“Alright, let’s make a break for it!” Paracelsus took off sprinting with his crew back to the Current. Sarabi was too busy firing at Silver’s crew to notice them, and Paracelsus was able to board his ship relatively painlessly. The whole crew, the Shah included, helped to raise the capstan, unfurl the sails, and cut the mooring lines, “Now, Silver! Get to your ship, and follow me!”
“I thought you said you had a plan to deal with her?” Serpacinno asked, tying off the sails.
“I do,” He leaned over the gunwale, lowering a small note on a fishing hook into the water, “But I suppose it would still behoove you to make peace.”
Shortly thereafter, a mermaid (in fact, the same mermaid they’d made use of earlier) emerged from the water, a confused - by human standards - look on her face, “Human, what is the meaning of this?”
Paracelsus fastened himself into the bosun chair and lowered himself down to shake the mermaid’s hand. She didn’t quite get it, seemingly, as she tilted her head curiously, sniffing his hand as though debating on whether it was food, “Here, just grab it,” She did so, and the captain did the honors, “There - just like that.”
“Is that all you wanted from me?” The mermaid’s speech was stilted and inhuman, almost being a small whisper. And her pitch black eyes and blue, scaly skin made her all the more bizarre.
“No, sorry, it’s a human tradition,” He grabbed a few of the relics they stole, and held them out, “I actually wanted to make a deal.”
“You want me to pilot you somewhere? No need for theatrics.” She replied, hovering her hand over each one, deciding which to take.
“Not quite,” When the mermaid rolled her eyes and appeared to be descending, he grabbed her wrist, “Hold on, hold on. I think that what I’m suggesting could be very beneficial, for the both of us.”
She popped back up, squinting at him, “Release me, human. What is your deal?”
He let go, “There will be times where I don’t have the items to feed you. At such times, I may still have need of your services. I’d like to be able to operate on credit, and as a token of our cooperation, you can have all of these.”
She squinted again. She could tell he wasn’t lying, but it still seemed like a risky decision. Regardless, she took all of the items, “You may call me Gru’lya, human.”
“Paracelsus,” He replied with a smirk, “I mean to say that’s my name. Later, I’ll pour red sand into the ocean. At such time, I implore you, please, take us away from here, as fast as possible.”
Gru’lya nodded, diving below to wait.
—
“Captain,” One of Silver’s crewmen shouted, “It seems the other captain left this here.” He held up a small bell, a replica of the one currently in Paracelsus’ possession.
“I wonder what it could be?” Silver took in and inspected it, “I’ll take it as a sign of things to come. Now, all hands, get us underway!”
“Aye, aye, captain!” The crew shouted back, getting to work, putting as much strain on the mast as they thought they could without it falling again.
—
“We’re too far behind them,” Graave said, observing his own crew making sailing preparations, “If we leave here without the bell, it will be an embarrassment to the Union.”
“Of course I agree sir,” Peeares saluted, even if the gesture was mostly meaningless in light of their personal relationship, “But it truly seems they’ve got ahead of us, not to mention the ship they’ve got in consort.”
“What’s gotten into you, Junior Lieutenant?” Graave made an annoyed face, “Such pessimism doesn’t fit you. Our guns outnumber both of theirs, two-to-one. We’ll sink them both if we need to.”
“Of course sir, I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s alright, son,” Graave put his hand on his protogé’s shoulder, “All guns - get ready to fire on Ms. Taylor’s command!”
Every cannon was summarily loaded and primed, with the gunners keeping them aimed at the rough bearing that the ships would be passing through.
—
“Tariq, adjust bearing a fourth of a point starboard,” Paracelsus instructed. The lad seemed like he had a good hand for helming from what he could tell, and it certainly helped that Tariq was on the larger side, being more easily able to counter the waves and wind, “Steady as she goes.”
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“Steady as she goes, Captain.” He acknowledged.
“All hands - we’re going to keep this distance from the coast, and slip between the Fox and the Saber, have them fight each other while we break to open waters.” Paracelsus was still readjusting to actually ordering a crew around, but he knew that such a thing was necessary to maintain cohesion amongst them on the sea, “As you were.”
Five minutes later, the Fox came up on their starboard-side, and the two maintained a distance of a hundred yards between them. Far enough, as the Current’s captain noted, to be out of range of their smaller guns, but close enough to be in range of the Fox’s larger ones. They also, coincidentally, had the guns manned, but unloaded.
“The Saber’s coming into sight, Captain!” Gareland shouted, “Relative bearing - three-hundred degrees!”
The first things to come into sight for the deck were the guns. Long, thin implements that were directly affixed to the ship and breech loaded from the back, which meant the gunners responsible only had to have a small hole through which to see, rather than the traditional ports either of the privateer ships had. A decisive advantage to be sure, not even considering the difference in size and number of sails which would make it faster and more maneuverable.
“Paracelsus!” Silver shouted through her trumpet, “Why haven’t you adjusted course to go about their starboard?”
It was a phony plan, Paracelsus thought - but didn’t verbalize, “They cut the rudder! You have to adjust course!”
“I don’t like this,” Silver leered at the Current, “Not one bit. Sandwiching us between the Saber and the coast?”
“I concur, captain,” Her new first mate said, “What do we do about it?”
“We maintain course,” Silver replied, never once taking her eyes off the Current, “That way the Current is sandwiched between us and the Saber.”
“Very well, captain.”
“They’re catching on,” Serpacinno told the captain, trying to subtly look over at the other ship without it being obvious, “They’re catching on, and we’re less than five hundred yards from the Saber.”
“I was hoping to get to speak to Graave,” Paracelsus quickly wrote up a note, before he took said note and had transferred it into a cannonball, “Gareland! Get down here!” He handed her the cannonball, “Do you think you could land this on the deck of the Saber?”
“I suppose I might be able to,” She eyed the distance between them, “But I think it would be hard.”
“And then what?” Serpacinno interjected, “You’d have just fired a cannon at a Union ship. We’d be obliterated.”
“I have a plan to get past them - Gareland,” He grabbed her by the shoulders, “Can you do it?”
“I’ll do it,” She nodded resolutely, “But you better see us out of this.”
He breathed a sigh of relief, and ran over to the gunwale with a sack, “Then - at your discretion.”
Gareland breathed in slowly, trying to calm her nerves and line up the perfect shot. With the angle calculated, she filled the cannon with just the right amount of powder, doubting the whole while about whether or not it was the right amount of powder. Then, with a final breath, she lit the fuse and let loose the cannonball.
No one on the sea at that moment, at least of those that could see what was happening, breathed at all as the cannonball soared through the air, whistling like a herald of doom as it cleanly landed on the deck of the Saber, plowing through its main and secondary decks before stopping just short of puncturing through and swamping the vessel.
Paracelsus hastily poured the sack out; Lorane failed to see through the trick, but nonetheless realized there had to be a trap laid, and so, disregarding the fact that her wool would be ruined for some time, she abandoned ship.
Graave opted to take retaliatory measures, first firing a volley of chain shots which managed to down the masts of both the Current and Fox. Swiftly and decisively, he took action by repeating the volley, albeit this time with grape shot, aiming to maim the vessels beyond repair. Luckily for the crew of the Current, their recently-hired mermaid had the foresight to realize that the typical methods would be ineffective, and decided to wrap her long, serpentine tail about the hull. It coiled over three times before it stopped, and the water again took a light blue glow as the ship was quickly dragged away at a blistering twenty-two knots, fast enough that the whole crew was knocked to their feet.
“Holy shit,” Serpacinno, the first to stand back up, turned around to see the volley repeating itself again and again, tearing the Fox apart like a predator that caught its prey. She turned her eyes down and saw the sack floating aimlessly behind them, then turned to her captain, “We did it! We’re -” She saw the great beam of light sticking through his chest, just below the sternum “Captain!”
“Tincture -” He coughed up blood, “Tincture of iodine. In my trunk.”
Tariq, now himself stabilized and adjusted to the speed, stood up, tore off his shirt and ripped it up to make a small bandage. Serpacinno returned with the tincture, and Gareland had now come up to the quarterdeck.
“This is bad,” She remarked, recoiling from the projectile that pierced the captain, “But it could be worse. Whatever it is, it’s red-hot,” She took the pieces of cloth from Tariq and wrapped them around her hand to rip it out of Paracelsus’ chest, “It’ll cauterize itself.”
Serpacinno read the bottle, quickly realizing she had no idea what an “antiseptic” was. With only her instincts guiding her, she tore the cap off and poured it into the wound, which only caused Paracelsus to violently shudder and jerk, pouring more blood out. Then, with all the dexterity of a wolf attempting to operate on another, she sewed up the wound as best she could and used the remaining cloth to tie off the wound, applying more tincture for good luck.
—
“Lieutenant,” Ms. Taylor, having already overseen the complete obliteration of the Fox, cautiously approached the cannonball, “It appears inert.”
“It looks like it was two pieces hastily melted together,” Peeares observed, standing back, “Wonder if there’s something inside?”
“There is, indeed,” Farah took a knife and pried the weapon open, seeing the message, addressed to Graave himself, “It’s for you, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Grave [sic],
It wasn’t hard to figure out Medine’s intentions in allowing you to operate here. You will find what you seek on the Fox, unless Lorane Silver has taken it. I know it may seem like another crime of convenience, but I’d like to say this: I hate pirates as much as you do. Consider this a temporary peace offering; I know you’ll continue to chase me. It’s your duty now to see me behind bars, and mine to evade you. But at least for now, it would behoove you to forget about us.
* Your drinking buddy
“Well, he’s quite the writer,” Graave tore up the note, “But he’s lying. Bacon to bones, they still have the bell.”
“Shall I tell the deck to pursue?” Peeares asked dutifully.
“Indeed. Have one of the ensigns contact another Union base to clean this up.”
“Lieutenant!” One of the divers came up with a salute, “We managed to recover a number of items, and we found this,” He produced the replica bell, “In the captain’s quarters.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Graave did his best to inspect it, but it wasn’t as though he was an antique appraiser, “I guess he wasn’t lying. Junior Lieutenant, belay those orders. We’ll clean up here first before pursuing.”
Peeares saluted reluctantly. It was the first time he could ever remember disagreeing with his superior officer, but at the same time, he was the superior officer. Still, it didn’t stop him from leering his eyes and gritting his teeth.