The next people they encountered were a couple of off duty pirates celebrating with a skin of ale. Not their first either, from the looks of things. One of them sat up straighter when Rosh stepped into the room and spoke up, “Hey, Rosh, was it your mother or father that was an ogre?”
The other one burst into drunken laughter. Roshelle ground his teeth together and turned to look at Dexter and the others. The man sat up a little when he noticed them. “What’s this? Why you moving prisoners? Thought you was too thick-skulled to be trusted with that?”
“Why ain’t they tied up?” The other man asked, taking notice too.
“They joined us,” Rosh lied, “I’m showing them around.”
“That don’t seem right to me, we ain’t letting no women round here ‘less they do the rounds, eh?”
Rosh moved closer to him as they talked and now was close enough to spring into action and plunge his sword into the pirate, silencing him. The other one sputtered and fell backwards out of his chair, trying to get away. Rosh left his sword quivering in the pirate’s chest and stepped on the leg of the one trying to escape, pinning him to the floor. He leaned down quickly as the pirate opened his mouth to cry out an alarm. With a powerful twist of his arms a sickening pop filled the room and the pirate’s body twitched and then lay still on the floor.
“Gods,” Dexter whispered, awed at the sudden and powerful violence the man was capable of.
Rosh glared at the man impaled on his sword. “I ain’t the son of no ogre,” he spat. He yanked his sword free of the wall and the pirate’s ribcage, sending his body to the ground and his soul to the underworld.
“Come on, we’re almost there,” Rosh said, turning and leading away again.
Dexter looked to the others, who mirrored his amazement and apprehension. He wondered just how smart it may have been to invite this brute of a man to join his crew. He knew he would deal with that later, if need be. For now they needed to escape first.
One hallway, a small open deck, and then another two rooms later and they were on the outer decking that skirted the outside of the ramshackle base. Rosh turned to the right there sat the Voidhawk with half a dozen men unloading the cargo from it and carrying it into the base. Docked next to it was the Maiden’s Bane, the only ship they knew of that could give them a serious chase.
“What’s your plan?” Kragor asked.
Dexter grinned, wondering how much time they had before they were discovered. Things had gone remarkably smooth for them so far. “Sabotage, my friend. Just make sure you pick me up.”
“Pick you up?” Kragor asked, confused.
“Keep going, Rosh, get to my ship and cast off, Kragor’s in charge of it till I get back,” Dexter said, stepping to the side and letting the others pass him.
“What madness is this?” Jenna asked, hesitating.
“Go,” he ordered, not having time to explain it. Frustrated, she followed after Kragor.
“He’s mad and daft both, lass,” Kragor said for the benefit of Jenna. “I’m just not sure which one is worse in him.”
Dexter followed a ladder that led up to one of the base’s existing bombards and frowned when he saw no barrels of powder. Instead it was gathered in bags. He picked up a heavy sack in each hand and hoisted them, with considerable effort, so each one rested on a shoulder. This served to hide his face from anyone not directly in front of him.
He managed to get back down the ladder without falling and then hurried over to the Maiden’s Bane. He walked up the ramp uncontested, and crossed directly to the door leading into the Bosun’s locker. In the middle of the room the main mast ran through the deck and to the cargo deck below. He used his teeth to tear a hole in one bag, spilling the fire powder out of it. He spat it out and dropped the bag, then tore a smaller hole in the second bag. He propped it on his shoulder and walked out, pausing to grab a sword and an unloaded pistol off the rack.
He walked quickly towards the stern, happy to see the two men on the forecastle were busy talking and not paying attention to him. The powder fell from the bag in a line connecting him to the first bag at the base of the main mast. A few moments later and he arrived at the mizzen mast, where the other bag of powder soon rested. He ducked through a door and stepped into the room containing the charts and the helm.
Dexter heard a commotion in the distance and cast a quick glance out the door. The fight for his ship was underway, he had to hurry. He grabbed as many of the charts as he could, rolling them up and shoving them into a leather case.
He knelt down beside the bag of powder and jammed the barrel of his pistol in through the hole he had made. Tipping the pistol up, he moved quickly to the middle of the Maiden’s Bane and prepared for his sabotage. He stopped when he heard a yell from above; he had been spotted.
An answering shout came from the gangplank that led up to the deck. Dexter spun and cursed. Escape towards the pirate base was not an option. He turned again, looking towards the open void. He glanced back and saw the pirate slowing as he approached. He could hear more pounding on the planks and rushing from the crew quarters below the bow.
Dexter knelt down and laid his pistol on the deck, then cocked the hammer back and pulled the trigger. The hammer descended and drove a spark from the flintlock into the barrel, which contained only some loosely packed powder. Rather than exploding behind wadding and driving a ball out the barrel, it flared hotly and shot fire out the front of it. The fire caught the trail of powder he had left earlier, sending a line of flame shooting in both directions.
Dexter turned and ran, leaping over the railing at the edge even as he heard the first crack of a shot. The bullet missed, slamming instead into the railing now below and behind him. A moment later the ship shuddered, rocked by the explosion. Less than three seconds after that a second explosion followed, shattering the base of the main mast and driving it at an angle through the roof of the ship. The mizzen mast fell inwards, towards the pirate base, and crashed into the decking surrounding the base, leading to the dock the Maiden’s Bane was moored at.
Dexter floated for a moment then plunged towards the ship’s gravity plane. He plummeted through it, then fought the vertigo of suddenly having his gravity reversed. He bobbed up and down in the plane, moving away from the ship with the inertia of his initial jump. Each time he crossed the plane there was an extra push away from the ship as well, which was how ships made it possible to keep small rocks and space debris from causing damage, by repelling them along their gravity plane. Dexter glanced back over his shoulder and saw one of the pirates on the forecastle gestured at him. Drevin stepped up to the rail and stared out at him, his face a mask of fury. He shouted orders for whoever was nearby to shoot him down and drew his own pistol, taking aim.
Dexter gulped and twisted his body, managing to flip so that his feet faced the ship and he lay prone. Drevin fired, his bullet ripping through Dexter’s pants and making him grimace in pain as it tore a bloody furrow in his outer thigh. Another man stepped up and fired as well, sending his slug soundly into Dexter’s bottom.
Salvation came in the form of the Voidhawk. With Bekka at the helm and the others manning the rigging they sailed into view and took time away from their guidance of the vessel to fire their re-acquired pistols at the pirates. The pirates ducked for cover, allowing the Voidhawk to sail up beside Dexter and for Rosh to toss a rope overboard for him.
On board his own ship again, Dexter limped behind cover and shouted orders to get them away as fast as possible. He heard a few more pistols fired, then nothing. He stuck his head back out and watched as they cleared the atmosphere of the pirate base, ending the transmission of sound. Cursing, he ducked low and remembered that while air and sound would not pass through the void, objects still would. Objects such as the slugs fired from pistols.
Or bombards. His mouth went dry as he saw one of the bombards on the base being cranked around to point at them. He realized it was the one he had stolen the powder from, if only he’d thought to steal the rest of it.
“Hard to port and down!” Dexter yelped.
Kragor glanced at him, furry brows cocked in surprise. He relayed the specific orders to the crew to enact them without missing a beat. The massive ball of lead sailed barely over the Voidhawk’s decking. Ere it could be reloaded, they had put enough distance from the base to make the odds of a hit unlikely, at best.
Out of range of the bandits’ bombards, they felt only a moment of concern when other ships undocked and came after them. With the Maiden’s Bane crippled none of the others could match the speed of Voidhawk under full sail and in less than an hour they gave up the chase.
“You’d better get that looked at, captain,” Jenna said to him as he limped around on the deck inspecting the
