I had to remove my armor before I could shove myself into the tight crawl space behind the bulkhead and wall. Thankfully I fit. Otherwise, I would have to remove an entire wall section to get at the damaged areas. It wasn’t the worst outcome but it would take far longer to remove those than it would to simply slide behind it. I suppose if I was in dire straights, I could just rip the panel off with brute strength but purposefully damaging my ship felt wrong.

The power conduit wasn’t like a normal electrical cable or even like the distribution lines I laid down on previous designs. Those worked to carry magical power in a similar way to my power conduit but were thin and easily torn. So when I designed the Retribution, I created the conduit as an upgrade. It was a series of finger-thick mithril bars that were square. The bars were mounted to rubber grommets that allowed them to flex and twist as needed. The runes carved into them did the rest.

And they worked great, except with the flexibility came a lack of durability, although, they were still stronger than a normal steel cable. They just weren’t designed to have the sharp edge of a compressed titanium plate shoved through them.

I sighed as I came to the damage, it wasn’t visible on the outside wall because the damaged armor panel had stopped when it impacted the exterior of the bulkhead.

The lines would have to be repaired but that was for later. I didn’t have time to remove the damaged section and splice in a new one, so I did a quick and dirty fix. I shimmied underneath the panel and sliced off a foot of each broken cable with a mana knife. This needed to be done to remove the corrupted runic section. Since the runes just repeated continuously this was rather easy. I then slid on a connector with a power ribbon attached to one end.

I unrolled the power ribbon until It could reach the other side and lopped off another damaged section. I cut the end of the ribbon, leaving it longer than it needed to be, and clamped it into another connector. As soon as I slid the connector in place, the entire line flashed with mana as it began working again.

I wrenched my arm around and pulled out my radio. “Ok, cloak should be working again.” There was an affirmative response from the radio as I tucked it away. I sighed, only three more lines to do on this side.

It took me the better part of an hour to reattach the four conduits. Not because it was all that hard, but because it was a pain to move within the tight space. I also had to make sure the conduits couldn’t touch each other or there would be bleed over.

The radio crackled to life as the last connection was made. “Captain, the view screen is working again but the enemy is still chasing us. We are gaining ground but I don’t think we can lose them like this.”

I was afraid this would be the case. Ever since I learned there was a way to track mana fluctuations, it was only a matter of time until some pirate crew had a capable person aboard. It's probably how they spotted us in the first place while we were invisible.

I extricated myself from the crawlspace before responding. “Keep going, try to find us an island to duck behind in the next few hours. I think I have an idea how to lose them.”

“Roger, captain,” Khikall replied. I felt the ship turn slightly and I steadied myself on the wall. The main issues may have been fixed but the Retribution was no longer in fighting shape. The shield was still broken thanks to the same armor plate that punctured the outer hull. Luckily the cloak didn’t rely on the same runes to operate.

I made my way to the command room and nodded to the others. “Are we on a good heading, I can't have any sudden movements for at least an hour.”

“Um… we should be good, captain, but I can slow us down a bit if you want more time.”

I thought over Khikall’s suggestion and nodded. “Do it, but not too slow, I have a feeling our opponents may not be showing their entire hand yet.” I had seen the fast attack ships that pirates liked to use, and hadn’t seen a single one from the enemy fleet yet.

Khikall gave me the okay and I unlocked the power distribution cabinet with my hand. The runic lock flashed white and the panel popped open to reveal the mana heart. I heard a couple of gasps and turned to see Em’ah and Barcos staring at the crystal. “By the gods, no wonder this ship has so much power. I don’t think I have seen a crystal that large on anything short of a dreadnaught.”

I thought Barcos was being overly dramatic at first but going by Em’ah’s expression…maybe not. “Really? Huh,” I turned back toward the cabinet with a smile as I enjoyed the stunned silence. I slid the power tray out and examined it for damage. It appeared to be fully intact.

I had to open the cabinet to access the power control function for the whole ship because I couldn’t implement this change on the consoles. I could turn off the passive mana gathering from any console but I needed to shunt a massive amount of mana from the crystal to the exterior of the ship. So instead of creating a void in the mana as we passed, there would be an excess of mana. A smokescreen if you will. At the same time, I would need to disable the mana gathering array and we could hide anywhere on the island until our pursuers went away. At least that was the idea.

I first needed to see if my idea would work. It was similar to the null beam in concept but not in execution. Although making the ship one giant omnidirectional null beam was appealing, it wasn’t practical simply due to the fact that the energy would tear the ship apart since it wasn’t made from mithril.

I finished the programming and input it into the main power console. Carefully I slid it back into its housing and sealed the armored panel closed. The lock flashed again and the runes quickly vanished leaving it looking like a simple bulkhead.

It had taken me less time than I thought, which was good because it gave me time to strap in moments before Khikall raised an alarm and shoved the ship forward at full velocity. “Enemy has launched intercept craft, they know we are going to try something as we get to the island.”

“Concentrate on flying. Barcos, Em’ah, split the remaining turrets between you two and keep them off of us. I have to concentrate on this next part, we only have one shot at this.”

The fast attack craft only had one cannon but they also had grappling hooks. If they managed to get attached before I carried out my plan, we would be fucked. The Retribution tilted violently as a cannonball streaked by just below. This was followed by two more. I felt the ship rumble as the turrets fired out of sync.

The enemy craft broke off and circled back around for another attack. We were nearing the island but I waited. The enemy ships got closer but still, I waited. It wasn’t until the enemy ships fired again and the cannonball sailed past us that I activated the new command.

Everything inside the ship went dead as the entire core dumped its stored mana around the ship. We started falling through a haze of expanding mana and I turned off the passive recharge. After what felt like an eternity but was only a few seconds, I turned off the command to dump all of the stored mana and started feeding my personal mana into the core. I disabled all systems except the cloak.

“Find us a place to hide,” I ordered as all of my concentration was on keeping the ship flying by feeding it mana.

I complained about Khikall’s reckless flying but I had to admit it was effective. We found a spot to hide while the enemy ships bombarded the island searching for us. They knew we had to be there as escape would be impossible without leaving a trail.

Well… they were right, sorta. Khikall came up with a daring plan, although I had to veto part of it.

After the enemy ships had circled around the island long enough to muddy any trail, we simply slipped in behind their ships. Khikall wanted us to follow them away but I thought that was too dangerous an option so I proposed we just backtrack along our old path. We could have hidden in one of the other ships' old wakes but there was a much narrower margin of error there.

So after four hours of playing hide and seek, we split off and followed the original trail back. Not as easy as you would think. Since Em’ah’s skill didn’t work from inside the ship and Em’ah couldn’t go above deck or it would expose our position, we had to come up with an alternative. That alternative involved me torching a fucking hole in the front of the ship so she could peer through it from inside.

I was going to add a periscope to my next design, this was ridiculous.

Despite the crude method, it worked and we sailed away from the island without pursuit. Once we were well out of range we cut in a new direction and blasted toward the pirate island we freed, to effect repairs.

Three days of travel didn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things but for a heavily damaged ship it was. Especially when I had to continuously supply it with mana. I got Em’ah and Barcos to pitch in but neither had mage-based classes so their mana was very limited. To say I was tired was an understatement as we limped into port in the dead of night and with the mists as thick as I had ever seen them.

After sleeping an entire day to recuperate, I inspected the damage for the first time. The others had snuck off at some point and were probably enjoying a beer down at the bar. But that was fine, I had a few former slaves here to help. I was going to need it.

The damage to one side wasn’t all that bad except for one section where four armor panels butted together. Apparently, that was where a cannonball struck resulting in the panels folding in and piercing the hull to slice through the power conduit.

So it was a design flaw on my part. I should have had two layers of armor offset to prevent this issue. A note I added for future designs. Already workers were pulling out the ruined sections. They were quick to pick up on the benefit of a plasma torch.

If that were the only damage I wouldn’t be so grumpy. The main damage was to the underside. Entire armor plates were mangled. Some sported scoring from explosions but the main damage was caused by our impact on the other enemy ship. I watched as a dozen men pulled on a chain attached to one of those panels. The metal groaned as it bent out and the damaged turret finally released from its deformed socket, held in only by friction.

I was glad it had held, if it had come loose during our escape, all of our efforts would have been rendered useless in an instant when the cloak failed. There was no way I was capable of doing the repairs myself in any reasonable amount of time. It was faster to direct these dock workers to do it for me. Money was less precious to me than time right now. With everything in the area spiraling out of control I wanted to be back up and running as quickly as possible.

On that note, I inspected the remaining weapons. While they didn’t see prolonged use, I could already pick out the telltale signs of wear and tear on some of them. The overall winner in terms of resilience was the ones made from the strange bone powder. I guess I shouldn’t be overly surprised by that. At least I had an easy means of making replacement weapons now.

While the workers were removing broken components, I set about pressing and forming new guns. I was just going to replace all of them at once. This way I knew everything would be good to go. It also gave me time to inspect the runes connecting the turrets. With so much damage some of those might have become damaged as well. Better to find out now than in the midst of another fight.

I also debated on adding a second layer of armor to the ship now but decided our speed was more important than armor. Plus we had the shield… well, once I fixed the runes we would have a shield again.