Surviving Higgins World: Book Two

Only a few more steps and Change or Chaos? will be available on Amazon. Here is a sample of what happens next.

That evening, Spacer asked the sailors who had sailed with Gunson and Batchelder and were in port, to gather in the meeting shelter. He wanted to discuss what Paul Jones had overheard at the party. Some of the sailors were a bit reluctant given what had happened to their respective captains, but Boats reassured them. They would not be held accountable for their leaders. Those men had been harshly punished. Boats had one of the distillers mix the tree nut gin they made with more water from the large nuts and the offer of a drink brought a crowd.

“It’s been a couple of years since we traded over on the east side of ‘topia, Spacer. They’ve developed a couple of new settlements over there, mostly cutting trees since then.” Jack had agreed to tell his story again and persuaded several other crew mates. “We got blown up the coast the first time we saw them. That was before the new ones. We needed water and they jumped us when we were filling the barrels.”

“Scared us, they did, all hairy and dressed in smelly fish skins,” one of the other sailors added. “They had good bows with sharp obsidian points, good enough to make us cooperate.”

“They spoke Trade and knew who we were,” another added. “Mack did the talking that first time and a couple of the Pins we had in the crew recognized one of them.”

“I had forgotten that” Jack Little said. “Seems one of the leaders was a pretty bad criminal in ‘topia. Paddy was from a fishing boat Mack had stopped and warned him to be careful because that guy had killed several people in his own family. Nasty guy from what Paddy said.”

“Mack and their leader hit it off,” another man added, “and we traded some of our load of meal and dried fish to them. We got some skins with fur still on them that Mack knew the Regals would trade for. Too hot for Port.”

“Don’t forget that dried meat they had,” a woman sailor spoke up. “Turned out to be spoiled and we all had to scrub the ship ’cause we all had the flux.”

“Yep, that was bad, and Mack was really mad. You’d think he would not go back but his next trip I was sailing with Beth Ann, so I only heard about it.”

“He tried to give them some foul meat, but they were on to him, and we about got strung up. Lost the whole load that trip.”

Spacer realized a lot was done when these ships were out at sea that he never heard about. No wonder the other settlements called them pirates.

“Boats, can we get a far speaker message to Blackie or Julie? This might make a difference in that trade agreement.” Spacer was worried the raids by Mack Gunson and George Batchelder may have been worse than he knew. Some of their looted material didn’t ever come through Port and others might be expecting this kind of trading to continue.

“How many years has it been since you heard someone trading with these people?” Spacer needed a reference.

“The new places are one, maybe two years old, so it has been at least a year,” Paddy answered. “The man they are talking about went by Black Bart after some pirate back on Terra, but he was a Bartmore from what I heard, kin to the princess.”

Coming soon! Surviving Higgins World: Change or Chaos?