James Axler - Crimson Waters

“That speaks well for you,” Mildred said.

“Don’t they try to stick you, anyway?” Ryan asked. He was surprised that the Syndicate, as Oldie described it, would let loose of the smallest chance at income. It was standard operating procedure for barons everywhere, whatever they called themselves.

Oldie laughed again. “The Monitors let me slide if I don’t technically land. They’re not too keen on splashing around in water where all the big fish and most of the little ones got a taste for human flesh.”

J.B. was just handing Mildred across to the slanted rock face of the pier. He cocked an eyebrow.

“Get your fool ass out of the water, J.B.,” Ryan said.

The armorer grinned, but he scampered up to the boardwalk with a vigorous splash just the same.

Ryan sat on the outboard gunwale to counterbalance the others as first Krysty, then Doc leaped to the rock. Contemptuously, Jak jumped into the water, then waded the couple of steps up out of the sea. At the last, he yelped and jumped clear.

“Something bumped leg!” he said, then glared as the others grinned at him.

Ryan tossed everybody’s pack and weapons over to them. After Krysty fielded his own, he took the leap. He wasn’t going to go wading with sharks and killer ’cuda.

“Word to the wise, Ryan,” Oldie called after him.

Ryan looked down at the man where he sat in the prow with his oars cocked up in their locks.

“Mind your steps here, folks,” the old man said. “Walk careful, especially around the Sea Wasps.”

“I thought you said theirs was an egalitarian society,” Doc said.

“Yeah. Whatever that is. The Syndicate is law.” He chuckled. “Just remember that people are basically dogs. They always got them a pack order. The more folks talk about everybody being equal, the more some’re more equal than others.”

“Talk sense!” Jak grumbled.

J.B. clapped him on the shoulder—gingerly, to avoid the sharp bits.

“He is, son. He is. Someday you’ll appreciate the fact. If you happen to live, that is.”

Ryan nodded to Oldie, and the old man pushed off with an oar. Ryan shouldered his pack and headed up the pier.

A party of men materialized at the inland end. There were six of them. Some were burly, some were wiry. All were hard. All were armed.

“Monitors?” J.B. asked as he swung along by Ryan’s side.

“Reckon so,” the one-eyed man replied.

The waiting six all had shaved heads and black T-shirts. Bloused over their boots, they wore baggy camo pants with many pockets and sundry patterns. Each had a hefty truncheon of polished black wood hanging from his belt. Counterbalancing the sticks were sawed-off scatterguns, either pump or double-barreled, with grips cut down to pistol size.

“Cute touch about these matching armbands,” J.B. murmured from half a pace behind Ryan’s left elbow.

Ryan knew Krysty was walking just behind his right elbow. He could smell the clean woman scent of her. She’d bathed in the sea off Oldie’s little beach the previous night. Both before and after lovemaking with Ryan.

“How you mean?” Ryan asked, making no effort either to be heard by the waiting sec men, or not to be.

J.B. jutted his chin at a jackstaff mounted above a solid-looking blockhouse made of brown lava chunks that stood back across an esplanade from the waterfront. A flag swung in a rising but still sluggish breeze. Ryan could tell it had some kind of black figure on a white field. So did the armbands, he saw.

“Yeah,” Mildred said from behind. “That’s cute. Photonegative skull and crossbones.”

Looking closer at the welcoming committee Ryan saw the armbands did indeed show a black skull over crossed bones.

“They look like event security at a rock show in the nineties,” Mildred said cryptically, then snorted. The notion seemed to amuse her.

“Welcome to Nueva Tortuga,” said the man in the middle. He stood a little ahead of his flankers. He was on the lean side, and an inch or so less than Ryan’s own six foot two. His skin was tanned dark, although his coal-smudge eyebrows and black beard made his tan look paper-pale.

“NuTuga, as we call it,” he went on. “We’re Monitors. We keep the peace. That’s all you need to know. Except you got to pay the entry fee.”

“Entry fee?” Ryan said, halting about ten feet short of them.

The leader provided several options in trade goods, ammo, gold or local jack. Ryan felt his cheeks tighten and his skin prickle as though he’d caught a touch of sunburn.

“No exceptions,” the squad leader said, pleasantly enough. “You don’t pay, you don’t stay.”

“What,” Mildred said truculently. “Or you’ll hang us off one of those derricks?”

Ryan felt his jaw tighten. Mildred’s predark outrage was building a healthy head of steam.

The leader only smiled wider. His teeth were white. Both men and clothes were clean, an unusual touch even in a relatively well-off ville on the mainland. The leader’s boots were cowboy pattern, obviously handmade of sharkskin. They may even have been built since skydark.

“Only if you make your way back here,” he said, “after we take you out a mile or two and toss your asses over the rail.”

Ryan looked back at his companions. He noted right off that Oldie was still hovering right off the end of the pier, keeping his skiff in place with light sculling of his oars. Even at this range the old sailor managed to catch Ryan’s eye. He cocked his head in question.

Ryan raised a hand to the boatman and nodded just once. The white-bearded old man shrugged expressively. Your funeral, Ryan could all but hear him say. He began to row back out among the ships rocking gently at anchor.

“All right,” Ryan said, emphasizing the words just enough to let his friends know his mind was made up. “We pay.” He handed over the requisite number of rounds.

“Must hurt like a nuke when you light those puppies off,” J.B. said conversationally.

“Not half as much as when you’re on the other end,” said the shortest member of the crew, an Asian whose flat, fringe-bearded chin sloped outward along with his neck, which in turn simply got wider and wider until it became shoulders. He had a surprisingly mild voice. Ryan reckoned the Syndicate’s strongarms didn’t need to bluster much.

“One more thing,” the leader said, tucking the ammo away in a pouch at his web gear belt. “We need to peace-bond your weapons.”

“Peace-bond?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah. We won’t try taking them away from you, but we don’t want you using them in our fair ville.”

“What’s the point of letting us keep them, then?” Mildred demanded.

“Would you rather we confiscate them? Look, it’s for your protection. You shoot or cut somebody, that will get you hung in the harbor with a few cuts down your legs to rile up the fish.”

“What if the other guy starts it?” J.B. asked.

The enforcers, not so subtly, had settled into braced positions, suggesting they were considering the chance the newcomers might try resisting. Ryan wanted to assure them that nothing could be further from their minds. But that wasn’t the sort of thing it did much good to say, he’d found.

It wouldn’t be true, of course. All of them, even the unusually squeamish Mildred and the spirit of mercy herself, Krysty, were imagining what it’d be like to shove those scatterguns up the Monitors’ uptight asses to the breech-locks and light them off. He knew that. Just as he knew his friends also calculated that the odds weren’t with them on that play.

“Just how do you mean ‘peace-bond,’ anyway?” Ryan asked.

“We wire the breeches open on your blasters,” the squad leader said. “Blades we wire in the sheath. You break the seal, you go in the harbor. That simple.”