LITMIR.BIZ

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Both Mildred and Krysty jumped back from the rail. “Whoa!” Mildred said. “Don’t startle a body like that!”

       “Smoke screen?” Krysty asked.

       “Uh-huh,” the captain said. “With the wind blowing it right up the pirates’ unwashed snouts.”

       Krysty felt the slim and graceful yacht heel to starboard as she tacked a few points into the wind’s teeth.

       “Changing our vectors a little,” Isis said, as a burst of machine-gun fire sent up a line of waterspouts fifty yards ahead of them and slightly to the right. “Spoil their tracking solutions.”

       “What if they have radar?” Mildred asked worriedly. “Marine radar was pretty common once upon a time. I’m sure if they wanted they could cobble a working unit or two together.”

       Isis smiled. “They may think they have a working radar,” she said. “Imagine their surprise.”

       “What do you mean?” Krysty asked.

       “The smoke contains a biodegradable, nontoxic aerosol that masks conventional radar wavelengths like old-time chaff,” Isis said. “It also blocks infrared pretty effectively.”

       Mildred gestured helplessly at the metal crates containing their own longblasters. “So now we can’t shoot at them, either,” she said sourly.

       “There are more of them than there are of us,” Krysty said, as ahead of them the New Hope let loose its own smoke screen and was instantly lost to view. “Even though our friends have some pretty potent weapons, if neither side can see to shoot the other I judge we got the better end of the deal.”

       “Long as my friends and I aren’t getting shot at,” Mildred said, “I’m okay. Hey!”

       The last was accompanied by a defensive duck as a burst of automatic fire cracked overhead.

       “They’re shooting blind,” Krysty said. She wasn’t sure which woman she was trying to reassure, Mildred, or herself. Isis as usual seemed to cool.

       The long, lean, exotic captain had opened the lockers and was pulling something out. Before Krysty could tell what it was a whooshing roar drew her attention forward. Even through the dense concealing fog she could see the glows of rocket engines arcing away from the New Hope’s launch racks toward the enemy fleet.

       “I guess we are, too,” Mildred said. A heartbeat later an orange glow flared like the sun behind the vivid clouds of an incoming acid-rain storm.

       “Not at all,” Isis said, smiling. She held a pair of bulky dark goggles toward the women. “Try these.”

       From Finagle’s First Law, the distinctive moan of Stork’s bow-mounted Gatling began to rise above the storm howl. Krysty hesitated momentarily, then pulled the goggles over her eyes and the strap to the back of her head.

       Immediately the pirate fleet appeared. It seemed all shades of gray, the hulls brightest, almost silver, as were the blasters in pirate hands. The pirates themselves were duller gray, the ocean a strange liquid construct of endlessly shifting panes in tones of slate and gunmetal, like stained glass robbed of color and rendered somehow fluid. Everything was overlaid with a rainbow shimmer, almost like the sheen of oil on water, except jittery instead of fluid.

       “What is this?” Mildred demanded at her side. “I’ve looked through Starlight scopes and IR goggles. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

       “Millimeter wave radar,” Isis said. “Much, much shorter wave than conventional radar. It gets translated into visual imagery by the ship’s computers, then broadcast to these headsets.”

       The magical eye of the goggles wouldn’t see through the waves, apparently. Because just then a shift in the shimmery planescape revealed something Krysty hadn’t noticed before. A swarm of small motor craft was forging toward the Tech-nomad squadron, packed dangerously full with pirates wearing black clothes or armbands.

       Just how dangerously overloaded they were was proved a few heartbeats later when Krysty saw the bow of a whaleboat plunge into a wave—and keep going until the water swallowed it and the crew whole. Another wave surge, its top torn ragged by the fierce insistent wind, hid where it had vanished from sight. When it subsided, she saw a few heads bobbing and arms flailing futilely above the churning water. She never saw the boat itself again.

       A roar of gunfire assaulted Krysty’s eardrums. Through the ringing it left in her ears she heard Isis say, “Hard to hit the buggers in this sea. But at least it’s just as hard for them, plus they’re shooting blind.”

       Krysty pulled down her goggles and looked at the approaching swarm of boats. Flashes told her some of the pirates were shooting into the dense brown bank, now rolling toward them like a fog. She heard a few stray shots crack overhead.

       She aimed and fired at the nearest boat. As far as she could tell, she missed it cleanly. She heard Mildred fire a burst, then curse. Evidently she’d whiffed as well.

       The Egret pitched so vigorously in the waves Krysty was finding it hard to keep her feet. Her stomach, normally as strong as cast iron, was starting to weaken from the complicated motion induced by the storm. But she willed herself to keep her feet, ripping burst after burst at the pirates. Her shoulder started to ache from the relentless pounding of the Browning’s recoil.

       “Where do they get all these suckers?” Mildred asked as she bent to grab a fresh magazine.

       “From the poor souls downtrodden in the baronies,” Isis said. “From the hopeless trying to scratch a living among the islands, or up the fever-swamp bayous. From the crews of craft they’ve captured.”

       She fired a burst. “From other pirate bands they’ve absorbed. They get the same choice as other captives—join or die.”

       “They must be doing mighty well,” Mildred said. “Ha, except for you!” Apparently she’d seen a target go overboard. The range was close enough now Krysty was able to bring punishing bursts on targets, spatter boat crews with bullets. Even if the pitching of the sea was so savage that she could only hit one or two at a time before Egret’s motion threw her aim totally off.

       It also meant the range was short enough for the pirates’ blind-fired blasters to have effect, as well. Krysty heard a grunt from the rail aft, where other goggled Tech-nomads were shooting with a bizarre assortment of weapons, from M-16s to crossbows. She didn’t look that way as she clawed an empty magazine from the well of her longblaster. Its receiver and barrel cast heat like a midwinter stove.

       “To have that many predators hunting together,” Mildred said, “they must eat well.”

       Isis was momentarily distracted. She lowered her BAR and moved her lips soundlessly. Krysty guessed that somehow she was still speaking to her crew.

       “Dammit,” the captain said, shaking her head. “Another one lost.”

       She snapped back into focus, looking at Mildred with her startling blue eyes. “Yes, they eat well,” she said. “And the fattest feast for a hundred miles of this coast is Haven. But so far that shell’s too tough for them to crack.”

       “And that’s part of the reason they’re attacking so furiously now, despite the storm and the damage we’re doing,” Krysty said. “Just the value of the Tech-nomads’ own equipment, like these goggles. Let alone whatever cargo we’re carrying.”

       “And that’s a big reason we seldom deal with outsiders,” Isis said. “Even the ones who aren’t out-and-out pirates can usually resist anything but temptation.”

       A commotion from astern made itself heard even over the noise of blasterfire and the approaching hurricane. “Krysty, look!” Mildred called. “Some of the boats have broken through Finagle’s smoke screen.”

       Krysty’s heart lurched with an adrenal shock of fear for Ryan. Not that he was in any greater danger now than a thousand times before, she told

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