Nassau, 1721 Jack regained consciousness hazily, staring down from a great height to the burning roofs of Spanish Town. His body spasmed, but fortunately, he’d been tied in place with… “You used my own noose to secure me?” he rasped, and wished he hadn’t spoken. His throat hurt almost as much as if a bullet had been put through it. A hand patted his head. “Only rope we had to hand,” Anne called back. “Don’t squirm. You’ll throw my lovey off balance.” Jack groaned. “It’s undignified, being carried ass-first away from my own hanging.” “If you hadn’t been dead drunk when the Navy caught up with you, you wouldn’t have needed rescuing,” she replied with logic as infallible as it was infuriating. “We were celebrating a major victory over Rogers,” he retorted, then stopped to cough. “Wasn’t much of a victory if you got hanged for it.” Another pat. “Quit patting my head like I’m a noddy dog!” The explosion of irritation couldn’t be helped. He wouldn’t be condescended to by anyone. “That’s all I can reach. Here, you hold my belt. I’ll cut the rope and you can sit up.” A little cautious scrabbling followed as he shifted around and got one leg over the beast’s back. Making a mistake at this altitude wasn’t to be thought on—they’d had a prisoner slip before, and a fall from this height into water? Was much like hitting a cobblestone street. At least sitting up and astride let him feel more in control, and he relaxed. “Thanks,” he managed after a moment. “For the rescue.” Anne tossed a glance over her shoulder. “Rest. We’ll be back at Nassau in no time. Rest of the captains are there.” “Where’s Mack—ahh.” He’d just caught sight of the one-time runaway slave and houngan who now held the equivalent rank of ship captain among the pirates. Jack raised an arm to catch the man’s eye. Caught the gleam of white teeth as Francois Mackandal smiled. Jack met his eyes over the beast’s wings and nodded, just once, in profound thanks. Anne could have pulled it off on her own, like enough. But I owe you for making sure she stayed alive while pulling my neck out of the noose. I pay my debts. Squinting at the other riders and their mounts around him, he realized that full half of them were Mackandal’s men—freed slaves of Hispaniola. Thank you, he thought. Another man might have sent that prayer heavenwards. Jack sent those silent words to all those around him. “Aye, Mack still seems to think he needs you. God only knows why, you idiot.” Jack laughed, his throat still aching. “He needs you and your lovely creatures more’n me, love. And he’s a smart man. Smarter than me.” He knew it was true. Mackandal spoke English, Arabic, and French, and even claimed to read—at least in Arabic. All Jack’s own few letters had come from a prayerbook of an older sailor who’d taught him as best he could. Jack had been pressed young—eight, as best he recalled. He’d learned enough to read a logbook and figure the stores, as a quartermaster should. No more. Mackandal knew poisons, and had been the terror of the French slave-owners of Hispaniola even before he’d joined with Jack and Anne. He knew every hill of Hispaniola like the back of his single remaining hand—the other had been cut away by the very slave-owners he now used the dragons to assail in nightly, daring raids. The silence had gone on too long. “He just wants to keep you happy, love, lest you whistle and call all your monsters home.” Anne turned her head and grinned at him like a shark. All teeth. Jack changed the subject. “What are the captains assembled for, then, other than to figure out who’s in charge, assuming you didn’t manage to pull my ass out of the fire?” “Arguing. Mostly about that,” Anne answered. “Vane’s heard that the French are so upset by Mackandal’s raids and the slave uprisings he’s provoking, that they’re looking to ally with the Spanish. Common cause against us.” He grimaced. “Damnation. We knew it could happen. But so long as they don’t make peace with England, we’re still in decent position. Harass, delay, and bleed them till they give up the islands as unprofitable.” Dangerous, he knew. The islands depended on trade. If no ships came, they’d be cutting their own throats. A delicate balance had to be walked—like balancing on the blade of a damned sword. He could smell the living reek of the beast under them. No sweat, not like an honest horse or cow—but a wilder, more primeval tang. He remembered the first time they found the creatures, just a year ago—a day that had entirely altered the power dynamic of the Bahamas. He’d already taken the King’s Pardon, mostly to keep his neck out of a noose, like the one that had ended Blackbeard’s life three years before, but partly, too, to keep himself welcome on Nassau, where he’d had a particularly sweet arrangement with the married Anne Bonny. And just that morning, she’d informed Jack with a mix of savage glee and desperation, that she’d found herself with child. “It’s mine?” he’d asked, stunned.
Anne seemed to be in a world of her own as the eggs hatched. She cradled the newborn creatures, slick-wet and piping of voice, feeding them with the raw flesh of what Jack presumed was their mother. So he exhaled and gingerly examined the corpse, finding a band of peculiar white material around one of its legs, which bore neatly printed words. “Property of ChronoInnovation, LLC,” he read out loud. He’d never been bookish, and this was harder going than the Bible on which he’d learned his letters. “Subject: Amelia. Species: Quetzalcoatlus northropi. Hatching date: September 27, 2169…what?” He couldn’t wrap his head around it. The words couldn’t mean what they seemed to mean. Next week was hard enough to imagine—a stretch of more than four centuries into the future? Impossible. And yet…does it matter where they came from? They’re here. Attacking the townsfolk. Are there more of them? He chanced a glance around, and spotted more dark, winged shapes in the sky. Damnation. Tears streaked down Anne’s cheeks as the creatures pressed close to her, stroking their heads along her sides. Dazed, Jack kept a wary eye on the skies, expecting another adult to arrive at any moment. “They’re beautiful,” she declared, longing in her voice. Hearing it, he thought of the first time he’d looked out on ships in a harbor, ships that could take him far away. From pain and privation to something that might resemble freedom. Of course, reality had been something different. Freedom from his family had become servitude in the Royal Navy. Freedom from the Navy had meant servitude to another captain, Charles Vane. Freedom from Vane had meant servitude to his own crew, their needs, their demands. Only in Anne’s bed had he felt anything that felt like true escape. But given every other time he’d thought he’d tasted freedom, it had ended in hard labor, he wondered now, warily, if what he felt for her would also end in toil. He cleared his throat gruffly. “Hungry little monsters, and more mouths than we can ever feed.” But he could see the look in her eyes. As if she’d just seen the sea for the first time. “Look at the size of the adults! Jack, they’re bigger than horses.” “I noticed that as the first dove at your head, aye.” His dry words went unnoted in her ecstatic awe. “Can you imagine riding them in the skies? No ship would ever be safe! All the cannons point level with other ships—” Ride them? But they’re monsters! But he revolved the image in his mind, caught by her enthusiasm, and took a cautious step towards the creeling young. “Wouldn’t stop a man with a musket perched in the crow’s-nest from taking potshots,” he muttered, but his imagination had already taken fire. He cut the next slice from the dead beast and fed the young ones himself, before leaning over to kiss Anne’s lips. “If I haven’t mentioned it before, I think I rather love you.” The rest hadn’t been easy. They’d smuggled the creatures to his ship, the Revenge—taken from Charles Vane two years before when Rackham had rallied the crew against a captain who’d lost his nerve. Renamed from Ranger to Revenge in a bid to inspire his crew. We’re not just out to wander from shore to shore. We’re here to take something back from those who’ve taken it from us, he’d said. And he’d believed it, at the time. That same crew had thought them insane when they brought the creatures aboard. The more so, as the giant creatures hunted Port Royal’s streets. But they’d gained others who saw possibility in the creatures. Benjamin Hornigold. Mary Read. Edward England. Later, Mackandal. And then they’d taken to the sky, and the royal governor, Woodes Rogers, couldn’t stand against aerial attacks that scattered, demoralized, and decimated his men. With the governor fled, Jack Rackham had been poised to take and hold Nassau—but for the sticky issue of all the other pirates who thought they had a claim to the place. The solution had seemed simple at first…train a few trusted allies to ride the beasts as well. And then they trained those that they trusted, and soon enough, a balance of power resulted once more. It never just…ends, Jack thought. We should’ve been free once we had wings, but we’re tied to the ground by a chain of other people’s will and desires. Dominican Republic, 2170 Ruby’s head spun. “Wait. If they go back in time and take the resources forward…there should only be a finite amount!” Quiang spread his hands. “We haven’t collapsed into a paradox yet.” “We shouldn’t even be aware that the past has been changed. It would always—already have been the past, as we know it.” Ruby leaned forward, practically spitting into Quiang’s face. She didn’t like the feeling that she was being played here. Quiang wiped a fleck of her saliva from his face, looking faintly irritated. “There could be a grace period as time reweaves itself.” “Could.” She pounced on the word. “There are other options, of course. It could be that they’re not colonizing the past. They’re creating alternate realities and colonizing them. Either way, they’re effectively enslaving millions, if not billions of people in service to our reality. I object to this thought. Do you?” Ruby swayed, her mental paradigms rocked. A sense of outage swept through her. “Whoa. That’s…really horrible.” She glanced at the machine. “But…why send me? I mean, I just do social media—” Quiang gestured at himself. “And I’m just a qubit pusher. Look, I don’t know who sent you or if you really only know online branding, but I do know my training in quantum computing gives me the edge here.” His fingers danced over a panel of multi-colored lights. “The machine looks like it was set to the mid-eighteenth century. Probably Nassau—the time of Anne Bonny, Jack Rackham, Golden Age of Piracy.” He rolled his eyes. “While my people had pirates, too, these folks obviously never met Cheng I Sao.” “Who?” Ruby asked blankly. “I mean, I know Anne Bonny.” She smiled, caught by the idea. “The original lesbian pirate queen!” “The past is another country,” Quiang replied sharply. “All we know about it is how people since then have portrayed it. Usually re-creating it to serve their agendas. We must be cautious about projecting our cultural awareness onto people of the past. Trust nothing you’ve heard about history.” She frowned and fluffed out her blue-dyed dreadlocks. “People who looked like me back in those days were slaves, Quiang.” “True. But I would stand out a lot more than you will, and do you know how to work the machine?” “No.” She stood, accepting a pack of gear from him. “Fortunately, pirate history is my thing. I can handle it.” A nod, to boost her own self-confidence. “Let me download some files about the period. Doubt I’m going to have net connection back then, right?” Cheerful bravado. I’ve got this. Totally. He handed her a white suit with a dark helmet for facial protection, independent oxygen supply, cooling and heating elements. “Overkill, much?” Ruby asked. “It’s in case the machine glitches and sends you to a different time or place than intended. I got sent back once for ancient Egyptian artifact collection and wound up in the Second Ice Age instead. Damn near lost my toes to frostbite.” “Wait, you’ve done this before!” Things were moving so fast, her mind couldn’t catch up, but something about that statement didn’t seem to add up with everything else Quiang had said so far. “Yes.” An uncommunicative response. He pulled devices from the pack, and showed her how to use the first. “This one’s a stiller. Temporarily takes someone out of time-flow. Hit them again to bring them back into it. That’s how I got the guards in here to cooperate with me flushing them back to 1968.” He managed a strained smile. “This one will let you communicate with me when you’ve located the beasts and you’ve documented if they’ve sent anyone there to live in that timeline. Now, just stand on the pad, please…”
Mackandal’s head tilted to the side. “I can only threaten men with curses from the spirits. You want to have power over these men? You have to take it.” Threaten them, aye, then poison them, so that they die screaming in the privy, begging for their mothers, Jack thought. But he only replied out loud, mildly, “I can’t command another captain’s men, Francois. No more than I can command yours. They ain’t mine. They ain’t sworn to me.” His eyes latched on to the bleeding wounds on the shopkeeper’s leg, and then Jack exhaled. He was going to regret this. “Anne?” “Aye?” “Let ’em know who really controls your loveys.” She put her fingers to her lips and whistled piercingly. The beast instantly dropped the burgher and raced to her, knocking aside porters, sailors, and whores along the way. Its rider chased after it, cursing until he got close enough to see the beast fawning over Anne, its head on the ground at her boots. “I don’t like having my loveys used like that,” she told the man. “You don’t get to ride one no more.” “I’m with Vane! You don’t get to take my beast—” Jack smiled mirthlessly. Anne tipped her head to the side. “If you don’t shut the fuck up right now,” she told the man, “I’ll tell my lovey here to rip you apart.” “She will,” Jack put in, trying to sound bored. “And it’ll obey her.” The indignant spluttering cut off as the man’s face suddenly went white. “Get yourself gone,” Mackandal put in, crossing his arms over his chest. “Vane won’t be needing a man who has no dragon to ride.” The man fled. Jack sighed. “Thanks, love. Find a stable for your little darling there?” “I’ll be right back,” Anne agreed, and headed off. Jack winced and approached the shopkeeper, who was being helped to his feet by his wife. He assisted, muttering, “Send someone by our berths. I’ll send a ship’s doctor to tend your wounds.” You might even survive his ministrations. Damn Vane and his men. Finally, after no more delays, they ducked into a dockside tavern where he knew he’d meet the other captains, young and old, had gathered to argue. Charles Vane raised his head now, his dark eyes glittering in the low light. “Rackham,” he said, unsmiling. “Nice of you to join us.” Jack measured the room quickly, feeling the balance of power undulating under his boots like a deck in a storm. Then met the eyes of the man he’d deposed three years ago. “Unavoidably delayed,” Jack replied smoothly, letting his shoulders fall back. Insouciant ease. Calm. Command. “Catch me up on whatever I’ve missed.” A hand wave, as if Vane were a subaltern. Vane’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “Your woman leaves the room. This is between captains.” Jack laughed. Vane had tried to sidestep the casual order he’d just given, to avoid looking subordinate to Jack, and had fixated on a petty issue, instead. “Without Anne, there would be no great flying mounts under your men’s arses,” he replied, taking a seat before anyone else could. As if they’d been waiting for him to sit. He enjoyed playing this kind of game. “None of you would have been out there taming them, if she hadn’t shown that it could be done first. You’d have been, at best, hired by Rogers to exterminate the beasts. At worst? Fed to them.” Jack smiled humorlessly. “She stays.” Vane opened his mouth to object again, which was when Mackandal spoke, “A man who only speaks to argue is one whom others dismiss, Captain Vane. Mistress Rackham should be considered the equal of any captain in this room. For she is not just like a shipwright, who builds a craft and sells it. Her beasts are soldiers. Loyal to her. If she whistled, each of them would throw off its rider and come to her call.” He glanced across the room, his eyes sharp and incisive. “Is that not so?” A smile crossed Anne’s face, her eyes as blank and atavistic as any shark’s. “Let’s say they know who their mother is,” she replied. “I don’t have to doubt the loyalty of my loveys the way you captains have to worry about the loyalty of your men.” She took the seat at Jack’s right. “With the pecking order determined…” Jack loaded his tone with boredom, like grapeshot, and turned towards Hornigold, Mackandal, and England now, as if dismissing Vane. “I can confirm that the Royal Governor is still alive. I’d taken one of his patrol ships on the Revenge, and had it in tow on our way back here when a fog rolled in. Having safely put the Navy behind us, I authorized extra rum rations for men not standing watch.” He sighed. “A second patrol ship caught us at dawn as the fog lifted. Rogers sent a letter to be read at my trial, so he’s still holed up in Carolina colony.” Anne moved up beside him, a knife-thin figure in her riding breeches and white shirt. “A pity he wasn’t there,” she muttered. “I’d have liked a shot at him.” “I’m shattered, too. Apparently, I’ve not made myself enough of a thorn in his side.” Jack glanced at the other men. “We know where he is.” “Too dangerous,” Hornigold countered swiftly, a spare-looking, gray-haired man who’d retired from piracy before the King’s Pardon had even been whispered of. “They haven’t had the motivation to come after us yet, but if we conduct raids inland on the mainland? Their disinclination to meddle with us will pass. They might well take up common cause with the French and Spanish—”
Vane exploded. “I’ll send my men to Carolina, but not for your sake. I refuse to send my men into battle to get Jack Rackham’s revenge. The ship or his battered pride—” “Didn’t ask you to!” Jack retorted. “I have two other ships. I can take care of this myself.” It was a lie, but a needful one. Losing the Revenge hurt. Loss of prestige. The loss of a full crew with her? A sign of weakness. “I’m inclined to take the price of the Revenge out of Woodes Roger’s hide personally. But anyone willing to sail alongside will get a piece of both glory and profit, and we’re stronger together than apart.” And yet Anne laughed softly, leaning on his shoulder. “If you go to Carolina on your own and kill Rogers, why, you’d be even more famous,” she pointed out softly, and Jack could see the others’ expressions flicker. Hornigold looked weary. “This is why democracies never survive,” he told them dryly. “Sooner or later, it comes down to just two men, fighting it out, and when one of them wins, there’s finally unity of direction, and civilization can move forward again.” “Is that what you want?” Vane growled at Jack. “To be a fucking king?” Jack snorted. They don’t dare let me do it alone, because if I succeed, they lose fame, notoriety, when I gain it. When men flock to my crew, and not to theirs. And if I lose, the captains as a whole look weaker, and England looks stronger. He leaned forward, pushing harder now. “I’m taking my remaining ships, our beasts and riders, and raiding Carolina inside of a week,” Jack asserted. “You can come with me—” The door of their private room opened. Jack had just enough time to note the shining white suit worn by the figure that entered. The round helmet that entirely enclosed its head, black glass over the face. Enough time to put that image together with the white band around the leg of the creature whose nest they’d first plundered— Then the figure raised a rectangular white box in its hand, and Jack’s world went dark. Watch for the exciting conclusion to Pterrors of the Caribbean in DreamForge Issue 6. |
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