to the book. Ricky had heard rumors that there were some other special weapons in the captain’s cabin that were off limits to him and to J.B. The young man jerked up as a tall shadow fell across the door. He had no bullets for any of the weapons he was cleaning, and he clawed for his ship’s knife.
Ricky sighed with relief as Doc’s rangy frame filled the doorway. The old man held a wooden case. “Doc! Don’t sneak up on someone like that!”
“Young Ricky,” Doc said gravely,. “you have a conundrum.”
Ricky stared at the weapons on his workbench and saw nothing that made sense. Doc often didn’t. “What’s a conundrum?”
“You have a problem.”
“Yeah, Doc. If getting butt-chilled by a bronze statue is a problem, I’ve got a problem.”
The subject matter was clearly to Doc’s distaste. Yet Doc seemed to be in a rare clear, cold mood. “Fight him.”
“Fight him?” Ricky began gesticulating. “Fight him how?”
“Challenge him.”
“Challenge him?” Ricky repeated. “Challenge him how? No one’s going to give me my blaster! With blades? I can’t beat him! Madre de dios, Doc! Bare hands? I haven’t been rated ordinary seamen yet, much less able. What do I challenge him for? The right to be bosun?”
“For the personal rights to your rectum.”
Ricky was shocked speechless to hear such a thing come out of Doc’s mouth.
Doc struggled to keep his voice steady. “When I was hurled into your time, I was captured by unethical men.”
Ricky had heard the stories. “Doc—”
“I was made sport of and abused. Cruelly.”
Ricky couldn’t meet Doc’s eyes. “Doc, you don’t have to—”
“Look at me!” Doc demanded. Ricky looked. He stared at the time-trawled man, ripped from his family and torn from his time. Ricky gazed on Doc’s chron-damaged visage and knew that in reality he was almost as old as Ryan. He had seen Doc’s skill with blaster and blade and knew that in his time Doc had been a learned scholar who had married a beautiful woman. Now he was old, broken in body and sometimes in his mind. Doc regained his composure.
“Ricky, my young friend. Fight. Rage.”
The youth did not know what to say. “Doc?”
Doc’s eyes grew clear. His voice filled with the terrible gravitas of his message. “You must fight.”
Tears stung Ricky’s eyes for Doc and himself and the future that awaited him in the darkness belowdecks. “But how, Doc?”
Doc set the case he carried on the workbench. “With these.”
Ricky opened the ornate box. It contained two of the most beautiful handblasters he had ever seen. Their grips were lustrously polished fruitwood. Clouds of golds, blues and purples swept through the steel of the barrel and lock work in gorgeous swirls of case hardening. The triggers and bead front sights were gold plated. The weapons were perfectly identical. Separate slots held individual bullet molds and intricately tooled silver powder horns for each blaster. Ricky took out one of the weapons. It was heavy and well over .50 caliber. He turned the weapon about for several moments and found writing along the bottom of the barrel.
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