Free Rising Tides by Taylor Anderson Page B

prove he was worthy to join the “Captain’s Companions,” those who’d been with Reddy from the start. To be considered worthy of that, he’d do whatever he had to—even if it killed him. To accomplish so much only to have it threatened by a volcano, a force of nature, seemed wildly unfair, but he would manage. Somehow, he would succeed. Pacing to the hatch, he prepared to descend the ladder and go back to helping Whitcomb. Before he did, he stood up straight and shook his fist at the distant smoky peak. “You won’t beat me,” he warned. “By God, you won’t.”

CHAPTER 5
    Yap Island (Shikarrak)
    “ H ow much longer do you suppose they’ll be?” Princess Rebecca Anne McDonald, daughter of the Governor-Emperor of the New Britain Isles, asked anxiously; her large jade eyes narrowed with worry. Her sun-lightened blond locks had gone horribly astray under the constant battering of the stiff sea breeze, and finally getting some growth, she’d also suddenly begun to sprout from the battered Imperial dungarees she wore. Her waiflike appearance did much to undermine her “princess” status. She glanced fretfully westward, where the sun was making its final rapid equatorial plunge.
    Nurse Lieutenant and Minister of Medicine Sandra Tucker’s bad sunburn was beginning to turn tan, but her normally sandy blond hair had gone peroxide. She looked at the bedraggled and somewhat gangly royal teen. “Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “They’ll be along.”
    “But it’s nearly dark!”
    “I assure you, my dear,” insisted Sister Audry in her precise Dutchaccented English, “Mr. Silva would be far safer in any wilderness you chose to drop him than any poor creature he might happen upon.” Sister Audry’s words were meant to reassure, but there was a subliminal thread of condemnation in her tone as well. Like the surviving Imperials, she harbored a deep suspicion that Silva was at least mildly psychotic. She stepped from beneath the sailcloth shelter they’d rigged against the daily rains and stood beside Sandra and Rebecca. She wore dungarees now too, although her practically destroyed habit was kept safely stowed in a bundle of oilcloth.
    “I’m concerned about poor Lawrence as well,” Rebecca said, “and perhaps ever so slightly about Messers Cook and Brassey.”
    “And Captain Rajendra?” Sandra asked dryly.
    “Him too, I suppose,” Rebecca conceded. “I really should be, shouldn’t I?” she asked Sister Audry. Rebecca had learned to respect the nun’s moral authority, even if most of the other Imperial castaways still considered her some form of Roman witch. Rebecca knew better. She knew there was no more similarity between Sister Audry’s “Catholic” faith and that practiced by the “Holy Dominion” than there was between night and day.
    “One should always try to think charitable thoughts about all people,” Sister Audry replied, but it was clear by her tone how difficult even she found that at times.
    A panicked cry arose near the shoreline, where Captain Lelaa and Carpenter Hersh were wrapping up their day’s repairs to the boat. Three other men, armed with muskets, raced to the spot from where they’d been posted along the beach to provide security for the laborers and their important charges. A loud Thump and a jet of fire flashed in the rapidly deepening gloom.
    Captain Lelaa, the Lemurian commander and possibly only survivor of the destroyed sloop USS Simms , raced past them, tail curled high in alarm, toward the ranks of muskets they kept loaded and under cover. “Shik-saak!” she shouted breathlessly as she passed.
    A large shadow, almost indistinguishable from the color of the sea behind it, lunged up onto the shore, barely missing the overturned boat where it lay chocked and supported on the sand. The carpenter was on his back, frantically scrabbling up the beach on his hands and heels, shrieking as he went. The security detail raced to that side of the boat and