Captain Draco walked among the men streaming up the gangplank that led to his vessel. A grandfather had rescued the clipper ship from a predark museum and had lovingly rebuilt it by hand, using tools found in another section of the museum. It had taken him and a host of others almost a year to complete the job, and nearly another to knock down the wall and drag the vessel the six miles to the ocean. But it gave him a way off the stinking island and into the freedom of the ocean. Only to discover that he was trapped in the archipelago chain, the currents and the sea muties refusing anybody exodus to the North American continent. One jungle prison exchanged for another. It drove the man insane, and he slit his own throat. But his wife took command, then her sons, and the Draco family lived on.
Within minutes, the anchor was lifted on a rattling chain, and then first sail rose into the rigging. The sleek vessel caught the gentle breeze and started to ease out of the lagoon and into the salty sea, going faster and faster as the second sail was raised, and finally the mainsail, billowing as it shoved the vessel onward with remarkable speed.
A man in the crow’s nest pointed to the south, Captain Draco bellowed orders, Lieutenant Giles cleaned his ax blade on a sleeve and the Delta Blue swiftly headed for its next victim.
Back on the shore, the soaked sentries lay in the warm sunlight to dry and to bask in their good fortune of being on watch when the treasure ship had sailed by their atoll. Soon the talk of the tired men became peppered with yawns, and gradually they drifted into a light sleep.
A slow hour passed, then two, and finally the slave sitting by the campfire dared to move. Rising from his kneeling position, he quietly went to a nearby tree. Brushing away some sand, he uncovered a flat piece of shale. Lifting it carefully, he exposed a shallow hole filled with a canvas bag. Untying the stiff twine that held the bag closed, he pulled out a double-barreled flintlock, plus a screw-top jar of shot and powder. Tears started to run down his face as he loaded the ungainly blaster and slid the two pieces of used flint into the receivers. It had taken him weeks to sharpen the worn rocks by rubbing them with a broken piece of granite stolen from the bilge of the pirate ship, but it had been worth the effort. The flint was perfectly shaped, twin stone daggers.
Standing erect for the first time in months, he painfully limped over to a pit in the ground. The smell was horrible, stomach twisting, but he refused to retch and wake the sleeping men. There was only one way off this island, and he would never have another chance.
“Honey?” he whispered, his throat scraped raw by the first words spoken in months. The masters didn’t like chatty property, and his back bore the scars of their displeasure.
From within the reeking depths of the sewage pit, a mutilated thing turned its ruined face to the open sky, and in a barely audible voice, croaked a plea for death. The masters also didn’t tolerate escape attempts, and there were many punishments hellishly worse than simple rape and torture.
The tears started anew as he lowered the blaster and cocked back the first hammer. “With all of my love, wife,” he murmured, then fired. The voice from the pit stopped begging instantly.
On the beach, the sentries jumped erect, weapons at the ready.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Over there!”
Quickly the slave turned the blaster around, cocked the second hammer and placed the hot barrel into his mouth. It tasted bitter and metallic, and he thought briefly of the first day he saw his beloved wife. Then he pulled the trigger.
As his head exploded, the sentries stopped in their tracks.
“How the fuck are we gonna explain this to Draco?” the younger sec man shouted furiously. “That captain is going to lash us for days over letting two slaves escape. With a blaster yet!”