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anybody in the vicinity, and leave a hell of a fine trail for dogs to follow.
And those triple-blasted crabs.
"We'll start on the juice tomorrow," Ryan said, sitting on a wall bunk. The
mattress was a hell of a lot softer than the sand dune he awakened on that
morning. "I think we'd better stay here for a while, get clean, catch some
sleep.
We have to cross three waterways to reach the island with a ville. Got the
blasters to try now, but we're never going to make it if we're dragging ass
every step of the way."
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"Wouldn't mind a hot shower myself," J.B. said, glancing at the rusty stalls.
"We could probably get those running in short order."
"How long?" Jak asked, padding over in his bare feet. The teenager was sliding
laces through the holes of a brand-new pair of combat boots.
Ryan dropped his backpack and flexed his shoulders. "A week," he decided,
laying the Steyr nearby. The blaster desperately needed to be completely
disassembled and oiled. "We'll have to guard the fireplace for crabs, and have
somebody in the lighthouse to watch for the baron's men. Place a few C-4
charges along the stairwell in case of trouble. But we should be safe enough
down here.
For a while, at least."
Dropping their backpacks with sighs of relief, the companions got busy
rearranging the crates to make more space and started settling in for the
night.
After establishing a firing line for defense, food was gobbled straight from
the
MRE packs, and the exhausted friends took turns sleeping and standing guard.
Soon, the soft breathing of exhausted sleep filled the bomb shelter.
But all through the starry tropical night, the army of crabs crawled around
the peninsula outside like flies on a corpse, endlessly searching for some way
inside.
Chapter Four
A hundred nautical miles away on another island, Lord Baron Maxwell Kinnison
was driving a pre-dark Hummer along the edge of a steep cliff at breakneck
speed.
Slowly, dawn began to tint the east sky, the polluted storms clouds overhead
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rumbling with thunder.
Revving the powerful engine on the Hummer, Kinnison banked sharply around a
small avalanche of rocks and cut away from the slide to go deeper into the
thick jungle of Maturo Island. There was little terrain on his island ville he
didn't know
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having crawled and run and fought pirates on every hill. His path to the
throne as baron of all barons had been steeped in blood, not one single drop
of it his. At least, none in combat.
Arcing through a dense copse of thorny bushes, Kinnison headed back toward the
seaside cliffs, his two passengers holding on for dear life against the wag's
wild rocking.
A growth of bamboo was smashed aside, and their goal popped into sight. The
cottage stood on the swell of a cliff overlooking the calm sea. The roof was
solid, glass filled the windows and the thick door was bolted on the inside. A
clear stream flowed past the cottage and over the cliff, bringing fresh
drinking water and carrying away each day's bucket of waste. The trees were
heavy with fruit, the vines rich with flowers whose scent repelled most of the
insects. A fence of thorny bushes cut off the cottage and its garden from the
rest of the island, and at the gate was a hand-painted sign bearing the symbol
of the lord baron, followed by a death's-head skull. The meaning was plain and
clear. Cross the fence and die.
With the engine roaring, the Hummer smashed aside the sign and rolled over the
gate as if the posts were no more than leaves on the road. The predark machine
raced directly to the front door, and the three occupants stepped out, two
much more quickly than the third.
Lord Baron Kinnison, ruler of the Thousand Islands, hoisted his tremendous
bulk from the vehicle, grunting constantly. He was becoming weaker every day
and knew that the end was near. He was wrapped in thick layers of protective
cloth, the material spotted with dried blood and moist yellow patches from
fresh skin eruptions. The ends had been cut off his boots to allow his toes to
breathe.
Circulation was very bad in his feet, and he feared gangrene daily. His face a
mass of open sores, and the fingers of both hands were wrapped in strips of
cloth stained black and yellow from the dried blood and pus.
Some half-mutie slut from one of the western islands had given him the Red
Death during sex. The disease was incurable, and the baron had tortured the
girl for a moon before allowing her to finally die.
The leprosy was eating him alive, faster all the time; the flash was no longer
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end was near. But the baron had already prepared for that eventuality.
The slim driver and the young slave girl waited patiently as the gigantic man
squeezed his bulk from the military vehicle and finally stood. Briefly,
Kinnison checked the array of predark blasters hidden about his bulk.
Impatiently, the driver started to speak and Kinnison silenced him with a
raised hand. The soft cry of a newborn child could be heard from within the
cottage.
"Boy or girl?" he demanded, staring at the slave.
She bowed her head and said, "A boy, master. A healthy boy."
"No mutations at all?" Kinnison insisted, brandishing a fist. "Are you
absolutely sure?"
"Yes, my lord. He is a norm. Big, but a gene-pure norm."
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"And you can smell them, little one," he rumbled, scratching inside his rags.
"That's why I keep you alive, for that one special trait. You can smell the
mutie on a man or woman as if it was the stink from a swamp."
She bowed. "Yes, master."
Kinnison grunted. "You have served me well this day. But I cannot allow any to
know of the child's real parents. Goodbye."
The girl stared in astonishment as the baron drew a silenced pistol from
inside his clothing and fired. The blaster only coughed, but the slave
violently staggered backward and sat down, blood trickling from the black hole
in her face. In slow stages she toppled over, as if only laying herself down
for a long nap.
Holstering the piece, Baron Kinnison stared at the house. The baron had given
it to a faithful servant who saved his life from an assassin's blade. He had
even given the man the most beautiful wife he could find, and made sure all of
the food delivered to the couple was as clean as his own meals. Everything had
been done
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idiots breed him an heir, and two years later the bitch finally whelped.
Two years! He wanted to tear them apart for that, but the man had saved his
life once. The reward would be a clean chill.
"Here," Kinnison said, passing the silenced weapon to the doctor. "Ace the
parents as painlessly as possible, and get the child. Do not let it touch me!
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