Chapter Five: Hell Hath No Fury
They gathered in a domed, lavishly furnished sitting room. The goon with the machete hand had wrapped his thick, corded arm around Polly's waist, immobilizing her. At the same time, a savage blow from another guard had dropped Joe to his knees. Jolly Roger loomed over him, taunting the base of his neck with a polished stiletto.
"You have five minutes to talk before I slit your neck and gut the pris."
She was a cunning specimen of lethal sensuality, a woman accustomed to using beauty and violence to take what she wanted from life. Jolly was garbed in black equestrian riding pants and a leather bodice that hugged her voluptuous curves. Outside the bodice she wore an opened, blood red waist coat trimmed in gold. Luscious, auburn locks fell seductively over her shoulders, but did little to detract attention from the multitude of knives fastened to every available space on her body. Everything from throwing daggers, to meat cleavers, to swords, could be found strapped to her person and she was an expert with them all.
"Four minutes Joe, you'd best hurry" she said, gently grinding the tip of the blade into his neck.
"Something's happened to Rock. We think he might be dead."
Jolly cracked the vertebrae in her neck, considering Joe's words before snapping the stiletto away from his neck. She dismissed her bodyguards before turning on the heel of her knee high boot and walking out of the room. Joe got up off the floor and followed her with Polly in pursuit.
They entered an office of slate gray walls that disappeared in a complex web of pipes and ventilation shafts near the ceiling. Her desk was an ornate slab of polished oak that sat in front of two walls of glass overlooking the City proper. Tall columns of bookcases, flanking the desk on either side, were filled with jars of severed hands, bobbing lifelessly in putrid green brine. Upon seeing the gruesome trophies, Polly screamed and pressed herself against Joe's arm.
Roger saw Polly's revulsion and smiled contemptuously.
"Girl's gotta protect herself from being hurt," she sneered, picking at her nails with the tip of a dagger. "Isn't that right, Joe?"
"Jolly," he said, ignoring the veiled attack as he and Polly took their seats before her. "Three days ago Rock and the Seahawks were engaging a squad of Japanese pirates somewhere over the South Pacific. They chased the pirates into a storm and were ambushed. Rock managed to get a distress call to me, and said something about black airships with a red skull and crossbones emblem. I need information on the airships. I need your help."
Jolly's body tensed at the mention of the black airships, and the color drained from her face.
"That big lug, always trying to save the world from something," she said.
Jolly got up from her desk and turned to face the City. She trembled slightly and clenched her fists behind her, not wanting Joe to see her pain. Jolly was about to speak again when a violent tremor rocked the foundation of the city. Outside, ebony jet fighters were racing across the City, bombing the tenements below.
"Blackbeard. Damn, he found out!"
"Who's that?" Joe said, springing from his seat with gun in hand.
Jolly leaped over her desk, drawing a vicious looking sabre from a jewel-encrusted scabbard hanging off her hip. Wasting no time, she grabbed Joe and Polly by their arms and pulled them out of the room with her. Looking back, Joe saw two ballistic missiles, their cones painted with red skulls, crashing through the glass walls, rocketing straight for them!
Stay tuned for Chapter Six: Death From Above