James Axler - Crimson Waters

“Not like,” Jak said.

“Me, neither,” Ryan said. “But it doesn’t look like we got much choice.”

He unslung his Steyr Scout, dropped the magazine from the well, cranked back the bolt and handed the piece over. The leader passed it to the Asian guy, who dug out a spool of wire and a pair of clippers and got to work.

In short order, most of the squad was busy wiring the companion’s weapons to spec. When each man finished a piece, he handed it back to the squad leader. The bearded man squeezed a dab of some shiny gold-colored sealant where the wire’s ends were twisted together. It seemed to harden almost instantly.

“Where’d you get that stuff?” Mildred asked interestedly. “I’d think it’d be set solid after all these years.”

The squad leader smiled and handed back her ZKR with the trigger wired in its guard. “That’s for us to know,” he said, “and you never to find out.”

When the considerable task was done, the leader stepped back. “That does it for the weapons you got showing,” he said. “Now, how about the holdouts?”

Krysty took a deep breath. Pulling her shoulders back, making her considerable breasts strain tighter against the front of the khaki man’s shirt she wore, she put hands on her well-rounded hips and did a slow roll.

“Care to search me and find out, big boy?”

Ryan’s eyebrows shot up. It was all he could do to keep from asking her if she’d flat lost her mind right here. But he remained silent. He knew Krysty didn’t do much without a reason. Usually a triple-good one.

The leader actually blanched behind his black beard and eyebrows and took a step back. “N-no,” he said. “That won’t be necessary.”

Turning to his squad he snarled, “All right, you taints! If you think the Syndics’re paying us to stand around with our thumbs up our asses, I want to be there when you explain it to them!”

They turned and stomped off along the esplanade that was paved in lightweight white tufa gravel that ran around the inside of the harbor. Ryan let out a long, long breath.

“Krysty, what the hell was that?” Mildred demanded.

“Dudes like that generally don’t see any point to havin’ power if they can’t abuse it good and regular,” J.B. said laconically.

Krysty smiled with an unusually mischievous edge. “Normally,” she said. “But didn’t their whole attitude tell you their bosses ride even tighter herd on them than barons usually do their sec men?”

Ryan grunted. “Makes sense, since you put it that way,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. The volume of sweat running down from his shaggy, curly black hair was more than mere afternoon heat in the Carib could account for. “They don’t want them pissing off the paying customers, after all. Especially when the customers might come back in force and shoot the shit of the ville.”

Ryan took for granted the Syndicate had some kind of pretty stout defenses against that. Even if he hadn’t seen signs of it yet. Obviously the pirates had a good thing here and knew it.

“Evidently the pirates’ own code tends to bind their behavior in Nueva Tortuga,” Doc said, clearly thinking along the same lines.

“And nothing makes sure they keep their minds right like, say, that pair of .50 calibers the Syndicate’s got set up to cross fire the harbor entrance,” J.B. said, finishing Ryan’s thought.

“But how could you be so sure they wouldn’t want to grab the merchandise, Krysty?” Mildred asked.

Ryan saw that she didn’t understand, as was so often the case since she’d awakened from her centuries-long cold sleep into a world she neither could’ve nor would’ve ever imagined. And when Mildred found something she didn’t understand, she gnawed on it like a dog with a bone.

“Discipline, Millie,” J.B. said. “Syndicate wants to make sure their bullyboys don’t take bribes. Of any kind.”

“Thus it ever is with tyrants,” Doc declared. “Corruption, in their eyes, consists in their not getting their share.”

Ryan squinted at the sun, which was rolling toward the ragged-topped cone of Nevis Peak, which dominated the small island.

“Let’s shake the dust off, people,” he said. “Standing here jawing isn’t filling our bellies or getting us any closer to anyplace we want to be.”

“A man might mention that the heat of the subtropical day can develop a powerful thirst, as well,” Doc said.

“Where do we go?” Mildred asked.

Doc laughed again. He flung out a long, skinny arm in the same direction the Monitor squad had gone. “Why, follow the sound of music and merriment, dear lady!” he declared. “Where those are, commerce is. Whether licit or otherwise.”

From that way, indeed, floated the tinkle of a not particularly well-tuned piano, a bubble of conversation, a high-pitched and slightly mad-sounding laugh.

“Not that it makes much difference to us which,” Mildred said glumly.

“As long as it pays,” Ryan said, “makes me no difference at all.”

Krysty frowned at him. “Ryan Cawdor, you know that isn’t true!”

“Truer than not, Krysty,” he growled. “Now come on. We’re bleeding daylight, and I got a feeling the longer we stay on this rock, the unhealthier it gets.”

Chapter Five

The Blowing Mermaid, the sign read. The crudely but colorfully painted image that accompanied the words made it clear the half fish, half voluptuous nude blonde woman in question was blowing bubbles or spouting breath like a sounding whale.

“Classy,” Mildred said.

“Needs must when the devil drives,” Doc murmured.

“That’s so encouraging,” she said.

“Anybody got any better ideas?” Ryan’s tone suggested he was addressing the group as a whole. Mildred couldn’t help noticing how his lone blue eye fixed on her for just a moment—and pierced like a blue laser.

“Thought not,” he said with a shrug, and pushed inside.

The smell of spilled beer, sweat and ganja smoke hit Mildred in the face like a sandbag as she stepped up to the door. Inside was dark, hot and humid. The conversation was boisterous enough that it actually overwhelmed the out-of-tune piano in the corner.

A grimy, fly-specked skylight let in yellow sun. It was enough to see by once Mildred’s retinas had adjusted from the seaside dazzle outside. There were about twenty patrons in the gaudy, enough to make it seem pretty well occupied without everybody banging elbows with their neighbors.

Mildred wondered how that worked out, especially when sailors—pirates, to boot—just in after days at sea got their first taste of whatever unimaginable rotgut the tall, corpse-faced bartender with the truly remarkable gray side-whiskers was doling out. Would fear of the Syndicate’s justice—and its Monitors—be enough to make everybody behave?

Mildred continued to scan the gaudy as Ryan led them to a bar that was fronted in what looked like respectable-gauge metal plate, painted some kind of drab color she couldn’t make out. It looked bulletproof to Mildred’s eye, which hadn’t exactly been uneducated before her long sleep and revival, since she’d been raised around firearms from girlhood on. For one reason or another it seemed the gaudy’s proprietors weren’t willing to trust their hides entirely to Syndicate civic discipline.

She realized that shouldn’t surprise her, either. While being a pirate—or any kind of coldheart bandit—could be a rational life-path in the strange and horrible world in which she found herself, it still wasn’t one that bespoke good choices. Or good impulse control. She suspected it wasn’t all that uncommon for patrons to haul out iron and start blasting in haste—then repent at leisure, either under the clubs or shotgun blasts of the Monitors, or while hungry, nasty fish dined on their nether regions in the harbor.