Hendrel Entigh waited impatiently as the last of the embarked militia finished pulling the crates of ammunition clear of the cargo bed.
It had taken him longer to manage things in town than he’d planned, and longer still to get everybody set up in the woods where Martin had wanted them. And still longer to set up the .50 caliber gun and instruct a couple of the brighter lights how to fire it without hurting themselves.
It was already well past the time when he’d have been expected back. He hoped that the delay wouldn’t prove disastrous.
The last of the Militiamen slapped the bed of the truck to let him know that he was empty, so he let the clutch out and rolled forward. His guts were twisted and his extremities were ice cold. His throat was dry. It was as though the last battle of the war had been yesterday instead of twenty-three years ago. It was all flooding back — the fear, the excitement, the uncertainty.
Never again, he’d promised himself when he’d hung up his uniform and pistols, and leaned his old rifle against the closet’s back wall. No more adventuring, no more fighting, no more of hurling himself into uncertainty with no more support than what he was carrying and his faith in the madman he was following.
Yet here he was again. Not chasing adventure this time. This time it had found him. Caught him unawares. And so he’d gone and uncaged the madman to meet it.
He pulled up well short of the gate, making half a loop to the right and stopping the old truck side on so that those inside could clearly see its non-military nature. Taking a deep breath that only missed hyperventilation by a fraction, he hauled the door deliberately open and stepped out onto the running board as though this were just another delivery. he leaned back in to sound the horn just in case they hadn’t seen him yet.
A few moments passed, and they didn’t shoot him arbitrarily off the truck, so there was that.
* * *
From the far side of the stead, Dar heard the Oshkosh’s horn. The silhouette froze. It was only partly visible between the merlons!
Martin waved to Av, who stepped out five long paces, turning in place to orient on his target. He had to take another two steps to the side, for the guard hadn’t stopped directly in the opening and the throw from the original direction wasn’t clear.
Three quick swings and the loop shot up and out like a bullet, dropping over the shoulders of the startled guard, who’d begun a turn at the whistling sound of the rope’s approach. Dar squeezed the trigger just as the loop dropped past the target’s head. The old Nagant bucked, making a sound like a shook up beer can when the opener first pierces the tin. The head jerked back just as the rope settled about the man’s chest and tightened.
Less than three seconds after the horn had sounded its first beep, Av was hauling the limp body over the wall. The two older men were already moving by the time the inert form had bounced from the back of one of the milling allox and thudded into the hard pack at the wall’s base.
It took Dar a fraction of a second longer. The image of the silhouette jerking away from the bullet didn’t want to leave his vision.
“Darnan!” Martin hissed urgently.
Dar came unstuck, lowering the Nagant, scooping up the Lewis gun, and rolling over the fence.
He reached the door to the manure pit at the same time as the others and tried to hand the revolver back to Av. Av shook his head and pushed out with the hand not cradling his Thompson. “You’re going to need it sooner than me, Boy,” he whispered. “You keep it for now. But hand over the Lewis and that satchel full o’ drums.”
Dar nodded and stuffed the revolver under his arm beneath the Colt holster, squeezing it in place as he fumbled with big machinegun and satchel, passing the gear clumsily to the old man.
He took the key ring with both hands and started running his fingers over the keys. Old man Entigh had said the round one with two notches cut into the jagged side. There were five or six round ones, with varying numbers of notches, and he had to run his fingers along the edges of half of them before finding the correct one.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the lock snicked open. The hinges were terrifyingly loud as the double doors swung up and out. Didn’t anybody oil anything anymore?
The stench hit them like a runaway freight wagon, sucking the breath from their lungs as it washed up and over them. They drew the bandannas they were already wearing up over their noses. It didn’t really help, but it made it seem to themselves as though they were at least trying.
Martin led the way, edging sideways around the half full manure spreader wagon, his gut sucked in to maintain as much distance as possible from it. Av followed and Dar brought up the rear.
* * *
Kapitän Heinemann stood atop the walkway of the wall beside the gate and observed the native distastefully. What did the idiot think he was about? Had he not seen the dead policemen?
“Bootsmann?” he asked.
“What is your business?” the bootsmann yelled out in his thickly accented English to the man standing atop the grocery truck.
“I’m here to offer you whatever assistance I can!” the man called back.
Kapitän Heinemann blinked. That was patently absurd. “Why would he do tha—?” he started before turning to engage the man directly. “Why would you do that?” he demanded.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“To insure that you leave my island as quickly as possible without anybody else getting hurt!” the man hollered back, his hands cupped around his mouth.
Heinemann nodded curtly to himself. Not so absurd after all. “What do you offer?”
“Whatever it takes to get you away from here!” the man answered.
“Do you think he’s serious?” Heinemann asked the bootsmann softly.
The bootsmann shrugged noncommittally. “What matter?” he asked laconically. “What can he do? If he brings us parts, we’re away the quicker. If he doesn’t, we’re no worse off than we are now.”
“He could be gathering information for the Royal Navy,” Heinemann mused.
Another shrug, this one unaccompanied.
“Very well, gather a parts list from the mechanics. Perhaps we might be off sooner than we’d hoped. Where is young Jaeger?”
“Still aboard ship,” the bootsmann replied. “Still trying to fix—”
“Get him down here,” Heinemann ordered. He is as near an expert as we have on the workings of our wonderful experiment.”
“What about the shakedown engineer?” the bootsmann asked.
“Sunderland?” Heinemann scoffed. “The man is as much use as a third arschbacke in a narrow chair. Have you so much as seen him since the attack on the Englisher vessels? I’m sure he’s cowering beneath his bunk as we speak.
“At least young Jaeger has something of a spine. And he knows the guts of that ship better than either of us.”
* * *
Several allox calves and a lone cow calf were bawling hungrily, having long missed their last meal. While the noise masked their incursion nicely, Martin wished they’d shut the hell up. He, himself, sort of wanted to hear what was going on up in the barn.
The stairway up onto the main floor was almost a ladderway. Balance was tricky with the heavy submachine gun at the ready. The trap door at the top was closed — they hadn’t anticipated that. If that door was locked from above....
It wasn’t. Bringing the Thompson up to shoulder height, ready to snap it out if need be, he eased the trap up with his head. He jerked back abruptly, nearly falling back down the ladder.
“What’s wrong?” Av inquired urgently at his gasp.
“Nothing!” he hissed back down. “Shut up!”
Sticking his head back up through the trap, he came face to face, once again, with one of the barn cats, staring calmly back at him as though watching strangers come up through the floor was an everyday occurrence. He didn’t even bother shooing it away.
Craning his neck, he looked around so far as the crack of the opened trap would let him. Nothing. He hadn’t really expected to find anyone. With the allox trapped outside, there wasn’t anything of interest in the barn and no reason to station anyone in here. Still, he moved quietly and slowly as he opened the trap fully, laying its upper end carefully against the wall before climbing out into the barn proper.
Av followed close on his heels, edging to the left as Martin took the right. Dar, bringing up the rear, moved carefully back around to the supply room. The barn —aside from them and the cats— was empty.
“Alright,” Martin snapped. Av, up in the silo. Dar, with me.”
Av didn’t bother to reply. He was already nearly to the ladder, his Thompson looped over a shoulder, bouncing against the heavier gun already riding across his back.
Martin and Dar moved from door to door, window to window, trying to assay the level of nearby activity. Not much. This whole end of the stead seemed abandoned.
From the milk house door, they could see out past the old pig sheds and the raised cistern to the back of the house and the bunkhouse. Between the corner of the main house and the edge of the bunkhouse they could see through to the knot of pirates gathered around the front gate. Entigh was doing his job.
The airship loomed large over the stead, hunkered low over the south wall, moored just thirty feet or so higher than the dragon stakes. Seen from this close in, she was even bigger than she’d appeared from the woods on the far side of the wall. The hull had to be forty feet, keel to deck if it was an inch. Damn. The likelihood was that their earlier estimate of her crew size would have been woefully inadequate.
“I think we’re looking at more than forty hostiles here, Dar,” Martin whispered. “Probably closer to eighty or a hundred, if not more.”
Dar suppressed the urge to whistle. As if thirteen to one odds weren’t bad enough. It never occurred to him to wonder whether they should continue.
Martin looked out over the yard. Lots of activity near the front gate. Lots more by that portion of the machine shed that he could see past the bunkhouse. The old hog sheds blocked his view of the tractor shed.
“Dar,” he whispered without turning. “There’s three stakes directly between this door and the house. And did you know about that fence?”
Dar shook his head slowly. “No sir,” he said apologetically. “I’ve never actually been inside the stead before. I only know what Mai told me about it. No worries, though, I can get over it pretty quick.”
“Yeah, but it’s gonna slow you down,” the elder Palin said. “And—” suddenly, he ducked back, catching Dar doing the same out the corner of his eye.
Somebody over there was thinking too hard. Several pirates were running from the area around the front gate towards the north, east, and west walls, looking, no doubt, for the possible attack while attention was diverted.
“Dar,” he hissed.
“Got it, Pop.”
“I’ll take low, you take high.”
The nearest access to the east wall was a ladder just inside the main door of the barn. It was a race!
Dar cocked the Nagant as he pelted for the main doors, his father running beside him, a wicked looking blade now to hand. Dar fell back, ceding the lead to give him clear maneuver.
The door swung open even as they reached it from the inside, and Martin Palin bull-rushed the oncoming figure, smashing him back and driving the long blade in and up under his sternum, twisting into a slashing withdrawal. The man didn’t even gurgle as his heart was bisected. He hit the barn floor, gushing blood into the straw. Martin was up and flattened against the door, swinging the Thompson off of his shoulder and up, resting the weapon’s forearm on his own.
Dar, meanwhile, was going up the ladder like the rungs beneath him were on fire. He had the cocked revolver clutched in his left hand, with the web of his thumb crammed into the notch between hammer and frame. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot himself because he was in a hurry.
He reached the walkway at the same time as the pirate further along the wall, who’d ascended another ladder on the far side of the pig sheds. This was a longer shot, and his heart was pounding with the adrenalin rush. The revolver bucked in his hands and the figure hesitated, stumbling. Cursing under his breath, Dar cocked the hammer and gave him another one. This time the man dropped bonelessly onto the walkway.
This time, too, when the man dropped, he went away. No after image, no struggle to understand the action. It was getting easier. He’d worry about that some day, but for now, he was in too much of a hurry.
Slipping the Nagant inside his shirt, Dar went back down the ladder and rejoined his father. He nodded at the old man’s raised eyebrow, still breathing hard.
There was a clatter farther back in the barn. Av had tossed something down from the top level of the silo to let them know he was in place.
* * *
Hendrel Entigh was mad to demand the status of his daughter and grandchildren, but he held his tongue as he made a show of copying down the extensive list of parts the arrogant bastard was demanding. The last thing he wanted was for them to get the idea he was related to anyone inside those walls.
Questioning where he could to stretch things out, he strove to give the Palins as much time as he was able. He had no idea how long it would take them and old Tall Pines to infiltrate to the house, but he meant to give them every second he could.
“I can get you a block,” he called up, “but I’m not sure it’ll do you any good! The nearest thing I’ve got is an old Bristol gas job. It can be converted, but it’ll take more time than you probably have! You can take it with you, though, and do the conversion yourselves underway!”