It was obviously a lie, but how much was bullshit, how much the truth? Buying time, Withers filled a brass mug from a crystal decanter. He slurped the homemade beer, trickles running down his cheeks, then slammed down the brass shell and beamed a smile.
“Fair enough. We’ll cut a deal. Pawter, remove their chains.”
“My lord?” the lieutenant asked askance.
“Do it!” Withers commanded. Then softly added, “After all, we have their three friends, and at the first lie” He drew a thumb along his neck while making a guttural noise.
Ryan felt hope flare deep inside and tried his best not to show any emotion. They were alive!
The chains around their necks were removed, but the ropes around their hands stayed in place. Ryan didn’t mind. It was the metal that had been holding them back. Now they could make a move.
“So tell us,” a fat, bearded man on stage demanded gruffly. “What are these bags filled with?”
Rubbing his chafed neck, Ryan scowled. “You want that here?” he said to the baron. “With all these ears present?”
“Stop stalling,” Withers growled. “These are my private council. What I know, so do they. Now start talking.”
“Doc invented it,” Ryan said.
A sailor scowled. “The old man did?”
“Indeed I did, sir. And I will elucidate, if I may,” Doc rumbled in his best schoolroom manner, and started up the stairs leading to the stage.
“Talk English,” Withers demanded, swinging the Uzi around to lay it on his lap. “Last chance, old man.”
“But of course, your noble highness.”
The baron roared with laughter. “Highness, that’s a good one. I may keep you around, old-timer.”
Which meant the rest would be killed as soon as the secret of the balloon was revealed. Doc had a terrible flashback to being captured by Cort Strasser, who tortured him horribly every day. The old man shook his head. Never again would that happen. Doe would rather die than suffer such ignoble torment once more.
“Do you have any chalk?” he asked. “I need to draw a picture.”
“Chalk?” the baron said as a question. The other men on stage shrugged in ignorance.
“It is a soft white stone used to make pictures,” Doc explained to their blank faces. “No chalk, eh? Never mind, I can use a knife and scratch a picture on the floor.”
The old man went to his knees and ran hands along the veneer of the old wood. “Yes, this will do nicely.”
“No knives,” Pawter said.
“But I need something,” Doc complained, looking helplessly at the baron, then at the table full of their equipment.
“My cane,” he said gesturing at the table laden with their belongings. “That has a steel tip. I can use my cane. Surely that is not a danger, and I need something.”
“I can go outside and get a sharp piece of coral,” Pawter suggested.
Doc felt his bowels run cold. That damn man would ruin everything.
“Give him the stick,” the baron directed impatiently. “Let’s get this going.”
A sailor took the stick and, holding it by the shaft, offered it to the scholar. “Here, now get writing!”
Casually, Doc seized the lion’s head of the stick, gave it a twist and stepped away with bare steel in his hand. Before anybody could react to the sight, Doc lunged forward and slipped the point through the neck of the guard before him. The man tried to yell, but only gargled from the red blood pouring out of his destroyed throat.
Doc swung around and Ryan was already on the stage, his hands as far apart as the ropes would allow. The razor-sharp steel sword sliced easily through the plastic, and Ryan slammed both of his fists into the faces of onrushing sec men, teeth and bones breaking from the powerful blows. As they crumbled, Ryan grabbed a blaster from the fallen man and fired a round at the baron, who was fumbling with the Uzi. The miniball impacted into the wood of his throne, missing his head by the thickness of a hair. But the startled pirate dropped the rapidfire to the stage floor.
“Chill them!” Baron Withers roared, drawing both revolvers from his belt, when the spent blaster arrived, hitting him hard in the throat. Withers dropped his weapons and clawed at his neck, fighting for air from his crushed windpipe.