“Cannons to the left of them, cannon to the right,” Doc rumbled, worrying his blaster.
“Poem,” Jak said in disdain.
“Based on a very real battle,” J.B. said, squinting at the turmoil on the ocean. He could barely see it.
The albino raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Anybody survive?”
“No,” Krysty said.
A sudden thump sounded from the side of the trawler, and Dean rose into view tossing a soggy backpack onto the deck.
“Somebody give me a hand,” the boy said, holding on to the gunwale while he tossed another on board.
While the companions rushed to assist, Ryan climbed onto the craft and knelt behind the gunwale. “We’ve got to get off this thing,” he stated gruffly. “Sooner or later somebody is going to spot movement and blow it out of the water.”
“Just been waiting for you, lover,” Krysty replied, staying low.
The munitions bag back where it belonged, J.B. hit the deck alongside the man and woman. “Find them?” he asked hopefully.
“Dean did,” Ryan said, reaching into a pocket and passing over the glasses.
Wiping them clean on a shirt cuff, J.B. slid on the spectacles, blinking a few times to focus his vision. Back in business.
Exchanging weapons with Mildred, the Armorer checked the Uzi, then finally looked at the fight to see how it was going. Smoke obscured most of the action, but the cannons of the ville roared defiantly, the shots hitting the large windjammers but missing every one of the darting Peteys. Another torpedo leaped from the little gunboats, but this time it struck wood. The watery blast ripped open a hole in a pirate ship large enough to drive a Hummer through. The sea poured into the vessel, men scrambling to reach the lifeboats, the cannons on the slanting deck still thundering as the pirate ship quickly began to sink.
More torpedoes plowed right by the moving pirate ships, never altering their course by a hair. Yet the much smaller rockets would swing across the harbor to impact directly onto a cannon emplacement hidden in the brick wall.
“How the hell can they do that?” J.B. demanded softly. “Just isn’t possible that the lord baron was working computer guidance systems.”
“For black-powder rockets?” Mildred scoffed, sliding her med kit over a shoulder and tightening the strap. “No way.”
“Mebbe alive,” Jak said, ripping open a damp cardboard box and pouring the shells into a pocket of his jacket. Cracking the cylinder, he yanked out a few spent shells and reloaded every chamber. The rounds from Langford’s Magnum worked fine, but gave off tremendous smoke, making it hard for him to see to shoot again, and making him a perfect target, a small ball of smoke standing all by itself. Fuck that.
J.B. scrunched his face in thought, then shook his head. No. It couldn’t be.
“Whoever wins,” Ryan said, opening the bolt of the Steyr to check its mag, “we better be long gone when the smoke clears.”
“How?” Mildred demanded. “This tub is slower than hell. They don’t have to sink us. They could pull alongside and throw rocks.”
“The scope okay?” Ryan asked.
J.B. patted his bag. “Sure.”
“Find the damaged PT, the one without the wheelhouse. Should be on the opposite shore somewhere.”
Digging the Navy brass from his backpack, J.B. swept the distant shore until locating the vessel. Straight across the harbor, the damaged PT had finally reached shore, going straight along the short runoff from the lagoon near the waterfall and plowing into the soft sand. The boat stopped traveling, but rocked back and forth as the spinning props still tried to force the vessel onward.
“Bingo,” he reported, compacting the brass down and tucking it away. “She’s in the lagoon, motors still running.”
“There’s our ride home,” Ryan said, draping the Steyr across his back. “And the boiler will provide the copper tubing we need. Grab your stuff, we have to run for it through the trees.”
“In front of the ville?” Dean asked, wiping his face clean on a rag. His hair was still slicked down, making the boy seem years older.
“Not going anywhere, outlander,” a sec man said, cocking back the hammer on his flintlock. “Everybody freeze.”