by James Axler
“So...Oldie,” Mildred said reluctantly. “You sure you’re going to be okay here?”
“Sure,” he said. “Ever’body’s safe as houses in NuTuga. Houses’re safe, too. Syndicate don’t let anybody act out. Ever’body’s equal before the law.”
He was a wiry guy of medium height, just a finger or two taller than J.B. His skin had started black and gotten blacker from constant exposure to the Caribbean sun. It made for a startling contrast with his hair and beard, full despite his years although cut close to his skull, and white as the snow he’d likely never seen. His face was a mass of wrinkles, as much, Ryan reckoned, from habitual good humor as age or sun.
He’d haggled briefly and halfheartedly before agreeing to feed them, refill their canteens from his hidden water cistern, let them sleep rough on his island and ferry them to the nearest port in the morning for three 7.62 mm rounds from Ryan’s Steyr Scout longblaster. Ryan got the impression he only accepted payment because his new friends would naturally suspect him of plotting something if he hadn’t—and that what he was really after was some company, however brief.
His skiff, named the Ernie H, was well kept but seemed as ancient as Oldie was. Right now, the little vessel ran on a broad reach across a breeze from the northwest, using a single triangular sail on the mast. Oldie had a pair of oars locked up under the gunwales for calm seas.
He also had an Ishapore 2A longblaster clamped under a tarp by his seat in the stern. It was the reason he’d been willing to take the 7.62 mm rounds in exchange for passage, since the Indian-made rifle had been built to fire those rounds. Though the forestock was secured by windings of bright red copper wire, Ryan had seen how the steel of the barrel and receiver shone with a faint coating of oil. It was a piece both well used and well maintained.
“So truly,” Doc said, peering toward the near ville, “the city is ruled by a council of pirates?”
“Right as rain,” Oldie said. “They started using the place soon as the quakes settled down after the war. Much as they ever settled down, that is. Wasn’t much commerce to raid in those days, but a lot of richies tried to weather the nuke-storm at sea on their yachts. They made pretty ripe plucking.”
The wind died as they approached the mouth of the harbor. Oldie calmly stood and began furling the sail, easily shifting his weight to accommodate the boat’s rocking.
“Pirates did a lot of coastal raiding in those days, too,” he said. He was clearly doing something he did every day. It didn’t take much conscious attention on his part. “These days, too, of course. Anyway, what with one thing or another, this side of the island wound up with a double-cherry natural harbor—if you could call what made it ‘natural,’ speaking rightly.
“Since the quakes and storms and whatnot had pretty much leveled Charlestown, which was pretty much the only town that counted, here or on St. Kitts just off to the north, there—” he nodded his white-bearded chin at a humpy green line lying off on the horizon as he lowered the sail “—the place tended to attract folks. Took hold right quick as a place to trade. ’Course, being as the only folks with much to trade—or at least, the means to insist on getting paid for what they had to trade, if you catch my drift—were pirates, pirates it was as settled it. Some got so successful they decided they could do better by staying put, keeping things running smooth and taking their cut off the top, than by sea-roving. Less work, and a shitload safer.”
“So they sell rum, gaudy sluts and beans to the gangs that bring in loot,” J.B. said. “Good income, if you got the weapons to hang on to it.”
Oldie grinned. “Told you, they was pirates to start with. They may put on airs and strut around cocky, but they didn’t forget their roots. They call their sec men Monitors. People as run afoul of them live to regret it.”
He got out his oars and set them in locks to either side of the bench that ran across the bow, then sat and began to pull with strong, practiced strokes. Muscles bunched and corded on arms left bare by the sleeveless burlap-sack blouse he wore.
“No engine on this thing?” Mildred asked in apparent surprise.
“Won’t have one.” He turned his head and spat into the water. “Don’t hold by the things. Don’t need gas. Get all the fuel I need, growing from the ground or in our sister the sea. And don’t need replacement parts.”
He grinned and thumped the hand-carved wood stump that replaced his lower left leg. “Not since I whittled this one to replace the pin that mutie eel bit off for me. More-ay we call ’em—‘a’ for ass, ’cause those are some big-ass eels!”
Jak scowled suspiciously. “Thought said shark bit off,” he said.
“Did I?” Oldie laughed. “One of them things. See, son, man gets to a certain age, trivial little details just naturally start to slip out of his mind. Great white, mutie more-ay—whichever. It got my leg and I don’t have it any longer.”
Jak lapsed into sullen silence, as the crusty old bastard laughed at him. But Ryan had seen the end of the stump beneath Oldie’s left knee. Something with big jaws and big teeth had taken it off; he knew that much from the marks. If the ancient half-crazed mariner wanted to make a joke out of something like that, good for him. Ryan had to smile in acknowledgment of his balls.
“Sweet yacht, there,” J.B. said, pointing.
J.B. was no nautical man—far less than Ryan, anyway, who’d at least grown up with small boats as a baron’s son in the rich and powerful East Coast barony of Front Royal. But J.B. was a skilled mechanic and tinkerer, not just an armorer. He knew wags of all sort, land and sea alike. He had a feel for them, and an eye.
Ryan nodded. He admired the clean lines of the vessel, although she had a funny prow: straight up and down, not angling up from the sea. She had to run ninety feet over waterline, with a smooth white coat of paint, unlike many of the other vessels in the harbor, whether masted or motor craft. Most were dilapidated and didn’t look well maintained at all.
Ryan also appreciated the machine gun on the pintle mount rising from the foredeck. He judged it was .30 caliber, which made it a Browning 1919. An oldie but goody, even by the time the balloon went up on the Big Nuke. But if it was maintained properly, as he reckoned this one had to be, it would still be capable of dealing out serious hurt. It even sported a splinter shield welded together from thick steel plates. The gun could kill a small craft’s engine, or just shoot the crew out of a larger vessel, without doing much damage to cargo or hull.
“Not bad,” Oldie admitted, “even if she has an engine in her belly. That’s the Wailer. Don’t burn your eyes on her too long, boys and girls. Like about half the hulls tied up here right now, she belongs to the Sea Wasp Posse, out of Ocho Rios over to Jah-Mek-Ya. Biggest, meanest pirate bunch working the Antilles and northern Gulf since that giant-ass ’cane took down the Black Gang some time back. The Blacks were cocks of the walk before that.”
J.B. caught Ryan’s eye and gave him a quick, tight, closemouthed grin. It hadn’t been a hurricane that took down the most feared pirate crew in the West Indies. Although not one but two hurricanes had helped. The real cause of their demise had been the companions.
It wasn’t a fact Ryan felt the need to advertise. Especially not closing in on a place that was the main pirate trading, refitting and recreational port. Odds were, the Black Gang had been NuTuga’s best customers in their time. The Syndicate might not look kindly on people who took that big a bite out of their business.
Quays had been built out into the NuTuga harbor out of broken-up volcanic rock, mostly a dark, rusty red-brown. The tops had been boarded over with planks. Some of the craft, such as the Wailer, were tied up to them. Others rode at anchor in the harbor itself.
As they entered the harbor Krysty pointed off to the left. “What are those?” she asked.
Squinting, Ryan saw what appeared to be half a dozen steel cranes standing by the shore, which was brown volcanic sand shored up by bigger chunks of lava. Four of the arms were swung out over the harbor. Something that looked like a cu
riously shaped duffel bag hung from a chain from each into the water. A seagull perched on the rounded top of one, bending forward to peck at it.
“Oh, no,” Krysty said in a small voice.
Frowning, Ryan looked closer. Those were humans hung from the chains, waist-deep in water with steel bands under the armpits. Their sun-blackened bodies were nude. At least one seemed to have been a woman.
One twitched. The seagull spread slate-backed wings and flew away. It had been pecking at the victim’s eyes.
“Is that one still alive?” Krysty asked.
J.B. shrugged. “Not much wind stirring,” he said.
“Oh, God—” Mildred emitted a strangled cry. Turning away just in time, she vomited noisily into the harbor.
“Lady got a delicate disposition?” Oldie inquired solicitously.
“She possesses a certain sensibility,” Doc said, with irony Ryan could make out distinctly even though he wasn’t sure their guide did. “Which fits not altogether comfortably with the exigencies of our modern world.”
Oldie shrugged. “She’s probably not gonna find NuTuga much to her taste, then.”
“Punishment is harsh,” Ryan rasped.
“Told you,” Oldie said with a certain gloomy satisfaction. “Syndicate runs a tight ship, even if they don’t tread the decks themselves much anymore. These poor folk broke the law. So they got their legs slashed and hung into the harbor to think things over.”
“Legs slashed?” Krysty said. She wasn’t a delicate flower, by any stretch. She was Deathlands born and bred, like Ryan himself, like everybody but Doc and the vigorously puking Mildred. It took a lot to shock her.
But this had done the trick.
“Doesn’t that bring ’cudas and sharks?” she asked. The way her emerald-green eyes flashed the instant the words were out of her mouth showed she got it.
“Reckon that’s the point,” J.B. said. “Right?” He took off his glasses and began to polish the lenses with a stained handkerchief.
“Best keep your noses clean while visiting lovely Nueva Tortuga, folks,” Oldie said. He continued to row.
“What manner of crimes,” Doc asked, “would occasion such stern punishment?”
Oldie managed to shrug without missing a stroke. “Could be a lot of things. Theft. Vandalism. Cheating at cards. Welshing on a debt. Brawling.”
J.B. frowned and fitted the glasses back on his nose. “Reckon those things’re pretty much what pass for recreation among pirates,” he said.
“There’re limits, see,” Oldie said.
“What are they, precisely, my good man?” Doc asked.
Oldie laughed. “You sure find out once you cross ’em,” he said, nodding to the dangling, half-submerged bodies.
“So the one real rule is don’t piss off the Syndicate,” Ryan said. He grunted.
Krysty knelt on the sideboard next to Mildred. She helped the shorter woman turn back inboard and wiped her mouth with a rag.
“Are we sure we want to visit this place, Ryan?” she asked.
“We do got a habit of pissing off the powerful, Ryan,” J.B. said.
“It’s not like we’re here on a pleasure cruise,” Ryan said with a bit of a rasp. “We got to find passage back to the mainland. Or some kind of paying gig. Triple-fast. Otherwise we’ll be boiling the shirts off our back to make soup of the sweat—if we could find a way to pay for fresh water, that is.”
“Oh, there’s work aplenty to be found in NuTuga,” Oldie said, “if a body’s got the stomach for it.”
“We got the stomach for a lot,” J.B. said. But he was frowning at the dangling bodies as he did it.
The body that had had the seagull pecking its eyes jerked. Ryan guessed something big had hit its legs underwater. He still couldn’t tell if any kind of living muscular reaction contributed to the motion.
He didn’t really want to know. He was a hard man, but he had limits, too.
“So the ville’s actually run by pirates?” Mildred asked. Her skin was the color of the ash in Oldie’s firepit. “They must be monsters.”
“They turned into something worse,” the old man said. “Government.”
And he laughed and laughed.
Chapter Four
Oldie pulled the Ernie H up next to the end of an unoccupied wharf. “You folks make it ashore without I tie up?” he asked.
“Reckon so,” Ryan said. “Why?”
J.B. went over the side to stand knee-deep in water on the slope of the busted-rock mole to help the others across.
“Don’t wanna pay their fee. Not my kind of place, NuTuga. Not my kinda crowd.”
“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 wa
terfront. 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.
