Firing one blaster, then the other, the albino teen said nothing, but seemed vastly relieved.
“Let’s go,” the Deathlands warrior shouted over the growing din, and the companions took off at a run into a side street.
STRIDING ALONG the wide top of the limestone wall that sealed off the valley, Peter Tongamorlena shouted orders to the sailors under his command. The air tasted of black-powder fumes, and aced pirates lay everywhere, pools of their blood making the limestone slippery to walk on. Most he knew by name, shipmates and fellow officers, but every corpse built a rage for revenge against the invaders. How the fuck had the lord baron’s sec men gotten past the rad craters alive? Nobody else had succeeded in getting off the beach in the past fifty years!
“Keeping firing!” Tongamorlena bellowed, discharging his blaster at the racing Hummers darting about in the jungle. Incredibly, he scored a hit, but the .44 miniball only ricocheted off the armored side of the military wag. The lord baron’s sec men answered with a burst from their giant rapidfire blaster, the spray of .50 caliber slugs raking the wall and its handful of defenders.
Designed to withstand bombardments from rogue ships in the bay, the stout limestone blocks were holding against the Firebirds and grens. But the steel-plated front gate was beginning to weaken, the cold iron hinges sagging under the weight of the door. Rocks on the brick barbicon had been dropped to hinder the advance of the Hummers. And the tactic worked, but only for a while. The grens of the sec men were slowly clearing a path for the deadly war wags.
As Tongamorlena quickly reloaded, the pirates struck back with flintlocks and crossbows, the wounded reloading for the healthy. Then the few remaining cannons roared in a ragged volley, sending a hellstorm of seashells and rocks into the jungle. More than once a hidden sec man screamed and fell to the ground horribly mutilated from the razor-sharp barrage. But there always seemed to be more, and nothing stopped the Hummers. Even the tires seemed resistant to lead and arrows.
Behind him, chaos filled the streets of the ville, buildings burning out of control and the civilians looting like hungry jackals. The triple-damn cowards. There only seemed to be a couple of those PT boats in the bay, and the pirates outnumbered the attackers twenty to one. But those accursed Firebirds made the difference, even when they missed. The fallout from the explosions threw flaming wreckage about and spread the damage across HomePort ville.
Taking a pepper box from an arm without a body, Tongamorlena tracked the passage of a Hummer and squeezed the trigger. The forty-five tiny chambers of the honeycomb barrel simultaneously fired, the swarm of iron needles spraying the military wag. A sec man cried out, his face a bloody ruin.
In response, a sec man stepped from the bushes holding a fat tube and launched a Firebird. The rocket streaked past the limestone so low that its fiery exhaust washed over several men, igniting their clothes and hair. Shrieking, the pirates slapped at their crackling bodies, one going over the side, and the other dashing madly about until aced by one of his own men.
“Cannons, fire!” Tongamorlena roared, limping along the top of the barrier.
“Sir, we can’t!” a dirty-faced ensign growled. A red-stained rag was wrapped around his neck, one eye partially closed from a cluster of burn blisters. “The metal is too fuckin’ hot. The powder will blow if we try a reload.”
“Then wash them with water first!” Tongamorlena bellowed.
The man spread his arms in reply, indicating the dozen empty buckets scattered on the wall.
Scorch! They were going to lose the ville because of water?
“We got any Firebirds?” Tongamorlena demanded.
The gunner scowled. “We’ve stolen dozens over the years,” he answered, “but they won’t launch at Kinnison’s troops. Got no fucking idea why, but they just won’t do it. It’s like the bastard things were alive!”
A fifty chattered, and both men ducked for a moment.
“Okay, then launch them at the sky. When the rockets run out of powder, they’ll rain down on the attackers from above.”