Pirates of the Timestream

by Steve White

  “Ahoy!” Boyer called up to Zenobia. “Captain Morgan wants to know if you need assistance.”

  “Our rudder is fouled. But we can fix it ourselves. We don’t need anybody’s help!” Having gotten that out of her system, Zenobia allowed her truculence to soften a trifle. She even smiled down at him. “But since you’re here anyway, I suppose you may as well come aboard.”

  “Thanks.” Boyer did so, somewhat awkwardly with the heavy musket strapped to his back.

  “That looks like a good-quality piece,” Zenobia commented approvingly.

  You’d be surprised, thought Boyer. He changed the subject. “I haven’t seen you since . . . that night before we left Port Royal. I never got a chance to ask you—”

  “Sail ho!” came a lookout’s shout.

  From almost due north, a ship was sailing about sixty degrees into the wind, coming straight for the immobilized Rolling-Calf.

  With a curse, Zenobia took up a spyglass. “It’s L’Enfer,” she said, in a tone of voice that did not conduce to Boyer’s peace of mind.

  “You know her?” he asked.

  “Aye. She’s one of the French ships that haven’t rejoined Captain Morgan. No surprise there. Her master—he’s known only as ‘Captain Gaspard’—was a crony of L’Ollonais. For some reason, he wasn’t along on L’Ollonais’ final expedition, so he unfortunately didn’t get chopped up by the Darien Indians like the rest of them. Instead he’s gone rogue. He operates out of Tortuga, but even the other French don’t much like him. He plunders his fellow buccaneers.”

  Like this one, thought Boyer with a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach as L’Enfer drew closer. The sick or crippled animal that’s fallen out of the herd and become a straggler.

  But in any ecosystem, predators don’t normally prey on each other.

  “I thought the Brethren of the Coast didn’t do that,” he protested aloud.

  “They don’t,” said Zenobia grimly. “Not even L’Ollonais did. But Gaspard is a mad dog.”

  Before either of them could speak further, a twin report crashed out from across the water and a cloud of smoke rose from L’Enfer as her bow chasers fired. There was a whistling whoosh and two geysers of water erupted ahead of Rolling-Calf.

  “That’s just to frighten us,” said Zenobia with a calmness Boyer wished he could share. “He doesn’t want to sink us. He wants to strip us bare of everything—including the crew, to sell back into slavery.”

  Boyer involuntarily glanced down at the African-dark skin of his forearms, and felt clammy sweat begin to break out. He forced steadiness on his voice. “But without our rudder we can’t maneuver. He can approach us from a direction where our guns can’t bear.” Rolling-Calf had only four small guns, mounted in the waist two to a side, besides the little swivel guns on the rail, which crewmen were already loading with a crude grapeshot of musket balls and scrap. Boyer decided they had the right idea, and hastily loaded his musket.

  “Maybe that’s what he thinks.” Zenobia studied the attacker’s course and seemed to do some mental calculations. Then she leaned over the taffrail and shouted orders to the men in the boat. “Will your boat help?” she demanded of Boyer.

  “Of course. You men,” Boyer called out to his rowers, “take your orders from her.”

  The two Oxford crewmen looked dubious, but only for a moment, for L’Enfer was getting closer and the sound of Gallic taunts could now be heard. They put out their oars and joined with Zenobia’s Maroon boatmen in towing Rolling-Calf’s stern to port.

  L’Enfer was closing rapidly now. She was a two-master like Rolling-Calf, but obviously bigger. Boyer, from his limited knowledge of ships’ rigging, thought to classify her as a small brig. Typically, she was overcrowded with men. Their jeering was starting to take on an ugly undercurrent as they saw what Zenobia was up to, for Rolling-Calf’s stern was starting to swing perceptibly, bringing her portside guns into line. One of them, a powerfully built man dressed more flamboyantly than his fellows, waved his cutlass and screamed an order.

  “Down!” yelled Zenobia.

  Boyer had barely obeyed when L’Enfer’s starboard guns thundered and sent iron balls crashing through Rolling-Calf’s upperworks. He heard a scream as a crewman was lacerated by the large splinters that Grenfell had mentioned were among the chief terrors of battles like this between wooden ships.

  “Still avoiding hitting us below the waterline,” observed Zenobia with inhuman calmness, just as Rolling-Calf shuddered to the discharge of her two portside guns. They smashed into L’Enfer’s side, rocking the larger ship and sending some of her men who had been clinging to the rails toppling over into the water. The rotten-eggs smell of burning black powder filled the air.

  But then the big, gaudily dressed man who had to be Captain Gaspard shouted another order, and a series of grappling hooks were thrown out to entangle Rolling-Calf’s rigging. Men hauled on their lines, and the two ships began to draw together.

  Boyer got to his feet and hefted his musket. Zenobia gave him a sharp glance, for it was unusual for anyone to try sharpshooting from a rolling deck. Ignoring her, he activated the laser target designator as he drew a bead on one of the men holding a grappling line. Squinting through the inconspicuously tiny sight at the pirate’s magnified image, he gave the trigger a half-squeeze and saw a red dot appear on the man’s chest. He completed the squeeze, the musket barked and recoiled bruisingly against his right shoulder, and through the smoke he could see his target fall. Only later would he have the leisure to reflect that he had, for the first time in his life, killed a human being.

  “Good shot!” exclaimed Zenobia. Then she gave a puzzled frown, as though thinking it had been a little too good, and for an instant Boyer wondered if he had made a mistake. But then the two hulls ground together, the screaming French pirates came swinging across the gap on ropes, and they both had other things to occupy their minds.

  Zenobia fired two flintlock pistols at once into a Frenchman who was still in midair. As he dropped, squalling, she threw the pistols into another man’s face and whipped out her cutlass. Then Boyer could no longer see her, for the deck became a maelstrom of brutal hand-to-hand combat as more Frenchmen swarmed aboard. One of them crashed against a Maroon who was about to discharge a swivel gun into the mass of boarders, knocking him aside and slashing him across the belly with a cutlass. As the Maroon fell with a scream, doubled over and trying to hold in his spilling guts, the Frenchman turned on Boyer, who had dropped his musket and now had his own cutlass out.

  He immediately found that his limited orientation with the weapon was no match for his opponent’s experience and sheer, mad ferocity. With a series of artless but powerful swings, the pirate beat down his desperate defense. Then Boyer’s feet slipped in the blood that was rapidly covering the deck, and he fell over backwards. With a yell, the pirate gripped his cutlass two-handed over his head and brought it down.

  Before Boyer even had time to despair, Zenobia appeared and, with a single slash of her cutlass, severed both the Frenchman’s hands. For a split second he stared stupidly at the blood-spurting stumps. Then Zenobia’s sea-booted foot shot out and kicked him backwards, to topple over the gunwale.

  “Thanks!” gasped Boyer as he tried to scramble to his feet. But then Captain Gaspard, his finery begrimed with blood and smoke and his bearded face a mask of fury, appeared out of the melee, swinging a cutlass. Zenobia, still off-balance, grasped his sword-arm. But not even her genetically enhanced strength was a match for the Frenchman’s gorillalike arms, and he flung her away. Her back slammed into a mast, knocking the wind out of her, and as she slumped to the deck Gaspard raised his cutlass.

  It was as though Boyer existed in a state of accelerated time, with the din of battle a faint roar and the combatants moving with dreamlike slowness. Without thought, he lunged for the unfired swivel gun behind Captain Gaspard. Grasping the little artillery piece by the ball-shaped cascabel at its breech, he swung it sharply around on its stirrup mounting. W
ith a clunk audible even above the general noise, the cast-iron barrel connected with the back of the Frenchman’s head, sending him staggering forward.

  He must, Boyer thought, have had a very hard head. He quickly regained his balance and turned around. His face—ugly at its best—was now contorted beyond all human semblance, and his eyes held nothing but insane rage. He gathered himself and lunged, roaring his hate.

  But Boyer had taken up the match and thrust it into the small brazier mounted on the inner surface of the gunwale. Now he pointed the swivel gun and inserted the glowing match into its touch-hole.

  The swivel gun crashed out and belched fire. Captain Gaspard’s head burst backward like an overripe melon, spattering blood and brains and bone fragments across Zenobia even as she reared to her feet with a cry of triumph. At that moment, Boyer’s time-sense came by into synchronization with the rest of the universe.

  The ear-shattering blast of the swivel gun had brought the battle to an abrupt pause. But only for an instant, for the Maroons took heart and began to drive the now-dispirited boarders back. Boyer, suddenly in the grip of reaction, sank to the deck. But Zenobia plunged back into the battle with the superhuman quickness of her heritage, her cutlass singing a whining song of death as it cut through the air and men’s limbs.

  Then, all at once, the French pirates broke off the fight and scrambled back aboard their own ship. As the wind blew the smoke away, Boyer looked forward and saw why. In the distance, Oxford and her consorts were coming about. The French renegades might be crazy, but they weren’t stupid. They cut the cables of the grappling hooks and pushed off, making no attempt to sink Rolling-Calf in a fit of pique, for without their captain they weren’t about to risk getting Henry Morgan sufficiently annoyed with them to spend time on a stern chase. Nor did the Maroons provoke them into doing so by firing their own guns. The two ships parted with nothing more than an exchange of obscene insults and gestures.

  Now Boyer had a chance to look around him, and recollections came crowding back. He felt his gorge begin to rise.

  “Come on!” He felt a hand grip his upper arm, and Zenobia hauled him to his feet. She wiped blood from her eyes and spat out a bit of gray matter. “What’s the matter? It’s over now. And it looks like your boat is all right, as is ours; they didn’t bother with those. So,” she finished matter-of-factly, “now we can finish fixing our rudder.”

  “But . . . but . . .” He gestured vaguely around, and once again thought he was going to be sick.

  She grinned—the first time he had seen her do that. “And besides, I think we’re even now.” She indicated the practically headless horror that had been Captain Gaspard, and then the two severed hands on the deck that still convulsively clutched a cutlass. “See what I mean?”

  “I suppose I do.” Boyer found he couldn’t hold back a shaky laugh, and the wave of nausea retreated.

  Still, he didn’t feel up to trying to press Zenobia with any questions before returning to Oxford.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As expected, Morgan didn’t bother pursuing L’Enfer and her now leaderless crew. The fleet proceeded to the rendezvous point with only a slight delay.

  Most of the French buccaneers (none of whom seemed to be wasting any tears on Captain Gaspard) were already at Cow Island—including one ship, Le Cerf Volant, whose presence not only delayed the rendezvous but almost disrupted the fragile alliance of English and French privateers. A captain from Virginia accused her of robbery and piracy, which was something that had to be settled before matters could proceed further. So Morgan and HMS Oxford took her back to Port Royal—a particularly easy run given the prevailing winds—where the Court of Admiralty promptly condemned her as a prize and sentenced her captain to hang. The latter was commuted, which smoothed ruffled Gallic feathers somewhat, and Morgan returned to Cow Island with Oxford and the former Cerf Volant, now renamed Satisfaction.

  All of which comings and goings kept them away from Rolling-Calf, with no opportunities to try to unravel the multiple mysteries surrounding Zenobia. They did have the chance to scour Oxford for other Transhumanists, but discovered none except the one Mondrago had already spotted (and Jason’s sensor now confirmed), and he kept to himself as much as was possible on this ship.

  Now, on the first day of 1669, they finally lay at anchor at the rendezvous point, just off the tiny speck of land that was Cow Island. And Morgan was sending out word to the captains to meet aboard Oxford the next day for the traditional war council that would choose a target.

  Jason stood by the rail, looking northward. Across a channel to the north, the mountainous spine of Hispaniola’s southwestern peninsula loomed: the Massif de la Selle to the east and the Massif de la Hotte to the west. With Oxford was a multinational fleet of twelve other ships and over nine hundred men, which Jason doubted would have held together for anyone but Morgan, the conqueror of Portobello. He picked out Rolling-Calf, which was somewhat farther away than most. Then he looked around the deck. Morgan was in the process of dispatching boats to the other ships.

  Boyer joined him and looked across the water at Rolling-Calf. “So near and yet so far,” he philosophized. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more help with her.”

  “Not your fault,” Jason replied absently. “You had other things to occupy your mind last time you saw her.”

  Morgan stepped up to Boyer. “As usual,” he growled, “I can’t find anyone who wants to set foot on Rolling-Calf. Henri, take a boat over there and tell Zenobia about the captains’ council. I know you don’t mind—especially after that fight the other day! Come on, your boat is waiting.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” said Boyer. And, in an aside to Jason: “Maybe this time I’ll get lucky.”

  * * *

  “Well, well!” greeted Zenobia as Boyer clambered aboard Rolling-Calf. “It’s you again. And with a message from Morgan?”

  “Yes.” Boyer delivered the news of the next day’s captain’s council. “Besides, I wanted to pay my respects. We never got to talk very much in the course of our unpleasant encounter with the late unlamented Captain Gaspard. For that matter, I also never had a chance to talk to you that night, on the way back to Port Royal, after the Koo-min-ah.”

  “Well, here I am now,” she said with a lazy smile, leaning back with her elbows on the taffrail, up on the poop and therefore looking slightly down at him. “What did you think of what you saw that night?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “You don’t think I’m a witch?” she asked boldly.

  “No. I saw some things I can’t explain, but I don’t believe that.”

  “You wouldn’t.” She cocked her head and looked him over. “You’re not like the others. There’s something odd about you . . . you’re not just an ordinary runaway slave, whatever you may claim. I don’t know what to make of you.”

  Does she suspect? Boyer wondered. But of course if she does she can’t say so outright. And I’m not supposed to state outright what I know about her. He noticed that the Maroons had all moved forward and busied themselves with various tasks, as though sensing that Zenobia wanted to have a private conversation. He cautiously stepped up onto the poop with her. It was barely large enough to accommodate two. She made no objection.

  “You puzzle me a lot more than I do you. In fact, you’d be a mystery even without . . . what I saw and heard that night ashore.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re no simple runaway either.” Boyer decided to risk the either, even though he was tacitly confirming that there was more to him than he had admitted. “Where do you come from anyway?”

  “I’ve told you before, that’s none of your business!” All at once, the fire in her eyes died down to something resembling warmth, with underlying flickers of amusement. “If you don’t believe I’m what I seem to be, then just where do you think I do come from?”

  He held her eyes and would not let go. “Even though you aren’t a runaway slave, I think you come from a place where
you were never treated as a full human being.”

  For a long moment, the creaking of a wooden ship swinging at anchor seemed unnaturally loud.

  Her eyes slid aside and would no longer meet his. “What are you talking about?” she muttered in a surly voice . . . and then stopped short. Her head swung around and she stared at him with eyes that were wide with sudden realization.

  He had spoken in twenty-fourth-century Standard International English.

  He smiled, and continued in the same language. “I got tired of fencing. It’s contrary to my orders, but I think we ought to start being honest with each other. I’m a time traveler—like you.”

  “What babble is this?” she demanded with an attempt at bluster.

  “It’s no use. Our mission leader has a sensor that detected your bionics—and, of course, I saw them in action. You don’t belong in this century any more than I do. By the way, don’t bother trying that vocal enhancement implant of yours on me. As you’re probably aware, it’s ineffective against someone who is alert to it and is consciously resisting.”

  Her eyes turned to black ice. “If I say the word,” she hissed, “my men will chop you into shark chum.”

  “I know. But I don’t think you will. You see, I think you need help—and my companions and I may be able to provide it. But only if you’re frank with us.”

  “What makes you think I need any help? Least of all from the Authority,” she added with a sneer, all pretense gone. “That is who sent you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and our mission leader is firmly convinced you’re a Transhumanist, because that seems to be the only possibility. And yet, we know those men chasing you in Port Royal were time travelers . . . and we’re certain that they were Transhumanists. Very perplexing. That’s why I’ve been sort of assigned to try and find out more about you.”

  “And I thought you liked me! I’m crushed!” Her sarcasm somehow lacked a hard edge.

  “Actually, I do. That’s why I’m still hoping, in the teeth of all logic, that you’re not really a Transhumanist. It’s also why I hope I can talk you into accepting our help. Whatever you may say, or think, I believe you need it.”