Crimson Waters by James Axler Page B

hole in the beach. Or just the harbor, without the necessity of being hung up, which Ryan was fairly sure was where Lumpy was destined, if he wasn’t bobbing facedown already with the ’cuda nuzzling his exposed face and fingers.
    The back door opened. Krysty and Mildred came in. They made for their companions’ table without glancing at the Sea Wasps, who were smoking vast cone-shaped spliffs and joking among themselves. Also without obviously steering clear of them, except to Ryan’s keen blue eye.
    Even so, one of the Sea Wasps suddenly blocked their path. He was a wiry mocha-skinned dude, with a single-braided black goatee and tattoos of women with big bare boobs and snake bodies twining up bare, muscle-cabled arms. He had two machetes slung crosswise over his back with the hilts sticking up over his shoulders, and two Smith & Wesson autoblasters in hip holsters decorated with bright beadwork. The weapons Ryan could see were peace-bonded, which didn’t much comfort him.
    “So what have we got here?” the pirate asked. He had a Spanish accent. “You getting a higher-quality slut in this gaudy of yours, now, than that taint cocksucker daughter of yours, Fish-face?”
    “She’s not a taint,” McDugus Fish said stubbornly. “It’s a birth defect.”
    “You got smarter,” the pirate said. “Figured out I got a soft spot for the redheads, huh?”
    And he reached out and grabbed Krysty’s left breast.

Chapter Seven
    Time seemed to slow. Ryan shifted his left hand inside his long coat.
    Calmly yet decisively Krysty reached up and removed the hand from her breast.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, strong but not shrill.
    Her eyes turned like emerald lasers to the table of Monitors sitting across the room. They were all watching.
    “I thought the Syndicate had laws against assault,” she said clearly.
    As one, the four sec goons turned their heads away.
    “Well,” J.B. murmured, “remember what Oldie said about some dogs being more equal than others? Reckon this gang’s the most equal of all.”
    “Right,” Ryan said, rising from his chair. He didn’t hurry as he walked toward the tableau a few paces away.
    The pirate saw him coming and showed him a gap-toothed grin. “What you want here, Patch? You triple-stupe? You think you can fuck with the Sea Wasps? You think wrong, man.”
    And he grabbed Krysty’s breast again.
    “If you don’t remove your hand,” Ryan said, “I’ll remove it for you.”
    The guy just grinned wider. His hand squeezed the full breast again quickly, then began to move down toward the flat plane of her stomach.
    Rattlesnake-fast, Ryan’s left hand whipped to the sheath on his hip, freeing eighteen inches of steel blade. Before the pirate could so much as blink it rose and slashed down.
    The panga’s razor-honed edge chopped the Sea Wasp’s hand off just above the wrist. The hand seemed to pulse on Krysty’s breast one more time and then it fell to the floor. It lay on its back in the sawdust like an overturned beetle, fingers twitching like bug legs.
    The pirate stared down at the blood jetting from his stump in slack-jawed amazement. Krysty sidestepped quickly out of the way of the pulsing blood, then she and Mildred grabbed their own weapons. As Ryan had quickly and covertly undone the peace-bonding on his weapons when the Wasps came in, they were obviously undoing theirs now.
    But not all of the party’s armaments had been sealed in sheath or holster, of course.
    The wounded man began to shriek like a horse in a burning barn. Grabbing his stump with his remaining hand, he danced in a circle, painting the patrons, the tables, the chairs, the walls, even the ceiling with arterial spray that gleamed dark in the fish-oil light.
    With startling power, Doc kicked the table. It flew across the room into the faces of the other Sea Wasps. They were too startled by this completely unexpected turn of events to react with what would surely be their normal rapid