FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The metal of the boat clanged and clanked with each wave that passed by, the anchor chains rattling and slamming against the sides of the ship. Despite two anchors dropped, one on each side, the vessel continued to rock up and down, one side after the other dipping down towards the water before coming back up again just before it could duck under the surface.

It was no different than the last four days spent in the Strait, and Azure had gotten used to the swaying roll of the ships in the first few hours of the first day.

The skunk morph roamed across the top deck, checking on some of the human soldiers that manned the guns along the sides, and keeping an eye on the east. Steam and smoke filled the air around them as the engines on board continued to chug along, providing a continuous source of energy to the air lines that went over the side and under the water, keeping the divers supplied with air in their new machine.

His eyes shifted over to the other two ships, exact copies of the one he was on, both flying the yellow and red flag of the Principalities. Of course, the flags were obscured with the massive stacks of smoke coming out of the pipes on top of the cabins, but they did show flickers of color now and then. Shouted orders by the other officers carried across the rushing water, sound without words as the current drowned them out.

He looked away, turning towards one of the engineers at the air hoses that hung over the side of the ship. The grease stained human turned with a glare. "What do you want?" the human asked.

"Have the divers sent any word?" Azure asked. "Are we any closer to finding it?"

"They saw something. No word on just what." The human shook his head, turning back to the lines. He tugged them this way and that, then pushed some more off of the side in response to some unseen signal. Fingers ran along the thick rubber coating on the lines, the engineer constantly checking for leaks. "Now why don't you get back to your soldiers and let me do my job?"

Shaking his head, the skunk morph walked away. As he walked towards the stern, he reached over his shoulder, fingers momentarily wrapping around the end of the metal staff he kept strapped to his back, reassuring himself that it was still where it was supposed to be. His motion was no different than a soldier checking his gun...at least, the way that a soldier would check it before the Great Reset. There were no more guns like that anymore; probably for the best, for that matter. Those had seemed very strange in the old books.

A group of twenty or so humans, with a canine morph or two mixed among them, waited for him at the stern of the ship. Dressed in the yellow and red colors of the Principality, they carried an assortment of weapons. Metallic clubs, backpacks connected with metal pipes to long copper tubes in their hands, square, boxy firearms; their arms were a motley assortment of death dealing devices. The lack of a unifying theme matched their wielders; though they wore the same uniform, Azure was sure that they couldn't look more different. Some humans were black, some white; some were midgets, some were giants; some wore their uniforms proudly, others didn't; in fact, in all of the group, there were no more than four that seemed to look at all similar to each other, or part of a unified group.

But regardless of all that, they were well trained and knew how to react to their superiors, each one lifting a hand in a salute at Azure's approach. "Captain," one of the canine morphs said as Azure stopped in front of them. "The 'neers got any word?"

"Just more maybes," the skunk morph said with a shake of his head. Some of the men groaned, and he chuckled. "Didn't your superiors tell you that this was going to take a while?"

"Yeah, but none of them said that it would take this long," a human called out.

"Or that we'd be working with a morph merc," another said.

He ignored that remark, though he filed away the face of the guy who said it for later. After the operation, he'd find some way to take care of that. Azure looked over the other soldiers. "Well, that's just how army life goes, men. Lots of boredom, a few minutes of hear stopping fear, then lots of boredom again." He looked up at the sky, turning to look towards the Principality's lands in the former Iberian peninsula, shaking his head a few times before turning back to his men. "But don't worry. If we get too bored, I'm sure that there'll be a fleet out of Equos Roma headed our way or something like that."

The men grinned at the thought, and Azure rolled his eyes. Army misfits; they always wanted the excitement, no matter how much it could screw the operation over.

Not that there was really much chance of a fleet from Equos Roma getting this far west. Considering they were in the Strait of Gibraltar, and how far off the front lines were for the Principalities' fleet, he doubted that anything significant could actually get to them.

Of course, the high command of the Iberian Principalities believed otherwise, thus the reason for his presence on the boat. They were paying a lot of money for him to be here, keep an eye on proceedings, and make sure that nothing went wrong with the divers, or with delivering whatever it was they were looking for back to Madrid.

The fact that all of his pay was tied up in getting the thing there, and he wouldn't see so much as a single Cog if he failed to deliver it, definitely made him more cautious than he otherwise would be. Combined with a bad feeling in the back of his head, Azure couldn't quite shake away the thought of an attack with logic. No matter how unlikely it was that the battle lines would shift this far west, no matter the fact that all other superpowers were too far away to make any kind of move out here, the skunk morph just couldn't quite shake the feeling of apprehension.

The men assigned to him continued looking at him, and Azure realized he'd been lost in thought for a bit too long. "As you were. Keep a watch to the east, just in case," he said. They nodded, some walking towards the bow and others remaining at the stern. One of the canine morphs headed towards the engine cabin, climbing a ladder to get to the higher parts of the ship so he could have a little elevation. Azure nodded in approval at that before turning and walking towards the port side.

Ignoring the glare from the engineer on the air lines, the skunk morph leaned over the side, looking down in the waters. The white froth that covered the surface was fading as the tidal currents started to shift, allowing some glances down below. Nothing to see yet, of course - the divers would be a few hundred meters down, and inside of a metal dome to boot - but at least the water was clearing.

He stood there for a few minutes before the engineer stopped glaring at him, the short little human freezing as he held the rubber lines. His attention seemed utterly focused on them, and he didn't move so much as an inch for almost a whole minute.

Suddenly, he turned, looking Azure right in the eyes. "They've got it," he said.

Azure had been waiting to hear that for days. The skunk morph grinned, nodding at the engineer before turning to the rest of the ship. "We've got it!" he shouted, his voice carrying past the cranking of gears and chugging of the engine.

Everyone on deck froze. For an instant, there was no motion, no shouting, no signs of life at all.

Then the crew exploded with whooping glee, throwing their arms - and in some cases hats - into the air in celebration of the news. Azure didn't blame them in the least; if he wasn't the one in charge, he would be doing the same damn thing. He watched some of the humans hug each other, and listened to the howls of the canine morphs around the ship. Finally, they could get it aboard and start heading back to port.

He turned back to the engineer. "How long until they're aboard?"

"Half an hour," he said. "Gotta make sure that everything is attached right, and then take our time getting it up."

Thirty minutes. That wasn't all that long, things considered, not after four days and some hours. A glance towards the bow, looking off to the east, confirmed that there were no other ships on the horizon; nothing could reach them by sea before they left, and considering they were right in the middle of the Strait, he doubted that there was anything on land that could hit them either.

"Get to it then," Azure said. "I'll inform the other ships of our find, and then we'll be on our way back to land."

Waved off by the engineer, he started making his way to the bow cabin. Avoiding a few open ports in the deck that led down to the bottom levels of the ship, he pushed open the door, stepping through and shutting it behind him. He locked it tight, and then sat down at the single bit of furniture in the cabin.

The captain's cabin had a large desk, bolted down to the metal deck, and covered with different papers. However, the primary part of it was the - also bolted down - radio, allowing communication between the different ships. Only captains were allowed to use it, to cut down on the non-necessary chatter between the ships, and Azure had to fight to be allowed to use it, rather than having his second in command be the one to keep in touch with the other ships. Something about his employers not wanting a mercenary to be the one entrusted with that duty, or something; he hadn't paid that much attention after their initial refusal, as he'd been more focused on getting them to relax and give him permission.

Thankfully, they'd relented. Azure sat down at the desk and pulled the headset off of the top of the radio, and then spun a crank on the side. It was one of the new radios, powered by motion rather than some of the older methods. As long as he kept the crank spinning, it would keep running. Good safeguard for an immediate shut-off, too, for that matter.

Keeping a steady motion and ignoring the click tick of the gears moving around inside, he used his other hand to turn the radio dial around to the appropriate channel. That was easy enough to remember; the rolling dial had the channels for the other two ships scratched onto the radio chassis itself. Soon, he was getting a whirring sound rather than simple static. "Come in, Verity, come in, this is Captain Azure speaking. Come in, Verity. Over."

A few seconds later, the response came through. "This is Verity, Captain Ilia speaking. Go ahead, Captain. Over."

"Good to hear you, Captain Ilia," Azure said with a nod, even though she wouldn't be able to see it. "News from the engineers. Divers have found it. They are bringing it up, and we can make our way home within a half hour. Over."

There was a moment of silence, just barely broken by the whirring and whistling of the radio channel. For a brief moment, Azure wondered if something had gone wrong with the radio.

He continued holding the headset to his ears for another minute before an explosion of sound nearly knocked the headset from his hands, and the skunk morph groaned as he held it at arm's length to keep his ears in as few pieces as possible. The sound blasting out of the radio headset was deafening, and his ears still rung from just that little burst at the beginning.

When the sound died down enough that he felt he wouldn't be deafened by placing it against his ears, Azure brought it back to his head. "Captain Azure here. I'm guessing your men were as happy as mine to hear the news? Over."

"You guess right, Captain." The woman on the other end chuckled a few times. "Sorry about that. Some of the crew are still screaming at the moment. You want me to pass the news on to the Baston? Over."

"Please. I need to make sure that the divers get things done right when they come back up. Anything else? Over."

"No problem, Azure. Ilia out."

The channel was dead a second later, and Azure turned the radio off. He chuckled as he laid the headset back where it was supposed to be, and leaned back into the chair. It was going to be good to be back on solid land again. He was lucky enough that he didn't get seasick, but there was only so much time that he could spend on the sea before he started getting bored.

"Now, if only the Principalities could start making airships like the Norse Alliance, or the Steam Boys," the skunk morph muttered under his breath, looking up at the ceiling. "Now that would make things a lot better."

He honestly didn't see why the Iberian Principalities didn't make them. They had the finances for it, and it would give them a massive leg up on Equos Roma, to be able to strike from the sky and transport their soldiers through the air rather than overland or across the sea. So what if they were a little bit unproven in combat situations? With all the advantages that they could give, the skunk morph considered them definitely worth it.

But, he hadn't had the chance to serve on one for a long time. The last time that he'd been on one had been a single contract with the Steam Boys during one of their hired assaults on Berlin's Great Steamwall. Just the thought of that massacre brought a wince to his face; air power or not, attacking that monstrosity of a defense and winning was next to impossible. last he checked, the Steam Boys were still recovering from that particular operation; probably would be for the next decade or so.

Still, that didn't mean that he hadn't enjoyed his time in the airship. There was just something about being so high in the air, above all of the troubles on the ground, and knowing that you could rain hell down from heaven that made one feel so alive.

Losing himself in thoughts of that for a few moments, Azure was knocked out of his thoughts by a few sharp knocks on the metal door. "Enter," he said, pulling himself upright in his chair.

One of the human soldiers stepped inside, his weapon held at his side and his face sweaty. "Captain? You might want to see this."

The tone was enough to get him out of his seat and out of the door. The human followed, lifting his hand and pointing to the north, just over the great rock that marked the northern edge of the Strait. Azure followed his finger, and blinked as the dot the human pointed at slowly started to grow bigger. "That's...not part of the Principality military, is it?"

"No, sir," the human said. "Orders?"

As the dot grew bigger, the shape more defined, Azure nodded towards the gunnery stations on the sides of the ship. "Get guns four, six, and seven ready to fire on my command," the skunk morph muttered. "And keep it slow; I want to make them think that they haven't been seen yet."

"Yes, sir." The soldier saluted and walked off towards the stern, towards the majority of the soldiers still on deck. They'd get the job done, Azure had no doubt; but he wanted to get a better look at these newcomers.

Ducking back into the cabin, he rooted through several of the desk drawers before he managed to find his binoculars, buried under several hard-cover books. One fell off and landed on his foot, making him dance around the cabin a few times before he managed to calm down again. Grumbling, he slammed the drawer shut again and walked out, binoculars in hand.

He made himself look away from the dot at first, taking his time to scan the horizon, trying to make it look pretty routine. Slowly, he turned his head from the western end of the Strait towards the north...and had to pause as he looked at the new arrival.

It was an airship, but different to everything that he had ever seen. Rather than the fixed frame that rode underneath a hard gas-bag, it was almost like a sailing ship. A mast stood tall over the main deck, and sails furled from wind, but it was clear that wasn't the driving force. Bursts of steam blew out from behind it, and gusts of white blew out from beneath the ship itself, holding it in the air. There were no signs of the sparks and smoke that usually followed airships around, no signs of disrepair or anything else that showed that it was sub-par.

He looked up, searching for the colors that the ship flew. He expected to see the red horse on a gold background of Equos Roma, or, considering the new design, the green dotted circle on a field of white, the flag of the Island Circle. Hell, he would have understood seeing the polar bear on a red background, the flag of the Norse Alliance; they were crazy enough to send raiding parties this far south, even if it was rare.

But there was none of that. Instead, there was the most iconic flag of all. One that had survived for years, both before and after the Great Reset. The skull and crossbones, the Jolly Roger. The sign of a pirate.

Azure slowly lowered the binoculars, walking across the deck to the port side, facing north still. "Engineer," he muttered.

"What? I told you, the divers are going to take a while. They're only halfway up," the human muttered, slowly tugging the lines back up. A quick look told Azure that they were less than halfway up, and a look on the horizon told him that they really didn't have much time.

Gritting his teeth, he made his decision. "Get them up now. Tell them to leave it underwater, but get them up now," he hissed.

The engineer looked up in shock. "What?! But we've been looking for this for days, and there's no telling it'll even be in the same place if we let it go now. Why -"

"Because, if we don't -" he handed the human the binoculars. "They're going to die."

He pointed towards the horizon, and the human pulled the binoculars up to his eyes. Not that he really needed them by this point. The airship had passed the coast and was rapidly getting closer, their flag whipping back and forth in the air. They were moving faster than Azure could have imagined, and he grunted to himself. "This is what I get for not thinking ahead," he muttered under his breath. He patted the engineer on the back. "Get them up. Get them up right now."

"Yeah...yeah, good idea," the human muttered.

Azure left him to his work, moving towards the guns he'd named. The men had them ready, a gunner seated in the little pit that each cannon had dug into the deck, and each was loaded with a shell. A spotter stood beside the barrels, and the spotters had their eyes on the approaching ship. The skunk moved behind gun six, watching the ship approach. "Let them get a little closer...I don't want them to have a chance to move out of the way," he whispered.

"Aye sir," they muttered in unison.

They were completely silent as they watched the airship sail over the Strait. As it got closer and closer, the other members of the crew, the other soldiers, started to notice it as well. Several moved to man the other guns, and when one asked if he should get to the radio, Azure nodded his head. The Verity and the Baston needed to be warned as well, just in case.

Finally, the ship was too close to ignore. Azure lifted his hand, and shouted, "FIRE!"

The guns split the air with the hiss of steam, the massive explosion of heated air shooting the shells out of the barrels at high speed. The air around them grew much hotter, and Azure felt himself break out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the situation. He watched the shells streak through the air, each trailing a line of white and glowing red from being superheated in the guns; no way that the hull of the pirate ship could stand up to that.

He expected the ship to rock from being hit with the shells, but it had a surprise for him. Rather than turning or trying to evade the way that another airship did, the pirate simply...dropped. Azure's eyes went wide as the airship suddenly fell, dropping at least a hundred feet in the matter of moments before suddenly slowing again, letting the shells just fly harmlessly overhead.

It was close enough now that he could hear the roar of its steam engines, whistling and crackling in the air as it surged through the sky towards his ship. "Reload!" he shouted. "Reload!" A glance to the engineer. "Divers! How far down are the divers?!"

"A hundred feet...not much longer now, sir!"

"Get them up here! Now!" the skunk morph shouted.

"But they'll-"

"We'll deal with medical later! Get them up here if you -"

BOOOOOOM!

The entire ship rocked back and forth, one of the anchor lines snapping off. Azure went flying off of his feet, landing on his rear halfway across the ship. Smoke billowed around the port side before it was blown away by the rising wind.

The pirate ship had returned fire, and with precision. The bow of the ship was torn and jagged; whatever munitions that the ship had, it was powerful enough to rip through copper and iron easily, leaving holes across the front of his ship. The captain's cabin had lost half of its roof, and the engineer...

Well, the engineer was alive, but the air lines were gone. They were broken apart, and there were holes in the deck and railing of the ship where they had been.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath. He pulled himself to his feet and rolled the unconscious engineer back, looking over the guns. "Whoever's got a shot, fire! Fire!"

The guns hissed again as they fired another barrage of shells into the sky, and this time, the pirate ship was too close to dodge. Azure grinned as he watched several pieces of the pirate vessel break off, falling into the sea below. "Take that, pirates!" he growled under his breath.

It wasn't nearly enough to stop them, though, and it kept coming. His eyes went wide as it dropped down even further, only about ten feet above the water, and only five above Azure's ship. Ropes flew over the sides of the ship, and both morphs and humans hung from them, holding weapons in one hand as they charged at the ship.

"DOWN!" Azure shouted, suiting his words to action as he hit the deck. He felt the steam blowing out of the pirate ship blow over his back, and winced at the heat that verged on burning him through fur and clothes. The screams of several of his men, those that hadn't ducked, told him just what could have happened to him if he'd stayed on his feet.

The thuds of footsteps hitting the deck brought him to his feet. A glance showed the pirate airship bearing down on the Verity and Baston, and he saw the other ships bringing their guns to the battle. Several shells went flying, and he wished them luck.

He grabbed hold of the staff on his back, the metal just barely warm under his hands, and brought it down on one of the humans charging him. Swinging it around the club that the pirate had, he cracked it against his ribs and sent him to his knees. A second crack over the head knocked him out, giving the morph some time to look around.

At least thirty pirates had jumped off of the ship and onto his; his men were on their feet and fighting, but the professional soldiers were falling back against the eager viciousness that the pirates showed for the fight. Separated by several smaller groups of pirates and unable to form together, his men were pushed back to back, forced to defend themselves rather than go on the offensive against the invaders.

The pirates were quick, carrying a mix of short pistols that hissed as triggers were pulled and gleaming blades. They barely used the pistols, though, instead charging right into melee range and using their weapons up close.

Two of the pirates finished dealing with one of the morphs in his unit, and turned to look at him. They grinned, pulling their swords up as they advanced on him, ragged clothes fluttering around as they ran at him.

Azure just grinned. He spun his staff around in a circle, pressing his thumb down onto one of several buttons on the metal shaft, and felt the click of the button working as he brought the staff around.

Both pirates went from grinning to gaping as the metal staff suddenly extended, almost tripling in length, and putting them squarely in range of the skunk morph. The staff slammed into the ribs of the one on the right, and shoved him into his partner, knocking both of them off of their feet. Another spin of the staff brought the lengthened metal down on their heads, cracking their skulls and knocking them out, if not killing them directly.

The skunk shook his head, looking around. "Leader...take out the leader...might be able to salvage this," he muttered under his breath.

A giant axe cut through another of the human soldiers, adding a great deal of crimson to the yellow and red uniform. Gore splattered over the deck, and only a quick dodge to the side prevented it from landing over Azure's fur and uniform as well. He looked up at the owner of the axe, a massive, heavily muscled polar bear morph, who wore a shirt with the Jolly Roger on it and rough leather pants. The bear morph grinned manically, swinging his massive axe around one-handed, cutting into anyone that got anywhere near him. The other pirates seemed to defer to him, stepping out of the way if he stepped forward, and going where he pointed.

"That's good enough for me," the skunk muttered. He let the bear turn around, and then swung out with his staff again, another button press giving it just a bit more length. It reached out nearly twenty five feet, and was almost impossible to keep steady, but as long as he could hit the bear -

CLANG!

Somehow, the morph had seen his swing coming! The blade of the axe had risen up to meet his swing, and had stopped it in its tracks. Azure stared as the bear morph turned to face him, and couldn't hide just a bit of fear at the predatory, massive grin that the pirate flashed in his direction. The staff dropped to the ground, and he rapidly retracted it back to a usable length.

"Heh...big balls on this one," the pirate growled in his direction. He spun the axe in a circle before gripping it in both hands. "Let's see if you can last longer than the rest of these 'soldiers'."

Faster than Azure believed possible, the bear morph charged at him. He'd have thought that the bulk that the pirate carried along would slow him down, but nothing could be further from the truth. Barely getting his staff up in time to block the first blow, Azure cried out in pain at the impact between them; the one strike felt like it would have broken his arms if the bear had gotten any better of an angle for it. He couldn't block the bear's attacks, not directly, not without losing his arms.

The bear grinned down at him, his face - to Azure's view - split in two by the axe between them. All teeth bared, the pirate pushed down with the axe, slowly pushing the skunk down to his knees. "Come on...is that all you got? Is that all you got?"

"Not...in the least..." Azure muttered. Staff, don't fail me now, he thought to himself as he pushed another button on the shaft.

A panel opened near the center, and a fist sized gust of steam blew out from a mini-boiler inside of the staff. Azure was worried that it would have gone out by now, but it was still running, thank heavens. The heat and mist forced the bear back, and he took advantage of his new space to roll out of the way, ducking under the blind axe swing and getting behind the pirate.

He didn't hesitate. Swinging his staff around at the bear's knee, he followed it up with a triple combination blow, bringing it down on the bear's other knee, back, and even on the side of his head. He felt the blows ringing through the metal of his staff, felt the impact shake his arms and leave them stinging, but took satisfaction in the thought of how it must feel for the bear.

Azure smiled as the bear drunkenly slumped forward, but his eyes went wide as the bear didn't fall down. No, the bear didn't even stay slumped, but instead took a few steps froward before turning around, shaking his head.

The bear spat on the deck, shaking his head again before grinning widely. "Oh, now THAT'S what I want...that's the spirit! HAHAHAHA!"

The skunk barely had the chance to bring his staff up again before the bear was after him once more. Axe blows rained down from above, chopping at him almost like he was a piece of wood. Precise strikes with his staff managed to knock them off to the side, but the bear was too strong to get knocked off balance, and he moved ridiculously fast, too fast for the skunk to turn a defensive move into a return strike. All he could do was keep falling back, pulling away from the bear and parrying as he went.

As he moved, he caught glances of his men. They were either tied up or dead, captured or killed by the pirates as he fought with the bear. Azure cursed himself under his breath; if he'd fought more of the minions, kept more of the men alive and out of bondage, maybe this damn bear wouldn't have been so hard to deal with.

One of the bear's swings went wider than usual, and Azure took a chance. Rather than taking another step back, he lunged forward, sliding along the deck and between the bear's legs. He grinned at the startled look on the pirate's face, and then swung his staff as hard as he could, putting all of his strength behind the blow...right between the bear's legs.

He heard the bear cry out from that blow, but didn't have the chance to look as he got back to his feet. Two more pirates were on him, and he had to fight them off, swinging his staff around in a frantic defense against the human and wolf morph attacking him with swords. His staff rolled over his shoulders and spun between his hands as he deflected their blows, ramming one end of the staff into the wolf's gut before swinging the other end up into the human's chin. Azure spun with the blow, landing on both feet, panting as he looked at the other pirates in front of him.

Soft groaning made his eyes go wide, and he looked over his shoulder. The bear was actually pulling himself to his feet?! How the hell was he still able to stand after getting a hit like that?!

The pirate bear glared at him, eyes half red. "You...are good...but you're going...going to pay for that..." the bear muttered.

Azure spun on his heels, pointing his staff at the bear. He didn't know if he could beat this guy; everything he tried just seemed to get shrugged off, ignored. What the hell was this bear?

"I'm going to take my time...rip your legs off...then your arms...then make you -"

"I really don't have time for this."

The new voice was accompanied by a sound that was almost as unwelcome as the bear. The hissing of a steam pistol. Azure shouted as his shoulder was ripped open by the bullet, blasted open badly enough that he lost his grip on his staff. A fuzzy hand with a red glove pressed onto his shoulder, forcing him down to his knees.

Azure didn't fight it. He was too tired, too exhausted to be able to get up again. He could only watch as his attacker walked around him.

To his surprise, it was a mouse morph. Dressed in a red silk suit and wearing a white mask, the mouse stood barely half as tall as the massive bear, maybe up to Azure's shoulder if one allowed the mouse to stand on tiptoes. He carried a cane, the bottom end of which emitted some steam and told him just where the bullet had come from.

"Olag, I told you that I preferred not to leave behind a lot of bodies. Remember?" the mouse said.

"And you know I like to do things MY way, captain," the bear muttered, grumbling as he leaned on his axe the way that the mouse leaned on his cane. "You want me to leave?"

"Do you want to?"

"Well, no, but -"

"Then stop doing the opposite of what I say." The mouse tossed his cane in the air, catching it by the bottom and smacking the bear on the top of the head with an audible 'smack' to go along with the action.

As the bear rubbed his head, the mouse turned around and faced him. "So, you're the officer in charge of this ship," the masked captain said as he leaned in. Azure couldn't make out anything besides pink eyes through the eye-holes in the mask, and the mouse barely gave him the chance to see that before leaning back again. "Well, you put up a good fight. Pity that you're never going to get that thing off the sea floor."

The skunk groaned. "What...gonna kill us all, pirate?"

Laughing, the mouse shook his head. "Oh, no, no, not at all. But I am afraid that you're going to have to explain to the High Command of the Principalities why they're going to need to budget the costs of three scout ships into next year's finances. Take a look," the mouse said with a wave.

Almost against his will, Azure turned around and looked at the Verity and Baston.

What he saw shocked him. Both ships were half sunk, their sterns sinking into the strait, while the bows were pointed up in the air. They were on fire, a fire that was somehow spreading over the water as well as over the ship itself. Lifeboats were scattered around both of the ships, filled with the survivors of the fighting on the other ships. He couldn't see individuals, but he hoped that the other captains had made it.

Roaring steam made him turn around, staring as the mouse's ship swung back around, hovering beside Azure's ship. The pirates made their way to the side of the ship, kicking some of the survivors off into lifeboats, then jumping onto hanging ropes.

The bear grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and Azure barely had the chance to grab his staff off of the deck before he was carried along by the massive pirate. "How..." No, that was useless. "Why...why did you do this?" Azure muttered.

"Why else? We were paid. Just like you were paid to protect it," the mouse said. He looked around at the different boats, then shrugged. "I think me and mine did a better job, honestly, but you're free to have your own opinion."

"Who paid you?" Azure asked.

"Heh, easy. Paris."

The knowledge that it wasn't the rival of the Principalities took a moment or two to penetrate Azure's head, and he blinked a few times in surprise. "What? You mean...that city-state -"

"Yeah, go figure. I was a little surprised myself." The mouse shrugged as they reached the port side, the bear picking up the unconscious engineer as well. "Feel free to tell your employers, and go ahead and tell them that the Man in Red is still available for a new contract if they want revenge. I can always use another paycheck."

Azure opened his mouth to ask another question, but no sooner had he started than he was thrown overboard. He braced himself to hit water -

And grunted as he instead landed in a lifeboat, shaking his head as he was lifted up to a seated position by some of the soldiers in it with him. They helped steady him, and glared up at the pirates still on the ship.

Well, pirate. The bear was gone, and the mouse was standing on the railing. He lifted a hand, grabbing hold of one of the ropes hanging from the airship, and Azure could swear he was smiling behind his mask. "Don't take offense to any of this, please; this was just business, after all, and if you want my opinion - "

"I really don't," Azure muttered.

"If you want my opinion, what you were getting was better off staying buried," the mouse said. "Trust me, there are things from before the Great Reset that need to stay back there. Anyway, you might want to get rowing; this ship is going down. Toodles." The mouse waved as he started rising up with his ship, climbing up the rope the way a squirrel climbed up a tree.

Much as he hated the thought, Azure took the mouse at his word, and ordered the soldiers to get rowing. As they started pulling on the oars, he reached down to the edge of his uniform. It was a little harder to rip it with just one arm working, but he managed it alright. The effort of wrapping it around his wound and staunching the blood flow was a little harder, but he managed that took, though he almost fainted at the pain when he tightened it.

They were almost two hundred feet from the ship when the airship opened fire on it. It only took three volleys for the ship to be ripped open, water flowing in from underneath and sending it down to the ocean depths.

The airship turned in mid-air, and with a burst of steam out of the back and bottom, went flying off. Not north, but north-east. It wasn't long before it was little more than a dot in the sky, and faded out of sight not long after that.

Shaking his head, Azure called out for the men to row to the north-west. There was a small town in Principality territory there, and they could make their way back to the nearest military base from there. The order was passed along, and they were soon moving along through the Strait. It would take some time, particularly fighting the currents, but they'd make it eventually.

To pass the time, Azure thought about the mouse, and the bear, and their ship. Someone like that, and with a name like the Man in Red shouldn't be too hard to find out about. The skunk morph would eventually figure out what was going on with that pirate...and when he learned where he operated from, who his favorite clients were...well, Azure would figure out what to do about that when the time came.