With only some minor maneuvering, the PT boats sidled up the shore and reached the shallows. The wind was blowing their black exhaust into the trees, but Mitchum heard no coughing from hidden snipers as a result. Good.
Lowering anchors, each craft then dropped a heavy sheet-iron tailgate onto the shore. Releasing the chains holding the Hummers in place, the sec man started the war wags, while the navvies tossed in bags of ammo, grens and the small portable Firebirds. Wary of the lolling deck, the sailors drove the Hummers down the inclined metal into the shoals and then successfully onto the beach. The navvies and sec men followed next, and soon the lord baron’s men were assembled on the rocky beach.
As the PT boats raised anchors and moved away, a flurry of blasterfire crackled from the mountainside. The gunnery mates of the peteys promptly responded with their .50 cals, the stuttering machine guns sending a hellstorm of flying lead at the unseen defenders.
“The pirates are ready for us,” Mitchum stated, taking the passanger seat in the front of a wag. A box of grens was on the floor between his legs, the loaded revolver in his grip, the other hand holding a small hand ax to repel boarders.
“Nuke them,” Glassman grunted, doing approximately the same. He knew this was going to be a bloody fight, but the prize waiting in victory was worth any risk. A ville of his own! “Okay, lads, let’s get the bastards!”
“No prisoners!” Campbell added, waving a long-blaster.
With their engines revving, the armored war wags rumbled into the jungle, smashing the plants out of the way.
“Death to the pirates!” a sec man yelled, then sat back in his seat with an arrow through his neck.
Without any hesitation, the rest of the men cut loose with their weapons, blasters ablaze in every direction, ruthlessly chilling anything that dared to move.
“PIRATES?” Lord Baron Kinnison said, glancing up from his breakfast,
“Yes, my lord,” the chief of the palace guards said with a salute. “Captain Glassman has found the home ville of the pirates and wishes reinforcements immediately.”
“Does he now?” Kinnison muttered, narrowing his eyes to mere slits. Clean white layers of bandages covered his humongous body; the disease oozing from his sores had not yet seeped through the new cloth wrapped around him this very morning. Over the bandages, Kinnison was wearing a loose caftan of predark cotton, woven sandals and two gun belts.
Caught just once without a weapon handy, his empire had nearly toppled. Such would never happen again.
The dining hall was empty except for the baron, his elite cadre of guards, sec men who had remained loyal to the baron during the revolution, and the chancellor. The polished cherrywood table gleamed in the candlelight from the chandelier and the alcohol lanterns in wall niches, and heaping mounds of food filled the long expanse, platters of steamed crabs, savory fried fish, fresh young squid, bowls of clams, pitchers of beer and loaves of steaming fresh bread. As a platter was emptied, pretty young serving girls appeared to replace it with another, broiled chimpanzee replacing the crab, hot buttered ears of corn in place of the chilled clams. There was enough food to feed a ville, even though it was only for the handful of men and their obese leader.
Chained to the wall opposite the feasting people was a very skinny man, his clothes hanging loosely from his emaciated frame. The vile traitor hadn’t been fed anything but thin broth for a week, and madness was starting to appear in his fevered eyes. Under threat of castration, the prisoner was forced to watch the baron and his cohorts consume huge meals three times a day. Formerly a sec man for the lord baron, the starving wretch was the last of the rebels who had tried to seize the baron’s throne. As the very last alive, Kinnison was doing his best to prolong the man’s death for as long as possible.
Studying the messenger, Chancellor Rochar Langford wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin, the only one at the table, and placed there solely for his use. The others made do with hands and sleeves. A small goatee was growing on his chin, but the second in command of the island fortress was still clean shaved from his navy days, when lice was a very real problem. Small scars marked his youthful face, and a gold earring hung from the stubby remains of his left lobe, the rest removed in a bar fight on a distant island ville. With his short-sleeved shirt, the tattoos on the forearms were visible to all, a striped tiger on the left and a green dragon on the right. It was something he had copied from a predark poster found in the ruins of a crumbling city. He had instantly liked the effect and had it copied, a process that meant months of pain, but was well worth the inconvenience.