Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight! Read online

  “What now?” Jack asked when Renata stood before him.

  She didn’t answer, just nodded her head toward the front door. A pirate opened it, and Nicky Hawkins walked in. He went directly to Renata, took her in his arms, and pressed his lips against hers, kissing her deeply while eyeing Jack the whole time.

  “I guess you won that competition after all,” Jack said. “Funny, I don’t feel like I lost out on anything.”

  Nicky released Renata and snarled at him. “You were always second-best, Jack, and you still are.”

  Seeing them together caused puzzle pieces to fall into place. “You let me overhear you plotting against me!” Jack said. “Knowing that if I ran away—”

  “We could herd you back into Renata’s clutches,” Nicky continued. “And you’d trust her even if you didn’t trust me. A little lost lamb, Jack, that’s all you are. A sheep, blindly following somebody else’s lead instead of carving out your own path in the world. Well, here’s where you get to change all that. You can join up with us, if you have the guts. But it’s your last chance.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Jack said, “is why you’d hook up with those three-eyed bastards and turn on your own kind.”

  “The war’s already been decided,” Nicky replied. “We lost. Some of us haven’t figured it out yet, so we’re still trying to fight. But they have the technology, the resources, and the smarts. Plus, they have the most important factor—they are willing to do whatever it takes. They’re ruthless, and in war it turns out that’s a powerful weapon. Little by little, people will figure it out.

  “But the Martians know they’ll need some of us. By joining forces with them now, we’ll be in the best position when it’s all over. Renata and I want Asia for ourselves, and they’ll be in a position to give it to us.”

  “You still won’t control it,” Jack argued. “You’ll be doing the bidding of creatures from another world. You’ll be enslaving human beings on behalf of monsters. I’m not sure what that makes you, but it’s more monster than man.”

  Nicky took Renata’s hand. “Jack’s hopeless,” he said. “It takes a certain mentality to be a winner, and he’s never had it. We should just let your guys torture him.”

  “I don’t think he knows anything,” Renata countered. “He would have told me if he did. He tried to cover his ignorance with noble talk, but he’s just another pawn. Torturing him would be a waste of energy. We’ll kill him. And before anybody knows he’s dead, we’ll use his disappearance to lure Hunter Noir and Josie Taylor here. Dead, Jack will do us more good than he ever could have alive.”

  Jack was surprised she knew about Josie and Hunter. He guessed he shouldn’t have been. This was China, they kept reminding him. People here seemed to trade secrets like kids at home had bubble-gum cards before the war.

  Nicky pointed to three of the pirates. “We’re leaving,” he said. “When we’re gone, kill him. Dump his body where it won’t be found.”

  “And don’t make a mess,” Renata added. She came back to Jack, straddled him in his chair, unzipped his flight suit, and put her hands against his chest. She ground against him and planted a deep, passionate kiss on his lips. “I always liked you, Jack. We could have been so good together.” Then she traced her fingers from his groin to his neck, rose from the chair, and turned away from him, taking Nicky’s hand once more. “Farewell, Jack,” she said on her way out the door.

  A minute later, she and Nicky and most of the pirates were gone. The three who remained behind held a quick, quiet discussion in Chinese. Jack could only assume they were planning his demise.

  He also realized something that took him by surprise. Inside his flight suit, against his stomach, he felt what he could only guess was a slip of folded paper. Renata must have put it there when she unzipped him. He didn’t know what it could be, but he was curious. And he would never find out if he didn’t survive the next few minutes.

  The three pirates looked as bloodthirsty as any men Jack had ever seen. They wore loose-fitting shirts and snug pants and boots, and their faces and bare arms were latticed with scars. One was missing a thumb, another seemed to have no teeth; his lips were mushed together and his face sank in where his jaw should have been, like a deflated balloon. The last one had a stripe of scar tissue from his left ear to the point between his eyes, and his left eye, milky and blind, protruded as if it had just landed there and could roll away at any moment. He and the one-thumbed man were armed with swords; the toothless guy had a Mauser pistol that dated from before the war that was supposed to end all wars. Whoever had said that about it hadn’t counted on Hitler, Jack figured, or Martians.

  “Hey, ugly,” Jack said to him. “Anyone ever tell you how to take care of your teeth? You’re supposed to brush every day.”

  The pirate sneered without evident comprehension. Jack peeled back his gums, exposing his own pearly whites. “Teeth,” he said, then clacked his together three times for emphasis. “What happened to yours?”

  The man spat in his face. Jack couldn’t move his hands, couldn’t reach his face with his shoulder, so he left it there and returned the favor.

  The pirate seemed to forget he had a gun in his belt. He came close enough to slug Jack in the face, twice. The second punch knocked out a tooth. Appropriate revenge, Jack supposed, spitting the tooth out and tasting blood. When the guy came in for a third attempt, Jack rose just enough to get the chair off the ground and brought one leg down on the pirate’s instep. Jack put all his weight on that side and felt the bone and muscle of the man’s foot give beneath the pressure. The pirate let out a scream.

  Before he could move away, Jack lifted the chair again, this time driving his shoulder into the pirate’s solar plexus. The other pirates were moving toward them, swords drawn, so Jack knew he didn’t have much time. He whirled around and slammed the chair’s rear legs into the toothless man’s shins. The guy dropped to the ground, and Jack went over backward, landing on top of him. The wood of the chair cracked, but held.

  Jack wasn’t concerned about that, yet. As the pirate groaned and tried to shove him off, Jack felt for the man’s belt. Finding that, he followed it to the Mauser, still stuffed there. He yanked it free and rolled away from the man.

  The one-thumbed pirate had his sword raised and was about to bring it down in a savage arc when Jack fired. The Mauser was loud and it had a hell of a kick, but the round shot up into the man’s thigh. He screeched, dropped his sword, and staggered back, tripping over the toothless guy. Jack rolled again, getting into a position from which he could shoot the third pirate, who was coming fast. That slug caught the pirate in the throat and kept going, spraying blood in both directions. He fell, making gagging sounds. Jack fired twice more, killing the toothless pirate, then, shifting the chair once more, he finished One-Thumb with a shot to the head.

  The angle made it awkward, and by the time he finished, Jack thought his wrists were on fire, but he managed to use the fallen sword to saw through his ropes. Massaging his wrists, he checked the dead pirates briefly for anything else that might be useful. He found a few more bullets for the Mauser, which he reloaded, and a wicked-looking knife with an eight-inch blade.

  Finally, he remembered the piece of paper inside his flight suit. It had fallen out during the fight, but he located it and opened it up. It had the words “Southern Cross” written on it, in a hand he still recognized, all these years later, as Renata’s. Below that were longitude and latitude coordinates, and the number 314.

  A triple-cross, Jack thought. There was more to Renata than met the eye, after all. He left her apartment behind with a grin on his face.

  He approached the waterfront cautiously, staying in the shadows. Jack didn’t know if anyone had discovered the dead pirates at Renata’s apartment yet, but if not, it wouldn’t be too much longer. When they learned that he had escaped, Nicky and Renata would have both their crews on full alert.

  But he might have a window, if he could act fast.

  Ther
e were sailors milling around the dry-docked submarine and sitting at a teahouse nearby. The junk was anchored just offshore, and some of the pirates were rowing a skiff toward it. Others were still on the waterfront, not mingling with the American seamen but not far away. Jacked wondered if they knew who had shot their comrades, back on the mainland.

  He eyed the sailors until he spotted a familiar thatch of red hair. Charlie Higgins was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette. A few of his crewmates stood nearby, engaged in conversation, but Charlie stood several feet from the nearest. Jack risked walking right past him. As he did, he whispered, “Charlie. Meet me around the corner.”

  Charlie started, but kept his surprise well disguised. He let Jack get around the corner, sucked in a deep drag from his butt, then tossed it to the ground and stomped it out. Jack waited in the mouth of a nearby alley, and a minute later Charlie joined him.

  “What gives, boss?” he asked. “I heard you were a dead man.”

  “Those reports are premature,” Jack said, paraphrasing Mark Twain. “Can you round up six or seven guys you trust? I mean, completely. With your life.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said without hesitation.

  “Get ‘em,” Jack said. “Now. We don’t have much time.”

  Charlie walked away without another word. Jack remained in the alley, comforted only slightly by the veil of darkness. Minutes dragged by. Every footfall that Jack heard might have been his last.

  But then Charlie returned, and with him were six other seamen. “Are you guys loyal to Captain Hawkins, or to the human race?” Jack asked. A few showed surprised looks; others nodded in understanding. Assured of their commitment to the struggle against the Martian invaders, Jack took them into the alley and quickly outlined his plan. Moving quickly and carefully, they made their way past the sub, avoiding seamen and pirates, and closed on Renata’s big yacht, the Domina.

  There was one guard standing on the dock. Jack borrowed a cigarette from Charlie and approached the guard alone, cigarette extended, as if looking for a light. The guard fumbled in his pockets for a few moments, giving Jack time to get close. When he was near enough, he dropped the cigarette onto the dock and shot out his right fist, catching the guard in the throat. The guard lurched forward. Jack hit him in the throat again, this time with the side of his fist, in a left-to-right punch that dislocated the man’s trachea. Unable to breathe, the guard dropped to the boards. Jack went down on top of him, silencing the guard’s struggle with his own body. When the man ceased moving, Jack rolled him off into the water and gave a low whistle.

  At that signal, the seamen struck. Most boarded the yacht from the dock, but two had gone into the water and came up on the far side. Renata’s crew—more refined than her pirates, but not by much—streamed up from belowdecks, but the Americans made quick work of them with hands and knives. None of the sub’s crew left on the waterfront knew anything until the yacht’s big engines started up, and then they weren’t necessarily alarmed. Even if they knew the yacht belonged to the Dragon’s Daughter, they didn’t necessarily know her relationship to their captain. As the yacht pulled away from the pier, the pirates rowing to the junk started shouting, and more pirates came on deck. Only then did the sailors seem to notice anything amiss, and with their submarine in dry-dock, they were in no position to act.

  The pirates put their backs to their oars, and were soon scrambling onto their ship. By then the yacht had raced past the junk, headed out to sea. The water was choppy but the air was calm.

  “There’s no wind,” Charlie said. He had the helm; Jack sat nearby, plotting out a course. “They’re dead in the water.”

  “They’ve got engines,” Jack told him. “They don’t need wind.”

  “We’ve still got a head start,” Charlie said. “I don’t think they’ll catch us. Have you figured out where we’re going?”

  Jack slid the paper from Renata over to him. “Don’t ask what the 314 means, because I have no idea.”

  “Southern Cross,” Charlie read. “The constellation?”

  “That’s my guess. The coordinates she gave us should put us right under it.” He took the paper back and wrote some other numbers down on it, from memory. “Have someone use the yacht’s radio, keep trying to raise this frequency,” he said. “We’re likely to need some help.”

  “What do you think we’ll find when we get there?”

  “Nothing,” Jack replied.

  “Then…”

  “Nothing on the surface. I expect I’ll have to take a little swim.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Eyeing the chart Jack was working on, Charlie made a slight course correction.

  “That makes two of us,” Jack said. “And millions more around the world, who don’t know what we’re up to but will be in a lot of trouble if we don’t succeed.”

  “Then,” Charlie said, “we’d better make sure we do.”

  Having left the junk far behind, they journeyed for more than a day, and reached the point Renata had indicated a few hours after midnight. The Southern Cross constellation had slipped down in the sky, but a constellation was never a true measure of location. The points of latitude and longitude, however, were specific and didn’t move around.

  One of the Americans, Delmar Rose, had been a chef in civilian life, before war and interplanetary invasion had upended the world. He got strong coffee brewing in the galley, and prepared better meals than Jack had tasted in ages.

  Jack had prepared during the voyage, so when they arrived at their destination, he wasted no time getting on his frogman gear. He had figured Renata would keep some air tanks and regulators on the yacht, and was pleased to also find a rubber wet suit, a weight belt, swim fins, a diving mask, and an underwater flashlight with them. It wasn’t everything he would want for an underwater salvage operation, but it would have to do. Once he had the gear on, he left Charlie and the others with some final instructions and tipped backwards into the water. The weight belt helped draw him down into what became, in only moments, nearly impenetrable darkness. He’d have preferred to wait until daylight, but there was no way to know when the pirates or somebody else might catch up. They had no time to waste. He followed the flashlight’s thin beam down, down, down.

  Nearing the bottom, he saw strange fish but nothing resembling a shipwreck. Had Renata steered him wrong? To what end?

  Jack played the flashlight beam across the sea floor, and it landed on a piece of painted steel. His heart thumped in his chest. It could be nothing, but it could also be significant. He searched around it for a couple of minutes, then saw more debris. Soon there was a trail of it, and he followed it to the wreckage of a good-sized freighter.

  Trouble was, that debris was strewn across the sea floor for at least a mile, maybe more. And he really had no idea what he was looking for. Renata had said that the scientist’s research might be recoverable, but she’d never told him what form that research would take.

  He swam toward the bulk of the sunken freighter. If there were any clues, his best hope to find them was to start where the scientist had been. As he neared it, he remembered the seemingly random number Renata had written on the paper she’d passed him.

  314.

  This was a freighter, not an ocean liner. The number wouldn’t refer to a stateroom, but maybe it was a number found in the ship somewhere.

  The ship had a massive hole in its hull, and it had cracked more or less in half as it sank. Jack swam in through the midsection and started checking doors. Many had numbers tacked to them on little brass plates. He was on the second deck, so he swam back out, went down one more deck, and found some numbers beginning with 3. He followed them until he found 314 on one. The door was open, and beyond it was a space that looked like a large storage closet. He looked around inside, but nothing looked to him like research of any kind.

  He gave up and returned to the corridor, casting his beam one way, then the other.

  And at the far end he saw a brown case, like
a large suitcase. He hurried to it, blood roaring in his ears, the sound of his own rebreather seeming to echo. When he reached the case he turned it this way and that, shining the light on it. It was fastened shut with a series of brass closures, and as far as he could tell, it appeared to be watertight. Finally, he found a small metal plate with four letters stamped on it: B LEE.

  Benjamin Lee.

  That was the name Renata had used. The scientist trying to carry his findings back to the States.

  If this case wasn’t what he was looking for, then he was out of luck. He didn’t have much air left in the tanks, and he had no way to narrow his search. He grabbed the handle of the case and started to swim.

  When he reached the surface again, just as the sun cleared the horizon, all hell was about to break loose.

  Jack was handing the case up to several of the seamen—it was remarkably heavy out of the water—when the submarine surfaced, two hundred yards away. Its arrival caused a wake that rocked the yacht and almost made one of the seamen lose his grip on the case. Jack braced for it, but the man caught it again before it fell. They hauled it aboard just as Nicky Hawkins emerged onto the submarine’s bridge, holding a megaphone.

  “Ahoy the Domina!” he called. “Or should I say, congratulations, Jack? You’re more resourceful than I knew.”

  “Maybe you’d better give up now!” Jack shouted back. He grasped the hand of a seaman who helped him up over the rail. “You never could beat me!”

  “I always beat you,” Nicky corrected. The sub crawled ever closer, and as it did, a shadow passed over the yacht. Jack looked up to see two Martian spacecraft hovering overhead like giant boomerangs. “And I’m beating you now, too. We saw you hand a trunk up from the water. Pass it over to us and we won’t sink the yacht.”