A Pirate's Life for Mei

The Hunt

Stray gusts continued to whip the surface of the Caribbean sea, creating wavelets and sending fine sprays of water in their faces as they sailed the catamaran to the south side of St. Vincent. As much as it might have bothered them, the squall seemed to do nothing to the vast column of bubbling gray smoke rising from the volcano that dominated the north end of the island.

Everyone was quite happy to be moving away from the smoke.

Dwayne, sitting with his back against one of the bolted-down trunks, wondered how imminent an eruption was. He wasn't about to call off the hunt, but flaming lava meteors hurtling through the sky and exploding all around them would be highly inconvenient. And he could see his less stalwart men balking at being on land during the event, becoming disobedient at worst and allowing Mei Ling to escape. Best to capture the woman as fast as possible, just in case.

The squat, burly-armed sailor manning the tiller was closest to Dwayne and spoke with a deferential, though uncertain, tone. "Yer sure you wanna sail right in there, sir? Likely they've got a watch out and will see us coming." An arm covered in tattoos flexed as he fought to turn the ungainly vessel up a roller.

Dwayne had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. "In this weather? They're probably hunkered down around a warm fire."

One of the other marines scooted over on his knees, his hand on a lifeline. Standing and walking on the platform were difficult because the vessel pitched around uncertainly at all times. The squall was calming considerably, but they were still being safe. "Sir. What's the plan going in?"

Dwayne nodded. He raised his voice so all could hear. "We'll go in hard, try to surprise them. With luck, they aren't keeping a lookout, and we'll enter the village without resistance. If you see the target, secure her immediately. You can wound her, but try not to kill. I don't want to have to search this island for her after she respawns." Especially with the volcano active.

"They're gonna outnumber us," another marine added.

His voice brooked no argument. "The shock of our arrival will hopefully keep them docile. They're not fools, and they know what our guns can do. If anyone resists, shoot to kill. If it looks like widespread resistance, take hostages. Women and children. They'll back down."

One marine looked askance at the part about women and children, but none of the others so much as blinked.

The prisoners, each with an ankle chained to the deck by a leg iron and with manacles still on their wrists, sat in helpless silence at the front of the catamaran, heads bowed in the rain and not so much as looking back at any of the marines or sailors, a melancholy group no doubt resigned to their unenviable fate. They wore only prisoner uniforms and thus had less protection from the elements than the marines and even the sailors. Yet Dwayne felt no sympathy. Criminals got what they deserved.

Besides, it's not as if you could get sick in the virtual world. Someone had decided that infections and diseases would necessitate hospitals and too much other infrastructure and had never implemented those here. So a man could sit in the rain for days and never catch a cold or fever, no matter how miserable the experience. And a wound would never grow gangrenous before it healed.

Healing was another simplified factor here. A cut that would take weeks to heal normally would take only days here. It made life a lot easier in some ways. Then again, it made life a lot more difficult for anyone being tortured. You could pull a man's fingernails out on Monday and then do it all over again on Thursday after they'd regrown. He knew because he'd done it.

Having been to this island before, when he'd discretely scouted the Carib section, Dwayne recognized a patch of brush sticking out into the beach, used to disguise the large, ocean-going canoes that the islanders expertly piloted.