Iron Rage. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ repairing the ship and fighting off the ever-present danger of rot in her wooden meat and bones, Ryan gathered it wasn’t wholly an affectation. He did make use of it on detail work and inspecting for damage.

      â€œAce. Report.”

      â€œThe shot that hit us just busted a chunk of rail all to nuke. Mebbe ten feet. I can have it fixed in twenty minutes with a spare spar from stores. Or, if you’d care to send a boat ashore we could cut down a sapling—”

      â€œNuke, no!”

      â€œIt would be cheaper, Captain,” Edna said.

      â€œGetting people killed by stickies would not be cheaper,” Trace replied. “And I doubt your crew mates would like to have all their hair fall out and have their skin get all gross with rad blueberries and stumble around like zombies for a few days from even a mild rad dosage. Now git!”

      The purser turned and hurried back into the cabin as fast as her legs would propel her.

      â€œDo the badlands extend a ways?” Ryan asked. The view astern was completely hidden by the barge now. Under Nataly’s firm hand, the Queen was churning steadily north up the big river. Ryan could see activity at the stern of the barge, including glimpses of Doc Tanner’s disorderly white hair, past the stacked lumber as the damage control crew pitched still-smoldering bales of Baron Teddy’s expensive, recently spun muslin overboard.

      â€œA couple miles in all directions, pretty much,” Trace admitted.

      â€œSo if you got a minute, Captain,” Ryan said, “tell us about this arms race between Poteetville and, uh, New Vick.”

      â€œNew Vickville is just south of the hot spot that includes the ruins of old Vicksburg, on and around the bluff, down there to the south. The ville got pretty rich off scavvy from the ruins, not too long after skydark.”

      â€œSeems like that would be pretty dangerous, what with all the fallout around here,” Mildred commented.

      â€œThe first baron believed in ruling with what you might call an iron hand,” Avery said in a dry drawl.

      â€œAvery here’s our history bug,” Trace stated.

      â€œPoteetville lies about five, six miles north of here,” the shipwright said. “It started out as a camp for people scavvying flotsam on the Sippi, of which there was a drek-load, right after skydark. Eventually both Poteetville and New Vick turned into pretty big river trading ports. And natural rivals, being so close together.”

      â€œYeah,” Ryan said. “I wouldn’t think they’d both be able to get rich.”

      â€œWell, Poteetville naturally gets first dibs on traffic coming down from the north,” Trace said, “while New Vick is the stop-off spot for ships from the south. Plus there’s a fair amount of traffic coming off the Yazoo, like us.”

      â€œThings started to heat up between them mebbe thirty, forty years ago,” Avery said. “Baron Poteet sent his daughter to marry Baron Vick, and she promptly died under mysterious circumstances. It seems she committed suicide, but that didn’t mollify Poteetville any. Both villes started building up their fleets. Each already had one or two improvised-armor vessels apiece, to repel river pirates.”

      â€œAnd do a little pirating themselves,” the captain added.

      â€œBut both sides decided they needed full-on ironclad fleets. Or mebbe flotillas. So they started building them like crazy. And expanding and consolidating their holds on the countryside surrounding, making lesser villes either pay them tribute or just absorbing them. That kind of thing.”

      â€œBuilding pocket empires,” J.B. said. He looked at Ryan. “There’s a lot of that going around this days.”

      Ryan shrugged. “It was one of the things that kept Trader in business, back when we ran with him.”

      â€œYeah.”

      â€œNow both sides got, what? A dozen or so apiece of what you might call ironclad warships. They’ve got three or four big vessels that they call ‘capital’ ships, some smaller ones they call frigates, and a shitload of unarmored little patrol boats. Some of them don’t amount to much more than a canoe with a trolling motor, truth to tell.”

      â€œAnd those that we just had the run-in with were frigates,” Ryan stated.

      â€œLike I said, they’re what pass for frigates,” Trace replied. “The capital ships run up to a hundred and fifty feet long, and can mount up to ten blasters on the Pearl. That’s Baron Vick’s flagship. Baroness, some people would say, though no one would say that to her face. We can be glad we didn’t brush up against them.”

      â€œAny rifled blasters?” J.B. asked. Ryan didn’t think his friend needed to sound quite so rad-blasted hopeful.

      But the captain shook her head. “All smoothbore, like the smaller ships carry. But that many weapons can put a lot of metal in the air in a hell of a hurry. It was lucky that we didn’t run into them.”

      â€œI notice you people seem to use the words ship and boat pretty interchangeably,” Mildred said. “In my experience, nautical types tend to get pretty sticky about the distinctions between them. They can be real assholes about it. Pardon my French.”

      â€œâ€˜French’?” Avery asked, blinking in confusion made comical by one eye being magnified to double size by his monocle. “Wait, that was French? I don’t speak French, but I understood what you said—”

      â€œShe’s not from around here,” Ryan said by way of explanation.

      â€œThis isn’t the Cific,” Trace said drily. “You may have noticed. Not even the Gulf. Back before the Big Nuke there may have been craft working the river big enough to be worth making a fuss over which were ships and which were boats. Not these days.”

      â€œI take it we’re not close to this New Vick,” Ryan said. “Any idea why they’d have their ironclads this far north?”

      â€œWell, things have been coming to a head between them and Poteetville the last few years,” Avery said. Fifteen years ago they were having a bit of a thaw between them. Then the old Baron Vick, Silas Krakowitz, took a new wife after his first one died. And I mean the old baron—the one who started building up his ville and its ironclad armada in the first place. His wife was much younger, late twenties or thereabout. Then Baron Harvey J. Poteet’s Senior’s wife, Maude, insulted Krakowitz’s young wife, Tanya. That started things off. Then, after old Silas croaked, Tanya became the baron. She was still hot past nuke red over Maude’s slight. Not long after Harvey Junior became baron of Poteetville, he refused to recognize Tanya’s legitimacy as baron. So the shit has been seriously headed for the fan between them ever since.”

      Ryan frowned.

      â€œThat suggests we might just find ourselves running into the Poteetville fleet,” he said.

      â€œShips!” СКАЧАТЬ