Blood Red Tide
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Ryan knew in an instant that the good ship Glory was not being boarded and taken. Her crew was being harvested. The silent night creep ended. Octopods shot up out of the water like an artillery barrage and hit the rails in full assault. There were scores of them, not counting the ones that had attacked through the blaster hatches below. Gypsyfair screamed and brandished her knife as an octopod pulled itself over the rail and rose. Ryan had seen squids and octopuses before. Out of the water their boneless bodies had no buoyancy or leverage and were reduced to creeping and pulling themselves along by muscular contraction. This octopod suddenly stood up straight, using its eight arms like legs. It shot out an arm and snatched the blind mutant’s knife out of her hands.
Ryan wound up and threw.
A marlinspike was a poor throwing weapon at best, but the half pound of iron revolved twice and slammed into the octopod’s head-body and rippled its gray flesh. Light strobed across its body in bizarre flashes, and it turned on its attacker.
Ryan had seen battle with man and mutie in every corner of the Deathlands as well as in some of the farthest flung corners of the nukecausted world. He didn’t flinch as the octopod ran toward him across the deck, seven feet tall on its eight arms with horrible shuffling speed. Ryan held his knife low and charged. He collided with the mutant octopus and hurled his left shoulder into the creature. It rocked back beneath the force of meeting its adversary’s frame, but its suckers gripped the deck and arms instantly snaked around Ryan’s limbs. Toothed suckers bit through his pants and directly into his bare flesh.
Ryan slashed, but it was like stabbing a stickie. His blade barely cut the thick, rubbery flesh, and in an instant a suckered arm constricted around his biceps while three others wound around him. The creature was using four arms to stand on and four to control Ryan. The contractile power of the octopod’s arms was sickening. Ryan stared into its golden, alien, rectangular eyes and knew he going to board the last train west. The webbing between the mutie’s forward arms flopped up and its head tilted back. It opened the underside of its body like a flower and a dark parrot beak twice the size of a human fist prolapsed out and opened. The arm around his biceps twisted and turned his blade away. The other three arms pulled him in.
Doc appeared out of nowhere.
He stalked across Glory’s deck like an avenging scarecrow with his sword unsheathed. The creature holding Ryan paused and one of its eyes bulged and watched Doc lunge and lance an oncoming octopod between its alien optical organs. Doc’s opponent shuddered, released black ink like a chilled man releasing his bowels and instantly went limp.
“Between the eyes!” Doc’s voice rose to operatic heights. “Shipmates, slash not! A swift thrust or a sharp blow, but between the eyes or not at all! That is where you shall find their brain!”
Ryan managed to twist in the cold, horrid, sucking grip. He felt the horrible beak scrape against his stomach, but its curved slick surface slid snapping across the plates of his stomach muscle. His blade was out of position to stab, so he desperately slammed the knife’s handle down between the octopod’s eyes. It was a weak blow, nearly all forearm, but the octopod’s protruding eyes squeezed shut and retracted into its head. The grip of every arm encumbering Ryan weakened, and the creature sagged. Ryan felt the mainmast against his back, and he put a foot against it and reared up. He put all of his weight behind it as he snapped his head forward and butted the octopus between the eyes.
Every suction cup released at once and the octopod slimed off of Ryan to flop shuddering to the deck. Ryan scooped up Goulash’s fallen sword. It was short, heavy, curved and not particularly well balanced. The thick blade had been designed for sliding around bones and penetrating deep to finish off downed big game. It would do for octopod between-the-eyes butchery.
Atlast screamed and screamed. He lay on the deck holding an octopod aloft with both arms and legs. The octopod had all eight arms suctioned against the deck and it inexorably contracted down, beak snapping to crush his skull. Its golden eyes snapped up just in time to see Ryan round on it.
The one-eyed man turned his wrist as he lunged the blade between the octopod’s eyes up to the hilt. Atlast screamed as the creature belched a bucket of ink on him, went limp between his limbs and collapsed on top of him. Ryan ripped his sword free. Three octopods charged him, scuttling on the tips of their suckered arms. He heard the pop of Mildred’s target revolver, and one of the aquatic mutants dropped, dripping ichor between its optical organs. A silver pinwheel of steel revolved over Ryan’s shoulder and Jak’s ship’s knife sank into cephalopod ganglia and dropped it. The remaining octopod took a look at Ryan as he charged and turned toward the rail.
It met Captain Oracle.
Oracle rammed his orange-furred prosthesis between its eyes up to the wrist. He twisted and yanked the paw free with hooked brains, guts and multiple hearts trailing between the silver claws. Manrape knelt above another, driving his fist between its eyes like a piston. Doc skewered one, and octopods convulsed and fell from stem to the stern as the crew counterattacked with a vengeance and scores of armed crewmen boiled out of the hatches like angry ants. The skin of the remaining octopods rippled and flashed like strobes.
Ryan’s teeth flashed in the dark as he heard J.B.’s Uzi blasting tight bursts belowdecks. The octopods with crewmen prey released them, and they all began hurling themselves over the rails. Ryan heard splashes as others belowdecks ejected from the blasterports. Ryan lowered his sword. The octo-muties had come to feed, and the food had fought back with far too much vigor for their taste. Wounded crewmen lay in lakes of blood and ink, twisting and screaming from tentacle tearings and beak bites.
Doc shook blood and ink from his blade. “Captain! All known species of octopus are poisonous! Like spiders, many are not dangerous to man, but this species is unlike any I have ever seen.”
“Wounded to the med!” Mildred shouted like she was in surgery. “Tell Bonesaw to administer any antivenin we have!”
Crewmen gathered up their blood-and ink-stained companions. The dead octopods and their ink were already starting to smell like a rottie attack. “Miss Loral,” Oracle grated. “I want a death and damage report ASAP! Commander, I want any sail set that can catch a wind!”
“Aye, Captain!” Miles wiped ink from a Japanese wakizashi short sword. “What course?”
“Due east, Commander! I want good, deep Lantic beneath us, without a spec of land, rock or reef on the horizon within the hour.”
“Aye, Captain!”
“Mr. Manrape, have the waisters get this filth off my deck.”
“You heard the captain, Hardstone!” Manrape shouted. “Get this squid filth overboard! I don’t want to see a spec of blood or a drop of ink on this deck come the light of dawn!”
Crewmen ran to the jobs and stations.
“Ryan!” Gypsyfair screamed and clicked and pointed at the deck. “There! There! There!”
Ryan stared at a pile of cordage in the glow of the ship’s lantern. The cordage had not been there before and was just a few feet away from where he had dropped his first octopod opponent with a head butt. “Watch the decks for anything out of place!” Ryan shouted. “The rad-blasted things can camo!” Ryan rounded on the pile of cordage with his sword before him. The pile of cordage rippled and changed color. The octopod tried to rise but seemed strong enough to only get three arms beneath it. It reeled like a drunk before Ryan in retreat. The one-eyed man raised his sword for the killing thrust. The octopod’s siphon suddenly contracted and Ryan recoiled as a liter of stinking black ink hit him under high pressure. “Fireblast...”
Crewmen charged in from all directions, brandishing blades, and cut off the creature from Ryan and the rail. Its camouflage flashed off, and the octopod returned to its normal slick-gray color. The golden eyes bulged outward in two directions as the seamen advanced. The octopod flopped headfirst into the water barrel and crossed its eight arms above it in defense. Half a dozen of the crew closed in for the kill.
“Gypsyfair!” Oracle called. “Sweep the decks, stem to stern! Boarding pike and blaster men to her!” Gypsyfair began echolocating the deck surrounded by a phalanx of blasters and sharpened steel.
“Lover!” Ryan turned as Krysty flung herself into his arms. She kissed him for long moments and then leaned back. She surveyed his sucker-torn, ink-stained face and torso. “You look like you just got thumped by stickies, and you smell like they pushed you down a pest-hole privy.”
Ryan’s teeth flashed through the ink covering his face. “I love the way you sweet talk me after we’ve been separated.”
Fresh shouting broke out. “Kill the thing!” “You kill it!” “I’m not getting within reach of it!”
Ryan hefted his sword. Krysty took his six with her blaster as they approached the armed crowd surrounding the water barrel. The octopod’s head was at the bottom, and its arms roiled like a snake mating ball at the surface. No one wanted to get close to it.
“Get Gallondrunk!” Sweet Marie shouted. “He’ll pin that squid in the barrel stem to stern with that walrus lance of his! Then we chop it up proper!”
This suggestion was met with great enthusiasm.
“Belay that!” Oracle ordered. The crew parted before him. “Mr. Manrape, I want a section of grating lashed to the top of that barrel. Put a guard on it. And get Boiler and Skillet out of the med and into the galley. They’ve been nursing their wounds long enough.”
Manrape looked quizzical for the first time in Ryan’s experience. “Aye, Captain.”
“That beast is a hundred kilos if it’s an ounce, and our stores are spoiling. We need meat if we are going to make it across the ’Quator.”
The crew seemed pleased with the idea, and men and women began whispering about calamari and the delights of Brazil.
Oracle turned back for the quarterdeck. “And Mr. Forgiven could use some fresh ink. Speaking of which, Purser, rate Mr. Ryan ordinary seaman.”
Chapter Six
J.B. worked. The good ship Glory was short on blasters. The majority of the weapons in the armory were typical, home-rolled, break-open, single-shot longblasters and pistols. The Glory had standardized on .45 caliber, and they had molds and enough lead to make thousands of bullets, and they could fire black powder or smokeless with equal facility. They punched primers out of predark coins that could be found anywhere.
Cases were the main problem. They had no machinery on board to extrude scavenged brass or aluminum. Smithy had to do it by hand. They were saving and reloading old cases, and by the buckets of split cases at J.B.’s feet some had been reused far too many times than was safe. The sharpshooters in the tops had assiduously cared for predark hunting longblasters of .308 and 30-06 caliber. Reloading them was even more problematic. A number of the crew had personally acquired arms taken as booty or acquired otherwise, which were stored in the blaster room, but most of those had but a handful of shells left to them after the last battle.
What they also had was several crates of blasters in various states of disrepair that were beyond Gunny’s knowledge or ability to fix. They kept those to sell for their parts in ports of call. J.B. liked Gunny, and Gunny liked him. They were men of similar minds. Unfortunately, what Gunny most understood was black powder and muzzle-loading cannons. Between him and Smithy, they could produce the simple springs, hinges and screws to keep the primitive blasters serviceable. The gas systems, trigger groups and bolt assemblies of predark semi-automatic blasters and assault weapons were beyond their skill.
They were not beyond J.B.’s.
The Armorer had disassembled every last waste weapon, made a list of things he felt Smithy could handle, requisitioned his tool kit and gone to work. If J.B. hadn’t liked Gunny already as a brother armorer, the fact that Gunny didn’t pull rank but instead watched with awe, asked intelligent questions and eagerly helped in whatever capacity he could won J.B.’s admiration. J.B. finally rose from the worktable and nearly hit his head on the low deck beam above. He sat back down and checked his chron. They had been at it for eleven hours straight. He and Gunny had cannibalized ten broken and corroded AKs and produced two that might function through another battle or two, though they only had enough ammo for slightly less than a mag each. Six M-16s had produced one working longblaster. Strangely enough they had nearly a case of 5.56 mm ammo but only one serviceable magazine. Several scatterguns and a few handblasters were now also in temporary working order.
Gunny shook his head in delight at the bonanza of working blasters. “Oh, that shines, J.B.!”
The Armorer stretched. He sighed as he felt familiar strong hands start to knead his shoulders. Mildred spoke low from behind him. “Hey.”
He looked up and smiled at her. “Hey.”
“How’s it going?”
“Did some good work today.”
Mildred smiled indulgently at the gleaming weapons. “I can see that.”
“How’s it in the med?” J.B. asked. He’d heard the screaming all through the night.
Mildred’s face went tight. “Doc was right. The octopods were poisonous. Whatever Bonesaw’s using for antivenin might work on snakes, but no one bit last night lived. We lost fifteen. The sucker wounds were ugly and prolific. Ryan’s covered with them, but none are deep and none are going septic.”
“How you and Bonesaw getting along?”
“Well, first off, the ship’s healer is named Bonesaw. That tells you something right there.”
“Bad?”
Mildred made a grudging noise. “He can plug a bullet hole. His sewing isn’t bad, and he’s actually pretty good at setting bones. Those octopus arms snapped a few. He’s got some interesting herbals going on, but...”
J.B. knew Mildred well. “But that’s not what’s bothering you.”
“Bonesaw knows I’m more than just a healer.”
Gunny smirked. “Everyone does.”
J.B. knew everyone knew too. One of the problems the companions had was that just about any group they met who learned of Mildred’s talents were reluctant to let her go, some violently so. “You got a little bossy about the wounded up top.”
“Yeah, well there’s this Hippocratic Oath thing of mine, J.B. Just isn’t made for this brave new world of yours.”
“How’s Jak, Ricky?”
Mildred made a face. “Jak’s fine.”
J.B. let out a long breath. “Ricky?”
Mildred’s face twisted into an expression the Armorer was genuinely afraid of. “Bad enough the ship’s healer’s name is Bonesaw! But the bosun’s name is Manrape. J.B., the kid’s ass is on the line and you better do something!”
J.B. looked Gunny in the eye. He hated asking for favors, but he asked now. “Ricky’s an armorer, not as good as me but better than you, and he’s an accomplished machinist. This ship needs him.”
“And he’s becoming an able top man,” Gunny replied. “He can do all three wearing a dress.”
J.B. stopped just short of reaching for the closest loaded blaster. “I can steal ten blasters while you’re cleaning your monocle. I’ll cut Manrape to shreds.”
“And you can’t imagine what will be done to you, but you can imagine Mildred weeping while she watches.”
“You’d let that happen?”
“You’ve seen Manrape. Have you known anyone so fast? Anyone so strong? He is a demigod among us and a demon in battle.”
J.B. had met several demigods and demons, self-professed and otherwise. Manrape was admittedly something of a juggernaut
“This ship is in trouble, matey. When the final battle comes, we’ll need him more than you and all your lot put together.” Gunny looked away. “Sacrifices have to be made, mebbe.”
Mildred pleaded. “J.B.!”
“The officers, do they keep their weapons separate?”
Gunny nodded. “Aye, they do.”
“Tell the captain I want to strip, clean, polish and tune every one of them, and tell him I need to requisition Ricky for it while you and I go over the cannons.”
“Aye.” Gunny chewed at his mustache. “I can do that. It will just prolong things, but it will give Ricky a few days’ respite. Can’t imagine the cap’n saying no.”
“Thanks.”
Mildred looked close to tears. “Thanks, J.B.”
“I should’ve thought of it earlier.”
“A few days’ respite, then what?”
J.B. rose and set his fedora on his head. He almost took Mildred’s hand but looked at the grease and grime covering his. Mildred smiled and took his hand anyway. “There’s some soap in the med. Why don’t I wash those for you before you start touching me?”
J.B. liked the idea of Mildred washing his hands very much, and touching her more, but his mind was still fixed on the problem at hand, and that was keeping Ricky’s rear contact point water tight. He nodded to himself.
“I’ll talk to Doc tomorrow. Talk to him about this creed and code.”
* * *
DOC TOOK HIS morning walk around the ship. He felt mostly recovered from his fit and being seized to the shrouds. Crewmen hailed him from the rigging. Those busy at their labors nodded and smiled. Those with a free hand patted him solicitously like he was a beloved child. Doc smiled, tipped his swordstick or exchanged a few pleasant words with his shipmates as he passed.
He took the gangway down to blaster deck and walked forward. He stopped by the galley. Boiler and Skillet stood at the octopus barrel and the cookfire, respectively, engaged in hot debate. Boiler was a big, florid man with a huge gut that bespoke he liked sampling his own wares early and often. He wore a bandage around his head from the wound and concussion he’d suffered in the ship’s previous battle. Skillet was a lanky black man whose wildly beaded hair would give Mildred a run for her money. His left arm was in a sling. The cooks were very grumpy about being ousted from the med.
“Well, how would you cook it?” Skillet snarled.
Doc peered into the barrel from a prudent distance. The octopod’s great, gray head pressed against the section of iron grate nailed to the top of the barrel. Doc noted the barrel had been bolted to the deck. He also noted the creature’s rectangular, horizontal pupils flicking back and forth between the two cooks.
Boiler stared into the barrel and pointed his butcher knife at the cephalopod. His postapocalyptic English accent was even thicker than Atlast’s. “Well, I’ve cooked flying squids right proper, then! Haven’t I?”
“Flying squids is small! This one’s huge!” Skillet waved his cleaver in protest. “You cut that thing into calamari rings and fry it? All you’ll have is two hundred pounds of rad-blasted rubber! It’ll be mutiny after what Forgiven’s been servin’!”
“Peels it, pounds it, and simmers it soft. That’s what the Greek always said about fish with arms! I say we peel that gray skin off and simmer it succulent!”
Doc watched with great interest as the octopod’s pupils slammed open like a cat’s eyes in the dark at the announcement. Skillet scratched his assiduously cultivated beard at the thought. “Might work. Might use some slush from the morning salt pork to give it some flavor.”
Boiler spread his arms to the deck above happily. “And now he’s cooking, then!”
The octopus shuddered.
“And pepper,” Skillet decreed. “Lots of pepper.”
“Excuse me,” Doc said.
The octopod flicked a glance at Doc and then went back to devoting one eye each to the cooks. The octopus’s arms contracted around the bars confining it. To Doc’s eyes it seemed much like a man going white-knuckled at his sentencing. Doc loosened the hilt of his swordstick and leaned perilously close to the barrel. “Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive, Doc.” Skillet waved his cleaver in warning. “But I wouldn’t get too close. Rad-blasted squid tried to walk off last night with its arms through the grate. Nearly took the barrel with it.”
Boiler nodded. “Which is why we nailed it down, then, isn’t it?”
Doc peered at the alien eyes regarding Boiler and Skillet simultaneously. “Forgive me, good Skillet, but when I first said forgive me, I was speaking to your captive.” The cooks gave each other looks. Doc’s peculiar behavior was already a high source of humor and discussion aboard. The fact that Doc wanted to talk to dinner would earn both men wide-eyed attention at mess. The octopod eyes snapped to center to regard Doc in binocular vision.
Doc bowed slightly. “I say again, forgive me, for I am an icthyologist by training rather than a teuthologist, but am I correct in my assumption that you understand human speech?”
The creature in the barrel pressed the top of its huge head against the grate. It ejected water from its siphon and sucked in air, and then the tube vibrated and let forth a sibilant hiss. “Yes.”
Boiler screamed. Skillet flailed backward and nearly sat in the cook fire. Nearby crewmen shouted in alarm. The two cooks brandished butcher knives and cleavers. Doc could not contain himself. “By my stars and garters!”
Ryan appeared at Doc’s side with his knife in hand. He kept a wary eye on his erstwhile, eight-armed opponent. “Doc, take a step or two back.”
Doc was utterly focused on the octopus. “How, pray tell?”
The octopod’s speech sounded like a snake gargling, but it was oddly very clear. “We learned.”
“From whom?”
“From humans.”
Doc pondered this fascinating development as crewmen gathered around brandishing marlinspikes, knives and tools. Other crewmen ran bawling for the officers and the captain. “Why would humans teach you speech?” Doc asked.
“They modified us. They wished to use us as weapons.”
“What happened?”
“The war happened,” the octopus replied.
“What happened to the humans who taught you?”
“We ate them.”
The crowd erupted.
“Sky fire!”
“Kill the fucking thing!”
“Captain!”
The octopus shuddered under the verbal barrage but kept its alien gaze locked on Doc. “That was many generations ago.” The alien voice seemed almost plaintive. “I have not eaten a human in months.”
“Fry the squid in crumbs!”
“I haven’t had calamari in months!”
“Captain on deck!” Commander Miles bawled. The crew parted like water as the captain strode through them. Oracle took in the scene of Doc and the two cooks. “What goes on here?”
“Oh, Captain!” Boiler was genuinely upset. “I ain’t cooking nuffing that talks! Am I, then? Much less eating it!”
Skillet pointed his cleaver at the barrel. “Squid can talk, Cap’n.”
Oracle’s face went blank.
Ryan nodded. “Doc’s interrogating it.”
The crew on the blaster deck held its breath. Oracle nodded curtly. “Carry on.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Doc continued. “So you and your species continue to teach yourselves human language generation to generation?”
“Yes,” the octopod stated.
“Why?”
“It is useful.”
“For what?”
“Survival.”
As a man who had studied ichthyology, the prospect of a sea creature he could converse with humans intelligently was almost more than Doc’s soul could bear. “If I implore the captain to spare you, would you promise not to do harm to any member of this ship?”
The crew erupted in anger.
“Quiet in the captain’s presence!” Miles bawled.
“Yes,” the octopus replied.
Oracle addressed his prisoner. “You and your brethren attacked us.”
“We were hungry.”
“My crew is hungry,” Oracle countered. The octopod recoiled.
Oracle continued. “How are you to be trusted?”
The creature spent long moments staring. “To my knowledge no cephalopod has ever told a lie.”
Doc straightened. “I believe him.”
For all his mass, Boiler’s voice rose to a childlike shriek. “It will crunch our skulls like snails, won’t it? Eating our poor brains and then be slinking over the rail in the night, then!”