I watched as the workers placed the last armor panel in position and began to weld it into place. It had taken a few weeks to repair the damages from our fight but the Retribution was looking almost new.

The replaced sections were clearly visible by the heat transfer in the titanium. I could easily fix that when I turned the thermal defenses on. It should make everything a uniform color. Paint would work too, I suppose, but why cover up the beauty of the metal.

It was a good thing the ship was complete, over the last few days, we had been getting reports from the Guild merchant ships that were stopping to trade, and they weren’t good.

Large fleets of pirate ships spotted raiding islands. The Capital of the Avulian Protectorate was sacked and all of the leadership missing. The remaining fleets of the Protectorate were attacking any ship that wasn’t theirs or the Guild's. Cities burning due to the slaves I helped free, it was madness and it was spreading.

Already I could hear concerned whispering coming from the islanders. It seemed to be split, half wanted to leave and make sure their families were ok while the other half wanted to hunker down and wait for the insanity to blow over.

I wasn’t sure either of those choices was a good one. The island was actually thriving. A few of the earliest evacuees returned and they brought others with them. Mostly families and whatnot, but still. As for an economy, I swear Barcos was of a mind to fund the entire thing by himself with his drinking alone.

While I didn’t think either choice the people were grumbling about was wise, they were probably better than what I was planning on doing. Information was key and we were lacking specifics, so with the ship fixed, we were going to head out and find out what was going on. I had a bad feeling about things and it wasn’t helped by reports of occasional ships being spotted on the horizon.

If they were pirates, they should have come to dock. Unless they were aware of what happened to the island or the previous pirates. If they knew, it didn’t matter. Neither I nor the people on the island could change that fact. The people were trained to man the bunkers and the cannons there, it would be up to them to hold the island in case of attack.

“All done!” One of the workers shouted.

I walked over and inspected the work. I had to admit, these workers improved quickly – superhuman stats helped a lot in those regards – the welds were perfect. A far cry from their initial attempts when I was training them. “Good work. I don’t have anything else for you fellers to work on, so why don’t you go enjoy a few cold ones on me.” I tossed a credit chit to the man that contained more than enough credits to get the ten men plastered. They earned the bonus.

I watched the men as they walked away and clapped each other on the shoulders in celebratory congratulations.

I was going to have Charles hire these men on and open up a secondary construction base here but I hadn’t received a reply from anyone back home since I left. Thinking about it, I wasn’t surprised. The message cards were enchanted. With my drainer installed in Saint June, they wouldn’t work. It was an idiotic oversight on my part but I didn’t have the time to work up a runic version to fix the issue. Not that I wanted them to send anyone to the Isles of Mist without a proper escort. There were far too many dangers without a guide.

The ship awaited, I stepped aboard the Retribution for the first time in a week. I had been staying at a small house nearby, to remain out of the way while the workers finished their repairs inside. Everything inside looked as good as new. It was actually better than new. I had ripped out or rearranged a lot of the internal systems to make them easier to fix or more redundant to damage. I also managed to improve the shield array by about ten percent. This did increase the power draw but it was nominal. It was also offset by the reduced power waste from my new weapons.

Who knew having proper mana conductive material for a weapon that conducted mana would be so much better.

All of the cannons had been replaced with my new ones. I even had spares to replace all of those. So I no longer needed the old ones. I decided to donate them to the defense of the island. I doubted anything short of a military fortress sported more firepower now. And while I didn’t have the time or resources to craft a city shield, I was quickly able to whip up shields for the weapon bunkers. They would only survive a few shots but it was better than nothing.

I’ll be honest, I did it because I felt a bit guilty about causing this whole mess that was going on in the Isles. Sure I didn’t force the pirate kings and their fleets to rampage across the area but they were likely taking advantage of the chaos, exactly as I wanted my target to do. And it worked. I had received word from one of Em’ah’s spies that Captain Grulaine’s ship the Forsooth had been spotted within the last week.

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Khikall was raring to go after he heard that. I had to stop the geriatric jerboa before he tried to commandeer one of the docked ships belonging to the freed slaves. We had a little spat over it and after I was forced to physically stop him, he was avoiding me and sulking somewhere.

I tried to reason with him. “Our time would come,” I told him.

I sat in my command chair and started testing all of the ship systems. Despite our best efforts the ship still had some yellow warnings displayed. I cleared them away, there was nothing that we could do about them without scrapping the entire ship. It was fine though, it wouldn’t affect the overall performance of the ship too much.

I heard the metal of the ship creaking and groaning as I turned up the thermal defense. I didn’t leave it on long as it felt like being baked inside an oven when it was set to the max setting. As the ship popped and creaked while it cooled, I rotated the turrets and ran them through the virtual simulation. I noticed a few of the bottom turrets were a bit slower to orient. I sighed, it was caused by the distorted deck, making the pods rub in their alcoves.

I added a note to my log for improvements. I scribbled in, replaceable weapon mount sections instead of just the mounts only. It wouldn’t be easy to implement, but I would give it to Charles and his engineers to figure out the details. I was quickly learning that while I could come up with some powerful ideas, implementing them properly was not my strong suit.

***

“Where’s Khikall?” I asked Barcos as he stepped aboard.

“Em’ah went to fetch the ornery sod. Idiot has been drinking himself blackout drunk since your little hissy fit.”

“My hissy fit? He was the one that punched me for trying to stop him from running off and getting himself killed.” Sure I may have gone a bit overboard in my application of punishment but Khikall should have known better. And where did Barcos get off on commenting on other people drinking? The man was half alcohol himself.

Barcos shrugged, “you’re the Captain, it’s your right to discipline your crew. But you took it too far, Cap. Remember, I said you need to be better.”

I wanted to be pissed at Barcos, I was still slightly pissed at Khikall but despite his many flaws, I knew he was right.

“Get your shit sorted on board,” I grumbled. “We are going to have some dangerous days ahead, so no drinking until we get to port.”

I saw the ghost of a smile cross Barcos’s lips before he gave me a sloppy salute and walked below deck.

I somehow thought I was just played… or was he using this as training. The man was an enigma to me. He was essentially royalty, yet didn’t act like it, despised the thought of it even, and actively hated his government. And I didn’t even bring up the fact that if rumors were true, he was also likely the highest-ranked person in the government left alive, essentially making him the leader of the Avuilian Protectorate.

I didn’t bring it up with him because I had the strong sense that he was aware of this and was avoiding the responsibility. Plus I didn’t want him to beat my ass like I beat Khikall’s. Yeah, let's go with self-preservation over cowardice for not bringing it up.

Soon enough, I saw Em’ah. She had four people following her, and held between them was a drunken and irate Khikall.

Em’ah and crew pounded down the deck and she stopped midway down the ship and snapped off a crisp salute. “Permission to board, Captain?”

I quirked my eyebrow in confusion for a moment before I realized what she was up to. “Permission to board granted, sailor Em’ah. Welcome back.”

She stepped across the plank and stood beside me. The four burly men deposited Khikall none too gently on the dock and stomped off. Khikall cursed them out before picking himself off the ground and looking around in confusion. That was until his eyes landed on me. I heard him intake audibly before he straightened up and offered a salute. Although, a much sloppier one than Em’ah’s but still better than Barcos’s.

“Captain…per- permission to board?”

I gave the jerboa a long hard look before responding. “Do you remember one of the first things I told you after we met?” I would be surprised if he did, not many had my capacity for memorizing things.

“No-,” I thought he was just gonna say no, but he paused and kept going, “no useless people aboard your ship.”

I nodded. “Are you going to shape up and follow orders, or do I need another pilot?”

“On my honor as a Jerboa, I will follow your orders, Captain. I will also swear off alcohol if it means you will let me fly with you until I can get my revenge.” The man seemed to straighten up as he said this. I knew Jerboa took honor very seriously so this was probably as good an offer as I could ever get.

I nodded. “Get below deck and clean yourself up. I want us in the air in an hour.” I flashed a Cleanse through the man, causing him to twist sideways and hurl as his body rejected the alcohol.

“Right away, Captain,” he replied as he scurried across the ramp and below deck. I got a distinct whiff of body odor and stale alcohol as he passed and I was glad I had ordered him to clean up before he entered the command deck.

I felt Em’ah slap me on the back and I turned. “Good job, Captain. The man just needed proper motivation. He wasn’t like us prior Legion grunts but he knows he fucked up royally when he attacked you. He wasn’t drinking and avoiding you because you beat him. He was afraid you would kick him off the ship.”

Well, fuck, that made more sense now that Em’ah explained it to me. I nodded to the Ilixian spy. “Any news or idea where we should start our search?”

She smiled. “Oh, yeah, let's get below, I got plenty to share.”