Mitchum scowled from the vessel’s bobbing wheel-house. The crew had dropped anchor, but it did little to smooth the rough waves. Hopefully, it was merely the advance notice of a coming storm, and not the herald of a Deeper arriving.
After delivering its load of people, the petey had swung away from the rest of the boats and assumed a defensive position in the deep waters off the landmass. The pirates couldn’t fail to see their arrival, and once they figured out what was going on, they would hit the navvies with everything they had. Against that eventuality, Glassman had given the sec chief a pre-dark revolver from the captain’s armory a .357 Magnum Ruger Redhawk. As a precaution, he tied the blaster to his belt, so it couldn’t fall overboard. The blaster weighed a lot, but he had been assured that it hit harder than a .44 flintlock. Mitchum was eagerly looking forward to seeing if that were true.
Battling to stay on the surface, the slave stared at the beach he was heading for. Big rocks that looked like molten glass studded the beach, and the trees beyond were oddly stunted, their trunks twisted and gnarled as if in pain. He flinched as something brushed against him under the water, and he rushed forward to gratefully touch the sloping sand of the shallow shoals, the sand squishing between his bare toes.
Rising timidly from the sea, the man eyed the nearby bushes and wondered for a moment if the sailor could accurately shoot that far, when a blaster sounded and a glass rock on the beach exploded into shards, one of the pieces scoring a bloody scratch along his ribs.
“Keep moving,” a voice shouted. “We’ll tell you when to stop!”
Swallowing hard, the slave began to shuffle forward, moving around a gaping hole in the ground that seemed to be filled with small pieces of the glasslike rocks, the air about it hazy with a greenish hue. Almost immediately, a wave of weakness flowed through his body, and the slave shivered with unexpected cold. It was becoming hard to focus his vision, he felt dizzy, the taste of metal filled his mouth and every step was becoming more tedious, his legs wobbly as if they were melting. Sweat poured down his face as his teeth chattered, and a ragged cough took his chest. Wiping his mouth, the man saw flecks of blood on his hand. Suddenly, it was impossible to breathe, his lungs laboring to draw in the smallest sip of air. His teeth began to ache, and blood poured from his nose. He coughed again, and his teeth fell to the ground, along with a sprinkling of his hair. What was happening to him? Unable to think clearly, he turned and started back for the ocean, thinking in a wild delirium that he would be okay again if he could just get back on the petey.
The waves washed over his feet, the salt stinging like acid, when there came a puff from the boats moored offshore and something hit him very hard in the chest. The pain became a warm numbness, and he fell backward into a black pit without a bottom.
“Was that necessary?” Campbell asked, lowering his longblaster.
“Yes,” Glassman said, reloading the flintlock. “If the slaves know that we’ll ace them when it gets too bad, then they won’t dash about madly and ruin the chart.”
“Makes sense, sir,” the sailor reluctantly agreed.
“You’re next,” a navvy ordered, grabbing a young woman by the arm and shoving her into the water.
Far away, Mitchum eagerly watched as she swam to shore, then walked along the beach, about fifty feet to the left of the corpse sprawled in the sand. She made it a lot farther before collapsing, fighting to breathe.
“Starting to look good,” Mitchum said with a cold smile. This was a good idea. Use the slaves to walk along the rad-hot beach and find the pirate’s safe passage to the interior. He had thought it a long shot at best, but that damn plan seemed to be working. Soon, they could land the Hummers and drive into the jungle after the outlanders.