Frozen

One of the slave ships sped toward their boat, the battering ram on its bow pushing ice and debris aside as it plowed through the water.

Wes raised a hand for quiet and motioned to Shakes, pointing toward the bow of the approaching ship. The soldier crawled to the back end of the big gun on the deck. The weapon wasn’t much to look at, but it packed a whopping punch. Wes had welded the base of an old howitzer behind a metal shield. The shield allowed someone to aim and fire the gun and have some degree of cover. The short-armed gun was like a miniature cannon and fired rounds as large as baseballs. It would have been a formidable weapon if only they had more than one round of ammunition for it. Shakes checked to see whether the barrel was loaded and nodded to Wes.

They only had one shot, so they needed to make it count. Wes waited until the ship was close. If they could score a good hit, they might be able to sink the slave ship before it got close enough for its crew to swim to them. Even a good hit might scare them away if they thought he had more ammo.

Wes considered his strategy: He wanted to scare the slavers away before they could see how poorly armed his crew was, but the farther the slavers were from them, the harder it would be to hit the ship.

So he waited as long as he could and then nodded to Shakes.

His friend took his time aiming the big gun. The sighting mechanism was missing, so Shakes had to guess to hit his mark.

The ship was a mile away . . . half a mile . . .

Wes was about to yell at Shakes when the soldier finally pulled the trigger.

The cannon-size gun let loose with such a bang that the whole deck shook, and the air filled with a thin cloud of smoke.

But when the smoke cleared, the slavers were still coming for them. The shot had gone wide, hitting a patch of ice thirty feet from the vessel.

Shakes cursed and Wes climbed behind the thick metal shield. “It’s not your fault,” he told Shakes, his eyes never leaving the slave ship. “The charge in that thing is decades old; it’s a miracle that gun even fired.”

The two of them watched, hands on their sidearms, as the ship moved closer. The vessel was like theirs, a run-down, put-together affair, but unlike Alby, which had been lovingly restored, the slave ship had a hodgepodge look. Its hull had been reinforced by car hoods, refrigerator doors, corrugated sheets of metal, a lumbering patchwork of junk. Smoke drifted from its chimneys. Wes spied several ominous-looking gun barrels poking through the metal maze.

The ship was so close now that they could hear the slavers speaking to one another.

Everyone huddled in their places and waited.

“What are they saying?” Roark whispered to Nat.

She strained to hear. “I’m not sure.” The slavers’ language sounded brutal to her ear, a corruption, all consonants and no vowels. Then she realized they were actually speaking textlish, a language that was only designed to be written, not spoken—even though she’d heard it in pockets of K-Town, and once in a while when she was a dealer in Vegas.

The slave ship was right next to them now; the mercenaries had tossed over a rope ladder and were boarding their ship. A raggedy troop of hard-looking boys and men climbed aboard, along with a few scary-looking women, holding guns and sharpened steel shanks. Nat counted thirty of them.

Across from her, Wes holstered his gun.

“What are you doing?” she asked, horrified. They had planned to fight. But now it looked as if Wes was just going to give up.

“If we fight, we’ll die. There’s too many of them, I thought they were only going to send a small strike crew, but we can’t take all of them,” he said. “It would be suicide. We have to surrender.”

“But we said—”

Wes didn’t let her finish. “I’m going to let them take us; maybe I can talk my way out of it—I know these guys. And if not, it’ll give me some time to think of another way out.”

“Another way?” Nat said pointedly.

“Don’t worry—I would never give them your necklace,” he said. “I promise. I would eat it first.” He grinned.

Wes nodded to Shakes and the rest of the team. Slowly, he came out from behind the shield of the howitzer, raising his arms in surrender. The group followed suit. There was no argument, no debate. Wes marveled at that; they were better at following orders than his old unit. The smallmen dropped the daggers they’d drawn for battle; Liannan descended the mast and walked regally to the front, holding her robes around her, Shakes hovering protectively nearby. Nat went last.

The slavers murmured and gestured to one another, as they surrounded the small group. Two of them took Wes. They bore the same scars, like scratches from cats or branches, on their cheeks. Wes knew that the lowest of the slaver clans cut their babies’ cheeks at birth. The scars grew as part of their faces—forever marking them as people of the black ocean.

“That’s it? That’s all your numbers?” the largest one demanded. Wes noted that his face lacked the scars— this man had grown up outside of the slaver clans. He spoke the standard tongue, but his words were barely comprehensible. He stank like the sea and his clothes were stained and tattered; he would probably wear the rags until they disintegrated.

“Yes,” Wes replied.

“Thought you ran a bigger crew than this, two soldiers and four passengers?”

“We lost a few,” Wes said.

There was a murmur in the crowd, and the mercenaries quieted down, parting for the appearance of the ship’s captain. Nat stifled a gasp. It was the familiar face of Avo Hubik, the Slob, the slaver from whom she’d won their ship. Just as in K-Town, Avo was sleek and handsome, his black eyes as deep as the night. Like the slaver who’d spoken, his smooth, handsome face was without scars, but he did sport a skeleton tattoo on his forearm. Nat noticed the scar above his eyebrow was almost the same shape and on the same spot as the one on Wes’s forehead. Coincidence, she wondered, or something else?

Avo walked up on the deck with a smile on his face.

He stopped when he saw Nat and his smile broadened. “Ah, there you are. Just as I suspected, you were too cheap to be a proper trophy. I should have known you were working for this guy,” he said, pointing to Wes.

Wes shrugged as if he weren’t caught in a trap. He matched Avo’s leisurely pose. Two old friends and adversaries meeting again.

“Slob, nice to see you again,” Wes said with a grin. “It’s been too long.”

“Wesson,” Avo said. “I have warned you many times not to call me that.”

Wes laughed. “Let us go, Slob. You can have your ship back—but I’m warning you, don’t touch my crew.”

“I have my ship back, didn’t you notice? Your dear old Albatross is aptly named,” the slaver said, no longer smiling. “And as for your crew . . .” His eyes flicked over to the girls, lingering on Nat.

“Don’t even think about it, pervert,” Wes warned.

Avo laughed. “Don’t worry, Wesson, your sloppy seconds aren’t my style,” he sneered.

Wes began to talk faster. “Hey, man, come on, be cool, you know me, let me work for you. I’ve got a good crew here, you know I can double the area you’d normally be able to cover in a day. Jolly won’t even have to pay me my usual fee—I’ll take a cut as a favor.” He smiled his easy, charming smile. Running another con, but this wasn’t a safari guide or a lazy seeker team. This was the most feared scavenger in the black waters.

Avo laughed a short, nasty laugh. “Bradley said you’d turned soft, but I didn’t believe it. Seeing you with a bunch of girls and dwarves, I guess he was right. Now I understand why you didn’t have the nerve to take the job,” he sneered.

“What’s he talking about?” Nat asked, looking at Wes. “What job?”

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