Happy Christmas. This is part of my farewell to Peter Capaldi, who will be replaced by Jodie Whittaker on Christmas Day. I hope she's a brilliant Doctor, who will inspire more stories for this website.

I don't own Doctor Who.

Please enjoy my story, and please leave feedback.


Back to the Spanish Main….. in a submarine

The Pirate had never considered herself to be a Designer, but when she had gotten the basics right she found it pathetically easy. It was ironic, really - designing time had been banned by her race for a long time. The Pirate had never pictured herself as the type to Design time before, though she knew that her unique knowledge of the workings of time and time travel made it easier than it would've done with a human or any other species, who would have needed to possess a computer rigorous enough to cope with the complicated temporal calculations.

Pfft, temporal calculations like that were for wimps. Well, computerised work was pathetic, but for her, it was as easy to breathe.

Designers were basically time travellers who were hired by wealthy clients - corporations or individuals who wanted to change a specific event or moment of the past in their favour. The Time Lords had banned temporal designing several centuries ago because they were afraid of the number of potential alternative timelines, and the Pirate understood and even sympathised with their problem. The Time Lords were tolerant of temporal experimentation, but they didn't actively encourage it. The dangers of inexperienced or really stupid time travellers meddling with history was another thing that antagonised them because they had to clean up the mess, but if you were really careful, had access to a well designed and developed time machine then you could manipulate the past without causing serious damage.

For her current plans, the Pirate had realised she had needed to be very careful and cautious, though truthfully after she had begun manipulating the past by programming specific people then she realised it was easy when you got the hang of it. The trick of Designing time wasn't to actively meddle with events, get in the way of a car, or blow up something important - only time meddlers did that. Designers programmed people to carry out specific instructions at a certain time and to make sure they were in the right place when that happened.

She had been away from Gallifrey for over two hundred years now, and she had already accrued a big reputation in several time frames, always under different names - the Pirate sometimes wondered whether or not she should have chosen a different name for a title or maybe just a different name altogether, but if she really wanted to she could change her name to something other than a title - but she wanted to go further.

The Time Lady was bored of prowling the future eras. Now she wanted to slip back into the past, and it hadn't been until she'd studied the TARDIS databanks and studied human history that she discovered the perfect eras. Human history was so full of war, chaos, and piracy that she was pressed for a choice, but she found the Spanish Main to be perfect.

But she had no intention of using the primitive sailing ships of the era. Sure, it wouldn't be too difficult to capture one and refit it to carry torpedoes, or convert the cannons to become rifled instead of being smooth-bore weapons capable of firing explosive or incendiary shells, or feature an atomic power plant and engine. But it would take too long and she would be working on her own - she was too much of a loner to really want to work with everyone, and besides working with advanced technology was difficult to anyone without the skills to work with them - the Pirate knew how ingenious and inventive humans were, she knew that from experience, but she knew that it would be way beyond their comprehension if she showed them nuclear technology.

She could've disguised her TARDIS as a ship easily enough, but the problem was the TARDIS couldn't duplicate weapons and she would need them in order to take on naval ships or indeed other pirates. Sure, she could also program the chameleon circuit into disguising her ship to resemble some kind of speed boat, but that was too anachronistic.

Further study of human history had given her the perfect answer. A submarine. At first the Pirate had considered merely taking her TARDIS through time to the Spanish Main or even the Indian ocean or any other time frame and disguise her ship as a submarine and carry out her plans there, but as she studied human history a little further along she learnt about the First and Second World Wars - the German U-Boats and the American Gato class submarines, and the X-Craft of the British Navy that sank the Tirpitz.

A disguise for the TARDIS was all well and good, but she wanted a submarine that could actually sink a ship from a distance. If she used her TARDIS then she would need to go very close to a ship, and plant a bomb on them, and while she could knock off a few bombs she didn't want to go down that route. For a start, how could she control her TARDIS to move from one ship to another? She would either need to have a mechanism in the conning tower of the disguise to control the ship's steering, but how would she even know it was there in the first place? And more importantly, how could she be sure she had the perfect number of bombs to make a difference? She didn't want to go down into the TARDIS and come out carrying a fresh set of bombs all the time. It was just not practical.

The only problem was choosing a submarine from a moderately advanced era of human history that could be used. She discounted the U-Boats and the Gato-class American submarines from World War 2; they were diesel powered and didn't have a very high speed underwater. The midget submarines from the same era were also discounted for much the same reasons, though she needed space to stow her TARDIS away. Okay, so she needed a submarine that was nuclear powered, armed with torpedoes, and could be crewed by a single person.

The early and middle 21st century was the perfect place to look, but the problem there was the submarines were too large and required large crews to run them efficiently. She didn't want that - she wanted a submarine that was small and manageable, and yet capable of sinking a large number of ships at a time and had a highly efficient and powerful power plant.

There was only one tiny problem - there weren't any.

The Pirate was so frustrated that she almost gave up before she drowned out some of her sorrows in a bar - the mild anti-intoxicant she regularly took whenever she drank copious amounts of booze was an advantage, but after she had almost been raped once upon a time, the last thing she wanted was to make another stupid mistake - and she overheard a couple of people that she could tell were time travellers talk about a contract to change a business deal, and how ridiculous it was even if it was a good job, and that was when it hit her to Design time.

Sure, the Pirate knew she could do it - and it wasn't as if she were on good terms with the Time Lords anyway, but she didn't want to push the limits. If they caught her meddling with time, they wouldn't exile her, she would probably be vaporised. So, the Pirate went back to the 21st century, and she began laying the foundations of her game plan. She chose the mid C21st because that was when the humans had begun developing fusion power reactors, and that meant they could downscale the size of anything whereas before anything holding a nuclear reactor was massive. She had a blueprint to work with there.

The Pirate had spent a great deal of time programming and meticulously Designing the pasts of several people - naval engineers, politicians, scientists and naval admirals to begin the work - the engineers and scientists would begin working on miniaturising the technology down to a fine degree, and she had also programmed several events of the time - Earth at that point was already volatile, so it was doubtful anyone would really notice anything different. It took a great deal of time, but the Pirate was pleased by the outcome.

The naval base the TARDIS was currently scanning featured highly advanced sensors and security systems that would have made it difficult to break in with conventional means, but to the Pirate it was pathetically easy for the TARDIS to materialise around one of the submarines that was inside the pen. The base was arranged in a hexagonal shape with a massive wall surrounding the base and sheltering the patrol boats and the submarines there from the roughness of the sea in bad weather, and there was a pen where the submarines were held, and there were a number of workshops and fuel cell stores. The Pirate's hands flew over the console and materialised around one of the submarines and dematerialised again, and set the controls to also materialise around a large number of torpedoes. She knew that her actions would cause a lot of confusion and lead to a major investigation, but she didn't care.

Next stop, the Spanish main.


The submarine the Pirate had stolen from the C21st was fairly long, with fins in the bow and stern with a large conning tower jutting from the middle, and right behind it was another smaller tower section where the airlock was featured, and directly in front of the conning tower was the torpedo launcher. All in all, the Pirate was very pleased and impressed with the success of her Design. All she had done was program a few people into conceiving a small submarine vessel that was powerful and strong enough to stay underwater for long periods and provide a good base to spy and launch saboteurs during peacetime while in wartime it would be small enough to menace the enemy.

The enemy being the treasure ships sent back to Spain.

As soon as the TARDIS arrived at her destination and ejected the submarine into the Atlantic ocean, and she guided the ship onto the submarine in a corner of the control room. The cabin of the submarine was cramped, with a large horseshoe-shaped console covered with controls that controlled the ballast tanks, the engines, and the weapons with a wheel in front of a chair. There were smaller control panels around the room, but the Pirate didn't pay them much attention. The controls of the submarine were overcomplicated, typical of human thinking, but to the Pirate, it wasn't a problem. Sitting down at the console, the Pirate's hands flew over the console like a pianist playing a concerto.

The submarine had been sitting on the surface of the sea, a gleaming metal predator way out of its time period. If anyone saw the vessel on the surface, they would stop and stare, and the more superstitiously minded would consider the submarine to be a monster, some kind of sea leviathan that had risen to the surface to devour all, rather than what it was in reality.

Then, very slowly, the submarine began to move through the water, leaving faint traces of white foam in its wake before great founts of steam were blasted out of its sides as its ballast tanks began to fill with water, and it slowly began to sink down. Eventually, the deck was completely under the water and then finally the conning tower and the top airlock was under the sea, leaving only the periscope. Eventually, that disappeared as well, leaving a completely empty sea.

"40 feet, I think," the Pirate murmured to herself as she adjusted the controls, and pushed the wheel forwards to control the hydroplanes, flicking on the sonar scanners before levelling off, and adjusting the speed to exceed 30 knots, while activating the hydrophone arrays to detect any surface vessel. Powered by its fusion power plant which sucked water through its forward ram scoops, and pushed through to the turbines and propelled the submarine at great speeds, the vessel crossed many miles under the surface of the Atlantic, and it gave the Pirate some experience with handling the vessel.

She had learnt how to pilot an ordinary spaceship, and she had even gotten lessons flying a plane in the late C20th. She had a few driving licenses for various types of cars in different time zones, and she had learnt how to manage a boat, so she wasn't particularly worried about learning how to pilot a submarine. But she wanted to learn how to handle the ship. In a way, it was kind of similar to how she had learnt how to manage her TARDIS, though truthfully both were pathetically easy.


For three standard Earth days, the Pirate experimented with the submarine. She became proficient at crash diving and sending the nose of the submarine to the bottom, and she began practicing with the torpedo controls though she didn't fire them because she didn't want to waste them. But she didn't waste time either.

Using the data collected by the Time Lords and placed so casually but helpfully in the databanks of every TARDIS, the Pirate was able to find the best routes in the Atlantic between the Caribbean and Europe. With the submarine and the TARDIS, she travelled along the routes, spotting various ships along the way, sometimes moving in groups to avoid the pirate ships already out there, or sometimes alone.

Very brave of them since they were at risk, but she didn't care if they had a death wish or if they just wanted to make a big profit they were willing to tangle bait in front of pirates. It amused the Pirate a little bit, because she was there, under the surface, who was able to keep up with them with more powerful engines, but she left them alone for now while she became used to the route, and besides she would have plenty of time to properly plunder the ships later on, so it didn't make any difference to her.

The Pirate also stalked different pirate ships that routinely tracked down and attacked the Spanish treasure ships - it amazed her they could even do that, considering how primitive human technology was at this current time, but they were doing much as she was, which was to stay close to the treasure routes ferrying gold and silver from the Spanish main to the ports in Spain, and just patrol it in wait until they came across any treasure ship unlucky enough to be out there at the time. As she patrolled the routes from the Spanish Main to Europe, the Pirate witnessed these attacks firsthand, but she discounted the pirate ships as important - if she came across them, then they too would become fair game, it was as simple as that.

When she had left Gallifrey, she had dealt with a few space pirates in her time, and she had been forced to see a few of them as her enemies, but this time she had the advantage - they couldn't do anything to her here.

Sticking close to one of the ports where treasure ships were constantly being loaded up with gold and silver for shipment to Europe had turned out to be one of her best ideas, because the Pirate soon decided she was ready. She had visited the port town and discovered that a small number of ships would be leaving, bound for Spain, carrying tons of silver and gold in their holds, in just a few days.

The Pirate stayed pretty close to the port in the submarine, using the periscope to keep watch on them. In a century where submarines were virtually unknown, she didn't really care if anyone saw the periscope. The top of the instrument wasn't that large and besides if anyone saw it, who cared?

Even if they saw it on the surface, it wouldn't be there for long. The Pirate only took intermittent views of the surface to reassure herself that the treasure ships were there, and besides even if any of the humans in the harbour saw the top of the periscope, what would they do? It wouldn't be as though they knew what it was.

The Pirate spied on the ships for hours when she looked through the periscope and saw that her patience was finally being paid off. The sails were finally being set, and the anchors were lifted, the treasure ships finally moved out of the harbour. Guiding the submarine directly underneath the ships as they left the harbour, the Pirate kept the vessels' speed fairly low as she lurked under the keels of her prey. Once in the open ocean and no longer confined to the cramped space of the harbour, the submarine was moved to flank the ships. The Pirate followed them out, and using the sensors built into the periscope she prepared to strike at the fleet when they were both at least seven miles out into sea. She prepared her submarine - she loaded the torpedoes into the launcher, and programmed the computer and guidance system built into each missile to hit the sides in each ship so then their holds would flood quickly without any chance of saving the cargo.

She put on her wetsuit and prepared the airlock, and her diving equipment, making sure to include some spare air tanks in case she used up her supply too fast - Time Lords didn't need as much oxygen as humans did, but she didn't want anything to go wrong. She put both sets of tanks in the airlock, and returned to the control room, and viewed the treasure ships through the periscope.

It was still daylight, and the ships were still moving in formation. Using the underwater scanners, the Pirate continued inputting the instructions into the torpedo guidance computer. She didn't plan to completely destroy the small fleet - she only planned to sink all but a few of them, and even then they would probably return to the port town, surprised with slightly battered survivors who'd expected to be well on their way to Europe, but the Pirate didn't care about any of that.

The Pirate pressed the control sequence that would trigger the programme to sink the treasure ships, and she watched through the periscope as it started. She heard a phutt sound as the launchers fired their torpedoes, and a few minutes later the small missiles exploded against the hulls of two of the treasure ships, sending up plumes of water and spray into the air. The launchers fired more torpedoes at the treasure ships, and more were hit until finally only three of them were left.

Through the periscope she could see the three treasure ships turn to pick up survivors. She watched the vision for a few minutes, not feeling anything for the mariners she had killed since she had done this before. She had destroyed dozens of ships just to get something she wanted. Part of her wanted to just looking through the periscope, but she didn't because she wanted to see what the humans did. To her relief none of the ships seemed prepared or willing to carry on with their voyage, instead they used their common sense and returned to the harbour. The Pirate knew without a shadow of a doubt they would be the recipients of some very deep and probing questions, questions that none of them could answer.

When she saw them begin to head for the port, she guided the submarine down slowly towards the ships resting on the bottom of the sea, taking the submarine down at a graceful angle. The sight of them resting on the bottom of the sea filled her with a little bit of pleasure since she knew the plan had worked.

Entering the airlock as soon as the submarine landed with a gentle bump on the seabed, the Pirate breathed in the air from the tanks gently as the water filled the room, equalising the pressure to match the sea outside. When the chamber was flooded, the Pirate opened the hatch and left the submarine, bubbles from her tri mix tanks of oxygen, nitrogen and helium cascading out as she swam out of the submarine. As she swam out of her submarine, headed straight towards one of the sunken ships, she was surprised by how far away she had landed her ship from the wrecks. There were shoals of fish everywhere, their silvery scales glinting even this far down, and there were tall strands of seaweed that stretched upwards, swaying gently in the current.

The Pirate paid the minutest amount of attention to the natural wonders of the sea before she swam gently towards the wreck, though she paid close watch for any sign of predators lurking about. She was armed with an underwater carbine which fired bullets, taken from the 21st century along with the submarine - in fact, it was a piece of the submarine's equipment, but she didn't want to use it unless she needed to. The newly sunken ship's hull had been split open by the impact of the torpedo, and there were chests of gold and silver scattered over the seabed. The Pirate went over the wreck of the first ship carefully, and just as carefully she went over the wreck while avoiding pieces of debris as she gathered the chests and put them outside the hull.

The Time Lady didn't have any intention of swimming backwards and forwards to the wrecks. That would take too much time, far too much for even a Time Lord to tolerate. She was just going to empty them out and then take them back to the submarine. It was going to be a long job, but she had plenty of time. It took her an hour to remove the treasure from just one ship, thankful that the work and labour on the surface which had been done by hundreds of slaves was easy down here because the water made everything virtually weightless. A massive pile chests was on the seafloor from just one ship, and when she was finished she simply moved on to another ship. It took the Pirate a couple of hours to plunder just three ships, and when she was finally finished, she started taking them back to the submarine.

She had a few loading problems there because the airlock of the submarine was not that big, and she was becoming tempted to simply materialise the TARDIS around the piles to save her the trouble of wrestling the chests in through the outer hatch of the submarine and out through the narrow inner door. It was awkward, and more than once she had been forced to remove the gold and silver for ease of movement, but she had problems picking up everything and putting it somewhere in the TARDIS.

After an hour of moving the treasure out through the inner door of the airlock chamber once she had finished emptying it for the last time, the Pirate leaned against a bulkhead and sighed. She was exhausted, but she knew she would have to go back out there. She sniffed the air, getting a sense of the local time and knew it was getting late. Reaching a decision the Pirate went back to the control room and walked to the console. Her hands moved over the controls and she guided the submarine to the centre of the wrecks. When the ship settled down on the seafloor again she realised she didn't want to keep going in and out of the submarine, spending long periods out there. An idea came to mind. The Pirate walked into her TARDIS and went to the console, and began to power the ship up. She made some careful adjustments to the control console before she left the ship. A few minutes later the Pirate was once again attacking the wrecks, but instead of just making separate piles outside the ships, she took all of the chests from all of them and put them into one massive pile.

When the Time Lady was sure she had gathered more than enough, she swam back to the submarine and reentered the airlock. Once all the water was evacuated, she rushed to her TARDIS and began setting the controls and triggering the dematerialisation sequence. She could have used her TARDIS anytime of her choice, but the Pirate didn't want to use her time ship too often for something so menial. Once the gold was stored in the TARDIS, she guided her ship back to the submarine. It was getting late. In the morning, she would go on another hunt.

For the next month, the Pirate and her submarine were the terror of the sea in the Spanish Main though she wasn't stupid enough to be sighted. But she quickly realised she had made a mistake in letting the sailors live when she visited one of the port towns in the Caribbean. The sailors there were mystified by the disappearances of several ships while eyewitness account didn't tell anybody anything. While she moved from town to town to listen to one these little chats, the Pirate was annoyed when she heard them talk about seeing something in the water sticking out.

While she wasn't too bothered by the sight of the periscope being seen by the sailors of the various ships she sank, the Pirate was annoyed when she heard there had been enough sightings for a few ships to be sent out to sea to investigate, but in an age before anti-submarine warfare was invented she wasn't bothered. No, what really bothered her was it was even happening.

When she returned to her TARDIS and returned it to her submarine, the Pirate sat in the captain's chair on the confined bridge of the ship and brooded over what she should do now. She had learnt that it was not a good idea to give up, even if she had made good on plundering different ships in the Spanish Main, but she would have to change her approach. She had made the mistake of thinking it would not really matter if her periscope was seen since it wasn't like any one would know what it was, and now she had a warship looking for her.

The Pirate decided to leave all warships alone, though she would need to pick her targets more carefully from now on, but she didn't really care about that. It was tempting for her to just simply hunt them down and sink them, but she avoided them. None of the crews on those ships or the authorities in this part of the world knew what they were hunting, and even if they did their technology was too primitive for them to be a credible threat to her submarine.


"C'mon, you heathen bastards! Get those trunks stowed onboard the ships," one of the overseers shouted at the black slaves moving the trunks onboard the ships, and his order was repeated by a number of his assistants who cruelly whipped the black slaves into hurrying up. But the overseer knew they were working as fast as they could, but he earned his pay by being cruel to these poor buggers.

It was hard for him not to feel sorry for them, but he knew he had to be cruel to get them to work faster, knowing if they didn't things would be bad for them.

The overseer was not the only one feeling sorry for the slaves. The Pirate had seen many types of slavery during her travels through time and space, but she knew there was little she could do for them. Even if she interfered and saved these slaves, it would do no good - they would either be captured or killed if she got them free. She had learnt that lesson before when she had travelled to Ga IV, in the year 3456, and the sight of those 60 slaves she had tried to save had been imprinted on her memory. Besides, in a few centuries black slavery would be banned, and the American Civil rights movement was fixed into human history, and into the Web of Time. There was nothing she could do.

The Pirate had had a busy morning checking over the treasure fleet, hating her restrictive dress which was like an umbrella encircling around her waist that made it hard for the Time Lady to move, and she hated the design of her clothes in contrast to the comfortable outfits she normally wore, but she tolerated it since she was making her living as a pirate.

Looking on as the slaves unloaded the chests and put them onboard the treasure fleet reminded the Pirate of an army of ants stripping a forest to nothingness. She knew this fleet would be leaving in the morning, knew that the supplies the crew would need to endure the voyage had already been put onboard. There were six ships of this fleet, and she would follow them soon. Heading back to a carriage that had been left abandoned, the Pirate went inside it. If anyone had paid any attention to the carriage which they hadn't, they would have been surprised that the carriage was no longer there.

Moving forwards through time, the Pirate used her TARDIS's poly directrix lenses to keep track of the ships from far above them, and then she directed her TARDIS to materialise inside her submarine which was suspended beneath the surface at a depth of 40 feet. Once inside she reactivated the ship and waited for the treasure fleet to come closer. It was very deep water around here. When she sank the ships, they would be so far under the surface that it would take years for them to be discovered.

The Pirate finished programming the torpedo guidance mechanism and she just waited. She'd spent quite a bit of time learning her way around this computer, and she had become better at it. Extending the periscope without any sense of worry, the Pirate saw the treasure fleet on the horizon. Automatically the periscope compensated for the distance with its digital focuser, with the computer built into the system giving an accurate estimate of the distance. The fleet were only 2 miles away and they would be close soon. The Pirate could have crossed the distance easily, but she didn't want to move at all since she had chosen this spot for them to sink. As soon as the underwater sensors detected the presence of the large ships on the surface, she retracted the periscope and waited. When they were close enough the torpedo firing computer instantly fired the torpedoes at the ships and circled the hulls and then detonated. She had enhanced the torpedoes so then they would explode, and sink and kill all of the crews. No witnesses.

Ignoring the coldness, the Pirate looked through the periscope. Where there was once pristine sea with the ships heading back to Europe with gleaming white sails, there were now pieces of burnt wood everywhere. The ships themselves were either on fire and sinking, or they were already sinking with their burnt masts and sails still sticking out of the water.

The Pirate wasn't sure if there were survivors, but she felt guilty about what she had done. Pushing that aside since she would have plenty of time, later on, to reflect on what she had just done, the Time Lady guided the submarine down to the bottom, tilting the forward hydroplanes and directing the pumpjets downwards at a slow, gentle speed and rested her ship on the bottom of the sea before heading for the airlock to check her equipment and the airlock while she waited for the ships to finally sink to the bottom. Once more entering the airlock, the Pirate stood in the middle of the room as the water poured into the chamber, letting the pressure equalise like she had let it do a hundred times now, breathing gently from her air tanks and then left the submarine and began swimming slowly towards the sunken ships. She winced under her mask at the slight increase of pressure, but it was manageable for the SCUBA equipment she was wearing at the moment.

As she swam towards the wreck, she saw the burnt and grisly remains of a few of the human crew members, the smell of the burnt and bloody flesh had already begun to attract the local predators, but as long as they left her alone the Pirate didn't care about what they did, though she had to hold down the bile at the sight of those burnt out humans. One of their faces was still reasonably intact and untouched and the eyes seemed to glare sightlessly into the Time Lady's own eyes. It took all of her will just to look away and continue with her task of plundering the ships.

The impact of the torpedoes had practically ripped the wooden hulls to pieces while blasting them with a small but very hot explosion, but while the torpedoes had done their jobs and practically incinerated the ships they had scattered the gold and silver over a large area. It took her hours to move the trunks from the ships to the centre of the fleet before she headed back to the submarine. A few minutes later, there was a strange sound under the water as the treasure pile seemed to be warped between different planes of reality, and then they just disappeared.


The crew of the treasure ship seemed relaxed but if there had been any outsiders on the ship - passengers or merchants returning or travelling to Europe - then they might have noticed the typical tension that the sailors ordinarily felt whenever they travelled in these waters. In the last three months, dozens of treasure ships like their own had disappeared without a trace, with no survivors. None of the other ships were targeted - the warships and the merchant vessels were safe enough, but for the crews of treasure ships it was hell. They needed to be bribed more money - money that would probably never even come their way in the first place - just to make up the crews and augment the manpower.

But the attacks had slackened, and even the conventional pirates were not launching any real attacks because they had problems picking a hapless treasure ship and then plundering it.

For the crew of this particular treasure ship, no more than seven days out from the city of Panama and headed straight for Spain, it was a relief they had managed to get out this far without incident.

The Captain of the ship, a Spaniard by the name of Jose glanced at his first mate, a tall wiry man called Esteban. "Anything?" Jose asked.

Esteban shook his head.

"Nothing on the horizon?" Jose pressed, knowing his long-term friend was a man of few words, but they had been through so much they didn't need works to truly understand one another.

"No," Esteban spoke at last, relief colouring his tone though his captain knew he was trying not to be too optimistic, he had learnt the hard way God worked in truly mysterious but sometimes uncaring ways.

Jose nodded, dropping that part of the topic, knowing from experience not to say a word about his friend's superstitious attitude. But he shook his head in frustration. "I wish we didn't have what we have in our hold," he complained, making sure no-one was paying too much attention.

Esteban let out a wry, rasping chuckle. "I think most of the crew agree with you," he replied. "I know what you mean. Treasure cruises always attract trouble, just as much as passengers. Speaking of which, how are the ones onboard?"

Jose sighed. "Demanding," he growled. "They are demanding. They don't realise I'm the captain of this ship, that I have responsibilities."

"We know you do. Still, at least its an easy charter," Esteban replied.

It wasn't unusual for people to come and go between the Americas and Europe if the price was right, but it was annoying for the crews and officers of the ships eventually. While many sailors were delighted to have a change of company, that delight could quickly dull. Jose and Esteban had seen and experienced it many times before, but truthfully they would both prefer to take passengers to and from Spain rather than a hold full of treasure, and even that was dubious with all the piracy in the Spanish Main.

"Do you think we should have others?" Jose asked.

Esteban snorted. "No, it might be safer than treasure cruises, but I'd rather have the treasure or sacks of stuff to take home. At least they don't complain."

"You're right there, my friend."

Any further conversation was mooted when there was a sudden crash, and the two veteran mariners were taken by surprise when there was a sudden shout from the other ship that had crashed into them without running lights. The pirates screamed and rushed onto the deck, even as Esteban rushed to the bell to ring it quickly to get help from the men below while his friend grabbed a pair of bellying pins - they weren't the best weapons, but they were all he had.

The crew poured out of the lower decks, weapons ready, and they began to take on the pirates that were trying to plunder their ship, but one of the passengers, a rich looking man came onto the quarterdeck, took one look at the fighting and then went back to the cabin in terror.

It was bedlam on the deck as the pirates and the merchant sailors fought against one another, swords clanging against swords as both sides tried to gain an advantage over the other. Both crews were equal in size, but the pirates were prepared for a fight, the honest sailors were still fighting sleep.

But both sides were taken aback.

Esteban and Jose had been fighting shoulder to shoulder with some of their crew, and they had just thrown themselves at another band of pirates when Jose cursed. Following his gaze, Esteban quickly saw what had made Jose swear like that. A band of pirates were rushing at them, cutlasses, knives, dirks, and axes, dark and slick with blood, screaming like Viking berserkers, eyes like rabid dogs set deep in their foaming, insane mouths.

The two old friends knew they could not fight two bands at the same time, but they prepared themselves anyway. They calmed their minds and prepared to fight, to the death if necessary, and readied their weapons -

When suddenly the pirates glowed and screamed in agony as they collapsed to the deck. Both crews paused in their fights to look at the smoking corpses on the deck, their skin black and stinking the air faster than the sea could cope with.

"I was sort of hoping for a real fight, but if you lot are going to just stare at the dead, then you may as well go to a cemetery," the voice of a woman called out through the silence on the deck over the creaking of the wooden vessels.

As one the crews turned to face the speaker.

Leaning against the rail was a woman wearing a shockingly and scandalously short dress that was more like a belt, showing off long legs tucked away in black boots. She was wearing a dark coat that went down to her knees and covered her equally scandalous top.

In her hands were two large, oddly shaped guns and they were covering everyone.

A pirate broke the silence, grinning at the woman and licking his lips. "Bit outta your depth, eh, girlie?"

The woman's lip curled. "Fuck you," she hissed, raising one of her guns at him. There was a roar, a flash of light and the pirate dropped to the ground with half of his head splattered across the deck, his eyes wide open in shock. The woman grinned at the two crews, her eyes glinting maliciously.

"Who's next?" she asked, raising her guns again.

The two crews were united in their fear of this woman, and as they raised their weapons they both wondered if they would get through this.


Author's note - I've kind of based the Pirate on Revy from Black Lagoon, there will be a few moments like that later on.

Also, in one of the old Doctor Who magazines, a renegade Time Lady called Berenyi was a Designer.

Enjoy, and have a Merry Christmas.