Grantville Gazette 38

and the palanquin began following the messenger, the rest of the men gathering up packages and following. This caused a fresh hail of protests from the sailors, but they didn't reach for their guns, and now found themselves reluctantly escorting the determined strangers toward their own ship.

Pam started to laugh at their consternation, a kind of giddy, hysterical laugh, but forced herself to stop.

'Thank God, it's working so far. Please let us pull this off, please!' she prayed under her breath, joined by Dore doing the same in German. Pam looked over to see the bosun standing by the men assigned to man the gun on the foredeck. If that kind of shooting started, Gerbald's group had orders to hit the deck and hope the cannon shot sailed safely over them. The fancifully high decks of the junk looked tall enough, but Pam really didn't want to put that to the test. She hunkered down behind the rail, and used her scope to see what was going on ashore.

Up on the hillside she could see women working in the fields, while their men were busy constructing the town and fortress walls growing along the beach. Apparently, the renegades and their allies intended to make this a long term base, and why not? They had free labor and plenty of supplies from the captured colonists. This would be a golden opportunity for an enterprising corsair to create a little kingdom here. During her research for the journey Pam had read about pirate havens sprouting up on Madagascar and Isle St. Marie off to their west in the century to come. She wondered now if rather than being a plot of the hostile French government, perhaps up-time tales of lucrative piracy in the 1700s had inspired this bunch to start the game on their own a century early. 'Well, here comes a little wrench in that plan, mes amis,' she hissed, scowling coldly.

The palanquin was now a few yards away from the Effrayant's long, steep gangplank. The procession came to a stop at The Great Khan Gerbald's raised hand. They wanted to be close enough to storm the enemy ship if they must, but still have some room to duck if it came to cannon fire. Gerbald waited with an impatient expression as several officer types emerged from a shady spot on the ship's main deck and began yelling at the men on the dock below. These yelled back, again with much gesturing, recounting the story so far. After a minute, the yelling stopped and the original welcoming committee stepped quietly back, relieved that their superiors were coming to deal with the problem. Gerbald took this opportunity to announce his intentions to the officers. 'Sous Capitan!' he bellowed in a voice full of generosity and good cheer, sweeping his arm extravagantly toward the enticing boxes his servants bore.

After another long moment of consternation, one of the officers nudged another, likely sending that one off to fetch the captain. The man had a decidedly unenthusiastic expression on his face, which Pam thought probably spoke volumes about the personality of the captain. After a few minutes, and a bit of angry shouting emanating from the captain's cabin, a grouchy looking fellow came swaggering out to the rail with an expensive looking sword at his belt and a many-plumed fancy hat on his roundish head. He looked annoyed, but couldn't hide some interest as he squinted at the odd-looking envoy assembled below. The officer who had stayed at the rail announced with proper respect, if little love, 'Capitan Leonce Toulon de Aquitane!' while the sour-faced man paused in what he must think was a heroic pose. Pam thought he bore more than a slight resemblance to your average Hollywood Captain Hook, and fought back a snicker. Sometimes it all just seemed unreal to her, and she had to remember that their lives were very much in danger, even from such an unlikely looking character as this.

'Capitan! Gerbald exclaimed with glee 'Por vous, pour vous! Mon ami! allez, allez.'

Pam silently thanked whatever accident of the cosmos had ensured that a citizen of Grantville was in possession of the complete Hogan's Heroes on VHS when they got sucked through the Ring of Fire, thus allowing the voice of Corporal Louis LeBeau to emanate from another universe. Gerbald's fractured Francais was outrageously funny to hear, plus it was working.

The captain cocked his head at the insistent potentate who had so unexpectedly appeared, but favored him with a thin smile. Giving those gathered a curt nod, he stalked down the gangplank, followed by his chief officers. Pam whistled softly in relief, so far so good. Dore frantically took hold of one of Pam's shaking hands, pushing all the blood out of it with a single squeeze. The men of the Second Chance Bird stood perfectly still, a set of bronze statues in the late afternoon sun.

The sneering officers, certainly no real gentlemen, but pirates through and through, stepped primly onto the dock. They sauntered confidently over to Gerbald and his men, all of whom bowed deeply in unison at Gerbald's unspoken cue. This pleased the officers greatly. They smiled and chuckled to themselves, smug in their superiority. Gerbald the Great Khan graciously swept his arms once more toward the gathered gifts. With an openly condescending nod of acceptance to Gerbald, the captain bent down to open one of the boxes. This was filled with some of the treasure they had found aboard the junk, and a gleam of avarice came to the captain's scheming eyes. His officers bent down as well, opening up other boxes to find more of the same. As they became engrossed in the windfall the odd- looking visitors began to surround them, cutting them off from the nearby sailors.

Chapter Forty-One: All Hell Breaks Loose

One of those sailors realized what was happening, and pushed the nearest visitor out of the way as he tried to rejoin his captain, one hand on the back of the disguised Swede's neck. His hand slipped off the sweaty skin and with an expression of astonishment he held up his palm to show that it was stained the same shade of orange- yellow. There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at him.

'The jig is up,' Pam sighed to Dore, her heart sinking.

The man with the stained hand began to shout at the top of his lungs, presumably to rouse reinforcements. Pam realized the Swede he had pushed was actually Lojtnant Lundkvist. Thanks to their disguises it was hard to tell them apart at this distance. The Lojtnant calmly produced a very sharp sword from within his loose silk cloak and stopped the shouts by slicing the man's throat wide open. He pushed the corpse backward to fall into the other sailors who had started to follow him. These now hesitated at the sight of so much blood. Even so, it was too late. An alarm bell began to sound on the Effrayant. Within moments, around forty surly-looking marines surged onto the deck from various quarters, all armed to the teeth. The Swedes were now well outnumbered.

'Christ, they have a freaking army with them!' Pam exclaimed. She thought fast, ignoring her terror.

'Carronade! Sweep that deck,' she screamed at the top of her lungs. Her men were ready for that signal and all of them dropped to the deck. Gerbald leaped from his palanquin, and knocked over the captain on his way down, it having been decided they wanted to keep that one alive if they could. The other officers, realizing what was happening, flung themselves down to the deck as well. The bosun swept the cover off the carronade and aimed it directly at the marines heading toward their gangplank. Not a second later its load of anti-personnel shot sprayed death across the Effrayant's deck. At least half the enemy fell dead or dying to the deck, their moans of agony awful to hear. Still, that left at least twenty, who hurried across the gang plank or swung to the dock on ropes.

Knowing it would take time for the bosun to reload, Lundkvist and his Swedish marines, who had mostly been stationed near the front of the procession, leaped back to their feet and opened fire on the advancing soldiers, along with any sailors who had dared to draw their arms. Pam gasped as a musket ball hit the Lojtnant, shattering half of his left knee in an explosion of blood and white bone chips. He started to fall but was held up by two of his men, who continued to fire their uptime-make pistols into the charging soldiers even as they dragged him backwards to the line the men around Gerbald were forming. Stunned by the amazing rate of fire, the soldiers quailed long enough for the Lojtnant to reach safety before finding their courage and mounting a charge. The marines swiftly closed with the Swedes, who were making a stand, and the dock rang with the clang and crash of close quarters sword fighting.

Meanwhile, Gerbald had pulled out his Snake Charmer, and had the nasty little shotgun pointed directly at the captain's head. The rest of the palanquin bearers had their swords and pistols aimed at the prone officers. The prisoners were quickly relieved of their weapons while the Swedes tightly bound their hands behind them and tied their ankles together; they wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. The captain was pulled roughly to his feet by the Swedes, the double mouths of Gerbald's shotgun-pistol jammed into the back of his neck. This group fell all the way back to the Second Chance Bird with their captives. Pam could hear Gerbald loudly taunt the captain over the din of combat.

'Surprise, surprise, surprise!' Gerbald exclaimed cheerfully in his best Gomer Pyle imitation, the skill of which