His head pounded. His mouth tasted like copper and ash. The last thing he remembered was the glass sphere exploding, the discharge ripping through the observatory.
A shove sent him stumbling forward. He caught himself against someone's shoulder. Fray Hernando. The older man's face was bruised, one eye swollen nearly shut, but he was alive.
Around them, Tzoma Kai warriors herded captives toward waiting canoes. One canoe, loaded with crying children, slipped its mooring and rose into the dawn sky.
Drew watched it spiral upward, and felt something inside him go cold and still.
He was a Deadman the system message reminding him that vivisection was in his future. He wanted to tell himself he was dreaming but the pain of his body reminded him this was reality.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Status Update:
Designation: Deadman
Flagged Outcomes:
- Capture
- Forced grafting
- Vivisection
He looked over at Fray Hernando the older man had a steely faraway look in his eyes.
“Remember this, hijo. Men can do this only because they believe God is not watching.” stated Fray Hernando.
Drew responded only with silence.
The silence was broken by loud booms from above. A cacophony of battle yells and screams crashed over Drew, doing nothing for the pounding in his skull. The captors around the loading area scattered for cover and the canoe in front of Drew cut its ropes and dove down away from the cliff ledge.
Drew squinted into the rising sun.
Shadows were racing toward the island, not drifting, not falling. Closing.
Further booms of cannons thundered in the air. Several canoes already in flight turned towards the incoming craft forming up into a loose V formation. The movement was clumsy, reactive. Defensive.
The center canoe of the Tzoma Kai formation shattered. It simply ceased to be a canoe its occupants exploding into chunks of debris and falling bodies.
Another two canoes promptly died, outer craft trying and failing to break away. One dove back toward the loading area, it's lift collapsing as it fled.
Another cannon spoke.
This time Drew saw it clearly, the canoe did not explode it unraveled. Wood burst outward in a fan of splinters and torn wicker, the hull shredded into flying ribs as grapeshot passed through.
“Shit” Drew breathed out.
Around Drew the other captives began crying in joy or praying.
Only then did he look past the falling debris to the source.
The ships were wrong in a way he couldn’t immediately name. They had hulls and masts, sails and rigging but the sails were curved, held in shape even as they cut through the air.
The hulls didn’t fight the wind. They hung beneath it.
Rock like growths glimmered above the decks, lifting the ships from points along their length instead of a single center. Distributed lift points. Not a single buoyant core. Whoever built them understood balance in three dimensions.
Sails were mounted vertically above and below the ships with another two masts mounted horizontally on the sides their sails furled.
Drew’s fear hadn’t vanished, but it had changed shape.
Someone up there knew exactly what they were doing.
Two of the ships descended toward the loading area, slowing until their lower yards hovered only a few feet above the stone where Drew lay bound.
Up close they were massive, nearly eighty feet long, yet they held position with unsettling steadiness.
Ropes dropped from the railings, slapping against rock, and soldiers along the decks leaned out to fire crossbows down into the scattering Tzoma Kai.
That was when all hell broke loose.
To Drew’s right, a man rose from behind a boulder, his body convulsing as his hide split open.
Spines erupted from his skin in a violent spray, launching upward in a shrieking fusillade.
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The fusillade of spines hit the men that were just appearing over the edge of the decking and descend on the ropes below. They slammed into the boarding party just as men crested the rail and began their descent.
The spines punched through bodies and tore into the wicker hull beyond, shredding flesh and fiber alike.
Men screamed and fell, hands slipping from ropes, bodies striking the uncaring stone below.
The originator of the spines slumped his body covered in bleeding craters of where the spines had exited his own body.
Arrows followed flights loosed upward from the defenders.
Then the ground shook as a boulder arced through the air.
Drew recognized the thrower instantly, the grotesque man bound in red vine, the one who had carried him earlier.
The stone smashed into the hull of the leftmost ship, splintering wicker and throwing the vessel sideways.
A stuttering roar answered.
Musket balls tore into the man whose limbs had been replaced by vines.
The impacts walked across him in a straight, deliberate line, punching through flesh and fiber alike.
He staggered, tried to stay upright, then collapsed into a wet tangle of red vine and blood.
Only then did Drew see the source.
A small ship knifed past low and fast, heeled over so its port side faced the ground.
Just forward of the side spar, a rectangular firing slit yawned open.
From it jutted a tight cluster of barrels, aligned like the pipes of an organ.
An organ gun.
The ship did not slow.
It screamed past the defenders, then banked sharply, climbing just long enough to roll onto its opposite side.
The maneuver traced a wide, controlled arc less a turn than the first loop of a figure eight.
The bow wielding defenders exchanged sharp whistles, and half of them peeled away from the landing craft, tracking the ship that had just raked them with fire.
As it came around, the starboard side dipped toward the ground.
Another stuttering roar followed.
The second volley raked the opposite flank, catching the defenders who had shifted positions.
The ship surged through the kill zone and climbed again, already setting up for another pass one side firing, then the other, never exposing the same angle twice.
It wasn’t strafing.
It was harvesting.
These were not just more nomadic raiders, they had their own close air support.
The soldiers rappelling from the two ships hit the ground and formed up with practiced speed, organizing into two thirty man groups.
They were hard bitten veterans, their armor dented and mismatched. Some shields and helmets dull steel, others copper gone green with age and neglect.
The group closest to Drew tightened into a compact formation.
Pikemen formed a protective hedge along the perimeter, spearpoints angled outward.
Within the circle, musketeers stepped forward in turn, firing through narrow gaps in the pikes before slipping back to reload.
In the center stood a woman in armor carrying a small round shield.
She pointed up in the sky creating two concave domes of light, partially shielding the formation.
Arrows struck the projections and shattered, leaving shallow craters of light that quickly smoothed away.
A second flight of arrows struck the domes and the left dome flickered under the strain then collapsed.
The group advanced forward as one.
Several men in armor carrying swords and bucklers moved along the edge of the circle, reinforcing the formation.
Rodeleros with short swords and bucklers ready paced the outside edge of the circle, watching for breaks.
Muskets boomed again, unarmored defenders dropping where they stood.
A lone defender sprinted towards the pike block.
“Ashweft!” someone cried out.
He made it only a few steps before musket fire tore into him.
His body erupted into a mist and spray of crystal darts.
The formation staggered then pressed forward several pikeman limping with crystal darts embedded in their armor.
There was no trace of the man, only heavy purple smoke that sank toward the stone and slowly dissipated.
The soldiers advanced towards a tunnel cut into the rock, musket men firing a mass volley into the tunnel entrance with the Rodeleros pouring in following the volley.
“God has not forgotten us, Drew. He has merely delegated.” Fray Hernando said.
“Who are they?” Drew breathed.
Fray Hernando craned his neck to see what flags the rescuing ships flew.
“For today, Corsarios of Trujillo.”
A few more men descended from ropes above and then the green brigantines rose up into the air departing.
The men wearing chainmail, unsheathed their short swords and began cutting the ropes of the captives freeing them.
The freed women and men cried out in joy.
One women wrapped herself around her rescuer so tightly another freed man had to pull her away so the rescuer could help others.
Behind Drew the constant roar of combat lessened to occasional musket shots and the moaning of injured people.
Drew turned to Hernando.
“What the hell is wrong with the Tzoma Kai?”
“Nothing is wrong with them, Drew. This is what people become when survival outlives mercy.” Fray Hernando Responded. “They are outcasts that followed the Arawinaya here and found no friends.”
“And the crazy vine attacks they had?” Drew asked. “One man didn’t have arms or legs just vines!”
Hernando watched a freed captive being cut loose before answering.
“Vines replace what hunger and fear convince a man he can live without.”
Drew frowned.
“That’s not living.”
“No,” Hernando agreed softly. “It is enduring. When a people are hunted long enough, they stop asking what they should be and begin asking only what will keep them breathing one more day.”
“So they turn themselves into weapons?”
“They turn themselves into tools,” Hernando said. “Weapons are still held by men. Tools are meant to be used until they break.”
He finally looked at Drew then, eyes tired but steady.
“Pray you never need to decide which parts of yourself are expendable.”
Drew quieted as a rescuer approached and cut the ropes binding him with a short sword.
“Thank you! You saved us.” Drew said.
His rescuer grunted and then turned to free others.
Drew stretched cautiously, blood and sensation creeping back into his limbs in a mix of pins and pain.
He spied a broken arrow laying near him Drew stepped over to examine it.
Most arrows Drew had seen carried broad, triangular heads only a few inches long, designed to cut and lodge.
This one was different.
The head was long and narrow, nearly six inches of thin, polished copper tapering to a vicious point.
It wasn’t an arrowhead.
It was a blade.
Whoever had fired it was not shooting arrows at people.
It's former wielder was launching daggers through the air.
Drew looked around at the carnage, really seeing it for the first time.
Bodies lay twisted where they had fallen.
Blood darkened stone and vine alike.
The noise of battle faded at the edges of his hearing, replaced by a hollow pressure in his chest.
He felt small. Weak.
A wave of guilt settled over him.
He had survived twice now, not through skill or courage, but by standing near Fray Hernando when the attack came.
Others had fought. Others had bled out on the stone.
Drew had lived by proximity alone.
Luck like that didn’t feel like mercy.
It felt like a debt.
Another brigantine descended towards the landing area.
This one approached slowly and cautiously less like a combat landing and more like a helicopter hovering above a helipad.
Drew was struck by how measured and stable the ships approach was.
This ship sails had a yellow bat wing painted on the canvas.
More men were lowered on ropes.
On the top deck, Drew spotted a pterodactyl.
The creature climbed over the railing and slid carefully down the rope.
It landed, looked at Drew and then began moving straight toward him.