by James Axler
“Do you believe this nukeshit!” J.B. said. “For almost a month they do their damnedest to chill us, now they want to take care of us?”
“The question is why?” Krysty said.
“Whatever the reason for the change of attitude,” Mildred said, “we’ve got to play along with it, at least temporarily.”
“I concur wholeheartedly,” Doc said. “This presents a golden opportunity to take our own back.”
The whitecoats led them down the companionway’s steel steps. The Matachìn escort followed behind, their weapons ready. Overhead, generator-powered light bulbs in metal cages faded in and out, from intensely bright to dim. Aft of the stairs, across the width of the stern, was the captain’s cabin; in front of them, under a low, sheet-metal ceiling was the ship’s mess. A long, metal-topped table was bracketed by bench seats. The floor was worn linoleum. Immediately they were enveloped by cooking smells from the galley—meat, beans, onions, garlic and savory spices.
The aromas made Doc’s mouth water and his head swim.
“Good grub,” Jak murmured.
“Mebbe the whitecoat wasn’t lying about the food, after all,” J.B. said.
“See if we get of it any this time,” Krysty said.
Beyond the mess, a bulkhead door opened onto a narrow corridor lined with riveted steel doors. Each door had a peephole on the outside so anyone in the corridor could look into the rooms.
At Dr. Montejo’s command, the pirates began to separate Krysty and Mildred from the others.
“¿Que pasa?” Mildred asked him.
The whitecoat responded to her through a big smile. The expression in his hooded eyes was romantic. An alarming bedside manner, to be sure.
“What did he say?” J.B. asked, glowering at the oblivious man.
“He said,” Mildred replied, “you two lovely ladies have been assigned a separate cabin for your comfort and privacy. Each stateroom has its own toilet and sink.”
Doc bristled at the idea of their being split up. It grievously complicated what they had to do, which was take command of the ship by force, and quickly. As they were still in chains and controlled at blasterpoint by the pirates, whether he liked it or not there was nothing to be done about it.
While Doc, Jak and J.B. waited in the corridor, Mildred and Krysty were ushered into a room on the right by the female whitecoats and three of the pirate guard. As the doorway was blocked by the male bodies, Doc couldn’t see what was going on inside. After a few moments, the whitecoats and pirate guard came out. Dr. Montejo pulled the door shut behind him and shot the slide bolts, top and bottom.
As if there was ever any doubt, Doc thought, this, too, was a prison ship.
Then Dr. Montejo opened a door on the left and waved for them to enter.
Doc stared into a low-ceilinged, windowless steel box, roughly ten by eight, illuminated by a pair of caged light bulbs. There were three built-in bunks along the left-hand wall, and a sink and a low, lidless toilet on the opposite side.
“Beats the rowing bench all to hell,” J.B. said.
The pirates roughly pushed them into the small room.
Dr. Montejo ordered the connecting chain removed, but left their ankle and hand manacles in place.
Jak shook his wrist chains in the man’s face. “These?” he said. “Like to wipe own butt.”
The whitecoat addressed them with open palms, in solicitous, dulcet tones.
Doc translated for his Spanish-challenged comrades. “The good doctor deeply apologizes for the continuing security measures, and assures us from the bottom of his heart they are only temporary. As soon as everything is secure, the ship will be leaving Veracruz, then we will have much more freedom. He says he knows we must be hungry and we will be fed shortly. After that, we will receive a complete physical examination and our wounds will be properly dressed.”
The smiling Montejo and the scowling pirates backed out of the cramped room. The door slammed and the locking bolts clacked shut.
“Trust no whitecoat,” Jak said. “All lying fuckers.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that, dear boy,” Doc said. “I’d just as soon see them food for crows, dangling by their overstretched necks from every incandescent light pole…”
“Shh,” J.B. said. “Listen…”
They could hear heavy boots moving around on the deck above. Then the sound of the gangway being winched in.
“Count ten, mebbe more, not sure,” Jak said.
“If the rest of the bastards got off the ship, our odds are looking better,” J.B. said. “How many bodies does it take to crew a tub like this? When the time comes, how many are we going to be up against?”
“If memory serves,” Doc said, “even a skeleton crew to run a ship this size would be seven or eight sailors, not including the captain. That would be the minimum, and it would entail hard duty for all around the clock.”
The ship’s auxiliary diesel engine started up with a rumble. There was a burst of shouted orders from the dock. After a moment, the heavy mooring lines thudded onto the deck above the companions’ cell, and then the vessel slowly backed away from the dock.
“Where they take us?” Jak asked.
“Where do they think they’re taking us, you mean?” J.B. corrected him.
“South,” Doc said. “My guess is it has to be south, deeper into Matachìn territory. I can’t think of a reason for them to want to ferry us back north.”
The time-traveler took a seat on the edge of the bottom bunk and stared at his own blurred reflection in the polished metal wall. Looking closer, he noted that its surface was covered with crude graffiti. Proper names. Obscene phrases in Spanish. Obscene cartoons. All apparently scratched into the soft steel with the edges of handcuffs.
Wherever they were being taken in chains, they were not the first.
Doc saw their situation as nothing short of desperate. They were in unknown territory, they were captives of a culture they didn’t understand, and worst of all, they were leaderless. On top of that, Ryan was living on borrowed time, already condemned to death. Who could step up to fill the void left by his absence? Were any of them really capable of honchoing his rescue operation?
Doc knew that as a warrior and a scout Jak Lauren was without peer, but because of his rudimentary communication skills he could never function as their leader. Mildred Wyeth was a trained scientific thinker, but military strategy was an entirely different kettle of fish. Her brand of science was not chess, nor was it game theory. Though Krysty Wroth was a formidable fighter with special powers, she lacked the emotional detachment necessary to take the group into combat. J.B. was good at all things mechanical, but had trouble seeing beyond the parts laid out in front of him.
And then there was Doc, himself.
A dedicated student of American history, he remembered in detail the grand engagements of the Civil War—Bull Run, Shiloh, Appomattox—but he lacked Ryan’s facility for thinking on the run, for guerrilla-style warfare, for immediately seeing the opposition’s weak point and knowing instinctively how to exploit it.
Doc also knew he was at times stricken by fits of irrationality. They were the consequence of damage inflicted by a double time trawl against his will. Sometimes he raved; sometimes he cried; sometimes he walked around in a daze. The attacks were unpredictable and when they hit, completely debilitating. He knew he couldn’t be counted on because of them.
The companions’ present limitations, and the consequences of same were all too clear to Doc, even if he couldn’t see a way around them. Their short time aboard Tempest had in no way prepared them to sail a ship twice its size. They could of course run this huge vessel on engine power, assuming there were no glitches in auxiliary propulsion. Under the circumstances there was no time for mistakes, which meant that somehow they would have to not only overcome their captors, but keep a few of them alive and convince them to follow orders.
From years of observation, Doc knew that Ryan always advanced his strategie
s one step at a time. He ignored the array of uncontrollable factors set in motion by the initial action, and concentrated entirely on successfully completing the opening move.
Get free, that was the immediate objective.
The ship picked up speed as it set course for the harbor entrance. From the hiss of the water against the hull, Doc guessed they were making six or seven knots.
“Do you hear someone talking?” J.B. asked. Then he put his ear against the bulkhead wall opposite the bunks. When he pulled his head back he said, “Someone’s in the cell next door.”
“I hear.” Jak nodded. “Not understand.”
“This may help in that regard,” Doc said. He stood and reached for the narrow air vent set in the wall near the ceiling. He slid back the metal cover on its tracks.
The voices immediately became louder and much more distinct, although they were still distorted and muffled by the steel wall and the engine noise.
At first it sounded like at least three people, perhaps four. One of the voices was familiar, although Doc couldn’t immediately place it.
“Why can’t you get it through your thick heads,” the familiar voice said, “I’m trying to explore the limits of moral responsibility and personal faith in an epical context. Every time you three pop up in the mix, that exploration comes to a screeching halt.”
“Stalk this, you unmitigated hack!” said a squeaky voice, possibly male. “You’re telling us we’re not good enough to flesh out your philosophical digressions, but we were damn good enough to put food on your kitchen table for years.”
“Yeah, Alpo and bubblebread.”
“Perhaps the fault isn’t with us, but rather with you?” The third voice sounded female; it was sultry, with an odd, lilting accent. “After all, we’re just stock fictional characters with half-a-page bios. You’ve always been in control of what we do and say. Empty canvasses. We are what you make of us. Perhaps you, the author, lack the skill, the depth of introspection, and the native intelligence to animate us in any other way?”
“Uff da!” a deep, gruff, manly voice protested. “Once again the gorgeous princess is talking through her shapely, buckskin-clad backside! I, Ragnar, am no mere puppet! I am a Warlord of Norseland!”
“Are you looking to get your head and pigtails hacked off, Viking?” said the squeaky voice.
“No, please don’t! Not again…” begged the familiar moderator.
“Draw your steel, you walking, talking vegetable, and I will chop you into Waldorf salad.”
“Advance another step forward, Ragnar,” the woman’s voice cried, “and I’ll have your fire-furred goobers dangling from my cinchwaist.”
“Not if I take one of your firm upthrusties for a coin purse!”
“No, stop, stop…” the moderator pleaded. “Can’t you see I’m searching for something important, something that will stand the test of time, something eternal, some kind of moral certitude, evidence of a divine hand in all things, the hope and nobility of humankind, and all you want to do is fight…”
Jak hooked a thumb at the wall. “How many locked up in there?” he said.
“Just the one soul, I believe,” Doc said. “He’s doing all the voices himself. Falsetto. Baritone. Tenor. The Norse and Native American accents, too. Not a very convincing job, either, I might add.”
“Hey, wait just a nukin’ minute!” J.B. said. “I know those names. They’re from those books Harmonica Tom had lined up on a shelf in Tempest. The Slaughter Realms series. Remember, I opened one of them and read some of it to everyone. It was so bad Krysty made me stop. It sounds like someone else’s got their hands on one of the books and is reading it out loud.”
“The excess of verbiage does sound familiar,” Doc agreed, “almost as if the author was being paid strictly by the word.”
The acted-out melee next door continued, the voices by turns uttering threats and inanities.
Fed up, the albino teen suddenly leaped from his bunk, pounded on the wall with both fists and howled up at the vent, “Shut fuck up!”
A stunned silence ensued.
“Why should I?” came the reply after a moment. “If you are on the other side of that wall, you’re in chains, and no threat to me.”
Behind the lenses of his spectacles, J.B.’s eyes opened wide in recognition. He hissed the words, “Fire Talker.”
Jak drew his cuffed hands across the front of his throat like a knife blade.
Doc gestured for quiet and calm. Indeed, it appeared that the occupant of the neighboring cell was Daniel Desipio—the self-same soulless bastard who had led the Padre Islanders to their awful, rotting doom, and who had betrayed the companions to the Matachìn. And he was separated from them by just few millimeters of scarred steel.
It also appeared that Daniel didn’t know who they were.
At least not yet.
“Are you reading from a book?” Doc called up to the vent.
“I’m not reading, I’m composing dialogue out loud,” Daniel informed them. “That way the ear can pick up the ebb and flow of natural speech. Besides, I lack paper and pen to set things down in a more permanent fashion.”
When the companions failed to react, Daniel added, “I’ll have you know I’m an author of considerable repute.”
“You mean for Slaughter Realms?” J.B. said.
“You know the series, then?”
“Who doesn’t know Ragnar and the Ninja Princess?” J.B. replied.
“It ran to more than two hundred and fifty titles, I believe,” Doc added. “Not even Armageddon could wipe all the copies off the face of the Earth.”
“Most gratifying to know that the body of work still lives on,” Daniel said.
On the other side of the wall, Doc and J.B. were laughing up their sleeves. From the void of expression in Jak’s ruby-red eyes it was impossible to tell whether he fully understood the joke.
“How did you come to live so long?” J.B. asked Daniel. “Are you a time-traveler?”
“After a fashion. I went into cryostasis before nukeday.”
“So you’re a freezie.”
“Not intentionally. Out of a deep sense of patriotism I volunteered and was chosen to participate in a supersecret experiment. In the course of unforeseen tragic events I ended up in a cryotank.”
The ship’s almost imperceptible forward passage suddenly changed. Clearing the protection of the harbor’s breakwater, the bow began gently rising and falling as it crossed the widely spaced, Lantic swells. The engine kept rumbling; there was evidently not enough wind for the pirates to raise sail.
A point of no return lay some hours ahead of them, Doc knew. A point after which they couldn’t reverse course and still make it back in time to save Ryan. They had to act, to overpower the captain and crew and take command of the ship before they passed that critical point.
Meanwhile the joke they were playing on the traitor Daniel had lost a good deal of its edge.
Doc only half listened as the man bragged on and on about his illustrious career prior to the end of the world: his many novels; their complex story arcs and deep characterizations; how his skill had left the other writers in the publisher’s stable in the dirt. He said that he was always the editors’ favorite because of the quality of his work, and that the other writers were jealous of the size and sophistication of his audience. Daniel described a dedicated fan club of eight people who corresponded with him on a regular basis on the worldwide Web; then admitted that before Skydark he had learned, much to his dismay, that two of his most rabid devotees were residents of a maximum security prison located in central California, and that a third was serving hard time in a federal lockup in Massachusetts for impersonating an FBI agent.
The Fire Talker’s boastfest was interrupted by the sounds of door bolts being cracked back. Then the door to the companions’ cell opened and the plump little whitecoat women entered bearing trays with large, covered ceramic bowls.
Amazing aromas entered with them.
&nb
sp; With a flourish, and twinkling black eyes, the whitecoats uncovered the bowls’ brimming contents.
Doc gazed down on a thick red stew dotted with islands of little cornmeal dumplings. Was that slow-cooked pork or boneless breast of chicken floating in the broth? Maybe both? Certainly he could see black beans, rice, squash of some sort, chopped up red and green chilis, and what looked like sprigs of cilantro. Sprinkled on top was a pungent, soft and crumbly white cheese.
One of the women handed him his bowl and then gave him a big metal spoon to eat with. In the process, some of the red gravy got smeared on the pink ball of her thumb. She licked it off, rolled her eyes in delight, and exclaimed, “Sabroso.” Then she giggled most fetchingly.
“You are a true angel of mercy, my dear lady,” Doc told her as he tightly clutched his spoon.
Even though the stew was scalding hot, it was difficult to keep from wolfing it down. Doc had to force himself to chew and savor each bite. He had almost forgotten what good food tasted like. There were no squirming weevils to crunch. No gagging threads of black fish guts. No tuberous, rubbery or gristly unidentifiables to gulp down whole. No sharp bones to stick in the back of the throat and choke on.
Beaming with delight, the whitecoats backed out of the room, then closed and rebolted the door.
Jak and J.B. made soft grunts of pleasure as they plowed into the meal.
Watching them chow down, Doc felt a sudden pang of guilt that stopped him from chewing. Guilt for so thoroughly enjoying himself while Ryan endured God only knew what. He prayed with all his might that his old friend was faring as well as they were, then with determination he resumed eating. He needed to regain his strength for the battle to come. They all did.
After a few minutes Jak abandoned his spoon, tipped up his bowl and stuck his face inside to lick it clean.
When Doc was finished, he sank back on his bunk, gasping for breath. Somehow he had managed to pack it all in. It was remarkable how the stomach could stretch. But the weight of the meal left him feeling more than a little woozy. And his tongue felt strange, tingly and thick.
Too much food, too fast, Doc told himself.