Steamship Amphibious and the River Pirates.

      
      I dreamed I was the captain of the Steamship Amphibious. We were steaming up a deep slow moving river in the Amazon, a tributary of that great river. I had just taken shots of several monkey tribes along the shores when I noticed small camouflaged boats moving among the tree roots at the water's edge.
      My local guide panicked when I pointed them out to him and begged us to put on steam and make our escape. The men in the boats chose that moment to fire their rifles across our bow. Ducking down behind the steel bulwark of the top observation deck we made our way back into the control bridge.
      "Full Steam! Get ready to come about!" I shouted into the microphone that was disguised as an old brass speaking tube. I felt the boat rumble to life as fuel rods slid smoothly into the reactor.
      The river narrowed and the current was becoming faster. Soon it was too narrow to come about, and the river pirates were catching up to us in their much smaller gasoline powered boats.
      "Put up the shutters!" I ordered into the mic. "Crew the port net launchers." I told the quartermaster to give the sailors our spare floats, not to load the launchers with netting. I could see a much larger vessel, this on with a machine gun on the front ahead of us at the narrowest, fastest place on the river ahead.
      "Landing gear down! Come about to port! Ready on the launchers!" I threw the wheel to port and the huge mass of nuclear powered steamship rolled slightly to starboard then started around to port.
      "We'll run aground!" shouted my local guide, reaching for the gun rack in the back of the bridge.
      "Tracks deployed, captain." My chief engineer reported over the intercom.
      "Thanks chief, record time."
      I moved to the port window to see the small river pirate boats closing on us. In each boat a couple of men stood with rifles or pistols. For a second I wished I told them to load the launchers with the nets, then the die already being cast I gave to order to fire, calling out the description of each boat and each launcher so everyone had a different target.
      Foot thick red and white floats were shot by steam out of the launchers. They all flew true save one and all but two riflemen were knocked out of their boats into the water. The two riflemen opened fire.
      My local guide asked where the ammunition was for my hunting rifle.
      "Put that back, we're not going to need it."
      "Gravel shoreline, 100 yards to the logging road."
      I turned to our helmswoman, gave the thumbs up, and used a pocket laser to indicate our path on the heads up display. I leaned over the microphone, "All port cameras, fill flash, fire now."
      A dozen bright xenon flashes went off in rapid succession, the cameras taking film of the attacking pirates, and blinding them in the process.
      "Prepare for impact, we're going ashore." The helm warned the ship via intercom. She spoke using a small mic that looked like it was glued to her cheek.
      I put the guide down into my captain's chair as we touched bottom and the track units took the weight of the steamship. We rolled up out of the water, I turned to the stern cameras and watched the river pirates veering off and waving and shouting. A couple of boatloads capsized as our backwash sent 5 foot waves out behind us.
      "Steamship Amphibious, reporting pirate activity," my helm operator called into her microphone, she gave the GPS information and we sent the photos of our attackers out live via satellite to the internet.
      While she was making our emergency call, I re-plotted our course so that we would follow an old logging path that had no old-growth jungle, something we could easily push through.
      Unfortunately our unique vehicle seemed to encourage the pirates rather than deter them, after the initial shock wore off. We managed to launch a video drone, and I was able to discover that the machine gunboat had docked and the pirates were transferring the weapon to a bright yellow Hummer. "What moves on this river that could require that much firepower?" I asked our guide.
      He shrugged. "Guns, drugs, parrots and macaws?" I could tell he was only acting like he didn't' know, and his continued searching for ammunition made me certain.
      I signaled the quartermaster, our biggest crewman, to come to the bridge. When he arrived we took the rifle away from our guide, and the quartermaster took him to a "safer part of the ship."
      I opened up a small compartment hidden by a name plate under the gun rack and pulled out a box of 50 rounds. The helm operator looked worried.
      "Armor piercing, shooting at their big gun, and radiators."
      I was under some sort of agreement with the country that I would not use guns against people, for any reason. I had agreed, but they let me keep the hunting rifle as we might need it against animal predators or to keep meat on the table. I knew I was taking a chance, but I didn't want that machine gun near us, I knew the ships armor wouldn't stand up to that.
      By the time the Hummer came up on the trail behind us, I was sitting on the top of the bridge with my scope focused about 400 yard back along the trail. In front of us I could see a mile long stretch straight through the forest, where before the path curved and twisted. I noticed a large white metal plate bolted across the front of the Hummer. I doubted that I could shoot through it to get to the radiator, I could tell by the way it bounced that the tires were solid, No luck there. I really didn't want to break our promise not to shoot at people, especially with streaming video going over the internet. I swore under my breath, and then luck turned our way.
      A pirate filled pickup truck and a Volvo pulled onto the logging trail, now made flat by our passage. They raced ahead of the Hummer. I took careful aim and fired a bullet into each radiator, and then as they slowed blew out two tires on the truck and one on the Volvo. They swerved and stopped, blocking the path of the Hummer. Pirates jumped into the back of the Hummer and snapped off several rounds at us before we were around a curve. The cable winch on the back of the ship exploded into fragments as three or four rounds tore into it. Another round tore through the aft loading door and ricocheted around in our aft garage. I watched the trees along our path exploding and falling behind us. That would slow them down also.
      It had been several minutes since we'd called in our mayday, I was beginning to wonder where the military was. We were almost to the end of the mile long straitaway when the yellow Hummer rounded the corner and accelerated rapidly towards us. The crew of the machine gun had it pointed to the sky, they were shooting at the camera drone!
      "Get all the drone pilots to their stations, lets give them lots to think about!"
      Soon, 7 more drones joined the camera drone, each of them headed for the Hummer. Soon the gunners were shooting at the drones, even pulling out pistols. We lost a drone, but the operator managed to flip it into the bed of the hummer at the last second, causing a couple of pirates to fall or jump out. The pirates suddenly seemed to realize they were wasting ammunition, and stopped firing at the drones. The big machine gun tracked back forward over the cab of the Hummer.
      I could see the ammunition feed box on the side of the gun. Every eighth round was colored differently, probably a tracer round, I took careful aim at the one closest to the weapon and fired. My bullet shattered the covering. Phosphorous leapt to flaming hot life. The ammo feed bucked and jumped. The pirates aiming the gun abandoned it. I fired again, this time right down the barrel of the machine gun. Our luck held, there was apparently a phosphorous round currently chambered. It burst and the round tore out of the barrel, jammed by its distorted shape it arced out flaming only a few hundred yards from the Hummer, lighting the debris from our passing in the process. There was now no pirate visible in the back of the Hummer. I took my time, hitting more ammo, hitting the shield on the front of the machine gun (the bullet went through, I fired a couple of more just so a gunner would think twice about relying on that little piece of steel to protect them) and generally trying to hit anything on the gun that looked like it might be breakable with a small steel-jacketed round.
      One of the drone operators called me and told me they had LAWs in the pickup truck that was now rejoining the chase. I told him to fly over the Hummer and then directly at the pickup. He did. The pirates in the back of the truck fired a LAW at the drone. It missed the drone, and struck the debris next to the Hummer. Several of the drones dove on the truck. Getting smart, the pirates only responded with small arms fire, but this too was aimed in the direction of the Hummer, and soon all the river pirates not in the Hummer's cab had abandoned it.
      Ahead of us was a small mining town, the road through town lead right to a dock on the river. Steamship Amphibious was just a little bit too wide to fit comfortably through the center of town without damaging every building along the main road. I pulled out a tablet and chose a new route, one that took us through a field outside of the town and then down to the river alongside the dock. The town's people were actually running away as we approached. Apparently they weren't part of this ambush.
      I was still concerned that we hadn't gotten any response from the country's military. One of my research leads put a call in to the embassy, trying to get some pressure put on the local government to come to our aid. I looked back, the Hummer wasn't gaining on us, I noticed that it had an Arizona license plate. I zoomed in with the camera on the back deck and shot a closeup of it. We slowed down to about 15 MPH from 60 and bounced off the main track across muddy empty fields. I was glad we weren't tearing up anyone's crops. We then entered the river and made full steam out to the center. I went back down into the bridge and suggested that we put a couple of miles between us and the river pirates, although they seemed to stop outside the village and sat around. We didn't drop any microphones in on them, as they were getting better at hitting the drones and we didn't want to lose any more. I really wanted to know what they were saying into their cell phones, though.