Plague Lords by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2008-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Daniel Desipio shielded his eyes from the sun with the flat of his hand, searching the horizon to the southwest for a sign of the oncoming Matachìn miniarmada. The pirate ships first appeared as a row of dark dots in the seam between sea and sky, then vanished one by one as they slipped into the trough of the offshore swell, reappearing again as they climbed the crest. Disappearing. Reappearing.

As the vessels crept closer and closer to the island, with his naked eye Daniel could distinguish three low, squat shapes, which he knew were oceangoing tugs. No plumes of dark brown smoke pumped up from their stacks. To save precious fuel, the tugs were under “people power” until they closed on the target. There were plenty of able-bodied rowers to choose from, former residents of Browns and Matamoros villes conscripted into service at blaster and blade point. The Matachìn had all the time in the world to reach their destination. Their quarry wasn’t going anywhere, and for damned sure reinforcements weren’t on the way.

Sweeping in front of the trio of tugs, four sailing ships beat back and forth to make headway against the breeze. They were the fleet’s pursuit and interdiction craft.

Though the hour of slaughter grew near, the Texas sky showed no hint of turning black; nor the Gulf of turning red as blood. The Vikings and Martians of Daniel’s fireside tale were artifacts of Slaughter Realms, figments of an anonymous cumulative imagination; they were not the pirates’ closest allies. The Matachìn relied on their own mythic savagery—and mortar barrage—to put the fear of death into intended victims. The predark tugs carried more than enough ordnance to dismantle Padre’s stationary defenses. They carried enough HE to flatten the place, end to end. And the master of the fleet was no stranger to excess.

Under the command of machete-wielding Commander Guillermo Casacampo the venerable nautical catch phrase “All hands on deck!” took on a grisly literal meaning. Post-conquest, the hands of the defeated lay severed and scattered along the scuppers of his flagship while their former owners bobbed like corks in the armada’s wake, waving bloody stumps.

When the ships came within ten miles of the island they started to spread out to their assigned attack positions. Although there were no sounds of alarm from the Yoko Maru, the surviving islanders had to be able to see what was coming; they had to be getting nervous. Daniel was starting to get nervous, too. This part of the operation always gave him butterflies. He had seen things go sour before.

Matachìn cannon crews in a chill frenzy tended to lose focus and get swept up in the moment. The really big worry, however, was Casacampo, himself. His ships could only carry and feed so many slaves, and stow only so much booty. They already had gathered more than enough of both from the previous two sackings. Under the circumstances the commander was free to take even wider liberties with human lives.

Including Daniel’s.

After all, he wasn’t the only plague vector at their disposal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.