The Nautilus Sanction

9

Fires burned on the beach. Men drank and sang, caroused with women, danced, fired guns off into the air and pummeled each other drunkenly. Many of Drakov’s crewmen went into New Orleans with seamen from the other ships of Lafitte’s fleet. Drakov went downstairs with Lafitte and Verne, to play cards with some of the other captains. Lucas, Finn and Andre had declined. Drakov didn’t seem to care. Apparently, it made no difference to him whatsoever what they did. Land rejoined them shortly after the others had gone down to play cards. With some awkwardness, he pointedly explained that all he and Marie had done was talk. To do any more, he said, would have been taking advantage.

“I learned a bit that may be of interest,” he said, as he filled his wine glass. “Drakov does not come here just so his crew can enjoy themselves. He buys slaves from Lafitte.”

Lucas frowned. “Slaves? You’re sure?”

“Marie told me,” Land said. “She said that Negroes are being put aboard the Valkyrie even as we speak.”

“How many?” Finn said.

“This time, he bought a hundred,” Land said. “Last time, twice as many. She saw his men taking them from the warehouse. Grigori and Martingale, from what she said. She hasn’t any idea where he takes them.”

“Martingale,” Andre said. “What’s he doing, playing both ends against the middle?”

“I don’t like him,” Land said. “You said you would tell me of this Underground he claims to belong to.”

“It’s not easy to explain, Ned, but I’ll try,” said Lucas. “You remember when I tried telling you before about how people in the future travel back through time so they can fight their wars in the past?”

Land nodded, grimly. “I didn’t want to hear. I thought you were making fun of me. After what I’ve seen, mon aini, I would no longer doubt a thing you tell me.”

“Well, that’ll make things easier,” said Lucas, wryly. “The Underground is made up mostly of soldiers from the armies of the future. These soldiers have become deserters. Sometimes soldiers from the future become… well, lost, for lack of a better way of putting it. They become separated from their units. Sometimes they’re found again. Sometimes not. Some of them become trapped in the past through no fault of their own, others become deserters. Many of them make contact with the Underground. Either they find the Underground or the Underground finds them. If they wish to return to their own time, the Underground helps them. But if they wish to desert, the Underground takes them in. It’s a complex, loosely knit organization. They have methods of keeping in touch with one another, but they’re spread out through all of time. Some of them, by choice, remain in one specific time period. Others travel a great deal, to any time they choose. We met one of them once. His name was Hunter. He was responsible for taking Andre from the time where she was born, 12th century England, to 17th century Paris, where our paths crossed again. Andre became one of us. Hunter, unfortunately, was killed by a member of the same group Drakov once belonged to.”

“The Timekeepers,” Land said.

Lucas nodded. “Hunter lived in 12th century England most of the time, but he could visit any other time, any other place, anytime he wanted to. The Underground is an illegal organization. Technically, they’re criminals, but no one tries very hard to catch them.”

Land frowned, concentrating. “Why?”

“Because, for one thing, it’s very hard to do,” said Lucas. “For another, they may be deserters, but they also serve a purpose. It’s just as important to them that history not be interfered with as it is to us. They represent a certain danger, since they are people living in times where they do not belong, but they are very aware of the dangers and they take great care not to interfere. If any of them are ever caught, they are tried as criminals, but there are more important things to do than spend time actively looking for them.”

Land shook his head. “I’m not sure I’m understanding you.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why should they care about preserving history? If they’re criminals, deserters-”

“There are many reasons why people join the Underground,” said Finn. “Some of them just couldn’t take being soldiers anymore. Others became soldiers because they thought they’d find adventure, but what they found wasn’t exactly what they had expected, so they deserted to find what they were looking for. Still others prefer living in the past, or in a past, to living in their own time. Just because they’re in the Underground, that doesn’t mean they’re evil or criminals in the sense you mean. I liked Hunter a great deal. And he helped us that one time. He saved our lives.”

“There’s still more to it,” Lucas said. “Suppose, Ned, you got on board a ship heading out of Boston on a whaling expedition. You don’t really expect Boston to change very much in the time you’ll be away. You come back and it’s still the same old Boston, same old streets and houses, same people, nothing’s really changed. But imagine you’re in Boston right now and you decide to take a trip to Boston the way it will be three hundred years in the future. If you’re in the Underground, that wouldn’t be very different from going on your whaling expedition and then coming back. Boston three hundred years from now would still be familiar to you because you know its history. You’ve probably been there before. Only what would happen if someone like Drakov succeeded in altering the course of history somehow? Then the Boston you arrive in might not be the same place you expected you would find. It may no longer even be there. Some interference with the past may have caused a chain of events to take place which would result in a completely different future, a completely different world. In order for the people in the Underground to be able to exist, they need to protect the world they exist in. Do you understand?”

Land exhaled heavily. “I think so. If I’d not seen what I’ve seen, I’d say all this was mad.”

“It is mad,” Finn said. “But we’ve got to live with it.”

“If I take your meaning,” said Land, “these people in the Underground are like the gypsy-folks, except that they travel not only from place to place, but from one century to another?”

“That’s it, exactly,” Lucas said. “That’s a very good way of putting it.”

Land sighed. “Lord, what a life it must be! How many of them do you figure there be?”

“Nobody knows,” said Finn. “Thousands.”

“And there’s no way to tell who they are?”

“Could you tell who we were, Ned?” said Lucas. “We’re just people. Who’d suspect the truth? Who’d believe it? Even after all you’d seen, you didn’t want to believe it. It sounds crazy.”

Land stood up and leaned on the railing of the veranda, staring out to the sea, glinting in the moonlight. “Part of me keeps waiting to wake up and find all this is a dream,” he said. “This beats any tall tale I ever heard. If I ever told anyone about this, I’d be put in a madhouse for sure. From now on, I don’t think I will be so quick to not believe things. If someone tells me he saw a sea monster breathing fire, until I know better, I will think that there just may be a sea monster that breathes fire!” He looked down, then quickly leaned out over the railing and glanced from side to side. “Look here! There are no guards! Quick, now’s our chance!”

He vaulted the railing.

“Ned!” shouted Lucas.

“Hell,” said Finn, jumping to his feet. “We’d better catch him before he gets in trouble.”

They jumped down to the ground, rolled, came up running and caught Land after a hard sprint of about seventy-five yards. Finn grabbed the harpooner and spun him around.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he said.

Land looked at him as if he had lost his senses. “What do you mean? This is our chance to get away!”

“And go where?” said Andre.

Land looked blank for a moment, then he snapped his fingers. “There are some of Drakov’s crew about,” he said. “A lot of them will be drunk. We can take them and steal those things they use for traveling through time! We’ll find one, knock him senseless, then-”

“Ned, your heart’s in the right place, but you haven’t thought it through,” said Lucas. “Besides, you really don’t understand how it all works.”

“But you said-”

“It wouldn’t be much trouble to knock a couple of Drakov’s crew out and take their warp discs,” Lucas said. “You’re right as far as that goes. But we can’t get back aboard the submarine without knowing where it is. Even if we could, Drakov still has a crew aboard it and they looked pretty capable to me.”

“Couldn’t you go back to your own time and return with more of your people?” Land said. “You could take Drakov and his entire crew-”

“Again, not a bad idea,” said Lucas, “but nothing short of an armed assault would take Drakov here on Barataria. Lafitte and his people would side with Drakov and fight the invasion. We can’t touch Lafitte. The British will be moving on New Orleans before too long and without Lafitte and his men, General Jackson will lose the battle and history will be changed. Drakov’s already interfered with history to a dangerous, perhaps even irreversible extent. You see, we’re the ones concerned with preserving history. Drakov doesn’t care. He has the advantage because of that and he knows it. There’s no way to attack him here and at the same time guarantee that no one on Lafitte’s side will be killed.”

“But if you were to bring back ships,” said Land, “like Drakov’s ships travel through time, so could yours! You could-”

“We could, but it wouldn’t do much good,” said Finn. “Those ships would still have to find the Nautilus. The sub marine is well-armed and difficult to detect. At first sign of pursuit, it could escape to another time. Remember that the Nautilus, the Valkyrie, Drakov and all his men can travel through time independently. They can all escape to his secret base and without knowing where it is or in which time period, there’s no way we could follow.”

“Is there nothing we can do?” said Land. “If we can’t act and if we have no weapons, then we’re helpless!”

“Maybe not, Ned,” Lucas said. “But we need to know more before we can act. When we began this, we thought it was just a matter of destroying the submarine, which is difficult enough. We need to know the full extent of Drakov’s power. We need to know his plans. He knows we can’t afford to try anything until we know where his base is. And when he takes us there, his guard will be up. But he may be overconfident. The thing to do now is find Martingale and make him tell us what is going on.”

“How do you know you can trust him?” Land said.

“I don’t,” said Lucas. “I’m still worried about that graft patch he gave me. If it was a listening device, we’ll know soon enough. I’ve got a lot of questions for Mr. Barry Martingale. If this is all part of a ruse by Drakov, I want to know before we reach his base.”

They continued down the path, through the village, toward the boats. In the distance, they could still hear the sounds of revelry on the beach by Lafitte’s house, but now the chirping of the crickets by the sides of the path was louder. As they neared the boats, still louder sounds reached them. Gunshots and men shouting. The sounds not of festivity, but of fighting.

“Come on!” said Lucas, breaking into a run.

The docks were the scene of a pitched battle. Terrified blacks ran past them, others cowered in the boats, still others lay dead among white bodies on the dock. Out on the water, several boats rowing out to the Valkyrie were being attacked by about ten pirogues, and the sounds of the blacks screaming and the shots fired back and forth carried across the bay. On the dock, Martingale was in the thick of it. He had emptied both his pistols and was flailing away with his sword, keeping a small group of men at bay. He was holding one in front of him, as a shield, his arm clamped tightly around the man’s throat. The man he held was dead, shot several times by his own compatriots in an effort to shoot Martingale, who kept swinging the body around, trying to interpose it between himself and his attackers, able to do so only because he was on a narrow section of dock that would not allow him to be surrounded. Even so, he had been shot. They could see him bleeding from a crease in his scalp and there was blood on his exposed shoulder. It would be all over for him in another moment.

One of his attackers had gone into the water and swam out to the end of the dock, climbing up on it so he could get behind Martingale. Andre pulled out her knife and let fly. The blade whizzed past Martingale’s left ear, missing him by inches, and embedded itself to the hilt in the swimmer’s chest. He cried out and fell back into the water. Ned and Finn drew their swords and ran forward to help Martingale. As Andre charged the men who were attempting to shoot him down, Lucas threw his own dagger, wounding one of them in the shoulder. Then Andre was on them and Lucas followed on her heels, turning the tide of the fight.

The odds had evened out now. Land knocked one man into the water, charging him as he reloaded. Finn disarmed one man, ran another through with his sword and, seeing reinforcements arrive, Martingale dropped the corpse he had been using as a shield and joined them on the offensive. He fought in a style the pirates had never encountered before, saber-fencing combined with martial arts. They were no match for trained commandos and, now that they no longer outnumbered their intended victim, they took flight.

Martingale took a deep breath as he watched them running off down the beach into the darkness. “Thanks,” he said. “I thought I’d bought it for sure.”

“See you’ve used a katana at one time,” said Finn, remarking on his style with the sword. “What happened?”

Out on the water, the pirogues had seized the boats and were now pulling toward the Valkyrie, intent on boarding her.

“Gambi’s men,” said Martingale, ripping a section of cloth from the shirt of one of the dead men and using it to stanch the flow of blood from his shoulder. “They came at me so fast I didn’t have a chance.”

“Here, sit down,” said Lucas. “Let me see that wound.”

“I’ll live,” said Martingale. “I’ve had lots worse. Lucky for me those clowns couldn’t shoot straight. Watch this, they’re in for one hell of a surprise in those pirogues.”

As the canoes drew closer to the Valkyrie, keeping spread out to minimize the effects of cannon fire if the ship opened up on them, there seemed to be no resistance from the ship. Then a sharp, bright beam of coherent light lanced out from the bow of the Valkyrie and hit one of the canoes. A second later, it was followed by a blast of white hot plasma as the auto-pulser, locked in by the laser-tracking circuit, systematically began to pick off the pirogues. One boat became awash in searing light, then it was gone, leaving nothing but smoke and some residual flaming plasma burning out upon the surface of the water. The screams of Gambi’s men echoed across the bay; the remaining pirogues turned and pulled for their lives, but nothing could save them.

“If Gambi’s lucky, he died out there,” said Martingale. “Quicker and cleaner than what Lafitte will do to him if he survived. Guess he saw an opportunity to seize a ship and a nice cargo of slaves, to boot. Too bad he picked the wrong ship.”

“That bullet’s going to have to come out,” said Lucas, examining Martingale’s shoulder. “I can’t do it here.”

“We’ll go out to the ship,” said Martingale. “There are medical supplies aboard. Besides, someone’s got to go out and get that boatload of blacks. It’s drifting.”

One of the other boats containing slaves had been hit by the auto-pulser from the ship. The remaining boat was slowly being carried away by the current, the blacks aboard howling in fear, not knowing what to do.

They helped Martingale into a boat and rowed out after the slaves. Martingale cursed. “We lost several men. Maybe von Kampf, too. Drakov’s going to be furious. Our own fault. We should have been more careful, knowing Gambi was around.”

“What are the slaves for?” Finn said. “Damn it, Martingale, you’d better start leveling with us right now.”

“Same thing slaves have always been for,” Martingale said. “Cheap labor. Drakov needs them at the base.”

“Where is the base?” said Lucas.

“Small island off the coast of Papua, New Guinea, in the early 19th century,” said Martingale. “Visitors are discouraged by the slaves Drakov buys from Lafitte. The area is known for having cannibals and even though Drakov’s slaves aren’t, they play the part real well.”

“If you’ve known where it is all along, why haven’t you done anything?” said Finn. “Why hasn’t the Underground reported it to us?”

“It’s not that simple,” Martingale said. “The timing must be right. The Doctor will explain it all.”

“That’s another thing,” said Lucas. “Who is the doctor?”

“His name is Dr. Robert Darkness,” Martingale said. “He’s the inventor of the warp grenade.”

Martingale sat on the edge of the table while Lucas bandaged him. Two men stood guard on the deck of the Valkyrie while Count Grigori von Kampf, who had been slightly wounded in the battle of the boats, led the others in a search for the slaves who had escaped during the fight. Martingale had been wounded in several places. Two bullets had been lodged in his body and he had sustained several sword cuts, but he carried on as though such injuries were a part of his daily routine. While Lucas worked, only an occasional grimace or grunt from Martingale gave evidence of his feeling any pain.

“So the mysterious inventor of the warp grenade joined the Underground,” said Finn. “Christ, no wonder they’ve classified everything about him, including his name.”

Martingale shook his head. “You’ve got that wrong,” he said. “Darkness isn’t part of the Underground. He isn’t part of anything. Years ago, he just split the scene. Took off for some remote corner of the galaxy. He’s real strange, Delaney. All he ever wanted was to get as far away from people as it was possible to get, but he wanted it both ways. He wanted to be able to deal with people when he felt like it, only on his own terms.”

“Sounds like what a lot of people want,” said Andre.

“True,” said Martingale, “only Darkness did it. He was working on temporal translocation around the same time Mensinger was, only he was going at it from another angle. He started out working on voice and image communication by tachyon radio transmission.”

“That isn’t possible,” said Finn.

“Hey, don’t tell me, I’m no scientist,” said Martingale. “Tell the Doctor. He’s been doing it for years. What he came up with was a means of communication at a speed six hundred times faster than the speed of light. That still meant a delay in transmission, though. A five-second time lag over thirty-six hundred light seconds or a one-year delay in messages at a distance of six hundred light years. He wanted it to be instant. He got involved in some very obscure mathematics, working from the Georg Cantor theory of transfinite numbers. He discovered a solution. He found a way to make his tachyon beam move more quickly by sending it through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Instantaneous transmission. Going from Point A to Point B without having to cover the distance in between. Only he wasn’t satisfied with just having achieved instant tachyon TV communication. He wanted to travel.”

“Wait a minute,” Lucas said, pausing in his ministrations. “You’re telling us he did all this before Mensinger invented the chronoplate?”

“I don’t know if it was before or about the same time,” said Martingale. “It was certainly before the chronoplate was perfected.”

“And no one knew about this?”

“How would anyone know unless Darkness told them?” Martingale said. “He didn’t give a damn. He just took off for deep space like some Flying Dutchman and started living life according to his own rules. But he still wanted to be able to keep in touch, so he started working on a process by which the human body could be turned into tachyons which would depart at 60 °C along the direction of the tachyon beam through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. His chief concern was that conversion to tachyons would violate the law of uncertainty.”

“How do you mean?” said Finn.

“Well, the way he explained it to me was that if you take one hundred eighty pounds of human being and one hundred eighty pounds of bacteria and put them into a genetic blender, the result would be indistinguishable. His main concern was whether the RNA and DNA would reassemble themselves in the appropriate order at the appropriate time and place.”

“Same thing Mensinger was worried about in terms of chronoplate transition,” Finn said.

“Exactly. Because if they didn’t, what might materialize would be a blob. He was also worried about the reassembly process itself, since there wouldn’t be a receiver. He solved this by incorporating a timing mechanism into the tachyon conversion, which reassembled him at the moment of arrival based on time coordinates of transition. He focused the beam by means of gravitational lenses scattered throughout the galaxy. But while the uncertainty principle didn’t trip the Doctor up, it didn’t turn out as he imagined, that he had invented the ultimate form of transportation. Mensinger did that. Darkness discovered instead that the taching process was ultimately restrained by a little known law of physics, called the law of baryon conservation. While he arrived “in corpus,” he was unable to move. He appeared much like a holographic projection or a distant ghost seen underwater. A figure frozen in time and trapped by the laws of the universe.”

“You mean he’s insubstantial?” Andre said.

“Well, no, though he can be, if he wants to. He can project an image of himself or actually tach himself, but he can’t move from one spot. He’s trying to work on a way to do more than talk and wave his arms and stare at people, but he hasn’t got that one licked yet.”

“Why can’t he simply use a warp disc or even a chronoplate?” said Andre.

“Because his body has been tachyonized,” said Martingale. “Something about the way the process has altered his subatomic structure won’t let him clock. He can transmit objects, but he can’t clock himself. It makes him angry as hell. Mensinger perfected the device that would allow him to do exactly what he wanted all along, only he can’t use it. He said once that after twenty years of scientific research, consulting thousands of libraries on hundreds of worlds, he still can’t duplicate the beaming process envisioned over one thousand years ago by some television writer. He hates that writer.”

“Now let me get this straight,” said Finn. “He can teleport, much the same way we can, only he does it through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge via tachyon beam and he can’t move once he gets there?”

“He can move some, but he can’t leave the spot he materializes on,” said Martingale. “Sort of like a hologram with substance. I wouldn’t get too close to him if I were you. He may be a genius, but he’s unbalanced, sort of. He just might grab you.”

“And this guy is supposed to help us?” Andre said.

“That graft you gave me,” Lucas said, “it’s a device for him to home in on?”

“Essentially. I’ve got one, too. Don’t ask me how it works, though. I haven’t got the faintest notion. The Doctor comes up with stuff most scientists don’t even understand. Like the warp grenade. He had a brainstorm one day and designed the thing, then didn’t know what the hell to do with it. So he tached over to the Temporal Army Ordnance Chiefs and laid the plans on them. Just like that.”

“Well, if it’s all the same with you,” said Lucas, “you can keep your little tachyon homing device or whatever, but I think I’d feel better getting rid of mine. Long as we have the medical kit here, we’ll do a bit of minor surgery. Finn, give me a hand with the local.”

“Don’t waste your time,” said Martingale. “You can’t remove it.”

“What do you mean, I can’t?”

“You remember feeling a sort of burning, tingling sensation when you put it on?” said Martingale.

“Yes?”

“That was the device bonding itself to you.”

“What?”

“It’s fused with your atoms, chum. Become a part of your chemical essence. Unless you can figure out some way to get a body transplant, you’re stuck with it, permanently.”

“You mean anytime this spaced-out scientist wants to find me-”

“He finds you and pops in for a visit.”

“You son of a bitch! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you wouldn’t have done it if I had,” said Martingale. “The Doctor told me to make sure one of you guys got terminaled. That’s what he calls it. When Darkness says to do something, you do it. You don’t argue with a guy who’s liable to materialize a warp grenade between your legs and make it go boom.”

“That’s just great,” said Lucas. “I should have just let Gambi’s men cut you to ribbons.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have received any answers.”

“Well, the answers stink.”

“Sorry. You should’ve thought up better questions. Look, the Doctor might be a little weird, but he knows what he’s doing. Your superiors knew what they were up against and what the odds were. That’s why they asked his help.”

“The Referees are in contact with him?” Finn said.

“More like the other way around,” said Martingale. “Nobody can contact the Doctor. Nobody knows where he is. It’s how he likes it.” Martingale put his shirt back on, being careful of his bandaged shoulder. “He does things his own way. I guess he decided to mobilize the Underground. He put the word out for us to try to infiltrate Drakov’s group. Of course, we didn’t know who they were then. It’s sort of funny; Darkness makes your people so nervous, they’ve classified his existence, but we’ve known about him for years.”

“So you’re the only one who’s managed to get close to Drakov?” Lucas said.

“There were several of us,” said Martingale, “but I’m the only one who made it.”

“How often do you see Dr. Darkness?” Andre said.

“He just shows up sometimes,” said Martingale. “It’s pretty spooky. He can move faster than light, but he can’t move when he arrives. So he can sort of arrive without materializing completely. You can’t see him. That’s how he knows if I’m alone. It’s an eerie feeling.”

“If he can do all that, you’d think he’d be more involved in what’s going on. Why hasn’t he been?” said Andre.

“Why don’t you ask him? Better yet, let Priest or Delaney ask him,” Martingale said.

“Why?”

“The Doctor doesn’t much like people,” Martingale said, “but he doesn’t like women, in particular. Now, unless there are any more important questions, I think we’d best be getting back. Drakov’s going to want to know about what happened, if he hasn’t heard already. I feel sorry for any of Gambi’s crew left alive. If they have any sense, they’ve left Barataria. I sure as hell would, rather than face Lafitte.”

The men stood lined up on the beach in the early morning sunshine. The survivors of Captain Gambi’s crew, and Gambi, himself, had been quickly rounded up. Lafitte’s men had moved fast. Gambi’s ship had been boarded soon after the fight and those aboard were taken. There had been no time for them to reorganize, no time to make good their escape. They stood uneasily on the sand, covered by the guns of Lafitte’s men. Lafitte, still dressed in his black trousers, only without his vest and jacket, paced back and forth on the sand, his hair and white shirt ruffling in the breeze.

“Vincent, Vincent, Vincent,” he said, approaching Gambi and shaking his head. He looked the swarthy Italian in the face and Gambi looked away. “You have been very troublesome to me. Very troublesome, indeed.”

Gambi said nothing. Drakov stood to one side with the others, watching.

“I cannot afford to be lenient with you, Vincent,” said Lafitte. “Do you know why? Because you are a stupid man and you would not understand. You would mistake lenience for weakness and that would only lead you to act foolishly again. I cannot have that. I cannot allow you to attack my guests with impunity. I cannot allow you to set yourself above my authority. You see that, don’t you?”

“I have never acknowledged your authority,” said Gambi, defiantly. “You have no right-”

“My strength gives me the right,” Lafitte said, curtly. “You never should have come here, Vincent. You should have gone your own way instead of trying to challenge me. Now you have lost. It is not enough for me to confiscate your ship. I must confiscate your life, as well.”

“So kill me, then,” said Gambi, contemptuously. “You can be brave now, with all these guns at your back.”

“Dominique,” Lafitte said. “Give him your sword.” Youx stepped up to Gambi and gave his sword to him.

“I will give you a chance to acquit yourself with honor,” said Lafitte. “Dominique, I charge you to carry out my orders. If Vincent should succeed in killing me, he and his crew go free. No one is to interfere. Understood?”

“Understood, Jean,” said Dominique.

“He will keep my word,” Lafitte said to Gambi. “Now, you wanted to challenge me, here is your chance. Make the most of it.”

Gambi growled and charged.

Lafitte smoothly drew his sword and, in the same motion, beat down Gambi’s blade and sidestepped the attack. He turned, moving lightly on his feet, one hand on his hip, the other holding the sword out before him, wrist circling slightly as he came back on guard. He looked bored.

“Come, Vincent, you will never win your freedom that way,” he said. “A little more finesse, eh?”

Gambi swore and returned to the attack, moving more cautiously now that his first rush had failed. He attempted a cut at Lafitte’s head, but Lafitte parried neatly, beat and riposted, slashing at Gambi’s shoulder. A bright streak of red appeared through Gambi’s shirt. They disengaged, circling each other on the sand as Gambi’s men called out their encouragement to him. Gambi bent down quickly and scooped up a handful of sand, flinging it at Lafitte’s face, but Lafitte read the move and ducked quickly to one side as Gambi moved in for a thrust.

Gambi recovered fast, but not before Lafitte opened up his cheek with a lightning slash across his face. Gambi howled and charged again, but Lafitte sidestepped him, playing him like a toreador plays a bull, working close to the body and using the barest minimum of motion. It was no contest. Gambi realized this and became desperate, flailing away madly with his saber and trying to put Lafitte on the defensive. Lafitte retreated smoothly, parrying each stroke and lunge, leading Gambi on, laughing and taunting him.

“Come, Vincent, come on, again, faster! Faster!”

Blade clanged against blade as Gambi desperately pressed his attack, sweat running down his face. His crew, thinking he was gaining the advantage, cheered him on, but then Lafitte stood his ground, his sword describing spare arabesques in the air as it darted in at Gambi, cutting, slashing, pricking, sting ing like a persistent bee as Gambi started to retreat. Each disengage met with a counter disengage, each parry with a riposte, each lunge turned aside as Lafitte pressed on, driving Gambi back until finally he lost his footing and fell. Snarling, he reached behind his neck and pulled a dagger from the sheath hanging down his back. He hurled it at Lafitte, but in mid-air Lafitte’s sword deflected it in an astonishing display of quick reactions. He stood, waiting for Gambi to get back to his feet.

“Enough of this,” he said. “I’m done with indulging you. It’s time for the coup de grace.”

Gambi glanced around wildly, but there was no escape. With a scream, he lunged at Lafitte. Lafitte spun his blade, wrenching it out of his grasp and in the same motion, ran him through the chest. Gambi gasped, clutched at his chest and fell face down onto the sand. Lafitte looked down at him and sighed.

“Stupid man,” he said. He glanced at Gambi’s suddenly silent crew and then at Dominique.

“Kill them,” he said, and walked into the house without looking back.