We circled the island as the defenders took potshots at the Retribution.

Few of them hit and the volume of fire wasn’t enough to worry the shields.

“Why do you want this island?” Em’ah asked for the second time.

“Because we need a place to stage our raids from. Preferably away from prying eyes,” I replied.

“I don’t see how you’re going to hold it with the four of us,” she mumbled in return.

True, holding it with only four people would be impossible. But I didn’t plan on sticking anyone here to hold it. I would simply set up active defenses that would ambush anyone that stepped foot on the island. Heck, it might even make a nice trap for pirates.

Given more time and resources I could add automated cannons to defend it better but I didn’t know if I wanted to spend that much time or resources while I was in this area. It was bad enough I was going to have to burn through some of my spare parts to fix up the damage the ship incurred thus far.

“We have to take the island first,” Barcos snorted in reply, sounding like he didn’t think that was a likely outcome.

In most cases, he might be correct but with the null beam, I could target sections of the island to disable cannons. It wouldn’t be as effective as it was on the ships because they could just repower the cannons but if I could slip Barcos on the island while we did it, it would make the effort of clearing the island much faster.

Of course, I told him my plan and he scoffed at the audacity of it, though he didn’t say no. I think he secretly liked the daring approach and was looking forward to a fight.

“Alright, you two get ready. We are going to hit this stretch up ahead. We will continue pounding the defenses while you two disrupt them from the inside. Try not to get killed,” I added.

Barcos grunted, tossing back a bottle of liquor before he gave a nonchalant wave as he exited toward the deck.

Em’ah just mumbled, “why did I agree to this lunacy again? Oh yeah, because someone in my government wanted me dead.”

I ignored their antics as I focused on the task at hand. With the null beam being so finicky I needed to watch it carefully and cut off the power system to prevent feedback.

“We’re in position,” Barcos said over the speaker.

I nodded to Khikall and he jerked the ship to the right and accelerated toward a pair of turrets that had just fired upon us.

One of the cannonballs struck the shield, causing the ship to buck but we stayed on course.

I knew about how long it would take for the guns to reload so I waited even though we were already within range. I fired five seconds before they should have been ready. It seemed one of the enemy crews decided to be a bit quicker about reloading this time around. The shot missed our ship though as I fired the beam.

As soon as I pressed the trigger, I issued the order to Barcos and Em’ah. “Go!”

The ripple of draining energy swept past the two cannon emplacements, causing the second one to go dark. It seems it wasn’t able to disrupt the active cannonball in the other emplacement as the fortified position erupted in a fire as the ammunition exploded in the barrel.

I would have cheered had it been the return beam, but it wasn’t aimed at either of those positions. It swept past and collided with a third cannon further back and up a rocky hill, obliterating it with prejudice. None of these cannons were protected by shields. The cost would have been exorbitant. This is why I think we had a good chance of actually pulling this off.

The ship pitched sharply down as our attack landed and we skirted the underside of the island at high speed. We didn’t have time to see if Em’ah or Barcos managed to get ashore but I had faith that they would be fine.

“Alright, let's start harassing more emplacements,” I said to Khikall.

It took a few hours but we started to see evidence that Barcos and Em’ah had been hard at work. Some cannons simply didn’t fire as we passed them, meaning they had nobody to crew them or the crew had been taken out. Some small fires were spreading in the town as well and a few pirates tried to flee in smaller ships that had been hidden on the island.

We ruthlessly cut these ships down as we found them. Since they were not much more than dinghies they had no defense or offensive capabilities.

After two hours of not getting shot at we carefully approached the small town. There was a white flag waving above the largest building. I spotted two people standing at the end of a dock cut into the island instead of the normal style that jutted out. I guess it made sense, it was much cheaper to just carve an earthen trench than it was to employ whatever enchantments made the weird wooden docks float in the air.

The two people were, of course, Barcos and Em’ah in her standard middle-aged woman persona. I noticed they weren’t the only people alive though as I saw tentative glances from shuttered windows and dark alleys.

“Fuck,” I cursed quietly, realizing these were probably slaves.

Khikall set the Retribution down in the dock but I told him to keep the systems up and his eyes out for any surprises. I wondered if he resented being stuck on the ship so often. He never said anything about it but it must be annoying seeing as he never got much experience. It was probably why it took him so long to hit level twenty. I did notice he finally chose his second class and managed to level it, although it seemed like a strange choice to me it made a sort of sense given his history.

Khikall | Elemental Blade/Justicar | 20/7

Considering the System gave reduced experience for fighting like this, Khikall had made significant progress on his second class. This only applied to people killed with the ship weapons though. Everyone else got significantly reduced experience for the other deaths we caused. I guess the system had to balance it somehow, otherwise, people like pirates would massively out level anyone else without much in the way of danger to themselves. It also explained why the enemy captains almost always seemed to join the melee fighting instead of remaining aboard their ships. I wondered if that was one of the benchmarks that the System went by, actual danger to your person during a fight. It would make sense given what I have experienced thus far.

It was probably the reason Barcos was still stuck at level nineteen of his second class, that or he wanted to keep pushing his main class but that seemed counterproductive considering he could get five more stat points with so much less effort. Maybe I would ask him about it when we had some time.

I jumped off the ship and landed on the dock next to Barcos.

“Very dramatic, Captain,” Barcos replied, slowly clapping as he smirked at me.

“Fuck off,” I replied, “just tell me how it went.”

“Honestly, rather boring. None of the remaining pirates even put up a fight,” Barcos sighed.

Em’ah grunted, “easy for you to say, I almost lost my head to one prick that was hiding in the town hall. Most of the pirates are dead, a few had bolt holes on the island that they managed to slip into during the chaos. We managed to locate a few of them thanks to the help of the slaves but there are others we have yet to find.”

I huffed in annoyance, knowing it was not going to be easy to flush these remaining pirates out but I would deal with that later.

“What about the slaves?” I asked instead.

“Domestic slaves mostly, that or sex slaves. All of the fighting ones went down with the ships, and some of the slaves aren’t too happy with you about that. They probably had loved ones aboard,” Em’ah replied.

“Of course they did. Are we going to have any problems with them?”

“We might have, but after they saw Barcos dismember a pirate, the most vocal ones decided to shut up. There are still those that are demanding we return them to their families but they aren’t inciting anything yet. Probably due to fear that we might punish them.”

I rubbed my chin in thought. “Find the leaders and bring them to the town hall, tell them I have a proposition for them.”

***

After some time, Em’ah was finally able to convince, or more like order the leaders of the remaining slaves to come to speak with me.

“Thank you all for coming,” I started, only to be rudely interrupted by one of the men.

“Like we had much of a choice,” he glared at Em’ah who ignored the man’s piercing stare.

“Well, Em can be a bit rough around the edges, but unless she physically beat you to get you to come, I expect you to shut up and listen to what I have to offer!”

The man looked like he wanted to call me out on my threat but eventually backed down. I think it had to do with the firm grip that a few of the other slaves had on him.

“Good, now I have an offer to make for you,” before they could ask, I held up my hand to stop any questions. “I can’t offer you passage off this island… at least not yet. What I can offer you is autonomy and freedom from those collars. What I need in return is for you and the rest of the slaves to keep the island safe from other pirates until transportation can be arranged.”

I waited, fully expecting to be interrupted but nobody spoke so I continued. “I can offer you weapons to better defend the island and I can contract a supply ship to come here and restock essentials. If you want off at that point you will have to discuss that with any merchant that comes along. For those who stay and anyone that manages to take down a pirate, they will get 80% of any loot and applicable reward if they can prove they killed the pirate. This includes any pirates currently hiding on the island.”

This got the group talking amongst themselves. Some seemed ecstatic at the idea, others not so much. Finally, one turned to me and asked the question I had been waiting for.

“How do we know you can get these collars off?”

I waved him forward, which he hesitantly accepted.

Now I had long ago added an invisible tattoo to a few places on my body that could easily reach my neck, just in the off chance that I got collared again. It was much more elegant than the ham-fisted solutions I had come up with in the past. I reached up and ran my finger against the man’s collar. There was a click and the collar broke in half and clattered to the floor to the astonishment of almost everyone in the room. It was only ruined by Barcos’s yawning.

Needless to say, the group quickly agreed to my offer. I handed them a tattooed piece of leather and showed them how to use it. The tattoo was just a random design that was meant to look vaguely enchantment-like. The real runes were hidden as usual. Soon every slave collar was removed and the remains were cast into the ocean below to prevent them from ever being used on another intelligent person again.

Now, while these people weren’t fighters, that didn’t mean they didn’t have a fighting spirit. In fact, three pirate hideouts were quickly torn open and the pirates in question were beaten into unconsciousness and dragged to a gallows that some of the other slaves quickly erected. Ah, the joy of skills making construction fast and easy.

I had to admit these former slaves had a bit of a sadistic streak. They clapped the surviving pirates in anti-magic cuffs, waited for them to come to, then they hanged them. System-given stats did not make hanging a person a very good way to die. No, these pirates clung to life for minutes while the former slaves quietly watched with not so much as a hint of remorse or pity in their eyes.

I knew the feeling, I hadn’t been much different so long ago. If the former slaves thought a pirate was taking too long to die, they simply took turns stabbing them with a long-handled spear. The wounds were shallow and timidly made but they eventually got the desired result.

Next came the burials. Over a dozen former slaves died in the attempt to capture the pirates that they did capture. These were given funeral rites and sent into the ocean below.

The next week was a blur of activity. I made Em’ah, Barcos, and Khikall join in with the slave hunting parties to root out pirates. If I left it up to the former slaves, they would just keep getting killed, making my efforts useless.

While they were gone, I was able to recruit the help of a metalsmith and some workers to make repairs to the Retribution. The only sticky point was when one begged me to take him on as crew and another tried to hide aboard the ship. I simply turned down the beggar and paid him for his work.

As for the stowaway, I was none too pleased by that but I simply knocked him unconscious and tossed him back on the island. That got me a few angry looks but everyone knew what I had done for them so a few passing people grabbed the unconscious man and carried him off.

Hopefully, the storage ring I left him with, and the sizable amount of credits it contained would cool his temper.

The ship was fixed, the issues with the null beam mitigated and even the hunting teams had managed to root out seven more pirate hidey-holes, this time with no loss of life thanks to my crew being involved.

All-in-all, things were coming together quite nicely. I didn’t have a whole lot of material to add traps to the town but I had enough to make assaulting the small village on foot, a nightmare. I left the training of the cannons to the other three since those were still going to be the best defense the island had against other pirates.

I doubted it would be long before another pirate showed up, this base may be out of the way but it was also the only known pirate base within days of this location and quite a few used it to make repairs after raids, at least according to the locals. Thankfully the survivors were set for some time. The island was fully stocked less than two weeks ago and for a much larger force than what was now on the island. With the reduced need and the fact that everything was in storage items, it would last until it ran out which was around six months. That was more than enough time for me to procure the services of at least one merchant vessel.

Heck, I might not even need to do that if the locals played their cards right. They could easily sucker a pirate ship into the dock, then just wait for the pirates to get shit-faced drunk, and kill them all. Then take the ship and leave on their own terms. It would mean the island was undefended but it would save me the hassle of getting all of the former slaves off the island by myself.

I did bring this idea up to the leaders but they deemed it an unnecessary risk as they were not trained fighters. I just shrugged and the four of us set off to cash in the bounties and see if we could find any details on our main target.