Blood Red Tide. James Axler

       Chapter Five

      Ryan stood deck watch. A moderate attempt had been made to work him to death the previous day, and he had been given light duty to recover. He had not been sent to the med, but he’d been issued a small jar of foul-smelling liniment. A tiny scrap of paper with Mildred’s handwriting said, “Use it!” He’d been reissued his own Navy longeyes and had spent his watch walking the rails surveying the sea and occasionally reporting to Miss Loral that there was nothing to report while his shipmates muttered envious insults about Deathlanders and their land-lubbing, weakling ways and needs.

      Ryan snapped the optic shut as dusk began to fall. The ship’s bell rang the hour. He took a deep breath as the evening breeze ruffled his hair. He was still stiff and sore from the beatings and hard labor. He was sunburned and smelled like a rottie, his hands and feet were raw meat and he was eating food barely fit for man or mutie.

      But Ryan felt surprisingly good.

      He looked down at the rad counter pinned to the open neck of his jersey. The air here on the outer edge of the Caribbean barely registered a rad. Ryan took the dipper from the water barrel and drank. One of the twins shot down a shroud so fast Ryan couldn’t fathom how he didn’t burn his palms off. He plunked down on the rail with perfect alacrity.

      “Hard work, Ryan? Walking the deck like a baron in his ville? Feeling a bit parched?”

      Ryan sighed, drank water and waited for it.

      “You know, Ryan, Purser Forgiven is kinda fond of me.”

      “And?”

      The topsman grinned. “And I could requisition you a nice silk pillow from the captain’s cabin. You could rest your gaudy soft little Deathlands hands on it. Mebbe have Wipe hold your cock for you when you step to the siphon.”

      Nearby crewmen laughed.

      Ryan held out the dipper. “If I cared, Born. If I even cared at all.”

      “Yeah, you’d chill me. Whatever.” The twin grinned and drank. “By the way, if you want to chill Born, which I recommend highly, he’s over there.”

      Ryan turned to see the other twin grinning and waving from the opposite rail. The one-eyed man waved back. “Naw. If I wanted to chill Mr. Born, I’d chill the bastard right in front of me.”

      The correctly identified twin started backward and grabbed for a shroud as he nearly fell overboard. “Nukestorm it! For a man with only one eye, you don’t miss much!”

      The twin called out to his brother. “BeGood! Ryan wants to chill you with his soft, Deathlands...” Born trailed off. His brother was gone. He shot his gaze back up into the rigging.

      “Ahoy! Topmen!” Born called. “Anyone seen my triple stupe brother—”

      “Man overboard!” Ryan roared. He vaulted barrels, coils of rope and an open hatch as he ripped off his shirt.

      Crewmen shouted in alarm. “Who? Where away?”

      “My brother, BeGood!” Born bawled. “Off the starboard rail!”

      Miss Loral stepped in Ryan’s path. “Belay that, Ryan!” He skid to a halt with a snarl and restrained himself from throwing the woman in after BeGood. Miss Loral sensed the danger she was in. “Last swim you’ll ever take, Mr. Ryan! Don’t do it!”

      “Barrel and a line!” Commander Miles bellowed. Onetongue and Atlast secured a line around an empty cask and sent it over the side. The barrel landed in the purple water with a splash and bobbed forlornly in the Glory’s bow wake, paying out line and swiftly disappearing into the gloom. The crew shouted into the gathering dark, “BeGood! BeGood!”

      Gypsyfair screamed out of all relation to her size. “Shut up!”

      The crew shut up while the little mutant cupped her hands behind her ears and turned her head slowly, clicking like the second hand on a chron. Her shoulders sagged. “Nothing above water, nothing within my range.”

      The waters didn’t stir. Oracle rasped from the quarterdeck, “I admire your sense of duty toward your messmate, Mr. Ryan. I know not what the waters are like where you come from, but no one swims here without a spear in hand, a bright sun above, clear water below and many mates fool enough to muster to him.” The crew scanned the murk and muttered in loss and agreement. Born fell to his knees, howling and pulling his hair.

      Oracle continued. “Dusk has fallen. The night feeders rise from the depths. Mr. BeGood has fallen down among them.”

      “No one heard him yell,” Ryan countered. “No one heard a splash.”

      The entire crew on deck and above looked at Ryan in shock at his challenge to the captain.

      “Ryan’s right,” Gypsyfair agreed. “I didn’t hear nothing until Ryan and Born shouted, and I hear everything.”

      Born ceased his howling. “My brother is a first-rate top man! He don’t fall from no rad-blasted rail in calm water! Much less without a sound! If he did, he’d have been laughing!”

      Ryan put his hand on the rail where BeGood had sat grinning at him moments before. It was dripping wet, as if BeGood had already been soaked before he had fallen. “Captain, BeGood didn’t fall. Something rose up to the rail and took him.”

      Oracle’s voice rose from his breaking slate rasp to a landslide. “Beat to quarters! All hands on deck! Prepare to repel boarders!” The drum beat to quarters. Shouts and footfalls echoed below. “Sharpshooters, top men! Look alive! Watch below, report to the armory! I want every lantern lit and—”

      Screaming broke out on the blaster deck below Ryan’s feet.

      The one-eyed man didn’t wait for orders. “Watch the starboard rail!” Ryan drew his knife and his marlinspike and ran portside. In the pale glow of the ship’s lanterns, Ryan saw man-sized, gray octopods climbing up the side of the hull. Crewmen boiled on deck armed with swords, war clubs, axes and butchering implements of every description. Far too few had blasters. Ryan had heard the crew had expended far too much of their ammo in the last battle with no hope of replacement soon, and they were saving their black powder for their cannons. The one-eyed warrior vainly yearned for his Scout, his SIG and his panga, but no one was hustling him his weapons. Ryan hefted his knife and spike in each hand and waited for the creatures suckering their way toward him. He counted more than two dozen. “Sharpshooters! The sides!”

      Blasterfire crackled and popped from the tops, but it was far too slow and sporadic. Two of the eight-armed muties burst as high-powered longblasters exploded their soft heads, but Ryan knew the shooters in the tops of the three masts were trying to cover port and starboard as well as bow and stern. Goulash shoved in shoulder to shoulder with Ryan, brandishing a beautiful, filigreed hunting sword and a double-barreled scattergun sawn down into a handblaster. He leaned out over the rail and pulled one trigger and then another. Two octopods smeared off the hull in riddled ruins. The Hungarian waved the swiftly creeping creatures upward. “Ha! Come then!”

      “Goulash, get the hell back from the rail! Reload!”

      An octopod launched out of the water like a rocket. It shot up level with the rail, and Goulash screamed and thrust his sword. His attack was instantly entangled as two arms wrapped around his wrist and elbow. His sword clattered to the deck as an arm cinched around his neck and squeezed. Ryan lunged, but the creature simply fell away before his attack and let its weight pull Goulash over the rail. The Hungarian fell gasping and struggling into the dark sea below wrapped in the octopod’s embrace.

      Ryan knew in an instant that the good ship Glory was not being boarded and taken. Her crew was being harvested. The silent night creep ended. Octopods shot up out of the water like an artillery barrage and hit the rails in full assault. There were scores of them, not counting the ones that had attacked through the blaster hatches below. Gypsyfair screamed and brandished her knife as an octopod pulled itself over the