The Mississippi: The mighty river south of Saint Louis to its meeting with the Ohio is practically unrecognizable to a riverman of the twentieth century.
Thanks to the great New Madrid quake in '22, the river doesn't even match old maps, having shifted both east and west in a few spots, closing down old loops, creating new islands, and leaving new fields and sloughs where once the river flowed. There is also very little in the way of dredging, so during the driest months it takes an experienced river-reader to navigate its twists and turns in an eighteenth-century style.
These banks are deep Grog country, owned by wild tribes who settled there shortly after the last great North American Grog-Human battle outside Indianapolis of the Old World in its death throes. The Illinois bank is owned by a tribe of Amazonian crossbreeds, another failed experiment by the Kurian Order.
The Grogs on the Missouri side are tough Gray Ones. For decades, they fought Southern Command tooth and nail, but both sides eventually exhausted themselves and discovered they could live in wary neutrality, with neither disturbing the other too much. Yes, bold young Grog warriors still prove their fighting and thieving skills by raiding down into the rough wilds of the New Madrid area, where no two bricks still stand atop each other after the massive 2022 earthquake. And yes again, Southern Command tracks, captures, and shoots the raiders, sometimes practically under the eyes of their home village, but the days of launching large counterraids to burn out Grog settlements and recover trophies of earlier raids have been over for years.
An informal demilitarized zone exists, where each side understands the other is fair game.
The river is another sort of zone, with a different set of rules. On the run between Cairo and Alton, Illinois, directly north of Saint Louis, it is understood that any craft on the water are inviolate. However, any vessel that becomes entangled with one or another bank is fair game. Crews are usually allowed to escape in a smaller boat, as long as they abandon their craft quickly enough to satisfy those onshore that cargo is not being taken off.
This has led to some Grogs acting in the manner of old wreckers on forbidding coasts, placing obstacles or faking the marker lights of another barge or boat in an effort to draw river traffic into the banks and disable it so plunder may be taken.
Now, in the critical spring of 2077, the snags and shallows are less of a hazard, as the river is at its fullest. Heavy spring rains and melting snow from farther north have turned it into a swollen, turgid beast, with many a birch- and poplar-filled spit turned into an island or chain of flooded trees. This is good smuggling time, for it's easy for small boats to take shelter behind the many temporary islands and short-lived lakes thrown off by the waterlogged river. But the Grogs on both shores are also ready for the increased traffic as well. On every bank there are eyes and ears watching the traffic, legitimate and illicit, sensitive as sharks detecting fish in distress.
The frustrating part was that the exodus could have been over by now, had Southern Command just cooperated. Lambert could have set up a landing at some friendly stretch of river, with a small mountain of foodstuffs and medicines. Blake and the rest would be resting in safety and comfort while they organized the final trip through Western Kentucky.
Instead, they'd have to pass the Missouri bootheel country and turn up the Ohio. All those "highways"-the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennessee-Lambert had mentioned could be used to attack the vulnerable transports. By now the Kurian Order would know what they were and where they were going.
Coalfield lowered his glasses. "Shit. They've strung a boom across the river."
"'They' who?" Valentine asked.
"Grogs maybe. Or the River Patrol. Looks like junked boats, most of them," Coalfield said, looking through his glasses.
"How do we get rid of it?"
He warned the following barges, out of sight on this twisted stretch of river, to backwater.
"Ideally, we just run up to it, board it, and blow a hole wide enough for our craft to get through."
"Bad stretch of river for them to do it. Lots of Grogs on either side taking potshots," Valentine said.
"Which is your bet?" Coalfield asked.
"Missouri side. Better cover, and the Grogs there are a little more amenable than the Doublebloods on the Illinois side."
Valentine had to admit, it was a perfectly executed ambush.
It had rained off and on through the afternoon, and thunder began to rumble. Good weather for the attempt. Still, they waited for the cover of night. Cottonmouth Four, the fastest of the boats, swept down the west bank to draw fire, then ran close to the boom.
Not so much as a single Grog potshot came from the bank.
"Very odd," Coalfield said. He'd put extra rivermen into boat One, along with the dynamite.
They moved forward cautiously, covered by the other four boats of Cottonmouth.
As the demo teams disembarked, Valentine examined the boom with a hooded light. It was simply a series of waterlogged boats filled with buoyant. The real danger came from the chains connecting them below the waterline. They would either hang up a boat or cause damage to the propeller and rudder.
A sudden flash and a thunderclap lit up the valley.
Valentine heard the engines first, coming from a loop on the river on the other side of the boom.
Every eye on Cottonmouth One looked across the sodden boom, downriver.
"Get back on board, here," Valentine told the demolition team.
"We can do it, sir!" the senior called back, wiring his charge.
"That'll just open it for them."
Fast-moving River Patrol attack boats were heading for the boom. In the center of them, like a foxhunter's horse among its dogs, a ship as big as a barge could be made out. It seemed to be moving impossibly fast, throwing up three different bow waves.
"Evasive pattern," Coalfield ordered into his radio to Cottonmouth . "Make smoke! What the hell is that?"
Valentine finally received his chance to tell the riverman something he didn't know.
"That's the Delta. Chinese-built littoral craft. Triple catamaran hull. Crew of twenty, or thirty if they're expecting ship-to-shore fighting. I knew her when I was with the Coastal Marines. She's River Patrol, but back when I knew her she alternated between Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Delta. Before my time it was called the Delta Queen, but some Biloxi Church busybody pointed out that queens and all that were part of the Old World everyone was supposed to forget, and by naming a boat after one, they were treating royalty and aristocracy as a aspiration, rather than a blight to be wiped off the earth. So it became the Delta."
"Get that smoke going, there," he called to the sailors aft, securing their explosives.
"Smoke won't help. She's got radar-controlled guns, rapid-fire cannon-two of them, one on each side just forward of the bridge."
Cottonmouth broke away from the boom.
The two sides exchanged tracer fire across the blockade. The Delta moved fast; either her captain was a reckless bastard or he was unusually sure of the Mississippi's depth. Of course, the catamaran hull helped.
"Shit!" the gunner roared as brass casings fell into the canvas recovery bags. "What's that thing made of, moon rocks?"
Valentine had never heard that moon rocks were bullet resistant, but the man was under stress.
A hot hand washed across Cottonmouth One and the gunner was gone, whisked away by bullets like a strong breeze plucking a loose piece of paper off a desk. Valentine heard distinct splashes as bits of the gunner struck river, his eyes blinded by the white streaks of tracer fire. Miraculously, he'd avoided being hit.
He jumped into the blood-splattered position, feet finding purchase on the rough platform. He checked the drums on the twin machine gun and opened fire.
The Atlanta Gunworks Type Three had more of a kick. The gun gently chattered in its mount. The hardest part was keeping aim with the boat rushing across river. As Cottonmouth One heeled he had to constantly adjust elevation.
The rain came down harder, shielding them from both visual and radar-or at least Valentine hoped for that to be the case. Cottonmouth limped upriver, leaving a single boat to watch matters at the boom.
They held a dispirited council of war at an abandoned riverside bar.
Some entrepreneur had tried to make a go of it as a rest stop for boatmen and River Patrol. It had been painted in the past ten years, and there was signage up, huge block letters advertising EATS BEERS MUSICS in block letters big enough to be read on the other side of the Mississippi.
The Delta's flotilla had paused near the boom, ready to protect it tonight or open it in the morning-if not sooner, with the weather clearing.
In the open waters of the Gulf, the Delta would have made short work of the Cottonmouth flotilla, where its speed and accurate fire would have reduced the boats to blackened wrecks in a quarter of an hour. But on the twisting Mississippi, she couldn't make use of her speed and even her supremely light draft only allowed her to use the relatively narrow barge channel. Cottonmouth boats could float on a heavy dew, as the rivermen phrased it.
Cottonmouth One had been so badly damaged by gunfire that Coalfield-himself with a painful splinter wound-had transferred flotilla command to Cottonmouth Four.
"We could just abandon the river, right?"
"They just saw us run and hide," Chieftain said. He'd seen it from Cottonmouth Five. "To me, that seems like the perfect time to attack."
"Except for those guns on the Delta," Coalfield said. "We'll be as waterlogged as those hulks on the boom in two minutes."
"A lot can happen in two minutes," Chieftain said.
"He has a point," Valentine said. "I wonder if something could be attempted."