LITMIR.BIZ

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the nineties,” Mildred said cryptically, then snorted. The notion seemed to amuse her.

      “Welcome to Nueva Tortuga,” said the man in the middle. He stood a little ahead of his flankers. He was on the lean side, and an inch or so less than Ryan’s own six foot two. His skin was tanned dark, although his coal-smudge eyebrows and black beard made his tan look paper-pale.

      “NuTuga, as we call it,” he went on. “We’re Monitors. We keep the peace. That’s all you need to know. Except you got to pay the entry fee.”

      “Entry fee?” Ryan said, halting about ten feet short of them.

      The leader provided several options in trade goods, ammo, gold or local jack. Ryan felt his cheeks tighten and his skin prickle as though he’d caught a touch of sunburn.

      “No exceptions,” the squad leader said, pleasantly enough. “You don’t pay, you don’t stay.”

      “What,” Mildred said truculently. “Or you’ll hang us off one of those derricks?”

      Ryan felt his jaw tighten. Mildred’s predark outrage was building a healthy head of steam.

      The leader only smiled wider. His teeth were white. Both men and clothes were clean, an unusual touch even in a relatively well-off ville on the mainland. The leader’s boots were cowboy pattern, obviously handmade of sharkskin. They may even have been built since skydark.

      “Only if you make your way back here,” he said, “after we take you out a mile or two and toss your asses over the rail.”

      Ryan looked back at his companions. He noted right off that Oldie was still hovering right off the end of the pier, keeping his skiff in place with light sculling of his oars. Even at this range the old sailor managed to catch Ryan’s eye. He cocked his head in question.

      Ryan raised a hand to the boatman and nodded just once. The white-bearded old man shrugged expressively. Your funeral, Ryan could all but hear him say. He began to row back out among the ships rocking gently at anchor.

      “All right,” Ryan said, emphasizing the words just enough to let his friends know his mind was made up. “We pay.” He handed over the requisite number of rounds.

      “Must hurt like a nuke when you light those puppies off,” J.B. said conversationally.

      “Not half as much as when you’re on the other end,” said the shortest member of the crew, an Asian whose flat, fringe-bearded chin sloped outward along with his neck, which in turn simply got wider and wider until it became shoulders. He had a surprisingly mild voice. Ryan reckoned the Syndicate’s strongarms didn’t need to bluster much.

      “One more thing,” the leader said, tucking the ammo away in a pouch at his web gear belt. “We need to peace-bond your weapons.”

      “Peace-bond?” Ryan asked.

      “Yeah. We won’t try taking them away from you, but we don’t want you using them in our fair ville.”

      “What’s the point of letting us keep them, then?” Mildred demanded.

      “Would you rather we confiscate them? Look, it’s for your protection. You shoot or cut somebody, that will get you hung in the harbor with a few cuts down your legs to rile up the fish.”

      “What if the other guy starts it?” J.B. asked.

      The enforcers, not so subtly, had settled into braced positions, suggesting they were considering the chance the newcomers might try resisting. Ryan wanted to assure them that nothing could be further from their minds. But that wasn’t the sort of thing it did much good to say, he’d found.

      It wouldn’t be true, of course. All of them, even the unusually squeamish Mildred and the spirit of mercy herself, Krysty, were imagining what it’d be like to shove those scatterguns up the Monitors’ uptight asses to the breech-locks and light them off. He knew that. Just as he knew his friends also calculated that the odds weren’t with them on that play.

      “Just how do you mean ‘peace-bond,’ anyway?” Ryan asked.

      “We wire the breeches open on your blasters,” the squad leader said. “Blades we wire in the sheath. You break the seal, you go in the harbor. That simple.”

      “Not like,” Jak said.

      “Me, neither,” Ryan said. “But it doesn’t look like we got much choice.”

      He unslung his Steyr Scout, dropped the magazine from the well, cranked back the bolt and handed the piece over. The leader passed it to the Asian guy, who dug out a spool of wire and a pair of clippers and got to work.

      In short order, most of the squad was busy wiring the companion’s weapons to spec. When each man finished a piece, he handed it back to the squad leader. The bearded man squeezed a dab of some shiny gold-colored sealant where the wire’s ends were twisted together. It seemed to harden almost instantly.

      “Where’d you get that stuff?” Mildred asked interestedly. “I’d think it’d be set solid after all these years.”

      The squad leader smiled and handed back her ZKR with the trigger wired in its guard. “That’s for us to know,” he said, “and you never to find out.”

      When the considerable task was done, the leader stepped back. “That does it for the weapons you got showing,” he said. “Now, how about the holdouts?”

      Krysty took a deep breath. Pulling her shoulders back, making her considerable breasts strain tighter against the front of the khaki man’s shirt she wore, she put hands on her well-rounded hips and did a slow roll.

      “Care to search me and find out, big boy?”

      Ryan’s eyebrows shot up. It was all he could do to keep from asking her if she’d flat lost her mind right here. But he remained silent. He knew Krysty didn’t do much without a reason. Usually a triple-good one.

      The leader actually blanched behind his black beard and eyebrows and took a step back. “N-no,” he said. “That won’t be necessary.”

      Turning to his squad he snarled, “All right, you taints! If you think the Syndics’re paying us to stand around with our thumbs up our asses, I want to be there when you explain it to them!”

      They turned and stomped off along the esplanade that was paved in lightweight white tufa gravel that ran around the inside of the harbor. Ryan let out a long, long breath.

      “Krysty, what the hell was that?” Mildred demanded.

      “Dudes like that generally don’t see any point to havin’ power if they can’t abuse it good and regular,” J.B. said laconically.

      Krysty smiled with an unusually mischievous edge. “Normally,” she said. “But didn’t their whole attitude tell you their bosses ride even tighter herd on them than barons usually do their sec men?”

      Ryan grunted. “Makes sense, since you put it that way,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. The volume of sweat running down from his shaggy, curly black hair was more than mere afternoon heat in the Carib could account for. “They don’t want them pissing off the paying customers, after all. Especially when the customers might come back in force and shoot the shit of the ville.”

      Ryan took for granted the Syndicate had some kind of pretty stout defenses against that. Even if he hadn’t seen signs of it yet. Obviously the pirates had a good thing here and knew it.

      “Evidently the pirates’ own code tends to bind their behavior in Nueva Tortuga,” Doc said, clearly thinking along the same lines.

      “And nothing makes sure they keep their minds right like, say, that pair of .50 calibers the Syndicate’s got set up to cross fire the harbor entrance,” J.B. said, finishing Ryan’s thought.

      “But how could you be so sure they wouldn’t want to grab the merchandise, Krysty?” Mildred asked.

      Ryan saw that she didn’t

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