sending out a ghastly spray of piss-yellow blood. That was when the next shed lost its roof and more black-powder rockets launched, peppering the monstrosity with high-explosive death.

Bawing in agony, the kraken lashed out mindlessly as the new rockets detonated inside the beast. Literally torn apart from within, a tentacle went limp, an eye turned dead-white and torrents of yellow blood gushed from the hideous wounds.

Enthusiastically cheering, the sec men redoubled their assault on the mutie, the arbalests now targeting the open wounds.

Turning to flee, the weakening mutie discovered there were iron chains attached to the arrows, the barbed heads caught deep within the belly of the beast in exactly the same way its own tentacles dragged a victim to their death in its cavernous maw.

Its inhuman brain sluggishly comprehending that death was coming, the kraken threw itself at the ville wall, hammering the stone ramparts with its full weight. The entire shoreside wall trembled from the impacts, and several sec men lost their grips and fell screaming onto the cobblestone streets below with grisly results. But even as the baron watched, the struggles of the creature became noticeably weaker, the rush of blood increasing.

“More rockets!” Wainwright yelled, running toward the thrashing kraken. “Fire them all!”

A grip of iron grabbed her arm, stopping the woman in her tracks.

“No closer, Baron,” sec chief LeFontaine commanded. “I won’t allow it.”

Contorting her face into a sneer, the baron started to reach for her blaster, then grudgingly relented, realizing the wisdom of the caution. Any animal was at its most dangerous when it was wounded and dying.

Chewing on the chains to try to get free, the kraken was hit with a third wave of rockets and then a fourth, the last few of them going completely through the mutie and coming out the other side to arch away over the bay. Yellow blood was everywhere, flowing down the sides of the stone wall and forming deep puddles in the street.

In a final rush of hatred, the dying kraken reached out with every working tentacle and wrapped each
around the nearest guard tower and squeezed hard. Astonishingly, the support timbers audibly creaked from the titanic strain, and a wealth of crossbeams fell away like dry autumn leaves. As the tower began to tilt, the sec men inside cursed at the unexpected tactic and tried to hold on to the railing for dear life.

That was when there came a high-pitched keen of a steam whistle from the other side of the wall, and more rockets slammed into the back of the beast, widening the exit holes of the arrows.

Shuddering all over, the kraken released the guard tower and sluggishly tried for the bay once more, but again it was stopped by the iron chains. Mewling weakly, the creature reached out with a gory tentacle, the tip just managing to reach the cold, clear water of the bay. Then it sagged and went still, the flood of blood quickly slowing to a trickle, and then stopping entirely.

Instantly a new bell began to clang. Minutes later every man, woman and child in the ville stormed out of the dockyard gates, each equipped with a wicker basket and a sharp obsidian knife. Resembling an army of ants, the people crawled over the chilled mutie and started to slice off pieces. Meanwhile, sec men armed with torches and axes began to hack apart the corpse, chopping a tunnel into the thing, and soon disappeared inside.

“It worked! We aced a kraken!” The baron chortled, slapping her sec chief on the back. “What a glorious day!”

“You can load that into a damn crossbow and fire it,”
LeFontaine agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll get enough salt from the gizzard to last the ville for months, for years.”

“Plus, there’s enough good leather for everybody to get new boots, belts and winter jackets,” she agreed with a smile, watching the harvest progress. “Sinew for a thousand crossbows, enough bones to…well, for any damn thing we need until further notice.” Plus, that bitch at Anchor ville would pay a baron’s ransom in metal for a single pint of kraken blood. But Wainwright kept that observation to herself. In the right circumstances, the blood of a kraken was the most valuable thing in the world.

“Sadly, we lost the dockyard gate, a horse and at least a dozen sec men,” LeFontaine muttered unhappily. The dogs and the gaudy slut were of no real importance.

“Yes, a pity,” Wainwright agreed. “But still, a price that I would be willing to pay anytime for the death of a kraken. The bay belongs to us now. No more will our fishing boats be pulled underwater, the crew drowned, the catch destroyed.”

“Aye, that’s good news. Too bad we can’t eat the meat,” LeFontaine said. “I hear it tastes fine, but soon afterward…” He gave a shiver. Any further embellishment was unnecessary.

“Leave some outside the wall for the Hillies to steal,” the baron ordered. “Maybe we can ace two birds with one stone, eh?”

“By your command, Baron,” the sec chief agreed, giving a small bow. “I live to serve.”

Trying not to smile, the baron acknowledged the
formal action with a prim nod of her head, mentally deciding to reward the man for his action later in her private bedchamber.

As for the ville, both the civies and sec men would spend the rest of the day and most of the night dissecting the mountainous mutie, scavenging everything of value. Even the fat of the monster could be boiled down into a crude form of tallow for candles. When that odious task was accomplished, the crew of the Wendigo would haul what remained of the bedraggled corpse out into the deep water near Liar’s Gate, so that the smell of the decaying corpse would scare away any other kraken for years.

The baron ruefully smiled. Then she would open the royal wine cellar and authorize a shore party the likes of which had never been seen before! It would be a day of rest for the slaves and roasted meat for the civies, while the sec men would revel in enough shine, sluts and song to satisfy even their warrior appetites.

Feeling exhausted, and exhilarated, the baron started back for the stone dais to watch over the rest of the harvesting. In the back of her mind, the woman tried desperately to ignore the rest of the doomie’s prophesy, that soon after this day-of-days the ville would be destroyed, and she would be forced into the ultimate act of depravity—marriage to a blood kin.

Chapter Two

As the robotic arm started dragging the struggling J.B. out of the ready room, the companions saw a hulking machine of some kind filling the outside corridor.

There was a domed head and a cylindrical body with treads on the bottom like an army tank. More important, the machine possessed six arms, each of them brandishing spinning buzzsaws, pinchers or pneumatic hammers. The terrible sight fueled them with cold adrenaline. This wasn’t a sec hunter droid, but it was clearly built for the same purpose—to ruthlessly chill invaders.

As Ryan scrambled from behind the heavy door, Doc assumed a firing stance and grimly triggered the LeMat. The weapon boomed and the huge .44 miniball of the Civil War handcannon slammed into the joint of the pinchers, cracking the seal, and amber hydraulic fluid gushed out like opening a vein. As the pressure dropped, J.B. forced the pinchers apart and wiggled free to drop flat and get out of the way of the others. Quickly withdrawing the damaged limb, the robot extended two more arms, each tipped with a spinning buzzsaw.

Now unencumbered by the presence of their friend, the rest of the companions cut loose with a fusillade of
destruction, the volley of rounds hammering the big machine. Scrambling to his feet, J.B. swung around the Uzi and raked the droid with a long spray of 9 mm Parabellum rounds.

Stabbing out with a ferruled arm, the droid sent a buzzsaw straight toward the closest companion. Jerking aside, Jak felt a tug on his hair and saw some loose strands float away.

Raking the big droid with their combined weaponry, the companions pulled back to gain valuable combat room. However, the machine was too large to get through the hatchway, and all it could do was reach out with ferruled limbs, the buzzsaw jabbing for their faces and hands. Unlike a sec hunter, there were no visible eyes on this droid. Aiming for the silvery dome on top, Ryan pumped several 9 mm rounds into the shiny head of the machine. The hollowpoint rounds ricocheted off the shiny material, but the dome bent and the droid began to wildly jerk, the metal arms flailing uncontrollably.

Focusing all of their blasters on the head, the companions mercilessly hammered the droid until it began to turn randomly, the armored treads going in different directions. Suddenly smoke began to rise from the joints, fat electrical sparks crawled over the machine, and then it went stock-still, a low hum rapidly building in volume and in power.

Biting back a curse, Ryan and Krysty both rushed for the door and together slammed it shut. They only turned the locking wheel an inch before there came a deafening explosion from the other side. The entire
ready room shook, the locker doors flopping open, miscellaneous items tumbling to the riveted floor as a crimson snowstorm of rust sprinkled down from the ceiling.

Waiting a few minutes for the reverberations to die away, Ryan gingerly probed the wheel to find it extremely warm, but not too hot to touch. Pausing to reload his blaster, he boldly cracked open the circular door once more and looked outside.

There was a smoky dent in the steel corridor, the walls bulging outward slightly. However there was no sign of the droid, only a scattering of partially melted machine parts littering the floor.

“Wh-what a piece of drek,” J.B. panted, swinging the Uzi behind his back to reclaim the scattergun. “A sec droid would have been much tougher to chill.” Taking spare cartridges from the shoulder strap, he worked the pump and fed them into the weapon.

“True enough,” Ryan countered, squinting his good eye to try to see into the shadows beyond the nimbus of the road flare. “But we better stay on triple red. If this thing had caught us in the open, we’d have bought the farm for sure.”

Just then, the road flare sputtered and died.

Cursing under his breath, Ryan pulled out his last flare and scraped it across the rough wall until the tip sparked. The flare gushed into smoky flame.

“I just hope this is some sort of a redoubt and not a predark warship,” Krysty stated, thumbing fresh rounds into her blaster. “Those were actually designed to be a maze of corridors, ladders and passageways to confuse any potential invaders.”

“Quite so, dear lady,” Doc muttered. “There is little chance of us successfully finding the egress in an unfamiliar locale through pitch darkness.”

“Finding what?” Jak asked, arching an eyebrow.

Doc smiled tolerantly as if addressing a student. “The exit.”

The teen nodded. “Gotcha.”

“Well, we wouldn’t be in absolute darkness,” Mildred retorted, releasing her butane lighter and tucking it into a pocket. “Not quite, anyway.”

Rummaging in her med kit, the woman unearthed a battered flashlight and pumped the handle of the survivalist tool until the batteries were recharged, then she pressed the switch. A weak beam issued from the ancient device, and she played it around the war-torn corridor, making sure there were no still functioning pieces of the war machine.

With his blaster at the ready, Ryan eased into the corridor, listening closely for any creaks or groans from the floor. The dented metal seemed stable, but he had been fooled before. And even a short fall onto steel could ace him just as sure as lead in the head from a blaster.

Past the blast zone, the metal corridor was covered with pale filaments that he soon recognized as roots. They covered the ceiling, and hung thick on the walls, extending out of sight in either direction. Scowling, the man glanced at the wall opposite the ready room. In every redoubt, that was always the location of a wall map showing new personnel where everything was to be found. The lack of a map, or any sign that a map had once been there, was proof positive to him that this was not a redoubt.

“Okay, anybody got an idea which way we should try?” Ryan asked, looking in one direction, then the other. Both went on for a hundred paces to end at an intersection with a ladder.

“Left,” Jak stated confidently, jerking his Colt in that direction.

“Now, how do you know that?” Mildred asked curiously, warily hefting her ZKR.

Stoically, the albino teen shrugged. “Roots thinner to the right, thicker to the left. So that way out.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Doc said appreciatively.

Having heard the quote many times before, Jak merely smiled in reply.

“You do know that Holmes never actually said that, don’t you?” Mildred asked. “Not in the books, anyway. Only the movies.”

“I am literate, madam,” Doc replied with a sniff.

Ignoring the banter, the companions sidled carefully around the blaster crater, and Ryan took the lead. Heading to the left, the companions found a lot of closed hatches along the walls. If there had been time, they would have eagerly done a fast recon for anything useful. But right now, getting outside was the goal.

Spying some lumps on the floor up ahead, Ryan slowed his advance, but soon he saw they were only a couple of crumbling skeletons covered with roots, the tendrils entwined among the loose bones and moldy strips of clothing. A gold ring glistened on the finger bones of a hand no longer attached to anything, and silver dots shone from the loose teeth inside a lopsided skull.

“This might tell us something,” Mildred said, kneeling to inspect the plastic ID badge still pinned to a piece of uniform lying on a skeleton. Reverently, she lifted the rectangle from the morass of plant roots and human remains. “It seems that we are inside a U.S. Navy ship after all, the—” she bent and angled the badge to try to catch the light better “—the…USS Grover Harrington.”

“Indeed, and who was that, madam?” Doc asked, craning his neck for a better look. “Some politician, perhaps?”

Placing the badge down, the physician stood. “Never heard of the guy. He must have been an admiral.”

“Don’t care who, what is?” Jak asked pragmatically.

“Sorry, again I have no idea,” the woman replied honestly, wiping off her hands. “This could be anything from an aircraft carrier to a missile frigate.”

“Well, at least we know it’s a boat,” Ryan said, easing his stance slightly. “Which means up is the way out.”

Reaching the intersection, Ryan paused at the sight of a wide breach on the metal floor. The hole didn’t appear to have been caused by an explosion as the edges were feathered with corrosion, not bent and twisted from the force of a detonation. That was when he heard the slow drip of water from above. A split second later, a drop plummeted past the man, directly through the hole and into the darkness below.

Kneeling slightly, Ryan lowered the flare into the darkness and froze at the sight of another robotic droid, apparently the same model as the one they had just aced. However, this one was in even worse shape, the
dome already cracked, several of the rusty arms lying on the deck nearby, and a broken tread was hanging limply off the gears.

“Not much of a danger there,” J.B. said with a touch of satisfaction in his voice.

“Not unless we trip over it,” Krysty agreed.

“What are those boxes behind it?” Mildred asked curiously, angling the beam of her flashlight.

The weak beam did little to alleviate the murky interior, but slowly their sight grew accustomed to the darkness. Lining the rust-streaked walls in orderly rows were stacks of plastic storage boxes, faded numbers stenciled along the sides to identify the contents.

“Those are full of MRE food packs!” Ryan exclaimed. “And those others contain ballistic vests!”

“I see some Hummers and an LAV in the back!” J.B. called, grinning widely. “And the boxes over here are full of boots, field surgery kits, radios…there’s even one marked for freaking LAW rocket launchers.”

“Excelsior!” Doc whooped in triumph. “We have hit the motherload of supplies.”

“This much ordnance must have been en route to a military outpost when the world ended,” Mildred guessed, chewing a lip. “Perhaps even a redoubt.”

“Quite true, madam.”

“Maybe,” Ryan muttered, in taciturn agreement. This was turning into one of the richest jumps they had ever made. But the man automatically distrusted anything this easy. If something looked too good to be true, it almost invariably was.

“Looks good, but how reach?” Jak said with a frown,
estimating the distance to the floor below. “That fifty-foot drop. How reach?”

“We can’t,” Krysty stated flatly, shifting her attention to the flare. It was already half consumed. “But once we get outside, we can come back with torches and rope. Even if there are no villes in the area, we can easily make those ourselves.”

Starting to agree, Ryan paused as there came a soft thumping. Fireblast, that sounded like a hydraulic pump. It seemed that some small part of the warship was still in working condition.

Something moved in the shadows. Ryan scowled as another droid rolled into the light.

This new machine was perfect, not a speck of rust or a scratch on the chassis. Even worse, instead of buzzsaws and hammers, this model sported a tribarrel Gatling gun in lieu of a left arm, the enclosed Niagara-style ammunition belt going into a wide hopper attached to the back of the droid.

Grunting at the sight, Ryan froze as the domed head instantly swiveled upward at the small noise to look directly at him, the Gatling swiveling, giving off a hydraulic sigh as it copied the gesture.

Lurching into action, Ryan threw his arms wide to push the other companions out of the way. They cleared the hole and a split second later, a chattering maelstrom erupted out of the opening. The noisy column of hot lead hammered along the riveted ceiling, blowing off the layers of corrosion, a barrage of ricochets musically zinging away in every direction. Mildred cried out and Jak grunted loudly as they both were hit by the misshapen slugs.

Yanking a pipe bomb from his bag, J.B. started to light the fuse, but then paused. They were sitting over a cargo hold packed with military ordnance. One bomb could easily start a chain reaction of detonations that would remove this ship, and the companions, from the face of the Earth. They couldn’t even shoot back without risking a damn explosion!

Suddenly the blasterfire ceased, and there was a series of hard clicks, then silence, almost as if the machine had run out of ammo.

Scowling in disbelief, Ryan took a spent brass from his pocket and flipped it toward the hole. As it hit the rusty edge, there immediately came a fiery response. He nodded in grim satisfaction. Yeah, thought so. Pretending to be out of brass was an old trick to try to lure an enemy into sneaking a peek so that you could blow off his or her head. The droid was well-programmed in military tactics. He would remember that when they returned.

Silently motioning the others to follow, Ryan crawled away from the jagged opening until they were at the base of the ladder.

“That damn machine was playing possum!” Krysty said angrily. At the soft words there came a short burst from the hole, but it soon stopped.

“Which probably means it can’t come after us,” J.B. stated, removing his fedora to smooth down his hair before jamming it back into position. “This droid didn’t activate until there was an explosion. This is the reserve force. It’s not going to leave that cargo bay under any circumstances.”

“Then we should be safe until trying to enter,” Doc rumbled, using a thumb to ease down the hammer on the LeMat.

“Unless there are others,” Ryan countered, grabbing the lowest rung of the old ladder. He shook it hard, and when nothing fell off, the man stood and holstered the SIG-Sauer. “But that’s tomorrow’s problem. We’ll find some way to take out that droid later.”