Chapter Twenty-Two - Piracy Across the Shitty Seas

“It can’t just be about choosing people who aren’t asses. There’s something else to it.

I don’t know what it is though. The numbers are hard to grab, but it’s something like ninety percent of all samurai who turn around and start fighting to help people, but only in a very narrow, select way that won’t entirely destabilize society at large.

Selection bias is a factor, sure, but there has to be more to it than that. We ran the numbers, entering every last bit of information we could about people, and we have access to their media feeds. The best our machine learning algorithms could pull up was some weird correlation between time spent reading on the shitter and people who become samurai.

It’s not just about people with a certain mindset. People are too mutable. There’s something else at play, and I can’t figure out what it is.”

--Intercepted message between CIA analysts, 2024

***

I was never very acrobatic. For that matter, I was never all that strong either. Fortunately, I had badass power armour to make up for some of my deficiencies.

My jump over the edge of the boat wasn’t perfect. A larger wave and maybe some faster reactions from the pilot, and there’s no way I would have made it aboard. As it was, I banged both shins on the edge of the boat and rolled forwards into it.

I was pitched to the bottom, but I tucked at the last moment and landed shoulder-first, which meant I could roll and crash onto the bottom back-first.

Which left me near the pointed front of the boat, on my back, between the legs of the two Sewer Dragons that weren’t glued down.

The one on the big mounted turret swung his gun around to point at me, only for the gun to stop before reaching the angle needed to shoot me. It couldn’t depress low enough.

I didn’t have any such issues as I kicked out, heel-first, and rammed him in the shin hard enough that I heard something snap.

His pant leg tore and a metallic bar pierced through the tough fabric where his obviously prosthetic leg had broken. He tumbled down onto his ass, the entire boat shifting with the sudden motion.

Dragon number two jumped down onto me and grasped for joints in my armour. I think he’d done the mental math and figured shooting me wasn’t cutting it. Maybe he planned on tossing me overboard?

I wrestled with him for a moment until I got one arm free and had enough room to swing a punch into his face. The first made him wobble. The second cracked against his jaw and he went stiff and collapsed onto me.

Swearing under my breath, I shoved him to the bottom of the boat, then wobbled onto my feet. The idiot on the ground who’d been behind the fixed gun pulled out a small handgun he aimed at my chest.

He fired.

The bullets went clink-clink.

I kicked at him. I intended to hit the gun, but the awful footing and bumpy ride had me kicking higher. I hit him in the wrist. I couldn’t hold back a wince as I saw his clearly mechanical hand detach from his arm and go flying overboard. No one was retrieving that anytime soon.

I kept myself low as I moved towards the back of the ship and the little cabin there.

The guy in it stared at me coming, wide-eyed, until I tore the door open and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Throttle down,” I asked, politely.

Almost meekly, he reached over to a lever in the ship’s console and carefully lowered it to the sound of the boat’s engine slowing down.

I kept a hold of him as I looked behind us. Gomorrah was still in our shitty little pontoon boat, puttering along and getting closer at a decent clip. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I warned the pilot before I moved to the back of the boat.

Gomorrah slowed down so that when she inevitably bumped into us, it was just a small lurch, the tires along the edges of both boats squeaking with the impact.

“What do we do with them?” Gomorrah asked as she casually stepped up and onto our new ride.

“Uh, toss them in the shit?” I asked with a gesture to the flowing river of sludge next to us. I had the impression it was moving along faster now. Could have been wrong about that, though.

“They’ll drown,” Franny said with all the indignity a nun could muster.

I shrugged. “They were shooting us,” I said. “And don’t tell me that bat of yours has a non-lethal setting on it.”

“I’m sure there are other options,” Gomorrah said. She moved into the cabin, opened the door, then stared at the trembling idiot within. “Out.”

“Alright, fine,” I said. She was taking her girl’s side, which, while annoying, was entirely fair. “Hey, idiot, help me load your idiot friends up onto the other boat.”

“The one that’s sinking?” Gomorrah asked.

“They’ll have five minutes to get somewhere,” I replied. “Less if this guy’s slow about it.”

As it turned out, he might’ve been an idiot, but he was a highly motivated one. We flung his one armed, one-legged buddy aboard, then the guy I conked on the chin woke up and managed to stumble onto the boat too. The only idiot that proved a challenge was the one I’d glued to the back of the boat, but I solved that by breaking off the prosthetic arm I’d glued to the hull with a few well-placed kicks.

“You didn’t want to keep them around for questioning?” Gomorrah asked as we watched the four of them move off. The pontoon boat was sitting noticeably lower in the water. I didn’t think they had all that much time left.

“Nah. I figure they know fuck-all, and at this point it’s pretty clear what we’re doing here isn’t an investigation.”

“What is it, then?” Gomorrah asked.

“This is a good old fashioned un-kidnapping,” I replied before I cocked my head to the side. “I can hear something else coming. We might have more company on the way.”

“I’ll get us moving.”

Nodding, I moved to the front of the boat again and sat down on a plank that seemed to serve as a bench. “Myalis, more sticky ammo, please,” I said.

New Purchase: Non-Lethal Explosive Ammunition

Points Reduced from... 10,891 to... 10,881!

I reloaded my gun while the boat picked up speed. Then, once that was done, I eyed my map. Myalis was kind enough to mark the route we had to take in green, with the path we’d already taken greyed out behind us. Our little adventure so far had taken us about halfway there.

Good enough.

I moved to the very front of the boat when the noise of something moving up ahead became even louder. I slid down, one knee wedged into the tip of the boat and my Icarus up to my shoulder. I turned on my invisibility. Someone might be able to see my gun, but that was it.

“Is it always like that?” Rac asked.

“Like what?” I asked.

“You know, running around, scaring the hell out of idiots. Shooting shit?”

I laughed. “Nah. Usually it’s aliens. They’re a lot trickier than people. Not that I have a ton of experience, you know. I’m not the kind of girl who’s had a lot of jobs, but so far, this one’s not bad. Good exercise, you get some great perks, visit fascinating new places.” I gestured to the shitty tunnels around us.

“I bet! That’s like, the coolest job ever,” Rac said.

I shrugged. “It’s not too bad, honestly. Dangerous, but so far the pay’s been worth it. You get to save people, you know? Sure, you’re putting your neck on the line, but it's worth it sometimes. Depending on the people you’re saving.”

“You think of yourself as a hero?” Franny asked. There was surprisingly little judgement there.

“Nah. I’m no hero,” I said.

The tunnel had a bend ahead, and as we came to it, a pair of speedy little boats came around. They had guys in familiar augs with guns out. I raised my Icarus, lining up the firing arc with the first ship, then fired. Three shots, then I moved on to the next boat and fired again.

By the time we crossed them properly, the foam covering the boats was expanding and the two were veering off course and bumping into the walls while their occupants screamed and cursed.

“I’m not a hero,” I repeated. “Just a girl with a bit of luck, a lot of guns, and... I guess it’s the willingness not to let good folk get fucked over.”

“Nice speech, Gomorrah said. “Can you focus on the road ahead?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “You just don’t want us to start talking about your philosophy on the whole samurai thing.”

“What philosophy?” Franny asked.

I could almost feel the daggers being glared into my back.

***