“Do it!” Brandon muttered hatefully. “I want them sent to Davey before reaching the horizon!”
“Aye, sir!” he said with a salute, and rushed over to the controls of the long fat tube. A single lever released the predark machine, and hopefully it would activate upon hitting the water. Sometimes they sank, often exploded; there was no way of telling. With his heart pounding, the sec man pulled the lever and the giant rolled off the vessel and into the ocean with a huge splash.
“ANYTHING IN SIGHT?” Krysty asked, stacking the last sandbag around the steaming boiler. The heat from the machine was intense, and the wet canvas of the bags was smoking already.
“Nothing yet,” Doc reported, the LeMat cradled in his arms. “No, wait, there is something in the water. Could be somebody swimming…sweet Jesus, it is a torpedo!”
“Going too fast! Can’t outrace it!” J.B. shouted, sweat dripping off his face from the exertion of controlling the boat. He didn’t know which would break first, his arms or the sword.
Frowning deeply, Ryan fired the Steyr at the foaming crest coming their way. This was real trouble. The gunboat was fast, but torpedoes were a lot faster than any surface ship. Even if they had more black powder, the cannons couldn’t track the aquatic missile, and bullets couldn’t penetrate deep enough to set off the antique until it was dangerously close. Even at a hundred feet away, the blast would flip over their craft, leaving the companions floundering helplessly until the sec men arrived. And the trip-blasted thing would hit; it was only a question of when.
“Any more grens?” he demanded, firing the Steyr and the SIG-Sauer together.
“Not me!” Jak answered, doing the same with his Colt Python and the Webley.
“All out!” Mildred added, squeezing off shots with the ZKR. The spread pattern of the shotgun that made it so effective against the Firebirds made it useless against a torp. Unfortunately the physician didn’t know where the warhead of the device was located, and so wasted seconds and precious rounds shooting randomly yards ahead of the crest, and yards behind.
Rushing to the front of the boat, Krysty snatched the Uzi away from J.B.’s outstretched hand and, going to the stern again, emptied a full clip of 9 mm rounds at the unseen war machine.
“Gaia save us!” she cried, slapping in a fresh clip. “Is the damn thing armored?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have a warhead,” Mildred suggested, “but is only going to punch a hole through us.”
“Just as bad,” Ryan answered, dropping the SIG-Sauer to reload a fresh mag into the breech of the Steyr. This job required a big-punch blaster, but the Steyr was the best they owned. Might be .75 flintlocks belowdecks, but there was no time to search for them.
Suddenly the powerful booming of the LeMat stopped. “Why are we shooting?” Doc rumbled, holstering the mammoth pistol. “The machine only wants a target to hit.”
“Yeah, us!” Jak retorted.
“No, my friend. Anything will serve that purpose fine.” As loath as he was to do it, Doc grabbed the tattered corpse of a dead sec man from the deck and heaved it overboard. The headless torso hit their wake and was quickly left behind. “Flotsam meet jetsam!” the scholar cried out in grim gallows humor.
Immediately the rest of the companions started clearing the decks of anything that could float, bodies, cannon swabs, broken pieces of the wheelhouse, the wheel, captain’s chair. They were still at it when the ocean thunderously erupted into a steaming geyser, the boiling spout climbing fifty yards into the stormy sky, then arching down to rain hot saltwater across the speeding gunboat.
“Any more torps?” Jak demanded, wiping the water off his face. Somehow, he looked even paler than usual.
“Only saw that one,” Ryan stated, watching the enemy Petey disappear over the horizon. But that was only seven miles away, about ten minutes in a PT boat. These babies were fast.
“Then we’re safe.” Mildred sighed in relief.
“Until they patch that boiler,” Krysty added, working the bolt on the Uzi to clear a jam. She wasn’t surprised when it happened. Caked with salt residue from the ocean spray, the rapidfire needed a thorough cleaning before it would operate smoothly again.