by James Axler
This was perfect. When her people had spread the white cough among the previous norms of the ville, it chilled them fast enough, but then new norms arrived in the big ship Constellation with its many cannons, and her tribe dared not attack.
Ah, but now the new baron was going to sneak away from the ville, taking most of the good blasters with her. The moment the outlanders were gone, her people could attack, and finally cleanse their home of these invaders. But by tomorrow night, maybe sooner, the island would be theirs once more. Nothing would stop them this time. Praise be the maker.
Chapter Fifteen
The companions spent the night in the baron's bedroom, sharing the huge bed in shifts, the door blocked with the heaviest trunk, a roaring fire in the fireplace to forestall any unwanted intrusions.
In the morning, they stayed alert at the dining table, while pretty young girls in oddly low-cut clothing served the men and Mildred breakfast, and older women more sensibly dressed for kitchen work served Krysty.
Not born a fool, Ryan could see what was happening and offered Krysty a slice of pineapple from his plate. But when the redhead reached for it, a serving girl darted forward and knocked the plate to the floor.
"Please forgive me, sir," the girl gushed, almost spilling from her clothing as she bent over to clean the mess.
"The comfort of my kin is very important to me," Krysty said sternly to the busty server. "So I will be tasting everything brought to the table before they eat. Is that clearly understood?"
"But I…as you command, Baron," the girl muttered, and promptly raced into the kitchen. The older women came back in a few moments with different food.
"We could smell it had gone sour," the matron explained, trying to hide a scowl as she filled their wooden mugs with coconut milk.
Ryan took her wrinkled arm and held it firmly in his grip. She gasped, and he offered the mug. "Taste it and make sure," he ordered.
The matron nodded eagerly and drank, spilling some down her clothing. "See? Nice and fresh, sir." She managed to smile, tears in her eyes. "Very good. Just harvested."
"Go," Ryan commanded, releasing his grip.
She stumbled back a step, then darted into the kitchen, cradling the arm as if it were broken.
"What is wrong with these people?" Mildred muttered, releasing the grip on her blaster.
"Poison the latrine seat next," Jak growled, sniffing a slice of grilled breadfruit before chancing a bite.
"Act normal, eat fast," Ryan said, cutting up a smoked fish to look for hidden needles. It was clean. "We're leaving on the noon tide. With or without the backpacks."
Squinting at the warrior, J.B. started to speak, then closed his mouth with a snap. Yeah, made sense. What good were glasses if he was riding the last train west?
"That is," Krysty added softly, feeling watched from every direction, "if they let me leave."
WATER SPLASHING around his neck, Dean reached over the gunwale of the dugout canoe and handed his father the ebony stick.
"That's almost everything," Ryan said, opening the stick and checking the blade within. The steel shone as if freshly polished, its day underwater causing no noticeable damage. There was just the med kit and J.B.'s munitions bag remaining.
Ryan had originally planned on using the local oyster divers for this job, but after the incident at breakfast, he wasn't letting anybody near their blasters and grens.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, rocking to the motion of the waves.
"Fine," the boy replied, kicking steadily. "This is easy." Dean was stripped down to his shorts and a pair of woven sandals, around his waist a canvas ammo belt with the pouches full of rocks. Just enough to balance the natural buoyancy of the human body so he only had to expend strength swimming, and not endlessly fight to stay submerged.
"Any sign of the med kit?" Ryan asked, holding out a canteen and pouring some of the warm coconut milk into the boy's mouth.
Swallowing gratefully, Dean waved, sending a spray of water in the direction. "Sure! Ten feet over that way."
"Hang on and rest for a minute," Ryan said, going to the bow of the canoe. Lifting a large rock, he brought it to his chest and heaved toward the location indicated. It hit with a mighty splash and disappeared, the attached rope snaking along the bottom of the canoe then yanking a fishnet full of inflated pig bladders over the side and down into the water. Using the bladders for air, the boy didn't have to waste time swimming to the surface every couple of minutes and could stay down for long periods of time, ten, fifteen minutes at a stretch. It was how they had gotten so much done so quickly.
The rest of the companions were equally busy. Doc and Jak were staying close to Krysty for protection while the sec men loaded the trawler for her official tour of the island. Mildred and J.B. were with the slaves making black powder, because they said it would be done today. Everything had to appear perfectly ordinary. But once the two came back, the companions would all meet at the trawler and get out of there. There was no way the sec men could stop them once they had sufficient firepower. The trunk holding the rapidfires and grens was already on board.
"That lard working?" Ryan asked, glancing at the sec men and civilians watching them from the beach.
"Nice and warm," Dean replied, the water sliding off his greased face. "But the damn fish keep nibbling on me."
"Bite them back." Ryan smiled.
"Watch me!" Dean laughed, and taking a deep breath, the boy plunged into the harbor. The saltwater stung his eyes for only a moment before they became adjusted again.
At a steady pace, Dean swam all the way down to only a few yards above the crumbling wrecks that covered the harbor bottom, then he started sideways, searching for the skeleton in the crow's nest. It was the most easily spotted object underwater, and served as his anchor for finding things.
Shafts of sunlight sparkled through the clear water, making the recce a relatively easy job. It was only inside the sunken ships that the shadows were thick, the broken hulls still protecting their cargo from thieves and raiders. After a few minutes, Dean was forced to exhale and take a careful sip from the inflated pig's bladder tied to his belt. The clip on his nose was uncomfortable, but his father had been right. There was a natural urge to inhale through your nose, which would easily chill him.
Finding the fishing net of additional pig bladders, Dean replaced his used one for a fresh. Then he glanced about for the crow's nest, and headed that way with a short bamboo spear at the ready. He felt vulnerable without a blaster, but tried not to let it bother him too much.
Then something moved into his field of vision and the young Cawdor turned about fast, jabbing with the spear. But it was only his hair, animated by the currents of the sea. He chuckled and a sip of ocean got into his mouth, momentarily blocking his throat. Exhaling hard to clear the air passage, Dean drained a fresh bladder, making it go flat. Exhaling again, he took a smaller breath from another bladder and felt his heart slow down. Death was everywhere in the depths. Even laughter killed. It was a sobering thought.
A school of brightly colored fish swam past him, and Dean froze, waiting for them to pass. They were only little things, but he knew there was usually something big chasing the smaller animals. He was correct. Only yards behind the school came a black lightning bolt wiggling through the sea—an electric eel, its pointed snout packed full on sharp teeth. As he watched, it snagged a fish and swallowed it whole. The rest of the school darted off at fantastic speed, the eel staying close behind catching another, and another.
His lungs were nearly bursting before the hunting party had moved onward, and he drank deeply from the shrinking supply of bladders. Mildred said he could only dive for an hour before risking damage. The boy was already way past that mark, so he hurried to finish the job.
The med kit was lying in plain sight on a bed of pristine white sand, a small red crab poking at it with claws. Dean chased the crustacean away. The packs were much too bulky to drag to the surface with any ease, so he simply tie
d on the rope, released the bladder and his father would paddle over to the bouncing buoy and haul them into the canoe.
A dark shape moved on the surface, and the med kit ascended. All right, only a single bag to go, the most important one, J.B.'s explosives.
Studying the undersea vista, Dean tried to reconstruct their hasty swim from the sinking skiffs in his mind. Now, if the lifeboat with Jones sank over there, and he had found his own backpack there, then the last bag should be somewhere near the coral breakers. The tide was going out when they arrived, and a lot of the smaller items had been swept out to sea by the strong currents. Thankfully the breakers removed any possibility of a riptide capturing the boy and hauling him miles away before releasing his drowned corpse. Otherwise, he never would have risked this dive without more equipment, as crude as it was.
Charging his lungs again, Dean headed for coral and swam along the irregular side of the submerged wall. Finally he spied the canvas bag hanging from the spar of a sunken ship lying smack in the middle of the pass. The ship was cracked in two, its broken hull draped over both sides of the reef.
Swimming close, Dean grabbed the spar to slow his passage and heard it break apart, then saw the bag plummeting into a hole in the deck, disappearing inside the vessel. Releasing the rotten piece of wood, Dean went lower and lower until locating the bag of munitions. Most of the bottom of the ship was gone, ripped away by the coral. Through the gaping chasm of the hull, the bag had fallen onto a ledge of pink coral, the straps waving in the currents.
Making a decision, Dean exhaled early and filled his lungs to the maximum, emptying a bladder. Then casting away the excess drag of the bamboo spear, he swam using both hands, going straight into the belly of the sunken vessel.
Trying not to touch anything, Dean maneuvered around the dim recess of the craft. The pink coral showed through the hull, rising from the shattered planks in spurs and sharp peaks, but the coarse material reflected the dim light from above, giving him just barely enough illumination to traverse the razor-sharp obstacles.
However, the water had distorted his estimation of the depth, and his lungs were aching by the time be reached the bag and grabbed it off the ledge. Success! Draping it over a shoulder, he realized how heavy it was when he started to sink. Quickly drawing his knife, he sawed at the leather belt of rocks around his waist to lighten the load. Busy at the task, he didn't notice when he drifted to the stairs and collided with the railing.
Small as the contact was, the entire ship groaned loudly and began to break apart. The deck rose as the ceiling fell. Planks splintered, silt clouding the water, and the mast slowly smashed through the hatch like a falling tree. He dodged clumsily, but blackness engulfed him and something painfully glanced off his shoulder, then the bag was jerked away, dragging him along.
Savagely Dean hacked at the darkness, and the munitions bag came free. As the awesome weight of the rotten hull drove the bow into the sand, the wreckage began to pile upward. Frantically swimming for the stairs, Dean dodged a thrust from the shattering railing, went under a rushing bulkhead and darted into the cargo hold.
The destruction slowed slightly as the aft section of the keel stubbornly resisted, and Dean took the opportunity to get his bearings. Floating between decks, he saw there were still tiny pinpoints of light streaming in from above, which meant he was in the shallows of the harbor. But he had to get out fast, and without touching anything. Next time he might not be so fortunate.
Lungs aching, Dean went to take another breath from the pig bladder and found it flopping loosely, ripped apart by some slashing piece of wreckage. Instantly his heart began to pound, and Dean remembered his father telling him a person used more air when he was scared. Stay calm, stretch every breath. Seconds counted now.
Krysty had told him to always follow the air bubbles, but that was bad advice for this situation. Escape meant going sideways. Rolling on his side, the tiny bubbles trickling along his left cheek, the boy now saw the ship correctly in his mind and headed for the starboard gun ports. A direct access to the outside. If they were in the same place as on the Constellation, everything was fine. If not… Dean banished from his thoughts what would be the result if he was wrong.
Swimming quickly, he ignored the moans of the ship, the snaps of its ribs and buckling beams, concentrating on watching the light and the bubbles, his only compass to freedom.
A hatch led up, or was it down? He didn't know. Confusion filled his mind, then he saw the rising bubbles and moved toward what looked to be deeper into the ship but had to be the way to the upper deck. So bastard easy to get lost underwater. He couldn't let that happen again. But it was getting hard to think clearly. He desperately needed to breathe, his heart pounding hard, lungs aching for the tiniest sip of air.
Closing both eyes, he let the currents haul him upward, always following the course of the bubbles that trickled from his nose. He willed himself to think of good times, to stay calm. He recalled watching vids in a redoubt and his first taste of popcorn, the memory of his mother and the first time he met his dad. That day they spent fishing on the Hudson and didn't get a bite. No muties, no fighting, a peaceful day, almost boring then, but now it seemed like heaven.
His lungs began to burn, and Dean clamped his mouth shut as he went by a hatch, then hastily paddled back and went through. Yes! Cannons and broken barrels were scattered about, rope snaking through the darkness as if alive, and a row of open hatches forming a vertical line of sunlight.
Kicking away, he felt the sandal hit the hatch and there came the terrible sound of splintering wood once more. As fast as possible, he headed for the middle hatch and saw the hull of the ship descending from his left, the opening going by to be crushed flat on the sand to his right at a frightening speed. Summoning his last ounce of strength, Dean charged and darted through the last opening, the jamb slamming into his legs, a heel catching for a second, then he was out!
Clamping a hand over his mouth, Dean moved away from the disintegrating vessel, then headed for the surface. It was just a matter of time now. Only thirty feet to go. But his movements were feeble, his meager resources of stamina gone in his flight from the craft. Worse, the noon tide seemed to be pushing him sideways, and he was much too weak to fight the current. Dean banished a rush of fear from his mind, and concentrated on a summer day years ago when it rained hard in Nevada, but not acid rain, and the air smelled so good afterward, the plants blooming like nothing he had never seen. And that time Doc found a vacuum-sealed can of chocolate powder in a redoubt, and Mildred made a devil's food cake. It was like bread, but so dark and sweet. The taste filled his mouth.
But the searing ache in his lungs was becoming agony. His vision was cloudy, and he exhaled an explosion of bubbles to ease the pain for a split second, before the urge seized him to now inhale. His own body was turning against him now, demanding that he breathe, even though it meant death. But anything was better than this terrible suffocation. No! He wouldn't do it!
Sound violently returned as his head cleared the surface and Dean greedily drank in the fresh air. Better than chocolate cake! As the pain in his chest subsided, the boy felt strength slowly return to his feeble limbs. It was then he realized that the heavy munitions bag was still draped over his shoulder, and he cut loose a laugh. Damn near drowned, and it never once occurred to drop the bag. Maybe his father was correct, and he was part mule.
"Dean, don't move!" his father shouted from somewhere far away.
As the fog lifted from his vision, Dean saw the man standing in the dugout canoe pointing the Steyr directly at him. What was going on? There seemed to be water in his ears, everything was muffled and faint. Waving back, he started that way and felt something large brush by him, raking his side as if with sandpaper. Dean cried out in pain and saw the big dorsal fin of a shark cut the surface only yards away. Hot pipe! When that ship dropped, it cleared the pass, letting the man-eater into the harbor at last.
IN THE DUGOUT, Ryan saw the shark brush past his
son on an inspection pass and reacted instantly. Drawing the panga, Ryan slashed his palm and thrust it into the ocean, splashing the water. Doc knew fish and had said a shark could smell fresh blood from a mile away.
"Come on," he growled, flexing his hand to make it bleed more. "Over here!"
In response, the shark abruptly shifted direction and charged straight for the canoe. Dropping the knife, Ryan grabbed Doc's stick and pulled out the full yard of Toledo steel. He'd get only one chance at this. When it found no food, the shark would go right back after Dean. Dripping blood into the water, Ryan braced himself for the strike. Just a little bit closer.
He yanked out his hand as the jaws of the great white reached for the food, its huge body slamming into the canoe, nearly spilling the man. Shouting a curse, Ryan slashed down with all of his might, and blood exploded from the water as he completely removed the dorsal fin of the beast.
Surfacing in mindless rage, the great white snapped insanely in an automatic response to pain, then it tried to turn and attack, but rotated helplessly around and around. Without the stiff dorsal to rudder its swim, the deadly killer was completely out of control. Spiraling away, the shark bucked and thrashed, thin blood pumped from the wound into the clear harbor waters. Turning end over end, beating its tail wildly, the great white wove a random path through the water, its motions gradually slowing until it stopped moving and limply rose to the surface, turning over to expose its pale belly to the bright sunlight.
Panting for breath, Ryan pumped a couple of rounds into its guts with the SIG-Sauer just to be sure. From the shore, the locals cheered, then stopped and ran pell-mell toward the ville gate, dropping their belongings along the beach.