Cinnamon Bun - Chapter Five Hundred and Fifty-Three 

Chapter Five Hundred and Fifty-Three 

The pirate ship was taking a ton of damage, but that didn’t mean that it was going down so easily.

Our shots from above left plenty of holes and rips through the canvas fabric enveloping its frame. Some of those were large enough to expose the large gasbags within. They were all made of a dark fabric, maybe some sort of leather? I couldn’t tell from afar. What I could tell was that we were poking plenty of holes into it. 

Some of those holes were probably small enough that I could plug them with a pinkie, but some? There were gashes and cuts large enough to crawl into, and that meant that the ship was slowly going to be leaking out a lot of its gases.

If the pirates didn’t patch all of that up and soon, then the only thing keeping them afloat would be their gravity engines and that would burn a ton of fuel.

“Keep it up!” Calamity shouted even as he nocked another arrow, pulled, and let it loose. It whistled down and punched through one of the balloons, only to explode deep within with a short-lived gout of flames. “This flying trash-heap ain’t gonna go down so easy!”

He was right, the pirate ship was taking a lot of damage, but they were already scurrying around and doing what they could to repair it. Still, the pirates were gaining altitude. Large basins of water were opened up and spilled out below, making the ship lose a ton of ballast and allowing it to rise despite everything.

“Watch out,” Bastion said. “They’ll be able to retaliate soon.”

“Let’s see if we can’t stall that,” Amaryllis muttered. She started to prepare another spell, just as big as the last. 

I fired off another brace of fireballs, aiming into the tears on the ship’s side so that they’d splash around within and hopefully light something on fire. There were lots of things in an airship that could catch fire. We just needed a few lucky sparks in the right place, and the pirates would be too busy putting out fires to think about doing piracy.

But that didn’t happen.

Amaryllis called down another massive bolt of lightning from above. It crashed into the top of the ship, sparks flying from one metal part to another, before shooting out the bottom. It left a smoking hole at the top wide enough to climb into, and a lot of the metal superstructure was red-hot.

“I’m out,” Amaryllis said. “I’ll need ten before I can cast something like that again.”

“Take it,” I said. “Clive! Give us some thrust! Engines on. No time to be silent. We need to get moving!”

The pirate ship was climbing and gaining some speed. As it rose, nose rising before the rest, I was able to make out the platforms on its bottom half where the ship’s ballistas were positioned. Pirates were loading them up, preparing to fire, and soon we’d be within their firing arcs. 

“Ah! Focus on their weapons!” I called out.

“Got it!” Calamity said. He took another expert shot, only for it to ram into a hastily raised magical shield. 

They had casters? Oh no.

The Beaver’s engine kicked on, and was soon roaring, but that didn’t instantly give us all that much speed. I jogged to the rear deck. “Give us some height if you can, Clive,” I said. “Deploy all sails! I want us to catch any wind we can get. We’re going to try evasive maneuvers!"

Already, a few sputtering fireballs were pitched our way, arcing through the air and mostly missing, though I winced as one of them smacked into the wooden deck. No lingering fire, and it probably only hit as hard as a punch, but still, that was just a warning of what was to come.

We started to gain a bit of speed and a tiny bit more height, but the pirate ship was just losing ballast too quickly. Soon enough it was nearly level with us, and its big ballista turned, aiming our way.

“Shields!” I shouted.

Amaryllis threw one up, and Desiree another. They were both relatively small, hanging off the side of the Beaver.

Three loud twangs sounded out as the pirates fired. One missed outright, another long bolt crashed into a shield, filling the night air with sparks of magic. The third rammed into and through the floor of the deck.

I winced. That’d take some effort to repair, but it wasn’t anything critical.

Awen replied. Opening up with her fast-firing ballista platform turret, every second making a loud thump that heralded the launch of another bolt.

They smacked into the pirate ship’s side, first along the canvas, then across a few shields before leaving a trail of bolts along the main underhull of the ship.

Calamity had Desiree and Caprica apply more magic to an arrow, and when he shot it, it rammed into one of the engine naceles and right through the thin metal surrounding it. The arrow exploded within, and then the entire engine pod was pouring out smoke, the bright light of a fire going off within.

“Yeah!” I cheered. Then eeped as two more ballista bolts struck us. One in the foredeck, another punched right through our balloon. “Oh no. Steve, Gordon! Emergency patch job, starboard!”

I received a few ‘ayes’ before they were off, the Scallywags running about to give them they equipment they’d need. 

“Clive! Dive. We’re going to pass under them, then get as much speed as we can before rejoining the convoy.”

“Aye-aye, captain.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. It’d make it hard for us to return fire, and for a few minutes we’d be within their range and running away, but I think we’d given them a bit of a black eye already. The pirates were probably more busy patching up and repairing things. I was hoping that we’d given them enough of a bloody nose that they weren’t going to keep up the chase.

“Fire everything you have!” I shouted. 

My friends did just that. The number of smaller spells we were flinging at the pirates redoubled, and once Awen finished reloading her turret, she opened up again. The pirates fired back, but the only bolt that might have hit us was caught on a shield. 

Then our dive began in earnest, and I watched as the large body of the pirate airship rose past us. I could just barely make out people in the main deck at the front where they had an impressive view afforded by bay windows. A man wearing a large captain’s hat was glaring.

Darn. If he was angry, he might chose to give chase.

With us dipping below then and gaining some small amount of speed over the pirate ship. We started to list to the side, then Clive kicked the engine into high gear and we accelerated towards the pirates.

I heard shouting from their ship. Probably at the sight of the Beaver’s balloon rushing towards them, but Clive had a great eye for distances and we skimmed past below them.

“To the rear-deck!” I shouted. “Aim up and get ready to fire when you have line of sight! Amaryllis, can you make a bigger shield?”

“It’s taxing,” she said. “And it’ll prevent me from attacking afterwards if I spend all of my magic on it.”

“Yeah, but we need to show up their mages,” I said. “Imagine how scared they’ll be if we stop them from hurting us at all.”

She puffed up a little, then started to work on a spell.

When we were out of the shadow of the pirate ship, the ballista on their other side opened up on it, but the pirate ship was rocking. Having an engine blow up was probably not great for their stability, and as I squinted to see through the night, I had the impression that they were slowly losing some of the upwards momentum that they’d gained from ballast dumping.

Where the leaks in their balloons catching up to them?

Calamity fired a few more arrows, nailing them into the thin metal walls of the undercarriage of the ship. It was unlikely that he’d hit anything important, but one cut hydraulic line could really make things annoying for the pirates, plus it probably spooked them to have arrows suddenly poke out of the floor.

A few windows were opened, and spells and bolts fired from crossbows were aimed down at us.

Amaryllis muttered something that didn’t sound very polite, then threw her talons out.

A large disk of buzzing, electrical energy flashed to light between the Beaver and the pirates, snapping at anything that came too close.

“Flash enough for you?” Amaryllis asked. She looked a bit sweaty and tired, but the spell was super impressive.

“That’s incredible,” I said.

“It’s decorative,” she admitted. “Let’s make some room before they realize it?”

With Clive at the helm, we moved the sails we’d deployed to catch the wind as best we could, then gunned it out of there. The Beaver wasn’t fast-fast, but it was faster than the pirates were at the moment, and we slowly gained distance until they stopped even trying to fire at us. With most of the lights on the Beaver extinguished, we’d be hard to see anyway.

“Let’s catch up with the convoy,” I said. “And then we’ll see what our next steps are.”

***