Chapter 129: Book 2: Chapter 30 (Part 1 of 2)

Chapter 30

 

Upon our return to the ship, there was a surprise waiting for us. Kristoff had returned as we expected but he was not alone. There was a group of almost thirty people I did not recognise. All were armed and armoured and they looked like they had seen plenty of action over the last two months.

LT took charge of Keith and the few other survivors from the raid and frogmarched them past the new arrivals. It drew a few curious glances from them, but no objections.

As Keith disappeared below deck, Kristoff escorted one of the newcomers over to me. The newcomer was an African American man in his early twenties. He was solidly muscled, and his ears were much larger than those of a regular human and they folded over like an animal’s. He wore chainmail armour and had a broad axe strapped to his back.

 

Martin Watson (Bullblood Human)

Huscarl (S) 7

Character Aptitude: Moderate

Current Affiliation: Michigan State (primary), Michigan Adventurer’s Guild (secondary).

 

Quixbix had been cutting down on the cruft that came up in my analyses. I didn’t really need to know the loot and threat values of everyone my eyes roved over. That information was all still there, ready to be accessed by me if necessary. And the imp was under strict orders to display anything to me that was out of the ordinary.

His species Bullblood Human explained his physique and the slightly bovine features.

“Captain,” Kristoff said and nodded as he stopped in front of me. “This is Martin Watson, head of the Flint chapter of the Michigan Adventurer’s Guild. He and some of his people were waiting for me when I finished up with Lieutenant Hernandez. They have come in response to the offer you’ve made.”

Kristoff inserted a slight querying inflection at the end. He was clearly a little unsure of precisely what offer the guild representative was referring to. In my haste to search for Mia, I hadn’t updated my core officers about our new offensive in the Upper Peninsula. An oversight I would rectify once this immediate matter was dealt with.

We had heard about the Adventurer’s Guild as part of Trisha’s regular updates. The guild was founded by enthusiastic gamers and role-players in Detroit who had embraced the Darkwyrlds and what it meant from the beginning.

The concept hadn’t surprised me and although I’d initially been intrigued by the group, the last update I remembered reading about them reported that their enthusiasm had got the better of them. The guild had mostly been made up of youngsters, like Jackson and his friends, who ended up in over their heads. Dozens, including most of the founding members, were killed in an attempted raid on a monster nest that went disastrously wrong.

I’d written them off and not read any further updates about the group. That now seemed like an oversight on my part. Neither Martin Watson nor most of his people looked like overeager teenagers who had bitten off more than they could chew. They looked hard-bitten, ex-military or survivalist types.

“My offer…” I said, keeping my tone as non-committal as possible.

“The war against the Hooved Horde?” Martin supplied into the conversational gap. “On the peninsula. Your all-points bulletin that came through to the podium suggested we had a limited opportunity to meet up with you here in Flint instead of at the main rally point up north next week. The branch head in Detroit wanted our group to get in early. Do some due diligence. See if what you said about how many dungeons you had access to was true and if it was worth committing the rest of the guild.”

Damn, but Trisha didn’t waste any time. Offering access to the dungeons under my control hadn’t been part of what we discussed, but I could see its value as a recruitment measure. A quick scan of the assembled warriors confirmed they all had the same secondary factional allegiance to the guild.

“Sorry, Martin, is it? I hadn’t expected a response so soon. The offer couldn’t have gone out more than an hour ago. And last I heard; the Michigan Adventurer’s Guild was virtually defunct.”

Martin nodded in acknowledgement. “We like to move fast, and the guild is rebounding. Under new management, you could say. It was a shame what happened to the original founders. They had the right idea but lacked the savvy to execute it properly. If there is an opportunity here, we didn’t want to miss the chance to explore it. And, well, let’s just say we’ve been beginning to feel…overly regulated as of late. We’re interested in relocating our operations to somewhere with a freer attitude.”

Quixbix chuckled in my head. <Sounds to me like somebody doesn’t like paying their taxes.>

Do you think? I thought back to him.

<Definitely. The Framework facilitates the creation of guilds for a whole slew of different occupations including adventuring and mercenary work. It’s why they’ve been able to communicate with each other in different cities with relative ease. Guilds are considered a quasi-faction and are officially recognised by the Framework. Now, while official recognition comes with plenty of benefits, it also makes them easier to keep track of, and therefore easier for a faction’s leadership to target them for tailored taxation.

<From what we’ve recently learned about the Governor, I bet he is taxing the ever-loving shit out of them. The greedy bastard. These types of guilds make a lot of coin from their activities, so it would make sense for him if he were trying to raise capital for a disappearing act. However, anything earned in your lands or under your banner would be exempt from the Governor’s regulations and be subject to yours instead. And as you have none, you are a far more attractive prospect. I’ll admit to being impressed; Trisha knows what she is doing.>

Assuming Quixbix’s assessment was accurate, I would have to agree with him about the siren. And a bit more firepower to throw at the Horde was exactly what we needed. If in the process we could convince some battle-tested warriors to switch factional allegiance, all the better.

That did present me with a tricky problem to resolve. We’d only just met and even though I didn’t get any bullshit vibes, no pun intended, from Martin, you could never be too sure. I’d been planning to bring all my people to assault the Hellhounds apart from a couple of sentries to be left at the ship. The adventurer’s presence would require a more substantial force to be left behind. I doubted they’d be willing to be locked in our cells or would agree to be fully disarmed. We were a pirate crew, after all. There would be distrust on all sides.

Then something he had mentioned gave me a lightbulb moment.

“Come with me Mr Watson,” I said with my best salesman smile. “I think I’ve got something you might be interested in. You could call it the beating heart of my operation.”

 

***

 

Less than half an hour later and we were on our way to the golf course. The guild problem had been solved once they found out about the dungeon we had onboard. Convincing them to break up into three groups and have a delve hadn’t taken long at all. Even if their guild rep had a mind to object, the lust for booty in his fellow member’s eyes could not be denied. In the end, he didn’t even try.

You are reading story Corsairs & Cataclysms at novel35.com

They didn’t all go in. Martin insisted a few of them remain outside along with him. Guild protocols, apparently. Which was a sensible precaution. You should always have somebody to report back in case of a full party wipe or to discourage opportunists lying in wait for weakened delvers. The number who remained outside was small enough that I didn’t have any fears that they would do anything foolish like try and take the ship.

Those that did go into the dungeon would be inside for a minimum of two or three hours. Plenty of time for us to complete our raid and get back here before they finished.

The clubhouse for the golf course was on the east side of the property. I’d been there before some time ago. From what I could recall there was a sizable car park out the front which meant approaching the building from that direction offered too much visibility for our intended targets. Based on Keith’s ramblings, I made the decision to break through the fencing along the northern edge of the course and for us to then work our way through the crop they had growing.

The creek that ran through the course broke the land into manageable chunks. The first fields that had been cultivated were on the southern half of the course that connected to the clubhouse. Keith explained that before the Hellhounds got involved Malky had erected chain-link fencing around those holes. There were several footbridges you could cross that had been gated and locked. However, the creek was not deep, so we waded across to where the treeline was thickest. The chain link fencing offered no deterrent as we brought bolt cutters with us.

Tony and his squad quickly took down a whole section of the fence and we ran through the gap onto what used to be the eighteenth hole. We came to a halt not far from where the putting green had been, just behind the clubhouse. As Keith had explained the fairway had been dug up and there were now rows of hemp plants growing robustly. Part of the reason I picked this spot to attack was that this was the only part of the hemp crop that had been kept. The rest had been replaced to grow opiates and some new plants that became available from being part of the Darkwyrlds.

It gave us a bit more cover but as soon as we reached the end of the trees that grew along the creek edge, I knew something was off.

Nobody was tending or checking on the plants. No guards were patrolling or keeping watch either. According to Keith and the few others we had taken prisoner, there were upwards of forty fully patched Hellhound members living on the course grounds and more than double that in slaves doing all the work.

We were further away from the newer fields that were in the earlier stages of cultivation and would have more activity, but there ought to be more going on here.

Tony and his squad, our vanguard, moved away from the trees and into the open, rushing across from the trees to the field of four-foot plants.

“Tony, wait…” I started to call out.

My order was cut off by an explosion of sound coming from the back of the clubhouse.

RATA-TAT-TAT. RATA-TAT-TAT. RATA-TAT-TAT.

The top half of the hemp plants in front of the advancing squad were mown down by the sudden eruption of large-calibre gunfire. After tearing up the crop, the bullets ploughed into my people. Tony was hit in the chest by several rounds, and he was thrown backwards, almost all the way to the treeline, by the force of the impact. The rest of his squad was similarly scythed down by the surprise attack.

Multiple rounds struck chests, shoulders, and thighs. Tony and a few others managed to crawl away, but half his squad were incapable of doing so after that initial salvo. Either they were dead, unconscious, or too severely injured to move.

These were not assault rifles that the Hellhounds had opened fire with, but heavy-duty gun emplacements.

“Where the fuck did they get .50 calibre guns. This is Michigan, not fucking Afghanistan,” Charlie muttered behind me, guessing the calibre from the sound it made. To be honest, it was distinctly different from what I’d heard being used before.

“Gun smuggling or they raided an armoury. Doesn’t really matter which. We gotta deal with it now,” LT barked out to settle the rest of the crew who had either scuttled back down the embankment to the creek or taken cover behind trees with thick trunks.

Thankfully, in the Darkwyrlds bullets didn’t do as much damage as they used to. But weapons that would have blown a hole right through you and kept on going had such a high base damage to start with that even with serious reductions they could still be lethal.

A closer inspection of my six crew members lying on the ground revealed that none were dead. A couple of them would bleed out if they didn’t get a healing pellet or spell cast on them within the next few minutes, though. Note to self, recruit more healers for the crew, especially those that could cast at a distance. We had a fair few in the militia, like Tommy, but no dedicated healers amongst the crew and we had been making do with Anastasia feeding back the health she drained from her victims. But she needed to touch you to do that.

The Hellhounds had to have been aware that we were coming. One of them might have checked out the B&B, but I kind of doubted it. And not just because Keith claimed they hardly ever visited during the day. They’d pulled everyone in and were prepared for a raid. LT was confident we hadn’t been observed in the act and we’d done our best to make it look like a random monster attack.

I didn’t know how they knew, but they did, and that made the assault much more difficult.

A few of the crew switched up their positions behind trees and that triggered another round of suppressing fire that chewed up the undergrowth around us.

With the hemp plants no longer blocking our view we could see they had their M2’s set up on the ground floor of the clubhouse. I counted three of them in two separate locations from the muzzle flashes. Two of the M2’s poked out of the main rear entrance that led onto a patioed dining space that had been cleared. The third was being fired from a window which I guessed was part of the kitchen based on the exterior machinery and fans nearby. They likely had spotters on the upper floors on the lookout for us.

“How are we going to get close?” Charlie squealed as the last round of fire ceased. “They’ll mow us down if we charge.”

I had to swallow the impulse to order Charlie to do just that anyway. But he was right. The only gain we’d get from sending him or anybody else out there to die would be fewer rounds remaining for the Hellhounds. As tempting as that might be for the scammer it would be a tremendous waste for any of the others. Plus, I needed them to help crush Luca.

“Fang Mei, do you feel up to a little bit of warping?” I asked instead.

She was hunched down just behind me. Her answering feral grin gave me the affirmative answer I’d been hoping for.

“Sheamus, pass up a bag of Night-Nights for Fang Mei.”

The Alchemic Bombardier had been down by the creek, but he scrambled up the embankment and produced a brown leather satchel from his inventory and handed it over. Fang Mei put the strap of the satchel over her head.

“Fang Mei, skirt the treeline and avoid the hemp fields. Your warp field might conceal you from them, but they could react to movement from the plants as you pass by. Now, the Night-Night canisters count as an offensive weapon even if it doesn’t deal any damage. That will force you to drop the warp field. Prime them first, then chuck a few in through the French doors. Pivot and throw another couple into the kitchen. Then take cover.”

“Understood, Torin,” she said, and faded from view in front of me.

We had power-levelled Fang Mei as best we could and got her up to level eight. Her stronger stats made it difficult for me to see her passively. If I made an active attempt to locate her, I still had a fairly good chance of breaking through, but then that would weaken the warp field surrounding her and make it easier for others to do the same.

“Eyes on the ground until I say, pass it along,” I ordered.

The fewer people directly observing Fang Mei, the less chance that any of them could pierce the veil and weaken it.

You can find story with these keywords: Corsairs & Cataclysms, Read Corsairs & Cataclysms, Corsairs & Cataclysms novel, Corsairs & Cataclysms book, Corsairs & Cataclysms story, Corsairs & Cataclysms full, Corsairs & Cataclysms Latest Chapter