Chapter One

      “I smell the sea,” Doc Tanner reported.

      Ryan Cawdor, leader of a group of seven companions who traveled the Deathlands, still mostly smelled and tasted his own bile from the jump. He stepped out from the shadows of the yawning redoubt blast doors. Someone back in the day had constructed a warehouse-sized building around the entrance to the redoubt. It was a blockhouse, and Ryan suspected it probably served as camouflage too. At some point the ruse had failed. Holes in the walls that a man could step through and twisted iron rebar indicated the structure had taken artillery fire.

      The wind moaned through the holes and emptiness. Ryan sniffed the air. Doc was right. They were close to the sea. The air also smelled like rain was coming. Depending on what hemisphere their jump had taken them, a golden sunrise or sunset spilled through the blasted out front door. Ryan looked at the thick layer of undisturbed dust and bird shit coating the floor.

      No one had been here in a very long time.

      Ryan took point and his companions spread out behind him.

      “It smells tropical,” Doc opined.

      A corner of Ryan’s mouth turned up slightly. Doc was definitely damaged goods, but there was nothing wrong with the man’s nose. Ryan jerked his head toward the blackened holes on both sides of the building “Jak, Ricky, check our flanks.”

      Jak Lauren and Ricky Morales, the two youngest members of the group, moved out. Ricky raised his silenced DeLisle carbine and peered out one of the smaller blast holes in the wall. “Nothing but rocks, Ryan. Nothing’s moving!”

      Jak held his Cold Python and peered to one side. “Jungle. Quiet.”

      “Hold positions. J.B., you and me, cross fire on the entrance.” The two men took oblique angles on the shattered blockhouse entrance. J.B. Dix, also known as the Armorer, squatted behind a pile of rubble. Ryan stood behind solid wall. He shouldered his Steyr Scout rifle and risked a glance outside.

      Ryan stared.

      J.B. cradled his scattergun and peered at Ryan quizzically. “What?”

      Ryan gazed on something he had seen only a few times in his life.

      Krysty Wroth, Ryan’s lover, held her blaster in both hands and tilted her chin at him. “What is it?”

      “Yo, Ryan!” Mildred Wyeth called. “You’re starting to freak me out! What do you see?”

      The one-eyed man waved his friends forward. The redoubt and the blockhouse concealing it were on a steep hillside. A raddled predark road zigzagged down through the forest to a lagoon painted in pink and gold with the setting sun. All eyes stared at the lagoon and what lay anchored there.

      “A full rigged ship!” Doc declared. “How delightful.”

      “What does that mean, Doc?” Ryan asked.

      “In my time a full-rigged ship meant a ship with three masts, all square rigged.”

      Ryan snapped out his Navy longeyes.

      He gazed on the vessel, knowing that such a ship was a rare thing. The few villes that could build boats of their own from scratch produced ketches or small fishing boats.

      Ricky had been born in a port ville in old Puerto Rico, and he gasped at the sight of something so magnificent. “She’s beautiful!”

      Ryan agreed. The ship below was perfect. Her lines were utterly clean. She was a design from some far better time, built to sail the world’s oceans using the power of the wind alone. Ryan took in her masts and yards.

      “Have you ever seen a ship as nice as that, Doc?”

      “In my time, dear friend, and I had never expected to see the like again. Indeed I had the pleasure of touring my country’s good sailing ship USS Constitution in my youth, upon an idyll in New York City. She was a frigate, and an antique even then.”

      “Jesus.” Mildred shook her head. “I took a tour of the USS Constitution when I was in college, and that was in my time.”

      “Big boat,” Jak commented.

      Doc sighed happily. “This vessel is rather smaller than the Constitution. If pressed, I would name her a sloop-of-war.”

      “Why?” Ryan asked.

      “Well,” Doc replied, “she is a wooden ship, Ryan. Given skilled carpenters and blacksmiths, every single piece of her can be replaced. Indeed, except perhaps the keel, I would dare to wager that not one plank or spar upon that boat is original. Like an organism slowly replacing its cells as they wear out, the structure never changes, but new wood, new iron, new crews and new life have invigorated her throughout the centuries and—”

      Mildred interrupted him, pointing a finger at the mast. It flew a blue flag with a white skeleton hand embroidered on it. “Yeah, and they’re flying the goddamn Jolly Roger!”

      “Hmmm.” Doc frowned. “Traditionally the pirate Jolly Roger was black, symbolizing death, or occasionally red for blood. A sea blue ensign should represent the sea and would denote a more commercial enterprise.”

      Mildred rolled her eyes. “Um, and the skeleton hand?”

      “What that denotes I cannot fathom,” Doc admitted.

      “It’s been in a fight,” J.B. stated.

      Ryan nodded. The Armorer was right. The ship’s sides were torn and scored. The sails were currently reefed, but Ryan could see blackening and damage. Men worked in the riggings and hung from the ropes along the sides, effecting repairs on holes that were clearly cannon shot. They moved with clear purpose. Ryan stepped out of the blockhouse. His friends followed him, blasters trained on their flanks. He crossed a weed-choked wag parking circle and took point at a shattered guard gate that had once stood sentinel on the road. He waved his companions forward. Ryan pointed his longeyes down the hill. Men on the beach were tending cook fires. Others loaded barrels onto a pair of small boats, and Ryan suspected they were barrels of fresh water. He eagerly scanned the sailing ship again from stem to stern.

      “I’m getting a real strong idea we’re probably on an island,” Ryan surmised. “And we’re probably going to need a way off. Maybe we’ll need a parley.”

      “No need for a parley!” an opera-quality voice said, then laughed. “Your ship awaits!”

      Ryan spun and snapped his longblaster toward the roof of the blockhouse. A bronze-skinned man looked down at him from the eaves. He stood barefoot and wore striped pantaloons and no shirt. Platinum-blond ringlets curled around his skull. Doc would describe his features as “cruel and sensuous.” He was muscled like a gladiator, and his every muscle, tendon and sinew stood out in high relief. Veins snaked down his arms in road maps of strength. Nonetheless he stood languorously relaxed. Ryan put his crosshairs between the man’s golden brown eyes. It was bad enough that he stood there, unafraid. Even worse that he stood there unafraid and unarmed. “Who are you?”

      “Your superior, and I command you to drop your blasters.”

      “I could chill