got a habit of pissing off the powerful, Ryan,” J.B. said.
“It’s not like we’re here on a pleasure cruise,” Ryan said with a bit of a rasp. “We got to find passage back to the mainland. Or some kind of paying gig. Triple-fast. Otherwise we’ll be boiling the shirts off our back to make soup of the sweat—if we could find a way to pay for fresh water, that is.”
“Oh, there’s work aplenty to be found in NuTuga,” Oldie said, “if a body’s got the stomach for it.”
“We got the stomach for a lot,” J.B. said. But he was frowning at the dangling bodies as he did it.
The body that had had the seagull pecking its eyes jerked. Ryan guessed something big had hit its legs underwater. He still couldn’t tell if any kind of living muscular reaction contributed to the motion.
He didn’t really want to know. He was a hard man, but he had limits, too.
“So the ville’s actually run by pirates?” Mildred asked. Her skin was the color of the ash in Oldie’s firepit. “They must be monsters.”
“They turned into something worse,” the old man said. “Government.”
And he laughed and laughed.
Chapter Four
Oldie pulled the Ernie H up next to the end of an unoccupied wharf. “You folks make it ashore without I tie up?” he asked.
“Reckon so,” Ryan said. “Why?”
J.B. went over the side to stand knee-deep in water on the slope of the busted-rock mole to help the others across.
“Don’t wanna pay their fee. Not my kind of place, NuTuga. Not my kinda crowd.”
“That speaks well for you,” Mildred said.
“Don’t they try to stick you, anyway?” Ryan asked. He was surprised that the Syndicate, as Oldie described it, would let loose of the smallest chance at income. It was standard operating procedure for barons everywhere, whatever they called themselves.
Oldie laughed again. “The Monitors let me slide if I don’t technically land. They’re not too keen on splashing around in water where all the big fish and most of the little ones got a taste for human flesh.”
J.B. was just handing Mildred across to the slanted rock face of the pier. He cocked an eyebrow.
“Get your fool ass out of the water, J.B.,” Ryan said.
The armorer grinned, but he scampered up to the boardwalk with a vigorous splash just the same.
Ryan sat on the outboard gunwale to counterbalance the others as first Krysty, then Doc leaped to the rock. Contemptuously, Jak jumped into the water, then waded the couple of steps up out of the sea. At the last, he yelped and jumped clear.
“Something bumped leg!” he said, then glared as the others grinned at him.
Ryan tossed everybody’s pack and weapons over to them. After Krysty fielded his own, he took the leap. He wasn’t going to go wading with sharks and killer ’cuda.
“Word to the wise, Ryan,” Oldie called after him.
Ryan looked down at the man where he sat in the prow with his oars cocked up in their locks.
“Mind your steps here, folks,” the old man said. “Walk careful, especially around the Sea Wasps.”
“I thought you said theirs was an egalitarian society,” Doc said.
“Yeah. Whatever that is. The Syndicate is law.” He chuckled. “Just remember that people are basically dogs. They always got them a pack order. The more folks talk about everybody being equal, the more some’re more equal than others.”
“Talk sense!” Jak grumbled.
J.B. clapped him on the shoulder—gingerly, to avoid the sharp bits.
“He is, son. He is. Someday you’ll appreciate the fact. If you happen to live, that is.”
Ryan nodded to Oldie, and the old man pushed off with an oar. Ryan shouldered his pack and headed up the pier.
A party of men materialized at the inland end. There were six of them. Some were burly, some were wiry. All were hard. All were armed.
“Monitors?” J.B. asked as he swung along by Ryan’s side.
“Reckon so,” the one-eyed man replied.
The waiting six all had shaved heads and black T-shirts. Bloused over their boots, they wore baggy camo pants with many pockets and sundry patterns. Each had a hefty truncheon of polished black wood hanging from his belt. Counterbalancing the sticks were sawed-off scatterguns, either pump or double-barreled, with grips cut down to pistol size.
“Cute touch about these matching armbands,” J.B. murmured from half a pace behind Ryan’s left elbow.
Ryan knew Krysty was walking just behind his right elbow. He could smell the clean woman scent of her. She’d bathed in the sea off Oldie’s little beach the previous night. Both before and after lovemaking with Ryan.
“How you mean?” Ryan asked, making no effort either to be heard by the waiting sec men, or not to be.
J.B. jutted his chin at a jackstaff mounted above a solid-looking blockhouse made of brown lava chunks that stood back across an esplanade from the waterfront. A flag swung in a rising but still sluggish breeze. Ryan could tell it had some kind of black figure on a white field. So did the armbands, he saw.
“Yeah,” Mildred said from behind. “That’s cute. Photonegative skull and crossbones.”
Looking closer at the welcoming committee Ryan saw the armbands did indeed show a black skull over crossed bones.
“They look like event security at a rock show in the nineties,” Mildred said cryptically, then snorted. The notion seemed to amuse her.
“Welcome to Nueva Tortuga,” said the man in the middle. He stood a little ahead of his flankers. He was on the lean side, and an inch or so less than Ryan’s own six foot two. His skin was tanned dark, although his coal-smudge eyebrows and black beard made his tan look paper-pale.
“NuTuga, as we call it,” he went on. “We’re Monitors. We keep the peace. That’s all you need to know. Except you got to pay the entry fee.”
“Entry fee?” Ryan said, halting about ten feet short of them.
The leader provided several options in trade goods, ammo, gold or local jack. Ryan felt his cheeks tighten and his skin prickle as though he’d caught a touch of sunburn.
“No exceptions,” the squad leader said, pleasantly enough. “You don’t pay, you don’t stay.”
“What,” Mildred said truculently. “Or you’ll hang us off one of those derricks?”
Ryan felt his jaw tighten. Mildred’s
