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While Spark worked on moving over and cataloguing their haul, Rion set to work checking the ship over. It was an interesting design, the small-ish ship fitted with a small engine and a large mast system to propel it along at best possible speed. The fore of the pirate ship was reinforced, too, when she leaned over the railing to look. A heavy armor plate had been fitted to it, presumably for ramming and protection both.
"It's an interceptor." She mumbled as she turned to look at the open-air wheel, fitted to the front of the ship presumably to let the one steering see their path more easily. "A risky spot to be, but if you're more concerned about speed… I guess it would work pretty well."
And had, too, considering the haul they'd gotten from the ships.
The prow was narrow, and low resting into the water a lot like her own ship's hull was. The back was larger and wider, though, and raised about a third of the way up the mast in the ship's center. The front was too risky for the captain to stay in, whether or not the captain actually steered the ship personally. Tradition back in the day said that they would, at least some of the time. But modernity had meant that captains did less piloting, leaving that to crew around them, or more commanding from the bridge.
"This isn't the UNSC, or Earth." She murmured as she headed towards the rear of the ship, stepping around the carnage left behind by Spark's attack. Ignoring the burning wood, and meat, she sighed, "No reason to think that the naval traditions here are one to one. And plenty to say they aren't."
The back of the ship had several doors split across three levels, but she ignored the bottom two oto climb the outside stairs. The top level was the smallest, with a narrow but finely made walkway in front of a set of wide doors that ran to a pair of staircases that led up to a fortified, once upon a time gun-topped, roof.
Set up in the back, and with a nice view that was good for tactics and the view itself, it was where she'd pick to stay on this ship, at least…
The door was locked but the top halves were windows, which her Forerunner body-glove enveloped elbow smashed through breezily. Inside was a wide room split down the middle, a kingly bedroom to one side and a chaotic, messy office suite of sorts to the other. She made a note to come back and loot for furniture later, the bookshelf alone stocked with enough books and binders to keep her busy for a while.
The latter, though, she got to digging through right away.
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"Rion." Spark nodded as the Watcher dropped her back off on the deck before zipping back to its work. The machine paid a nod to the little book in her hands and then he asked, quietly, "Your search went well, I take it?"
"Depends on how you define 'went well', Spark." She sighed, hopping up onto the ship railing and leaning against a raised wind-breaker at the front of the ship. Flipping open the little journal to a page she'd saved she started to read, "It's been three weeks now, and all we've found have been trading ships up and down around Menagerie. No Fang activity. I sent word through the regular channels out of Royale, but the only word to come back has been to 'keep to the plan'. Why? These are civilians. Sinking them doesn't do anything to curtail the Fang… But as command says, I do, as ever."
"Pirates don't tend to report to 'Command'." Spark noted needlessly, turning a look on her, "Usually their idea of 'command' begins and ends right around whoever is captain at the time. Until they get shot, or stabbed, in the back, at least. Then it just shifts around."
"My sentiments exactly." She sighed, "And the journal is full of entries like that, too. I don't know where Royale is, but I get the feeling it isn't Command, either."
"Why is that?"
"He never refers to them as the same thing." She answered simply, shrugging and closing the little black book. "I read a handful of the entries, and he talks about both often enough. But never does he call them the same. In fact, how he words things implies that he goes to Royale to report to Command."
"Then I'd guess they are privateers." Spark offered quietly, "Probably normal pirates hired out to work against Menagerie. Or even normal navy."
"Drop the uniforms and no one would be any the wiser." She sighed, chewing a lip anxiously and shaking her head. "What the hell are we getting involved in, here, Spark? Some kind of proxy war, feels like."
"It does at that." He sighed, adding when she turned a look on him, brow raised, "What do you want to do about it, though? We could just dump the book, hock the goods we've found, and pretend not to know about any of it."
"We could…" And the temptation was there, too, and pretty strong. This wasn't their fight in any respect, and they had better things to focus on, between trying to get home and figure out what happened. But… "The Belladonnas did right by us, went out of their way to help total strangers. We can't just toss this out after that."
"So… Back to port, then?"
"Back to port." She sighed, turning a look the way they'd come and grimacing at distant, dark clouds that rumbled threateningly. "Don't reckon that will just blow away, do you?"
"No." Spark answered, "But we'll be fine, I'm sure. It'll just slow us down a bit, going against the wind and currents. No worries, though, and hey. We have stuff to sell when we get there, too."
"Yeah." She grinned, "At least there's that to look forward to."
The storm turned out to be a true tempest, with winds that howled and waves that buffeted them as they tried to push through it. They stuck to the shallows, and their hold was full to bursting, so the waves couldn't get large enough to overturn their ship. But Spark was forced to send his Watchers to the other ship, first to store the bodies below-decks where they'd be kept safer, and then to steer the other ship so that it wouldn't drift into the shoreline, or out into the stronger waves of the sea.
How he was able to steer two separate, very different ships, she didn't know, beyond the usual AI based nonsense.
Even with his pre-existing skills on the open sea, it still took days to fight against the storm's wind and waves. And she still had nothing to do, besides sit in her bunk, head between her knees while she tried to stave off the sea-sickness the storm was kicking up. Spark had warned her before they set off into the storm that space travel and cryo-sleep were two very different things to a stormy sea, and she'd laughed it off.
Now, she really understood the differences… A ship's groans and moans as space pressured it and the internal systems worked were regulated, normal. You could predict them, after a while, and that made it easier to deal with them. Even ones that made space travel hard, like how air-cons tended to whine and wheeze on older civilian ships. Or how armor plating, replaced and resoldered so often back during the war that even the UNSC didn't really know what was what, would moan and groan occasionally.
The waves were wild, though, and doing wild things to her insides…
"How are we feeling?" She heard, looking up to see Spark standing in the door, a Watcher hovering at his waist with a little pot and cup she didn't recognize resting on its head.
"Like I look, I imagine."
"So like shit?"
"Kiss my ass, Tin Man." She grunted back, wrapping her arms tighter around her legs and tugging them into her chest as the ship rocked again. And took her stomach with it, bile rising against her steadily weakening iron defense. Forcing it down she asked, quietly, "What's that? I don't recognize the pot…"
"Lemon and ginger tea, from our… Recent ventures." He answered with a wry chuckle and a glint of amused green and vicious red, the Watcher bobbing forward quickly, hardlight systems holding the pot and cup both steady. She took the cup, after a moment, and the Watcher poured it for her while Spark explained, "It's an old remedy. Hot tea, ginger to fortify, and lemon to steady the stomach. It helps new sailors get their sea legs."
"Yeah?"
"It helped me." He answered with a small shrug, "On my first voyage, I was a mess. Hacking up my stomach, unable to eat- And it wasn't even a storm."
"Really?"
"Oh very much so, yes." He nodded, pantomiming taking a drink from an invisible cup, piny raised jokingly, to cue her to do the same. Grimacing, she did, biting back a groan at the bitter lemon taste it left. Chuckling, he said, "I reacted that way to that, too. The taste… Takes a while to adjust to. But once you have, you'll feel better."
"Like coffee after cryo?"
"Kind of, I suppose."
"That's a placebo, though, Spark." She smirked, watching him stiffen at being caught out. Put on or a genuine reaction, she wasn't sure, but she took another sip and explained. "Caffeine wakes you up, which is helpful. But it's mostly just the warm drink that helps you get up and out of the 'Bay."
"Yes, well… Then I suppose this isn't like that." She snorted, amused, and he sighed, face plates contorting in an unamused grimace. "I mean it, Rion. The ginger and lemon blend is actually medicinal, not placebic. And for the record, I pilfered it from the captain's cabin. It was stored beside arthritis medication and eye drops."
"So?"
"So clearly it was medicinal!" He guffawed, turning slightly as the Watcher deposited the pot on the floor at the foot of her bed and zipped out of the room. Seeing her smirk, he sighed, "You're messing with me… Because of course you are. The one time I try and be nice-"
"Relax, Spark." She smiled, taking another sup from the cup and chuckling. "I'm just teasing you. And I appreciate you helping me out, too."
"Yes, well…" He tinted a cold blue and shrugged, turning to leave, "We'll be at port come the morning. I don't look forward to giving the Chieftain the news, but…"
"I've been thinking about that ever since I found the journal." She sighed, taking another fortifying sip and turning, tugging the little book out from under her pillow. Frowning and turning it in her hand she said, "You were right that we could just… Dump it. Avoid everything we're about to just walk into."
"Sail, technically."
"Spark…"
"But I take your point." He sighed, shaking his head and turning back to her, "I agree with you, though. They've done too good by us not to offer them this. Not to help them. We have to pay it back."
"Will this help them, though?" She asked, "Or just put them in danger?"
"We can't know the future." Spark counselled her gently, clasping his hands behind his waist and, for once, looking the years he'd lived as opposed to just bragging about them. "What if by not telling them they were to end up in even worse danger, in the end? What if, say, it causes a civil schism in Kuo Kuana that ends with the manor torched?"
"That wouldn't be our fault, though." She argued, "We can't know what not saying anything will really mean. But if this happened to the UEG's traders, the UNSC would be rolling up the production lines to respond."
"Kuo Kuana isn't the UNSC." The ancient Human answered coolly, "We can't know what will happen one way or another. But the Chieftain deserves to know what is happening. It's his duty to protect his people. And he needs all the information to make an informed decision."
"I know, I just…" She sighed and leaned back, pressing her back against the wood of her room. "I don't want to end up involved in another war. You know?"
"But I also want to do the right thing." She said, "By the Belladonnas and just, you know, in general."
"I know you do, and so do I." Spark murmured with a deep set frown, accented by his colors shifting through a hue of shades before settling on a dull purple. "And I'm not interested in getting involved in something like that, either. But we can decide how to handle that if, not when, a war is declared. For now, we just need to focus on getting by. And part of that is not sinking."
"Yeah." She smiled, "Try not to do that, alright?"
"I will. And do try to rest up, Rion." He nodded, turning and slipping around the corner without another word.
Taking another sip of her tea, she sighed and stared up at the ceiling. What was the right decision, here? Telling them about the privateering that was going on seemed the obvious, easy answer. But keeping it to herself did, too. Whenever governments used privateers instead of opting for actual war that generally meant that they couldn't wage a proper war, and had to rely on them.
But being called out could force them to…
And that would be on her head.
"But if it's left alone, more people will die anyway…" She sighed, "And they'll be civilians, too. Just sailors, trying to get by. Just like..."
Like them.
"Damn it." She growled, downing a long drink of her tea and reaching for the pot to refill it. "Why can't I just have a nice, easy life?"
As usual, none of the walls answered her, and she was left to drink her lemon and ginger tea in silence. Which left her all alone with her thoughts, and the decision she had to make. Which was normal enough, she supposed… And was just fine by her, really.
Because she had an idea about how to solve the pirate problem.
By the time they reached Kuo Kuana, her decision - and plan - had been made, almost in line with the storm dying off to let bright sunshine once again bake her alive. As they sailed into port, their pilfered products in tow, she took a deep breath to steady herself. Once they'd docked a guard arrived, staring at the towed boat and opening her mouth to ask about it. Before she could, though, Rion pressed the little journal into her hand and cut her off.
"We need to speak to Chieftain Belladonna." She said simply, "Tell him it's urgent."
"Why?"
"If he reads that he'll know, but if you want the headline…" The guard nodded and Rion sighed, but put on a strong voice. The kind she used to issue commands and edicts. One filled with confidence and a demand for obedience, and that she knew would do well for the guard. "You don't have a pirate problem. You have a privateer problem. And I have some ideas on who is sending their men out to raid your lanes."
"P-Privateers-" The guardswoman blinked, "You know who it is?"
"I do." She nodded gravely, "The journal has the evidence the Chieftain will need to prove that Mistral is sending her men and women out to raid Kuo Kuana's trade lanes. And we brought back one of their ships, too. A Mistrali corvette."
The woman eyed the ship and then the journal, then frowned and nodded. Turning, she jogged off, past the gate the private docks used and out, into the city.
"You're sure about this, then?" Spark asked quietly, stood behind her at the base of the gangplank, once more playing the servile role he'd fallen into. "You know what all of this might mean…"
"I do." She nodded, stomach turning somersaults for entirely different reasons, now. "And whatever comes, I'm going to stand by the people that helped me. By Kuo Kuana, and the Faunus that live here."
"Then I will too, I guess." He sighed, "Not like I have anything better to do."
"I appreciate it." She smiled up at him, "Your big guns will be useful."
"Yes, well, that and I'm the only one who can steer the ship."
"Yep." She nodded, "Autopilot with extra steps."
He only sighed sufferingly, which made him all the more of a drama queen for the fact he didn't have lungs to do it with. Which meant the sound was entirely made up.
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Dasgun :
Kpmh2001 :
Yeah, I've noticed it a couple times too, and trying to find a way to lean into it.
Combine117 :
Naaah, Corsac and Fennec only make the BEST decisions.
The Baz :
...I hate you, now, I'M DOING IT TOO!
Korbussite :
Oh yeah. For those properly prepared, the Forerunner machines he's using can be dealt with. But some random not-pirate caught unawares? Nah, not a chance in hell.