R.W. III - The Dark Design

  "Quel dommage!"

  Sheehan had been a fine fellow. It was a pity that his funeral sermon was confined to, "What a pity!"

  On the other hand, he should not have been so careless as to put himself in the line of fire.

  Cogs well ran up to the corpse, retrieved the electrical line and battery, and walked swiftly backward, unreeling the line. Fortunately, Sheehan had inserted the fuse in the plastic, thus saving a few seconds. Everything was a matter of utmost speed, and seconds might mean the difference between success or failure.

  Cyrano retreated to the corner, flattened himself against the bulkhead, turned his head away, and stuck his fingers in his ears, opening his mouth at the same time.

  Though he could not see him, he could imagine Cogswell securing one end of the wire to a terminal of the battery, then touching the other with the other end of the wire.

  The explosion rocked and half-deafened him. Clouds of acrid smoke filled the corridor. Coughing, he felt his way along the bulkhead, touched the now open doorframe, dimly saw the blasted door lying over Sheehan's body, and then he was inside the stateroom.

  He had dived in and then rolled side wise, a maneuver made clumsy by the sheathed sword attached to his belt.

  Now he was up against something that felt like the legs of a bed. Almost directly above him, a woman was screaming. But where was John Lackland?

  A pistol boomed. Cyrano saw its flash through the smoke and was up and flying across the corner of the bed. His arms enfolded a thick and naked waist, and the tackled man went over sideways. There was a grunt, a flailing arm that struck Cyrano's head without hurting him, and then the man went limp.

  Cyrano had his dagger out and against the man's throat. "Make one move, and I'll cut your throat!"

  There was no response. Was the fellow frozen with terror or was he faking?

  Cyrano's other hand felt along the shoulder, up the neck, and along the head. The man did not move. Ah! A stickiness! John, if it was John, had struck his head and was indeed unconscious.

  Cyrano got up, groped along the bulkhead, and found the switch. The light showed a large room, luxuriously decorated and furnished by Riverworld standards. The smoke was clearing away now, revealing a very pretty and quite naked woman on her knees in the center of the bed. She had stopped screaming and was staring at him with huge blue eyes.

  "Get under the covers and stay there, and you won't be hurt, mademoiselle. De Bergerac does not make war upon women. Unless they try to kill him."

  The man sprawled on the deck was short and muscularly built and tawny haired. His blue eyes were open, and he was mumbling something. In a few seconds, he would be recovering his wits.

  Cyrano turned and saw why John had fired his pistol. Hoijes lay on his back on the floor, his chest torn open.

  "Mordioux!"

  He must have run in immediately after he had seen his colleague dive through the doorway. And John, seeing him outlined against the light from the corridor, had shot him. Doubtless, he, Cyrano, had not been fired at because the smoke was still too thick for him to be seen.

  Two of his men were dead so far. Perhaps there were others elsewhere. They would be left there, since it had been agreed that carrying off bodies would slow the getaway.

  Where were the others? Why had they not come in after him?

  Ah, here were Cogswell and Propp!

  Something hard struck him, lifted him up and backward, hurling him into a bulkhead. He fell down on his face, and lay there, while his ears rang and his head seemed to expand and collapse, expand and collapse, like an accordion. More heavy clouds of smoke filled the room, stinging his eyes and making him cough violently.

  It was some time before he could get onto his knees and more time before he managed to stand. By then he understood that a bomb had gone off in the corridor. Had it been thrown down from the wheelhouse?

  Whoever had done it, he had killed Cogswell and Propp. And he had come close to killing Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac.

  John was on his knees now, swaying, staring ahead of him while he coughed. A pistol lay within reach of his hand, but he did not seem aware of it.

  Ah, now the vile fellow had extended his hand to grasp its butt!

  Having neither gun nor dagger, Cyrano unsheathed his epee. He stepped forward and brought its triangular blade down like a club against the back of John's head. John fell forward on his face and lay motionless.

  The woman was on her face on the bed, her hands covering her ears and her shoulders shaking.

  Cyrano staggered through the smoke, almost stumbling over Propp's body. He stopped when he reached the doorway. His sense of hearing was coming back, but the firing in the corridor sounded faint. He got down on his knees and dared to stick his head out. The smoke was being carried away by the draft from the doorway at the top of the ladder. A body lay at the foot of the ladder. Evidently someone from the wheelhouse, perhaps the bomb thrower. Down at the end of the corridor two men crouched, firing out through the entrance. They were raiders, Sturtevant and Velkas.

  Now two men, smoke-grimed, were coming down the ladder. Reagan and Singh. They must have cleaned out the wheelhouse and were coming to help the abduction party. Their aid was indeed needed.

  Cyrano got up and gestured at them. They said something, but he could not hear it. That bomb must have been a rather large one. It had certainly made a mess of the corridor.

  Reagan and Singh entered the cabin and picked up the limp body of John. Cyrano followed them after sheathing his sword and reloading his pistols. The woman continued to hide her face in the mattress and to keep her hands over her ears. See no evil, hear no evil.

  On stepping out of the cabin, he saw that Sturtevant and Velkas had left. So – whoever they had been shooting at had been eliminated. Reagan and the giant Sikh, dragging John, his head lolling, his feet trailing, were almost to the door. Velkas reappeared, running by the three men, shouting something at them. They kept on while Velkas sped to Cyrano.

  By putting his mouth against Cyrano's ear and yelling, Velkas made himself understood. Some of John's crew had gotten to a steam machine gun. But their backs would be exposed to fire from John's cabin.

  They ran into the cabin and looked out a port. To the right was a platform which extended over the edge of the flight deck. On it was mounted the thick barrel of a steam gun. Two men were behind its shield, swinging the weapon around to bear on the helicopter.

  To his left, below him, were Sturtevant and the two carrying John. They would also be in the line of fire of the gun.

  Cyrano opened the wide, square port, braced his pistol on its ledge, and fired. A second later, Velkas' gun boomed in his ear, deafening him even more.

  They emptied their pistols. At this distance accuracy was impossible. The Mark IV pistols were using precious lead bullets, but the charges required to propel .69-caliber missiles caused a powerful recoil. Moreover, the wind, though slight, had to be compensated for.

  The first two volleys missed. Then the gunner fell sidewise and the other man, taking over, dropped a few seconds later. Neither may have been struck by a direct hit. The shield could have made the bullets ricochet. It did not matter. The effect was the same.

  By then, Sturtevant and the man dragging John were halfway across the deck. The chopper's vanes were whirling, but Cyrano could not hear them. Even if his hearing had been regained, the alarm sirens would have drowned out their noise.

  Cyrano grabbed Velkas' arm and pulled him close. Shouting in his ear, he told him to get to the machine gun and hold off anybody who tried to attack. He gestured at the armed men who had just emerged from a hatch at the far end of the deck.

  Velkas nodded and ran out the door.

  Cyrano looked again through the porthole. The parties sent to blow up the paddlewheel motors and the ammunition supply were not in sight. Either they were still working or they were cornered and trying to shoot their way out.

  He ran up the ladder and into the wheelhouse. Bodies
lay on the deck. One of his men, two of John's. The lights shone on their blue-grey faces, staring eyes, and open mouths.

  He turned off the alarm sirens and looked out the front screens. There was no one on the fore decks except a body at the foot of the ladder leading down from the fore part of the pilothouse and several bodies near the prow.

  The boat was alongside a well-lit dock far longer and more massive than those usually found along The River. Perhaps the crew of the Rex had built it, their captain having decided to give everybody a long liberty. Or perhaps extensive repairs were needed.

  It did not matter. What did was that the raiders had had the luck to find the boat manned only by guards and a few officers. John had decided to spend the night aboard, another item of luck, though not for him.

  However, the uproar had awakened those on shore. They were streaming out from the huts on the plain and the stockaded fortresses. The lights from the boat showed the forefront of the mob racing toward the dock. Many of these were crew members, since they carried metal weapons.

  It had not been in the plan to move the boat from the dock, but it should have been. Cyrano, knowing that the boat would be invaded in overwhelming numbers within a minute or so, took action. He sat down in the pilot's seat, pressed the motor power switches, and grinned as he saw the ON lights illuminated. Until now, he had not been sure that the motor power was available. After all, to make sure that the vessel was not stolen, John could have had the switches disconnected.

  He prayed that just now would not be the moment for the motors to be blown up. If they were, the boat would be immobilized, and he and his fellows might not get to the chopper in time.

  There was no time to untie the mooring lines. Too bad, but the power of the great electrical motors was immense.

  He pulled back on the long, knobbed metal rods, one on each side of him, and the paddlewheels began turning backward. They moved slowly at first, too slowly to tear the lines. He pulled the sticks as far back as they would go, thus, causing the wheels to rotate at full speed.

  The giant mooring ropes were stretched. But, instead of snapping, they pulled the ends of the vertical beams alongside the dock after the boat.

  For a moment, the fastenings of the piles held. The people on the dock either threw themselves down or leaped across the space between dock and boat. With a rending noise that could be heard even above their shouts and the firing aft, the piles came loose.

  Its supports removed, the near side of the dock tilted, precipitating most of those on it into the water. Only one man managed to jump onto the boat without falling in.

  The Rex backed swiftly away, dragging the beams alongside it at the ends of the massive ropes. Cyrano, laughing, stabbed a panel button, and the steam whistles hooted derisively at those left ashore or in the water.

  "How do you like that, John!" he yelled. "Not only you but your boat is stolen! It's only just!"

  Now he pushed the starboard stick forward, and the great boat turned down-River. He steered it to the middle of the stream and set the automatic pilot on. Its sonars estimating the depth and the distance from both banks, it would now hold a course exactly in the middle unless it was on a collision course with a large object. Then it would turn to avoid it.

  The man who had jumped onto the boat ran across the deck and disappeared from view. A half-minute later, he came up the ladder to the next deck. Evidently he was headed from the pilothouse.

  At that moment, the rain ceased.

  Cyrano leaned out of the door and emptied his pistol at the man as he ran across the deck. The man dived beneath an overhang, then stuck his head out and shot back at Cyrano. The only bullet that came near smashed itself halfway up the ladder.

  Cyrano looked out the aft screen. The helicopter was still sitting on the flight deck. John and his three captors were now inside it. Four men were running across the deck toward the texas. He lowered the screen and leaned out, gesturing to them that it was he who had moved the boat. They stopped and waved at him, grinning, and then turned and ran to the copter.

  At the far end of the deck some men were still shooting at the copter from a hatch. But their large-caliber plastic bullets were going against the wind, and most of them were falling on the deck or being blown over the deck. Cyrano could not determine how many were firing, but it seemed to him that there could not be more than three or four.

  Of course, there might be others in the boiler deck fighting with the demolition men.

  And then the boat shook and a great cloud of smoke rose from the deck near the port wheelhousing.

  The blast was followed by another almost immediately. This one was from the starboard side, a much more powerful explosion than the other. Pieces of flight deck soared up through the smoke, falling on the deck, some being propelled near the helicopter. The clouds were quickly dissipated, however, revealing a great hole just beside the starboard wheel.

  The lights went off, then burned again as the emergency system took over. The motors having stopped, the boat began to turn slowly, its nose moving toward the right bank. It would be drifting now, though it might be many kilometers before it rammed the bank.

  Sturtevant was back out of the chopper and waving at Cyrano to hurry.

  Four men appeared on the starboard side of the flight deck. Two came up from the ladder on the port.

  Cyrano cursed. Were these the only survivors of the explosives crews?

  Now little clouds of smoke rose from the hatch where the defenders had been firing at the chopper. One of his men dropped. The others gave protective fire while two of them picked up the fallen man and began to carry him between them toward the copter. One of them fell and could not get back up. He was picked up by two men. The other wounded man was hoisted up onto the shoulders of a comrade, and that one carried him though he staggered under the burden.

  Cyrano ran back to the other side of the wheelhouse. That damnable fellow who had gotten aboard appeared for a moment, running across the deck just below. He was not carrying his pistol, which meant that he must have discarded it after emptying it. He carried an epee in his right hand.

  His eye caught the movement near the foot of the ladder leading from the wheelhouse to the deck below. One of the men whom he had thought dead was living. And he was motioning for help. He must have seen the face of his chief at the screen.

  Cyrano did not hesitate. The orders were to leave the dead behind, but nothing had been said about abandoning the wounded. In any case, he would have disregarded such a command. There seemed to be no immediate grave danger to the chopper. The few defenders could not cross the flight deck without exposing themselves to the fire of those in the chopper. Of course, they could take another route, come up a ladder near the machine. But he, Cyrano, could get this poor wounded fellow to the copter before John's men got there.

  He went down the ladder as swiftly as he could, skipping steps, sliding his hands along the railings. By then Tsoukas had gotten on his hands and knees. His head hung low, and he was shaking it.

  Cyrano knelt by him. "Do not worry, my friend. I am here."

  Tsoukas groaned and pitched forward into a puddle of blood.

  "Mordioux!"

  He felt Tsoukas' pulse.

  "Merde!"

  The fellow was dead.

  But perhaps the other two were still alive.

  A swift examination dispelled his hope.

  He rose, and whirled, his hand going to the butt of his bolstered pistol. Here came that lone man, a brave person but a nuisance. Why had he not fallen into the water and so saved Cyrano the trouble of killing him and himself the irreparable harm of being killed?

  "Ayyy!"

  The pistol was empty; he had forgotten to load it. And there was no time to pick up one from the deck, to use the gun dropped by a dead man. Indeed, there was scarcely time to unsheath his sword and so prevent this audacious fellow from running him through. Boynton would have to wait for him a few seconds longer. That surely would be sufficient to dis
pose of this obstacle.

  "En garde!"

  The man was a trifle shorter than himself. But, whereas Cyrano was as thin as a rapier, this foolish person was as sturdy as the shaft of a war axe. His shoulders were broad, his chest was deep, and his arms were thick. He had a dark, Arabic-looking face of imposing structure, though his lips were too thick, and his blazing black eyes and white grin made him look like a pirate. He wore only a cloth fastened around the waist.

  With those wrists, Cyrano thought, his antagonist would make an excellent saberman – if he had the skill to match his muscle.

  But with a rapier, where speed, not strength, was most important, ah, that was a different matter.

  After the first few seconds, Cyrano knew that, whatever the man's aptitude with the saber was, he had never crossed blades with the likes of such before.

  Cyrano's parries, attacks, advances and retreats, lunges and recoveries were equally matched. Fortunately, the devil did not so far have the slightest superiority in quickness. If he had, he would have run his opponent through.

  He must know, however, that he was fighting another master. Even so, he was still smiling, seemingly undaunted, but behind his savage mask must be a realization that he would die if he became a fraction of a second slower in reflex and judgment.

  Time was on the side of the dark man. He had no place to go, nothing to do but fight, and Cyrano had to get to the machine soon. Boynton must know that Cyrano was still alive, since Sturtevant had seen him in the wheelhouse. He would be wondering what was keeping him.

  Would he wait a few minutes longer, and then, his chief not showing, think that he was dead for some unaccountable reason? Would he then take off? Or would he send someone to investigate?

  There was not time to think about such matters. This devil was countering every maneuver, just as Cyrano was countering his. It was a stalemate, though there was certainly nothing stale about this. The attacking and the defending blades flashed almost in rhythm with each other.

  Ah! Knowing this, the fellow had broken the rhythm. Once the rhythm was well established a fencer had a tendency to continue the sequence of motion. This almost unparalleled swordsman had hesitated slightly, hoping that Cyrano would follow the rhythm himself and so be spitted.