Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Three - No Plan, Just Survive Contact With the Enemy

We didn’t have a plan.

In fact, I felt surprisingly weary, as if all of the excitement of the last few minutes was finally catching up to me, and for a moment, even thinking felt hard and sluggish. But that had to be set aside, at least for the moment.

I huffed and puffed, breathing hard as I felt my stamina slowly depleting away with every thrust of my leg against the pedals.

“We’re going to slow down, just a little,” Bastion said. “You’ll need your stamina.”

I nodded, and when he slowed his pace, I followed suit. “Do you have a plan?” I asked.

Bastion looked at me. “You’re the captain.”

“I’m a very new captain,” I said.

Amaryllis looked back at us, but she seemed just as uncertain as I felt.

“This is such a disaster,” Joe muttered.

“Alright,” Bastion said. “If you don’t mind, Captain Bunch, then I suspect I have a bit more experience with these matters.”

“You’ve boarded ships full of enemies before?” Amaryllis asked, her tone biting and more than rude.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Bastion said. “As a Paladin of the Royal Inquisition, it’s my duty to ensure the safety of the crown and the sovereignty of the Sylph nation. I’ve fought pirates before. That has included boarding their ship. Once at night when they did not see us coming, once in a pitched battle. I suspect this will be more like the latter.”

“That’s awesome,” I said as I looked at my friend with a new light.

Bastion just nodded once. “Do you think you’ll be able to negotiate with the kidnappers?”

I bit my lower lip. “Do you think I can?” That would really be the best case scenario.

“No,” he said. “You’ve surprised me before, but even your diplomatic skills will be hard-pressed when boarding another’s ship to take away a prize they already think they’ve won. That, and we don’t have anything to negotiate with.”

“We have violence. That’s often a very useful tool when it comes to negotiating,” Amaryllis said.

Bastion grinned. ”That it is.”

I wasn’t sure I liked that idea. Not at all. But then Amaryllis twisted something and we were rocketing up towards the ship above.

“We’ll jump off once we’re above the ship. Aim for the main deck and clear out the area. Keep moving, don’t let them gang up on you. Toss them overboard if you can manage it,” Bastion said. He turned his attention to Joe and the other Scallywags. “Keep close to us. Below their line of fire. We might signal you over at the last moment.”

“R-right,” Joe said. Oda and Sally tried to look determined, but they looked just a bit too scared for it to be genuine.

“We can’t take over the entire ship. We find the VIP, we grab her, we leave. If you can damage the ship enough to make a chase difficult for them, then that would be for the best. Got it?”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“I heard you,” Amaryllis said.

The ship was coming up fast. Its name, emblazoned on its side in proud golden letters was the Golden Grove’s Revenge. It was, at a guess, three times as long as the Beaver Cleaver and about as wide, with a long black balloon festooned with golden banners along its sides.

The ship was one of those that looked like an actual naval vessel instead of something more futuristic, though it had two nacelles on its sides with large paddle wheels within, and two smoke stacks somehow poking through the balloon above to spew out black smog into the sky above.

It reminded me a bit of those ships on Earth after the age of sail, but before steamships were the norm.

“Get ready to switch!” Bastion said.

He started pedaling faster, and I pushed some more to keep up. The extra push sent us zipping right past the side of the ship and had a few of the sailors aboard looking up in surprise.

“Switch!”

I got up and tried to move up, fighting the angle of the Manatee and the push of the wind we were slicing through. When I reached the middle, I felt Bastion grabbing my arm and pointing me towards the Golden Grove’s Revenge. “Aim for the deck!” he said.

Nodding, I narrowed my eyes, placed a foot on the edge of the Manatee then tried to ignore the way my tummy flip-flopped inside me as we reached the apex of our arc and started to dip back down.

It felt as if the larger ship was rising up to meet us, and the backdrop of the open sea far below did nothing to help my sense of perception.

“Now!” Bastion said. He launched himself ahead, spinning in mid-air to unsheathe his sword. I saw him slice a rope apart and catch the top part to swing deeper onto the deck all in one smooth motion.

Then I refocused and jumped after him. For a moment I was afraid that my little bit of hesitating would send me smacking into the ship’s side, but I landed on a bannister just below the rails along the deck. My arms windmilled and I only just managed to catch onto the rails above just as a burly man stuck his head out over the edge.

“Who in the World are you?” he asked.

It was very, very rude of me, but I reached out under the rails, grabbed the sailor by the scruff of his shirt, and put all of my weight into pulling him down as hard and fast as I could.

His jaw cracked against the rail and I saw his eyes watering as I climbed up and vaulted over him. He wasn’t knocked out or anything, because that was hard to do, but he didn’t look like he was in the best of shapes.

The deck was a wide, rather cramped space. There were a lot of devices sticking out of the floor, with spools of rope and little machines that I couldn’t identify at a glance. Those didn’t matter, not as much as the dozen men on deck. Most were unarmed, or if they did have something, it was little more than a knife or a length of chain.

Bastion landed at the far end of the deck, both feet crashing into the chest of a man that went flying and giving him the boost needed to spin around in mid-air and land at a crouch with his sword by his side.

Amaryllis swooped onto the deck, ran to a stop, then huffed as lightning started to race up and down her arms and made her feathers puff out.

I cleared my throat, then did it again when the sound was drowned out by the whipping of the ship’s paddle-like propellers. “Hello everyone,” I said. “My name is Broccoli Bunch, captain of the Beaver Cleaver, and you kidnapped one of my best friends.”

“Pirates!” One of the men shouted.

“Technically, we’re not--” I began, but it was far too late.

One of the sailors that had a knife ran straight for me and started to swing his weapon around. I ducked back, looked around for something to use as a weapon of my own, then on finding nothing, let loose a burst of Cleaning magic at the man’s face.

He covered his eyes, which meant that he never saw it when Amaryllis zapped him full on in the chest.

“Amaryllis!” I said.

“He’s probably not dead,” she said. “We have bigger things to worry about!”

I wanted to say a bad word, but refrained. One of the pirates jumped forwards, a rope swinging around him and snapping around as if it was a living thing. I couldn’t focus on anything but ducking and weaving out of its way until the man twitched and swung his arm around to smack one of his own friends with his rope.

The telltale electrical snaps around his body hinted at who made that happen.

“Head in the game, idiot!” Amaryllis said.

I nodded. She was right. No matter what, the one thing I couldn’t do was nothing.

Something caught my eye, and I found myself grinning as I rushed over to the side, rolled past a man with a club, then picked up the perfect weapon out of the sopping wet bucket it had been left in.

The mop head splashed some soapy water across the deck as I brought it up and brandished it at the three men that had followed after me. A glance to the side and I saw Amaryllis firing bolts of lightning at a few sailors while another, connected to her by electrified strings, was whaling into a comrade with little finesse and less skill.

Bastion, for his part, was holding his own against five men at once, spinning and twisting out of their path and leaving shallow cuts through clothes and skin with the tip of his sword. It looked almost as if he was just toying with them.

Maybe I should have Inspected his level at some point.

“Drop the mop girl,” one of the pirates said.

I spun the mop around and gestured with the head of it in their general direction. One of them even moved out of the way of the splatter of water I sprinkled his way. “I’m warning you, I’ve got expert cleaning skills and I know how to use this. Just give us back our friend and we won’t have to do anything drastic.”

One of them didn’t take my warning seriously, he raised his bat and came at me with a roar.

I slid my foot towards the bucket, then flung it up so that it smacked him between the legs with a wet splat. Then when he started to trip forwards, I hooked the mophead around his neck and pulled him down.

I let go of the mop with one hand and started to concentrate on the first spell that came to mind. I was halfway into building it when the next pirate rushed me. I smacked his hand aside with the end of the mop handle, then poked it against his throat.

He stumbled back with a gurgle and cough just as I raised my hand towards the remaining pirate, now with nine fireballs spinning around it. “Mass Fireball!” I called.

The pirate ‘eeped’ and jumped out of the path of the balls of fire. They shot out, spinning around like balloons losing their air. Four went over the edge and burst in the sky, but the others smacked into the ship and sails and spread sticky flames across the wooden surface.

“Oops,” I said.

The door to the cabins at the back burst open and a dozen more men rushed onto the deck. These weren’t just sailors with whatever they had on hand though, they were all carrying proper weapons. Swords and studded clubs, a few long spears with hooked spikes at the end and...

“Crossbows!” I cried before ducking to the side and behind a barrel.

A bolt thumped into the wood right next to my head. I looked over to Amaryllis to see her hiding behind the man she was puppetting and Bastion... sliced the two bolts fired at him out of the air with a motion of his sword so fast it was little more than a blur.

“Those are arbalests, not crossbows,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “My bad.”

“No matter,” he replied before shifting his shoulders and letting his wings beat a few times. “I could use some support. Distract a few of them so that I can take the brunt without having to watch my back.”

“You’re kinda scary,” I said.

“Who in the world are you?” I peaked over the barrel and watched as a very angry Golden Rogers stomped onto the scene. “You three, get those fires under control dammit! And you idiots, who do you think you are, boarding my ship?”

I swallowed, then stood. I was about to give this bully a piece of my mind.

***