“Captain!” a sec man called out from the port cannon. “The waves are cresting white!”
“Is that important?” Glassman responded.
The sailor stole a glance at the others on the deck of PT 312 before answering. “Ah, yes, sir,” he replied, trying to mask a surly smile. “Means a storm is coming! Maybe we should find a cove to anchor in, just in case.”
A storm? Glassman glanced at the sky. The heavy clouds rumbled with sheet lightning as always. He recalled less than a week of clear blue in his whole life. Some of the oldsters said the clear days were coming less often, as if the atmosphere was becoming more polluted with toxic chems and rads. But that was impossible. Sheer nonsense.
“What’s your opinion, Sarge?” Glassman asked the pilot.
Campbell looked out of the corner of his eyes. “I know of a small atoll only a few miles to the nor-west, Cap’n,” the pilot replied, trimming their speed. “Good harbor, no villes, though.”
Which meant no more blood to be spilled, for a while at least.
“Take us there,” Glassman ordered. “Best speed.” Then releasing the stanchion, he climbed into the empty chair. Ah, better. He was tired of standing, and if he was supposed to be the goddamn captain then he could do whatever he wanted. Including sitting down.
“Aye, sir,” Campbell replied, then leaned sideways to shout down a bamboo tube sticking out of the deck. “Engine room! Skipper wants all she’s got! We’re racing a storm!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” a muffled voice replied, and the speed of the boat increased noticeably.
The healer looked hard at the sergeant. That was the first time he had been called the skipper of the vessel. Briefly, he wondered if by taking the chair he had just passed some sort of test.
“Okay, swabs, batten down the hatches!” a bosun called out from amidships, his wet shirt clinging to his muscular chest. “Or do ya wanna swim home!”
Glassman watched as the crew hustled into action, lashing down loose items of equipment, tightening ropes and covering the machine guns and torpedoes with old plastic sheeting that was heavily patched.
Just then, the speeding craft gently rose and fell as something colossal disturbed the water directly under the petey and continued onward, heading directly for the brewing storm on the horizon. The pilot went pale, the crew whispered curses and Glassman felt clammy, his heart pounding in his chest. They had just sailed past death itself, a sea mutie.
With an effort of will, the captain put the event out of his mind and concentrated on the work at hand. There was nothing to be afraid of; death was just part of life in the Cific. And often a welcome release.
PAUSING, Krysty pointed with the barrel of her weapon. Only a few yards away, the form of a woman was sprawled on the filthy soil. Feebly, she raised a hand, struggling to accomplish the action as if her limb weighed a million pounds.
“Here…” the ghostly voice whispered once more. “R-Ryan.”
It was a woman, dressed in rags, her body covered with dark discolored bruises. Her arms were skeleton thin, her cheeks sunken and sallow. On her arm was the brand of a slave.
“Who the hell are you?” Ryan asked, scowling, his blaster pointing directly at her heart.
“I w-was on…” she gasped, “S-Spider Island.”
Ryan’s scowl deepened, but he moved aside the blaster. There was no way a local slave could know that. Quickly, he dragged the dead man off her legs as Krysty knelt on the ground and opened her canteen to trickle some of the tepid water into the woman’s mouth. She drank it greedily and sighed in relief.
“Been so long…” she croaked, then broke into a ragged cough. “You’re really here. Not another dream…”
“We’re real,” Krysty said softly, trying to brush aside the tangles of hair covering the woman’s face. But the hair was stuck to her skin in spots from the dried residue of sickness.
“You were on the Constellation, right?” Krysty asked, drawing a blade. Cutting a relatively clean shirt off a dead man, she splashed some more water from her canteen onto the rag and mopped the woman’s face clean. The smell from the dead around them was terrible. Most were lying in dried pools of their own vomit and feces.