arm.
The bronze gladiator loomed over him. He wore a bandage over the knick Ryan had given his cheek and another on his ear. “Captain will speak to you now.”
Ryan squeezed his manacled hands into fists, pushed off the deck and stood again. Mixed mutters of admiration and speculation greeted his effort. He reeled. The deck spun and he could still barely see. Ryan spit. “And just who’s the captain of this bastard tub?”
The bronze fist hit Ryan in the guts again, and he doubled over. An uppercut ripped him erect, and a right cross crushed him to the deck, vomiting. The blond, bronze enforcer squatted over Ryan and leered as he cocked his fist. “Oh, you...”
A voice like a rasp on slate spoke. “Mr. Manrape.”
All chatter and cheering ceased. Ryan’s abuser shot to his feet. “Captain!”
“Every man on this ship has the right to ask who the captain is exactly twice,” the voice continued. “Once, when he is first brought aboard and doesn’t know, and the second, the day he kills me and stands before crew.”
The assembled men on the deck chanted in unison. “We know the code! We keep the creed!”
Ryan rose for the third and he thought possibly the last time. The only good news was that throwing up seemed to have cleared his head a little. He took in the crowd. He estimated about a hundred were on the deck and in the rigging. That told him the ship probably kept four watches. Most were on deck now effecting repairs from the previous battle and watching the spectacle the new prisoners presented. The worst part was that Ryan couldn’t see land on the horizon. The crew was different than any Ryan had encountered before. Despite the relaxed discipline of the moment, the symmetrical arrangement of the crowd told Ryan each man or woman was standing at their station.
The crew did not exactly wear a uniform, but nearly all wore loose white pants of identical cloth and red or white striped shirts. The uniformity of the clothing told Ryan they bought or traded for cloth in bulk and shared it among themselves. He reined in his drug hangover and found himself startled again. Hardly any of the crew was armed. The pirates and sea raiders Ryan had encountered were usually festooned with blasters and blades. Every crewmember he surveyed carried a knife or a marlinspike or both, but those were working tools.
Ryan looked up and saw sailors up in the tops on lookout with longblasters, and several were pointed his way. There was that, and a ring of men surrounding him tapped belaying pins into their palms with practiced familiarity. Ryan heard his companions being hurled to the deck behind him. Krysty drew a lusty chorus of catcalls. Doc drew jeers and noises of disgust. The rest of the companions fell somewhere in between. They took Ryan’s lead and rose behind him. Ricky and Mildred had to hold Doc up. He wasn’t doing well. Ryan squinted up at the quarterdeck and beheld the captain.
He was something to see.
The man was black, his skin a lot darker than Mildred’s. His black, wavy hair was shot through with gray and pulled into a short pigtail. The man’s eyes were black from pupil to iris with almost no white showing. It gave him a gaze that disturbingly resembled a shark’s.
The captain was a mutant.
He was not tall, but his shoulders were impossibly broad. The captain wore a black broadcloth shirt cut to fit his frame and black trousers. A sash that had to have weighed five pounds with all the spun gold gleaming through it girded his waist. His shirt was open to his solar plexus against the heat. Twisted and raised white lines girded his throat like a choker of thorns. Ryan instinctively knew it was a hanging scar. The captain’s right hand was twice the size as was usual, locked in a curled rictus and covered with orange fur. The nails were silver, long and sharpened like claws. Ryan could tell the hand was not the captain’s own but something that had been affixed.
The mutant grated through his damaged voice box. “I am Oracle, captain of the good ship Hand of Glory.”
A tall man with a short beard, mustache and spectacles stood beside the captain. He was dressed nearly the same except that his blouse and trousers were blue and white, and undoubtedly he was an officer. “Glory!” the man shouted.
“Glory!” the crew roared in response. “Glory! Glory! Glory!”
Oracle’s flat black eyes stared eerily at the prisoner before him as the cheers died down. “What is your name?”
“Ryan Cawdor.”
“You have been on the waters?”
Ryan knew he and his friends’ lives hung in the balance. Lies or subterfuge would not serve them shackled and out of sight of land. “A few times. Never for long.”
“Are you able? Can you hand, reef and steer?”
“No,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “But I’ve pulled on a rope, hurled a harpoon and fought in boarding actions. Steered a bit.”
“You stand like a man accustomed to command,” Oracle observed.
Manrape leered. “I can break him of that habit, my captain.”
“Never commanded a ship.” Ryan kept his eyes on Oracle. “Don’t claim the ability.”
Oracle’s eyes narrowed and his gaze went opaque. “With time and tides, Mr. Ryan. Perhaps.”
Ryan tried to marshal his thoughts. “Captain, I—”
The blue-clad officer beside the captain bellowed with the unmistakable timbre of long command. “You don’t address the captain directly, fish!”
Manrape lunged in. His fist rammed into Ryan’s right thigh in a charley horse from hell. Ryan’s leg spasmed, and he dropped to one knee against his will.
Oracle stared at Ryan like a cipher. “I do not ordinarily press men, Mr. Ryan. I prefer volunteers, but we live in extraordinary times.” Oracle turned away and walked back toward his cabin. “I leave it to you, Commander Miles.”
The officer eyed J.B. “That fish had some very fancy blasters.”
J.B. looked at Ryan, who grimaced against his pain. “He’s J.B., armorer.”
“Mr. Forgiven!” Miles shouted.
A fat man with lank black hair hanging like the curtain of a jellyfish from his bald pate waddled forward. He wore blue like Miles and bore a great brown leather book and a predark pen. “Aye, Commander!”
“Rate Mr. J.B. temporary Gunner’s Mate until proved otherwise or signed to the book. Have Smithy ease his irons six inches apiece so he can work. If he’s useful, strike his chains tomorrow.”
Miles gave J.B. a deadly look. “You try to sneak a blaster, a blade or a thimbleful of powder, and by the nukecaust breaking of the world you will kiss the blaster’s daughter while the whip pounds your cock and balls to paste.”
J.B. nodded. “I’ll—”
“Shut your filthy piehole, scum!” Miles roared.
J.B. tensed but fell silent.
Miles pointed at Mildred. “This one had med supplies.”
“Mildred
