Iron Rage by James Axler Page B

his boots into the drain holes at the base of the gunwale.
    Holding on to the rail with his left hand, he drew the SIG from its holster with his right. A man with a billed cap and a beard stood to his right, not three feet away. He was already starting to turn.
    Ryan shot him twice through the back. The shots were loud even over the ringing in his ears left by the deck cannon going off almost in his face. The sailor fell.
    The one-eyed man vaulted the rail and landed in acrouch on the deck. Somebody emerged from the cabin, to his left, and he sensed the man grabbing for him.
    Ryan dealt him a sharp elbow strike. It struck hard against the man’s chin, momentarily numbing Ryan’s left hand. The sailor reeled back with a cry. The initial blow was followed by a side kick that slammed the man onto his butt on the deck. Ryan pivoted slightly and fired a single shot. Just as the sailor was starting to bound forward to his feet, he collapsed to the deck with a hole in his forehead.
    Drawing the panga with his left hand, Ryan rushed forward and was among the still-confused crew like a tiger among sheep.
    The man attending the surprisingly little deck cannon looked up in amazement as Ryan appeared around the corner of the mostly open cabin that lay in front of the vessel’s exposed topside boiler. Ryan delivered two shots that drilled though the blasterman’s throat. He emitted a sort of croaking sound and toppled backward over the rail, leaving his wet mop stuck down the fat smoothbore barrel.
    A second man in a peaked cap stood behind the cannon in a spill of yellow shine from the lanterns mounted at the front of the wheelhouse, in front of Ryan and to his left. The Deathlands warrior chopped him at the base of the neck from behind with a backhand swipe. The officer went down.
    That left two crewmen in sight, one to the right of the cannon, turning to face Ryan with a bag of what had to have been premeasured black powder in his hands, and the other on the cannon’s far side, bending over alow crate that contained several softball-size iron balls. Ryan shot the nearer man, the one with the powder bag, twice through the chest. He collapsed in a heap beside the cannon.
    Abruptly Ryan felt himself caught up from behind by a pair of arms snaking beneath his own. Then hands interlocked behind his head, pulling both his arms up while his neck was forced inexorably forward. His attacker, who had to have been bigger than he was, hoisted his boots off the deck.
    Sparks began to pop like tiny muzzles-flashes behind Ryan’s eye. He was in a beyond Code Red emergency. That full nelson neck lock could crank his spine far enough to put him out, cause permanent injury up to paralyzing him, or leave him staring up at the stars through the fleeting wisps of clouds above. All of which would mean he’d failed in his mission to cover his friends’ slow-motion escape from the armored battle fleet.
    The other gunner came at him, his bearded face a twist of rage. He held one of the cannonballs overhead in both hands, preparing to smash it down on Ryan’s exposed and helpless head.
    But while his skull was definitely exposed and vulnerable, Ryan was far from helpless. He’d been here before.
    As the cannon-loader lunged at him, Ryan whipped up his lower body and pistoned both his boot heels into the man’s gut—neither a solar plexus nor a nut shot, but between the hip bones, midway from navel to nut-sack. It was a blow meant to unbalance, not stun.
    It did. The gunner was already leaning forward. As Ryan intended, the man’s legs whipped out from under him. Though the motion almost made him black out, Ryan torqued his own hips rapidly counterclockwise, twisting his own legs out of the way.
    By sheer luck the falling cannonball hit Ryan’s captor somewhere between the same spot Ryan had kicked his pal and a thigh. Ryan had never counted on that—he had other means of getting his attacker to loosen