“I can explain,” Cheia said nervously.

Kelsey grinned and looked around at the devastation like a proud parent.

“No need,” she said. “One look at you tells me all I need to know.”

Cheia laughed nervously and glanced at Aris. Aris narrowed her eyes.

“Anton,” she said calmly. “What does her status say?”

“Her status?” Anton asked. Then he looked.

Cheia Lucina, Level 10, Human, Original Gunner’s Apprentice, Doxy/Original Gunner’s Apprentice, S: 11 T: 4 A: 15 D: 16 P: 15 W: 15 C: 14

“Oh,” he said. “Level ten already?”

“It’s not my fault!” Cheia protested. “We were attacked!”

“Oh, Cheia, no,” Aris said. “You did all this?”

“Not all of it,” Cheia said, looking around. Anton noticed that the sullen glares from the villagers had increased. Most of them were directed at Cheia.

“Oh, Cheia,” Aris remonstrated. “I didn’t want you getting into… all this.” She gestured at the village.

“I was just doing what you would, Sis!” Cheia insisted. “When those troops came, I had to protect everyone!”

“I really want to hear all about it,” Kelsey said. “But maybe not on the dock? Should we move to the ship, or do we still have a place here?”

“The hut is still there,” Cheia said. “They haven’t tried to kick us out. No one wants us here anymore, but they’re too scared to say anything.”

“Perfectly handled,” Kelsey said with a grin. “No notes.”

“Kelsey!” Aris scolded. “That’s not the sort of impression we want to give!”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Kelsey said unrepentantly. “Fear will keep them in line, fear of this battle station!”

“Is that another word for boat?” Anton asked. Kelsey stuck her tongue out at him.

“We thought it would be best to move back onto the boat,” Cheia said. “Aside from the villagers not liking us any more, we weren’t sure if any of the soldiers got away.”

“So you’re all ready to leave?” Kelsey asked. “That’s fortunate. We should get the guys on board and head out then. There’s nothing left here for us.”

“I’m not sure we’re going to have enough beds on board,” Cheia said, looking at the ex-gladiators getting off the cart. “Oh! Hi, Thalorin!”

“People can share bunks,” Kelsey said dismissively.

“Kelsey!” Aris exclaimed. “It’s too soon—they shouldn’t have to—”

“Plus the beds are too small to be comfortable doing that,” Cheia said matter-of-factly.

Kelsey looked at them both. “What I meant was, you can sleep in shifts, and each bed can be used by up to three people. I don’t know where you’re getting your ideas from.

“Oh, right,” Aris said. “That makes sense.”

----------------------------------------

It took a while to get underway. Kelsey insisted on going over the engine before they left.

“Let me tell you,” she said to no one in particular. “It’s a real pain to fix one of these when you’re drifting with the current into some rocks.”

“Is that an experience you’ve had?” Anton asked. “I thought this was your first sea voyage.”

“It’s a general admonition,” Kelsey said, waving vaguely. “Applies to a lot of things.”

With all the arrangements to be made, it wasn’t until the evening meal, supplied by Kelsey and eaten on the deck, that Cheia got around to explaining.

“Everything was fine until the soldiers showed up,” she said. “I don’t know if they were looking for us, but they were looking for something. We kept to huts, hoping to stay out of sight until they were gone, but they saw the ship and insisted on searching it, and the village.”

She stared into the middle distance, remembering. “The villagers argued with them, but the soldiers just did what they wanted. They split up into small groups and went around all the huts. When they found us, they tried to drag us out of there.

“Did they recognise you?” Kelsey asked.

“I’m not sure. I don’t speak the language that well,” Cheia said. “They were mostly excited to have found “women”. There’s a couple of reasons they could be happy about that. They didn’t get much time to express what they were here for.”

“What happened?” Anton asked.

“Well, we were armed,” Cheia said. “They weren’t expecting that, didn’t recognise that. So when they started dragging us out, they were surprised by what happened.”

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“I’ll bet,” Kelsey said. “I’m going to need to combine an ammo check and a level check, see who got the most experience for the least number of shots.”

Cheia nodded absently. “That was just a small group though. There were other groups all over the village, and one group that was headed for the boat. They’d all heard the shots, even if they didn’t know what they were. We thought the best plan was to make for the boat.”

“Always secure your escape route,” Kelsey said.

“It was pretty scary,” Cheia said. “Moving while trying to avoid the soldiers, headed right for a bunch of them. And we only had so many shots. Fortunately, they didn’t know that. We… killed… the group that was between us and the boat, and kept the ones closing in on us back. They’d figured out that we were carrying weapons by then, so they’d duck back whenever we waved a gun at them.”

“So that left you trapped on the boat,” Anton said.

“I’m not sure if trapped is the right word when you could just leave on the boat,” Kelsey said. “But you didn’t.”

“We thought about it,” Cheia admitted. “But aside from leaving Aris and the others behind, we knew that the boat only had a day's worth of fuel. And we didn’t have a map.”

“You could go a long way in a day,” Kelsey stated. “But I guess, without a map, you wouldn’t know where to go.”

“Exactly,” Cheia agreed. “So we pulled off but stayed in the bay. And then we had another problem.”

“Which was?” Anton asked.

“We realised that we couldn’t let any of the soldiers escape,” Cheia muttered, looking down with shame.

“What? No! Why?” Aris pleaded.

“If we let them go, they would have passed word that we were here,” Cheia explained. “Their superiors would have sent boats, or mages, or siege weapons or… something that could capture us.”

“Very well reasoned,” Kelsey purred. “So what did you do?”

“They were yelling at us from the pier,” Cheia said, remembering. “Not a hundred yards away. They didn’t have any bows, and none of us were good enough shots at that range. Not with the small guns.”

“Go on,” Kelsey said, her eyes wide.

“They didn’t realise what we were doing,” Cheia said. “Not until it was too late. They never got a good look at our guns, and the Decksweeper doesn’t look like them. Not really. So they just stood there while I set it up like you showed me, and then…”

She swallowed.

“I mowed them down. Not all of them. Once they realised what was going on, they jumped in the water, which made it difficult. Some of them managed to swim back to shore.”

“Cheia…” Aris interjected, but the younger girl pressed on.

“I got a trait,” she said. “All of the ones available had strange names, but I took the one that said targetting because that was what I was having trouble with right then. It made it so I could see a…light, wherever the gun was pointing.”

“Targeting Reticule, maybe?” Kelsey asked. Cheia paused.

“That word, yes, that’s what it said. So I could aim over longer distances, and we still needed to make sure that the soldiers didn’t report back. So I kept shooting.”

“But not at the villagers, surely?” Aris asked. “They were trying to protect you!”

“At longer ranges,” Cheia said. “the decksweeper doesn’t hit exactly where it’s pointed at. And the soldiers started hiding.”

“So, an important distinction that hasn’t been needed up to now,” Kelsey said. “Is the one between hard cover and soft cover. Hard cover will stop a bullet, while soft cover will only block the shooter from seeing you. It won’t save you if they shoot right through.”

Cheia nodded. “The village was all soft cover,” she said. “It didn’t save them. But there was… unexpected damage.”

Kelsey nodded. “It’s not that unusual for machine guns to start fires,” she said. “Bullets are surprisingly hot. And there’s all sorts of potential for broken oil lamps or debris from a cooking fire that gets hit.”

“I tried not to hit the villagers,” Cheia said miserably. “And I think I got all of the soldiers. But once the fires started, it got really confusing.”

“It sounds like you stepped up, Cheia, and did what was needed,” Kelsey said. “I’m proud of you.”

“She shouldn’t have needed to!” Aris said. “You said they’d be safe here.”

“I’m pretty sure I put a “probably” in there,” Kelsey said. “Nowhere in this world is totally safe. And hey! Nobody died!”

“That was pure luck!” Aris said.

“It was pretty miraculous that none of us died,” Cheia agreed.

“Who’s the god of surviving rapidly escalating firefights?” Kelsey asked.

Anton thought for a bit. “Butin?” he suggested. “He’s the god of war, at least for Zamarra.”

“Huh,” Kelsey said. “We did just try to curry favour from his church back in Bures. I wonder if he did intervene?”

“Do you think he did?” Anton asked.

“I hope not!” Kelsey said. “Aside from the fact that it would mean that Cheia needed help, we were counting on getting that help in Bures.”

“I didn’t see anything that looked like divine intervention,” Cheia put in. “Nothing that I couldn’t explain.”

“Well, maybe we’ve got that favour still on the books then,” Kelsey said.

She looked over at the crowd of ex-slaves still eating. It wasn’t everybody. Tyla was steering the boat on the heading that Kelsey had provided and the sleeping in shifts had started already. Despite the celebratory mood, everyone was keeping their voices down in consideration of the sleeping passengers. It was difficult enough to sleep with the throb of the engines a constant presence.

Kelsey ignored those considerations, of course.

“You did good, girls!” she shouted. “They came to take you away again, and you showed them their graves! I can see that some of you got levels from it, as well. Nice!”

The response she got was positive, if a little muted. Except from Aris.

“Kelsey!” she half-whispered urgently. “People are sleeping!”

Kelsey waved her off. “This is important,” she insisted. “We’re starting something here, and everyone’s a part of it. Even the ones that are sleeping.”

She looked out over the group again.

“Most of you are from Kirido,” she said. “Some of you are from elsewhere on the north coast, captured in a different raid. Some of you were born in the empire and decided to take your chances as free men. All of you have good reason to hate the Empire.”

Anton’s gaze searched out Zaphar, who was quietly sitting in a corner, eating his food. Of all the people here, Anton thought, Zaphar should hate the Empire the least. He was just a criminal, and Anton doubted that he felt singled out for punishment like the others. Although, there was Soraya.

She was looking distinctly unhappy as Kelsey started outlining the crimes of the Empire that she’d once called home. Most of the crimes were slavery-related after all, and Soraya still felt part of her family.

“Whether you stay in Kirido is up to you,” Kelsey continued. “Some of you have got families to get back to, some of you want to seek your fortune elsewhere. But Kirido needs you.”

She paused to look them over again.

“Kirido needs you to fight. To fight against the ones that enslaved you.” She looked at Soraya. “To fight against the ones that want to enslave you.”

She grabbed Anton’s arm and held it up. “This one wants to fight for you!” she shouted. “To fight for freedom! Freedom for everyone!”

It wasn’t a roar. More of a buzz. A susurration of excitement as people responded, but were too polite to forget about their sleeping comrades.

Kelsey dragged Anton to his feet. “Okay, big man,” she said. “Time to make your pitch, Baron Nos.”

Anton looked at her in surprise. They hadn’t discussed this. He looked over the small crowd of expectant faces. He took a deep breath and started to speak.