Chương 183: 21. Flames of Wrath 3

Marro moved before anyone else.

"Don't run the front!" He stepped up onto the helm platform and hauled the command line hard.

"North-northwest, use the cross-swell! Blake, watch the wave gaps ahead! Nico, take in the starboard auxiliary line—half a beat late and I'm tying you to a gun muzzle!"

"Yes yes yes!" Nico's mouth maintained its usual register; his hands moved like something that had been raised in rigging.

"Lov, firearms ready! Don't waste powder—wait until they're close enough to matter!"

"I'm not you." Lov already had the slow match and pan in order. I grabbed the nearest line and barely managed to stay vertical. Tidesever lurched hard—the hull angling like a blade edge driving into a wave trough, the whole ship cutting sideways across the swell. Deck planking, rope wheels, canvas, and wind were all screaming simultaneously, and the only sound that mattered was water and timber tearing at each other.

"They're opening fire!" Blake's shout. The next moment, the imperial dragon ship's gun ports dropped open along the broadside—a row of dark openings appearing in the hull like a black wall suddenly growing a dozen hollow eyes. BOOM— The first broadside wasn't a sound. It was an impact. The entire ocean seemed to receive a hammer blow simultaneously, the air shaking with it.

Not all the shots connected, but the ones that hit the water around Tidesever's bow and stern threw up walls of white spray tall enough to block the sky. The hull was hit laterally—a violent lurch—and I nearly went horizontal across the deck. Ignicia caught the back of my collar and hauled me upright with one hand.

"Stay on your feet!"

"I'm trying!" I shouted back, thinking that anyone who could stand like they were on a training ground in this moment had probably transcended the category of human. The two sea-dragon gunboats to starboard had used the imperial broadside as cover to close the distance further. They weren't relying on heavy cannon. They were relying on speed. The first one didn't fire a cannonball—it launched something trailing iron chain.

The projectile scraped across our stern and drove into the rail with a crack, trailing splinters.

"Cut it!" Marro's shout. Blake hit the chain with an axe and severed it, still cursing. The second gunboat was more direct. Several sea-dragon fighters on its forward deck were already positioning a short-barreled swivel gun—clearly intending to punch through our hull at close range. Lov finally fired. Her flintlock erupted in a burst of white smoke, the recoil rocking her shoulder back. The sea-dragon fighter who had been loading the swivel gun took the shot in the chest and went backward over the rail.

But there were more behind him. Marro looked forward, then at both flanks. He knew. I could see it too. We were fast. But not fast enough. Dragon ship blocking ahead. Gunboats biting from both sides. Running the conventional play, Tidesever would be surrounded and stopped. Just then, one of the sea-dragon gunships on our starboard side closed in again. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Close enough that I could make out the wet gleam of scales and eyes on their deck, and the launcher on their foredeck grinding as it swiveled toward us. Marro whipped around. His gaze swept the chaos and landed on the oilcloth bundle at my waist.

"Kid!" he practically roared.

"You know how to use a firelock?!" Something in my head... gave way. Like someone had just kicked a locked door clean off its hinges. The underground base. The armory. That bag of metal peanuts Ignicia had thrown me. Those neat little holes in the foreheads of all those skeletons. Every curse-filled lesson Lov had hammered into me on deck these past days. And her voice— If you're going to fire the first shot, make sure it hits something worth the bullet. I didn't have time to think. My hands moved first.

I tore the oilcloth aside, yanked out the pistol. My fingers felt stiff, half from the ship's lurching, half from sheer nerves. I bit open the cartridge pouch, brass rounds spilling into my palm, cold as stones dredged from the bottom of the sea.

"Hurry up!" Nico shrieked, still hauling on his line like a madman.

"They're about to board us!"

"I know!" I shouted back. My own voice was already going hoarse and I hadn't even noticed. Magazine, round, press, all the way in. Click, click, click. I'd practiced this for days. No live fire—just drilling the motions until they burned into my muscles. But only now, with death breathing down my neck, did I feel it for real: I wasn't handling some relic anymore. I was waking up a killing technology that should've stayed buried in history. Magazine slapped into the grip. Click. I racked the slide hard.

Metal jerked back and slammed home with a note so sharp and clean it didn't belong in this era at all—Lov actually glanced over in spite of herself. Her eyes changed. That wasn't her "oh good, a show" look. That was the look of a seasoned musketeer seeing something that had no business existing in this age suddenly come alive.

"… Bloody hell," she muttered. I didn't answer. Because the sea-dragon gunship off our starboard was now too damn close. Close enough to see them clearly: two sea-dragons hunched over the launcher, forcing the frame to a new angle; another crouched with a firepan cupped in his hands; and behind them, what had to be the leader, raising his arm in that familiar signal— Closer. Just a little closer, then we throw the grapples. The wind howled. The ship rolled. My palm was slick with sweat.

Lov's voice from those training sessions felt like it was still pressed to my ear. Don't muscle it. Don't blink. You're not aiming at the sea. You're aiming at the exact spot you want dead. I drew a breath and held it. Aimed. Not at the waves, not at the hull— At the firepan carrier beside the launcher. I pulled the trigger. Bang—! Shorter than Lov's musket, crisper, but so shrill it felt like a steel needle stabbed straight into my eardrum. For an instant, the whole deck froze. Even Marro's head jerked toward me.

The first shot went wide. The round scraped along the launcher's side, showering splinters, but didn't knock the man down. My heart sank.

"Shit—""Again!" Lov beat me to the shout. Right. Again. I ground my teeth and steadied my grip. This time I didn't aim for the firepan. I aimed at the leader, the one leaning over the frame, about to slam the firing lever. I squeezed the trigger. Bang! Bang! Two shots, almost blended into one. This time, their reaction left no room for doubt. The first round punched in just below the leader's collarbone, snapping his chest back like an invisible fist had smashed him from the front.

The second caught the firepan carrier behind him; the pan flew, man and flame going down together. Their foredeck dissolved into chaos. The launcher lost its final adjustment, lurching off-angle. The grapnel cannon that should have speared us fired wild instead—scraping along the hull of their nearest ally. Nico stared, slack-jawed. Blake forgot to pull his line, eyes locked on the pistol in my hand.

And Lov— Lov stared at the ancient short pistol still smoking faintly in my grip like her eyeballs were about to fall out.

"…It can rapid-fire?!" For the first time, that face of hers—usually cold enough to preserve meat—showed raw, unfiltered shock. I didn't have time for her amazement. The gunship I'd just scrambled was swinging wild, bow slamming into waves, its angle completely shot. Its partner couldn't dodge fast enough; the two ships' paths tangled instantly. Marro had been waiting for that crack like a starving man watching bread fall.

"Now—!" His roar shook the whole ship.

"Hard a-port! Cut between them!" The Breakwater snapped forward like a bowstring finally loosed. The hull heeled savagely, driving straight into the gap that hadn't existed a heartbeat ago between the two floundering gunships. Spray, splinters, wind, and gun-smoke exploded across my vision. I clung to the pistol and heard nothing but my own heartbeat pounding like a war drum. Because I knew— I hadn't just pulled a trigger back there. I'd crossed a line I'd been pretending wasn't really there. The ancients' weapons.

In the end, I'd picked them up after all.