The baron grinned lustfully. “Mebbe I’ll finally get a son if I seed enough of the women.”
Hiding his emotions, Brandon was pleased. The sec men would have the pick of the sluts once the fat bastard was exhausted. And the women would do anything the sec men asked, anything at all, to avoid the terrible bed of the baron.
“I’ll leave on the morning tide,” Brandon said, giving a salute. “I would like to sleep in a bed that doesn’t move for one night.”
“Acceptable,” the baron said leniently. As with any valuable animal, a good master had to know when to beat his dog and when to pet. Too much one way and it became useless; too much the other, and it would turn and attack. “But I want you to leave before dawn, and return by the end of the week. I need that flash, Lieutenant. Get it, and do not fail me.”
“Have I ever, sir?”
“Not yet,” Kinnison grunted. “Which is why you’re still alive.”
Brandon said nothing aloud, but his eyes were smoldering pools of hatred as he marched from the room and down the long corridor of the predark castle.
Chapter Eight
With Mildred and Krysty setting up sick bay, and Dean helping to raise the sails, J.B. stayed on the Constellation to cover Ryan, Jak and Doc with his Uzi while they retrieved their backpacks. The three men on shore then did a recce of the ville with some of the sailors from the ship to make sure that none of the slavers was still alive. None had survived the wrath of the women prisoners. Body parts lay strewed along the beach, the crabs scuttling among the dead, dragging everything they could into the shoals. High above, hungry scream-wings circled the ville, waiting until it was clear for them to join the bloody feast.
Suddenly there was a motion in the sky, and the scream-wings were gone, clutched in the beaks of golden condors. Then they were gone from sight.
Knowing the women would sooner believe Doc before the young sailors, Ryan had Doc invite the females on board as crew. Cowering in the empty houses, most of them laughed wildly at the suggestion and declared their intention to stay and make the deserted ville their own. The few who decided to board the ship, did so hesitantly, as if afraid to disobey.
Once they were back on board the Constellation, Captain Jones had O’Malley free the sea anchor and started to shout incomprehensible orders to Daniels at the wheel. The crew dashed about pulling on ropes and climbing like monkeys in the complex rigging above. Soon the great ship was moving away from the shore, then past the breakers and into the open sea. Now the mainsail was raised, the yards of patched canvas billowing taut as it caught the wind and the ship lurched forward with renewed speed, the waves breaking into white spray across her bow.
Standing at the port-side gunwale, the three men watched as the lush tropical island receded. Now the second island with its vine-covered mesa rose into view above the forests of the lower woody atoll.
“Any sign of the gateway?” Doc asked softly, glancing behind them.
“None,” Ryan replied, squinting. “Nor the bridge.”
“Good,” Jak grunted. “Others not find.”
“Hey!” Krysty shouted from the other side of the ship.
They waited as she rushed across the deck to rejoin the companions. “It just occurred to me,” she said, breathing normally as if the one-hundred-foot dash had been nothing. “If that short circuit ran through the whole building, it might have blown the comps!”
“Don’t know much about comps, but we have to hope for the best. Mebbe it just affected the fuses. And there usually is a full replacement set underneath the console. The comps will be fine.”
Krysty exhaled in relief.
Standing motionless at the gunwale, J.B. didn’t join the conversation, concentrating on his work. Carefully aligning the half mirror of the minisextant, he tried to focus on the tropical sun hidden in the roiling storm clouds overhead.
“Got that location down yet?” Ryan asked as the green island vanished into the distance.
Lowering the predark device, J.B. nodded and used a pencil stub to carefully write some figures on a small scrap of paper that he slipped into the sweat-band of his fedora. “Shot the sun twice, just to make sure,” he said confidently. “I could find this place in a hurricane.”