Taylor Anderson - Rising Tides

He was otherwise equipped with a large shooting pouch, slung over his shoulder, made from the almost indestructible hide of a rhino pig. It contained all the implements, components, and accessories necessary to keep the “Doom Whomper,” the. 100-caliber rifled musket he’d made from a Japanese anti-aircraft gun, fed, maintained, and happy. He’d given his pistol belt to Sandra Tucker-she knew how to handle a 1911 Colt-and there wasn’t much ammo for it anyway. She could use it if she needed it, but it was his job to keep that from happening. Instead of the 1911, Silva still carried his cutlass, and a long-barreled flintlock pistol he’d taken from the Company assassin Linus Truelove. Silva expected, with some satisfaction, that Truelove had been reduced to a few floating ashen specks, when Silva had contrived to blow up Ajax, but the pistol was a dandy. It would shoot only once before reloading of course, but they had plenty of ammo for it.

He took the opportunity to fish a whetstone from his pouch and run a few swipes down each side of his cutlass blade. He then offered the precious whetstone to the others, and when they took it, he watched keenly while it made its rounds before being returned. Dropping the stone back in his pouch, he carefully secured the flap. He took a deep breath and resumed his attack on the shoots. They continued moving slowly under the sweltering sun, through the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon. Eventually, finally, it appeared that the stalks were beginning to thin. After a little longer, Silva was sure of it, and he slew the final shoots like the helpless stragglers of a routed army.

Before him now stretched a virtual savanna, filled with long grasses of various types. Some looked like “normal” grass, like coastal Bermuda, but there were large, almost islandlike clumps of taller stuff that reminded him of kudzu, complete with blue and purplish foxtail blossoms congregated near the edges. Strange birds (real birds, it seemed) flitted and swarmed around the clearing on strange wings, almost like dragonflies. There were a few of the now ubiquitous lizard birds, which occasionally streaked in to snatch one of the inoffensive-looking things, but even the birds nearest the victims didn’t appear to give them any heed. Perhaps from within the apparent security of their multitudes, the weird little birds just didn’t notice.

“Every time I turn a corner on this goofed-up world, I see somethin’ even more goofed up,” Silva mumbled. He surveyed the expanse of the savanna for several moments, trying to divine if it represented a threat of any kind. There were few large animals on the island, and most of those behaved aggressively only within the bounds of their apparently single-minded desire to be left alone. They were retiring and extremely heavily armored in the manner of giant land tortoises, even if any physical resemblance was remote. The smaller ones could be killed, with the Doom Whomper at least, and their flesh was fat and wholesome, but they’d learned that killing anything on this island came with a dose of risk. They’d met an interesting variety of smaller predators and scavengers that were far more capable and dangerous than they appeared. All were smaller than a man and most were fairly skittish. Some were not, and those were usually more than happy to contest them for the meat.

So far, they’d encountered only one type of really large, dangerous animal during their brief, limited forays-and those didn’t exactly live there. Silva now knew from experience that they had to be particularly watchful for the occasional, early-arriving “shiksak.” He called them “shit-sacks”; of course, “shiksak” was a Tagranesi word and he tended to prefer his own names for things. No matter what anybody called them, the damn things gave him the creeps.

Once, if anybody had ever told him he’d run across anything scarier than a “super lizard” on land, he’d have called them a liar. Now he knew better. Shiksaks were almost as big as super lizards, and although generally slower moving, they were actually quicker in a sprint. Maybe “lunge” or “leap” was a better term. They struck him as kind of a twisted cross of a crocodile, an eel, and a frog. They had big, fat bodies with long swimming tails with a ridge or finlike arrangement beginning behind their heads that ran the length of their backs, all the way to the ends of their tails. Their forelegs were little more than stumpy, clawed “flippers,” but they had long, powerful hind legs with heavily webbed “feet” like those of a frog or toad. Add long, broad heads full of lots of teeth to the mix, and they even looked sort of comical in a way, like a giant pollywog that had swallowed most of an alligator. The young, towheaded Abel Cook, who’d once been fascinated with the dinosaurs of their “old” world, believed they were a type of mososaur that had evolved an amphibious capability to lay their eggs on shore, away from this world’s more treacherous seas. Maybe so. “Mosey-saurs” they may once have been, but Silva was only concerned with what they’d become.

Individually, they weren’t really that bad, he admitted to himself. A single shiksak wasn’t as scary as a single super lizard. Unlike super lizards, which seemed to possess a kind of creepy cunning, shiksaks apparently weren’t any smarter than pollywogs. Also, even if their thick, croclike skins made them practically bulletproof to the Imperial muskets, nothing was immune to his treasured Doom Whomper. No, so far the most pressing menace represented by the usually lethargic “early bird” shiksaks was that the sneaky bastards could change goddamn colors! That just wasn’t fair. They crept ashore, made a nest, and plopped down to lay their eggs. Sprawling there, in the dense Yap, or “Shikarrak ” Island jungle, they were difficult to see-and they would gulp down anything that came wandering by. Fair or not, even that wasn’t an insurmountable problem: be careful, watch where you’re going, and stay in pairs. Simple enough. The really big, scary problem-according to what they’d squeezed out of Lawrence (“Larry the Lizard”)-was that within a month the whole island would be working with the damn things like maggots in meat, and nothing that wasn’t armored like a tank, couldn’t climb a really big tree or squirm down a tiny hole, would survive.

No human or ’Cat would fit down a hole small enough that the shiksaks couldn’t dig it out, and the trees… would be full of other dangerous things. Larry had been here before when things got like that, during his “trial,” and he’d survived. That was the point of the trial-to test his wits. But he’d been all alone, with only himself to look after. Dennis Silva had to make sure nothing happened to Princess Rebecca, Lieutenant Tucker (the Skipper’s dame), the Lemurian Captain Lelaa, Sister Audry, and the gawky but gutsy Abel Cook. Maybe he would concern himself a little with a few of their Imperial companions who didn’t like him very much-or maybe not. As he saw it, his plate of responsibility was pretty damn full.

Larry hadn’t been willing to “blow” about the danger at first, even though he blamed himself for their presence there in the first place. He’d sworn an oath. He finally agreed to tell Rebecca and Miss Tucker, since no female was ever expected to undergo the trial. Even that might have been stretching things, but he just couldn’t bear to let his precious Rebecca face the dangers unprepared. Silva was still a little put out that Larry hadn’t just told him. He had to know the girls would blow. Oh, well, at least this way Silva got the word without Larry having to technically break his. One way or another, he’d learned what he was up against, as far as looking after the girls was concerned, and ultimately that was all that really mattered. Larry could look out for himself.