Ago’s Portuguese on the other hand is a living, breathing entity that has continued to grow and evolve to this day. The two languages were far apart in my time and have only grown further in the intervening centuries. There is danger on the big island, but the day is safer, of that I am fairly sure. The nature of this danger I cannot determine, though it is clear Baron Barat and Father Joao are to be feared regardless.”
Ryan gave Doc a long hard look. The scholar had been more lucid for the past couple of days than Ryan could remember. Maybe the sea air was doing him good, or being more useful than usual was helping him focus, as well. “What do you think?”
Doc shrugged. “These people have shown us nothing but kindness and hospitality. They were also clearly willing to hide us, quite possibly at risk to themselves. Ago is adamant, we must not go to the island at night.”
“Fireblast.” Ryan wanted to go now. He had a very grim feeling that time wasn’t on their side. But he could tell that Doc needed rest. Ryan felt the ache of his own wounds. If they left now there wouldn’t be much left of them to meet whatever awaited on the big isle. “Fine, we leave at first light, but under one condition.”
Doc blinked. “What would that be?”
The die was cast. “You’re a baron until I tell you different.”
J.B.’S HEAD SHOT UP as the comp in the control room chimed. He was sitting guard duty while the rest of the party slept and almost didn’t hear it over the moans, coos and shrieks of the stickies as they pressed themselves against the door and reached for him. He’d chilled two of the muties with head shots as they had tried the contortionist routine; but luckily full-body dislocation didn’t appear to be a universal stickie skill set, at least not yet. He perked an ear and realized the comp was no longer peeping. “Jak!” J.B. called. “Watch the door.”
Jak was awake, on-station with Colt Python drawn in an eyeblink.
Krysty and Mildred roused themselves wearily as J.B. examined the comp screen. Mildred pushed at her face sleepily. “What’s up?”
“The mat-trans.” Data no longer scrolled down the screen. J.B. checked his chron and then the comp screen again. “It’s been seventy-two hours. I’m pretty sure to the second. I’m thinking the mat-trans is enabled again.”
Krysty leaped to her feet. “We’re out of here.” She shouted into the corridor “Jak! We’re leaving!”
Jak trotted into the control room. Krysty surveyed her friends. “We leave the food and half the water we got here. There’s a chance there’ll be supplies on the other side. Here there’s none, and if J.B.’s right on the timer, anyone left behind will have another three days before the mat-trans cycles again.”
The party put down their canteens, water bottles and stacked their meager store of provisions on the main console of the control room. One by one they filed past and took their seats on the mat-trans floor. Krysty went and put her hand on the lever. Ryan was always the last man in. He was always the one to pull the lever and the first one to step out of the chamber. Watching him do it had always given Krysty confidence. She felt very nervous now but kept it off her face. “Everyone ready?”
J.B. nodded. “Let’s go.”
Krysty shut the door and quickly sat on the floor disk as a mist began to fill the chamber. The lights began to flicker and the sucking darkness started to pull her in into oblivion. Krysty screamed in rage rather than fear this time as the lightning suddenly sledgehammered behind her eyes. She wasn’t going to meet Ryan. Krysty screamed on in agony as she felt the savage wrenching for the second time as the universe seemed to pull every last fiber of her being in a separate direction but stopped just short of ripping her apart.
Krysty collapsed face-first into a puddle of her own bile and lay shuddering for long moments. Locks of her mutant hair snapped and twisted like beheaded snakes. Her battered brain knew she had been left behind again and she was still in the same redoubt. Instinct curled her fingers around the grips of her snub-nosed blaster. She pushed herself to her hands and knees and another wave of nausea ran its course through her. A clinical part of her noted dark, internal blood mixed in with the mess that had nothing to do with her bleeding nose. J.B. lay a few feet away, clutching his Uzi like an anchor as he was racked by his own gastrointestinal fireworks. Krysty could have wept.
Jak and Mildred were gone.
Krysty reeled onto her knees and mentally bucked herself up as she stood. Her hand shook as she pressed the lever and the chamber door hissed open. The comp was peeping. Data was scrolling. The supplies were still there. The corridor outside echoed with the sounds of besieging stickies.
Three more days.
Chapter Five
Ryan’s broken rib stabbed and sawed at his side with each stroke of the oar. The sea was calm and the current slight, but they were still pushing a craft shaped like a brick across several klicks of open ocean. Doc was clearly no longer invigorated by the call of the sea. Each dip of the paddle was a groan and each return was a wheeze of effort, and Ryan felt his injured and exhausted body falling into the rhythm. The only good news about the journey was the morning fog. The big island was a dark smudge in the distance, and it would take a keen eye to make out the little makeshift raft in the vastness.
“I was on the rowing team…when I attended university…you know,” Doc gasped. “I fear…I have since…lost…my wind.”
“Save your wind for the sea, Doc.” Ryan dug his cut-down oar into the Lantic. “We’re getting close.”
Waves boomed and hissed ahead of them as the ocean met the land. Both men instinctively dug down and dug harder as the big island loomed ahead of them like Leviathan in the fog. Doc suddenly gave a little sigh, and Ryan felt the sea change beneath them, as well. They had passed some invisible barrier in the waters and now rather than fighting the ocean current they were being pulled in by the tide. Ryan had scanned the beachheads the previous late afternoon and seen little in the way of obstacles, but he worried about the rocks and reefs he couldn’t see. “We’re coming in.”
“Indeed…I believe we are.” Doc set his oar aside and took the crude tiller.
The raft slopped and dipped as the waves slapped it, but so far the surf wasn’t bad and Doc began to guide them in. Four barrels set in a square were very difficult to capsize. Despite several stomach-dropping descents down wave faces and being soaked to the skin, they were heading straight for the beach. Rather than rising up and down in booming waves they were suddenly in surf that sizzled like bacon. They gathered speed and Ryan could see the dull yellow sand of the beach ahead of them. “Nice work, Doc. We—”
Both men went flying as one corner of the raft smashed into a sandbar and the little craft went vertical. Ryan’s rib screamed at him as he took a shoulder roll in the surf and came up on his feet with a splash. Doc ate a mouthful of beach and rose spitting and blinking sand from his eyes. Water churned around them as the wave receded. Doc splashed seawater onto his face and spluttered as they slogged up past the water line. “We have made landfall.”
Ryan began to haul the raft onto the beach. It took long minutes for the two exhausted men to get the raft past the waterline and against the cliff. They piled seaweed on top to camouflage it, but most things in nature weren’t square and covered with weed.
“A most suspicious lump,” Doc opined.
“Check your powder.”
