James Axler Deathlands 045 Starfall

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"Son of a bitch!" Donovan exclaimed. "How the fuck did you do that?"
"Got lucky." He adjusted the lantern he carried, turning up the illumination.
Taking the SIG-Sauer blaster in his free hand, he walked into the redoubt.
Donovan followed him.
THE REDOUBT WAS small compared to many of those Ryan had seen. There were two
rooms. One held a mat-trans unit with bright blue armaglass sporting dark
green diagonal stripes.
"Is that a gateway?" Donovan asked, pointing at the mat-trans unit.
"What do you know about them?" Ryan asked.
"Read about them in some of the materials at the Foun-dation. Supposed to
transport something or someone from one place to another by a light beam
bouncing off a satellite or something. Does it?"
Ryan only gave the man a small smile.
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The second room held more promise, turning out to be a small but complete
armory. He played the lantern light over the weapons, grinning as he realized
J.B.
was going to have the time of his life.
"Fuck me!" Donovan exploded, holding his own lantern up and moving closer.
"Ready to go into the pirate-chilling business?" Ryan asked.
"LOVER."
Ryan turned his head tiredly and gazed at Krysty. She was huddled under her
blankets, her skin as pale as death. "Yeah."
"I don't remember you coming to bed last night. Mebbe I missed it."
"Didn't get there," Ryan said. He squatted near her, drinking coffee sub from
a ceramic mug Donovan had given him.
"What's going on? I thought I heard power tools ear-lier."
"You did," Ryan assured her. "We've been busy." He gestured out toward the six
boats he and J.B. had worked on with volunteers from the dam builders. They'd
mounted a .50-caliber machine gun from the redoubt on each boat. The arsenal
still contained another six, as well as rifles and handblasters that were
being passed out to the Heimdall Foundation people. Ryan had easily let the
weapons go, after restocking their own ammo needs, because the com-panions
couldn't take them.
He had, however, locked the redoubt door behind them. The mat-trans unit still
offered a back door out of the area after Krysty was taken care of properly.
Krysty forced herself up to one elbow and surveyed the dock. "What's going on,
lover?"
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Ryan told her about the agreement to help recover the satellite section from
the pirates.
"Shouldn't have done that," Krysty objected, her face going crimson as her
hair.
"You're trying to take on too much weight to take care of me."
"Has to be done to close the deal."
"That's not much of a deal, lover."
Ryan turned his single eye on the beautiful redhead. "I'd make a deal with the
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devil himself if I had to."
RYAN RODE WITH Donovan in the lead powerboat, feeling the engines throb
through the entire craft and the slap of the river against the hull. Eight
other men occupied the boat with them, all of them armed and scanning the
river. The early morning sun rose to their right, burning through the thin
layer of fog that lay over the water and reduced visi-bility.
"Reports we've had lately are that Barbarossa has put up a campsite here."
Donovan laid a forefinger on the handmade map he held.
The map was well made, and seemed to cover the river's current course, more or
less. In the powerboats, the trip back to the river from the cistern took only
a couple hours.
On the map, the river cut a lazy S downstream and north of their present
position.
The pirate base was located on the second hump of the S.
"Are you sure they're still there?" Ryan asked.
"No." Donovan folded the map and put it away. "This is just my best guess."
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LITTLE MORE than an hour later, Donovan's information and guess, however,
proved correct.
Ryan lay on his belly, his binocs to his eye as he sur-veyed the pirate camp.
J.B.
and Donovan lay on either side of him, field glasses to their eyes, as well.
Dean and Jak stayed behind them with three other men that Ryan had designated
as the land-based attack team. Doc and Mildred had stayed at the base to care
for
Krysty. Ryan hadn't liked splitting their forces, but Krysty couldn't make the
trip and he wasn't going to leave her there alone.
The pirate base showed none of the semipermanency of the Foundation base. Few
tents stood along the riverbank, leaving men sleeping out on the open ground
wrapped in thick woolen blankets or in tattered sleeping bags. They clustered
around low-burning campfires, few of which showed any signs of being cared for
during the night.
"Sleeping deep," J.B. observed.
"Local hootch," Donovan replied. "Got a small ville called Snockers farther
downstream that has a potato-whiskey still set up. Most folks working this
river find something Snockers can use and trade for the whiskey. Snockers has
overland traders set up to trade farther in-country. To them, Barbarossa and
his filth are just another customer."
Ryan didn't comment as he raked the binocs across the riverbank. The land
tumbled down out of the mountains, remaining rough and broken all the way to
the water's edge. It also provided a lot of cover in the form of brush and
tall grasses, which Ryan had counted on after studying the shoreline. He'd
left their boat a half mile back, cutting across the land and keeping the
river in sight to mark their bearings.
More than two dozen water bikes floated in the harbor area the pirates had
chosen, tethered by ropes, chains or leather thongs to boats, rocks, trees and
small anchors. Nearly four dozen bigger boats, all of them in deteriorating
condition, also bobbed in the water. Together, they consti-tuted an impressive
armada.
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And Ryan's plan called for direct action, his six boats against the numbers
before him.
Scanning the boats, Ryan saw that only a few of them had mounted weapons. The
machine guns they'd raided from the redoubt held more firepower than most of
the pi-rate craft. The biggest boat in the group was a sixty-foot powerboat
that had faded Montana Lake Patrol insignia on it coupled with State Police
running along the bow.
The sixty-footer sported a black flag with a white skull and crossbones that
looked handmade. It drooped now in the light breeze, hardly unfurled at all.
The sixty-footer was the only craft big enough to hold the recovered
space-station section, according to Donovan. A tarp covered a lump taller than
Ryan and nearly twice a long. The weight caused the sixty-footer to sink lower
in the water than she was supposed to. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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