Chapter Twenty-Two – Piracy Across the Shitty Seas

Chapter Twenty-Two – Piracy Across the Shitty Seas

“It can’t just be about choosing people who aren’t asses. There’s something else to it.

It’s not just about people with a certain mindset. People are too mutable. There’s something else at play, and I can’t figure out what it is.”

–Intercepted message between CIA analysts, 2024

***

I was never very acrobatic. For that matter, I was never all that strong either. Fortunately, I had badass power armour to make up for some of my deficiencies.

My jump over the edge of the boat wasn’t perfect. A larger wave and maybe some faster reactions from the pilot, and there’s no way I would have made it aboard. As it was, I banged both shins on the edge of the boat and rolled forwards into it.

I was pitched to the bottom, but I tucked at the last moment and landed shoulder-first, which meant I could roll and crash onto the bottom back-first.

Which left me near the pointed front of the boat, on my back, between the legs of the two Sewer Dragons that weren’t glued down.

The one on the big mounted turret swung his gun around to point at me, only for the gun to stop before reaching the angle needed to shoot me. It couldn’t depress low enough.

I didn’t have any such issues as I kicked out, heel-first, and rammed him in the shin hard enough that I heard something snap.

His pant leg tore and a metallic bar pierced through the tough fabric where his obviously prosthetic leg had broken. He tumbled down onto his ass, the entire boat shifting with the sudden motion.

Dragon number two jumped down onto me and grasped for joints in my armour. I think he’d done the mental math and figured shooting me wasn’t cutting it. Maybe he planned on tossing me overboard?

I wrestled with him for a moment until I got one arm free and had enough room to swing a punch into his face. The first made him wobble. The second cracked against his jaw and he went stiff and collapsed onto me.

Swearing under my breath, I shoved him to the bottom of the boat, then wobbled onto my feet. The idiot on the ground who’d been behind the fixed gun pulled out a small handgun he aimed at my chest.

He fired.

The bullets went clink-clink.

I kicked at him. I intended to hit the gun, but the awful footing and bumpy ride had me kicking higher. I hit him in the wrist. I couldn’t hold back a wince as I saw his clearly mechanical hand detach from his arm and go flying overboard. No one was retrieving that anytime soon.

I kept myself low as I moved towards the back of the ship and the little cabin there.

The guy in it stared at me coming, wide-eyed, until I tore the door open and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Throttle down,” I asked, politely.

Almost meekly, he reached over to a lever in the ship’s console and carefully lowered it to the sound of the boat’s engine slowing down.

I kept a hold of him as I looked behind us. Gomorrah was still in our shitty little pontoon boat, puttering along and getting closer at a decent clip. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I warned the pilot before I moved to the back of the boat.

Gomorrah slowed down so that when she inevitably bumped into us, it was just a small lurch, the tires along the edges of both boats squeaking with the impact.

“What do we do with them?” Gomorrah asked as she casually stepped up and onto our new ride.

“Uh, toss them in the shit?” I asked with a gesture to the flowing river of sludge next to us. I had the impression it was moving along faster now. Could have been wrong about that, though.

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“They’ll drown,” Franny said with all the indignity a nun could muster.

I shrugged. “They were shooting us,” I said. “And don’t tell me that bat of yours has a non-lethal setting on it.”

“I’m sure there are other options,” Gomorrah said. She moved into the cabin, opened the door, then stared at the trembling idiot within. “Out.”

“Alright, fine,” I said. She was taking her girl’s side, which, while annoying, was entirely fair. “Hey, idiot, help me load your idiot friends up onto the other boat.”