Free Blood Ocean by Weston Ochse Page B

Are you saying that the blood rapes aren’t to find a cure?” he asked, his eyes screwed around the question.
    Leb shook his head. “Not connected. Sorry, Pali friend, but I can say no more.”
    Kavika sat back as the idea spread across what he knew of his own world like a fast moving cancer, covering it, devouring it, eating it whole. He’d always connected the two, because everyone else had. It was common knowledge. Blood rapes, monkey-backing and a cure for Minimata had all been intrinsically linked things, no matter how terrible they seemed. If this Sky Winker was to be believed, none of it was connected at all. And if the blood rapes didn’t exist to find a cure, then what were they good for? Who were they good for?
    Now that he’d begun thinking about it, Kavika couldn’t get the thoughts of his mind. Knowledge is like pain. There’s only so much that can be done to conceal it. Once you have it you have it.
    And Kavika had it in spades.
    If only he could get rid of it.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
    T HERE’D BEEN A moment when Kaja had thought the boy lost. Then the youth had surprised everyone by dropping his best friend into the drink. The Boxers didn’t know how to take that. Then again, they weren’t used to dealing with too much outside the Freedom Ship. Neither were they familiar with the idea of someone, anyone, getting the best of them.
    But as Donnie Wu often liked to say, the Boxers were a shadow of the people they’d once been. They’d named themselves ‘the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists’ after the Chinese who rebelled against English colonial rule in 1900, fighting for individuality and national identity. The old Pali Boy couldn’t understand how representatives of the longest surviving culture on the planet could lay at the feet of the residue of a Japanese Empire that had peaked with Samurai movies and the Kawasaki motorcycle.
    But then, Donnie Wu had always been a little too proud.
    Kaja shadowed the remainder of the chase. It gave him pause when the boy slid into the hold of the Sky Winkers. An odd collection of nutcases who believed that the sky promised them salvation. Kaja gave the white-hot sun a wall-eyed look. On one level he was aware of his past; that his people worshiped the sun, water, wind and volcano, each taking on an Earth-given name. But that was superstition, not science. And in this modern age, it was science which had scoured the world. The Sky Winkers claimed to have a higher knowledge, but Kaja doubted it was any higher than his own relationship with Pele, or Ivanov’s dedication to the old Roman god, Neptune.
    A movement several ships over caught his attention—a man with a red bandana.
    Kaja checked the package strapped to his waist, then took to the rigging, leaping and swinging until he leaned from a mast, staring down at the solitary man. He was definitely alone, as they’d arranged. About fifty and fat, his skin burned the color of a red snapper. As Kaja watched, he looked around, twitching like a bird, wiping his broad forehead. With the exception of the Sky Winkers, most people never looked up.
    Kaja slid down the mast and alighted onto the deck.
    The man gave an eep and backpedaled.
    Kaja held up his hands. “It’s only me.”
    His terrified expression faded, giving way to a sneer. “You could have warned me.”
    Kaja shrugged.
    “Do you have it?” The man licked his lips.
    “I do.”
    “Then let’s do this.”
    Kaja removed the package he’d liberated from Akamu’s body. He’d known what it was immediately. He handed it to the Mga Tao, who produced a small device with a LCD screen, attached to a water-filled glass vial. He sliced open a corner of the package, removed some of the white substance with a small metal spoon and added it to the vial, then stoppered the container, shook it for a moment, and pressed a button. It only took a few moments for the results to come through. When the machine beeped, the man let out a long low