Uncharted, p.25
Uncharted, page 25
Our ship, he corrected himself. The kid had set the terms, fifty-fifty, and Sully had accepted. Except then Nate had figured everything out on his own. Sully’d just followed him to the prize. And the kid couldn’t fly a helicopter.
Nobody said you weren’t gonna have to work for it. And you’d better get going.
Sully popped the flap on his pack’s outer pocket, pulled out the earpieces in their little flat case. Third time’s a charm. He handed one to Nate, slipped the other into his ear after checking to make sure the light was on. He’d re-read the instructions in Jakarta.
“You know the drill,” he said, and centered the pack across his back. He was strong, still lifted when he got to the gym, but it was gonna be a drag trying to make it to the Halo. And the mainmast looked so impossibly tall…
Go already, Braddock’ll land before you make it halfway!
Sully grabbed the ropes and started up, reaching for hand and footholds that had been sitting in a cave for five goddamn centuries—
“Hey, Sully,” Nate called, and Sully looked back. The kid’s expression was somber, sincere.
“Don’t crash,” Nate said.
“Thanks for the positive reinforcement,” Sully muttered, and started climbing again.
* * *
Sully headed up the mainmast, strong but gasping after ten feet with that pack on his back. Nate would have dropped it, but Sully was nuts.
We all go a little mad sometimes, he thought, and turned around on the sailing ship, gently gliding south now, high over the sea where it had once labored. Helicopter air pulsed over the creaking deck. He picked up the cutlass and headed for the sterncastle, climbing a sturdy oak ladder to the helm.
The mizzenmast came up through the deck, the massive, ancient wheel just between it and the poop. There was an actual capstan in front of the cabin door, a thick vertical log with wooden spokes coming off the sides. The sailors would turn it to bring up the anchor.
Nate put down the sword and stepped to the helm, resting his hands on the rounded handles, ten and two. One of the lower sails had dropped and it whistled in the wind, tatters flapping overhead. He looked out across the trembling ship, the volcano portside of her, the endless water starboard.
Eastward there was a chain of rocky islands, the ones he’d sent Chloe to plunder. Nate squinted past the volcano. He saw some distant dark shapes against the crystal blue. It was hard to tell, the sun off the water was blinding.
“Sully, I think we can lose them if we head left, into those islands.”
Nate looked up, saw that Sully was maybe seventy feet over the deck. Pretty fast, for an old guy. The rickety-looking crow’s nest was another twenty past that, but it was framed by the giant chains hooked to the helicopter. The pair on the left ran right past the top of the mast and clipped to the copter high above—another twenty feet? Thirty? Nate couldn’t tell from the deck.
“Port side,” Sully gasped. “Islands. Got it.”
“All hands on deck!” Nate cried, and turned the wheel. It groaned but obeyed. “Raise anchor and hoist the mainsail! Prepare to come about, we’re underway!”
“Hey, king of the world,” Sully gasped. “Stay sharp!”
“Oh, come on man, I’m just having a little fun,” Nate said, and turned the wheel again. He could feel tension from unseen connections, probably brittle with age. Was the rudder shifting? How cool is this? He wracked his brain for more sailing terms, but could only remember orlop, which wasn’t awesome to yell. Man the yardarms?
Sully had reached the crow’s nest. He climbed into it, gasping, stretching one hand toward the nearest chain. The gap was maybe ten feet. If he could get up to the very top of the mast, the gap was half that—
An injured merc stumbled out onto the deck below, holding a cutlass. He wore a cap—in this weather?—and snarled when he saw Nate at the helm.
Nate grabbed his own cutlass and jumped down, wishing they’d counted mercs before declaring victory.
* * *
The climb was a nightmare. Sully had to stand on the rickety, rotten rail of the uppermost platform and leap for the nearest chain, which he almost fucking missed because his backpack was so heavy. Sully wrapped himself around the cold metal, took a deep breath, and started climbing. The links made good rungs and there were a lot of them, plenty to grip.
Overhead, the chains were hooked to a wide, round white plate four feet across, and past that was the drop ladder on the Halo, half-shielded by curves of rigid steel. Straight up into the cabin-slash-cockpit.
Sully dug deep to push himself over the plate, the wind and the roar of the helicopter blasting his ears, pulling at his clothes. He crawled to his knees on the white-painted steel, touched the bottom rungs of the ladder and stood, panting. He pulled himself up into the copter on numb fingers.
The pilots were the only people he saw, climbing on deck. Sully immediately tackled the co-pilot, pushing him out of his chair and against the door. He reached around and popped the door release.
Out went the co-pilot. The pilot was bringing up a gun—
Sully blocked the move, hammering the pilot’s wrist. The weapon clattered to the floor, and the copter took a dive.
* * *
The merc was putting up a fight but he was wearing out fast, his swipes getting clumsier. He had blood on his shoulder, and dribbling out from under his hat. Nate leaped back, thrilling at the clash of the blades—
—and then they were both pitched flat, and falling.
“Sully? Sully!” Nate looked up in horror at the rapidly descending helicopter above, chains and cables bunching—and saw a guy falling out of one side, and then the massive machine swooped upward.
Nate and the behatted merc were both tossed like jacks. The cables strained, there was a mighty shrieking sound, and then the deck slammed up from below, a thousand boards protesting at the sudden loss in momentum. The Concepción surged forward, the copter swinging them back over Demar, headed east.
* * *
Sully threw the shouting, beer-bellied pilot out and jumped into the seat, grabbing the stick.
“Alright Victor, you got this,” he said, and did his best to turn their fall into a swoop.
“Shit! When did they add all of these buttons?” he muttered. The cyclic was the same but the pitch was different, the handle all wrong. He tapped his feet on the pedals that controlled the back rotor. A few bobbles, but then he got the fat bird turned in the right direction, more or less. He started forward, staying just ahead of the carrack’s bulk. Faster than was probably recommended for the old wood below, but he was kind of in a hurry. They needed to be far from Jo Braddock, as soon as possible.
Sully sat the captain’s pistol on the co-pilot’s seat, next to his gold-stuffed backpack, and put on the pilot’s headset. The controls were starting to feel familiar. The console was way more complicated, though, and there seemed to be an extra pedal…
You’ll get the hang of it. Sully grinned. The Concepción was officially theirs.
The Trinidad hovered closer to the Victoria, the deck open, crewmen waving them in.
Braddock looked back—and saw the second helicopter tumble and then straighten out, turning due east.
She punched the radio’s transmit button in shock, watching half her treasure swing over the jungle and away. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m taking off with your gold,” Victor Sullivan answered, on the pilots’ channel. “What the hell are you doing?”
Braddock snatched up her binoculars, found the sky-crane’s cockpit.
Sully blew a kiss in her general direction, as if he knew she was watching.
You. Bastard. If he could steal it, she could steal it back.
She looked up at the helicopter carrying the Trinidad, tapped the channel on the radio. “Follow that ship.”
Scotty answered, “Weh six hunner maeters frae th’ Victoryuh, wae kin land noh!”
She usually knew to listen to Scotty, he kept a cool head, but Sully was flying away with her money, and laughing about it. She couldn’t live with that.
“Victor Sullivan doesn’t get away with one ounce of my gold,” Braddock said, and her tone must have relayed her expectations. Their Halo turned in a wide circle and headed after him.
Next to her, Hugo put one hand on the rail, wind picking up as the Trinidad swept over the jungle.
* * *
Nate staggered to his feet at the same time the bleeding merc did.
“Hang on, kid,” Sully said, and then the deck swung like a funhouse as Sully directed them past a cliff that had come out of nowhere, sending Nate over a pile of rigging. The merc stumbled toward Nate, grabbing a small keg and holding it over his head—
—and the ship swung again, hard, throwing both of them against the starboard rail, next to one of the cannons. When the ship swung back, moving like a pendulum now, the merc slid away. Nate hung on to the rail and dug at the ropes tethering the cannon between the posts. The fraying fibers tore under his nails.
The heavy metal tube was set free, and Nate gave it an encouraging push. It crashed across the deck and into Bleeding Hat Guy, pushing him through the rail with a crunch and following him over.
The ship kept tipping, and suddenly Nate was sliding across the boards, skittering toward the nice new hole the cannon had made. He turned to claw at the deck, felt his boots hit air, saw the deck shrinking away, and jammed his arms straight out.
He grabbed the rail to either side, and heaved himself back onto the deck as Sully got control of the swings. The deck’s wild creaking lessened. Nate took a breath, swallowed, looked south—
Uh oh.
Charging toward them was the Trinidad, its swaying deck dotted with men. The larger ship was suddenly coming in fast, swooping forward, the pilots handling their copter much better than Sully was doing. Nate swore he could see Braddock on board, a flash of platinum blond and shiny black clothes.
“Sully, I think they want their boat back,” Nate said.
“I’m aware,” Sully said, and the Concepción surged forward. Nate grabbed a solid piece of rail, edging sternward to where the wood was more securely anchored. Nate heard branches break against the bottom of the hull and then the deck swooped upward again, closer to the larger ship. That was definitely Braddock, coming in starboard, and her mercs were aiming guns at him.
At me!
Nate dove for the mainmast, rolling up behind it as rounds sprayed across the deck, clanging off cannons, splintering through the soft wood.
“Sully, have you considered flying away from them?!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do, kid?”
The Trinidad had shifted parallel to their position, a little above them, but was close enough for Nate to hear Jo Braddock screaming, “Cease fire!” The sound of her voice swung in and out as Sully flew them over Demar and toward the ragged islands eastward, the larger carrack right at their side. She was furious. He could still hear her shouting.
“…use grappling hooks! Take out the Drake kid and Victor Sullivan by any…”
Means necessary, Nate finished for her as the roaring copters drowned her out, talk about cliché—and when he risked a glance, he saw nylon ropes suddenly shooting down off the Trinidad, the sound of the fired hooks following a split second later. There were some misses, but three black lines wrapped around the brittle rail, and there were guys waiting to jump down. If the rail held, the Concepción would be outmanned.
A loose cannonball rolled past his feet. If only the cannons worked, I could—
Nate blinked—and the Concepción suddenly dropped five feet. Nate hit the back of his head on the mainmast, distracted before he could find a flaw in his ridiculous, wonderful idea.
The flaw is that there’s gonna be a bunch of armed mercenaries in your face in about two seconds.
“I’m about to be boarded!” Nate whispered, rising into a crouch behind the mast. Sully didn’t answer. There’d been a couple of loose guns around, but they’d flown off board at some point. Nate grabbed one of the long oars off the deck and gripped it, hoping Sully was about to pull off some expert flying. Otherwise, they’d be sunk.
* * *
The Trinidad’s harness was bigger and longer than the Concepción’s, so all Braddock’s pilot had to do was sit on top of him. Sully didn’t dare go up and there were some cliffs to navigate ahead. He couldn’t break away without losing his cargo.
Sully looked up, saw the beady-eyed, bearded face of Braddock’s Scot glaring down at him, and gave him the finger. Eat shit, pal.
Looking down, Sully saw a half dozen mercs sliding down the Trinidad’s hull, turning to leap across the open air on thin ropes to the Concepción’s railing. Below them, air-blasted jungle gave way to the random cliffs and beaches of Demar’s east coast. Nate jumped out on deck and swung a long oar, knocking two guys into the rail. One fell through a splintered opening in the port side and plunged out of sight.
“You don’t see that every day,” Sully said, and aimed for a narrow slot through the cliffs ahead, hoping the kid had his sea legs.
* * *
The helicopters swept through an opening in the cliffs, forced together by the tight passage. When they swept back into the light, Nate saw that a guy was climbing one of the giant harness chains, not far below Sully’s copter.
“You got a stage-five clinger, Sully!” Nate called, and within ten seconds, he heard a single shot. The climbing merc dropped off the chain, fell to the shallows far below. Sully might suck at flying, but he was an excellent shot.
Over the open water, the carracks swung apart—and then came crashing back toward each other, the Trinidad’s pilot overcompensating for the split while Sully kept flying due east.
Shit!
Nate reached for something solid but the ships collided in a juddering, cracking smash, the Trinidad’s hull smashing long-side into theirs. Nate was rudely dumped into the air, and rolled across the top deck along with the handful of mercs who’d made it aboard, bodies flying everywhere, cannonballs jumping on deck. There was a new hole in the side of the ship, and a ragged split had opened up around the hatch to the hold. Nate fell into the crack, splintered boards slapping him on the way down. Another guy crashed down with him, a skinny merc wearing a bandana around his head.
Nate and the merc landed on the gun deck; both came up at the same time, shaking off broken pieces of timber. The merc wore a leather shoulder holster, his gun under his left arm, mag pouches on the right. He snatched for his weapon and Nate tackled him, both of them smashing into a teetering stack of barrels. The merc kicked free and Nate came up on his knees on top of a shifting pile of gold.
Bandana Boy had his gun out. Nate grabbed a heavy round shield, brought it up in front of him just as the merc fired. Three rounds smashed into the gold and most of the way through, thick gold bubbles popping up next to Nate’s face.
Nate frisbeed the shield at the guy, knocking him back against the stairs with a heavy clunk. He leapt after his throw, ready to do some punching, but the merc was out cold, having whacked his skull against the support post.
That’s a nice rig. Nate looked down at the drooling merc, admiring the shoulder holster—nothing to bind at the waist, no ugly modern webbing—and then slipped it off the comatose merc. It was too cool for a guy wearing a bandana. Nate put it on, picking up the dropped weapon, a PM 9-mil according to the stamp on the grip. He didn’t know guns well, but it felt good in his hand and he liked the finish.
Overhead, he heard his brother’s killer screaming orders, and the Concepción swung under his feet. Heavy boots landed on the deck above his head and thundered aft. Nate holstered the semi and hung on to the stairs, prepared to go down with the ship if it meant Braddock lost her precious gold—
—and he saw the cracked barrel under the steps, spilling out sacks of gunpowder tied with twine. Like the ones on deck, those in the middle had stayed dry.
It’s a sign. Nate grabbed a small, heavy sack, tucked it into his waistband, and staggered up the stairs.
* * *
Two of the remaining mercs jumped for the Concepción when the ships crashed together, but one of them fell short—the rail he’d hooked broke off in a hand-sized chunk. He disappeared into the water below.
Goddamnit! Braddock was seething. Couldn’t they do anything right? The shifting, battered carracks were about to come apart again, there was now a gaping hole in the upper decks of the smaller ship, and Sully was headed for a rocky pinnacle off one of the scattered islands east of Demar. Scotty was shouting at the pilots.
Braddock looked at Hugo, met his steady gaze. He’d been with her since the beginning, he and Scotty both. They were the only men she could trust not to fuck things up.
“Get over there and get me my boat back,” she said.
Hugo didn’t hesitate. He looked down at the Concepción and then jumped, even as the Trinidad swung away from the smaller boat.
Hugo cleared the landing and rolled across the cracked main deck, then disappeared into the aft cabin—
—and the helicopters were too far apart now, splitting around the rocky cliff at the head of the island chain. Braddock lost sight of Hugo, the Concepción swinging behind the steep tower.
The Trinidad shuddered against her slings, fighting to turn with the wind. Braddock stumbled, grabbed the creaking rail.
“Hold steady,” Braddock ordered. “Do not let him get away!”
She could hear Scotty take it up with the pilot. “Gonnae-no ’at ship!” he shouted, and she could hear his frustration a beat later. “Stop them!”
The Trinidad came around the cliff and picked up speed, cutting north to head off Sully as the Concepción surged into view—and Braddock saw, with horror, that the debris spilling from the hole in the carrack’s deck sparkled as it rained down over the sand and sea.
Chloe heard the distinctive chop of helicopters incoming from the west. She leaned back in the sandy pit she’d been working on and swigged from her canteen, tucking sweaty hair behind her sweaty ears.
