LITMIR.BIZ

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she goes,” Conoyer repeated. She was leaning forward, gripping the lower sill of the now-vacant front port with her left hand so hard her knuckles whitened. “On my word, turn her hard aport, smartly as you can.”

      The mate glanced nervously aside. Her steely veneer was showing serious cracks now.

      “Aye-aye, Captain,” she said.

      Ryan, J.B., Doc and Ricky had pushed onto the bridge with Krysty. Jak was doing whatever he was doing, as he usually did. Under the circumstances, he was as helpless as the rest of them. Arliss had come in with them. The rest of the Queen’s crew had dispersed elsewhere.

      Flashes flickered from the bows of the oncoming craft. “Get down!” Ryan commanded.

      He did as he ordered, although he stayed just high enough to peer out the front port. Krysty did likewise. She realized he had likely ordered his people down to reduce the targets they offered. She doubted the wooden front of the cabin would offer any resistance to a solid cannonball. It had not been built for that.

      “You too, Nataly,” Trace ordered. After a dubious glance her way, the mate hunkered as low as she could and still see to steer.

      The captain stayed erect. “Mildred, stay hunkered down too, but please help me stand. I need to see.”

      Mildred reached out and grabbed her hips to steady her.

      A shot whined overhead, then the ship was racked by a shuddering crash that seemed to come up through the deck by way of Krysty’s knee and boot sole. Another crash came from somewhere astern.

      “Captain,” Maggie called, coming up the hatch from below, “the bow’s been holed below the waterline. We’re taking on a lot of—”

      Something moaned by Krysty’s head, between her and Ryan. A hot breath blew across her face. She saw a lock of her lover’s curly black hair tweaked briefly out from his head as by invisible fingers.

      From behind she heard a strange squelching noise, followed by another sound of rending wood. Something like hot rain fell on her shoulders and back. She heard a sizable amount of liquid hit the planks of the deck.

      She and Ryan both turned. His lone blue eye was wide.

      Maggie stood a step away from the hatch below. Or rather her slight torso did. Her head was missing entirely. A pulse of blood shot up from the terrible vacancy between her shoulders, then her headless trunk toppled down the ladder.

      Ricky puked. The stink of vomit, added to the reek of fresh blood, excrement, burned flesh and lingering peppery gunpowder smell, made Krysty’s head spin.

      “Arliss,” Trace snapped without turning, “get every hand available to work the bilge-pumps.”

      His wrinkled, sunburned face was white beneath his beard, but he bobbed his head. “Aye, Captain.”

      He vanished below, slipping slightly in Maggie’s blood.

      “Captain,” Nataly said in a strained voice, “those blasterboats are getting mighty close—”

      “On my mark, start your turn to port,” the captain said. Nataly stood back upright, her hands white on the wheel.

      “Don’t see much of a break, up ahead,” J.B. murmured.

      Krysty didn’t, either. The summer-green reeds and rushes on the left bank waved in the breeze in a line unbroken as far as the eye could see. She realized Ryan was gripping her arm, tightly enough to hurt, but she didn’t say anything. It reassured her more than it felt bad.

      “Three,” Trace said. “Two…”

      “Captain, I don’t see—” Nataly began.

      “Now! Hard aport!”

      “But it’s just land!”

      “Now, nuke it, do it now!”

      Ryan let go of Krysty’s arm. He started to grab for the wheel.

      But Nataly, her normally narrow eyes now saucer-wide, began to crank the big spoked wheel counterclockwise for all she was worth. The Mississippi Queen began to heel to the right as her bow swung left.

      They were curving toward what indeed looked to Krysty like solid land at a good rate of speed. She gripped the sill in front of her with her right hand and Ryan’s arm with her left. Bracing was the only thing she could think of to do.

      The vessel shuddered to another hit.

      The land rushed toward them. Krysty held her breath.

      “By the Three Kennedys!” Doc crowed from behind them. “I see it!”

      Then Krysty did, too. The weeds were thinner directly in front of them, stretching twenty or twenty-five yards to either side. The Queen’s bow slid smoothly among them, right into a channel Krysty would have bet her life a few seconds ago was not there.

      “Ladies, gentlemen,” Trace said, “welcome to Wolf Creek.”

      An explosion came from behind. It was as loud as rolling thunder, and made the stout little vessel rock violently back and forth. Instantly Krysty’s keen nostrils smelled fresh smoke, and not just of burned black powder.

      “There’s another fire in the cabin,” Avery yelled from the hatch in the aft bulkhead.

      “Get anybody who’s not pumping out the hull to fight the fire, Avery,” Trace ordered. Her voice was getting as thin as hope.

      “That’s us,” Ryan said, straightening. Krysty went with him.

      “Ryan,” Trace called. Krysty saw her sway despite Mildred’s strong hand supporting her. “Have that albino scout of yours keep his eyes skinned. Stand ready to repel boarders.”

      “Right,” Ryan said.

      “Nataly, take us up-channel at least a mile. Then look for the best place to ground her.”

      The first mate had the steel back in her spine. “Aye-aye!”

      “Mildred, help me…lie down. Then you’re relieved from tending me to join your friends. I need to pass out now.”

      “Then let us help you out on deck to get you laid down,” Mildred said, working her hands professionally up the captain’s solid body as she stood up. “I’m not laying you down in this slop, no way.”

      Trace’s short-haired head lolled on her neck. “What…ever.”

      Her eyes rolled up in her head. Mildred was ready, but still had to bend her knees to hang on to the woman when her knees sagged.

      “I’ll help you, Mildred,” Krysty said. She went to support the now-unconscious—or perhaps semiconscious—captain from the left.

      It feels good to be able to do something, she thought. Even if we’re nowhere near safe yet.

      * * *

      “FIREBLAST!” RYAN EXCLAIMED as the sound of cannon fire echoed between the banks of Wolf Creek.

      But when he paused in chopping away burning planks from the starboard side of the Mississippi Queen’s cabin to look astern to where the dull booms came from, he saw nothing but clear green water on Wolf Creek. They had rounded enough of a bend in the stream that the original screen of weeds that had shielded the creek’s mouth had passed out of sight. But he could clearly see two big banks of smoke like river-hugging fog, off above the flat land with its tall grass. The tops of the smoke clouds were already tinted gold by the rays of the sun sinking into the horizon.

      “Poteetville and New Vick,” Arliss said grimly. The ship rigger was perched perilously atop the weakening roof of the Queen’s cabin forward of the fire, directing water from a canvas hose into its hungry red heart. “They found better things to play with than us. Meaning each other.”

      “Think they’ll follow us this way?” Ricky asked. He was taking a

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