What Little Remains Of Terpsichore Ironheart

The Joint Admiralty didn't firmly know the pirate fleet's composition, but they had some pretty well-educated guesses, and I'd been reviewing those files for a good while now.

"Between thirty and fifty ships," I read aloud. "It could be more than fifty ships, but not much more, and it is very unlikely to be less than thirty. Most will be corvette-class airships, much like The Harpy, except with conventional Grigian engines and armaments. Expected armaments are two Grigian cannons and two flamethrowers; maximum range of three miles, effective range of half a mile. Expected crew of about twenty people, ten of which are marines for boarding, and four of the permanent crew will be gunners."

According to Abbondanza and Thompson both, a 'real' corvette would be a lot bigger than a corvette-class airship, calling for a crew of about two hundred people, but as was well-understood by pretty much every navy in the world, airships could be just as effective as a watership of a much greater size, which was the only reason they got built with weapons at all, because even the biggest airship in the world was only the size of a regular water-borne corvette.

"A dozen or so will be larger frigate-class airships," I continued. "Expected armaments are four Grigian cannons and two flamethrowers, although two cannons and four flamethrowers is a common alternative. Same ranges as the corvette weapons. Fifty men aboard, twenty of whom will be marines for boarding. And the flagship, of which there is only likely to be one, is, most likely, going to be The Respiro di Fuoco- which is Grigian for 'Breath of Fire,' or maybe 'Fire Breath.' It's supposed to be the biggest airship in the world, with a crew of three hundred men, and armed with twenty long-range Grigian cannons, with an effective range of a mile, plus four flamethrowers, two lightning guns, and four ballistae with enchanted shipbreaker ammunition. That one's gonna be our hardest target, thanks to its steel hull, and enchanted shielding, but I'm confident we can still take it down."

"Doesn't it have five flamethrowers?" Vanessa asked. "I remember hearing that it was called Fire Breath because the bow of the ship had a dragon figurehead with a flamethrower mounted in it."

"You're forgetting the rest of that anecdote," I said. "Abbondanza mentioned that, during her shakedown cruise, the bow chaser was tested and found to be ineffective at long ranges, due to the impossibility of aiming it- it was mounted inside the figurehead, after all."

"Right, right..."

"Anyhow," I continued. "It's rumored that Admiral Bowser's son, who hasn't been seen since Mario ran off in The Respiro, was a Dragonblood Sorcerer, and that his mother- who very few people have seen or met- was a High Elf from the pre-war Rosewood Kingdom. There's an argument to be made that the dragon's blood is why The Respiro was styled like a dragon, despite otherwise being a conventional steel-hulled corvette that was then enchanted as an airship at tremendous expense, but... Honestly, not sure that's tactically relevant. We've got less than ten people on this ship; if boarding happens at all, it's not going to be us doing the boarding, and we're having a bad time. Ideally, specific people in the pirate fleet are going to simply die with the rest of their crew when we firebomb their ships."

The display in front of me pinged loudly, and I immediately turned my attention to it.

Divination wards were good, but they weren't perfect. They could block a clairvoyance spell cast from halfway around the planet, but blocking any sort of line-of-sight spell required full-on invisibility, and even the smallest corvette-class airships were too big for anyone short of a dragon to make them invisible. And these days, automated systems with line-of-sight divinations that could spot things farther out than the naked eye were common enough that even The Harpy had come with one, saving me another day of refits and installation.

Twenty miles out from us, according to the tactical map, was an incoming patrol group of five airships in a V formation. We didn't know for certain that they were pirate airships, but it wasn't like they were likely to be anything else, considering how quickly they were approaching us.

"All hands, we have sensor contact North-Northwest, twenty miles out," I said, turning on my headset. "Five signatures consistent with corvette-class airships, making a beeline for us at 130 knots. Interception in eight minutes."

"Roger that," Envy said. "Awaiting orders."

"Stay the course for now," I said, as I looked for the right button. Where was... Ah, there we go. I turned on the telescope, and aimed it at the tac-map signatures, giving me an actual visual on the incoming airships on the display. "Eyup, just what I thought."

"Those are pirates?" Vanessa asked.

"Those are Grigian-style military airships, and Admiral Abbondanza said that, until we gave the word, those would all be grounded for the next week," I said. "They're also flying the flag of House Bowser, so... Pirates."

I punched a few more buttons, turning on the broadcasting system.

"Attention, vessels of House Bowser," I said in Grigian- Abbondanza had given us translation charms, after imploring us to take the time to actually learn to speak Grigian after this. "This is The Harpy, licensed vessel of the Adventurer's Guild, on contract with the Joint Admiralty. Stand down or be destroyed."

There was a bit of crackle, before a response in accented Hikaano came back:

"Harpy, this is Commodore Cadorna aboard The Bronze Hawk. We have you outnumbered, and we will shoot you down if you don't turn around right now."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I checked their formation's range, and nodded slowly. Well. Time to see if these new weapons live up to the hype.

"You're welcome to try," I said, before switching channels. "Envy, swing us around to 314 degrees. Faith, Nicky, take up the chase guns, and fire when ready. Save the center ship for last."

"Roger that," they chorused as one, and The Harpy rolled a few degrees to port as Envy brought her around. It wasn't too extreme, but it was enough that we were all very grateful for the gimbaled cupholders to avoid spilling our drinks.

"Emily, Talia, get ready for Healer duty on the main deck," I continued. "We're about to enter weapons range. Make sure you're clipped to each other and the overhead lines; I don't want anyone falling overboard."

"Got it," Talia said, already pulling out a tether to clip her safety harness to Emily's.

(The safety harnesses were certainly an interesting sight, to say the least. They were a pretty standardized design, looping around the shoulders and thighs and providing anchor points in the back, but the thing was, these collections of straps and buckles that were designed to wrap securely and tightly to the chest, hips, and thighs were very distracting when they were being worn by curvaceous women, some of whom still insisted on wearing outfits that showcased tactical cleavage. Seriously, Vanessa and Talia looked like a misogynistic cartoonist's argument for why women shouldn't be allowed to join the military, and only the fact that they were both fully capable of turning a man inside out kept me from saying anything about it.)

Soon enough, though, we entered weapons range, and Nicky and Faith took a single shot each, at the airships on the outside edges of the V formation. And now, it was time to stop playing coy about what these new, proprietary shipboard weapons of mine were.

It was, much like my personal weapon, an automatic firearm, but scaled up until the whole thing was four feet long and a hundred pounds. This alone would've been pretty gnarly, as big ol' lead bullets would probably punch through an airship's hull pretty neatly, but we didn't actually care that much about the airships- we cared about the people on the airships, and making them as dead as possible.

So instead of simple lead bullets, each cartridge fired a goddamn rocket-propelled bomb, spatially expanded on the inside, which would rupture and spray a cloud of misty fuel oil into the air, right before igniting that cloud and making a fireball about two hundred feet across, which would crispy-fry just about anyone who had the misfortune to be within its radius.

One of these was, in my estimation, sufficiently deadly as to justify the increased production time per shot over standard lead bullets, which could simply be cast en mass, and it also meant that I had given the ship's guns a semiautomatic firing mode, to preserve ammunition.

"Talia," I began, as we watched the opening shots tear two of the pirate vessels in half, "I just wanna thank you for being an Alchemy major. I couldn't have committed these war crimes without you." After all, having the idea to make a gun that shot rocket-propelled dust-bombs was one thing, but knowing what compounds to use for the rocket fuel and the explosive liquid was another, much more complicated thing that relied on the fact that Talia had an Alchemy textbook and was willing to sit under time dilation with me and read the whole thing, cover to cover.

"All's fair in love and war," Talia said, smirking. "Ready for Healer duty."

"Orders, Captain?" Nicky asked.

I turned my mic back on, and said, "Take another shot, still at the outside of the formation."

"Roger that. They're taking evasive maneuvers, though."

"Let them get in closer, then," I said. These rockets were fully faster than the speed of sound, and once the targets got close enough, leading our shots stopped being necessary; these bombs had a pretty solid blast radius, and it was only at a hundred feet that a miss was truly a miss. "Envy, don't start evading until they're within their own weapons range, and even then, wait for the gunners to take their shot."

"Roger that," Envy said.

We waited in tense silence for about thirty seconds, as their ships grew closer, until-

BOOM!

Nicky and Faith landed their next shots, blowing apart two more ships, leaving only one left in the skies. It hauled around, turning to run, and Faith decided she was having none of that, taking a third shot, which went wide by enough that it only browned the crew's pants.

"Hold your fire," I said.

"They're getting away!" Faith protested.

"We'll use the other weapon," I said, punching another button, followed by a brief code sequence.

Atop the aftcastle was mounted a stout, un-manned turret that had a bit of a rounded hexagon look to its main body. And from the top lobe of the turret, from an opening that was a full foot in diameter, shot forth a much, much bigger rocket than the main guns fired.

See, while it was reasonable to describe the ammunition of the main guns as "Lucifer's bottle rockets," those weren't what Volex was talking about. Those were, ultimately, just obscenely potent, over-engineered, and expensive bullets. It was these guided missiles, each of them about the size of an entire shipboard gun, that were worthy of the Dark Lord's moniker. They were fast, they were powerful, and worst of all, they were nimble, using pivoting fin-like rudders to turn sharply in midair and point unerringly towards their targets, and the whole thing was guided by a simple intelligence, constructed with Occult magic, that knew how to steer and aim the missile, and where it needed to get the missile to.

The ship guns were for taking down pirate vessels that stood their ground and fought.

The missiles were for taking down pirate vessels that tried to run.

It was an abomination. It should've been illegal. But piracy was a crime that was harshly punished by just about every state with maritime interests, and the entire Bowser fleet had been charged, tried, and convicted of piracy in absentia. Their personhood was revoked, and they were legally recategorized as "Enemies Of All Mankind"- a death sentence, to be freely administered by whoever managed to kill them first.

"Mother, I beg your forgiveness for what I've set out to do," I whispered under my breath.

Through the telescope display, we watched as the missile shot through the air, coming up to cruising speed, and then plunged downward, through the deck of The Bronze Hawk, before turning itself and the airship around it into an expanding cloud of splinters and blood.