Outlanders 14 Hell Rising, page 25
In a crouch, he glided toward the sounds. At least eight dragoons moved stealthily along the edge of the companionway, peering over the guardrail. Two men pushed a heavy L-37-AI machine gun mounted on a wheeled frame. Although the frame was poorly lubricated, the AI was a devastating weapon and could cut all the Celts to fish bait inside of ten seconds.
When the contingent of dragoons passed Kane's position and their backs were to him, he pulled his second and last concussion gren, tweaked out the pin and lobbed it underhanded toward the troopers. It struck the steel grating and bounced. Kane shielded his face, and they turned in the direction of the sound. The gren detonated with an eardrum-piercing bang. The eruption of white light turned the gray morning into triple high noon.
Kane poked up his head and saw two of the dragoons whimpering, writhing on the deck plates, hands over their eyes. With their mutagenically altered optic nerves, they were particularly sensitive to high light levels.
The others were stunned and dazzled, and stumbled and staggered about half-deaf and half-blind. Kane didn't hesitate. He charged forward, the Copperhead's killdot centering on the nearest chest. The silenced subgun whispered, and six rounds took the man in the torso, punching dark periods from groin to throat.
The man lurched backward, not knowing what hit him, wild with pain, dazed from the shock of the multiple impacts, tendrils of blood squirting from his chest. He howled and red-uniformed figures went in all directions. Only four stood their ground, leveling their weapons. Kane dropped into a crouch just in time to avoid a bullet that whistled over his head. He fired again, and saw one of the dragoons fall over the guardrail and plunge out of sight. Another burst from the Copperhead at close range chopped a soldier's head to pieces.
A shot from the Sin Eater took a man in the head, lifting the top of a dark blond scalp and flinging it and a beret twirling in the air. A second 280-grain blockbuster punched a dragoon in the side of the neck, sending him cartwheeling down the catwalk, leaving a red spray in his wake, like a liquid banner.
A dragoon frantically tried to swivel the barrel of the heavy machine gun toward him. Kane sprinted forward and launched himself over it. He collided with the soldier, and both of them went down, but Kane's knee was in the man's gut.
Due to his enhanced physique, the man beneath Kane was strong, perhaps even stronger than Grant, but his reflexes were hampered by fogged vision and impaired hearing. He closed one hand around the long barrel of the Copperhead and struggled to yank it away. His other hand closed on the Sin Eater.
For a very long moment, they were motionless, locked in straining combat, sweat breaking out on Kane's forehead, breath coming in harsh gasps from beneath the dragoon's lips.
The man jacked a knee up into Kane's left kidney, who ignored the pain and rammed his head downward, hearing and feeling the cartilage of the soldier's nose collapse beneath his forehead. Snarling, blowing a crimson spray, the man arched his back and bucked Kane off.
Kane threw himself backward, using the man's strength against him. But the dragoon didn't release his tenacious grip on the gun barrels. Planting a foot against the man's sternum, Kane levered him up and over. He had time for one high-pitched cry before he plunged over the guardrail and out of sight.
Kane pushed himself to his feet. Then he saw the naked woman.
Chapter 25
Grant wended his way among the pylons and climbed over struts and cross braces. The damp sea air pulsed with the roar of heavy and continuous gunfire.
Sidling up to a girder, he hazarded a quick look around it. Three dragoons were directing subgun and pistol fire at two Celts crouched behind a stack of pipes. The bullet-riddled bodies of two other Celts lay in their own blood on the deck, scarlet spilling through the openings in the grate to the ocean below.
Grant announced his participation in the firefight with a prolonged burst from the Copperhead. The first three bullets hit a dragoon broadside, punching a deep, ugly cavity in his right rib cage. The other rounds spun the second man around like a top, blood spurting from mortal wounds in his head and upper back. He didn't fall. Instead, he swung his body and MP-5 toward Grant, snarling in silent rage. An autorifle burst from one of the Celts opened his skull in a spray of crimson.
Grant waved his Sin Eater in acknowledgment of the help and went on his way. Phin's men, howling like demons when they stormed Northstar 40, had achieved a measure of surprise, but they were now faced by a spirited and disciplined crew who fiercely defended the last bastion of the Imperium Britannia.
Grant continued to wriggle and climb through the jumble of rusty, corroded metal. He found his path to the portside ballast tank blocked by a gutter brawl of close-quarters slaughter. A churning mass of red- jacketed men fought, screamed and thrashed above the open area directly beneath the intersection of two companionways.
Because they were locked in hand-to-hand combat and all dressed identically, Grant couldn't tell the difference between Celt and dragoon or exactly how many men snarled and tore at each other. They were packed too closely together for firearms to be effective, so the participants used them as clubs. He saw the head of a broad-bladed ax, already stained with blood, rising and falling above the press of bodies.
Grant watched from the shelter of two I beams, appalled by the savagery. On land, either of the attackers would have retreated, but here there was no ground to give, so the wounded were trampled underfoot. He saw a man who had participated in the skirmish at the ministry compound spasming on the deck, his hands fluttering around the handle of a knife embedded in his groin. Over the hoarse yells and screams, he heard him calling for his mother.
Shuddering, Grant decided not to involve himself in the fray. He circled around the heaving mass of combatants, climbing along struts, swinging himself by using crossbars as stationary trapezes. From another area of Northstar 40, he heard the dull thump of an explosion and knew it was a high-ex gren.
After a minute of muscle-straining effort and clumsy gymnastics, Grant dropped down beside the pressure valve of the ballast tank. A dead dragoon lay beneath it, one hand crooked stiffly around the wheel. A long, horizontal gash bisected his lower back, completely severing the spine. The wound looked as if it had been made by an ax.
Grant figured that when the ruptured ballast tank threw Northstar 40 out of true, a group of dragoons had been dispatched to protect or equalize the balance in the other tanks. The dead man had crawled from the hand-to-hand battle and expired right as he reached the valve. Grant couldn't help but feel a twinge of admiration for the dragoons and a touch of compassion for this particular one. Mutated they might be, but they still knew how to fight and die like men.
The floor grille was suddenly shaken by a sharp concussion. Loose bits of metal fell clanging from overhead. He felt the air shiver from the shock wave. From the sound and feel of the explosion, Grant guessed Kane had used his last Alsatex gren.
As he removed the high-ex grenade from his harness, the crackle of renewed blasterfire reached him, but it didn't sound close. Jamming the gren into an elbow joint at the point where the feed pipe fitted into the tank itself, he set himself, tweaked away the pin and began a long-legged lope for the nearest cover, behind a pylon.
He was still loping when the grenade detonated with a hot flash, a ballooning fireball and a brutal wave of hot compressed air. Chunks of steel rang like wind chimes as they bounced against the pylon. The shock wave slammed into Grant and bowled him off his feet. He went with the kinetic force, throwing himself forward, catching himself on his hands and going into a somersault.
He fetched up hard against the support post and lay there at its base for a few moments. At a screeching, hissing rumble, he turned around just as a geyser of seawater fountained up and out of the torn wall of the ballast tank. The roaring torrent thundered at least thirty feet in the air, drenching everything in the vicinity.
A few seconds later, the whole of Northstar 40 quivered violently. Rust sifted down from the overhead catwalks. The deck lurched beneath him, rolling him sideways. With a nerve-stinging groan, the oil platform listed to starboard. From beyond his range of vision came the sound of glass shattering and the thudding of heavy objects toppling over.
Faintly, he heard a voice bellowing, "Pumps! Get to the pumps!"
Grant recognized the voice as that of Quayle. He also recognized the tremor of panic in it.
KANE RECOGNIZED the steel-gray hair and blank, blue-white eyes of Morrigan instantly. His eyes took in her pale, compact body and the purple patches marring it, the angry red welts on her throat, her swollen lips and bruised cheek.
She made her tottering way along the companionway, the red-stained knife in one hand tapping along the guardrail, the other groping over a network of pipes. From directly below, gunfire crashed. Several bullets flattened themselves on the pipes right above Morrigan's head. She seemed serenely oblivious to them.
Kane bounded forward, catching her and falling with her to the grille just as a stream of autofire burned the air where she had been walking. The woman beneath him stared sightlessly upward, whipping up the point of the knife, pressing it against the underside of his chin. Then she smiled and touched his face, feeling its contours. She tossed away the dagger. "Kane," she murmured.
Before he could respond, he heard the detonation of a high-ex gren. Another volley of shots stuttered from below, bullets whipsawing the air overhead, ricocheting away from steel with keening whines. Kane covered Morrigan with his body, shielding her with his coat. He felt a round tug at the tail.
When the blasterfire ceased, Kane began to help the woman to her feet. A racking shudder made the companionway flooring jump violently, and they both fell again. Northstar 40 squeaked, screeched and heeled over to starboard.
Her face only an inch away, Morrigan said between clenched teeth, "You must stop Quayle. You must rectify my madness."
"That's the general idea," he said gruffly, pushing himself to a crouch. He heard Quayle's voice roaring, "Pumps! Get to the pumps!"
"You mustn't let him escape," Morrigan said, voice tight with repressing a groan of pain.
"He has other problems right now...like putting what's left of his crew to work to keep this thing from sinking."
Helping her to her feet, he saw how her bare flesh was goose-pimpled from the raw wind. He shucked out of his coat, draping it over her like a cloak. She wasn't much taller than Domi, so the hem dragged on the floor grates. Gently, he fingered the red welts encircling her neck. "Did Quayle do this to you?"
Morrigan shook her head, tresses flying as if the question was annoyingly irrelevant. "The coordinates of Lyonesse are programmed into the Cromwell' s navigational computers. He doesn't need a crew to get there."
"If we're lucky, Fand will have already disabled the ship."
A line of consternation furrowed Morrigan's smooth forehead. "Fand? She is with you? I wouldn't have thought—"
The companionway tilted again, and both people nearly pitched over the rail. The wheeled machine gun rolled across the deck, the long barrel jamming between the crossbars. Kane tried to kick it free, but it was stuck fast. With an arm around her, he led her along the companionway.
The autofire from below resumed, and Kane hazarded a look over.
At least five dragoons were blazing away with MP-5s into the throat of a passageway. Kane couldn't see their target, but it didn't matter. They fought a retreating action, and they were almost directly below his position, their backs to him. Kane unslung the Copperhead, making sure his body was shielded by the guardrail, then depressed the trigger. He didn't have to aim. Every man below was a target.
Over the rattling roar and the clink of ejected cartridges, Kane heard cries of shock, pain and anger. Return fire raked upward, the short, hastily aimed fusillade of shots pock-marking the pipes, showering him with metal fragments. The dragoons turned and ran, out of Kane's field of vision and fire. They left two of their number leaking crimson on the floor plates. An instant later, a horde of howling Celts appeared, racing in pursuit.
Kane turned back to Morrigan. She seemed completely unperturbed by the crash of blasters and din of battle. In little panting gasps, she spoke quickly as if she were seeking to unburden herself. Kane only half listened as he led her toward a stairwell that pitched downward. He suspected she would have said the same thing to the first person she encountered.
"I thought it was a grand plan, a little daft perhaps, but to use the Imperium's fixation on power against them was so tempting—"
A dragoon appeared at the head of the stairs, stared at them and loosed a strafing burst toward them. Kane managed to slap himself and Morrigan against the wall, avoiding the swarm of lead. The slugs swept high, and by the time the man had his aim adjusted, blood was squirting from his chest where the last shot in the Copperhead's magazine hit him. The dragoon hurtled backward, his arms flailing, falling headfirst back down the steps.
Kane ejected the spent clip from the Copperhead, slamming in a fresh one detached from his combat harness. He cycled in a round and moved carefully forward again, Morrigan clinging to his arm.
She continued speaking as if she hadn't been interrupted by a near brush with death. "I underestimated Quayle, you see. I thought he was nothing but a jumped-up enlisted man with delusions of grandeur. He's as evil as Strongbow was. Worse. At least Strongbow never—"
Her words trailed off and her lower lip trembled, her eyes blinking repeatedly to hold back tears. In an aspirated whisper, she said, "The things he did to me. The things he made me do—me, a sister in the holy order of Awen. I was with him when the assault began. While his back was turned, I managed to stab him, but the wound wasn't mortal."
"He'll pay," Kane bit out. His tone carried a note of deadly conviction.
"'Tomas my own arrogance that brought me to this pass. I believed I could trick Quayle into bringing a boatload of the orichalcum, the firestones, to Britain. I would give him false instructions on how to tap into their power. England and the Imperium would be laid waste within the blink of an eye."
"And so would a lot of your own people."
Morrigan nodded, a jerky spasm of her head. "I intended to send a secret signal to the Priory monastery that the Cromwell was returning to England, and they in turn would relay that information to our forces, telling them to pull out."
"What about your Scots allies?"
"In every war, particularly those for survival, sacrifices must be made."
Kane began to angrily tell her she had sacrificed her own dignity and honor, but as they began descending the stairs, his voice was drowned out by the jubilant shout of "Erin go bragh!" from many throats.
He peered through the banister railing and saw the victorious Celts disarming a group of dragoons. There were few unbloodied in either party. Kane led Morrigan around the heart-shot dragoon, lying face down half on and half off the stairs. The tails of his coat dragged in the widening pool of blood.
He left her standing against the foot of the stairs and went to join the Irish. One dragoon wept bitterly, not because he was wounded but because of the shame of losing the fight and, in the process, the entire war.
Grant appeared on the far side of the group, coat beaded with moisture, and he snapped off the one-percent salute when he caught sight of Kane. The whoops of victory turned into cries of alarm as North- star 40 gave another creaking jolt to starboard. A collection of bound-together pipes snapped cleanly away from their moorings and crashed down, rolling across the canted deck.
Everyone stumbled, Irish and Briton clasping each other to keep from falling. "Back to the ship!" a Celt yelled. He pushed the sobbing, wounded dragoon ahead of him, "You, too, weepy!"
"The Cromwell is closer," a dragoon protested.
Above the squealing of tortured metal, came the sound of big engines throbbing to life, the whine of turbines hitting a high-pitched note. Without hesitation, Kane bounded in the direction of the noise, gesturing first to Grant, then to Morrigan. "Take care of her," he shouted. "And my damn coat!"
If anyone was puzzled by Kane's exhortation to care for his coat, Grant wasn't. On the last trip to this area of the world, Kane had lost his Mag-issue coat and only recently found a replacement.
Kane ran, acutely aware of the great groaning shudders racking the forest of girders all around him, and jouncing the deck beneath his sprinting feet. Twice he was forced to take detours to avoid large pieces of machinery that slid down the tilted deck toward him. Dark water bubbled up through splits in the flooring, and by the time he glimpsed the Cromwell, he was sloshing ankle deep through the North Sea.
The black ship edged out into the open ocean. The concrete wharf was riven through with cracks, reinforcing bars poking up like gnarled fingers. Half of the ramp was already submerged.
As he ran down it, he saw a length of heavy rope trailing from a cleat at the Cromwell's aft port side.
