NOVEL NEXT Book 4, Chapter 13
After destroying that patrol group, we didn't encounter any further resistance on our path towards the main fleet. On our way there, it was clear there were two possible explanations: one, there had only been a single patrol group that was between us and the main fleet, or two, all of the patrol groups had been pulled back to the main fleet to avoid being picked off and defeated in detail.
As we got within visual range of the fleet, I could confirm that it was the second one.
The sky swarmed like a kicked hornet's nest, with sixty corvettes and fifteen frigates flying all over the place, staying constantly in motion, and generally forming a defensive screen between us and the flagship, The Respiro di Fuoco.
It was certainly an imposing vessel, that's for sure. It wasn't the biggest warship I'd ever seen, admittedly- that honor went to The Impavida, a capital ship from the Grigian Navy that was a full six hundred feet long- but nonetheless, seeing a two hundred foot warship that must displace two hundred tons of water simply hanging in the air was...
Well.
I was forced to admit that I had no fucking clue how they got that thing to fly. If I had a dragon's magicka and ten years, I might be able to figure it out. May Vulcan bless the shipwright's hammer, I was impressed.
And also annoyed, because I wasn't enthusiastic about our chances against an ironclad.
"Attention Hikaano vessel," a voice in accented Hikaano said, coming in through our headsets. "This is Admiral Mario Bowser, aboard the flagship Fire Breath." So that was the Hikaano pronunciation. "Prevent your death, and come no closer."
"Oh good, you speak Hikaano," I said, rolling my eyes and making a jerk-off motion. "Listen, you have about five minutes before we enter weapons range, and the choices you make are very important. If you throw all your weapons overboard and run away, I'll let you go, and you can all change your names and start new lives."
"Bold words-" Bowser began, before I interrupted him.
"And if you aren't going to disarm yourselves and flee, what do you want me to tell your family?"
There was silence on the line for a good few moments. On The Harpy's private channel, Envy was audibly clapping, applauding my showmanship. Finally, Admiral Bowser spoke.
"Then there can be no peace between us. Make your peace with your pitiful gods, Hikaano. May Lucifer himself eat your soul."
I cut the channel, and went back to the ship's private channel. "Volex, Vanessa, go topside to man the remaining guns. Erica, watch the tac-map. Talia and Emily, you two are also going topside to provide healing as necessary."
"Do the two of us not need healing?" Erica asked.
"If we do, we're all fucked anyways," I said. "Besides, I may not be a Healer, but I'm still a Cleric, and I can do enough basic healing to patch us up if we get thrown out of our seats."
Erica grunted, and around us, the rest of the bridge crew went topside. Volex, despite being a Succubus whose body was a disposable phantasm that was also capable of growing wings and effectively teleporting back to me- through rapidly dispersing and reforming- was still wearing a safety harness, and unlike Vanessa and Talia, she'd replaced her normal seductively curvaceous form for a more typically elven build, tall and slender, wrapped in a simple and durable canvas jumpsuit which had vents in the back for her wings to grow through when she needed them.
"Alright," I muttered, as we closed in towards weapons range, before turning my mic back on. "Envy, take us up and over the top of the fleet. All gunners, prepare to shoot downward. Focus fire on the frigates. And Faith, you make sure to take a shot at the flagship, and see how our guns do against its armor."
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I heard more Rogers than dominoes night at Old Man Brown's house, and picked up my cup, tossing back the remainder of my water. Something told me I wouldn't have the opportunity to hydrate again anytime soon.
"What about the corvettes?" Faith asked. "They're going to close in enough to use their cannons, aren't they?"
"They'll fucking try," I said. "Envy, bring the engines up to eighty percent. Evasive maneuvers, but hold your bearing for five seconds after every change. On my mark... Mark!"
The Harpy sped up, and we could feel it do so; those new electric motors were good, and gave us a top speed of two hundred knots, which wasn't quite the fastest airship ever flown, but was definitely pretty close. Conventional, production-model corvettes simply weren't fast enough to keep up with us, and the likes of frigates and capital ships were even slower than that.
"Faith, your target is the near frigate at 47 degrees. Volex, near 72 degrees. Vanessa, near 150. Nicky, near 292. Weapons free, fire at will."
My own display showed a tac-map much smaller, but much more detailed, than Erica's, and I watched the illusion, which was based on the feeds from a few divination sensors that used clever lenses to get a fully spherical field of view from each one, and then filled in with educated guesswork, as it showed all four of our guns firing off in unison, followed shortly thereafter by the four nearest frigates taking serious hits. As the fire and smoke cleared, though, it became evident that, while we'd certainly damaged the ships and killed anyone unfortunate enough to be on the topdeck, they weren't fully disabled, and additional crew was coming up from below deck to re-man the weapons.
The exception was Faith's target. Rather than taking a fireball just above the topdeck, Faith had managed to put her round through the frigate's aftcastle, where it detonated inside the engine room, causing a chain reaction that reduced that frigate to an airburst of shredded metal, wood, and meat.
When I'd given her that hunting rifle as her own personal weapon, she'd taken it upon herself to practice with it extensively, to the point I'd had to give her the equipment to cast her own lead bullets. She was, consequently, a very, very good shot- better than me, three times out of five.
There was a reason I'd asked her to take a shot at the flagship, after all.
The revelation of our ship's guns managed to make the swarming fleet even more angry and frantic, and the corvettes threw their throttles fully open as they tried to close the distance with us.
"All gunners, switch targets to the nearest corvette in your quadrant," I ordered. "Faith, take a shot at the flagship first, then switch targets."
I allowed myself a cruel smirk as Faith's next shot struck true; The Fire Breath was designed like a modern warship, with a tall, narrow structure in the center that housed the ship's commanding officers at the top. It was called a "conning tower," "conn" being short for "control" or "conduct," depending on who you asked. It was, most likely, precisely where not only the ship's own captain but the whole fleet's admiral would be housed.
And it had just gotten decapitated by a well-placed fireball shell.
"Good shot, Faith," I said. "Let's mop up these corvettes before they get too close for-"
The boom of a nearby cannon, far closer than it should've been able to get, shook The Harpy, and Erica's eyes went wide with panic.
"They hit the engine room!" Erica cried. "Two of the engines are out, and another shot in that area will completely kill propulsion!"
"Alright, we've gotta go topside and do some repairs," I said, standing up from my chair. "C'mon, Erica, let's go make ourselves useful. I'll get the engines, you focus on mending the walls."
She nodded as she followed after me, the both of us stumbling up the stairs as The Harpy pitched and rolled to avoid further fire. We emerged onto the top deck a few seconds later; as I went to clip myself into the overhead line, another cannonball struck the ship on the starboard railing, rocking the ship and throwing us from our feet.
"No no no no no," I gasped out, as I scrambled to grab Erica's hand. We were both lying prone on the deck, but where I'd managed to hook my foot onto the hatch frame, Erica had been thrown free of any convenient handhold, hitting her head on the deck in the process, and was limply slipping down the sloped deck towards the port side, where a fiendishly-placed gap in the railing would let her slip away without being caught by the railings that were installed specifically to prevent people from falling overboard god fucking dammit-
Erica slipped beyond reach in a moment, and before I could cast even the simplest of spells to catch her, she was over the side of the ship, and there was only one thing I could do:
"MAN OVERBOARD!" I yelled, before letting go of the ship and diving after her.