The Guns of Two-Space (18 page)

"Rangers!" Melville called out to Josiah and Valandil, "Archer's fighting their captain. Wound the captain if you can, and Pop the tick off his back. He's a black, shaggy cur."

Without a word the rangers both took a step back, dropped their swords, and unslung their muskets. Having these slung over their backs had been a hindrance to the rangers' swordsmanship throughout the battle, but they understood the plan and had been keeping the muskets in reserve for such an occasion.

Among the swirling mass of creatures on the quarterdeck above him Melville saw Petty Officer Hommer, fighting at Archer's right side, take a musket ball in the chest. He felt anger and sadness as he watched Hommer, a beloved old Shipmate, fall. That helmet of blond curls drooped down as the young NCO sagged to his knees and then keeled over onto the deck, dropping his musket from nerveless fingers.

As full-blown poppies, overcharg'd with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain
—
So sinks the youth; his beauteous head, deprest
Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast.
 

Melville found himself fighting alone at the base of the ladder going up to the enemy's quarterdeck. Without his two rangers beside him he was suddenly too busy to worry about Hommer or Archer... or anything else besides survival.

But he was not truly alone. His monkey clung tightly to his neck, blocking bullets and blows with its belaying pin, and his dog, Boye, and Josiah's dog, Cinder (along with
their
belaying pin-equipped monkeys) stayed at the captain's flank. And Brother Theo and Grenoble provided support from behind him, while his sailors closed in from his left and right. After a brief instant of grave danger Melville was able to hold his own in the fierce melee.

Amidst the milling, scrambling throng above them the two rangers spotted one tick that projected up above the mass. In an instant they both took a shot, their muskets cracking together as one, and the tick went down. But they could not get a shot at the enemy captain.

Hans was the
Fang
's best boat handler, perhaps the best in the Westerness Navy. With consummate skill the old sailor swung the jollyboat,
Rip
, around Archer's cutter and across the Guldur's stern at breakneck speed. Ulrich was perched up on
Rip's
tiny yardarm, and as they shot past the enemy Ship he leapt up and clung to the ledge below the stern windows. Swift and nimble as a deranged ferret, Ulrich scrambled up the stern and launched himself onto the quarterdeck railing with his monkey clinging tightly to his back.

The Guldur were all turned away from Ulrich, dealing with the attacks on their front and flanks. Balancing on the railing like some grotesque gargoyle, the vicious little coxswain promptly initiated a one-man onslaught on the enemy from a new and unexpected quarter.

Standing up on the taffrail gave Ulrich enough height to see a huge black cur beating down Lt. Archer's guard. This was clearly the enemy captain, and young Archer was obviously losing his sword fight. He was just seconds away from becoming dog meat.

As Ulrich was drawing his pistol he saw the tick fall from the enemy captain's shoulders. Two musket balls had entered the vicinity of the tick's left ear and punched out the right side of its head, blowing its brains out in a fine, pink mist. Ulrich knew that this was probably the rangers' doing, but he also understood that the force down on the main deck was unlikely to get a good shot at the enemy captain, who was well back on the quarterdeck.

Quick as a mongoose, Ulrich snapped off a shot that shattered the Guldur captain's right forepaw. Then the second barrel took advantage of a momentary gap in the mass of Guldur defenders to smash the enemy's left ankle. He might have been able to put a bullet in his target's head, but the goal was not to kill the enemy captain, only to weaken him enough to allow Archer to win his duel.

The enraged Guldur forces standing behind their captain turned to face their new tormentor. Every loaded musket was turned on Ulrich, sending a hail of bullets whizzing toward him. Any Guldur who was not in direct, hand-to-hand combat with an opponent turned and charged at Ulrich in a furry tide of seriously pissed-off mutts.

With a "
Thwack!"
and an "Eek!" his monkey's belaying pin deflected a head shot, but two bullets hit Ulrich like fists smacking into a block of beef. One went through his right lung and out his back. Another shot made a direct hit on his right thighbone.

Everything slowed to a crawl as Ulrich fell backward, and he had plenty of time to note that he barely felt the through-and-through in his lung, but the hit to his thighbone hurt like hell. He had heard that in the heat of battle you usually wouldn't feel a flesh wound but bone hits
hurt
, and he was strangely intrigued to recognize that this was painfully correct.

With a snarl of defiance Ulrich dropped back into the cold embrace of two-space that waited below him. His right hand tossed an empty pistol into one cur's onrushing face, while his left hand flipped a dagger into another's throat. The last thing the Guldur defenders saw was Ulrich's monkey echoing its master's snarl and hurling its tiny dirk into a cur's eye.

Lt. Archer watches the enemy's blade come hammering down at him. The Guldur captain is not using any finesse, just pure brute strength to pound down his guard, and it is working. Slow-motion time makes the blade come down at an agonizing crawl. There is a horrific despair welling up in his chest as he watches the hated blade come down.
I don't want to die
, he thinks.
Dear God, I don't want to die!

Then he sees the blur of two bullets punch into the left temple of his opponent's tick. He had heard that the effects of slow-motion time could be so intense that you can actually see bullets, and now here it was. The tick gets a confused, cross-eyed look on its face. The right side of its face balloons out and then the hateful creature's brains spray slowly out of the right side of its skull. Archer's monkey cries out with an "
Eek!"
of joy and relief as it watches its foe slump to the deck.
 

Then a bullet slams into the Guldur captain's right arm and his right forepaw begins to lose its grip on the descending blade. Archer's numb arm moves his sword up and deflects the now weakened blow, assisted by a "
smack!"
from his monkey's belaying pin.
 

The Guldur's left forepaw reaches across and reinforces his right, beginning to fight two-handed, just as another bullet cuts his left hindpaw out from under him. The creature falls to his left with his guard still high, and Archer swings a weak, sweeping, waist-high, horizontal blow that sends a ropey flood of guts flowing out of his opponent's body.

With a howl of outrage a Guldur sailor beside the falling enemy captain thrusts his bayonet at Archer's chest. The young lieutenant is just beginning to feel a wave of relief, and now once again he sees death coming at him and he knows that he is out of position to block this blow.

In mid-thrust the Guldur's glaring eyes and fierce concentration gives way to a distorted mask of agony. Then it looks down in horror as its guts, and their contents, flow out onto Midshipman Hayl like a cauldron of sickening, stinking stew being poured over the little middie's head.

Hayl had been scurrying underfoot. When he saw a cur about to attack Lt. Archer, he thrust up with his horrifically sharp, double-edged blade and literally stirred the Guldur's guts. He inserted his midshipman's dirk just above the pelvic bone and was astounded at how easily it slipped in. He sliced up in a broad arc to the solar plexus, and then down and back up in a spiral motion. He continued to be amazed and strangely pleased at how effortlessly the blade slid through the Guldur's body. Then his pleasure turned to dismay and disgust as the hot, reeking contents came pouring over him in an unholy baptism of bubbling blood and diverse foulnesses.

"Eep!" said his monkey.

Ulrich's bullet-riddled body falls down off the Ship's stern and into the merciless maw of two-space. He can clearly see the stern of the Guldur Ship churning through two-space as he falls, and he is not sure which is worse: seeing the awful blue depths of two-space coming at him, or the Ship moving away from him. He closes his eyes as he punches through the plane of two-space and feels an awful, biting cold wash over his body, a brief preview of the icy death that awaits him.

"
Brrr!!
" squeaks his monkey, clinging helplessly around his neck.
 

The effects of slow-motion time make these seconds last for an agonizing eternity as Ulrich bounces back through the icy plane to the other side.

"
Brrr!!
" repeats his monkey with a screech of despair.
 

Then he seems to hang there, his last moment in life stretching on, and on...

"Dammit, Ulrich," says Hans, "gimme a hand here. I can't hold ya ferever!"

He opens his eyes to discover that, in a feat of incredible boat handling, old Hans has spun the jollyboat back around just in time to catch him on the rebound.

His monkey is stretched out between the two humans, with four hands keeping a death grip on Hans' arm while the other four are locked around Ulrich's skull. The little creature has a look of wild desperation on its face as it quietly gibbers a stream of incomprehensible monkey obscenities.

It slowly dawns on the little coxswain that maybe he is going to live. He reaches up an arm and a leg and hugs the boat's gunwales like an ardent lover.

"Damn!" says Hans, rolling him the rest of the way into the boat. "Them vacuum-suckers dun shot the hell out o' ya, lil' buddy."

"Thask mah technique, shee?" mumbles Ulrich. "Ik's a trick, shee? By bleeding I lures 'em inta a falsek sensa skecurity..."

The eviscerated Guldur captain and the sailor that Hayl had gutted both leaned forward in grisly bows and plunged to the deck. There was the briefest of pause before the remaining curs turned on Archer in a final spasm of fury. The press of Guldur in front of Melville had eased off, so he took this opportunity and stepped to his left, calling over his shoulder, "Give me a boost!" Then he sprung up and grabbed the top of the quarterdeck railing with his left hand. Numerous sailors helped to launch their captain up onto the quarterdeck. Melville vaulted over the rail, hacking to his right and taking off a cur's arm at the elbow. Then he slammed his sword to his left, driving down an enemy's sword and cleaving its skull with a blow that jarred his wrist.

Through a gap in the melee Melville saw a Guldur attacking Lt. Archer from the flank. This one appeared to have Archer dead-to-rights, but Melville had an ace in the hole. He twitched his left hand down to the small, over-and-under, double-barrel Colt pistol tucked into his belt, and with one fluid motion he drew the gun and snapped off a round at the Guldur.

This pistol was a family heirloom. It was centuries old and the intelligence in the pistol's Keel charge had developed into something that was remarkably vicious, and
accurate
. Most two-space pistols and muskets gave a faint <> when you thumbed them, but this little gun gave a distinct <> as it worked with its master to guide the bullet home.

The ball slammed into the Guldur's right rib cage just as it was raising its sword to strike Archer down. The bullet smashed through both lungs, unbalancing the enemy and flipping him over the rail into two-space.

Melville caught a glimpse of the Guldur falling back with a shrieking sob. The noise cut off like a door closing when the wretched creature fell through the plane of two-space. Then the sound of its despair reappeared when it bounced once and looked up at Melville with a final gurgling sob before it dropped forever into interstellar space.

He sinks into the depths
with a bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd,
uncoffin'd, and unknown.
 

The Guldur defenders had given one burst of wild outrage after the loss of their captain, and then they seemed to lose heart. Only the ticks were still fighting and trying to goad their hosts on. A hail of Westerness bullets picked off the remaining ticks, and then the battle was over.

Melville and Archer knelt down beside the Ship's dying captain. They rested wearily with both hands on the hilts of their upright swords, the points dug into the deck.

"Okay. It's official," gasped Archer. "This job is just too damned exciting sometimes."

"Watch his hands!" said Westminster, kicking a pistol out from behind the Guldur's back. "Always watch their hands," the ranger drawled. "Hands kill. In God we trust, everyone else keeps their hands where Ah can see them. Or paws... as the case may be." Valandil stood silently beside Westminster, facing in the opposite direction, watching his partner's back and wiping his sword with a piece of some luckless Guldur's shirt.

"
Therrre iss no honorrr in thiss," hissed the Guldur, pawing the deck with arms gone flaccid as he looked up at Melville. "Thiss pup did not defreat me!"

"It was a pack kill," said Melville, looking down at the dying captain. "Like your four Ships attacking us."

"Urrr? Prack krill," the Guldur nodded. "Prack krill." Then, very quietly, with his dying breath, he looked up at Archer and whispered, "Urrr. Grood pup. Brrrave pup..."

"It seems kind of unfair," whispered little Hayl to himself. "We all just ganged up on him."

"Would you rather it was you layin' there?" asked Westminster softly. The middie didn't think anyone had heard his comment, but he should have known the sharp-eared ranger was listening. Hayl kept watching the dead enemy captain with wide-eyed fascination as the big ranger put a hand on the boy's shoulder and quietly continued. "It's one of Saint Clint the Thunderer's 'Rules of a Gunfight.' Don't never forget it: 'Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.'"

Young Hayl absentmindedly wiped Guldur guts and gore from his face while he looked down with wonder at the dead enemy captain. As he watched, the Guldur's eyes become fixed and without understanding.
So this is the enemy
, he thought.
So this is war.