Death: Genesis

Tucker took aim and shot an alchemical globe above the enemy ship. When it was halfway to its destination, it split into ten smaller balls that spread out to cover the whole ship. Once they were in position, they all exploded, showering the deck – and the sailors upon it – in green mist that he knew would weaken even the strongest members of the crew. The weaker sailors would be knocked out, while a the least powerful ran the risk of being killed altogether.

“They should’ve just surrendered,” he said to himself, already triggering his blunderbuss’ reload function. Even as another globe – this one containing the combustible Conflagration potion – rolled out of his spatial storage and into the weapon, a dozen powerful kirran pirates leaped across the gap between the two ships. Only a few brandished weapons, but that didn’t mean the others were unarmed. They didn’t need swords or axes to be lethal. Instead, their claws, along with their powerful musculature, were more than enough to get the job done.

Athis led the way, landing on the enemy deck in a whirlwind of motion. It was difficult to see with the naked eye, but every swipe of his claws extended a bit further than one would expect – evidence that the treatments were working. Even without that, the giant dragon man was a terror, and each of his attacks resulted in a cloud of red mist.

Tucker fired, and the globe containing the Conflagration potion hit the enemy ship’s sails. They burst into flame, eliciting panicked shouts from down below.

“I told you no fire!” Iris hissed.

“Sorry,” Tucker said, cutting his eyes at the beautiful captain. He gave her a grin. “I just can’t help myself.”

“If you down another ship…”

“I’ll put it out before it spreads too far,” he said, already loading a Dousing potion for just that purpose. He only wanted to cripple the airship, not knock it from the sky. While they could loot a downed ship, it was far preferable to simply take it intact.

That was why they gave each of their targets the chance to surrender. Few took it, which necessitated more direct action, but the hope was that they would gain enough reputation that, eventually, their victims would be too afraid to fight back. That was when the real money would start rolling in.

“Bad guys over there,” he said, pointing to the other ship’s stern. “Looks like they’re trying to escape on one of the lifeboats.”

Indeed, a few members of the other crew had loaded a couple of chests into one of the smaller airships attached to the much larger Hermes. They wouldn’t have much range to them, but hunting them down would prove extremely frustrating.

Tucker knew that from experience.

The life of a sky pirate had turned out to be a little different than what he’d expected. There was a lot less cannon fire and elaborate sword fights, and a lot more searching and waiting. He was a patient man, but combing through miles of forest just to find an enemy life boat was the height of tedium.

“They’re not all bad guys,” Iris said. Tucker didn’t need to look in her direction to know that she’d rolled her eyes.

“These ones are. Radiant Host. I’ve had some dealings with their kind.”

Indeed, he’d been a little surprised to find that Shar Maelaine had followers in the Eternal Realm, just like she’d had in the Mortal Realm. And they were strong, too. One of the preeminent factions on the continent, and they’d only grown more powerful over the past few years. Something about taking over an entire country and building an empire through conquest.

Tucker wasn’t sure about any of that, but he did know that their ships were always loaded with expensive goods. Sometimes, they carried weapons or mundane supplies, but just as often, they transported powerful natural treasures that would fetch a pretty gem on the open market.

Whatever the case, he had plenty of motives to target the Radiant Host. More, they didn’t need to fear much in the way of reprisal. Partly, that was due to Iris’ skill and experience, but it was also because the Radiant Host was too busy to chase down a single pirate ship. They probably looked at the loss of a few ships here and there as the cost of doing business, much as large retail businesses back on Earth had seen shoplifting.

“Are you going to stop them?” he asked.

“I’m considering it, but I’ll remind you that you claimed that this ship wouldn’t be equipped with lifeboats. How did you put it?” she asked. Then, she adopted a deep voice that he knew was supposed to be an imitation of his own baritone, saying, “They’re running scared, Iris. They didn’t have time to equip the ship properly.”

“That’s not how I talk,” he pointed out, finally shooting the Dousing potion at the fire racing through the sails. The ship was already crippled – at least for the time being – and there was no reason to let it burn any more.

“It’s exactly how you talk,” she counted. “But that’s not the point, and you know it. This ship wasn’t supposed to have any soldiers. Nor was it supposed to have any life boats. So, I ask you – why is our favorite lizard man ripping the arms off of a bonafide Radiant Knight right now? And why do I see the captain loading all of our treasure into a top-grade life boat?”

“Okay, for the first part – Athis is not a lizard-man. He’s a dragon-man. You know how sensitive he is about that,” Tucker said. “And he’s ripping that man’s arms off – wait, that’s a leg, I guess – because that’s kind of his thing. He wouldn’t be happy unless he got to –”

“Not the point, Tucker.”

“I know!” he replied. “Seriously. Let’s just chalk this up to bad intel, alright? Don’t rake me over the coals because my source wasn’t as reliable as I thought it was.”

“Fine. But we’re not done talking about this,” she said. Then, she gave a signal, and a pair of crew members raced to the giant ballistae at the front of the ship. The thing looked like a crossbow, though one that was of a size to be wielded by a giant. Its arms were at least seven feet across, and the rest of it had been built to match. The bolt they loaded into it was nine feet long, made of high-grade metal, and when it hit, it would explode not unlike a missile, albeit one filled with napalm. Tucker had helped build it himself, and he considered it one of his greatest achievements.

Not because of how destructive it was. That was part of it – after all, he very much enjoyed making things explode – but the real reason was that it could punch through even the staunchest defenses. That meant it was perfect to take down a lifeboat, most of which were built with powerful shields that could protect their occupants from all sorts of attacks.

But not from his ballistae.

It was the single biggest reason they’d been able to make their campaign of piracy work, and Tucker took no small degree of pride in their many successes. Not only had they begun to stockpile a considerable amount of wealth, but they’d also managed to make significant progress in terms of their levels. Already, he’d hit what Iris referred to as the bottleneck at level seventy-five, and he was on the verge of punching right through.

Of course, he had an advantage that many of his more martial friends didn’t. They all had to kill things to progress, but because of his hybrid class that included significant crafting abilities, he could make progress by brewing potions. And then, he could double-up by getting energy by using those potions. It was slower than going out and killing things, but it was steadier as well.

Not that Tucker didn’t do his own fair share of hunting. He had, which was why he’d managed to progress so much and so quickly. Sometimes, it felt like he was cheating, which was absolutely fine by him.

The sailors – pirates, really – took aim, then fired the bolt. It scorched its way through the air, faster than a bullet, only to slam into a powerful shield protecting the life boat. However, the bolt didn’t simply fall away. Instead, it bored into the shield, then exploded into a blue mist that settled onto the surface of the shield.

The enemy captain screamed something Tucker couldn’t hear, but it didn’t matter.

“One Mississippi,” Tucker recited, taking aim with his blunderbuss. As he did, he loaded it with a Null Potion. Strong enough to keep it from taking off, but not so strong that it would send it plummeting to the forest below. He went on, “Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.”

He fired.

This time, the single globe didn’t split. There was no reason to use [Bombardment]. Instead, it slammed into the weakened shield, shattering it on impact. The glass globe broke apart, and the liquid inside fell with a thump that no liquid should make. The captain, having no idea what had just happened, leaped aboard the lifeboat, but when he tried to break away and sail to freedom, nothing happened.

“That one is weird,” Iris said.

“Null potion. The trick is making it powerful enough to disable the uncoupling mechanism for the lifeboat, but not so strong that it removes the flight enchantment altogether,” Tucker said. “You should see the math I had to do to get it just right.”

“I’m sure you worked very hard,” she said, her hands on the helm.

“I heard that.”

“What?”

“You know what. You were patronizing me.”

“I would never do that to my big, strong alchemist who’s the smartest man in the –”

He groaned. “Stop. Just stop.”

Her laughter filled his ears, accompanied by the screams of battle on the nearby ship. It was music to Tucker’s ears. It was difficult to believe that only a year-and-a-half before, he’d been the one hijacking Iris’s ship. Since then, they’d worked together on dozens of heists, starting with the one that had allowed him to cure the curse afflicting the kirrans. More importantly, only six months before, they’d finally stopped dancing around the fact that they were attracted to one another.

After that, things had progressed quickly. Tucker wouldn’t say that what he had with Iris was the same as the relationship he’d shared with his wife back on Earth, but he could, without question or hesitation, call it love.

It was the last thing he’d expected, especially after spending so long alone. He’d mostly given up on finding anyone else after being reborn into the Mortal Realm, and he’d not considered anything more than a dalliance possible. Until he’d met Iris.

She flashed him a wide grin that he couldn’t help but return. Meanwhile, the assault on the transport ship continued, with Athis having been joined by a half-dozen other powerful kirran fighters. There were a few other races among the crew as well, including Iris’ first mate, Gira, who happened to be the homeliest half-elf he’d ever seen. The girl had drawn the short straw from both ends of her parentage, getting the least appealing traits of humans and elves.

Nice girl, though. Once you got past her surly hatred for just about everyone and everything. Except Iris. She was devoted to her captain in a way that Tucker found a bit creepy. Or he would have if she hadn’t included him the moment she’d discovered that he and Iris had become a couple.

Either way, Gira and Athis were strong enough that none of the other sailors could hold up to their assault, and it wasn’t long before the ship was theirs. That’s when Iris and Tucker crossed over to find the whole crew kneeling on the top deck. Nobody had bothered binding them, largely because none were combatants. The highest level among them was the captain, a square-jawed man who was level sixty-three. Not weak, but by no means powerful, either.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” demanded the captain.

“Uh…looks like we’re taking your stuff. And your ship. We probably would have let you keep the boat, but then you tried to fight back. Then, you tried to run away. You have no idea what kind of a pain in the ass it would have been to chase you down,” Tucker said. “Seriously. Why won’t you people just cut your losses and recognize when you’re in a no-win situation? We wouldn’t have even killed anyone if you’d just paid the toll.”

Indeed, that was the deal. If people wanted to fly through their air space – and a lot of them did – all they had to do was pay a minor fee. Then they’d be left alone to do their thing. But some people refused, and so, Tucker and Iris and their merry band of pirates had no choice but to show them the error of their ways.

It wasn’t the life he’d envisioned, but it was strangely gratifying. Not just because of the power, though that was part of it. The luxury helped, too. But also because he could pick and choose who paid what and what sort of consequences they incurred. For instance, they left some of the more honest merchants alone, while targeting people like the Radiant Host with a ruthlessness that approached obsession.

He wasn’t exactly Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, but he was more than happy with the morality of his actions. Whatever the case, it was better than doing dodgy experiments for a budding necromancer.

Especially given that he’d managed to funnel some of his wealth to the kirran, who’d used it to help implement his cure for their curse. They still hadn’t recovered – it would take generations before that curse was fully banished – but it was enough to put them on the right path.

“The Imperium will not stand for this! They will hunt you down and slaughter you, destroying everything you care about!” the captain spat.

“I don’t think so,” Iris said. “We know they’ve got their hands full with that little beast problem on the Plains. Especially with keeping all those other territories under control. They’ve bitten off more than they can chew, so they have nobody to spare for a few little privateers like us.”

“We’re pirates, dear.”

“Privateers sounds better,” she said.

“But if you keep calling us privateers, I’ll have to stop calling myself the Dread Pirate Tucker. And Dread Privateer just doesn’t have the same ring to it,” Tucker stated.

“You’re not wrong,” she said, tapping her lip.

Meanwhile, the bound captain looked apoplectic, a vein bulging out of his forehead at being mostly ignored.

“What do you want to do with them?” he asked, nodding toward the prisoners.

“I’m fine with tossing them overboard,” she said. She’d had run-ins with the Radiant Host, and she very much hated them.

“Maybe we can put them –”

Just then, the captain glowed with some sort of skill and launched himself at Iris. Tucker was ready for him, though, and in an instant, he’d fired his blunderbuss into the man’s face. Which melted off.

“You’re going to have to clean that up,” Iris said, looking at the puddle of liquified flesh on the deck.

Tucker sighed. “Yes, dear.”