Blood Red Tide. James Axler
companions being hurled to the deck behind him. Krysty drew a lusty chorus of catcalls. Doc drew jeers and noises of disgust. The rest of the companions fell somewhere in between. They took Ryan’s lead and rose behind him. Ricky and Mildred had to hold Doc up. He wasn’t doing well. Ryan squinted up at the quarterdeck and beheld the captain.
He was something to see.
The man was black, his skin a lot darker than Mildred’s. His black, wavy hair was shot through with gray and pulled into a short pigtail. The man’s eyes were black from pupil to iris with almost no white showing. It gave him a gaze that disturbingly resembled a shark’s.
The captain was a mutant.
He was not tall, but his shoulders were impossibly broad. The captain wore a black broadcloth shirt cut to fit his frame and black trousers. A sash that had to have weighed five pounds with all the spun gold gleaming through it girded his waist. His shirt was open to his solar plexus against the heat. Twisted and raised white lines girded his throat like a choker of thorns. Ryan instinctively knew it was a hanging scar. The captain’s right hand was twice the size as was usual, locked in a curled rictus and covered with orange fur. The nails were silver, long and sharpened like claws. Ryan could tell the hand was not the captain’s own but something that had been affixed.
The mutant grated through his damaged voice box. “I am Oracle, captain of the good ship Hand of Glory.”
A tall man with a short beard, mustache and spectacles stood beside the captain. He was dressed nearly the same except that his blouse and trousers were blue and white, and undoubtedly he was an officer. “Glory!” the man shouted.
“Glory!” the crew roared in response. “Glory! Glory! Glory!”
Oracle’s flat black eyes stared eerily at the prisoner before him as the cheers died down. “What is your name?”
“Ryan Cawdor.”
“You have been on the waters?”
Ryan knew he and his friends’ lives hung in the balance. Lies or subterfuge would not serve them shackled and out of sight of land. “A few times. Never for long.”
“Are you able? Can you hand, reef and steer?”
“No,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “But I’ve pulled on a rope, hurled a harpoon and fought in boarding actions. Steered a bit.”
“You stand like a man accustomed to command,” Oracle observed.
Manrape leered. “I can break him of that habit, my captain.”
“Never commanded a ship.” Ryan kept his eyes on Oracle. “Don’t claim the ability.”
Oracle’s eyes narrowed and his gaze went opaque. “With time and tides, Mr. Ryan. Perhaps.”
Ryan tried to marshal his thoughts. “Captain, I—”
The blue-clad officer beside the captain bellowed with the unmistakable timbre of long command. “You don’t address the captain directly, fish!”
Manrape lunged in. His fist rammed into Ryan’s right thigh in a charley horse from hell. Ryan’s leg spasmed, and he dropped to one knee against his will.
Oracle stared at Ryan like a cipher. “I do not ordinarily press men, Mr. Ryan. I prefer volunteers, but we live in extraordinary times.” Oracle turned away and walked back toward his cabin. “I leave it to you, Commander Miles.”
The officer eyed J.B. “That fish had some very fancy blasters.”
J.B. looked at Ryan, who grimaced against his pain. “He’s J.B., armorer.”
“Mr. Forgiven!” Miles shouted.
A fat man with lank black hair hanging like the curtain of a jellyfish from his bald pate waddled forward. He wore blue like Miles and bore a great brown leather book and a predark pen. “Aye, Commander!”
“Rate Mr. J.B. temporary Gunner’s Mate until proved otherwise or signed to the book. Have Smithy ease his irons six inches apiece so he can work. If he’s useful, strike his chains tomorrow.”
Miles gave J.B. a deadly look. “You try to sneak a blaster, a blade or a thimbleful of powder, and by the nukecaust breaking of the world you will kiss the blaster’s daughter while the whip pounds your cock and balls to paste.”
J.B. nodded. “I’ll—”
“Shut your filthy piehole, scum!” Miles roared.
J.B. tensed but fell silent.
Miles pointed at Mildred. “This one had med supplies.”
“Mildred can sew a man,” Ryan answered. He and the companions were very careful who they let on that Mildred was a genuine physician. “She’s a healer, hoping to learn more.”
Commander Miles seemed pleased. “Wake up old Bonesaw and tell him he has a new temporary saw mate until proved otherwise or signed.”
Forgiven wrote in the ship’s book. “Aye.”
Miles gave Mildred the evil eye. “And listen to me, bitch. You steal meds or let a man deliberately die on the table, you’ll kiss the blaster’s daughter while every man aboard takes you.”
A woman with hair as red as Krysty’s, but six inches taller and two hundred pounds heavier, held up a huge callused hand and made a fist. “And woman!”
The crew cheered. Miles rolled his eyes. “Sweet Marie to have firsts.”
Forgiven entered Mildred’s name and made a check by it.
Miles nodded in approval at Jak and Ricky. Ryan started to speak. “They’re—”
“They’re young, light and tight, and this ship is short of top men.” Miles nodded at a mutie who looked like a six-foot, shaved gibbon with bright pink skin and golden eyes. “Mr. Movies, I want Whitey and Softboy here able in the rigging ASAP.”
Movies put a pink knuckle to his brow and spoke in a soft voice that sounded like it was unused to human speech. “Aye, Commander Miles.”
Manrape looked at Ricky with open lust. “What is your name?”
Ryan gave Ricky credit for scowling at Manrape as if he were shit he had scraped off his shoe. “Ricky.”
Manrape closed his eyes. “Ricky Softboy, young, light and tight...”
Ricky made a Puerto Rican hand gesture that had been ancient in Doc’s time. “Mama bicho!”
The crew laughed at Ricky’s bravado. Manrape smiled beatifically. “Oh, my soft Rickito.”
“Manrape wants a new wife!” someone called from the rigging. The catcalls resumed.
“Ship’s business!” Miles thundered. The increasingly horrible suggestions and bets died down. The commander ran an appreciative eye over Krysty. “And her, Mr. Ryan?”
“She’s mine,” Ryan stated.
Sweet Marie called out lustily. “We’ll see how long that lasts, Cyclops!”
The crew whooped.
“Write Red into the log and rate her lubber, powder monkey, gopher and the like, until proved otherwise or signed.”
Forgiven scratched in the log. “Aye.”
The commander weighed and measured Doc and found him wanting. The knockout drug, the beating and the rude awakening had left the time-trawled man staring at his shoes. “And this?”
“Doc is—”
“Doc?” Miles perked up. “He’s a whitecoat?”
Ryan sought for anything that could save his friend. “No, but he’s educated. He’s—”
A thatch-headed young man shouted happily, “He’s just a fucking old