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Iron Rage. James Axler
Читать онлайн.Название Iron Rage
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781474029001
Автор произведения James Axler
Жанр Приключения: прочее
Издательство HarperCollins
Trace shook her head. âThey werenât aiming for anything in particular.â
âMust be triple-bad shots,â J.B. said. He had slung his Uzi and now took his glasses off to polish them with a handkerchief.
The captain shrugged. âMebbe. But those cannon arenât anywhere near accurate at that range. Theyâre smoothbores. Usually four-pounders, in boats like those. Six for the broadside cannon, mebbe.â
J.B. nodded. That was his lingo, even if charcoal-burning cannon without rifling were pretty far out on the fringe for him.
Krysty and Mildred approached them from around the starboard side of the cabin.
âNo injuries, Captain,â the shorter woman reported. âThat was some lousy shooting, thankfully.â
âAny orders for us, Captain?â Krysty asked.
âStand ready if youâre needed.â
The statuesque redhead gave her lover a wink as he straightened from the rail. He kept his blaster in hand, just to be sure.
âSo whatâs the deal with this barony of New Vick?â J.B. asked. He settled his wire-rimmed spectacles back in place. Behind them Ryan could see a gleam in his eyes. âWhy are they building up a fleet?â
âTheyâre in an arms race with Poteetville,â Trace replied.
âCaptain.â
âWhat have you got for me, Edna?â the captain asked.
This time it was Edna Huang who was approaching from astern. A short, bespectacled Asian woman who inexplicably liked to wear her shiny black hair all wound into circular pigtails, she was the Mississippi Queenâs chief purser.
âArliss reports the fire is controlled and heâll soon have it out,â Edna said. âThereâs no sign of structural damage to the barge that he can find.â
âAce on the line,â the captain said.
The purser seemed less than happy at the very news she brought.
âWhatâs eating at you?â Trace asked.
âThereâs not much damage to the textiles, maâam. But thereâs still some. We may need to write off as much as ten percent, adding in for smoke damage.â
âItâs the cost of doing business on the river,â the captain said.
âBaron Teddyâs not going to be triple pleased.â
âYou leave him to me. He knows how the world works today.â
âYes, maâam.â
âNow run along and send up Avery.â
âAlready here, Captain.â
Avery Telsco, the Queenâs chief shipwright, was a long, lanky black dude with short dreadlocks. He wore a monocle, of all the nuking things, screwed into his right eye. Although having seen him work repairing the ship and fighting off the ever-present danger of rot in her wooden meat and bones, Ryan gathered it wasnât wholly an affectation. He did make use of it on detail work and inspecting for damage.
âAce. Report.â
âThe shot that hit us just busted a chunk of rail all to nuke. Mebbe ten feet. I can have it fixed in twenty minutes with a spare spar from stores. Or, if youâd care to send a boat ashore we could cut down a saplingââ
âNuke, no!â
âIt would be cheaper, Captain,â Edna said.
âGetting people killed by stickies would not be cheaper,â Trace replied. âAnd I doubt your crew mates would like to have all their hair fall out and have their skin get all gross with rad blueberries and stumble around like zombies for a few days from even a mild rad dosage. Now git!â
The purser turned and hurried back into the cabin as fast as her legs would propel her.
âDo the badlands extend a ways?â Ryan asked. The view astern was completely hidden by the barge now. Under Natalyâs firm hand, the Queen was churning steadily north up the big river. Ryan could see activity at the stern of the barge, including glimpses of Doc Tannerâs disorderly white hair, past the stacked lumber as the damage control crew pitched still-smoldering bales of Baron Teddyâs expensive, recently spun muslin overboard.
âA couple miles in all directions, pretty much,â Trace admitted.
âSo if you got a minute, Captain,â Ryan said, âtell us about this arms race between Poteetville and, uh, New Vick.â
âNew Vickville is just south of the hot spot that includes the ruins of old Vicksburg, on and around the bluff, down there to the south. The ville got pretty rich off scavvy from the ruins, not too long after skydark.â
âSeems like that would be pretty dangerous, what with all the fallout around here,â Mildred commented.
âThe first baron believed in ruling with what you might call an iron hand,â Avery said in a dry drawl.
âAvery hereâs our history bug,â Trace stated.
âPoteetville lies about five, six miles north of here,â the shipwright said. âIt started out as a camp for people scavvying flotsam on the Sippi, of which there was a drek-load, right after skydark. Eventually both Poteetville and New Vick turned into pretty big river trading ports. And natural rivals, being so close together.â
âYeah,â Ryan said. âI wouldnât think theyâd both be able to get rich.â
âWell, Poteetville naturally gets first dibs on traffic coming down from the north,â Trace said, âwhile New Vick is the stop-off spot for ships from the south. Plus thereâs a fair amount of traffic coming off the Yazoo, like us.â
âThings started to heat up between them mebbe thirty, forty years ago,â Avery said. âBaron Poteet sent his daughter to marry Baron Vick, and she promptly died under mysterious circumstances. It seems she committed suicide, but that didnât mollify Poteetville any. Both villes started building up their fleets. Each already had one or two improvised-armor vessels apiece, to repel river pirates.â
âAnd do a little pirating themselves,â the captain added.
âBut both sides decided they needed full-on ironclad fleets. Or mebbe flotillas. So they started building them like crazy. And expanding and consolidating their holds on the countryside surrounding, making lesser villes either pay them tribute or just absorbing them. That kind of thing.â
âBuilding pocket empires,â J.B. said. He looked at Ryan. âThereâs a lot of that going around this days.â
Ryan shrugged. âIt was one of the things that kept Trader in business, back when we ran with him.â
âYeah.â
âNow both sides got, what? A dozen or so apiece of what you might call ironclad warships. Theyâve got three or four big vessels that they call âcapitalâ ships, some smaller ones they call frigates, and a shitload of unarmored little patrol boats. Some of them donât amount to much more than a canoe with a trolling motor, truth to tell.â
âAnd those that we just had the run-in with were frigates,â Ryan stated.
âLike I said, theyâre what pass for frigates,â Trace replied. âThe capital ships run up