RUINS OF WAR

In a nuclear wasteland where death and destruction are the norm, Ryan Cawdor and his fellow survivors seek out refuge while looking to one another for protection. Civilization no longer exists in the barren Deathlands. There is only the will to survive and the dim hope of a promised land.

CREW OF THE DAMNED

Taken captive on a ship in the former Caribbean, Ryan and his companions must work as part of the crew or perish at the hands of the captain. But the mutant in charge of the vessel is the least of their worries. Each day is a struggle as they face rivalry among the sailors, violent attacks and deadly storms. Worse, a powerful enemy is hunting the ship to destroy everyone on board. Fighting for their lives and those of their shipmates, the companions must find unity within the chaos or die in the attempt.

The Glory slowed as the War Pig surged forward

Ryan grimaced and waited for the smoke to clear. He caught sight of his target as smoke shredded around her forward progress.

The Deathlands survivor fired, and his bullet tore a hole in the deck a foot from his target. He worked his bolt, then fired again. The bullet sparked off the iron of the War Pig’s starboard chaser.

Ryan could see one of the officers shouting as he realized the enemy was shooting for the powder kegs. The officer grabbed the cask of gunpowder by the port chaser, pressed it over his head and with effort charged the taffrail and threw the powder into the sea.

Ryan swung his scope to starboard. A huge man in red and black seized the starboard chaser powder cask and raised it over his head with ease. Ryan pulled the Longbow’s trigger. The .338 Lapua Magnum bullet hit the cask of black powder at over 3,000 feet per second.

The bow of the War Pig disappeared in a thunderous black-and-orange pulse.

Blood Red Tide
James Axler

O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

—Walt Whitman

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope.…

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

The Deathlands Saga

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Copyright

Chapter One

“I smell the sea,” Doc Tanner reported.

Ryan Cawdor, leader of a group of seven companions who traveled the Deathlands, still mostly smelled and tasted his own bile from the jump. He stepped out from the shadows of the yawning redoubt blast doors. Someone back in the day had constructed a warehouse-sized building around the entrance to the redoubt. It was a blockhouse, and Ryan suspected it probably served as camouflage too. At some point the ruse had failed. Holes in the walls that a man could step through and twisted iron rebar indicated the structure had taken artillery fire.

The wind moaned through the holes and emptiness. Ryan sniffed the air. Doc was right. They were close to the sea. The air also smelled like rain was coming. Depending on what hemisphere their jump had taken them, a golden sunrise or sunset spilled through the blasted out front door. Ryan looked at the thick layer of undisturbed dust and bird shit coating the floor.

No one had been here in a very long time.

Ryan took point and his companions spread out behind him.

“It smells tropical,” Doc opined.

A corner of Ryan’s mouth turned up slightly. Doc was definitely damaged goods, but there was nothing wrong with the man’s nose. Ryan jerked his head toward the blackened holes on both sides of the building “Jak, Ricky, check our flanks.”

Jak Lauren and Ricky Morales, the two youngest members of the group, moved out. Ricky raised his silenced DeLisle carbine and peered out one of the smaller blast holes in the wall. “Nothing but rocks, Ryan. Nothing’s moving!”

Jak held his Cold Python and peered to one side. “Jungle. Quiet.”

“Hold positions. J.B., you and me, cross fire on the entrance.” The two men took oblique angles on the shattered blockhouse entrance. J.B. Dix, also known as the Armorer, squatted behind a pile of rubble. Ryan stood behind solid wall. He shouldered his Steyr Scout rifle and risked a glance outside.

Ryan stared.

J.B. cradled his scattergun and peered at Ryan quizzically. “What?”

Ryan gazed on something he had seen only a few times in his life.

Krysty Wroth, Ryan’s lover, held her blaster in both hands and tilted her chin at him. “What is it?”

“Yo, Ryan!” Mildred Wyeth called. “You’re starting to freak me out! What do you see?”

The one-eyed man waved his friends forward. The redoubt and the blockhouse concealing it were on a steep hillside. A raddled predark road zigzagged down through the forest to a lagoon painted in pink and gold with the setting sun. All eyes stared at the lagoon and what lay anchored there.

“A full rigged ship!” Doc declared. “How delightful.”

“What does that mean, Doc?” Ryan asked.

“In my time a full-rigged ship meant a ship with three masts, all square rigged.”

Ryan snapped out his Navy longeyes.

He gazed on the vessel, knowing that such a ship was a rare thing. The few villes that could build boats of their own from scratch produced ketches or small fishing boats.

Ricky had been born in a port ville in old Puerto Rico, and he gasped at the sight of something so magnificent. “She’s beautiful!”

Ryan agreed. The ship below was perfect. Her lines were utterly clean. She was a design from some far better time, built to sail the world’s oceans using the power of the wind alone. Ryan took in her masts and yards.

“Have you ever seen a ship as nice as that, Doc?”

“In my time, dear friend, and I had never expected to see the like again. Indeed I had the pleasure of touring my country’s good sailing ship USS Constitution in my youth, upon an idyll in New York City. She was a frigate, and an antique even then.”

“Jesus.” Mildred shook her head. “I took a tour of the USS Constitution when I was in college, and that was in my time.”

“Big boat,” Jak commented.

Doc sighed happily. “This vessel is rather smaller than the Constitution. If pressed, I would name her a sloop-of-war.”

“Why?” Ryan asked.

“Well,” Doc replied, “she is a wooden ship, Ryan. Given skilled carpenters and blacksmiths, every single piece of her can be replaced. Indeed, except perhaps the keel, I would dare to wager that not one plank or spar upon that boat is original. Like an organism slowly replacing its cells as they wear out, the structure never changes, but new wood, new iron, new crews and new life have invigorated her throughout the centuries and—”

Mildred interrupted him, pointing a finger at the mast. It flew a blue flag with a white skeleton hand embroidered on it. “Yeah, and they’re flying the goddamn Jolly Roger!”

“Hmmm.” Doc frowned. “Traditionally the pirate Jolly Roger was black, symbolizing death, or occasionally red for blood. A sea blue ensign should represent the sea and would denote a more commercial enterprise.”

Mildred rolled her eyes. “Um, and the skeleton hand?”

“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

“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!”

“Shut up, Wipe!” Miles snapped. Wipe flinched and stood at attention. Miles sighed at Forgiven. “Old Stick, rate him lubber, let him pull a rope until he proves himself ordinary seaman or breaks.” Doc seemed completely oblivious to his sentencing.

Forgiven made a derisive noise and a note. “Aye.”

The commander gave Ryan a smile that held not an ounce of warmth. “And you, Mr. Ryan, word is you can pull a rope, heave harpoon and lance and fight a boarding action.”

Ryan knew what was coming. He was the leader of a group of the shanghaied aboard a ship in dire straits. He was mostly likely to be worked until broken or made an example of. “I can.”

“Rate One-Eye lubber, until proved otherwise or signed.”

“Aye.”

“Mr. Manrape! I don’t want any of the new fish together in number on deck until proved otherwise or signed. Let them mess together but separate their hammocks. Clap Red, Whitey and Softboy in irons until the next watch. Put Ryan to work now.”

Manrape sneered openly at Doc. “And this one?”

Commander Miles laughed. “Put Old Stick to work immediately. Let Mr. Ryan have him as a comfort.”

* * *

RYAN WORKED LIKE a slave. The knockout drug and the beating did him no favors as he hauled on ropes to bring fresh spars and sails aloft. Small boats brought casks of water, and by the crew’s grumbling, far too little bush meat from the forest. Ryan staggered beneath their weight to bring them down into the dark depths of the hold.

Their complaints and worry about the food situation were nearly constant. Ryan was treated like a pariah, a pressed man and probably rebellious if given any chance. No one talked to him except to scream about how he was doing his every task wrong. Crewmen laughed when he threw up or fell, but some gave him grunts or nods as he rose again and again and returned to his tasks. If there was any solace in the situation, it was that every other member of the crew was working just as hard as he was. The ship had been in a battle and barely escaped. The urgency among officers and crew to get the vessel seaworthy and under sails again was palpable.

Doc was not doing as well.

The knockout drug had addled him. He had been put to work picking apart torn rope and rigging for caulking material. Doc was spending more time talking to the rope scraps than picking them. Manrape stalked the decks with a knotted rope end of his own and it fell upon Doc again and again. The old man whimpered and looked to be spiraling into a genuine episode. Ryan tottered beneath two wooden kegs roped to his shoulders. The ships bell clanged the hour and the commander called out, “Miss Loral!”

A lanky, grinning, raven-haired beauty in officer’s blue produced a pewter whistle on a chain from her ample cleavage and piped the change of watch. The crew put away its equipment and gear and began filing down the hatch. Miss Loral looked at Miles, who shook his head.

Miss Loral shook her head at Ryan. “Not you, Ryan! Watch on watch! And you, Old Stick!”

Ryan had already worked straight through two four-hour watches, and now it would be twelve hours without rest. He was handed hard bread at intervals, and he was given as much water as the rest of the crew, but Ryan could see his sentence written on the wall. They were going to break him and destroy Doc. The new watch filed up. Ryan hadn’t seen J.B. or Mildred, but he saw Krysty, Jak and Ricky with each change of watch and they shot him increasingly concerned looks. Jak and Ricky filed by. Jak hesitated, but Miss Loral’s voice cracked like a whip. “Into the tops, Whitey!”

Jak was without his Colt Python and his smorgasbord of knives. He knew he would only get Ryan and himself punished if he tried anything. He frowned and moved toward the port rigging. Ricky shot Ryan a grin and tossed a piece of salted mystery meat the size of a deck of cards between two buckets by Ryan’s feet.

Ricky shot Ryan a wink.

Manrape appeared out of nowhere behind Ricky. He grabbed the youth by the back of the neck and lifted him off the deck with one hand, caressing his buttocks with the other. “Aiding and succoring a man sentenced to watch on watch, Ricky Softboy?”

Ricky cursed and flailed in the titan’s grip.

Ryan stepped forward despite the kegs strapped to his back.

Doc’s voice thundered across the deck. “Cursed pederast!” The entire deck stared as Doc rounded on Manrape. The old man drew himself up to his full height and his eyes flashed with imminent violence. “Should you wish to compulse young Ricardo into the role of catamite, then you shall be forced to come through me!”

Manrape dropped Ricky and turned.

“Doc!” Ryan shouted. “No!”

Doc produced a marlinspike with the same oil-on-glass speed he could draw his sword from his cane when properly motivated. The crew barely had time to gasp as Doc lunged for Manrape’s heart. Manrape slapped the marlinespike out of Doc’s hand as if he was swatting a fly, and his backhand tossed Doc to the deck. For a moment, silence reigned.

Commander Miles’s familiar roar broke the silence. “What in the last megaton that boiled the seas is going on?”

Manrape sighed happily. “Old Stick, unsigned, attempted murder of the bos’n with a marlinspike.”

Miles glared down at Doc in terrible judgment. All fight had gone out of the old man, and he twitched and mewled on the deck. The marlinspike lay damningly beside his hand. Miles’s eyes filled with rage. “Witnessed?”

More than a dozen men chorused. “Aye!”

“Clap Old Stick in irons! Take him to the captain for judgment!” Miles shook his head. He already knew the sentence. “String a rope, and prepare to pipe all hands on deck to witness the mighty hand of the Glory’s creed and code.”

“Can’t you see he’s damaged!” Ryan shouted. “The drug you gave him stuped him!”

Shocked silence fell across the deck. Ryan expected a second rope to be rigged beside Doc’s. It was Manrape who spoke. “Perhaps One-Eye is right, Commander. Why bother the captain? We have a cure for those who are drunk or addled on duty.”

“We know the creed. We hold the code,” Miles intoned. “Mr. Manrape does not press his injury and begs mercy.” Miles jerked his head toward the starboard rigging. “Ship’s punishment, then! Seize Old Stick into the shrouds. See if that clears his head. Failing that, let the gulls have him as an example to those who might be likewise tempted.”

Crewmen seized Doc and carried him over their heads to the starboard rail, laughing. Ryan took a step forward. A huge, raw, red hand slammed onto his shoulder. “Best case, you hang right up there next to him in the shrouds. Worst case, you hang alone from the yardarm.”

Ryan tensed with frustrated rage as the crewmen lashed Doc spread-eagled in the shrouds ten feet above the deck and facing inward. “Mr. Hardstone!” Miles called.

The big red-headed man removed his hand from Ryan’s shoulder and snapped to attention. “Aye, Commander!”

“You have empty seats at your table. One-Eye will mess with you and your mates.”

“Aye, sir!”

“The captain says until he is proved otherwise or signed, One-Eye is your responsibility.”

Ryan was starting to have a very bad feeling about being proved otherwise.

Hardstone gave Ryan a none-too-pleased look. “Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Manrape!”

“Aye!”

“Let Mr. Ryan stand another watch for his insolence.”

“Aye.”

Miles turned on his heel and returned to the quarterdeck.

Manrape stroked his chin. “Mr. Forgiven!”

The purser looked up from counting a pallet of green bananas. “Aye, bos’n?”

“Would you gaze on the ship’s dictionary for me when you have a moment?”

“Aye. And what would you know?”

Manrape looked up at Doc. “The meaning of the words pederast and catamite.”

Chapter Three

Krysty staggered into the fo’c’sle. The hammocks had been stowed and tables hung from the ceiling above as the watch got ready to mess. They were at anchor so lanterns were lit. Commander Miles had considered Krysty unfit for most duties aboard ship, and she was half convinced he was right.

That had not stopped Krysty from being assigned to run up into the rigging to bring the top men water several dozen times; running messages between decks; scrubbing the decks and heads; taking nails, rope, twine and supplies to the repair crews; being speeded along with a rope end when it was perceived she wasn’t moving fast enough; and enduring more sexual innuendo and gropings in passing than she had been subjected to her entire life in the Deathlands.

Sweet Marie called out from her mess table. “Over here, girlie!” Krysty looked that way. Sweet Marie sat with J.B., Jak, Mildred and Ricky. Two crewmen sat with them, the pink mutie, Mr. Movies, who seemed to rule the rigging, and a huge sagging, bull of a man. “You mess with us!”

Krysty sat down to the sound of whistles and hoots “Flame on flame!” someone called.

“I’d pay hard jack to see that!” a crewman replied.

Krysty stared the big woman in the face amid the jeering. “I’ll chill you.”

Sweet Marie threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I’m not one to force myself on anyone, but when your man is corruption down in the Old Place and you’re all alone, you’ll remember your Sweet Marie when every shark comes circling.”

Krysty reserved comment.

A small, pretty, dark-haired and olive-skinned woman made her way over to the table. Krysty saw that her eyes were milk-white without pupils. She made soft clicking sounds as she unerringly wove through the crowd and clutter. Crewmen called out to her. “Gypsyfair! When you gonna mess with us?”

The woman called back in bemused disgust. “Shut up! I’m walking belowdecks!”

Gypsyfair sat down and turned her milk-white gaze on Krysty. “Nice to meet you, Red. Too many norms and not enough muties on this ship if you ask me.”

Krysty tried to hide her surprise. The blind mutant grinned. “Your hair don’t move normal, girl.”

Sweet Marie’s mass visibly sagged. “Red’s mutie?”

“Yeah?” Krysty bristled. “So?”

Gypsyfair laughed. “Now I’ve seen Sweet Marie eat things that would choke a stickie and ask for seconds, but eat a mutie girl? She just won’t do it.”

Despite all her innuendo Sweet Marie turned beet red.

Krysty blinked at the giantess. “But, I thought you were...”

“I ain’t mutie!” Sweet Marie snarled. “I’m just big-boned!”

Krysty thought of several retorts but kept them to herself. She nodded at the mutant top-man acrobat. “Mr. Movies.”

He nodded. His voice was a soft chirp. “Hello.”

Sweet Marie nodded at the man mountain beside her. “This is Gallondrunk.” Krysty noted the puckered scar just above his left temple.

Gallondrunk stared at Krysty for long seconds. “Pretty.”

Sweet Marie sighed. “He’s never been the same since he took that bullet to the brain off Scoshia.”

Movies suddenly became agitated. “Bastard bluenoses!”

Sweet Marie shrugged. “Bonesaw got the bullet out, but Gallondrunk’ll never reef, hand or steer again. Still, he’s the strongest man on the ship, and he’s a chilling machine with that walrus lance he cherishes.” She patted the giant on the shoulder tenderly. “Even worse chiller than he was before. Got the gift of emptiness, don’t you, darling?”

Gallondrunk spent long moments processing the question. “I like to help. I like to give ’em the iron.”

He turned his gaze on Krysty again. She realized the giant was staring more at her hair than her. “Pretty.”

Another crewman came over bearing a steaming bucket. He was one of the handsomest men Krysty had ever seen. He had long black hair, a luxurious black mustache and hazel eyes. He put the heavy bucket onto the table and twirled his mustache. He had some sort of very thick accent. “And you must be Miss Krysty.”

Sweet Marie made a disgusted noise. “Speaking of circling sharks, this is Goulash.”

Goulash rolled his eyes. “Gulyas.”

“Whatever, he may be the worst sailor aboard other than you, girlie, but he’s a dead shot with a blaster and our best hunter and scout ashore.”

Goulash ladled beans and three lumps of bushmeat onto Krysty’s wooden platter. She stared hard at the mystery meat. “What is it?”

Goulash blew a lock of black hair off his brow and pointed his ladle in turn. “That is monkey. That is sloth.” He pointed last at a small mass of twisted bones and gristle. “That is mutie...something.”

Krysty decided to go from worst to best. She picked up the mutie mess and began stripping meager meat and tendon and spitting bones.

Krysty looked at her friends. “How’s it going. Mildred?”

“Bonesaw is a drunk, and when he isn’t drunk he’s sampling whatever meds he has. Strangely enough he seems to care about his patients. He likes the way I sew.”

“J.B.?”

J.B. shoveled down beans. “I wasn’t allowed in the armory or near the cannons. I cleaned blasters. Mostly single shooters. Homemade. I think they’re desperate short of—”

Sweet Marie spoke low and dangerous. “You best keep that talk between you and Gunny till you get your short ass signed, Specs.”

Krysty changed the subject. “Jak?”

“Big boat.”

Sweet Marie, Movies, Gallondrunk and Goulash spoke in harsh unison. “She’s a ship!”

“Ship,” Jak amended. “Big ship.”

“You all right?”

Jak almost smiled. Krysty had seen Jak up in the rigging and knew that despite their circumstances Jak was enjoying hanging from the rigging and being in the tops. He was already as agile as a monkey, and he was learning a new skill set. It didn’t mean he wasn’t planning on how to murder the entire crew, but part of him was enjoying the work.

“Ricky?” Krysty asked.

Ricky’s fists clenched. “If one more person pinches my ass...”

“You and me both. Has anyone seen Ryan?”

Sweet Marie sucked the meat off a monkey bone. “Captain’s working your man watch-on-watch. Can’t imagine he’ll last much longer without falling asleep on duty or collapsin’. Then it’s ship’s punishment.”

Krysty bit her lip. “Like Doc?”

Sweet Marie looked at Krysty with genuine sympathy. “Best you forget about Old Stick, girl. He’s done. Eat. Sleep. If you gotta worry, worry about your man.”

* * *

THE SHIP’S BELL RANG. First Mate Loral piped the change of watch as the sun set. Ryan had been going twenty-four hours straight. “One-Eye! Take supper with your mates!” Ryan managed not to collapse to the deck. Loral called to the purser. “Mr. Forgiven! Rate Mr. Ryan waister!”

Crewmen made approving noises of Ryan’s elevation from One-Eye to his name and from lubber to waister. His bravery, work ethic and sheer toughness had not gone unnoticed.

Mr. Forgiven came forward bearing the book. “Come along, Wipe!” The thatch-headed sailor who had named Doc “Old Stick” bore a large bundle. Forgiven opened his book and flipped to a page. “Mr. Ryan, neither proved otherwise, nor signed.”

“Mr. Forgiven.”

“One hammock, mattress and blanket.” Wipe dropped them at Ryan’s feet. Forgiven held out his pen. “Sign or make your mark for your issuables.”

Ryan signed the indicated space in the book.

“You have been promoted from lubber to waister, until proved otherwise or signed.” Wipe set down a leather belt sheath with two implements on Ryan’s bedding. Forgiven nodded. “Ship’s knife number 12, Marlinspike number 42 and sheath. Mr. Ryan, these belong to the ship and are your responsibility until you’re chilled in action, leave ship’s service or should you buy implements of your own preference in port that meet ship standard and then these seen returned to stores. You understand?”

Ryan understood all too well. The beating at Manrape’s hands had been one test. Working him watch-on-watch had been another. Now he was being issued the tools that could be the keys toward mutiny or escape. He was being tested again. “I understand.”

“Sign.”

Ryan signed.

Forgiven nodded and walked away. “Very good.”

Ryan drew the marlinspike. It was twelve inches of tapered iron coming to point like a sharp, flathead screwdriver with a hitch loop at the top. It was made for splicing, knotting and hitching rope and line. Ryan slid the spike back into its side pocket and drew the knife. It was simple, with well-weathered wood grips and a full riveted tang. The blade was five inches long, discolored and pitted from salt and sea. It was a working man’s knife. The spine was thick for strength and the edge was thin as a razor and shaving sharp. The knife had been sharpened so many times the blade was starting to lose its original line. Ryan hefted it in his hand.

“Don’t even think about it,” Hardstone muttered.

Manrape pulled his trick of appearing behind Ryan out of nowhere. For a big man he moved very quietly. He whispered like a lover. “Think about it, Ryan.”

It took all of Ryan’s will not to turn and slash. Manrape laughed and resumed his walk along the gangway. “Think about sticking me, while I think about sticking little Ricky.” He looked up as he walked beneath Doc moaning in the shrouds and laughed.

Ryan slammed his new knife back in its sheath and gathered up his bedding. Hardstone jerked his head toward the hatch as the second watch came up and the ceaseless work continued. “Follow me. You mess with us. Word is the last hunting party brought back a barrel or two of bush meat. Enjoy it. We lost a lot of stores in the battle when the hull was pierced. Boiler and Skillet are both in the med. We’ll be on hard rations and badly cooked at that when we sail.” Hardstone limped for the hatch. Ryan stopped beneath Doc. Earlier Doc had been mumbling to his wife and children hundreds of years gone. Now Doc moaned, pleading to a baron only he could see.

Ryan flinched. Doc was spiraling down into the cellar of the horrors he had experienced. “Doc, you have to listen to me. You’re going to die up in those ropes unless you get it together.”

Some rational section of Doc’s unraveling mind sobbed in response. “Oh to be so blessed...”

Ryan could sense the nearby crew listening in. Doc’s utter loyalty to his friends often shored up his sanity. “Doc, we’re in a hard place and it’s getting harder. I need you. We all need you.” Ryan grasped at Doc’s words and his talents. “You said it yourself. This is a square-rigged ship. A thing from your time. You know about these things. Find something. Anything! Anything that could make you useful and get you cut down so we can get you to Mildred.”

“Mildred...”

“Doc.” Ryan put the iron of command in his voice. “You and I are friends. Now we’re watch mates. You die on my watch, and Krysty will never forgive me.”

“Krysty...”

“Loves you,” Ryan snarled. “Now you got to get yourself together, get yourself down out of those shrouds and make yourself useful! Tell me you hear me!”

A barely sane whisper responded. “Ryan...”

“Doc, you heard me. I know you heard me. Tell me you...” Ryan’s shoulders sagged in defeat as Doc’s chin had dropped to his chest and the evening breeze stirred the rivulet of drool hanging from his chin.

Manrape cooed. “Mr. Ryan, are you talking to a man under ship’s punishment?”

Ryan spun. Manrape lunged. Ryan was three steps too slow from exhaustion and still holding his bedding. He started to drop the bundle and go for the knife and marlinspike, but Manrape’s rope end slammed into his chest. Ryan fell back onto the deck. The tactical part of his mind noted that one end of Manrape’s double-ended rope was loaded. He gasped like a fish and tried to breathe.

Manrape knelt and put a knee on Ryan’s chest. The blond titan held his rope end between his legs and dangled the knot over Ryan’s face in horrible metaphor. “You haven’t been proved otherwise, so I can’t kill you. But know this. You are unsigned. You do not know the creed. You are not protected by the code. You’re lucky because we need every hand able or otherwise and for the good of the ship, so I’ll not put you in the med. This time. Now go mess with your mates.”

Manrape rose and walked away whistling. Chilling rage boiled behind Ryan’s eye and the red mist clouded his vision as he reeled to his feet. Hardstone stepped between them and gathered up Ryan’s meager belongings. A sailor Ryan had heard called Atlast hurried to his side. Atlast was the ship’s master of sails and spars. He was a head shorter than Ryan and Hardstone, but his shoulders were just as broad, his legs bowed like a horseman and what could only be described as a whiteman’s Afro was pulled back and barely restrained by a short pigtail.

“Listen, Ryan. We need the likes of you aboard this ship, then, don’t we? Best you go easy like around the bos’n.”

“Go easy.” Despite his rage, he knew Hardstone and Atlast were looking out for him. “Around Manrape?”

“Don’t rock the bloody boat, then. You’ve felt the thunderbolt.”

“The rope,” Ryan muttered.

“Yeah, well, Manrape’s rope end has two ends, doesn’t it? One’s a regular rope end knot, the other’s a monkey’s paw he’s woven in, and that paw holds four good grams of lead shot. One end’s for fighting, one end’s for fun.”

Hardstone handed Ryan his bedding. “Go down and string your hammock. Wipe should be below and will show you where. I’ll save you a bowl of meat and beans.”

Ryan knew it was the best offer he was going to get.

Chapter Four

“Heave away, boys!” Manrape called. “Heave away!”

The Hand of Glory cast off. The captain had deemed the ship ready for sail. The watch hours had been changed. Six hours of dreamless sleep and a bowl of leftover beans with biscuit broken into it had done Ryan a world of good. He wore stiff canvas pants and a blue-striped jersey someone had sewn to his proportions. He was still sore all over. His hands were well callused from life in the Deathlands, but working a wooden ship watch-on-watch had ripped his hands to shreds. Twenty-four hours barefoot on a wooden deck and rope riggings had left him limping and leaving bloody footprints that got him roared at wherever he went.

Ryan heaved against the horrible weight of the capstan bar next to Onetongue. Despite his fatboy body, Onetongue’s muscles rippled beneath his flesh, and unlike every other sailor aboard he never seemed happier than when confronted with back-breaking work. Hardstone and Wipe heaved on the bar ahead and groaned like everyone else as they slowly moved clockwise and the capstan shaft wound anchor cable. Four more pairs heaved on bars behind them.

Ryan risked a glance back at Doc. The old man hung limp from the shrouds in the morning sun. Blood ran down his cheek and chin and spattered his shirt. Ryan had been belowdecks eating, but he had heard the roars and catcalls above and heard the story. Just before the watch had changed, a gull had gone for Doc’s left eye. Doc had jerked awake with a scream and frightened the bird off, but the gulls circled in wait above the tops. They sensed the bound man’s weakness. They sensed no one was going to defend him. Ryan knew without a shadow of a doubt that Doc was going to die hanging from those shrouds this day, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Ryan snarled as the rope end thudded into his back with all of Manrape’s strength behind it. “You look back at Old Stick one more time, Ryan! One more time, and I will seize you to the shrouds beside him!” The rope end slammed between Ryan’s shoulder blades a second and third time. “Now heave!”

Ryan gritted his teeth against the “fun end” of Manrape’s starter. More than the knotted rope tenderizing his flesh, Ryan felt Captain Oracle’s eyes on him from the quarterdeck. Oracle always seemed to be watching him. Ryan heaved. The capstan turned. Ratchets and palls clacked with monotonous rhythm as the crewmen threw their muscle against the bars and hauled the dragging anchor off the rocky bottom.

Doc’s voice rose out of nowhere in song.

“A is the anchor that holds a bold ship.”

The crew glanced up at the insane, shroud-seized man.

“B is the bowsprit which often does dip...”

First Mate Loral laughed. “Sing more!” The capstan men grunted as the song met the rhythm of their heaving and the clank of the pall and ratchet.

“C is the capstan upon which friend Ryan does wind...”

Onetongue shot Ryan a smirk as they heaved together.

“And D is the davits, on which the jolly boat hangs.”

“What’s a jolly boat?” Wipe gasped.

“Shut up, Wipe,” Hardstone snarled. “I wanna hear.”

Doc’s voice rose. In his less broken moments he was a powerful orator. Ryan only seldom heard it, but Doc’s singing voice was a clear, beautiful tenor. It sang out now.

“E is the ensign, the white Hand of Glory on Blue, F is the foc’sle that holds the dear Glory’s crew.”

Noises of amusement and approval traveled through the crew from stem to stern.

“G is the gangway, on which Mr. Manrape makes his stand. H is the hawser, which seldom does strand.”

Manrape’s rope end hung limp in his hand as he stared up at Doc.

“I is the irons where the stuns’ll boom sits. J is the jib-boom, which Mr. Atlast will tell you does dip.”

Atlast roared from his precarious perch at the prow. “Ha!”

“K are the keesons of which you have been told, and L are the lanyards that always will hold. M is the main mast, so stout and so strong. N is the North Star that never points wrong. O are the orders of which we all must beware, and P are the pumps that cause sailors to swear...”

The crew laughed and the men on the capstan heaved in time with Doc’s song.

“Q is the quadrant, the sun for to take. R is the rigging that always does shake. S is the starboard of our old bold ship, and T is for the topmasts that often do split. U is for the ugliest, one-handed old captain of all...”

Every head snapped a look at Oracle. The captain stood like a statue of ebony, staring at Doc.

Doc continued without missing a beat. “V are the vapors that come with the squall. W is the windlass upon which we all wind, and X, Y and Z? I confess, I cannot put in a rhyme!”

The crew laughed and cheered. Men with two free hands clapped and those who didn’t whooped and pounded wood with their fist or stomped their feet. Commander Miles put his fists on his hips. “Sing another, Old Stick! That anchor is only halfway up, much less catted!”

Doc licked his cracked lips and stared at the birds circling him with intent. “I know a song about seagulls...”

Men laughed. Hardstone made a grudging noise. “He’s a bold, old scarecrow, I’ll give him that.”

Wipe did his slow mental math. “But...”

“But what, Wipe?”

“You were laughing at him just yesterday.”

“Well, he deserved laughing at yesterday!”

Manrape stared at Doc with a strange light in his eyes. “Sing me a song about seagulls, Old Stick, and I will cut you down from the shrouds.”

Captain Oracle’s hanged-man’s rasp cut all chatter like a knife across a throat. “Mr. Manrape, have Old Stick cut down.”

“Aye, Captain! Mr. BeGood! Mr. Born! Seize that man down from the shrouds!”

“Take him to Bonesaw.” Oracle watched as the twins cut Doc down. “I am without a servant since our last battle. When this man is fit, send him to my cabin. He will never make sailor, but perhaps he can pour wine and amuse us.”

Manrape nodded. “Make it so!”

Doc seemed to barely have a bone in his body as he collapsed to the deck. Sweet Marie pushed through and pressed a dipper of water to his lips. Doc drank and raised his head.

“My captain?”

Oracle’s eyes narrowed.

“I crave a boon.”

The deck went silent. Oracle stared at Doc like a cipher. Ryan wasn’t quite sure whether Oracle was considering in what manner to have Doc killed for his impertinence or whether the captain didn’t know what the word boon meant.

“What?”

“If I am to serve, may I have my cane to lean upon? It is my only comfort.”

Oracle turned to the ship’s purser. “Mr. Forgiven, fetch Old Stick’s cane from stores and bring it to my cabin.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“And strike Old Stick’s name from the ship’s book.” Oracle turned and resumed his pacing of the quarterdeck. “Enter ‘Doc’ into the log, serving in the captain’s quarters until proved otherwise or signed.”

The crew cheered.

Onetongue and Wipe pounded Ryan’s shoulders. Ryan and Doc exchanged a look. There were few secrets aboard a sailing ship. The crew knew that Ryan and Doc were friends, and all knew of Ryan’s whispers to Doc to save himself. The old man had cheated death and been elevated. It was a lucky thing, and the crew would take luck wherever and in whatever form they could find it. Sweet Marie scooped Doc up in her arms like a child and took him belowdecks to the med. A secret was now aboard the Glory. One only Ryan and his companions knew. Once Doc had his cane, and if Ryan gave the signal, Doc would draw his concealed sword and drive it through Captain Oracle’s heart.

* * *

“AGAIN!” THE MEN IN the mess shouted and clapped. “Again!”

Doc held up a hand. “Dear shipmates, I beg of you, let an old man break his fast.”

“Let him eat!” Hardstone bellowed. “He’s sung it seven times already!”

Ryan smiled wearily. Doc had indeed sung it seven times already. Doc was dealing with a crew that was mostly illiterate, but most of his watch mates could now sing his abridged version of The Sailor’s Alphabet by heart. Onetongue shoved a wooden stoop of small beer into Doc’s hand. Doc sighed happily. “Bless your heart, Mr. Onetongue.”

Onetongue drooled happily. “Welcome!”

Ryan regarded his messmate. The man was bald, bat-eared and blubbery. However, Ryan recalled the terrible strength of Onetongue’s arms as he’d simultaneous drugged him and choked him unconscious. “Onetongue.”

The sailor regarded Ryan warily. “Yup?”

“That’s an interesting handle.”

“Oh! I u’thed to have two tongue’th! But the previouth cap’n couldn’t stand my thlobbering and thtuttering so he cut one out! Now I th’peak real good! Thep’t for the lith’p.”

Doc sipped his small beer and lime with relish. “In my circles, and in several languages, a lisp was considered a sign of refinement.”

Onetongue beamed happily and pointed an accusing finger at Wipe. “Th’ee!”

Ryan had no desire whatsoever to discover the origin of Mr. Wipe’s appellation. Doc took a seat across from Ryan between the twins. They were young and wiry topmen with skin burned brown and hair bleached blond. These same young men who had gleefully seized Doc into the shrouds had, like most of the crew, done a complete one-eighty and now doted on him.

Doc had been entered in the log as Captain’s Manservant until signed or proved otherwise. He still messed and slept with the crew. Doc stared sadly at the stew Wipe ladled him from the kid. Ryan nodded in agreement as he mechanically shoveled the food down. It was chipped dried meat, dried peas and dried plantains boiled into a viscous mass. The job of cook had fallen by default to Mr. Forgiven, and forgiven he was most certainly not. Suggestions of how Forgiven might be tortured and murdered for his culinary crimes grew in imagination and severity with every meal. His unofficial name aboard ship was now Unforgiven, and he hardly dared to show his face belowdecks.

Doc reached into his frock coat. His kerchief was wrapped like a parcel, and he unwrapped it to reveal a decidedly runny, fist-sized wheel of cheese.

Onetongue sighed. “Chee’th!” Atlast looked at it lovingly. “Oh, a tidbit from the captain’s table! You’re the lucky monkey, Doc, aren’t you, then?”

“Our good captain declared it past its prime.” Doc pushed it toward Atlast. “Dear shipmate, would you take your knife and cut each man among us a portion? A good sailing man must share with his messmates.”

“Oh indeed, and thankee!” Atlast drew his knife and began dividing the dilapidated cheese into eighths with geometric precision.

Doc spoke low. “Ryan, I fear for our young friend Ricky.”

Ryan kept his face neutral. “Manrape.”

“The same.”

“What’ve you heard, Doc?”

“As you may have surmised, Manrape is not our esteemed bosun’s given name. Like many aboard this ship, his moniker was earned.”

“Got that feeling the moment I met him.”

“Well, the word about ship is he plans to press the matter of his affections upon young Ricky once the boy is rated able up in the rigging and next time ashore. Ricky is no acrobat upon the yards like dear Jak, but he has taken serving this ship well to heart. He is young and quick and learns his new trade well. Sad to say his speedy grasp of hand and reef only sends him ever more swiftly into Mr. Manrape’s most untender—” Doc made a face “—embraces.”

“You’ve got the captain’s ear. There’s nothing you can do?”

Doc flinched. “I did broach the subject.”

“And?”

Doc stopped short of going pale. “The good captain told me sailors settle these matters among themselves, and just from his demeanor I received the strongest impression not to broach that or any other ship’s subject with him without being asked first ever again.”

“The commander?” Ryan suggested. “I saw you talking with him.”

“He seemed to find the subject quite distasteful, but when I pressed him he said that ‘a buggered boy can do his duty as well as any other man.’” Doc shook his head and ate a spoon of stew. “The first mate is another man not to be pressed lightly.”

Atlast handed out slices of cheese. “Too right.”

“Ryan, I have read this ship’s creed and code. No sailor may lay his hand upon a shipmate aboard ship in anger without provocation. Should he, the lashing is to equal the damage inflicted. Should a sailor murder his shipmate aboard ship, it is death, the nature of execution to depend on the circumstances of the crime and the local availability of materials. Ryan, I tell you, some of the proscribed methods stop nothing short of the Roman Circus.”

Ryan didn’t know what the Roman Circus was, but he got the gist. He grasped at straws.

“Manrape seems sweet on you, Doc. Not like Ricky, but you’ve got no influence?”

“I have considered it, and Mr. Manrape’s entire demeanor toward me has changed since I sang from the shrouds. Indeed, he has become genuinely solicitous of my welfare. Yet, were I to demand he leave our Ricky alone, I fear he would insist that I make him.” Doc stared deeply into his stew. “Shall I make him?”

Throughout the mess men drank their small beer, swore about their stew between mouthfuls, laughed, joked, smoked and took the few pleasures sailors had in their free time. Ryan’s mess table went silent. None of Ryan’s and Doc’s messmates had seen Doc in battle with blaster or sword. None knew how dangerous the man from the past was once he set himself upon the path of violence. All they saw was an old man who had gone from a figure of fun and torture turned into an exotic and lucky ship’s mascot. Hardstone spoke low and slow as he smeared his cheese across a piece of bread with his knife. “Ryan, tell Doc to stand down.”

“What if I kill him?” Ryan asked. “On shore.”

Doc was aghast. “Dear Ryan, I beg of you, as a friend, do not even think of it!”

Hardstone grunted around his food. “Listen to your friend, Ryan.”

“Mr. Manrape, whatever his proclivities, has risen to the rank of bosun,” Doc continued. “In my day a bosun was an able sailor and responsible for overseeing nearly every part of the day-to-day running of the ship. We had a saying that it was sergeants who made an army run. Bosuns run a ship. Good ones are invaluable, and the Glory is short-handed. The crew will hate you for it. As bosun, Manrape also has many allies and associates aboard. They would surely seek your demise, and many of our dear companions would suffer by association.”

“Listen to your friend,” Hardstone repeated.

“Manrape is the worst of us, and the best,” Atlast said as he savored his cheese. “Knows the ship from stem to stern, he does.”

Onetongue slobbered around his mutated and shorn soft palate. “Taught me all I know about th’ips! Th’aved my life more than one’th!”

Wipe sighed. “Beautiful speaking voice.”

Hardstone contemplated his small beer. “Ryan?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re messmates, and I like you.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I was a sec man before I was a sailor, a Deathlands man, like you.”

Ryan nodded. “It shows.”

Hardstone nodded his thanks. “Some then, well as now, thought me a hard man, but save for the Captain himself, there is no better fighter aboard the Glory than Manrape. You’ve seen my gimp. We’d recently lost a bos’n. Many thought I should be given the post. Manrape was up and coming and challenged me for it. We both had our fair share of supporters. So, Manrape and I rowed the dinghy ashore one soft, fine morning and decided it between us.”

“Hard way to decide rank on a ship.” Ryan frowned. “The captain allowed that?”

Hardstone sighed bitterly. “There wasn’t too much to choose between us as able sailors. Bos’n is the first man in a boarding action and stands at the captain’s side if boarded. It had to be settled.” Hardstone stared into his warm, weak beer. “And he’s bos’n now, and I’ll never go into the tops again. And I’ll tell you what else, Ryan. Manrape’s dark night itself in a fight. Even with all your Deathlands steel in hand, I’d bet no bounty upon you.”

“I appreciate your honesty.” Ryan read the writing on the wall. “Ricky’s going to have to stand for himself.”

“That is the way of it,” Hardstone agreed.

Atlast tucked back into his stew. “Aye.”

Chapter Five

Ryan stood deck watch. A moderate attempt had been made to work him to death the previous day, and he had been given light duty to recover. He had not been sent to the med, but he’d been issued a small jar of foul-smelling liniment. A tiny scrap of paper with Mildred’s handwriting said, “Use it!” He’d been reissued his own Navy longeyes and had spent his watch walking the rails surveying the sea and occasionally reporting to Miss Loral that there was nothing to report while his shipmates muttered envious insults about Deathlanders and their land-lubbing, weakling ways and needs.

Ryan snapped the optic shut as dusk began to fall. The ship’s bell rang the hour. He took a deep breath as the evening breeze ruffled his hair. He was still stiff and sore from the beatings and hard labor. He was sunburned and smelled like a rottie, his hands and feet were raw meat and he was eating food barely fit for man or mutie.

But Ryan felt surprisingly good.

He looked down at the rad counter pinned to the open neck of his jersey. The air here on the outer edge of the Caribbean barely registered a rad. Ryan took the dipper from the water barrel and drank. One of the twins shot down a shroud so fast Ryan couldn’t fathom how he didn’t burn his palms off. He plunked down on the rail with perfect alacrity.

“Hard work, Ryan? Walking the deck like a baron in his ville? Feeling a bit parched?”

Ryan sighed, drank water and waited for it.

“You know, Ryan, Purser Forgiven is kinda fond of me.”

“And?”

The topsman grinned. “And I could requisition you a nice silk pillow from the captain’s cabin. You could rest your gaudy soft little Deathlands hands on it. Mebbe have Wipe hold your cock for you when you step to the siphon.”

Nearby crewmen laughed.

Ryan held out the dipper. “If I cared, Born. If I even cared at all.”

“Yeah, you’d chill me. Whatever.” The twin grinned and drank. “By the way, if you want to chill Born, which I recommend highly, he’s over there.”

Ryan turned to see the other twin grinning and waving from the opposite rail. The one-eyed man waved back. “Naw. If I wanted to chill Mr. Born, I’d chill the bastard right in front of me.”

The correctly identified twin started backward and grabbed for a shroud as he nearly fell overboard. “Nukestorm it! For a man with only one eye, you don’t miss much!”

The twin called out to his brother. “BeGood! Ryan wants to chill you with his soft, Deathlands...” Born trailed off. His brother was gone. He shot his gaze back up into the rigging.

“Ahoy! Topmen!” Born called. “Anyone seen my triple stupe brother—”

“Man overboard!” Ryan roared. He vaulted barrels, coils of rope and an open hatch as he ripped off his shirt.

Crewmen shouted in alarm. “Who? Where away?”

“My brother, BeGood!” Born bawled. “Off the starboard rail!”

Miss Loral stepped in Ryan’s path. “Belay that, Ryan!” He skid to a halt with a snarl and restrained himself from throwing the woman in after BeGood. Miss Loral sensed the danger she was in. “Last swim you’ll ever take, Mr. Ryan! Don’t do it!”

“Barrel and a line!” Commander Miles bellowed. Onetongue and Atlast secured a line around an empty cask and sent it over the side. The barrel landed in the purple water with a splash and bobbed forlornly in the Glory’s bow wake, paying out line and swiftly disappearing into the gloom. The crew shouted into the gathering dark, “BeGood! BeGood!”

Gypsyfair screamed out of all relation to her size. “Shut up!”

The crew shut up while the little mutant cupped her hands behind her ears and turned her head slowly, clicking like the second hand on a chron. Her shoulders sagged. “Nothing above water, nothing within my range.”

The waters didn’t stir. Oracle rasped from the quarterdeck, “I admire your sense of duty toward your messmate, Mr. Ryan. I know not what the waters are like where you come from, but no one swims here without a spear in hand, a bright sun above, clear water below and many mates fool enough to muster to him.” The crew scanned the murk and muttered in loss and agreement. Born fell to his knees, howling and pulling his hair.

Oracle continued. “Dusk has fallen. The night feeders rise from the depths. Mr. BeGood has fallen down among them.”

“No one heard him yell,” Ryan countered. “No one heard a splash.”

The entire crew on deck and above looked at Ryan in shock at his challenge to the captain.

“Ryan’s right,” Gypsyfair agreed. “I didn’t hear nothing until Ryan and Born shouted, and I hear everything.”

Born ceased his howling. “My brother is a first-rate top man! He don’t fall from no rad-blasted rail in calm water! Much less without a sound! If he did, he’d have been laughing!”

Ryan put his hand on the rail where BeGood had sat grinning at him moments before. It was dripping wet, as if BeGood had already been soaked before he had fallen. “Captain, BeGood didn’t fall. Something rose up to the rail and took him.”

Oracle’s voice rose from his breaking slate rasp to a landslide. “Beat to quarters! All hands on deck! Prepare to repel boarders!” The drum beat to quarters. Shouts and footfalls echoed below. “Sharpshooters, top men! Look alive! Watch below, report to the armory! I want every lantern lit and—”

Screaming broke out on the blaster deck below Ryan’s feet.

The one-eyed man didn’t wait for orders. “Watch the starboard rail!” Ryan drew his knife and his marlinspike and ran portside. In the pale glow of the ship’s lanterns, Ryan saw man-sized, gray octopods climbing up the side of the hull. Crewmen boiled on deck armed with swords, war clubs, axes and butchering implements of every description. Far too few had blasters. Ryan had heard the crew had expended far too much of their ammo in the last battle with no hope of replacement soon, and they were saving their black powder for their cannons. The one-eyed warrior vainly yearned for his Scout, his SIG and his panga, but no one was hustling him his weapons. Ryan hefted his knife and spike in each hand and waited for the creatures suckering their way toward him. He counted more than two dozen. “Sharpshooters! The sides!”

Blasterfire crackled and popped from the tops, but it was far too slow and sporadic. Two of the eight-armed muties burst as high-powered longblasters exploded their soft heads, but Ryan knew the shooters in the tops of the three masts were trying to cover port and starboard as well as bow and stern. Goulash shoved in shoulder to shoulder with Ryan, brandishing a beautiful, filigreed hunting sword and a double-barreled scattergun sawn down into a handblaster. He leaned out over the rail and pulled one trigger and then another. Two octopods smeared off the hull in riddled ruins. The Hungarian waved the swiftly creeping creatures upward. “Ha! Come then!”

“Goulash, get the hell back from the rail! Reload!”

An octopod launched out of the water like a rocket. It shot up level with the rail, and Goulash screamed and thrust his sword. His attack was instantly entangled as two arms wrapped around his wrist and elbow. His sword clattered to the deck as an arm cinched around his neck and squeezed. Ryan lunged, but the creature simply fell away before his attack and let its weight pull Goulash over the rail. The Hungarian fell gasping and struggling into the dark sea below wrapped in the octopod’s embrace.

Ryan knew in an instant that the good ship Glory was not being boarded and taken. Her crew was being harvested. The silent night creep ended. Octopods shot up out of the water like an artillery barrage and hit the rails in full assault. There were scores of them, not counting the ones that had attacked through the blaster hatches below. Gypsyfair screamed and brandished her knife as an octopod pulled itself over the rail and rose. Ryan had seen squids and octopuses before. Out of the water their boneless bodies had no buoyancy or leverage and were reduced to creeping and pulling themselves along by muscular contraction. This octopod suddenly stood up straight, using its eight arms like legs. It shot out an arm and snatched the blind mutant’s knife out of her hands.

Ryan wound up and threw.

A marlinspike was a poor throwing weapon at best, but the half pound of iron revolved twice and slammed into the octopod’s head-body and rippled its gray flesh. Light strobed across its body in bizarre flashes, and it turned on its attacker.

Ryan had seen battle with man and mutie in every corner of the Deathlands as well as in some of the farthest flung corners of the nukecausted world. He didn’t flinch as the octopod ran toward him across the deck, seven feet tall on its eight arms with horrible shuffling speed. Ryan held his knife low and charged. He collided with the mutant octopus and hurled his left shoulder into the creature. It rocked back beneath the force of meeting its adversary’s frame, but its suckers gripped the deck and arms instantly snaked around Ryan’s limbs. Toothed suckers bit through his pants and directly into his bare flesh.

Ryan slashed, but it was like stabbing a stickie. His blade barely cut the thick, rubbery flesh, and in an instant a suckered arm constricted around his biceps while three others wound around him. The creature was using four arms to stand on and four to control Ryan. The contractile power of the octopod’s arms was sickening. Ryan stared into its golden, alien, rectangular eyes and knew he going to board the last train west. The webbing between the mutie’s forward arms flopped up and its head tilted back. It opened the underside of its body like a flower and a dark parrot beak twice the size of a human fist prolapsed out and opened. The arm around his biceps twisted and turned his blade away. The other three arms pulled him in.

Doc appeared out of nowhere.

He stalked across Glory’s deck like an avenging scarecrow with his sword unsheathed. The creature holding Ryan paused and one of its eyes bulged and watched Doc lunge and lance an oncoming octopod between its alien optical organs. Doc’s opponent shuddered, released black ink like a chilled man releasing his bowels and instantly went limp.

“Between the eyes!” Doc’s voice rose to operatic heights. “Shipmates, slash not! A swift thrust or a sharp blow, but between the eyes or not at all! That is where you shall find their brain!”

Ryan managed to twist in the cold, horrid, sucking grip. He felt the horrible beak scrape against his stomach, but its curved slick surface slid snapping across the plates of his stomach muscle. His blade was out of position to stab, so he desperately slammed the knife’s handle down between the octopod’s eyes. It was a weak blow, nearly all forearm, but the octopod’s protruding eyes squeezed shut and retracted into its head. The grip of every arm encumbering Ryan weakened, and the creature sagged. Ryan felt the mainmast against his back, and he put a foot against it and reared up. He put all of his weight behind it as he snapped his head forward and butted the octopus between the eyes.

Every suction cup released at once and the octopod slimed off of Ryan to flop shuddering to the deck. Ryan scooped up Goulash’s fallen sword. It was short, heavy, curved and not particularly well balanced. The thick blade had been designed for sliding around bones and penetrating deep to finish off downed big game. It would do for octopod between-the-eyes butchery.

Atlast screamed and screamed. He lay on the deck holding an octopod aloft with both arms and legs. The octopod had all eight arms suctioned against the deck and it inexorably contracted down, beak snapping to crush his skull. Its golden eyes snapped up just in time to see Ryan round on it.

The one-eyed man turned his wrist as he lunged the blade between the octopod’s eyes up to the hilt. Atlast screamed as the creature belched a bucket of ink on him, went limp between his limbs and collapsed on top of him. Ryan ripped his sword free. Three octopods charged him, scuttling on the tips of their suckered arms. He heard the pop of Mildred’s target revolver, and one of the aquatic mutants dropped, dripping ichor between its optical organs. A silver pinwheel of steel revolved over Ryan’s shoulder and Jak’s ship’s knife sank into cephalopod ganglia and dropped it. The remaining octopod took a look at Ryan as he charged and turned toward the rail.

It met Captain Oracle.

Oracle rammed his orange-furred prosthesis between its eyes up to the wrist. He twisted and yanked the paw free with hooked brains, guts and multiple hearts trailing between the silver claws. Manrape knelt above another, driving his fist between its eyes like a piston. Doc skewered one, and octopods convulsed and fell from stem to the stern as the crew counterattacked with a vengeance and scores of armed crewmen boiled out of the hatches like angry ants. The skin of the remaining octopods rippled and flashed like strobes.

Ryan’s teeth flashed in the dark as he heard J.B.’s Uzi blasting tight bursts belowdecks. The octopods with crewmen prey released them, and they all began hurling themselves over the rails. Ryan heard splashes as others belowdecks ejected from the blasterports. Ryan lowered his sword. The octo-muties had come to feed, and the food had fought back with far too much vigor for their taste. Wounded crewmen lay in lakes of blood and ink, twisting and screaming from tentacle tearings and beak bites.

Doc shook blood and ink from his blade. “Captain! All known species of octopus are poisonous! Like spiders, many are not dangerous to man, but this species is unlike any I have ever seen.”

“Wounded to the med!” Mildred shouted like she was in surgery. “Tell Bonesaw to administer any antivenin we have!”

Crewmen gathered up their blood-and ink-stained companions. The dead octopods and their ink were already starting to smell like a rottie attack. “Miss Loral,” Oracle grated. “I want a death and damage report ASAP! Commander, I want any sail set that can catch a wind!”

“Aye, Captain!” Miles wiped ink from a Japanese wakizashi short sword. “What course?”

“Due east, Commander! I want good, deep Lantic beneath us, without a spec of land, rock or reef on the horizon within the hour.”

“Aye, Captain!”

“Mr. Manrape, have the waisters get this filth off my deck.”

“You heard the captain, Hardstone!” Manrape shouted. “Get this squid filth overboard! I don’t want to see a spec of blood or a drop of ink on this deck come the light of dawn!”

Crewmen ran to the jobs and stations.

“Ryan!” Gypsyfair screamed and clicked and pointed at the deck. “There! There! There!”

Ryan stared at a pile of cordage in the glow of the ship’s lantern. The cordage had not been there before and was just a few feet away from where he had dropped his first octopod opponent with a head butt. “Watch the decks for anything out of place!” Ryan shouted. “The rad-blasted things can camo!” Ryan rounded on the pile of cordage with his sword before him. The pile of cordage rippled and changed color. The octopod tried to rise but seemed strong enough to only get three arms beneath it. It reeled like a drunk before Ryan in retreat. The one-eyed man raised his sword for the killing thrust. The octopod’s siphon suddenly contracted and Ryan recoiled as a liter of stinking black ink hit him under high pressure. “Fireblast...”

Crewmen charged in from all directions, brandishing blades, and cut off the creature from Ryan and the rail. Its camouflage flashed off, and the octopod returned to its normal slick-gray color. The golden eyes bulged outward in two directions as the seamen advanced. The octopod flopped headfirst into the water barrel and crossed its eight arms above it in defense. Half a dozen of the crew closed in for the kill.

“Gypsyfair!” Oracle called. “Sweep the decks, stem to stern! Boarding pike and blaster men to her!” Gypsyfair began echolocating the deck surrounded by a phalanx of blasters and sharpened steel.

“Lover!” Ryan turned as Krysty flung herself into his arms. She kissed him for long moments and then leaned back. She surveyed his sucker-torn, ink-stained face and torso. “You look like you just got thumped by stickies, and you smell like they pushed you down a pest-hole privy.”

Ryan’s teeth flashed through the ink covering his face. “I love the way you sweet talk me after we’ve been separated.”

Fresh shouting broke out. “Kill the thing!” “You kill it!” “I’m not getting within reach of it!”

Ryan hefted his sword. Krysty took his six with her blaster as they approached the armed crowd surrounding the water barrel. The octopod’s head was at the bottom, and its arms roiled like a snake mating ball at the surface. No one wanted to get close to it.

“Get Gallondrunk!” Sweet Marie shouted. “He’ll pin that squid in the barrel stem to stern with that walrus lance of his! Then we chop it up proper!”

This suggestion was met with great enthusiasm.

“Belay that!” Oracle ordered. The crew parted before him. “Mr. Manrape, I want a section of grating lashed to the top of that barrel. Put a guard on it. And get Boiler and Skillet out of the med and into the galley. They’ve been nursing their wounds long enough.”

Manrape looked quizzical for the first time in Ryan’s experience. “Aye, Captain.”

“That beast is a hundred kilos if it’s an ounce, and our stores are spoiling. We need meat if we are going to make it across the ’Quator.”

The crew seemed pleased with the idea, and men and women began whispering about calamari and the delights of Brazil.

Oracle turned back for the quarterdeck. “And Mr. Forgiven could use some fresh ink. Speaking of which, Purser, rate Mr. Ryan ordinary seaman.”

Chapter Six

J.B. worked. The good ship Glory was short on blasters. The majority of the weapons in the armory were typical, home-rolled, break-open, single-shot longblasters and pistols. The Glory had standardized on .45 caliber, and they had molds and enough lead to make thousands of bullets, and they could fire black powder or smokeless with equal facility. They punched primers out of predark coins that could be found anywhere.

Cases were the main problem. They had no machinery on board to extrude scavenged brass or aluminum. Smithy had to do it by hand. They were saving and reloading old cases, and by the buckets of split cases at J.B.’s feet some had been reused far too many times than was safe. The sharpshooters in the tops had assiduously cared for predark hunting longblasters of .308 and 30-06 caliber. Reloading them was even more problematic. A number of the crew had personally acquired arms taken as booty or acquired otherwise, which were stored in the blaster room, but most of those had but a handful of shells left to them after the last battle.

What they also had was several crates of blasters in various states of disrepair that were beyond Gunny’s knowledge or ability to fix. They kept those to sell for their parts in ports of call. J.B. liked Gunny, and Gunny liked him. They were men of similar minds. Unfortunately, what Gunny most understood was black powder and muzzle-loading cannons. Between him and Smithy, they could produce the simple springs, hinges and screws to keep the primitive blasters serviceable. The gas systems, trigger groups and bolt assemblies of predark semi-automatic blasters and assault weapons were beyond their skill.

They were not beyond J.B.’s.

The Armorer had disassembled every last waste weapon, made a list of things he felt Smithy could handle, requisitioned his tool kit and gone to work. If J.B. hadn’t liked Gunny already as a brother armorer, the fact that Gunny didn’t pull rank but instead watched with awe, asked intelligent questions and eagerly helped in whatever capacity he could won J.B.’s admiration. J.B. finally rose from the worktable and nearly hit his head on the low deck beam above. He sat back down and checked his chron. They had been at it for eleven hours straight. He and Gunny had cannibalized ten broken and corroded AKs and produced two that might function through another battle or two, though they only had enough ammo for slightly less than a mag each. Six M-16s had produced one working longblaster. Strangely enough they had nearly a case of 5.56 mm ammo but only one serviceable magazine. Several scatterguns and a few handblasters were now also in temporary working order.

Gunny shook his head in delight at the bonanza of working blasters. “Oh, that shines, J.B.!”

The Armorer stretched. He sighed as he felt familiar strong hands start to knead his shoulders. Mildred spoke low from behind him. “Hey.”

He looked up and smiled at her. “Hey.”

“How’s it going?”

“Did some good work today.”

Mildred smiled indulgently at the gleaming weapons. “I can see that.”

“How’s it in the med?” J.B. asked. He’d heard the screaming all through the night.

Mildred’s face went tight. “Doc was right. The octopods were poisonous. Whatever Bonesaw’s using for antivenin might work on snakes, but no one bit last night lived. We lost fifteen. The sucker wounds were ugly and prolific. Ryan’s covered with them, but none are deep and none are going septic.”

“How you and Bonesaw getting along?”

“Well, first off, the ship’s healer is named Bonesaw. That tells you something right there.”

“Bad?”

Mildred made a grudging noise. “He can plug a bullet hole. His sewing isn’t bad, and he’s actually pretty good at setting bones. Those octopus arms snapped a few. He’s got some interesting herbals going on, but...”

J.B. knew Mildred well. “But that’s not what’s bothering you.”

“Bonesaw knows I’m more than just a healer.”

Gunny smirked. “Everyone does.”

J.B. knew everyone knew too. One of the problems the companions had was that just about any group they met who learned of Mildred’s talents were reluctant to let her go, some violently so. “You got a little bossy about the wounded up top.”

“Yeah, well there’s this Hippocratic Oath thing of mine, J.B. Just isn’t made for this brave new world of yours.”

“How’s Jak, Ricky?”

Mildred made a face. “Jak’s fine.”

J.B. let out a long breath. “Ricky?”

Mildred’s face twisted into an expression the Armorer was genuinely afraid of. “Bad enough the ship’s healer’s name is Bonesaw! But the bosun’s name is Manrape. J.B., the kid’s ass is on the line and you better do something!”

J.B. looked Gunny in the eye. He hated asking for favors, but he asked now. “Ricky’s an armorer, not as good as me but better than you, and he’s an accomplished machinist. This ship needs him.”

“And he’s becoming an able top man,” Gunny replied. “He can do all three wearing a dress.”

J.B. stopped just short of reaching for the closest loaded blaster. “I can steal ten blasters while you’re cleaning your monocle. I’ll cut Manrape to shreds.”

“And you can’t imagine what will be done to you, but you can imagine Mildred weeping while she watches.”

“You’d let that happen?”

“You’ve seen Manrape. Have you known anyone so fast? Anyone so strong? He is a demigod among us and a demon in battle.”

J.B. had met several demigods and demons, self-professed and otherwise. Manrape was admittedly something of a juggernaut

“This ship is in trouble, matey. When the final battle comes, we’ll need him more than you and all your lot put together.” Gunny looked away. “Sacrifices have to be made, mebbe.”

Mildred pleaded. “J.B.!”

“The officers, do they keep their weapons separate?”

Gunny nodded. “Aye, they do.”

“Tell the captain I want to strip, clean, polish and tune every one of them, and tell him I need to requisition Ricky for it while you and I go over the cannons.”

“Aye.” Gunny chewed at his mustache. “I can do that. It will just prolong things, but it will give Ricky a few days’ respite. Can’t imagine the cap’n saying no.”

“Thanks.”

Mildred looked close to tears. “Thanks, J.B.”

“I should’ve thought of it earlier.”

“A few days’ respite, then what?”

J.B. rose and set his fedora on his head. He almost took Mildred’s hand but looked at the grease and grime covering his. Mildred smiled and took his hand anyway. “There’s some soap in the med. Why don’t I wash those for you before you start touching me?”

J.B. liked the idea of Mildred washing his hands very much, and touching her more, but his mind was still fixed on the problem at hand, and that was keeping Ricky’s rear contact point water tight. He nodded to himself.

“I’ll talk to Doc tomorrow. Talk to him about this creed and code.”

* * *

DOC TOOK HIS morning walk around the ship. He felt mostly recovered from his fit and being seized to the shrouds. Crewmen hailed him from the rigging. Those busy at their labors nodded and smiled. Those with a free hand patted him solicitously like he was a beloved child. Doc smiled, tipped his swordstick or exchanged a few pleasant words with his shipmates as he passed.

He took the gangway down to blaster deck and walked forward. He stopped by the galley. Boiler and Skillet stood at the octopus barrel and the cookfire, respectively, engaged in hot debate. Boiler was a big, florid man with a huge gut that bespoke he liked sampling his own wares early and often. He wore a bandage around his head from the wound and concussion he’d suffered in the ship’s previous battle. Skillet was a lanky black man whose wildly beaded hair would give Mildred a run for her money. His left arm was in a sling. The cooks were very grumpy about being ousted from the med.

“Well, how would you cook it?” Skillet snarled.

Doc peered into the barrel from a prudent distance. The octopod’s great, gray head pressed against the section of iron grate nailed to the top of the barrel. Doc noted the barrel had been bolted to the deck. He also noted the creature’s rectangular, horizontal pupils flicking back and forth between the two cooks.

Boiler stared into the barrel and pointed his butcher knife at the cephalopod. His postapocalyptic English accent was even thicker than Atlast’s. “Well, I’ve cooked flying squids right proper, then! Haven’t I?”

“Flying squids is small! This one’s huge!” Skillet waved his cleaver in protest. “You cut that thing into calamari rings and fry it? All you’ll have is two hundred pounds of rad-blasted rubber! It’ll be mutiny after what Forgiven’s been servin’!”

“Peels it, pounds it, and simmers it soft. That’s what the Greek always said about fish with arms! I say we peel that gray skin off and simmer it succulent!”

Doc watched with great interest as the octopod’s pupils slammed open like a cat’s eyes in the dark at the announcement. Skillet scratched his assiduously cultivated beard at the thought. “Might work. Might use some slush from the morning salt pork to give it some flavor.”

Boiler spread his arms to the deck above happily. “And now he’s cooking, then!”

The octopus shuddered.

“And pepper,” Skillet decreed. “Lots of pepper.”

“Excuse me,” Doc said.

The octopod flicked a glance at Doc and then went back to devoting one eye each to the cooks. The octopus’s arms contracted around the bars confining it. To Doc’s eyes it seemed much like a man going white-knuckled at his sentencing. Doc loosened the hilt of his swordstick and leaned perilously close to the barrel. “Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, Doc.” Skillet waved his cleaver in warning. “But I wouldn’t get too close. Rad-blasted squid tried to walk off last night with its arms through the grate. Nearly took the barrel with it.”

Boiler nodded. “Which is why we nailed it down, then, isn’t it?”

Doc peered at the alien eyes regarding Boiler and Skillet simultaneously. “Forgive me, good Skillet, but when I first said forgive me, I was speaking to your captive.” The cooks gave each other looks. Doc’s peculiar behavior was already a high source of humor and discussion aboard. The fact that Doc wanted to talk to dinner would earn both men wide-eyed attention at mess. The octopod eyes snapped to center to regard Doc in binocular vision.

Doc bowed slightly. “I say again, forgive me, for I am an icthyologist by training rather than a teuthologist, but am I correct in my assumption that you understand human speech?”

The creature in the barrel pressed the top of its huge head against the grate. It ejected water from its siphon and sucked in air, and then the tube vibrated and let forth a sibilant hiss. “Yes.”

Boiler screamed. Skillet flailed backward and nearly sat in the cook fire. Nearby crewmen shouted in alarm. The two cooks brandished butcher knives and cleavers. Doc could not contain himself. “By my stars and garters!”

Ryan appeared at Doc’s side with his knife in hand. He kept a wary eye on his erstwhile, eight-armed opponent. “Doc, take a step or two back.”

Doc was utterly focused on the octopus. “How, pray tell?”

The octopod’s speech sounded like a snake gargling, but it was oddly very clear. “We learned.”

“From whom?”

“From humans.”

Doc pondered this fascinating development as crewmen gathered around brandishing marlinspikes, knives and tools. Other crewmen ran bawling for the officers and the captain. “Why would humans teach you speech?” Doc asked.

“They modified us. They wished to use us as weapons.”

“What happened?”

“The war happened,” the octopus replied.

“What happened to the humans who taught you?”

“We ate them.”

The crowd erupted.

“Sky fire!”

“Kill the fucking thing!”

“Captain!”

The octopus shuddered under the verbal barrage but kept its alien gaze locked on Doc. “That was many generations ago.” The alien voice seemed almost plaintive. “I have not eaten a human in months.”

“Fry the squid in crumbs!”

“I haven’t had calamari in months!”

“Captain on deck!” Commander Miles bawled. The crew parted like water as the captain strode through them. Oracle took in the scene of Doc and the two cooks. “What goes on here?”

“Oh, Captain!” Boiler was genuinely upset. “I ain’t cooking nuffing that talks! Am I, then? Much less eating it!”

Skillet pointed his cleaver at the barrel. “Squid can talk, Cap’n.”

Oracle’s face went blank.

Ryan nodded. “Doc’s interrogating it.”

The crew on the blaster deck held its breath. Oracle nodded curtly. “Carry on.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Doc continued. “So you and your species continue to teach yourselves human language generation to generation?”

“Yes,” the octopod stated.

“Why?”

“It is useful.”

“For what?”

“Survival.”

As a man who had studied ichthyology, the prospect of a sea creature he could converse with humans intelligently was almost more than Doc’s soul could bear. “If I implore the captain to spare you, would you promise not to do harm to any member of this ship?”

The crew erupted in anger.

“Quiet in the captain’s presence!” Miles bawled.

“Yes,” the octopus replied.

Oracle addressed his prisoner. “You and your brethren attacked us.”

“We were hungry.”

“My crew is hungry,” Oracle countered. The octopod recoiled.

Oracle continued. “How are you to be trusted?”

The creature spent long moments staring. “To my knowledge no cephalopod has ever told a lie.”

Doc straightened. “I believe him.”

For all his mass, Boiler’s voice rose to a childlike shriek. “It will crunch our skulls like snails, won’t it? Eating our poor brains and then be slinking over the rail in the night, then!”

The octopod kept its golden, rectangular gaze on Oracle. “I am without my brethren. I am far from home. I am a coastal animal. I could not swim from the open ocean to the littoral waters without being eaten. I could not swim all the way back to the Caribbean without exhausting myself and dying before the breeding season. I will not desert this ship until it returns to the Caribbean, and only then if given permission.” The eyes of the crew on deck snapped back and forth between their captain and the octopod in the barrel. “I give you my word I will not eat any member of the crew under any circumstances.”

“Other than serving as a source of intellectual intrigue for Doc—” Oracle’s sharklike eyes met the inhuman gaze of the cephalopod “—how would you serve this ship and your fellow crew members?”

The genetically engineered cephalopod spoke by rote. “Coastal infiltration and observation. Underwater demolition. Clandestine shipboard and port facility kidnapping and assassination.” The octopod’s eyes flicked about the crowd. “Any task requiring an anthropoid crewman to go into the water, or beneath the hull, I can perform with greater alacrity or be of great assistance. You have a significant mass of seaweed clinging to the bottom of your hull. I can begin removing it immediately and subsist on the barnacles infesting the bottom for at least a week.”

The crew stared in shock and awe at their potential nonhumanoid shipmate.

“Mr. Forgiven!” Oracle rasped.

The purser waddled forward. “Yes, Captain!”

“Sign Mr. Squid into the book and remove the grating. Unbolt the barrel and take it up top someplace out of the way and bolt it down again. Let that be his bunk, and see that it is filled with fresh seawater every other watch.”

Dumbfounded mutters rippled through the crew. Forgiven’s fat jowls worked in shock as he opened the book and his pen hovered over an empty line. “And rate him...?”

Oracle turned his flat black stare upon Doc. “How should Mr. Squid be rated?”

Doc spoke without hesitation. “Specialist, subaqueous.”

Forgiven’s pen drooped. “Sub, aquee...?”

“Ship’s dictionary,” Oracle advised.

The captain’s voice dropped. “Doc, you are responsible.”

“Aye, Captain!” Doc enthused.

Forgiven jumped as a seven-foot suckered arm snaked out of the barrel, took the pen from his hand and signed Mr. Squid on the line. The purser shook as he took the proffered pen back and the arm retreated back into the barrel. “Very good, Captain. Mr. Squid, sub-aqueest, specialist...signed.”

Chapter Seven

The Caribbean

Captain Emmanuel “Black” Sabbath stood on the incredibly high stern of his ocean-going junk Ironman and watched the island ville burn. Despite the Caribbean summer heat he wore a black frock coat, black knee breeches and hose, along with a wide-brimmed black cockle hat with a silver buckle. At his hip he carried a hooked cane knife. He drummed long fingers on the worn rosewood hilt in meditation. “Oracle’s not here.”

Blue snarled and tapped the little island on her chart. She didn’t like being wrong. “He’d have to have come here! This is the only ville with a ropewalk within range. Much less manioc fields, a sawmill and a pig farm. He has to resupply.”

Sabbath glanced at his daughter. Blue was pretty, black haired, and would have been beautiful like her mother except that visible blue capillaries formed a delicate, spiderweb tracery beneath every visible inch of her skin. She wore black as was the custom of many ship’s captains in this age, but her blouse and breeches were deliberately cut to hug her slender curves. Her logic was flawless. The burning ville would have been the last chance to take on cordage, lumber and salted meat and fish while allowing a window of escape. The smoke rising into the sky and the recently cleaned blade at Sabbath’s hip had determined the Glory had not come into port. “And yet he is not here, nor has he been.”

“And we know why.” Sabbath’s son, Dorian, lolled against the taff rail. His giant, brass and ivory-handled butterfly knife made lazy, flashing figure eights in the morning sunlight. Open, the weapon was thirty inches long and was a short two-handed sword. Closed, the double handles served as his baton of office. He was tall and rangy like his father and had his mother’s good looks in masculine form without the mutations. Dorian tossed his black, unbound hair contemptuously. “Oracle’s gone all doomie again.”

If Blue were a cat, she would have arched her back and hissed. She was a pure sailor, one of the best, and believed in little besides winds, tides, a well-oiled blaster and sharp steel. Despite being a mutant herself she had no use for prophecy or mutie visions.

Sabbath knew better.

He turned to his astrologer. “Oracle’s not here.”

Ae Sook was beautiful, Korean, and when Sabbath had taken the junk years ago she had come with it. Her manicured, gaudy-red nails tapped the intricate brass astrolabe in her lap. Skydark had broken the world and compasses were often unreliable given the rampant electromagnetic anomalies, much less the irritating habit of the poles themselves to wander. Nevertheless, despite the poor, broken and battered Earth’s condition, the stars still looked down on her from their fixed positions and they could be used as tools for navigation. Ae Sook was not a doomie, but she observed the movements of the stars and planets as her mother and her mother before her and divined horoscopes. She spoke with a thick accent.

“Captain Dorian is correct. Oracle is moved by his visions. It makes him difficult to predict. Captain Blue is also correct—in the end, the needs of Oracle’s ship must dictate his actions. If he avoided this last chance here, then we must look for the desperate and the unlikely.”

Sabbath gazed on his available fleet. He had two ships besides the Ironman beneath his feet.

His son’s red painted ship the War Pig was aptly named. She had two screws that had been converted to coal and that gave her the power to maneuver any way she liked and push against bad weather. But she ate that coal like a pig, and in the intervening century her steel masts and spars had been replaced by wood and she had never sailed efficiently since. Still, she carried a devastating weight of shot with her cannons, she had a very large crew of very dangerous men and muties and few could match her in a stand-up fight. Sabbath had been recently tempted to move his ensign to her and make her the flagship of his fleet, but the ship was best suited to his son’s middling sailing ability.

Sabbath sighed as he looked on his daughter’s ship, Lady Evil. The Lady was a schooner, her flush deck, deep vee hull and two steeply raked masts were a delight; she was painted sky blue and it was just possible she was the fastest sailing ship left in the broken world. The Lady was the terror of the Caribbean and the Gulf coasts of the Deathlands, but she was small in the scheme of things. There was only one ship Sabbath knew of that could freely sail the great oceans with the weight of shot and yards of sail to ask by your leave from no pirate or baron, and that was the Hand of Glory. She had once been his. She had been his flagship. Sabbath’s fist clenched around the hilt of his butcher blade.

Oracle had taken her from him.

Under Sabbath’s captaincy she had been the Hand of Doom, and he had ruled her with an iron hand.

Oracle had returned her to glory and to the volunteer ship she had been for more than a century. Sabbath stared up into his junk’s rigging. The sails of his three masts were fully battened, and the bamboo slats spreading through the black, lateen rigged sails looked like the fins of a great fish. Sabbath had exaggerated the effect by painting the battens sheaths white like bones. She was a beautiful ship, and big, but she could not match the Glory’s sailing ability. Ironman carried a respectable weight of shot, but her dramatically upswept hull and compartmentalized chambers were not ideal for blaster decks. As far as Sabbath knew, the Glory was the only perfect ship still afloat, and skydark might fall again before the hand of man could ever make another like her. “He’s heading south.”

Dorian snapped his massive balisong shut and rose. “The Brazils! A hungry and thirsty journey in his condition but plenty of villes! He’s fast enough to make sail for it, get resupplied and...” Dorian trailed off. “Then what? He can’t make Africa or Europe from there. What is left but to come back into our teeth?”

“He’s heading south,” Sabbath repeated.

Blue was shocked as she saw it. “He’s going to round the horn.”

“In the southern winter?” Dorian was appalled. “Rad-madness! Triple-stupe bastard!”

Blue admired the gall of it. “If there is one ship that could do it...”

“There are two I know of,” Sabbath said.

“Aye, Father,” Blue agreed. “I can—”

“The War Pig can chase him around the horn.” Sabbath corrected.

Blue bit her lip. Dorian stopped short of strutting like a rooster across the stern. “Aye, Father! I can!”

“And chase him you will, but you’ll not catch him, nor try to.”

Dorian tapped his double hilts in his palm. “No?”

“No, you’ll push him. Give him no rest or respite. Stay under sail down the south. He will outpace you, but when you hit the Horn? While he is tearing sails and snapping spars in the storms, you drop sail and go to your coal. Again, don’t try to catch him. Push him. Push him to breaking with his skeleton crew watch on watch, breaking with the scurvy, hunger and despair, and then push him to me.”

Dorian smiled like a child pulling the wings off a fly. “You and sister Blue will take the Northwest Passage.”

“It’s summer, sweet winds up the Deathlands east and no better sailing across the Great White North. With luck we beat the chem storms and have even better winds down the Deathlands west into the Cific. Oracle has never sailed outside the South Cific before. He’ll be sailing by dead reckoning and rumor. Once he rounds the Horn he’ll have to hug the western coasts, and we’ll have him.”

Blue flipped through her chart book. Many of the maps were more than a hundred years old. The apocalypse had reshaped entire coastlines, dropped entire island chains beneath the sea and generated new ones. The Caribbean Sea was better charted than most, but beyond it, most modern charts were little more than forlorn suggestions. The fact was, like the first age of ships, vast stretches of ocean were once more uncharted. Where a modern chart read ‘Here there be monsters’ it had been written in deadly earnest. Blue collected and collated every chart she could buy, steal, copy or take in plunder. Her library took up a good portion of the captain’s cabin on the Lady. A sheet of vellum stretched from floor to ceiling on her starboard wall, and on that she laboriously pieced together her masterwork, her chart of the world. Blue sighed.

By her estimate it was ninety percent incomplete.

She had never sailed farther south than the night-glowing ruins of Recife; however, her initial jealousy toward her brother’s southern run around the Horn was tempered by the idea of taking the Northwest Passage in convoy with her father and sailing the Cific. “What course?”

Sabbath turned his eye to the operations on shore. The surviving ville people howled in mourning and loss. Pigs squealed as they were slaughtered. Meat roasted in huge pits for the ships’ dinner while pork side, belly and fat back were cut into bricks and salted away. Crewmen loaded the small boats with plundered lumber and cordage and fresh fruits and vegetables and topped off water casks. The choicer of the ville’s young men and women were argued over and divided up for entertainment purposes.

“Set me a straight course, north for the Rock. It will be hard sail, across open ocean, but I don’t want anything to do with any Deathlanders. We’ll be running short on supplies by then so when we get there we’ll relieve a few Newfie villes of their women and salt cod before we round into the Labrador Sea and take the Passage.”

Blue was already flipping through her charts. “Aye, Father.”

Sabbath opened his own chart book. “Dorian, you’re going to do just about opposite. Head south until you hit the southern continent and follow the coast down. I’ve never heard of anything big enough down there to match you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try. Don’t get night creeped by a horde of war canoes or let a bunch of motorboats take a run at you. Stay out of sight of the coast as much as possible. Stop only for water and supplies.” Sabbath gave his son a stern look. “And no prizes. Stick to the mission. You don’t fight anyone unless they attack you first.”

Dorian quirked his lips in disappointment but nodded. “Aye, Father.”

“And you don’t attack Oracle, not unless he turns to fight you, or you come on him at anchor in a bay and he can’t maneuver. If it all goes glowing night shit and Oracle sinks or somehow escapes us, we’ll meet up here in August.” Sabbath tapped a point on South America’s west coast. “There’s a ville called Coquimbo, about two hundred miles north of the Valparaiso Crater. The baron there’s name is Zarro. When I first traveled the western coast I stopped there for supplies. Zarro and I came to an agreement and I helped him and his sons take a rival ville by loaning them some cannons and men to man them. You sail in to port and say your name is Sabbath, you’ll be feasted well until we arrive.”

“Aye, Father.”

“If you take Oracle before rounding the horn, head back for home with Glory in tow and we’ll see you next year.”

“Aye, Father.”

“Very good.” Sabbath snapped his book shut and turned back to the rail. He watched as a short, chubby teenaged girl was torn from her family and her homespun shift ripped from her onshore. “Mr. Kang!”

Sabbath’s seven-foot Korean second mate stepped forward. He had come with the junk as well, and after an initial period of disgruntlement, he found piracy in the Caribbean suited him quite well. He carried a cat of nine tails in a shoulder bag at all times, and every man in Sabbath’s fleet lived in horror at the prospect of feeling the lash propelled by the giant’s right arm. “Aye, Captain.”

Sabbath pointed his book at the weeping girl. “That one. Bathe her and bring her to my cabin as a belly warmer, now.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Sabbath licked his thin lips. “Ae Sook, you will assist me.”

“In all things, my captain.”

Black Sabbath strode to his cabin with his loins stirring. “We sail with the morning tide.”

* * *

RICKY CLEANED THE CAPTAIN’S blasters. Compared to the barons and warlords the youth had encountered since leaving Puerto Rico, Oracle’s personal arsenal was sparse in the extreme. Then again, Oracle’s preferred combat method seemed to be disemboweling his opponents with a mutant orangutan paw prosthesis. He had a beauty of a single-shot Thompson/Center Contender that, according to rumor, he was quite proficient with and could reload with his paw. It was chambered for .45-70. Ricky was a confirmed blaster lover, and he knew the round was ancient, pre-Deathlands American and usually used to take bison. He couldn’t imagine firing it from a fourteen-inch blaster. He aimed the oiled, tuned and gleaming blaster and yearned to shoot it. Ricky lowered the weapon as the lurking fear closed in.

He might as well stick the weapon in his mouth. The question was whether to try and shoot Manrape first.

Ricky’s weapons, and those of his companion’s, were locked away. They had been allowed to bear arms during the octopod attack, but they had been relieved of their weapons afterward. The companions would not be allowed to touch them again until they were signed to the book. Ricky had heard rumors that there were some other special weapons in the captain’s cabin that were off limits to him and to J.B. The young man jerked up as a tall shadow fell across the door. He had no bullets for any of the weapons he was cleaning, and he clawed for his ship’s knife.

Ricky sighed with relief as Doc’s rangy frame filled the doorway. The old man held a wooden case. “Doc! Don’t sneak up on someone like that!”

“Young Ricky,” Doc said gravely,. “you have a conundrum.”

Ricky stared at the weapons on his workbench and saw nothing that made sense. Doc often didn’t. “What’s a conundrum?”

“You have a problem.”

“Yeah, Doc. If getting butt-chilled by a bronze statue is a problem, I’ve got a problem.”

The subject matter was clearly to Doc’s distaste. Yet Doc seemed to be in a rare clear, cold mood. “Fight him.”

“Fight him?” Ricky began gesticulating. “Fight him how?”

“Challenge him.”

“Challenge him?” Ricky repeated. “Challenge him how? No one’s going to give me my blaster! With blades? I can’t beat him! Madre de dios, Doc! Bare hands? I haven’t been rated ordinary seamen yet, much less able. What do I challenge him for? The right to be bosun?”

“For the personal rights to your rectum.”

Ricky was shocked speechless to hear such a thing come out of Doc’s mouth.

Doc struggled to keep his voice steady. “When I was hurled into your time, I was captured by unethical men.”

Ricky had heard the stories. “Doc—”

“I was made sport of and abused. Cruelly.”

Ricky couldn’t meet Doc’s eyes. “Doc, you don’t have to—”

“Look at me!” Doc demanded. Ricky looked. He stared at the time-trawled man, ripped from his family and torn from his time. Ricky gazed on Doc’s chron-damaged visage and knew that in reality he was almost as old as Ryan. He had seen Doc’s skill with blaster and blade and knew that in his time Doc had been a learned scholar who had married a beautiful woman. Now he was old, broken in body and sometimes in his mind. Doc regained his composure.

“Ricky, my young friend. Fight. Rage.”

The youth did not know what to say. “Doc?”

Doc’s eyes grew clear. His voice filled with the terrible gravitas of his message. “You must fight.”

Tears stung Ricky’s eyes for Doc and himself and the future that awaited him in the darkness belowdecks. “But how, Doc?”

Doc set the case he carried on the workbench. “With these.”

Ricky opened the ornate box. It contained two of the most beautiful handblasters he had ever seen. Their grips were lustrously polished fruitwood. Clouds of golds, blues and purples swept through the steel of the barrel and lock work in gorgeous swirls of case hardening. The triggers and bead front sights were gold plated. The weapons were perfectly identical. Separate slots held individual bullet molds and intricately tooled silver powder horns for each blaster. Ricky took out one of the weapons. It was heavy and well over .50 caliber. He turned the weapon about for several moments and found writing along the bottom of the barrel.

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