the porch and into the bushes. His men exchanged confused glances. Apparently this was all new to them. 'Well, I figured this day would come.' He turned and walked back into the building. 'You ate lunch yet?'
Sullivan consumed all the fish they put in front of him, and figured he would keep doing so as long as the Japanese girl kept putting more on the table. She batted her eyes politely when he thanked her for the fifth plate and returned to the kitchen. Hetold his story quickly and quietly, and now he was just plain hungry.
Bob Southunder studied him with cold blue eyes. Sullivan could tell that he was a calculating and intelligent man, the kind of man who'd grown impatient with governments and secret societies and had decided to make war on the Imperium by himself, but he was also a friendly enough host. 'You sure eat a lot.'
'So I've been told,' he answered.
He watched Sullivan's hands. 'Where's your ring?'
'Don't have one. Never took the oath.'
Southunder nodded. 'I would've figured otherwise. You've got Grimnoir written all over you.'
He didn't know whether to take that as compliment or not, so he just grunted and kept eating.
The building was mostly an open space, sort of a village common room, and a long rectangular table made of planks filled most of it. More people had poured in after he'd arrived, taking up the other spots, and then filling in along the wall once the chairs were taken. Apparently his arrival was interesting. The people were made up of every race he could imagine, and were aged from teenagers to old men, but most of them looked to be of fighting age and in fighting shape. The only women present were the ones that kept bringing food from the kitchen. Apparently piracy was man's work.
Southunder hadn't lived this long in the shadow of the Imperium by trusting strangers. 'I'd of figured Black Jack would have sent at least a knight…'
'John Moses Browning was supposed to have given me the oath, but he got hurt, and I had to leave in a hurry.'
'The John Browning?' the kid named Barns asked from a few seats away.
'Yep,' Sullivan said. The serving girl refilled his cup with some pungent rice wine. He kept catching her staring at him.
'You're pulling my leg.'
Southunder waved him away. 'He's not. We're old friends. How bad was he?'
Sullivan told them the story of the Peace Ray. The other conversations in the room tapered off to nothing, and soon everyone was listening in. When he got to the part about Isaiah Rawls trying to Read his mind, a look of disgust crossed Southunder's face. 'He was one of the knights of New York too, but…' he paused. 'Never mind, it isn't right to speak ill of someone who isn't around to defend himself. Let's just say that I'm not surprised he ended up in the leadership. He was a sneaky one. The Society always liked doing things in the least straightforward way possible. Maybe that's why they never liked me much. What was the other one's name?'
'Harkeness,' Sullivan answered. 'Why?'
'The name's familiar. I think he was one of the European Grimnoir that argued with Black Jack when he wanted to just break the cursed thing and be done with it. There were a bunch of them. They were one of the founding families. Leave it to them to be too proud to listen to reason, thinking that they were smart enough to use Tesla's mad device.'
'How about we go smash the damn thing right now then,' Sullivan suggested. 'Everybody wins.'
Southunder smiled. 'Because I don't know if I believe you yet. For all I know you're an Imp spy, trying to get me to take you to it, so you can cut my throat and take it back to your master.'
He wasn't the easily offended type. 'Fair 'nuff.' Sullivan looked around the crowded room. There were a few Japs within earshot, and he had no doubt the Chairman would pay a fortune to anybody who ratted them out. 'You want to talk about this alone?'
Southunder chuckled. 'This is my crew. We've been through hell together. I trust these men much more than I trust you, stranger.' He turned in his chair, looking for someone. 'Ken, come here, please.'
A young Jap leaning against the far wall set his food on the windowsill and came over. His face was creased with scars and half of one ear was missing. 'Captain,' he answered gruffly.
'Show Mr. Sullivan here how much love you've got for the Imperium.'
The Jap bowed his head a bit and unbuttoned his shirt. When he opened it, even as hardened as Sullivan was, he still cringed. Despite all the things he'd seen, he hadn't seen anything like this before. Every inch of his chest and stomach had been burned or cut, and was now covered in twisting black and grey scars.
'That'll be all,' Southunder said.
'Yes, Captain,' the Jap said as he pulled his shirt back on and returned to his lunch.
'Ken was one of the lucky ones we freed from a slave transport. See, his family didn't like the way the Chairman was running things, so he was volunteered. They started working on him when he was a little boy, but the kanji just wouldn't take, and they kept on burning until they ran out of skin. He was lucky he was born Nipponese, so failing out of school didn't get him turned over to Unit 731. If he had been a Chinaman or anything else, they'd still be experimenting on him. Mr. Parker?'
'Captain?' the muscular man responded from a few spaces away.
'Tell our guest what happens to the gaijin prisoners.'
'I was on a ship running guns up the Malaccan Straights to the rebels fighting in Siam. We were boarded and taken inland.' His accent reminded Sullivan of his time on the New Orleans docks, that cross between French and English that he'd never gotten used to. 'There was a 731 camp there. The Cogs were doing surgery, cutting pieces off of people's insides, just to see how long it took them to die, givin' them diseases to see how fast different plagues killed different colored folks. They'd build whole little towns in the camps, fill them with folks, whole families, and then turn containers of plague fleas loose on them, just to count how many got sick. I was lucky, 'cause I was strong, so they used me to move the bodies to the pits where they fed them to the things they'd created. That's where I was when Captain Southunder and the Marauder bombed them bastards to hell.'
The young one named Barns laughed. 'He never gets tired of telling those stories. Scares the piss out of the new guys, so they make extra sure not to get captured.'
'How'd you get here, kid?' Sullivan asked.
It was obvious he didn't like being called kid. 'I'm a pilot. Barns is short for Barnstormer. I like shooting down Jap planes.'
'Everybody needs a hobby.'
'Pays good too.' Barns grinned and took a swig from a bottle of mystery booze.
Southunder shook his head at Barns, giving an exasperated look that told him that the kid had a story, and that he wasn't helping make the point. The old pirate turned back to Sullivan. 'I could keep these men talking all day. Most of us have been wronged by the Chairman somehow, so don't you worry about my men's loyalty.'
'That how you do most of your recruiting? Men who hate the Imperium?'
'Some. Any man who's willing to stand against the Imperium is welcome here. I don't care if they do it for the money, revenge, or just because they like to burn things. I've got a gang of misfits, deserters, and outcasts. I split anything we capture evenly with my men and we sell it in the remaining Free Cities or wherever people are buying. Don't get me wrong. There's money to be made but it's more satisfying when you pry it from scum. Any Imperium ship on the water or the sky that goes anywhere without heavy escort is mine for the taking, anywhere along their frontier. They've hunted us for years, but we're too smart, and we've given them a few black eyes.'
Sullivan glanced around the room. 'You've got, what? Thirty men? What do you expect to accomplish?'
'Oh, we won't quit until we're dead or we've killed them all, Mr. Sullivan.' Southunder was a soft-spoken man, but Sullivan could tell that there was steel beneath those quiet words. 'Every last one.'
'EVERY LAST ONE!' the entire room bellowed in unison, banging their cups, stamping their feet, or hitting their rifle butts on the floor.
Sullivan decided that these pirates were okay with him. Imperium flagship Tokugwa Though the Tokugawa could certainly defend itself, it was not a warship. It was more like a floating palace. Madi had been amazed by the sheer opulence of the craft when he'd first come aboard and even after a couple of days he was still finding new things. Much of it was still bare, since the Chairman would use his personal favorite artisans to place the finishing touches, but the rooms and open spaces were majestic. There were paths lined with black soil where plants and even trees would be lovingly placed. It would be an appropriate vessel for the greatest man alive.
There was no other airship like it. All three giant hulls were mostly covered in structure and buildings. The
