James Axler - Blood Red Tide

“Aye, Father.”

“If you take Oracle before rounding the horn, head back for home with Glory in tow and we’ll see you next year.”

“Aye, Father.”

“Very good.” Sabbath snapped his book shut and turned back to the rail. He watched as a short, chubby teenaged girl was torn from her family and her homespun shift ripped from her onshore. “Mr. Kang!”

Sabbath’s seven-foot Korean second mate stepped forward. He had come with the junk as well, and after an initial period of disgruntlement, he found piracy in the Caribbean suited him quite well. He carried a cat of nine tails in a shoulder bag at all times, and every man in Sabbath’s fleet lived in horror at the prospect of feeling the lash propelled by the giant’s right arm. “Aye, Captain.”

Sabbath pointed his book at the weeping girl. “That one. Bathe her and bring her to my cabin as a belly warmer, now.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Sabbath licked his thin lips. “Ae Sook, you will assist me.”

“In all things, my captain.”

Black Sabbath strode to his cabin with his loins stirring. “We sail with the morning tide.”

* * *

RICKY CLEANED THE CAPTAIN’S blasters. Compared to the barons and warlords the youth had encountered since leaving Puerto Rico, Oracle’s personal arsenal was sparse in the extreme. Then again, Oracle’s preferred combat method seemed to be disemboweling his opponents with a mutant orangutan paw prosthesis. He had a beauty of a single-shot Thompson/Center Contender that, according to rumor, he was quite proficient with and could reload with his paw. It was chambered for .45-70. Ricky was a confirmed blaster lover, and he knew the round was ancient, pre-Deathlands American and usually used to take bison. He couldn’t imagine firing it from a fourteen-inch blaster. He aimed the oiled, tuned and gleaming blaster and yearned to shoot it. Ricky lowered the weapon as the lurking fear closed in.

He might as well stick the weapon in his mouth. The question was whether to try and shoot Manrape first.

Ricky’s weapons, and those of his companion’s, were locked away. They had been allowed to bear arms during the octopod attack, but they had been relieved of their weapons afterward. The companions would not be allowed to touch them again until they were signed to the book. Ricky had heard rumors that there were some other special weapons in the captain’s cabin that were off limits to him and to J.B. The young man jerked up as a tall shadow fell across the door. He had no bullets for any of the weapons he was cleaning, and he clawed for his ship’s knife.

Ricky sighed with relief as Doc’s rangy frame filled the doorway. The old man held a wooden case. “Doc! Don’t sneak up on someone like that!”

“Young Ricky,” Doc said gravely,. “you have a conundrum.”

Ricky stared at the weapons on his workbench and saw nothing that made sense. Doc often didn’t. “What’s a conundrum?”

“You have a problem.”

“Yeah, Doc. If getting butt-chilled by a bronze statue is a problem, I’ve got a problem.”

The subject matter was clearly to Doc’s distaste. Yet Doc seemed to be in a rare clear, cold mood. “Fight him.”

“Fight him?” Ricky began gesticulating. “Fight him how?”

“Challenge him.”

“Challenge him?” Ricky repeated. “Challenge him how? No one’s going to give me my blaster! With blades? I can’t beat him! Madre de dios, Doc! Bare hands? I haven’t been rated ordinary seamen yet, much less able. What do I challenge him for? The right to be bosun?”

“For the personal rights to your rectum.”

Ricky was shocked speechless to hear such a thing come out of Doc’s mouth.

Doc struggled to keep his voice steady. “When I was hurled into your time, I was captured by unethical men.”

Ricky had heard the stories. “Doc—”

“I was made sport of and abused. Cruelly.”

Ricky couldn’t meet Doc’s eyes. “Doc, you don’t have to—”

“Look at me!” Doc demanded. Ricky looked. He stared at the time-trawled man, ripped from his family and torn from his time. Ricky gazed on Doc’s chron-damaged visage and knew that in reality he was almost as old as Ryan. He had seen Doc’s skill with blaster and blade and knew that in his time Doc had been a learned scholar who had married a beautiful woman. Now he was old, broken in body and sometimes in his mind. Doc regained his composure.

“Ricky, my young friend. Fight. Rage.”

The youth did not know what to say. “Doc?”

Doc’s eyes grew clear. His voice filled with the terrible gravitas of his message. “You must fight.”

Tears stung Ricky’s eyes for Doc and himself and the future that awaited him in the darkness belowdecks. “But how, Doc?”

Doc set the case he carried on the workbench. “With these.”

Ricky opened the ornate box. It contained two of the most beautiful handblasters he had ever seen. Their grips were lustrously polished fruitwood. Clouds of golds, blues and purples swept through the steel of the barrel and lock work in gorgeous swirls of case hardening. The triggers and bead front sights were gold plated. The weapons were perfectly identical. Separate slots held individual bullet molds and intricately tooled silver powder horns for each blaster. Ricky took out one of the weapons. It was heavy and well over .50 caliber. He turned the weapon about for several moments and found writing along the bottom of the barrel.

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