James Axler - Deathlands 53 Savage Armada

"We take this ship!" a bald pirate shouted.

Desperate men charged the wounded defenders.

Lying on the deck, Ryan emptied his blaster at the pirates, chilling two more before they were past him and charging the others. They clearly wanted no part of the raven-haired man with the battle-scarred face and a working blaster.

The two groups converged, each choosing a person to fight. A single blaster roared, and then it was swords, axes and knives in total blood chaos, the individual screams and curses mixing into the muted roar of mob warfare.

Weapon in hand, Ryan couldn't find anybody to chill. The people were so well mixed, the Deathlands warrior would only ace the sailors he had promised to protect. Then he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Crew of the Connie!" he shouted. "Hit the deck!"

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO NEW YORK LONDON AMSTERDAM PARIS SYDNEY HAMBURG STOCKHOLM ATHENS TOKYO MILAN MADRID WARSAW BUDAPEST AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

To Police Sergeant Matthew A. Mingle, who walked that thin blue line for as long as possible.

First edition March 2001

ISBN 0-373-62563-4

SAVAGE ARMADA

Copyright 2001 by Worldwide Library.

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

Printed in U.S.A.

Let them hate, as long as they fear.

Accius Navius, High Priest
for Tiberius the Elder, 617 B.C.

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endurein the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope

Even as the swirling electronic mists began to fade, the first shock of pain shot through his body and Ryan Cawdor knew that something was terribly wrong with the jump.

"Fucking hell," Ryan muttered, slumping to the cold concrete floor of the mat-trans chamber and gagging on the taste of sour bile that filled his throat. The big man swallowed a few times to clear his mouth. Fireblast! They hadn't had a jump this bad in weeks. For one terrible moment, he wondered if the machinery had malfunctioned, scrambled their insides, or something equally awful.

But then the convulsions racking his body began to subside, and Ryan could hear the moans and curses of the others around him. Nobody was screaming, and there was no smell of blood. No malfunc then, just a rad-blasted bad jump. Dimly he could sense the others spreading out, all instinctively trying to get away from the source of their pain.

Time passed slowly, and Ryan finally summoned enough strength to sit and brush the wild profusion of black hair from his sweaty face. There was the expected stink of sweat and puke in the air, but much stronger than normal. Usually the life-support system of a redoubt cleared away any unpleasant traces within minutes. The atmosphere in the underground bunkers was usually scrubbed clean and smelled with chem disinfectants. But not this time, and Ryan didn't like that.

Adjusting the patch that covered his ruined left eye, Ryan blinked his right into focus and weakly glanced about. Four, five, six, all of his friends were present, and looking as bad as the Deathlands warrior still felt.

Sprawled on the floor of the mat-trans unit, with one hand extended onto the concrete apron outside, was a tall slim man with silvery hair. Fighting for breath, the old man wore an old-fashioned frock coat, and a frilly white shirt drenched in sweat. An ebony walking stick with an elaborate silver lion's head was clenched in a twitching hand, and a monstrously huge revolver with two barrels jutted from the holster on his hip. The leather belt supporting the hand cannon was made entirely of lumpy pouches tightly buttoned shut.

"Youokay, Doc?" Ryan asked, surprised at the hoarseness of his voice.

Dr. Theophilus Tanner forced open an eye and looked vaguely about until focusing on the speaker. "Have" He stopped to swallow, then tried again. "Have we crossed the River Styx, my good Ryan?" he asked in a deep rumbling voice.

Just then a hacking cough took Ryan and he couldn't answer for a while. Nuking hell, he thought, there was another bad smell in the air, something familiar that he couldn't identify immediately. It lay under the stink of their tortured bodies like the scum under a river of sewage. Faint, but bad. Ryan seemed to have some trouble focusing his thoughts. Another side effect of the jump? Fumbling at his side, he found a canteen and tried to force his hands to unscrew the top without spilling the water everywhere.

"We're not dead yet, you old coot," murmured a stocky black woman flat on her stomach between the two men. Slumped over a canvas bag, a wild array of dreadlocks masked her features. A sleek revolver was holstered at her hip, a battered tin canteen draped over a shoulder. As she struggled to roll onto her side, a canvas lump was exposed as a bulky backpack patched with a dozen different pieces of cloth that almost hid the small red cross.