“Yeah,” another pirate added. “But we found him first.”
The bosun scratched his chest. “If it’s war the fat pussball wants, then let’s give him some!”
“What about the other ships?”
“They’ll do as they’re told,” Bachman stated, tucking the lens into his vest. “If they want a piece of the booty.”
“Ready all blasters for a broadside!” Red Blade shouted through cupped hands. “Solid shot and chain. We’ll sink them before they even know we’re here!”
“Bo, what about the Firebirds?” a pirate asked, scratching his cheek with the iron hook at the end of his wrist.
“Can’t hit what they can’t see. The smoke from their own blasters will let us slip in and chill them all.”
“Bosun, full sails!” Captain Bachman ordered. “Tack on every yard of canvas the masts will hold! We’ll charge right down their throats with guns blazing!”
“Our thirty-pounders give twice the range of any other pirate!” Red Blade boasted proudly. “Blow them out of the water, we will!”
“Just as long as the outlanders are mine,” Giles stated, drawing a dagger and stabbing it into the wooden railing. “Got plans for that one-eyed fucker and his bitch.”
“Gonna take them a long time to die,” the pirate muttered, his mind filled with demented visions of flame, blood and knives. “Oh yeah, a real long time.”
IN A SPRAY of sparks, a Firebird rustled from its nest on PT 264 and streaked across the beach to slam into the ville gate. The stout barrier was blown apart in a thunderclap, a dozen voices shrieking on the other side.
A .50-caliber machine gun stuttered at the palisades of the wall, while another flight of arrows arced high into the sky and plummeted downward, hitting water and deck, but no flesh.
“Another rocket!” Brandon ordered, reloading his blaster when there was an odd whistling noise in the air. He realized what it was just in time to drop and cover his head with both arms before the barrage of cannonballs hit.
Sand jumped on the beach, geysers rose from the water, bricks exploded outward from the Cold Harbor wall, and the dock violently shattered, spraying pieces of wood in every direction. On PT 144, sec men screamed as the hail of splinters tore them apart like a shotgun blast.
“Get moving!” Brandon commanded, scrambling aboard his own vessel. “That’s the Gibraltar out there! Her thirties can tear us apart!”
Staggering along the deck, the crew was alive and undamaged, merely shaken from the terrible near miss. The hull bristled with splinters, and one man had a sliver sticking out of his arm that went completely through. Shock had him numb, and the sailor didn’t even know he was wounded yet.
“Thirty-pound cannons?” the pilot gasped, even as he slipped the gears into reverse. “Davey save our ass if those hit!”
In agonizing slowness, the thumping of the engines increased and the ship started to back away from the decimated beach.
On the wall, the ville sec men cheered, and their fifteen pounders boomed again, a line of splashes dotting the water around the three vessels in the middle of the harbor. A sec man was slammed overboard. Two of the Peteys launched Firebirds that streaked past the ville and disappeared into the jungle beyond.
“They missed?” the pilot of PT 264 cried out aghast, struggling with the wheel. The rudder was stiff, something obviously damaged underwater. “How can that be?”
“It’s the smoke.” Brandon cursed bitterly. “The warheads can’t see clearly.” This was bad. Without the rockets for protection, the battle was going to get bloody fast. Speed was their only hope now. The ville had no range, the pirates were large but slow, while the Peteys could move like crazy once they got up full steam. “Pilot, give me a zigzag pattern! Don’t let them track us for another hit!”
“Aye, sir!”
“Bastard pirates,” Thor growled, and fired his longblaster twice at the distant windjammers. They were definitely in his range, but all of the exhaust fumes from their own engines, mixed with the discharges of the ville’s cannons, made it damn near impossible to target anything. Their forces divided, looking in the wrong direction, it was a perfect time for the coldhearts to stage an ambush. The Peteys were trapped between two enemies, and the cross fire had already claimed one of their crafts. FT 144 was listing to starboard, clearly taking on water. Stationary, it was good as sunk.