“An outrigger,” Mildred said as they climbed on board.
“Row!” Ryan ordered, shoving the craft away from the dock.
Oars bending and threatening to break, the companions put their backs into the task and the nimble craft leaped forward over the crashing waves toward the Constellation. Standing amid the reeds, the young woman silently watched them go, then turned her back to slowly walk away.
A wave crashed over the outrigger, almost swamping the boat, but they leaned against the swell and stayed afloat. Looming before them, the Constellation rose from the sea like a wooden cliff, imposing and indestructible. On the shore, the fighting had slowed to a few scattered gunshots and the steady thumping of an ax slamming into meat. Then Doc appeared from among the fighters, his gory sword stabbing here and slashing there. In the crow’s nest, a villager looked down in shock at the approaching outrigger and reached for the rope attached to a warning bell. Rocking against the waves, Ryan fired the Steyr, and the man fell backward with most of his face gone.
“J.B., keep these stupes off us for a minute,” Ryan ordered, rowing with one hand, the other holding the SIG-Sauer and blowing flame at the men on the deck.
Nodding, the Armorer released his oar, pulled a large gren from his munitions bag and began to unwrap the tape around the old-fashioned lever handle.
“Fireblast! That the reload?” Ryan asked, pulling the top of the SIG-Sauer along his pant leg to jack the slide and clear a jam. There was more ammo for the Steyr in his backpack, but only a few loose rounds for the longblaster in his pocket, with no time for reloading the magazine.
The Armorer nodded grimly. The gren was an old World War II model called a pineapple. Normally the two-pound gren was filled with gunpowder, but that had lost its ginger over the decades and wouldn’t explode anymore. So J.B. had replaced the dead gunpowder with C-4 plas-ex. Problem was, the old-style gren held six times more plas than a modern lightweight gren, and nobody could throw it far enough to survive the explosion. J.B. had been saving the bomb for a special job, and this was it.
“Now!” Ryan shouted, and the companions stopped rowing to duck.
In a lofting arch, J.B. threw the gren over the gunwale.
There was a shout from the main deck, then a strident fireball erupted, blowing pieces of deck and bodies into the sky. A dozen men fell from the rigging, plummeting to the deck with horrible thumps.
“Head for the bow!” Ryan directed, sliding the longblaster over a shoulder. “Stay away from the bastard sides! Those cannon will cut us into mincemeat!”
At the shout, another face appeared over the gunwale and aimed a crossbow at them. Releasing her oar, Mildred triggered the shotgun and the man went flying out of sight, the iron quarrel slamming into the deck of the outrigger, missing Krysty by a scant inch.
“Thanks,” she grunted.
“No prob.”
Reaching the side of the vessel, Ryan grabbed the muzzle of the cannon and hauled himself off the outrigger canoe. As he peeked inside the ship, he saw the gunners jerk in reaction to his presence and claw for weapons. The SIG-Sauer coughed a song a death, and the slavers dropped where they stood.
Bracing his shoulder against the side of the ship, Ryan grabbed the cannon with his free hand and started to push. It took all of his strength, but the cast-iron weapon slowly moved along its recoil track until there was enough space for him to wiggle through and enter the gun room.
A match flared from the dark end of the room. Ryan dropped and rolled as flintlocks boomed and miniballs loudly ricocheted off the iron cannon.
From within a pool of darkness, he waited for his eye to adjust to the low light, then backtracked the muskets and emptied half the clip. Grunts announced lethal hits, then he spun about, firing twice more in the opposite direction.
Standing in a stairwell, a fat man struggling to load a musket dropped the weapon in surprise as a 9 mm round only nicked his arm. Shifting position, Ryan dropped the spent clip and slapped in a fresh mag while the coldheart raced to ram the cloth wad down the barrel of his blaster and finish the reloading process. Both men clicked back hammers at the same time, and fired. Ryan proved to be the better marksman.