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boards. The comp setup and program were similar to ones he had worked with
when the Trader had needed serious work done on communications or munitions
systems.
He watched the thin beads of silver solder fit neatly into place.
Then a quiver shook the ship, even stronger than the one that had hit it
before.
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Instinctively he lifted the soldering point from the circuit board's surface
to wait until the quiver was over.
But it lasted longer than the previous one.
And this time J.B. felt himself go weightless for a moment as the frigate
slipped in the embrace of the iceberg. Ice crushed against the walls outside,
and the skidding sounds let him know they were rising.
The Armorer looked through one of the windows near the workstation, not
surprised at all to see the broken edge of the ice that had been chopped away
from the ship suddenly rise three feet above the railing.
Whatever ice remained below the ship, it was no longer strong enough to
support the frigate's weight.
The ship was sinking.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"The ship's going down!"
Krysty watched as Harlan's shout became a reality. The Russian frigate
wallowed like a dying animal in the ice trough. Even from a distance, she
could hear the
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Deathlands 42 - Way of the Wolf splintering of ice around the vessel. "Gaia,
protect Ryan," she prayed quietly.
"We've got to go," Dean said from beside her. He pushed himself up from
hiding.
"Wait!" Krysty's sharp command froze him into place.
A pained look filled the boy's face.
"We're going," Krysty said, "but we're going to do this just the way Ryan
would.
If we go rushing in there like chickens with our heads chopped off, you know
what's going to be on the lunch menu."
Dean nodded.
"Harlan!" Krysty yelled over the thunder of the breaking ice.
"Yeah," the Inuit chieftain called back.
"Are your people ready?"
"That ship's going down."
"It isn't down yet," Krysty said.
Abruptly the iceberg stopped quivering, and the frigate stopped its plunge.
"Okay," Harlan said, his gaze locked to the ship that barely remained above
the rim of ice that had been chopped around it. "But if it goes "
"If it goes, you're going down with this iceberg," Krysty reminded him.
"I guess we're in it as deep as you are."
"Whether we save Ryan and the others," Krysty declared, "those lifeboats
aboard
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Deathlands 42 - Way of the Wolf the frigate are all the hope you have left of
getting off this iceberg."
Harlan nodded, turning and speaking quickly to his little band of warriors.
None of them seemed happy about the prospect. "Whenever you're ready."
Krysty looked at Doc, Mildred and Albert.
"Lead on," Mildred said.
"'Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead,'" Doc shouted, waving his sword stick
toward the foundering frigate.
Krysty pushed up from cover and started for the ship. Her friends followed
her, flanked by the Inuit.
RYAN BLASTED the Steyr empty. Having no chance to reload, he cleared leather
with the SIG-Sauer and started to fire again. He had put three of the
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Russians down with the long blaster, but there appeared plenty of them left.
Footsteps rung on metal at his side, slightly behind him. Only his combat
senses honed over years of living in the Deathlands and dozens of battles
fought while with War Wag One allowed him to sort that new, more threatening
sound out from the noise of battle all around him.
He spun, leveling the 9 mm at the end of his arm.
A face, malformed and demonic in intensity, appeared at the top of the stair,
followed almost immediately by a rifle barrel.
Ryan fired from less than six feet away. The hollowpoint blasted through the
sailor's head, emptying his brainpan in a scarlet rush. The corpse clung
stubbornly to the ladder for a moment, then finally lost the fight against
gravity.
Even as he was pulling back into position, Ryan's eye caught a flicker of
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Deathlands 42 - Way of the Wolf movement arcing through the air. He tracked
it, bringing up the SIG-Sauer, then recognized it as an implo gren.
"Fireblast!" He threw himself behind the support struts for the antenna
overhead and curled into the protection as much as he could.
The implo gren went up in a thunderclap of noise and a white-hot flash of
light.
Partially deafened from the concussion, Ryan forced himself to a standing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]