Chapter 25
Ron saw pirates capturing people in large numbers, with all the GP robots defeated, and he knew what to do.
He could see that the smoke emanating from his tank was non-critical: it was just the smoke from composite armor having been damaged, not penetrated. The tank wasn't on fire. It was still functional, though he'd left it empty of any crew and just playing a looped recording of the hula-dancer illusion, plus music.
The fact that the illusion and the music were still playing proved even further that the tank was still functional.
So Ron ran to his tank.
As he ran, a pirate got in his way. Ron shot him twice with his laser, which curved in its flight path, destroying the pirate's parrot and giving him a fleshwound in the shoulder, instead of hitting where Ron had aimed.
Then, even though he had, many times, mocked the characters in movies for doing this, he threw his empty pistol at the pirate.
Sometimes, something that is almost always a stupid move, can actually be a good idea in the right circumstances. It was important to be flexible enough to recognize and adapt to those circumstances.
Ron had recognized that these pirates had embraced all the cliches about 18th century pirates, with some movie-pirate overtones. Embracing those cliches seemed to be a contributor, somehow, to the super-powers they showed, so it may even be compulsory to embrace them, but was at least a strong habit.
Those cliches included being extremely greedy for loot. And a functioning laser pistol was valuable loot. It wasn't certain that the pirate would be distracted by an opportunity to grab loot, but Ron felt it was worth a try.
The lightweight pistol impacted the pirate in the chest, doing no damage at all to the man.
Immediately, the pirate stooped to pick up the laser pistol.
That gave Ron an opportunity to kick the pirate as he ran past him.
The pirate went down, with at least the wind knocked out of him.
Ron almost went down, but after stumbling a few steps, recovered his balance and kept running towards his tank.
Nearby, and unnoticed by Ron, a pirate taking aim at Ron got shot by Simon. The basketball-sized blob of super-hot plasma from Simon's gun veered and hit the pirate's parrot, rather than the pirate's chest. But the plasma blob was still big enough to destroy the parrot, as well as the pirate's head.
That pirate went down.
Just a moment later, another pirate getting ready to shoot a net at Ron also got taken down by a plasma bolt from Simon.
Then Simon calmly reloaded.
-0-0-0-
Beth's slightly breathless voice sounded in almost every nearby ear, "Sprich mit all humans within 2 miles of me who are not affiliated with the pirates. Attention party-goers! Help is on the way. We have 8 more robots patrolling the island and I've called them in to help us. Hang in there. I've also called the battleship Agamemnon, and they'll be sending help asap, though I caught them at an inopportune moment so it may take a couple minutes. I know things look bad, but hang in there just a little while longer."
She paused to let that sink in, and to catch her breath, then continued, "In the meantime, here's what we know about the situation. The pirates shot all the defensive robots, as well as the tank, and have caught maybe a quarter of us so far in nets. We've taken out less than ten of them. They all have some kind of Tinker-Tech super-powered abilities, like nullifying the first couple hits they take, and never running out of loaded pistols. Many of them have other abilities too."
She paused for another breath, "The pirates with hooks as prosthetic hands seem to generate a fear aura. They're herding folks together to be captured. The pirates with blunderbusses - those look like funny bell-mouthed shotguns - can fire big nets and capture many folks at once. The peg-legged pirates can hop around like grasshoppers. The ones with eye-patches seem to know who is armed and who is not, and they almost never miss when they shoot. They all seem to be expert with cutlasses, and to be fairly acrobatic - doing things like swinging from ropes and somersaults and such. If you observe more things that look like super-powers, call them in to me or the astronomy club and we'll get the information out to everyone. That's what I have for now. Out."
She went back to observing the enemy, while gasping to catch her breath. She was hidden in a safe place for now, but it was an exercise in aerobics to stay there. She was next to the King Tiger tank, trying to stay inside the illusion of a Polynesian Fire Dancer as he danced.
At least he was a very large man, so when she made mistakes and didn't quite keep up with his dance, not much of her showed.
She'd initially thought of hiding inside a hula dancer, but those were slim women dancing very rapidly and neither of those left any room for mistakes.
-0-0-0-
Big Tom frowned in concentration as he tried to reload as fast as he could without making a mistake.
He got the new battery into his disintegrator pistol, heard the satisfying click as it locked into place, then brought it up to aim.
The nearest pirate was getting ready to fire again too. His first shot had tangled around the large beach-umbrella that Tom had been standing next to.
That was why Tom had been standing next to it - in hopes the large net would catch on it rather than on him.
The pirate had them taken out a distinctive pistol - one with copper fittings instead of the iron fittings that his net-firing pistols had - and fired that at Tom, who had rolled sideways a few feet just in case.
It was well that he'd done so, since the cone of flame coming out of the copper-chased pistol had missed him, even though it had consumed the beach umbrella that had been his former cover.
Tom was now standing next to a bush, which suddenly got draped in a net from some other pirate.
Well, one thing at a time, Tom finished aiming and took the shot at the nearest pirate. The narrow green beam curved in mid-air and struck the pirate's parrot instead of his chest. But that didn't matter, since the spherical lightning bolt resulting from all those positively-charged nuclei flying apart, thoroughly electrocuted the pirate and left him dead.
The secondary lightning bolt a moment later would have done the same, if needed. But neither that pirate, who was dead, nor Big Tom, who was busy, even noticed it.
Big Tom was already busy with the next nearby pirate, dodging his attack via an acrobatic Aikido move, and then disintegrating him.
-0-0-0-
Ron was almost there.
He was just a few feet short of the King Tiger tank, and already looking for the foot-holds built into the side of it so he could climb up to the hatch on top, when he unexpectedly tripped over an illusory fire-dancer.
He certainly hadn't expected that - these illusions were not solid.
He tumbled to the ground, tangled with someone...who turned out to be Beth.
"Fancy meeting you here," the irrepressible Ron quipped.
"Sorry about that, I saw you coming, but the illusion I was hiding in suddenly stepped sideways into your way and by then it was just habit to match its motions." Beth answered.
"No worries," Ron answered as he helped her up and they both started climbing the side of the tank, "you just graduated from faux fire dancer to assistant tank gunner. Don't worry about qualifications, I'll show you how."
"I'm game. It's probably safer in the tank than staying in a moving illusion. Less aerobic too," she panted.
"Great!" Ron enthused, "It'll make it go faster. Normally loading, aiming and firing takes 3 people, and I wasn't looking forwards to shuffling between all the crew positions to do it all myself. By the way, stop here."
Beth had reached the top of the tank hull and had started to continue up to the top of the turret, where she knew there was a hatch. At Ron's request, she now moved to stand on top of the hull.
"There are two hatches here we can use, for the driver and radio operator," Ron said, as he moved to a hatch and started typing a code into the keypad next to it, "and the crew compartment is interconnected, so we can enter here and be less obvious than if we got on top of the 10 foot tall tank turret. Then we can move inside the tank to where we need to be."
The hatch next to Ron beeped and clunked as a catch was released. Ron bent and opened it all the way, then started getting in feet first while still talking. "You get in next, the same way you see me doing it now. Then reach out and pull the hatch closed again. I'll move out of your way and get myself to the loader position. I don't think you want to try lifting these heavy tank shells - they're about 50 pounds each I'd judge."
Ron stopped talking as Beth started climbing down into the tank through the hatch. She wouldn't have been able to hear him anyway, with her body mostly blocking the hatch.
Once inside the tank, she looked around and was surprised to see how limited and cramped the space was. It was crammed with equipment and controls - almost as much as the cockpit of a single-seat fighter plane she'd seen once.
As she pulled the hatch closed above her, she heard Ron say, from somewhere above and behind her, "Welcome to my parlor..."
She completed the quote, "...said the spider to the fly? You're not after my blood are you?"
She didn't think he was, but it was probably wise to be sure.
"Not in the least. In this case we can both be spiders and go for some of the enemy's blood. Twist to your right and look behind you. You'll see a way to climb up into the turret. I'll show you how to rotate and aim the turret. Then you do that while I load the main gun. Let's see what a 105mm high explosive shell does to an old wooden pirate ship. It should penetrate the wooden side before exploding, and that ought to be spectacular."
-0-0-0-
Abe finished the last cut, and the net tangling up himself, the picnic table, and the other bench-rest shooter fell away.
He passed his knife to the other man and said "free the others" while gesturing to the other tangled rifle shooters nearby.
Then he scooped up, from off the table-top, the bayonet that went with his rifle - an M14 - fixed it in place at the end of his gun, and said "I'm taking the fight to the enemy."
"Alone?" the other man queried.
"Only at first. The guys will back my play once they see it." Abe responded while taking aim at the pirate ship.
Then, as fast as he could fire while still being sure every shot would hit, he emptied his 20 round magazine at the pirate gunners on the quarterdeck.
He mostly hit parrots, but also got 2 flesh-wounds in pirate shoulders and one in an upper arm.
He reloaded while running to the beach, towards a jet-ski that was parked there just onshore.
-0-0-0-
Big Tom was out of reloads, but not out of pirates.
But at least he had an umbrella.
It was a big beach-umbrella, six feet high and maybe 8 feet across.
He'd pulled it up a moment ago, and looked at it's construction and its workings. Now, satisfied with what he saw, he quickly released 2 catches, then stripped the umbrella mechanism and canopy off the pole, and dropped all but the bare pole.
Now he had something a lot like a quarterstaff.
His Aikido training had included the quarterstaff.
The first thing he did with it was to drop and roll, to avoid a net being shot at him. He ended the roll with his feet under him, and, by suddenly extending his legs at the right time, ended up back on his feet.
By design, he was now within reach of the pirate who'd shot at him.
Tom swung his improvised quarterstaff, and the pirate tried to block with his empty pistol. Abe was stronger, and had both momentum and leverage on his side with this swing, so the result was that the quarterstaff shoved the pistol back before it, and knocked the man's own pistol into the side of his head hard enough to knock him out.
Tom wryly wondered if that counted - for the pirate - as a successful parry or not. It was successful if parrying meant getting your own weapon to intercept the incoming weapon. It was not successful if parrying meant preventing damage via such an intercept.
He wondered this while going after his second target - another pirate, this one with his cutlass out and ready.
The pirate struck first, slashing his cutlass at Big Tom.
Tom could have blocked by just interposing his quarterstaff, but that would potentially have damaged it. It was aluminum, not wood, but the incoming steel blade could still cut it to some degree, and a few such cuts could weaken it enough to make it bend or break. He didn't want that.
So he swung his staff around in a different kind of block. Instead of just getting in front of the blade to block that way, his staff came up to the side of the blade, and pushed hard to the side, to shove the incoming blade out of the way.
It worked well enough that the pirate almost slashed his own leg with his own deflected cutlass.
Tom thought that was a neat idea, so on the pirate's next swing, he did the same thing, only harder, to try to get the pirate to cut himself.
But he mis-judged the blow, swung too hard, and impacted the side of the cutlass blade hard enough to snap the blade in two.
The pirate, now effectively disarmed, quickly went down to Tom's follow-up blow.
-0-0-0-
Simon fired his final plasma shot at a nearby pirate, taking out his target, then stowed the empty plasma pistol and took out his .45.
He could see, out of the corner of his eye, a GP robot arrive on the beach from the east, where it had been patrolling before Beth called back the patrols.
Simon put three shots into a pirate, hitting, as usual, the parrot, the puffy shirt in a minor fleshwound, and then his intended target.
While he was looking for another target, he saw the GP robot on the east end of the beach had taken down a couple of the pirates who brandished hooks as prosthetic hands. Those pirates had been herding together a large number of people, who now broke free of the roundup and started running in every direction.
Simon smiled, thinking that any such chaos would set back the pirates' timetable, disrupt their plans, and give him more time to work on defeating them.
It took four shots to put down the next pirate, and with that, Simon's magazine was empty.
While he inserted his last magazine, he looked over a nearby picnic table for anything he could use as an improvised weapon once he ran out of bullets.
A shish-kebab skewer looked promising as an improvised rapier. It would be at a disadvantage versus the pirates' cutlasses, but not as much so as being unarmed.
While assessing who should be his next target, Simon took in the general situation.
Up and down the beach, the pirates were definitely winning, though there was still scattered resistance from people using whatever they could.
Some had brought weapons.
Some were using improvised weapons like cooking implements.
Some were using weapons taken from dead pirates.
And the gun range at the west was holding out nicely.
But still their side was losing.
There were maybe two dozen resisting, maybe two hundred pirates attacking, and almost two thousand of the five thousand party goers, already captured in nets.
Simon saw as another GP robot came out of the forest by the west end of the beach.
It immediately began to assist the riflemen there in pushing back the pirates.
That was great, and a half-dozen more robots would get here soon, from wherever they had been in patrolling the island.
They would be a big help. The regular pirates didn't seem to carry any weapon capable of defeating a GP robot.
But their ship certainly did. It had had no trouble taking down multiple robots when it arrived. And it wouldn't be very long at all until its cannon were reloaded and could fire again.
Simon, grimacing slightly at the thought, found a target and was aiming, when a net caught him from behind and tangled him up good.
-0-0-0-
The moment Boz was sure Contessa was dead and the immediate threat to him was over, he looked towards the commotion at the beach.
He quickly took in the situation, then set his laser to continuous beam, took careful aim, and used the one shot left in it's battery.
His laser beam hit the base of the pirate ship's main mast, and quickly swept upwards to the tip of that mast before the beam winked out, having used up its charge.
As the beam passed, it had cut everything it touched, and set most of it on fire too.
Sails were cut in two and ignited. The mast itself caught fire.
And a truly amazing number of ropes were cut and ignited too.
Flaming bits of sail and rope cascaded down onto the pirate gunners on the quarterdeck.
Every pirate available, left off what he had been doing in order to fight the fires.
Smiling, Boz had taken the time to find a particle beam pistol and some reloads for it.
While looking, he was reviewing what he knew and using that to plan.
The pirate ship had 3 masts, looked to be about 130 feet long, and had 14 guns on its only gun deck. That made it a "fifth rate" warship by the old British rating, where first rate through third rate were different sizes of "ships of the line", and fifth rate ships were focused more on being fast than on how many guns they carried. They still carried a lot of guns - they were warships - but only up to about 40 for a fifth-rate, not counting little cannon like the swivel guns on the railings.
Fifth-rate ships made for good frigates and pirate ships, and often operated off on their own, which could mean extended cruise durations.
And that many cannon - which used, as he recalled, around 4 pounds of black powder per shot - plus lengthy cruises often meant large powder magazines.
As best Boz could recall, the powder magazine was usually a special room built into the gun deck for speedier reloading. He didn't know if it would be amidships to be closest to more guns, or forward or aft to be less likely to be hit and also be behind a section of hull that was slightly stronger due to its curve.
Without knowing which it would be, Boz did what he could and guessed. He would aim for where he supposed an amidships powder magazine would be, there on the gun-deck.
And with that, he started shooting. His particle beam pistol cut a line through the pirate ship hull in the spot Boz thought best.
Nothing blew up, so his next shot cut a line through the spot that seemed next most likely to house the powder magazine.
Again nothing blew up.
Boz chose his next target as he reloaded his pistol.
-0-0-0-
Abe was riding his jet-ski in the standing position as it reached the rear of the pirate ship. That gave him much better reach from which to climb up the ship.
He'd approached the rear, even though it was a much higher climb than amidships, because it looked like a safe climb.
It looked safe both because there were no rear-facing cannon, and so, no pirates loading them, and also because there were a number of decorative features that would make good hand-holds.
With his loaded rifle slung across his back, Abe took hold of one handhold, then another, and began his climb up the ship's rear hull.
-0-0-0-
On the HMS Agamemnon, Bas-Oon and Bas-Ra finished their preparations and opened a portal.
A line of 40 combat robots waited on deck, and had already been given their instructions.
So the moment the portal opened in front of them, they started marching through it to the beach where the party had turned into a fight with pirates.
Their mission was to win that fight, and each one set about doing so, as soon as it arrived: firing rapidly, but still carefully, so as not to hit any non-pirates.
-0-0-0-
Captain Boz ejected the empty battery from his particle beam pistol.
While he reached for another reload, he took stock.
His Duplicates had opened a portal to the beach, and 4 combat robots had already marched through it and started fighting. He knew 36 more were behind them, then 40 GP robots after them.
Almost all of the fires on the pirate ship were out. The crew had taken care of most of them, but one man had been instrumental in getting the hard-to-reach ones, like the fires up high in the rigging.
That pirate - one with a beard that looked like actual fire - had simply had to point at individual fires for the flames to fly to him and join his beard, leaving the spot where the fire had been, now extinguished.
As Boz was reloading, he noticed that pirate - the fire-bearded one - was looking right at him, and appeared to be quite angry as well.
Boz began to aim for his next shot, and saw the fire-bearded pirate aim an ancient flintlock pistol at Boz and snap a shot off, with extraordinary results. The pirate appeared to turn entirely into flame, which flowed down into the flash hole at the end of the frizzen pan on the pistol, then into the pistol's chamber, then shoot out the muzzle as a bolt of flame. The bolt of flame flew past the water and beach and struck the sculpture next to Boz, doing no damage to it, but briefly covering it in flames before those flames flowed together and re-formed into the fire-bearded pirate.
The moment the pirate finished re-forming, Boz shot him.
But the particle beam curved in mid-flight and hit the faux parrot on the pirate's shoulder. The parrot looked like it was made of cloth, like a plush-toy, yet it shattered like it was made of ice.
Before Boz could fire again, the fire-bearded pirate said "Join Us", and suddenly Boz couldn't move.
Boz couldn't even twitch his trigger-finger. He'd heard of 'capes' whose super-power let them control other people. There were a wide variety of them, generally called "Masters", and they were greatly feared.
Boz could understand why.
The pirate continued to speak in soothing tones, "You fight well, using your head, thinking about what you do. We can use that. Join Us. We always have room for someone like you. I'm Captain Firebeard and you will join my crew..."
Captain Firebeard droned on and on and Boz struggled to resist, and felt himself, bit by bit, losing the struggle.
-0-0-0-
"OK, we're on target now," Beth said.
Ron stopped cranking on the hand crank which traversed the turret, and moved to the tank commander's seat to double-check the main gun's aiming point.
It wasn't that he didn't trust Beth, but she'd never aimed or fired a tank's main gun before, and a 105mm round demanded a certain amount of respect - it could cause major problems if it went to the wrong place.
As he changed positions, Ron said, "you know, I'm glad that turret crank is there, but I'll also be glad not to have to use it any more - it's tiring!"
Beth responded, "isn't there a better way to move the turret? That seems awfully inefficient."
"Yep," he sighed, settling into his seat and leaning forward to look through the tank's optical aiming eyepiece, "normally the tank's engine rotates the turret by electrical power. Or the battery can do it too. But I left it running all day, to display the Hula dancer illusion and play music. The gas tank ran dry a while ago and it had almost drained the battery by the time we got here. The first few things we tried finished draining it. So the hand-crank was the only option left."
He let out a slow breath to get a good look at his cross-hairs, "Yes! that's it. Fire!"
Beth complied and the cannon roared.
The 105mm round hit the pirate ship near the front, down by the waterline so the curve of the hull as well as the distance would protect Abe - at the rear of the ship - from any shrapnel.
The explosion as the shell hit was large and dramatic, but when the smoke cleared, they could see no damage - only scorch marks - to the wooden hull.
Ron moved to the loader's position, by the gun, and reached for the next shell, saying "that should have destroyed them, so it has to be using some kind of super-power like those fake parrots. Well, let's see if they can shrug off an armor-piercing round!"
-0-0-0-
Abe let out an enthusiastic whoop as the tank on shore fired.
He was charged up with excitement and the thrill of combat, and the big explosion at the front of the ship just added spice to that.
He was having a great time testing his abilities against the pirates', though part of him recognized that he should be concerned, since he'd run out of bullets and was now down to fighting with only the bayonet on the end of his empty rifle.
When he'd first climbed over the railing, the two pirates manning the big wheel called the 'helm' saw him, secured the wheel in place, drew cutlasses and charged him.
By that time, Abe had clambered from the side of the ship to its deck. Just before the pirates got close enough to swing their cutlasses, Abe got his rifle up and aimed.
He put a quick 3-round burst into each of them, shattering both parrots, giving each a flesh-wound, and then putting each down.
Abe had stood up, moved towards and past the helm wheel, to a railing that separated the elevated rear deck - he supposed it may be called the 'aft-castle' - from the deck in the middle part of the ship, which was about 1-story lower.
Then Abe started shooting the pirates below him.
That got their attention. They had been loading, aiming, or firing some big 9-pounder cannon, and some smaller cannons - 'swivel guns' - mounted on the deck rails.
Three of them immediately dropped what they were doing and charged Abe, drawing cutlasses as they came.
He dropped them all with 3-round bursts before they even reached the ladders leading up to where Abe stood.
Five more charged while Abe reloaded.
Three came up the starboard side ladder, with the other 2 going for the port-side ladder.
Before they reached the top of the ladder, Abe managed to put 3-round bursts into all three of the starboard climbers.
Then he had to swing around and block a cutlass slash, which clanged loudly against his bayonet..
The other two had reached the top.
Abe side-stepped to put one pirate into the other's way, then blocked again, using his bayonet to stop the cutlass blade. He followed that with a rapid and vicious reverse-stroke that put the butt of his rifle deep into the pirate's solar-plexus, knocking the wind out of him.
He immediately gave all of his attention to the other pirate, having to block three times and do some fancy footwork before he could get in a counter-stroke. Abe's counter-stroke again put his rifle butt into the target's solar plexus, but this time it also made the pirate fall backwards down the ladder to the lower deck.
That was good, because the other pirate had caught his breath and was coming back in to attack.
Abe surprised him with a sudden long lunge, which struck home and sunk deep into the man's torso.
As Abe was muttering "you won't be a problem for anyone anymore.", Ron's voice sounded in Abe's inner ear, saying "Sprich mit Abimelech Ouzounian. Hit the deck!"
Abe immediately dropped prone, just before one of the small, rail-mounted, swiveling cannons on the quarterdeck fired a net at him.
The net missed Abe and got spectacularly tangled up in the ship's rigging, which probably demonstrated why the pirates had been avoiding shooting nets from their pistols at Abe.
Then the King Tiger's co-axial machine gun started to fire from shore at the pirates on the quarterdeck.
Abe belly-crawled to the ship's helm wheel while replying to Ron, "thanks, I knew I wouldn't be the only one to take the fight to the enemy. But still, thanks."
When he reached the helm, he quickly cut the rope that secured it in place, then rotated the wheel hard to port, to send the ship heading towards the beach.
He used a fallen piece of rope - there with many, with burned ends, fallen down from when someone had run a laser up and down the main mast cutting up rigging as it went - and he used it to secure the helm wheel in it's current position.
The ship's new heading would make it hard for it to aim its cannons at the beach, where Abe could now see 4 GP robots operating - all of whom wore the tattered remnants of nets they'd torn their way out of - and 6 combat robots having already arrived through an open portal.
And when the ship reached the beach and ran aground, it would tend to tilt sharply to one side, making the cannons along one side point too high to be useful and the cannons along the other side point too low to be useful.
Abe grinned as he reloaded and prepared to again defend his little section of the pirate ship.
The he grinned again as he saw that four of the 6 combat robots had lit their rocket packs and were flying towards the pirate ship, clearly intent on landing on the deck and fighting there.
He let out another whoop in exhilaration while he thought someone deserved a medal for that decision - it would keep the pirates' attention focused on defending themselves, which would seriously undermine their attack..
-0-0-0-
The original Basil was frozen immobile while he fought - and slowly, bit by bit, lost - against being mind-controlled by Captain Firebeard.
But Basil's Duplicates were another matter. They were a little sluggish, as they examined each thought to make sure it was their own before acting on it. That was necessary, since some thoughts that were definitely not theirs came over their mental link from the original Basil. With a little effort though, they were able to identify and dismiss the thoughts that Captain Firebeard was inserting in Basil's mind, and dismiss them.
Basil, was Firebeard's, primary target, and was right there in his presence, so he had a much much harder time resisting than his Duplicates did.
The Duplicates, Bas-Oon and Bas-Ra, through their own efforts to ignore Firebeard's influence, were actually aiding Basil's efforts to do the same. But that was not their primary focus.
They were working as quickly as they could to end the threat.
When they were ready, both acted at once and a teleportation portal opened up behind Captain Firebeard, while the ship's telekinesis shoved him through it.
They had only taken time to alter one of the portal's endpoints, so Captain Firebeard, stumbling backwards through the portal, landed on his butt on the deck of HMS Agamemnon, right in front of a line of combat robots who had been, a moment before, walking through a portal to the beach.
The robots had been instructed not to kill Captain Firebeard, just in case he was needed alive to provide answers on how to break his mind-control effect, or whether there were any side-effects.
The moment Captain Firebeard arrived on the battleship - or rather, arrived within the super-power draining and nullifying fields around it - his beard reverted back to being just red hair, not actual flame. Also Captain Boz was freed from his mind-controlling influence.
Bas-Oon and Bas-Ra knew that, but went ahead with the plan anyway, knowing that it may yet turn out that they'd need Captain Firebeard alive for some reason.
So a moment later, another teleportation portal opened, and Captain Firebeard was telekinetically shoved through that.
He arrived in the northwestern corner of Mongolia, in Dimension 211.
That was the same dimension where they were exiling other super-villains to Saint Helena Island.
But they didn't want Firebeard on that island, out of concern that he may be able to unite the others and, united, they may find some way to rescue themselves from exile.
Firebeard knew how to sail. And a sailor near the sea just might show up anywhere else that's also near the sea.
So they chose to send him to a place far away from the sea: Mongolia, with the Gobi Desert between him and the nearest ocean, which itself was far away from the ocean that contained Saint Helena Island.
An instant after Captain Firebeard splashed down in a small pond in the northwestern corner of Mongolia, Bas-Oon and Bas-Ra were working to re-align the portal and be ready for the next steps.
Bas-Oon worked on the portal while Bas-Ra moved to the scanners to get an idea of the state of things on the beach where the pirates had attacked.
Basil could see some of what was happening on that beach, but not all. And his Duplicates didn't fully trust him yet, so they wanted to check in order to give the robots updated instructions if needed.
And updated instructions did turn out to be needed.
The moment Captain Firebeard got exiled, most of his crew had stopped fighting, looked around themselves as if just waking up, then surrendered.
Some kept fighting, but not many.
When Bas-Oon got the portal re-established and more combat robots started marching through, even the pirates who had kept fighting saw the futility of it and surrendered as well.
Bas-Ra was busy giving the robots new instructions for how best to capture and round-up pirates..
Bas-Oon still sent through all the robots they had prepared, both the combat ones and the general purpose ones, to stabilize the situation, guard against double-crosses, round up the prisoners and other such duties.
Then he sent through a bunch of repair robots, since their telekinesis was a great way to lift and carry the wounded without disturbing their wounds.
He altered the portal so its near end was not on the battleship's deck, but right inside it's hospital.
He sent a couple extra GP robots to direct traffic into and out of the hospital - it looked like it would be busy for a while. Then he went down there himself to work the equipment for people and get them healed up.