"I'm trying! Tommy, get a rag in that damn leak, we got drag!" Beside her, Rahman moved, tried to help, slumped down again. A rafter loomed up, spiny with hooks. Wild cries hooted through the night. Crazies, it's crazies!
Rahman moved again, got to the side of the deck, strobed in lightning. "Get back!" she yelled as shots popped behind them. Dead Wharf was off portside. She shoved the throttle for any last fraction she could get out of it, swung the tiller and saw what Rahman was after. Ali had seen and crawled up there. The last bottle. Fuel-smell came over the wind and the rot.
"Get down!" she yelled at them. "Get down in the well—"
As the engine gave a fuel-out cough and died.
"What happened?" Tommy yelled. "What happened?"
They kept gliding, wind-battered, tossed by the chop. She got to her knees and tried the prime, hurled the crank over. Dry cough. Again.
O God.
"Gimme my gun!" she yelled. "Tommy! My gun! In the well!"
Shells in the drop. She flung the lid up and groped for the heavy little box among the rags, cast a look at the boats coming up fast, at the crazies closing on them from one side and the big shadow of the fisher coming up from behind.
It was Mondragon came up with the gun, came clattering onto the half deck at a slithering crawl, chain trailing. "Sword's in the hidey," she said. "I brung it—"
He shoved the gun at her and scrambled down into the well again backward. She broke the chamber and began to load, precisely, hands a-tremble and way falling off the skip by the second. She kept the bow to the waves, kept gaining what she could. No more shots back there. They knew their prey was slowing, knew that engine had to be dead.
She snapped the chamber shut, saw the spiny hulk of a raft closing nearer and nearer to portside, lightning-lit. Ragged figures worked a score of poles, doggedly and slowly revolving the raft in that way that rafters moved. And the engines of the lighter boats behind them drowned in the heavier thump of the fisher-engine as the big boat gathered way and came on them.
Closer and closer, till it filled everything aft and throttled down for the overtake.
"Rahman!" she yelled.
"I got 'er," Ali yelled, and fire sparked in the wind, a rag caught, and that fire-spark went sailing up and over that high bow.
Fire broke on the slaver-deck, Men screamed and cursed. One appeared in sight and she fired. He fell back. More came, and the skip came round to the side, engine dying. Men stood ready with boathooks, and she picked another off as the skip crashed bow-on into their side and men leaped aboard. "Mondragon—dammit!''
The sword flashed in firelight, a dark-clothed, blond streak swung into the boarders and dumped them into their own boat. One swung a hook for him and she blew that man off the boat. Rahman yelled and she fired into the fancy-boat coming up on his side as boarders kept trying and Mondragon kept discouraging them on the one side with the sword and Ali on the other with the axe. Tommy got the boathook unracked and nearly took Ah' in the back with it.
"Ware aft!" Rahman yelled. She looked up as he did and popped a fire-limned rifleman off the fisher-bow as a thunder grew in her ears, like engines, like one big engine, bigger even than the fisher.
A bow arrived out of the fire-glare and the lightning-shot dark and crunched the fancy-boat to splinters, rode it and the men down; and of a sudden their last boarders dived for the remaining boat and tried to start it. Shots from elsewhere toppled them into the water.
The big boat rode past like a moving wall, came to a powered slow that churned the sea to chop. Shots popped and whined overhead, aimed at the burning fisher and the crazies. Howls went up from the raft. And all along that towering side men appeared with rifles aimed down at them.
Ali froze. Tommy let the pole down. Only Mondragon kept the sword a moment. And slowly, slowly let it sink to his side and drop to the deck.
She slipped the gun back to the drop-box, covering what she did with her knee. She let the lid down, all little motions, while Rahman rested on an arm, staring bleakly up at the dark-clothed men who held the guns on them all. The fisher went on burning.
'Take a line!" a voice shouted down at them. "Canaler, take a line!"
"The hell!" Altair stood up and shouted up at the faces and the guns. "The hell! You going to give us a tow, say where!"
A pale face appeared along the rim among the others. Firelight glittered off his collar, red as blood or rubies. "There are other choices," white-face called down. "And none of them favor you!"
"Trade'll have a say in it!"
"Take them," white-face said, pointing with a long, jewel-cuffed arm. And turned and vanished from the rail, leaving only the guns and the boarding crew.
"Dammit, I'll take the line," Altair cried. "I'll take the tine!"
The deck was huge, smooth pale wood, brass fittings, a lofty quarterdeck aft. She gaped about her dazedly, standing at Mondragon's side, looked back left as they hauled Rahman aboard, all strapped to a board and wrapped up with blankets.
They going to save him or what?
Tommy and Ali came last, under their own power. They began to take Ali away, a man on a side. They took Tommy, who belatedly began to struggle in panic. It did no good. They were big men. And there was not much of Tommy.
Guns were on them. They carried Rahman off, never taking him loose from the board they had tied him to, and disappeared belowdecks.
She shivered, wanted to lean on Mondragon, wanted to hold onto him. But he kept apart from her. She guessed why. It was about the only favor he could do her.
A man searched him for weapons. Mondragon stood still, swaying on his feet. The same man laid hands on her and she saw Mondragon's face go hard. She looked past that man's shoulder, looked at him, shut her eyes and opened them again.
Don't do nothing stupid, Mondragon. Please.
"Whose boat is this?" she asked hoarsely, "Whose?"
But no one answered.
And the fisher kept burning, black skeleton sinking down to join the Ghost Fleet. With all hands.
Chapter 10
THE trip belowdecks was dizzy nightmare, a confusion of steps and a passage forward, to a dark cubby of a compartment that smelled of the huge coils of rope that half filled it, all neat, all big-ship orderly. There were electrics up and down the corridor and a man turned on electrics inside the rope-storage, throwing it all into light.
Altair went in first, Mondragon second, and the door slammed. And locked, leaving them the light as footsteps went away. Electrics. In a boat-belly. White-face and his jewels and his glitter above the rail, arm stabbing down at them with the order that swept them up.
That big iron-shod bow grinding a boat to splinters. Without much noticing, same as it might have ground them under, except white-face wanted Mondragon; and took up the rest of them as something extra.
She sank down on the nearest coil of rope, legs going out from under her, and dropped her head down between her knees so it would quit spinning. Her arms went all but limp. The hand hurt with a dull throb. The feet—they stung, that was all. Her gut hurt. She heard chain rattle and crash and lifted her head, saw Mondragon had sunk down in like attitude on another such coil, and the trailing collar-chain had hit the planking. He looked up at her.
She sneezed, a violent, helpless explosion. "Damn," she said in a squeak of a voice, "you and water. Did it again, didn't you?"