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“What that denotes I cannot fathom,” Doc admitted.
“It’s been in a fight,” J.B. stated.
Ryan nodded. The Armorer was right. The ship’s sides were torn and scored. The sails were currently reefed, but Ryan could see blackening and damage. Men worked in the riggings and hung from the ropes along the sides, effecting repairs on holes that were clearly cannon shot. They moved with clear purpose. Ryan stepped out of the blockhouse. His friends followed him, blasters trained on their flanks. He crossed a weed-choked wag parking circle and took point at a shattered guard gate that had once stood sentinel on the road. He waved his companions forward. Ryan pointed his longeyes down the hill. Men on the beach were tending cook fires. Others loaded barrels onto a pair of small boats, and Ryan suspected they were barrels of fresh water. He eagerly scanned the sailing ship again from stem to stern.
“I’m getting a real strong idea we’re probably on an island,” Ryan surmised. “And we’re probably going to need a way off. Maybe we’ll need a parley.”
“No need for a parley!” an opera-quality voice said, then laughed. “Your ship awaits!”
Ryan spun and snapped his longblaster toward the roof of the blockhouse. A bronze-skinned man looked down at him from the eaves. He stood barefoot and wore striped pantaloons and no shirt. Platinum-blond ringlets curled around his skull. Doc would describe his features as “cruel and sensuous.” He was muscled like a gladiator, and his every muscle, tendon and sinew stood out in high relief. Veins snaked down his arms in road maps of strength. Nonetheless he stood languorously relaxed. Ryan put his crosshairs between the man’s golden brown eyes. It was bad enough that he stood there, unafraid. Even worse that he stood there unafraid and unarmed. “Who are you?”
“Your superior, and I command you to drop your blasters.”
“I could chill you,” Ryan stated.
“You could,” the titan responded. “Worst mistake you’ll ever make. All your mates will die.”
Ryan considered the fact that in his experience only a handful of people knew about the mat-trans units and what they did. Any jump without a specific code was random. The fact that there was an ambush here, waiting for them, minutes after a random jump was thought provoking.
Ryan fired. The man above twisted with incredible alacrity even as the Scout kicked against his shoulder in recoil. He realized that the man had dodged his shot and flicked the bolt for a follow-up shot, but the man had already dropped out of sight. The man’s voice boomed from the roof. “Now, Mr. Hardstone!”
The ground shifted beneath Ryan and his companions’ feet. The earth opened up and swallowed them. The one-eyed man had only moments to register that a pit trap large enough to hold seven people and constructed thick enough up top to escape detection had been built outside the redoubt. Ryan hit the layer of underbrush that had been laid there to cushion the fall. Dirt had been piled three feet high above the trapdoors to conceal them, and the dirt cascaded all over the companions. Ryan landed on his feet and he spit dirt as the jolt ran up his legs.
“Cast your nets, boys!” the man of bronze called. Heavy deep-sea netting fell across Ryan’s head and shoulders and entangled the Scout. He dropped his longblaster and went for his panga and SIG Sauer handblaster. A second net and a third weighted with iron fell across him as he struggled to draw steel. Men leaped into the pit. As they landed on the netting, it encumbered the companions and pinned them down more. Ryan shoved his SIG free of the heavy strands. The bronze man suddenly stood next to him. The man stomped on netting, and it yanked the rope over Ryan’s blaster arm down. The shot busted cuttings on the pit floor.
Ryan’s vision went white as a belaying pin rammed into his back just above his right kidney. He heard J.B.’s Uzi snarl off a burst and their captors shouting. “Watch him! Watch him! Watch him!”
A man screamed. “He cut me! Little white runt cut me! Oh, rads and fall out,” the kidnapper moaned. “He cut me bad...”
Jak was still in the fight.
A huge hand closed around Ryan’s wrist and squeezed. The one-eyed man’s blaster hand popped open against his will and the SIG fell. “You’re fast,” the man admitted. “Fastest I’ve—”
Ryan struck quick as a snake strike with his blade. He thrust straight for the right eye. The strong man snapped his head aside, but the edge still whispered a hair-thin cut across his cheek and nicked his ear in passing. Ryan found his wrist plucked out of the air like a bird before he could retract it. The bronze hand squeezed with sickening strength. “So fast,” the titan mused. He jerked his head at the man behind Ryan. “Onetongue!”
A thick arm snaked around Ryan’s neck and Onetongue slapped a wet mass of folded rags across Ryan’s mouth and throat and held it there with great strength. The sop reeked. Ryan’s vision spun, his limbs loosened and his gorge rose even as he tried to hold his breath against it. His knees buckled beneath him. The titan held his wrists effortlessly.
“The knife!” a man bellowed from somewhere. “Someone get the fish-white son of a gaudy slut’s knife!”
“I got his knife!”
“Well, he has another— Fuck! That’s twice! Together! One three! One...three!”
Ryan heard a net-snared Jak snarling as his opponents piled on and the meaty sound of blows landed like rain. Ryan struggled as well, and consciousness drained out of him like a barrel with the bung knocked out. He couldn’t hear any of his other companions as darkness claimed him.
Chapter Two (#ulink_2dda024c-cc92-58d6-9a08-bc7c410d6a2b)
“Wake up, ya rad-blasted lubbers!” A cascade of cold seawater drenched Ryan and wrenched him out the blackness the drug had taken him to. His skull split from the sedative hangover. The shouter shouted on. “And your sluts, too! Wake up!”
Seawater flew by the bucket, and Ryan’s friends gasped and jerked awake. Rough hands yanked Ryan up and kept him from falling as the shackles binding his legs tried to trip him. His hands were manacled before him. The one-eyed man blinked in the dimness and confusion and fought to collect his wits as he was hustled forward. His jacket, boots and all weapons and equipment had been stripped from him. As his head slammed into a low beam, he saw stars and buckled. Rough laughter greeted his discomfort. He could hear his comrades’ moans and groans as they were manhandled behind him. Ryan was half carried, half dragged up two companionways between decks.
“Make way! Make way! Seven fresh fish for the captain!” Male and female voices hooted and catcalled. Ryan was bum-rushed into the blinding light of the sun and a broadside of jeers.
Despite the hangover from the drug, Ryan instantly knew he and his friends were at sea. He also knew he had been deliberately thrown facing into the sun. He got a knee beneath him and rose. He perceived the bronze gladiator figure from his capture whipping forward. Ryan raised his manacled hands, but the huge fist shot beneath and buried itself into his guts. Ryan dropped to boos and derision. It took a supreme act of will to keep from vomiting.
Ryan forced his limbs to obey him and rose again.
A voice from the side spoke low. “Strong bold bastard, I’ll give him that.”
The one-eyed man shook his head and tried to blink his vision straight. The voice belonged to a red-haired, bullet-headed man built like an aged, sun-ravaged gorilla. He gave Ryan a look of grudging sympathy and lifted his chin in warning. “Best look to starboard, mate.”
Ryan blinked and caught the next blow coming out of his right peripheral vision. He was too drug addled to do anything about it. The fist took him in the side of the neck and dropped him with white fire racing down his right arm.
The bronze gladiator loomed over him. He wore a bandage over the knick Ryan had given his cheek and another on his ear. “Captain will speak to you now.”
Ryan squeezed his manacled hands into fists, pushed off the deck and stood again. Mixed mutters of admiration and speculation greeted his effort. He reeled. The deck spun and he could still barely see. Ryan spit. “And just who’s the captain of this bastard tub?”
The bronze fist hit Ryan in the guts again, and he doubled over. An uppercut ripped him erect, and a right cross crushed him to the deck, vomiting. The blond, bronze enforcer squatted over Ryan and leered as he cocked his fist. “Oh, you...”
A voice like a rasp on slate spoke. “Mr. Manrape.”
All chatter and cheering ceased. Ryan’s abuser shot to his feet. “Captain!”
“Every man on this ship has the right to ask who the captain is exactly twice,” the voice continued. “Once, when he is first brought aboard and doesn’t know, and the second, the day he kills me and stands before crew.”
The assembled men on the deck chanted in unison. “We know the code! We keep the creed!”
Ryan rose for the third and he thought possibly the last time. The only good news was that throwing up seemed to have cleared his head a little. He took in the crowd. He estimated about a hundred were on the deck and in the rigging. That told him the ship probably kept four watches. Most were on deck now effecting repairs from the previous battle and watching the spectacle the new prisoners presented. The worst part was that Ryan couldn’t see land on the horizon. The crew was different than any Ryan had encountered before. Despite the relaxed discipline of the moment, the symmetrical arrangement of the crowd told Ryan each man or woman was standing at their station.
The crew did not exactly wear a uniform, but nearly all wore loose white pants of identical cloth and red or white striped shirts. The uniformity of the clothing told Ryan they bought or traded for cloth in bulk and shared it among themselves. He reined in his drug hangover and found himself startled again. Hardly any of the crew was armed. The pirates and sea raiders Ryan had encountered were usually festooned with blasters and blades. Every crewmember he surveyed carried a knife or a marlinspike or both, but those were working tools.
Ryan looked up and saw sailors up in the tops on lookout with longblasters, and several were pointed his way. There was that, and a ring of men surrounding him tapped belaying pins into their palms with practiced familiarity. Ryan heard his companions being hurled to the deck behind him. Krysty drew a lusty chorus of catcalls. Doc drew jeers and noises of disgust. The rest of the companions fell somewhere in between. They took Ryan’s lead and rose behind him. Ricky and Mildred had to hold Doc up. He wasn’t doing well. Ryan squinted up at the quarterdeck and beheld the captain.
He was something to see.
The man was black, his skin a lot darker than Mildred’s. His black, wavy hair was shot through with gray and pulled into a short pigtail. The man’s eyes were black from pupil to iris with almost no white showing. It gave him a gaze that disturbingly resembled a shark’s.
The captain was a mutant.
He was not tall, but his shoulders were impossibly broad. The captain wore a black broadcloth shirt cut to fit his frame and black trousers. A sash that had to have weighed five pounds with all the spun gold gleaming through it girded his waist. His shirt was open to his solar plexus against the heat. Twisted and raised white lines girded his throat like a choker of thorns. Ryan instinctively knew it was a hanging scar. The captain’s right hand was twice the size as was usual, locked in a curled rictus and covered with orange fur. The nails were silver, long and sharpened like claws. Ryan could tell the hand was not the captain’s own but something that had been affixed.
The mutant grated through his damaged voice box. “I am Oracle, captain of the good ship Hand of Glory.”
A tall man with a short beard, mustache and spectacles stood beside the captain. He was dressed nearly the same except that his blouse and trousers were blue and white, and undoubtedly he was an officer. “Glory!” the man shouted.
“Glory!” the crew roared in response. “Glory! Glory! Glory!”
Oracle’s flat black eyes stared eerily at the prisoner before him as the cheers died down. “What is your name?”
“Ryan Cawdor.”
“You have been on the waters?”
Ryan knew he and his friends’ lives hung in the balance. Lies or subterfuge would not serve them shackled and out of sight of land. “A few times. Never for long.”
“Are you able? Can you hand, reef and steer?”
“No,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “But I’ve pulled on a rope, hurled a harpoon and fought in boarding actions. Steered a bit.”
“You stand like a man accustomed to command,” Oracle observed.
Manrape leered. “I can break him of that habit, my captain.”
“Never commanded a ship.” Ryan kept his eyes on Oracle. “Don’t claim the ability.”
Oracle’s eyes narrowed and his gaze went opaque. “With time and tides, Mr. Ryan. Perhaps.”
Ryan tried to marshal his thoughts. “Captain, I—”
The blue-clad officer beside the captain bellowed with the unmistakable timbre of long command. “You don’t address the captain directly, fish!”
Manrape lunged in. His fist rammed into Ryan’s right thigh in a charley horse from hell. Ryan’s leg spasmed, and he dropped to one knee against his will.
Oracle stared at Ryan like a cipher. “I do not ordinarily press men, Mr. Ryan. I prefer volunteers, but we live in extraordinary times.” Oracle turned away and walked back toward his cabin. “I leave it to you, Commander Miles.”
The officer eyed J.B. “That fish had some very fancy blasters.”
J.B. looked at Ryan, who grimaced against his pain. “He’s J.B., armorer.”
“Mr. Forgiven!” Miles shouted.
A fat man with lank black hair hanging like the curtain of a jellyfish from his bald pate waddled forward. He wore blue like Miles and bore a great brown leather book and a predark pen. “Aye, Commander!”
“Rate Mr. J.B. temporary Gunner’s Mate until proved otherwise or signed to the book. Have Smithy ease his irons six inches apiece so he can work. If he’s useful, strike his chains tomorrow.”
Miles gave J.B. a deadly look. “You try to sneak a blaster, a blade or a thimbleful of powder, and by the nukecaust breaking of the world you will kiss the blaster’s daughter while the whip pounds your cock and balls to paste.”
J.B. nodded. “I’ll—”
“Shut your filthy piehole, scum!” Miles roared.
J.B. tensed but fell silent.
Miles pointed at Mildred. “This one had med supplies.”
“Mildred can sew a man,” Ryan answered. He and the companions were very careful who they let on that Mildred was a genuine physician. “She’s a healer, hoping to learn more.”
Commander Miles seemed pleased. “Wake up old Bonesaw and tell him he has a new temporary saw mate until proved otherwise or signed.”
Forgiven wrote in the ship’s book. “Aye.”
Miles gave Mildred the evil eye. “And listen to me, bitch. You steal meds or let a man deliberately die on the table, you’ll kiss the blaster’s daughter while every man aboard takes you.”
A woman with hair as red as Krysty’s, but six inches taller and two hundred pounds heavier, held up a huge callused hand and made a fist. “And woman!”
The crew cheered. Miles rolled his eyes. “Sweet Marie to have firsts.”
Forgiven entered Mildred’s name and made a check by it.
Miles nodded in approval at Jak and Ricky. Ryan started to speak. “They’re—”
“They’re young, light and tight, and this ship is short of top men.” Miles nodded at a mutie who looked like a six-foot, shaved gibbon with bright pink skin and golden eyes. “Mr. Movies, I want Whitey and Softboy here able in the rigging ASAP.”
Movies put a pink knuckle to his brow and spoke in a soft voice that sounded like it was unused to human speech. “Aye, Commander Miles.”
Manrape looked at Ricky with open lust. “What is your name?”
Ryan gave Ricky credit for scowling at Manrape as if he were shit he had scraped off his shoe. “Ricky.”
Manrape closed his eyes. “Ricky Softboy, young, light and tight...”
Ricky made a Puerto Rican hand gesture that had been ancient in Doc’s time. “Mama bicho!”
The crew laughed at Ricky’s bravado. Manrape smiled beatifically. “Oh, my soft Rickito.”
“Manrape wants a new wife!” someone called from the rigging. The catcalls resumed.
“Ship’s business!” Miles thundered. The increasingly horrible suggestions and bets died down. The commander ran an appreciative eye over Krysty. “And her, Mr. Ryan?”
“She’s mine,” Ryan stated.
Sweet Marie called out lustily. “We’ll see how long that lasts, Cyclops!”
The crew whooped.
“Write Red into the log and rate her lubber, powder monkey, gopher and the like, until proved otherwise or signed.”
Forgiven scratched in the log. “Aye.”
The commander weighed and measured Doc and found him wanting. The knockout drug, the beating and the rude awakening had left the time-trawled man staring at his shoes. “And this?”
“Doc is—”
“Doc?” Miles perked up. “He’s a whitecoat?”
Ryan sought for anything that could save his friend. “No, but he’s educated. He’s—”
A thatch-headed young man shouted happily, “He’s just a fucking old stick!”
