Ryan considered the fact that in his experience only a handful of people knew about the mat-trans units and what they did. Any jump without a specific code was random. The fact that there was an ambush here, waiting for them, minutes after a random jump was thought provoking.
Ryan fired. The man above twisted with incredible alacrity even as the Scout kicked against his shoulder in recoil. He realized that the man had dodged his shot and flicked the bolt for a follow-up shot, but the man had already dropped out of sight. The man’s voice boomed from the roof. “Now, Mr. Hardstone!”
The ground shifted beneath Ryan and his companions’ feet. The earth opened up and swallowed them. The one-eyed man had only moments to register that a pit trap large enough to hold seven people and constructed thick enough up top to escape detection had been built outside the redoubt. Ryan hit the layer of underbrush that had been laid there to cushion the fall. Dirt had been piled three feet high above the trapdoors to conceal them, and the dirt cascaded all over the companions. Ryan landed on his feet and he spit dirt as the jolt ran up his legs.
“Cast your nets, boys!” the man of bronze called. Heavy deep-sea netting fell across Ryan’s head and shoulders and entangled the Scout. He dropped his longblaster and went for his panga and SIG Sauer handblaster. A second net and a third weighted with iron fell across him as he struggled to draw steel. Men leaped into the pit. As they landed on the netting, it encumbered the companions and pinned them down more. Ryan shoved his SIG free of the heavy strands. The bronze man suddenly stood next to him. The man stomped on netting, and it yanked the rope over Ryan’s blaster arm down. The shot busted cuttings on the pit floor.
Ryan’s vision went white as a belaying pin rammed into his back just above his right kidney. He heard J.B.’s Uzi snarl off a burst and their captors shouting. “Watch him! Watch him! Watch him!”
A man screamed. “He cut me! Little white runt cut me! Oh, rads and fall out,” the kidnapper moaned. “He cut me bad...”
Jak was still in the fight.
A huge hand closed around Ryan’s wrist and squeezed. The one-eyed man’s blaster hand popped open against his will and the SIG fell. “You’re fast,” the man admitted. “Fastest I’ve—”
Ryan struck quick as a snake strike with his blade. He thrust straight for the right eye. The strong man snapped his head aside, but the edge still whispered a hair-thin cut across his cheek and nicked his ear in passing. Ryan found his wrist plucked out of the air like a bird before he could retract it. The bronze hand squeezed with sickening strength. “So fast,” the titan mused. He jerked his head at the man behind Ryan. “Onetongue!”
A thick arm snaked around Ryan’s neck and Onetongue slapped a wet mass of folded rags across Ryan’s mouth and throat and held it there with great strength. The sop reeked. Ryan’s vision spun, his limbs loosened and his gorge rose even as he tried to hold his breath against it. His knees buckled beneath him. The titan held his wrists effortlessly.
“The knife!” a man bellowed from somewhere. “Someone get the fish-white son of a gaudy slut’s knife!”
“I got his knife!”
“Well, he has another— Fuck! That’s twice! Together! One three! One...three!”
Ryan heard a net-snared Jak snarling as his opponents piled on and the meaty sound of blows landed like rain. Ryan struggled as well, and consciousness drained out of him like a barrel with the bung knocked out. He couldn’t hear any of his other companions as darkness claimed him.
“Wake up, ya rad-blasted lubbers!” A cascade of cold seawater drenched Ryan and wrenched him out the blackness the drug had taken him to. His skull split from the sedative hangover. The shouter shouted on. “And your sluts, too! Wake up!”
Seawater flew by the bucket, and Ryan’s friends gasped and jerked awake. Rough hands yanked Ryan up and kept him from falling as the shackles binding his legs tried to trip him. His hands were manacled before him. The one-eyed man blinked in the dimness and confusion and fought to collect his wits as he was hustled forward. His jacket, boots and all weapons and equipment had been stripped from him. As his head slammed into a low beam, he saw stars and buckled. Rough laughter greeted his discomfort. He could hear his comrades’ moans and groans as they were manhandled behind him. Ryan was half carried, half dragged up two companionways between decks.
“Make way! Make way! Seven fresh fish for the captain!” Male and female voices hooted and catcalled. Ryan was bum-rushed into the blinding light of the sun and a broadside of jeers.
Despite the hangover from the drug, Ryan instantly knew he and his friends were at sea. He also knew he had been deliberately thrown facing into the sun. He got a knee beneath him and rose. He perceived the bronze gladiator figure from his capture whipping forward. Ryan raised his manacled hands, but the huge fist shot beneath and buried itself into his guts. Ryan dropped to boos and derision. It took a supreme act of will to keep from vomiting.
Ryan forced his limbs to obey him and rose again.
A voice from the side spoke low. “Strong bold bastard, I’ll give him that.”
The one-eyed man shook his head and tried to blink his vision straight. The voice belonged to a red-haired, bullet-headed man built like an aged, sun-ravaged gorilla. He gave Ryan a look of grudging sympathy and lifted his chin in warning. “Best look to starboard, mate.”
Ryan blinked and caught the next blow coming out of his right peripheral vision. He was too drug addled to do anything about it. The fist took him in the side of the neck and dropped him with white fire racing down his right 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