Chapter 12: Swashbucklin’

“Revenge heals all wounds.”

-Unknown.

Stephan stumbled when the anchor hit. He steadied himself against a wall, knees knocking. The influx of power from the other ship made the lights in the ceiling flash and flicker, blew out a few of them.

A few moments later, the port boarding doors opened and he was hit by a wave of cold air.

“Yin, you handle the gunners and officers!” Kurko shouted. “Torch, you’re interference! Lordling! The fuck are you doing over there?”

Stephan righted himself and faced the behemoth, who was holding his man-sized shotgun against one shoulder.

“Just… getting ready,” he said as he held back a wave of bile.

“Yes, well, stay behind us,” Kurko said. “Don’t get yourself killed. I don’t want the captain nagging me on that account.”

Yin threw herself out of the ship and leapt the gap in a single bound, slipping through the large hole the drain anchor had created. Gunfire and screaming followed.

Torch was second. He sprinted confidently across the thick chain that ran taut between the two ships, a lit explosive in each hand, as he cackled like a maniac.

Kurko was third. The chain was too small for him, so he simply ducked through the boarding doors, stepped off the chain as a springboard, and jumped atop the warship. He blew a sizeable hole in the hull with his shotgun and dropped through.

Stephan was last. With an ever-growing sense of trepidation, he inched up to the boarding doors, beyond which was only empty space and tugging winds.

Stephan closed his eyes. Okay, you’ve done this once before. Nothing to worry about.

He inched his left foot onto the chain.

Nothing to worry about.

Nothing to…

Oh, fuck it. Let’s do this.

Stephan ran onto the chain. It all went rather well until he accidentally looked down and saw the hundreds of meters separating him from the ocean. His muscles tensed up and his stomach flipped, but his momentum kept him moving.

He scrambled, slipped, stumbled face-first through the hole into the opposing ship.

He was nearly hit by a flying, screaming soldier, who went straight out the jagged hole. His screams slowly tapered off.

Stephan went on, entering into the back of the main deck. Everything was chaos. Bullets were flying everywhere. A full dozen Concordian soldiers outnumbered the pirates. Most of the fire was focused on the behemoth, who shrugged it off like bee stings as he shotgunned several men at a time. His gun cracked like thunder, set the walls and floor quivering. His war cry was not half as loud, but set twice the fear into the enemy soldiers. His icy breath filled the room, oppressing the men.

Stephan fumbled for the pistol holstered to his belt. He got it out, and switched off the safety, and aimed it with shaking hands into the tumult.

Torch danced by him, all smiles and laughter. He shot a man in the face with a pistol, discharged his brains out the back of his head, then raised his other hand at the man’s comrade.

“Yala!” he sang. A bolt of electricity extended from his fingers and struck the soldier square in his chest. His mouth came open and he shuddered for a moment, then he fell backward, stiff and unmoving.

Torch continued on, and Stephan was faced with two more Concordians barreling towards him. They brandished rifles, barrels pointed right at his face.

Stephan hit the deck and a burst of gunfire went over his head. He raised his pistol towards one of the men in a one-handed grip. His finger quivered on the trigger.

The man fell backward, a bullet through his head. The second met the same end.

Stephan looked down at his gun, mouth agape.

“Stop gawking, Mr. Lordling!” Quintilla said. She leapt off the chain and onto the ship. A trail of smoke extended from the barrel of her drawn revolver. “We have a job to do.”

He got back on his feet and saw that every Concordian lay dead or dying.

“Is that it?” Stephan asked. “Did we do it?”

“Not even close,” Torch said, coming out of the pilot’s cockpit. “This is a big ship. There’ll be more on the gun deck.”

The pyromaniac was right. Stephan could still hear the muffled sounds of fighting coming from the lower levels. Yin had to be down there.

“Kurko, you’ll just clutter us up,” Quintilla said. “You stay up here, make sure none of these great friends decide to bother us.”

Kurko looked like he wanted to protest, but one look from the captain shut him up. Stephan silently wished they could have traded places, but when Quintilla moved, he filed in behind the others.

They headed down a set of stairs, spread out so as to avoid drawing too much fire. The first thing he saw when he descended to the gun deck—a level intended specifically for the allocation and maintenance of the Intrepid’s ship-to-ship guns—was Yin cutting clean through the spinal column of a man trying to escape. He fell in a big tangle of limbs and made pitiful little whimpering noises, but could not move much, and seemed too shocked to attempt it.

The rest of the gun deck was empty of combatants. Only a handful Concordian corpses littered the floor.

“Ta-daaa,” Yin said with a flourish of her bloody shortswords. “Gunners are handled.”

“What about the officers?” Quintilla asked.

Yin poked a dead woman with her foot. “This is the sergeant, I think. Captain took the last of his guys and headed down to the cargo hold.”

“They’re planning a last stand. Stubborn bastards. Well, nothing a few grenades shouldn’t fix. Torch, you good with that?”

“Oh yeah,” Torch said with a yellow-toothed grin. “I’ve got some good stuff, Captain.”

Quintilla nodded. “Then all that’s left is to—”

“Captain Wenezian!” Kurko called from the main deck. “There’s a bit of a situation!”

“What now?” Quintilla cried back.

“The controls in the cockpit are going crazy,” he said. “Emergency power engaged. Self-destruct initiated. That’s what it says!”

“Oh, for…” Quintilla rubbed her face with her palm of her hand. “It’s never easy, is it? Looks like the Concordians don’t want us to get our hands on that intelligence.”

Stephan swallowed hard.

Self-destruct. That doesn’t sound good.