I let Khikall take control of the ship and slowly ease us into the pea soup fog that was quickly rolling into the harbor. It was hard trusting someone I had just met but he seemed like a straight sort of guy. Besides, I couldn’t do this alone, despite my capabilities.

“This is normal?” I asked.

“The mist? Yes, this is actually quite thin yet. The mists roll in and stick around for a few days before they dissipate again. Something to do with the mana fluctuations that keep the islands afloat or so I heard,” Khikall replied, reaching into his vest and producing what looked like the bottom of a glass bottle and holding it up to his eye.

“What’s that do?”

“Here, see for yourself,” he said, tossing me the item.

I snatched it out of the air and looked it over. It was obviously enchanted as could be seen by the visible magic circle around the edges. I held the item up and looked through it like I had seen Khikall just do. What I saw was the blank metal walls inside the ship. I frowned in confusion for a second before Khikall chimed in.

“It is supposed to allow you to see through the fog but something within your ship is blocking it. Either the metal or whatever enchantments you are employing. I will have to navigate through that other item you picked up and hope for the best.”

“Oh, that’s it, I could probably modify the display to cut through the fog, give me an hour.”

He chittered, clicking his teeth rapidly and I looked at him with concern.

“Apologies, that is how Jeroba show amusement. I was amused by the fact that you boiled down an enchantment that cost five thousand credits into a simple hour's work. Not that I doubt your ability after seeing this ship, you designed and built it yourself?”

“Well, I didn’t build it myself but I did design it and the enchantments. How could you tell?”

“Very few captains know every nut and bolt of their ship. But even less care about it as much as you seem to, based on the repairs you personally did.”

“Well… Thank you, I appreciate the sentiment.”

The conversation petered out as Khikall concentrated on not crashing in the thick fog with only the compass to guide him and I got to work adding an upgrade.

Knowing I was probably going to have to make improvements and changes to this new ship, I designed a system to quickly implement what I termed temporary changes or upgrades. The changes would be made on a special tablet that linked to the corresponding section of the ship I wanted to change and had a clay-like consistency to the surface.

Any changes I made on the tablet would update the runes on the mithril pathways. This wasn’t as precise as carving them in manually and suffered similar issues too when I tried to mass produce my previous designs. It was a bit like those pin impression toys. The effect was weaker overall but in this case, anything would be an improvement.

It didn’t take me long to draw out the runes I needed as it was similar to my tattoo. But unlike my tattoo, it only needed to see through this mist and wouldn’t have the same green glow that my tattoo produced, not that it would show from inside the ship anyway. The effect was different too as I looked through the test piece I had scratched some runes into. I shrugged, it wasn’t perfect but it would work.

My fingers flashed across the tablet and ten minutes later a flash of black light crawled across the view screen, highlighting everything outside the ship with a wavy black outline that resembled slow black fire. It was a bit like echolocation or a topographical representation of what was around us. Finer details were lost but you could at least see where you were going.

“There, that should work,” I said, storing the tablet.

“Fascinating. While not as detailed as the looking glass, I can certainly see this being far preferable. The ability to see everything at once is definitely an improvement. Speaking of everything,” he added, pointing off to the northern side of the island, “looks like we have a follower.”

I looked to where he pointed but I didn’t see what he saw, at first, then slowly I saw the prow of a ship coming from around the island to pace us.

“How did you even spot that?” I asked in amazement.

He shrugged, “high perception and decades of experience. It’s probably a minor pirate ship but they won’t attack us until we're a few hours from the port, what do you want to do?”

“You’re the expert here, so I will leave it up to you.”

My plan would just involve blasting the ship to bits right here but I wanted to see how Khikall handled this situation.

He grunted, “very well. There is a small island an hour away, your ship is quite a bit faster than these pirates so I suggest we circle around and come in behind them after they lose sight of us. They won’t risk going over the island as they would lose the cover of the mist, and going under the island will give up the advantage of the high ground.”

I looked at the ship again, it didn’t resemble those steamer ships I had seen so I assumed it couldn’t create its own cloud cover. I did see a large oblong balloon above the vessel so it was similar in make to the Guild's vessels.

“Sounds good to me, the helm is yours, I’ll operate the weapons. I assume shooting them down won’t be an issue?”

“No. The bounty will payout as long as you retrieve their flag or the captain's head.”

I nodded.

It took about an hour to get to the island in question. The entire time, the other ship trailed in our wake, remaining close enough to pounce but outside the range of our weapons.

“Get ready,” Khikall said quietly.

“Ready when you are,” I replied.

I left the bottom weapons stored for now. I would wait until we were out of sight of our quarry before I deployed them.

As we skirted the edge of the island we started to pick up speed, slowly at first. The ship following us must not have noticed right away as we quickly pulled away. As soon as we were out of sight, Khikall shoved the throttle forward and we raced around the island to come up behind the pirate ship.

I wasted no time, deploying all of the weapons. As we came back around the island, we spotted the pirate but they weren’t where we expected them to be.

I heard Khikall click his teeth once, probably in irritation. “They didn’t bite, we will have to give chase.”

“It’s your call,” I said simply.

He grunted in reply and we curved back toward the fleeing ship.

“Incoming fire!” Khikall said a minute later, jerking the ship in a slalom that threw me against the straps of my chair.

The control system was doing a piss poor job of detecting the incoming rounds simply due to the fact that it wasn’t linked into the upgrade system and couldn’t see them. Another oversight on my part but one not easily fixed without overhauling the detection system. I could do it but that would be a few days of downtime.

I jerked against my straps again as we avoided another round. The ship rocked as a third round ricocheted off the shield. If I had been behind the helm, we would have been hit multiple times already. Hiring Khikall was already paying off.

Khikall chittered in joy, “your shields are truly a wonder to behold, I have been on few ships that could hold up to more than a few impacts from these enhanced cannons. Yet yours shrugged it off like nothing and are already recharging.”

“Thanks,” I said, gritting my teeth as the mad man weaved us closer to our quarry.

The enemy cannons had much better range than my mana-based weapons, even my lasers. They had their own downsides though, they were bulky and required ammunition. Which took up even more space. They were also slow to load and fire.

Finally, we were within range of the lasers. I opened up with a full salvo, aiming for the balloon.

All twenty beams had a clear line of sight to the target and cut through the mist like the rays of a vengeful sun. The enemy's shield rippled in protest as my attack slammed home. But it held, surprising me.

I heard Khikall grunt, “the mists may have weakened the effectiveness of your weapons. I will attempt to get us closer so you can fire the mana cannons, those should be more effective.”

I hoped so, or this pirate may just turn around and realize we weren’t much of a threat. I could put the lasers on continuous fire and that may work but I was leaving that as a last resort since replacing those – if they burned out – would be annoying and time-consuming.

The Retribution rocked as three more attacks hit our shield. The enemy ship was starting to come about to fire its broadside at us as they had realized they couldn’t outrun us.

That would be a mistake though as we quickly made up the distance and I fired all of the weapons aboard Retribution. The flash of energy was so intense it lit up the mist around us, blinding the view screen and even washing out the change I made to see through the mist. The power in the mana heart dropped to about a third but was quickly recharging. I wouldn’t be able to fire volleys like that for an extended fight, good to know.

By the time the display came back, we were on top of the pirate ship, literally. My attack had blown apart the balloon they used for lift and the ship had begun to plummet from the sky only moments before we would have plowed directly into it. All wasn’t roses and rainbows though as the lines that used to hold the balloon got caught up on the Retribution and dragged us down along with the other ship.

“Shit! Hold on,” Khikall said, trying to shake the other ship free.

“I’ll go fix this, you try to keep us from slamming into the ocean,” I said, unbuckling myself and rushing for the top hatch. My armor was covering me before I even left the command room.

I got to the deck just in time to see three people climbing the ropes to greet me.

Two were human and one was a beast-woman but I couldn’t tell what type. I did recognize her as the pirate captain though.

I couldn’t even activate the defensive systems as I was on the deck. Oh well, I would deal with this the old-fashioned way, brute force beatdown time. I activated Charge and slammed into one of the men before he got his feet under him. He flew over the edge of the ship, screaming as he fell to his death.

I didn’t bother sticking around to watch as I was already pivoting to avoid a blade of condensed air, thrown my way by the captain. I smiled inside my helmet as I used Identify.

Grull | Tempest | Level 18

The woman was already conjuring a vortex of wind around her and I didn’t like that. But I had to deal with her subordinate first.

The man rushed me with impressive speed and I saw the telltale sign that he was being enhanced by the woman.

Unfortunately for him, the ship lurched and he stumbled slightly as he ran. It wasn’t much but I was able to take advantage of it by casting Frostwave in his path. He fell flat on his face and I stepped to the side as he slid off the side to join his fellow screaming crew member.

“Well… just you and me then,” I said as I spun my staff and circled the wind mage. “Don’t suppose you would just give up?”

She growled and the small tornado separated from her body and rocketed toward me.

“Guess that was too much to ask for,” I said with a sigh.

I cast Blink Step and Time Shudder, and simply blurred through the wind as if it wasn’t even moving. Before she could even react, I grabbed her by the neck and activated three of my favorite skills, Corrupting Touch, Calcifying Strike, and Festering Wound. It had become a favored combination of mine because the skills all fed into each other rather well. Especially Festering Wound since every time the other two did damage it was considered a new wound and increased the damage that Festering Wound would add. I discovered that neat quirk when Fiona and I were fighting the gorlophants.

She tried to retaliate with a burst of sharpened air blades but I grunted and endured the pain as I squeezed and tore her throat away like a rotten piece of fruit using my false hand.

Blood splashed across me and most of the deck as she scrabbled at her ruined throat. She even tried choking down a health potion but her entire neck had rotted or turned to stone by this point so the potion was useless. As she fell to the deck, I kicked the back of her neck, snapping her spine and ending her misery. I looted the corpse, stored the head, and tossed the rest off my ship. Then I went about cutting the lines free and braced myself as the Retribution surged skyward again.

It wasn’t a perfect first go but I must say Khikall was quite the pilot and he was rather cool under pressure. Even the crash wasn’t really his fault, it was mine for blinding our sensors.