Some would criticize me for not being the sort of captain who swings like a shrieking monkey onto the enemy’s deck to wreak bloody havoc with her crewmates. But a smart woman plays to her strengths and dodges her weaknesses. That’s what me mother taught me right from the cradle to the captain’s hat. Aye, it’s good to make sure them weaknesses aren’t too damned weak, but no point in bailing out a sinking ship either.
I wait until we’re alongside and me crew have launched their grappling hooks before taking up me firing position. Inkman’s at the top of the steps, his taiaha clutched tightly in his big, scarred hands. I’ve never seen another man bear its like. Best described as a warstaff of solid hardwood, pointed like a spear at one end, flat-bladed like an oar at the other. Inkman has made a few piratical adjustments to the traditional Māori weapon, cladding its blade and point in razor-sharp steel.
Ngāi Tahu Taiaha
Base Damage - Point: 30
Base Damage - Blade: 50
Steel Edging: +20 Damage
Kaumātua Blessing: +2 Agility
“Give them hell, matey!”
He responds with what he calls a pūkana, widening his eyes and sticking his tongue out at me. I’d laugh if it weren’t such a bloody frightening sight. Had I not known better, I’d have thought he was about to chop me up and eat me.
I wave him away. “Save it for the English ladies, you ugly blighter.”
He gives me a sailor’s salute and then he’s off down the steps to lead the boarding party. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of Inkman’s battle charges, that’s for damned sure.
Me crew fires their grappling hooks at the enemy ship and soon the winches are singing as our two vessels are joined in what will be volatile and violent matrimony. On the Stallion, a couple of the Englishmen start hacking away at the grapples with boarding axes, desperate to free their vessel from our tentacles. I line one up, a red-headed giant of a man, breathe out slowly, and put a bullet right between his ginger eyebrows.
Critical Hit!
Shot Damage Inflicted = 300
Level 2 English Marine
HP = -150/150
You have killed a Level 2 English Marine.
XP reward = 200 XP
Progress to Pirate Captain Level 7 = 21200/30000
Yes, the otherwords have spoken true. I’ve got a wee way to go yet before me next level-up. Me last one was when we captured a fat sealer in the Tasman Sea. I was tempted to dump both cargo and captives overboard. Inkman and I see eye to eye on that matter of animal butchery. Neither of us can stand to see the slaughter of defenseless beasties. And for what? So some fancy-man can have himself a plush coat? Don’t seem right at all to me. But I have a crew to feed and a ship to maintain, so I dumped the furs and sold the sealers to the slave mines of Broken Hill. A girl has to set her course and stick to it, no matter how murky the skies be getting.
Now I be out with fresh powder and shot, loaded and cocked in a shade over ten seconds. It’d normally take an experienced musketeer fifteen seconds to reload, but I’ve got a couple of nifty advantages on your average rifleman.
Rumpus Musket
Base Damage: 100
+1 Quickness
Built for faster reloading than standard muskets.
-2 seconds to loading speed.
“Be quick or be dead.” - Happytrigger Hakura
Hasty Hands
This ability enables increased fine motor skills.
-20% reduction in the time it takes to perform manual tasks involving hands.
This be no time for dwelling on what else these quick hands of mine can be doing. There be a sea battle to win.
I poke me head over the gunwale and see the flash of a musket on the opposite quarterdeck. One of me sailors, a blondie Swede named Icepick, spins and falls into the frothy water below.
The Albatross
Crew: 96/99
Me guts twist at the sight, but I know it’s just part of the pirate life. I’ll be losing some more of me crew before this battle be done, especially now that Inkman’s boarding party has jumped over to the Stallion and be engaging the English in hand to hand.
I wait until the English musketeer has reloaded and popped her head up to take her next shot. Aye, she’s lining up Inkman no less, having recognized him as the leader of the boarding party. Can’t be having that. I don’t have time for careful aiming so trigger me Flashfire skill. Won’t be able to use it again for a bit. It has a one-minute cooldown. The battle might be over in half that. But it’s well worth it to save Inkman’s skin. I know he’s a tough bugger, capable of taking a bullet or two to the body, but the musketeer be at close range. If she scores a critical as I did with that ginger giant, Inkman will be a deadman.
Quick as a striking adder, I aim and fire. By the spray of blood from the Englishwoman’s neck, I can tell I’ve hit me mark, and the otherwords soon confirm it.
Damage inflicted by shot = 150
Level 2 English Musketeer
HP: -50/100
You have killed a Level 2 English Musketeer.
XP reward = 200 XP
Progress to Pirate Captain Level 7 = 21400/30000
Inkman looks in me direction and snaps off a quick salute before engaging his next foe, a saber-wielding officer. I feel a little warm inside at the acknowledgment, a tad bit proud of protecting me friend.
Then I set to loading again while I cast me gaze over the enemy ship, searching for their captain. I spot him on the steps of his quarterdeck, well-turned-out in his smart red officer’s coat and captain’s hat. He’s fending off a couple of me crew with his rapier and doing a damned fine job of it. He’s got that prim and proper style of a private school fencing champ, but he’s doing a right number on me own fighters. Before I can bring me musket to bear, he’s skewered the German, Bratwurst, neatly through the throat. Yet he still be quick enough to parry a brutal cutlass slice from the lanky Zulu lad, Shaka.
The Albatross
Crew: 93/99
I can’t tell where but seems I’ve lost a couple more of me crewmates somewhere in the fray. The English are falling like flies, but not fast enough for me liking. There’s only so many in me social circle I feel I can afford to lose on any given day, and today I’m feeling a might miserly on the matter.
I line the lordling up, ready to put a shot through his temple, but can’t seem to pull me trigger. He’s a handsome lad, all clear blue eyes and soft brown curly locks beneath his hat. And there’s a grace about the lad that makes him seem like some delicate artwork. A stained glass window. I just don’t have the heart to shatter him. I sigh, curse me own squishy innards, drop me aim and wait a moment while Shaka drives the nobleman up the steps. As soon as I see the white of the bugger’s clean pants, I put a shot through his thigh.
Damage inflicted by shot = 50
Level 3 English Captain
HP: 70/120
He stumbles backwards and falls onto the quarterdeck while I stand and holler at the Zulu.
“Shaka! Take him alive!”
The lad hesitates for a moment and glances back at Bratwurst’s corpse. I know the two of them been bunkmates off and on, and I can see the lustre of vengeance in Shaka’s eyes. I bark at him again.
“Shaka! Think of the ransom, lad!”
Nothing like the mention of money to snap a pirate out of his sensitivities. He nods, knocks the captain’s rapier aside and hogties him with some nearby rope. I reload and cover Shaka while he’s about his business, making sure he doesn’t get stabbed in the back for his troubles. And I’m impressed to note that Shaka takes the time to slice a strip from the captain’s coat and tie it around his gunshot. Don’t want the bugger bleeding to death before we get a chance to ransom him.
Out of the corner of me eye, I can see that the Englishmen are faltering now that their captain’s out of the action. Shaka’s done his job and is now guarding the nobleman, cutlass at the ready, so I drive a nail into the coffin of defeat by shooting the Stallion’s quartermaster through the heart.
Damage inflicted by shot = 150
Level 3 English Officer
HP: 0/150
You have killed a Level 3 English Officer and incapacitated a Level 3 English Captain.
XP reward = 450 XP
Progress to Pirate Captain Level 7 = 21850/30000
With both captain and quartermaster at Level 3, it’s as I reckoned it. This be an inexperienced crew with a relatively green captain too full of his own well-bred self-importance to know he be sailing into hostile waters. He’s completely underprepared. I’ll quietly enjoy rubbing some salt in his wounded pride. Can’t stand toffs of any color or creed. Me mother took over our family’s fishing boat after me father drowned and now she has a dozen trawlers in her fleet. But she weren’t about to treat me like some little new-rich princess. Sent me off with a packed lunch and the clothes on me back, and told me to put what she’d taught me to good use.
Turned out her lessons were more valuable than any amount of gold she might’ve handed me. I worked me way up from powder monkey to head gunner, led a mutiny to unseat the whip-happy tyrant of a captain, and had me own pirate ship by the tender age of twenty-three years. This very ship, in fact. The Albatross. Inkman was quartermaster and didn’t much like the captain either. But he’s never wanted the burden of captaincy so was happy to let me shoulder the charge while he stayed on as quartermaster. We was only Level 3s back then, like these green limeys, and four years of piracy soon put scars on our skin and experience in our gizzards.
Speaking of the tattooed devil, Inkman waves at me from the Stallion’s lower deck. The remaining Brits have surrendered under orders of their only surviving officer, the sailmaster. I’m quietly hoping she can be persuaded to join our crew. I lost me last sailmaster in the tussle with Yellowteeth, and one of me boatswains, Jerry “Hyena” Mugabi, has been filling in. He does a fair enough job of it, but I’d prefer to have a specialist on deck again.
I wave back and then order a couple of me sailors to lower the gangplank so I can saunter across to the English ship like a conquering Queen of the Waves. Can’t put me finger on why, but I want to make an impression on this English captain. Frighten the bejesus out of him? Aye, that’d be nice.
